All My Blogs

  Comparing zoom lenses:  Variable minimum aperture (top) versus fixed minimum aperture (bottom). When you look at the specifications printed on a lens, it usually denotes brand (Nikon), focal length (single number for prime or range for zoom), and often other tidbits such as type of glass (ED), type of mount (G), build quality (S and N).  Another thing you usually find is the minimum aperture denoted as a 1:___ ratio.  The question is, is it a single number (1:4) or a range (1:3.5-4.5). All prime lenses have a single minimum aperture, usually lower than zooms of similar focal length.  Zooms may have either a single minimum aperture common to all focal lengths or the aperture may vary depending on what focal length the zoom is operating at.  In general, you will find that more expensive zooms have a fixed minimum aperture while their less costly counterparts have a variable minimum aperture.  It's not only the common minimum aperture that's pricey thou...

An ultra-wide angle lens is usually considered anything with a focal length less than 24 mm relative to a full-frame camera.  On an APS-C crop sensor camera, that would be anything less than 16 mm. What exactly are ultra-wides good for?  I find them especially useful for landscape and architectural shots where the background can easily overwhelm the foreground.  They are also valuable when shooting in confined spaces as you can't back up far enough to use a regular wide-angle lens.  I currently own one ultra-wide angle lens for my Nikon Z system, but I have owned many before it.  These include lenses for both full-frame and crop-sensor cameras.  They also include a few primes, my favourite being a 20mm f/1.8 beauty. There are two main features about ultra-wide angle lenses.  The first is that they seriously distort the image by bending the lines of perspective inward.  Things that are near the camera look much larger and things away from the camer...

Male American avocet photographed with Nikon 500 PF lens   Above image, cropped Semipalmated plover photographed with Tamron 150-600 lens @ 600 mm As above, cropped Primes vs zooms.  The debate has gone on for a very long time, and there is value to all the pro and con arguments for both.  I have owned my fair share of both.  The question becomes, not which is the best, but rather, which is the right one for you. In general, primes are sharper than zooms, offer a lower minimum aperture, and are faster in focusing.  They also tend to be more expensive because primes are built for users that have specific goals in mind rather than being more general-purpose. Zooms are, in many ways, the antithesis of primes.  They are less expensive, have lower minimum apertures at full zoom, and are slower in their overall rate of focus.  Their advantage is based upon the lower price and greater versatility in the field. Looking at the 500 mm prime (top two photos), I c...

A photo I took in 2006 after local flooding Water sometimes happens.  By that, I mean that water has a way of ending up where it's not supposed to be.  And it can come from anywhere.  High water tables affecting shorelines, overflowing streams, massive rainfalls or snow melts, or highly destructive tsunamis all account for overground water.  Structural issues that cause water problems include leaking roofs, burst pipes, foundation cracks, and floods from accidents like overflowing tubs. My friend, Charles, and I have had to deal with numerous such issues over the years.  Burst pipes, leaky roofs, cracked foundations, heavy rains, rapid snow melts, and the occasional accident from overflowing toilets or leaky washing machines.  And every time we were forced to deal with it without the assistance of insurance. It's not that we don't have house insurance.  We do.  However, the insurance companies of today are trying to reduce their liability by placi...

Narcissus Bulb Fly - a flower fly I photographed in 2016 It's a new season for photographing insects and other minutia small enough to warrant specialized equipment.  I have my old standard, a Nikon 105 mm lens with three sb200 flashes and a D7200 camera body that will certainly do the trick - it's what I used for the above photo. But, as I have been selling off older stuff, I purchased some new macro gear. Mirrorless cameras have, to some extent, been overtaking DSLR bodies now for some time.  Every major camera company has developed their own line, Nikon boasting more than a dozen different models as of this date.  I bought a mirrorless Zfc camera last year, a crop-sensor body that I will be using with a macro lens I bought specifically for it.   My new lens is a Z 105mm macro has features similar to my old 105 but with some noted improvements.  This includes VR, faster internal focusing, and the lens doesn't change size when altering focus.  I do us...

Nelson's Dockyard, Antigua, Caribbean    -    Click on image to see full size Photography is essentially the art of capturing light.  You can do it anywhere; home, the office, or when you are at play.  But you can imagine that your opportunities can be limited by where you are and who is with you.  Your photos will likely improve by going further afield and interacting with more people. Imagine if you limited your photos to your home or backyard.  Expand that by exploring the neighbourhood, then the town, then the county, and finally the state or province.  Your shots will tend to improve as you broaden the region you engage and the people you encounter.  Now go the next step and travel to a different state or province, and ultimately a different country or culture. It goes beyond better photos.  The excitement that comes with exploring the world and meeting new people is exhilarating.  Go places, meet people, take pictures....

iPhone Crib Game - my 29-point hand I have played cribbage for many years.  I think my dad taught me back when I was a teenager, although I don't remember playing any games with him until I was married with children.  I do, however, remember a rainy day in the dorm at college when I played 7 games in a row and my opponent tore up my deck because I skunked him on many of those games. I have played thousands of games over the years and maybe have had 40,000 or 50,000 hands.  In all of those games, I have never gotten a 29-point hand, until today.  The math says the chance of getting a 29-point hand is 1 : 216,580.  That sounds atrocious, but it's a lot better than the chance of winning the 6/49 jackpot, which is around 1:14,000,000.   So really, I am way ahead of the curve.  Instead of taking over 200,000 hands to win, I did it in a mere 40,000.  That's 5x better than the average.  If I apply those odds to the lottery, I could play the 6/4...

