I think the photo seicer posted is the limo for an alabama wedding party. They were inside at the rehearsal dinner when the photo was snapped.

 

Ah, but I see mountains in the back...perhaps a Montana wedding party?  And don't hate on the rehearsal dinner at 7/11...they probably planned it around half price slurpee day!

^ Nah. That was a stop for some Mad Dog 20/20.

Images from a hike I went on (with some friends) in Clifton Gorge State Park.

 

Fall Colors

 

Rapids

 

Ditto

 

Snake

 

Leaf Landing

 

Small Fall

 

More here: http://www.hydrobond.net/index/2008.10.11/

Is it at peak or near peak? I went several weeks ago and grabbed some photos, but wanted to return when the leaves were at peak.

Sweet photos Hydrobond. Good eye, steady hand, and apparently, patience.

You have many great photographs on your site Hydrobond!

 

--

 

 

A lone soldier carrying the Confederate flag after the Confederates were victorious at the short fight for Gibson Farm.

Cincinnati, Ohio

...as viewed from The View in Covington, Kentucky.

 

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2

 

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^ Nice!

^Wow.  That's a kick ass pool/view.

 

Is it at peak or near peak? I went several weeks ago and grabbed some photos, but wanted to return when the leaves were at peak.

 

There are lots of leaves on the ground already out there, but there were also a lot of green trees that had not started to turn yet.  If I had to guess I would say peak is a week or two off. 

 

 

You have many great photographs on your site Hydrobond!

Sweet photos Hydrobond. Good eye, steady hand, and apparently, patience.

 

Thanks guys.

^ http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/9584/default.aspx?jrl=168401&clk=171428

Well, I went there yesterday and spent about 5 hours doing a second photo montage of the park and the leaves were in about 60% peak.

Cincinnati, Ohio

...as viewed from The View in Covington, Kentucky.

3

 

Is that a roof pool? Roof pools rule. I wish Columbus' roof pool bars would reopen. I hear they were raging back in the '70s and '80s.

Is that an infinity pool?

Nope, just a regular pool at The View.

First of all, hydrobond those are amazing...every single one of them.  Secondly, The Views have amazing views and that pool is one to die for.  Thirdly, amazing photos hydrobond.

Thanks for the enthusiastic remarks, UncleRando.

Nicely done Calvin

Where is that?

Baltimore

Damn, David! I love that shot! So many things just come together in a way that pleases my eye; the light, the sky, the vintage buildings, the way the street vista terminates ...

David, I would have said "European city" if it wasn't for the purely American signage and mast-arm traffic signals. Beautiful! What is the location (specific) on that?

 

Calvin, your photographs are great. I should come up to Toledo and check out some of the metroparks one day.

Damn, David! I love that shot! So many things just come together in a way that pleases my eye; the light, the sky, the vintage buildings, the way the street vista terminates ...

David, I would have said "European city" if it wasn't for the purely American signage and mast-arm traffic signals. Beautiful! What is the location (specific) on that?

 

Calvin, your photographs are great. I should come up to Toledo and check out some of the metroparks one day.

 

That's the Washington Monument. After looking it up online, that is the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore (just north of downtown). I don't think we give Baltimore enough credit!

 

I saw that view from the car and had to get out and take a picture of it, it was too perfect. I think the reason this picture is so great is that it showcases so many great elements of a city. The park is beautiful and has activity on all sides of it, the monument is a clear and obvious landmark, the church interrupts the roof line from this perspective without looking out of place due to the angle of the street (it's on the same street as the buildings in front of it), and the architecture in general is just really great. I think people inherently use street grade as a measure of complexity and that of course is one of the important factors in what makes a great dynamic city.

 

Also wanna say as great as this pic may be, it looked like absolute sh!t without running it through photoshop lol. I paid about 90 bucks for that camera (plus memory card).

 

I was in Baltimore last month and I walked up that thing....man, I think I'm still tired!  I stayed in the Mount Vernon Neighboorhoods with a friend for a week.  BEAUTIFUL city!  My favorite is Fells Point.

There are miles of metroparks, historic sites and a state park along the Maumee River in Ohio. From time to time there's been talk of filling in the gaps to create a 100-mile trail all the way between Toledo and Fort Wayne, but I haven't heard anything, lately.

 

It would have been nice if they could have tied that in with the Fort-to-Port Highway for funding. Once the Fort-to-Port is finished, though, it should take a lot of the most dangerous traffic off the existing US 24 route, and that might open up some possibilities.

What on earth???

Neat weathervane. Looks just like a real helicopter! :wink:

is that in clifton heights/correyville?  Or is the photo a picture of the sky?  In that case my guess in heaven.

 

I love when you get to see a chopper hoist a/c mechanicals and things onto roofs, etc.  I remeber when the cross looking things were placed on the top of the Suspension Bridge towers back in the 90's.....that'd be the 1990's. lol

Nice shot, with a view not often photographed.

I like Cleveland from that angle. Just put a nice new neighborhood in the foreground and you've got a great shot.

A field full of those big, orange things growing in Belleview, Boone County, Kentucky.  I couldn't find a single pumpkin with a candle inside or a carved out, scary face. I guess I'll need to hack one up myself before Halloween!

