Holy shit!

The first words out of my mouth and truer words have never been said. While Baltimore does great fireworks, tonites replay of the 1814 repulse of the Brits, was without peer, at least in my experience (and I have seen a fair number of these things) and truely over the top. Five barges, from Fort Mc Henry to the Inner harbor (normally we get two) plus stuff firing off buildings downtown. Simply spectactular.

Two galleries, one with a normal focal length (45mm) from the Sony A7r and a 70-300 on the Canon 5D Mk III. Could have used more cameras, although tonite, the Canon had a mind of its own, choosing settings I didn't know it had. So I couldn't handle two much less five.

As is usual on this blog click the snaps below to see all of the rest on Smugmug.

Pow! Bam! Kaboooom!

Oh, as nice as tonite was, today was pretty non-conducive for much of an airshow. Blue Angles on again tomorrow, plus a ton of other stuff in Patterson Park (the Gov and his Irish Band, Navy Sky Divers, ...). So more posts will be forthcomming.

45mm — Ft. Mc Henry on the left70-300mm

Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days

A convenient use of the Fiddler on the Roof/Sinatra lyrics to fit the circumstances.  The first was taken yesterday morning, the second tonite. There was some notion of a stitching up a pano for tonite's snaps but no such synapse yesterday. Yesterday's were actually stitched after todays worked out ok. The sunrise pano is only two shots, that is why it is taller, I took a third snap but there is a gap between it and what would be the middle snap, so drat — only two images for the sunrise. The wider, sunset shot, is made up of three images. I had a notion of maybe getting a bonus pano but there wasn't much time as these sun up/down events come and go in a hurry. Certainly no time to grab a tripod, so I used the EVF grid lines to get the horizon more or less in the same place and moved fast and hoped I got the same exposure in AP mode. Worked out pretty well.  Both panos with the A7r with the FE 55mm f/1.8 @ f/5.6. All were the first images shot out of a three shot bracket exposed at -2EV, horizontally for convenience. Stitched in Photoshop not in the A7r.

In keeping with my mantra, F the process, it is the outcome that counts. I think the outcome is just fine.

BTW, "contact" printed these things would be pretty big; 42x15 for Sunrise, 64x15 for Sunset.  Next time I have a printing party, I think I will do Sunset. A new container of yellow ink just arrived from B&H last week.

Yesterday my AA asked if I had any extra prints laying around the house.  Boy do I, finally an opportunity to get rid of some of this stuff, wait until she gets a framing estimate! Hah!

Sunrise 1/13/14

Sunset 1/14/14

Rain delay...

at Camdem Yards for the Orioles and the Rangers.  Not so different two miles or so to the east.  Quick flat-stitched pano with the complete ND configuration including the Lens Rental 24 TS-E. The thing feels like it coists what it does. Took off the 45 TS-E to mount it — no comaprison, might be why it is twice the price.

Three portrait snaps, cropped 12x5.

Stiched foggy morning

No clever comments for this just the specs, actually, 17 shots, Heiicon Focus focus merged, front to back twice, then stictched in to a pano.  Although with the 45 TSE-E rotataed because the shift was in use to keep the camera level.  Need to use the macro slide to get the entrance pupil correctly positioned.  Practice, practice — tuning up for the North Dakota workshop.  Quite large if printed at 300ppi ~ 39" x 12".  5D Mark II, 45mm TS-E f/2.8, ISO 100, f/5.6, +1 EV, 1/100 on the Gitzo.

So here is the redo with the macro slide and the no-paralax (aka, entrance pupil, nodal point) set correctly. Gitzo lowered to eliminate the need to shift with the 45mm TS-E but the composition could have dealt with the rail better.

 

 

Gray on gray

Gray day with some black and white conversions to match. Three handheld bracketed images each.  Blended in Photomatix, conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2.  5D Mk II, 85 f/1.2 L at f/9.0, ISO 1600 to get some noise, middle exposures ~ 1/1000. From Veranda #4 as usual.

 

 

4:35PM... 20 minutes ago!

The sun was heading down into a clearing sky after a days worth of rain.  Spectactular. Butcher's Hill, Locust Point, Fells Point, Domino Sugars.

Baltimore Harbor — November 29, 2011 at 4:31PM

 And around to the west five minutes later. Butcher's Hill, Fells Point, Domino Sugars, Harbor East.

Baltimore Harbor — November 29, 2011 at 4:36PM

Clearing

well maybe.  A clouple of days with heavy rain and dense clouds.  The sun broke through for a while around lunch time. Time enough for a quick couple of snaps with the X100 — prepping for the second annual Black Friday excursion to Manhattan.  Still hoping to be able to pull that off dispite some achilles tendonitis.

