Another Late Thursday

Gas prices 17 March 2011

So here I am, it's nearly midnight again. Oh well. The price of gas has dropped rather dramatically over the last seven days.

Gas prices 10 March 2011

Gas has dropped 14 cents/gallon almost as fast as it rose from the first of March. We're certainly not out of the woods with regards to the cost of gas, and these last 7 days don't make a trend towards cheaper gas. We'll just have to wait and see what happens later this year.

Olympus E-1 with HLD-2 and Zuiko Digital 12-60mm on tripod

And then, of course, there's my new/old second E-1. I've been carrying it around with the 12-60mm SWD mounted on the front, and it has indeed been a sweet combination. The lens/body combination focuses just as fast as the E-3/12-60mm combination. The magic is mostly in the lens.

Tonight, at the golden hour, I decided to take advantage of the light to photograph the system while it was sitting on my tripod. I took it outside and placed it next to a nice roll-up blind I have over the back, then I used my 48" Promaster circular reflector to bounce the afternoon light back onto the camera. It has a white side and a gold side. I used the white side first, but wasn't happy with the results. I then used the gold side and got a few I did like. I so need to work on my lighting skills. Along with my compositional skills. And a few others besides.

Olympus E-1 with HLD-2 and Zuiko Digital 12-60mm on tripod

The one above had the camera facing into the sun, with the right reflector filling in the shadows. That one, while technically "accurate", doesn't look as sexy as the one right above it.

Moon 17 March 2011

And finally, my second moon shot of the sequence leading up to 19 March. The Terminator has advance a little further across the surface of the moon. This one was shot with the E-3 body and the 50-200mm zoom lens. And I made sure to mount the whole assembly on my tripod, use my remote trigger, and enable anti-shake for two seconds. I set focus to manual and turned off in-body image stabilization. Finally, I turned on live view and rotated out the LCD and used that to focus. The image is a good bit clearer than the image taken last night with the E-1 body. That's partially due to double the pixel resolution, and partially to all the precautions to eliminate as much vibration as possible. The next two evenings I'll be using the E-P2 with an adapter.

I'm well aware of the images returned by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). They're stunning, and my little cameras will never equal that kind of science brought to bear. But there is still something to be said for doing it yourself. It's a personal satisfaction that defies words at time. My ultimate fantasy would be to build a little tele-operated space probe, just large enough to carry one of my Olympus cameras, capable of flying to and around the moon and looking where I want it to look. I know I'll never go there, but what a thrill it would be to have an electronic and mechanical avatar there to represent me.

Blog Statistics

This is my 800th entry. I've now written more entries in 2011 than I did for all of 2010, 2009, and 2008. I would include 2005, but that wasn't a complete year; that's when I started writing this blog. I'd like to say hello and thank you to those that follow me. I sincerely hope you're enjoying what I write and photograph.