Yesterday my Viewfinders Camera Club held its first annual awards banquet at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. And whether you are resident or visitor, if you haven't discovered this place you owe it to yourself to check it out. It is a photographers' paradise. Lots of flowers and stuff of course, but some really cool other structures including a number of large glass enclosures for plants. I was fascinated by the glass buildings and since HDR is my fun thing of the month, I had to try some triplet shots for HDR merge. Here is one that I think came out pretty well. Comments welcome.
So I wanted to try some HDR effect on an industrial subject. I stopped at the power distribution yard on Sonterra Blvd. at Hwy 281 and took a few scenes using a three-shot burst at -1,0,+1 stop exposure. Did the HDR thing in Paint Shop Pro and here is one result. Not very realistic, but I think appropriate for the subject matter.
Think about a digital clock using seven-segment displays. Clearly, the zero, the one, the two, the five and the eight read the same forward and back. The six and the nine interchange with each other when upside down and reversed. Three, four and seven do not reverse.
Given these properties, it can be seen that there are some times of day that read the same forward and upside down and backwards. For example, 1:01, 9:26, 5:25, etc. There are 720 separate times displayed on a 12-hour digital clock. Of those, 27 are palindromic. (Coincidentally, 72 and 27 are palindromes!).
I have been getting up in the mornings only on palindromic times. On golf days when I have to get up early, I will arise at 5:15 or 5:25. On more leisurely days, I might sleep till 8:28 or even 9:26. So hopefully the house will not catch fire at 3:00 AM. I will have to tough it out till 5:05 before I can get out of bed.
Life is a challenge when you are retired.
Someone from Viewfinders posted a video discussing the use of UV filters on the front of digital cameras and whether this was a valuable thing to do. Their conclusion was that, contrary to film, sensors from digital cameras are not sensitive to UV so there is no advantage to filtering out UV. They did feel strongly that UV filters provide a valuable safety measure to protect the front lens element from dust, scratches and other physical ailments. I have always used UV filters for that purpose, but it got me to thinking about such filters and whether they really reduce the UV or whether they could be a simple glass plate with no UV attenuation.
To investigate this, I performed a simple homey experiment. I have a black-light lamp that was made for inspection using fluorescent penetrants. The hand-held lamp has a filter that blocks any visible light and only UV is emitted. It is well known that certain fabrics, such as white cotton will fluoresce under UV. If you put a white handkerchief under the black-light, the fabric will glow with a very bright white. I know that you cannot see the UV, so the filter would be useless if trying to see attenuation of the UV. However, if the filter blocks UV, then it should block the fluorescence of the white cotton. I held several UV filters made by different manufacturers between the UV source and the handkerchief. In no case was the fluorescence reduced. My conclusion is that the filter only works for some remote wavelength, different from my lamp, or else they are essentially just plain glass.
I can think of another test I could do in the summer. I could tape some filters to my skin and sit in the sun for awhile. If the UV from the sun is responsible for sun tanning, then there may be some lighter circles in the area of sunburn. Maybe later.
Ted Grant's assignment last week was a self portrait with imagination. He specifically did not want forty shots of people looking into mirrors. I tried a little variation on that approach. I call it "Portrait of me photographing a camera on a tripod". I wanted the image to suggest I was looking at myself in a small mirror. But, if you think about it, you realize that couldn't be the case. The camera I'm holding has to be pointed at the camera taking the picture and that one is not shown. Anyway, a fun exercise. Comments welcome.
The previous post was about the "Twilight Zone" assignment. This week the assignment was "Dramatic Human Hands". Since I already used the photo from the last post, I had to look for another subject. I thought a shot of two pairs of hands in a nail salon would be a good subject. I approached the manager of the nail salon in our local Walmart. Turns out she didn't do English. But there was a young woman sitting up front who took pity on me and offered to pose. Here is the result I submitted.
So I have been a subscriber for a number of years to a mail list for the "Leica Users Group". The LUG has members from around the world with a common interest in Leica cameras and lenses. I have never owned a Leica nor do I really want to, but I have admired their performance and design philosophies for many years. The LUG has recently started a weekly "assignment", run by a veteran Leica photographer, Ted Grant, from Canada. Ted is in his 80's and retired from many years of photojournalism and other photography. He is highly honored in his home country and has many fans in the LUG. Ted names a topic each week and lets members post entries on-line to the mail site. Then on the Sunday after the assignment he posts critiques of each entry. No winners, no prizes, just an opportunity to get feedback from an expert.
Last week's topic was "Twilight Zone" with each entrant to interpret the topic as he chose. Turns out hardly anyone interpreted it as Ted imagined. My interpretation was "twilight" in terms of the twilight of your lifetime, i.e., old age. That interpretation was suggested by my spousal unit and her arthritic hands are the subject, though she is very embarrassed to have anyone see their condition. I don't share that concern. They are what they are and they represent over seventy years of hard work and dedication as a wife and mother. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
Here is the photo. Comments are welcome.