While waiting for a meeting with a local notary public, I noticed the view from the 12th floor was somewhat extraordinary.  It was the first time I had seen the city from this vantage point, and I was somewhat enthralled.  I took my iPhone and photographed the scene as a panorama and ended up with the above image, although the original was much bigger being 46 megapixels in size.   I rather like the large central rooftop as it points towards the background.  I shot this using the 2x camera which has a relative focal length of 48 mm which gives it a perspective similar to the human eye.  If you click on the image you will get a better view of it all. Have a look at the image below.  It shows the object selection tool in Photoshop that I used to select the sky so I could darken and enhance it.  The original shot shows it somewhat blandly.  Normally, I would have to use the brush selection tool and go through the entire sky area carefully, selec...

Red necked grebe and chicks, Edmonton, Alberta My first SLR was fully manual with an external light meter that only worked outdoors during the day.  Focusing was manually done with a split-finder and depth of field was estimated by using either the depth-of-field preview gizmo on the lens/camera or by looking at the aperture/distance bars inscribed on the prime lens. There was no such thing as TTL flash metering, and my first automatic camera had only 2 hotshoe pins - the second was so you would know if the flash was properly seated and ready to fire.  Wireless wasn't even a word back then and you had to manually advance film - unless you could afford a motor drive.  Even then, the 3fps rate you could get would eat through a roll of film in mere seconds. With the merger of computer technology and light-sensitive media, the world of photography has changed.  And every year things become even more user-friendly.  I have a dozen automatic shooting modes I can choos...

If you are using Windows 10, you may want to consider this.  I am old enough to remember having to learn DOS.  My first computer was a Commador 64 that my dad brought home.  Once at university, I had to learn DOS because they only had PCs.  Then came a series of Apple computers, mostly because I was a teacher and could buy them through the district.   It wasn't until the early 90s that I bought my first Windows PC - a Bill Gates special running Windows 3.1.  I learned basic, Pascal, and a couple of elementary pixel-editing programs such as Paint.  Eventually, I sold it and bought another machine using Windows 95.   Then came the series of upgrades.  Better platforms, but you couldn't keep the old OS because of the rate of technological advances.  So, 95 became 98 and then XP and then 7, 8, 10, and now we are up to 11.  And the problem is that you can't just keep the old OS because it will no longer be supported.  What...

Mission Creek in Kelowna - before (inset) and after white balance adjustment. I photographed this today with my iPhone 15 Pro.  Although digital cameras have an auto white balance features that corrects for off-white lighting, it is not always perfect.  This is a common occurrence in many situations and there are a number of ways to correct it.   As you can see, the inset (straight from the camera) has not had any adjustments to it other than resizing.  The main image had some alterations, mainly colour, some effect changes, contrast, and sharpening.  The greatest impact on the image was the alteration of white balance. Why was the image blue to begin with.  It was a sunny day, and although the sun was present (albeit at a low angle), the scene was lit by light coming from the blue sky above.  To our eyes it looks white, but that's because of the brain's processing ability to alter reality.  The camera sensor uses an algorithm to produce the ...

Silver Lake near Hope - using the water's reflection to make a stronger image Although I have often used reflections of landscapes to produce appealing images, I have never taken the time to realize that it is a wonderful composition technique to intentionally look for. I frequent areas around water bodies and often find myself using reflections to improve an image.  There are a few things you can do when considering this. Look for bodies of water, regardless of how small, to use for reflections. Even small puddles can be exploited for this effect. Shoot early in the morning or at dusk. Shoot from a low angle.  The lower the angle, the better the reflection. Try not to put the sun in the reflection unless it is low to the horizon. Shoot when there is little wind so there is little wave action. Consider using a polarizer filter to enhance colours.   You can use a tripod if you like - to get really low you can reverse mount the tripod's stem so that the camera is mount...

Back:  Josh, Kurt, Eric, Michelle, Lincoln, Leanne Front:  Kristie, Brennan, Hudson, Charles (with pot on his head) It was 2013, twelve years ago (hard to believe), and the bunch of us hiked the West Coast Trail from its most northern point to Tsusiat Falls.  That 25 km trip, one way, took us a week to do.  At each campsite, we took an extra day to rest, play games, and enjoy the surroundings.   It was about spending time with my kids and my friends.  The actual location didn't really matter, although there are few places in the world as beautiful and majestic.  I photographed eagles, killer whales, and terrific landscapes.  I got many great shots of the people I care about and, best of all, enjoyed spending time with them. Tsusiat Falls is a coastal waterfall and ends in a beach pool.  It is quite a site, although we were fogged in most of the time and didn't always get a good look at it.  Having said that, a break in the clouds le...