The tall building in the middle of shot is Silo Point, a rehabbed B&O grain elevator that is now apartments and as of yesterday the other end of my 5GHz uWave internet access link.  Was pointed at downtown but they needed to upgrade the antenna and along with it came a different route.

X100 then smashed to smithereens with a a half dozen plus of Flypaper's Textures.

Different ship, different time of day

Domino's again.  Same camera, a little longer focal length, techniques just early in the evening on a clear, finally getting cool night. The ship from the other night now high in the water and empty sailed around 2PM today.By 5PM there was a new low in the water, loaded ship in its place.

Pretty good color, 30 second exposure this time, figured out that the Vari-ND can be rotated to get the the exposure where you want it at the shutter speed you want it at — neat.

Domino Sugar — at twilight

Big numbers...

Long focal length: 310mm, Long exposure: 485 seconds, Decent sized aperture: F/8.0, ISO: 100, with a Singh-Ray Vari-ND on the pointing end of the 100-400. Vari-ND turned as dark as it would go — that is supposed to be about eight stops.  A little over four minute exposure, the little over is due to multi-tasking, was surfing the web on the treadmill, while the 5D Mk II was making the image — took a while to from the treadmill to the camera.

Domino Sugar with a ship at the dock.  Was looking for more cloud movement need to work on that.

Offloading at Domino's

Edgar checks out the harbor

So the Supik's invited me to a fund raiser for the Poe House at the Creative Alliance last night.  It was run in conjuction with the folks who brew Raven Special Lager.  Mark Supik & Co. make the Raven tap handles and one was on offer via auction.  Turns out in addition to having a great time, Edgar came home with me. This morning I decided to give him a look around from Veranda number four.  

Three shot HDR sandwich, Canon 5D Mark II, 45 2.8L TS-E, ISO 100, f/8.0, bracketed around 1/250, on the Gitzo. FWIW, beer tap handles are the same size and thread as camera tripod mount (who would have guessed) so Edgar is checking out the Baltimore scene from the top of a light stand.

Snap expected to appear shortly on the brewers web site, www.ravenbeer.com.

 

Elevation infatuation

Yet one more elevator — this time cement instead of grain.  Fully read in on how they work and completely up to speed on Buffalo.

First attempt with TopazLabs Topaz B&W Effects, pretty much a rip off of Nik's Silver Efex Pro II.  Similar controls but the NIK UI is more elegant and the sliders update on the fly rather than when let go — but with the Nik stuff at 6.5x the price there should be some difference. Sky was a somewhat noisy so destructured in Viveza 2 and Glamour Glowed in Color Efex Pro then masked to isolate the effects. Storage bins dodged and burned.

Likely the last of the Sea Cruise posts for a while.  Canon 7D, EF 24-70 f/2.8 at 30mm, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 100.

Lazaretto Point Light and Lehigh Cement Elevator - Lower Canton

Huey Huey babe, Huey Huey babe...

More from the sea cruise.

The dot over the i is 6' 4 3/4" tall.

Verizon marketing excellance

At Lazaretto Point

Amidst the Vane Brother's Canton Marine Terminal

Pennsylvania Railroad grain elevator and the NS Savannah in the Vane Brother's Canton Marine Terminal

Done cruising — Inner Harbor Wall

Come on Huey Huey babe...

Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise.  Early returns from today's cruise of Baltimore Harbor.

Walk the plank at Domino Sugar

At roost on Fort Carrol

Heading in, apace, from Key Bridge

Fort Carrol Light

More practice

with the 45 TS-E.  The idea here was selective focus, specifically, to get the diagonal row of houses in focus and everything else out of focus.  This can't be done without a camera with movements or a lens that tilts. Worked quite well, the crazy sky with the light shafts is a plus.  

45 TS-E, on the 5D Mk II, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/5000 (-1 EC), MLU, tilted as needed, no shift.

National Maritime Day

Some snaps around the N.S. Savannah and the National Maritime Day proceedings.  X100 all, mostly single shot here for the exterior, while the prior post is all HDR for the N.S. Savannah interior.

Baltimore City Fire Department Fireboat "John R. Frazier"

N.S Savannah I

N.S Savannah II

Bow and the gypsum factory

Stern

Lots of lines

Pride of Baltimore.  The gray ball floating in between the stays is the nose of the Goodyear Blimp, in town for the running of The Preakness

Damn the torpedoes