I photographed this back in 2010 while visiting the Oregon coast.  I have always had a passion for coastal waters, especially when there are stacks, blowholes, and sea arches to discover.  But visiting Oregon was only a tiny plan in the grand things that were to be.  Zion National Park, the Redwood Forest, the zoo, aquarium, and aircraft carrier at San Diego, and the marvellous adventures that awaited us in Arizona and New Mexico.  All gone - thanks to You-Know-Who. Yes, folks, that's right.  Our neighbouring president and goodwill ambassador, Donald "I" Trump (the I stands for himself, being a narcissist and all).  We have decided to delay our sojourn to the States this fall because of the looming tariffs.  The Canadian dollar is down (thanks again) and we are choosing to spend our precious retirement dollars elsewhere instead.  Also gone is the time we were going to spend with my brother down in Texas around Christmas.  That, too, is anothe...

Aphid adult and young produced by parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction where a single adult can lay viable eggs that hatch into clones.  The offspring is identical to the parent genetically.  The whole purpose of sexual reproduction requiring a male and female is to recombine genes to produce unique individuals. This produces small variables in a population that will allow better-adapted members to survive.  If this is so valuable, why do some organisms reproduce parthenogenetically? Consider plants that reproduce asexually.  Many garden plants have this ability.  Strawberries (runners), potatoes (tubers), and raspberries (cut a branch off and stick in in the soil) all make clones of themselves.  They also reproduce sexually - all of these plants produce flowers and seeds. Certain invertebrates, including the aphids I photographed above, can reproduce in both manners.  The advantage of parthenogenesis is the ability t...

Screen shot of my desktop computer - backing up my 2024 files I am a big supporter of backups.  Not the type in a car where the reverse lights come on and where large trucks make regular beeping sounds.  Rather, the backups I am referring to are those of important files on my computer. I try to do this once a year.  I have 5 hard drives on my main computer.  My C: drive has my programs, OS, and Windows on it.  It is a SSD, or Solid State Drive, where there are no moving parts and it allows me to boot in seconds.  I don't keep any docs or images on it other than what is needed by the system. The second hard drive (D:) is used to put recent stuff.  Right now all I have on it is my 2025 stuff.  Everything else has been moved to my main hard drive, a 5 tb (terabyte) monster that has every digital image I have ever taken on it and all my other documents to boot.  This includes my power point images, books I have written, and even files from school...

I have written about flickers a few times - mostly because they are one of my favourite birds and are fairly common throughout North America.  I have never seen the yellow-shafted ones.  Two days ago I was hiking around one of my favourite bird haunts (Munson Pond in Kelowna) and saw a male high up in a tree.  My photo of him revealed the best angle I have ever gotten on the tail feather colouration. The other shots (three on the right) have been taken over a period of 25 years and reveal some of the tail colour.  I have many more flicker photos (how many does a guy need?), but the one on the left shows the colour the best. In the spring I find flicker tail feathers on the ground from the bird's molt.  It is a common practice for me to put one in my Ausie leather hat band.  It often stays there for the summer.   Today's post was a bit on the silly side, but I just felt an urge to do it.  What can I say?  I am mastered by my whims. Thanks...

Canada goose, one of many flying in a familiar "V" formation. Nature has its secrets, and though many are familiar to us, we rarely understand why something behaves the way it does.  Many of those secrets have to do with unseen physics.  The way clouds form, the way eddies form in in a stream, or the way that geese fly in a V-shaped pattern.  Wait.  What does the shape of a flock of airborne geese have to do with physics? It all has to do with the turbulence and air pressure changes that occur as a goose beats its wings.  There is an excellent video here , but I can tell you the short version.   When the bird raises its wings it causes the air trailing it to form a pressure wave called an upwash.  When the bird lowers it wings the pressure wave forms a downwash.  The waves occur behind the bird and are angled away from it; there is no such turbulence directly behind it (streamlining).  A bird following the lead will take advantage of the...

It was around 1999 or so, give or take a year, that we visited Oregon's coast near Lincoln City.  I was attracted to the magnificent rock formations while my kids were awestruck by the sand.  Miles and miles of sand.  Together we explored the waves, rocks and dunes. One memorable windy day we happened upon a gentleman who apparently had a love of kites.  He had no less than 15 of them strung together in a series formation, each about a meter apart.  And the rainbow of kites had matching tails that streamed effortlessly behind them.  It was a tremendous spectacle. You can see my son (inset) running on the sand drawn to the mesmerizing event.  I was there to record the event on slide film, as my foray into digital media had not yet begun.  I have quite a few shots, but I like these ones the most. I probably have 10,000 slides and negatives and have only digitized a small portion of them.  Each of them represents a slice of history stored on 8.6...