Steve Hagy photo.

Pretty pic - it sort of reminds me of the time before highly-mechanized farming and ultra-high plant densities. Some of the older farmers around where I grew up still grew pumpkins in their cornfields; they'd mix the pumpkin seeds in with the seed corn in the planter boxes, and the growing corn apparently provided just the right mix of sun and shade for the pumpkins.

 

Some pumpkins got smooshed during the corn harvest, but the machinery was smaller and simpler and a lot survived. After the corn was picked, you could look across a field and see lots of those big, orange gourds. That's what a pumpkin is, you know.

Beautiful photo Calvin. Another metro park? I need to get my ass out and take some time off in a morning to grab some more fall foilage shots.

 

What are you using as your workflow program? Or are you doing it straight up in a Photoshop-esque app?

Agreed, beautiful shot!

 

There was some lighting thing going on in Boston a couple of weeks ago.  Mostly underwhelming, but here's something to show for it.

It probably came from the local strip club.

Neat! Still doing those excellent night shots, I see.

Woahh!! That's awesome haha.

I shoot raw, do some minimal editing in Canon's utility (white balance, adding/removing vignette), and then just adjust levels, some selective color saturation, and unsharp mask in Photoshop CS 2. Though for this photo, I didn't use any unsharp mask, which is a break from the norm considering the soft, sh!tty kit lens I shoot with. It looked much better without it, and I can't really explain why. This is the first photo I've done with the Canon XTi that didn't benefit from unsharp mask. Perhaps it needed a little softness to set the mood.

 

Also, I should add that I do all my Photoshop adjustments in 16-bit before outputting to 8-bit. I've found that gives me better results. 8-bit has its limitations, even if the final product is going to be 8-bit.

 

I have the option between a 12- and 14-bit on the Nikon D3, and almost always choose 14-bit for the shadow and highlight recovery, and for the vast improvements in color transitions and quality.

 

You should look into a workflow tool. I used to use Nikon's in-house software and Photoshop CS2, but since switching to Lightroom, I've cut the time in half for editing and managing the photos. I categorize every image that comes in, select the ones I want to use, and then edit and save. Lightroom 2 is optimized even for 64-bit, which is what I have, and it runs MUCH faster than the 32-bit.

 

As for lenses, I have a shitty 28mm 28-80 f/4-5.4 I need to unload. Great lens for starters, but sharpness is not what I expect out of a lens.

 

It took me a few minutes to place this one, I grew up a few blocks away on Cypress Way.  It has looked exactly like this for as long as I can remember.   

I'm not for sure about panorama stitching, but no, Lightroom does not support it. Your wording earlier gave me inspiration for a panorama out in Adams County today at Buzzardroost Rock ... and now I'm looking for a program to stitch it for me.

 

The D3 is very good at high ISOs. I frequently shoot ISO 100 to 1000 with little to no issue -- and with 14-bit enabled, you get a better tonal range and less distortion and fringing -- especially as you approach ISO 1000. I have done 11x13 prints with ISO 1000 and it literally looks like regular film grain -- which is desired in many instances. Of course, it's acceptable past that and I've done some nice 5x7's at ISO 6400 -- more so with black-and-whites than color, but the noise literally looks like film grain, just a little more dense. I've seen some action shots at ISO 6400 in 11x13's, and they were very nice for the most part (if you don't mind minor noise). Very sharp overall.

 

Worth the money? Hell yes. Although the D700 was just released. It is much cheaper, has a full frame, and has some features the D3 lacks -- like a sensor cleaner (it's a pain to clean it by hand every once in a while). The D700 is smaller than the D3 -- about the size of a D300. It has a different shutter than the D3 and is a little more slower -- not a big deal unless you are doing mission-critical shots (e.g. action, action, action) 24/7, has a slower burst rate, is missing one CF slot and the lower LCD monitor (the D3 has a small LCD screen at the bottom for basic information), and some other minor items. It starts at $3,000 and is very hard to find today... much like the D3 still.

 

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond700/

 

Moist and cold? I've not had it put through its paces yet in either, although it kept a full charge during one of the cold nights while I was backpacking up at Spruce Knob, and had no performance issues. It carries a lithium-ion battery and is an EL-4, a step up than Nikon's other batteries. The D700 has a EL-4 I believe.

I was surprised that I only had to wait a little less than 2 weeks for the D700 to come in at my local dealer. It has the En-EL3e battery, same as the D200 & D300, but I haven't run into any capacity problems with it yet. I think I may be getting more shots (RAW) per charge with the D700 than I was with the D200.

 

The instructions say don't use the battery below 32degrees F, but I haven't had a chance to try my luck at that yet. I did a little bit of winter stuff with the same battery with the D200 and never had a problem, but I wasn't out for hours at a time with it.

 

It'd be nice if they'd come up with an extension battery cord like the one for the Mamiya 7. It's a dummy battery that goes inside the camera case, connected by a 3-foot cord to a battery case that I can put inside my coat to keep it warm. Works like a champ.

^The old arm pit method is how you developed polaroids out in the cold! 

 

I think the D300 and D700 have some sort of ridiculous gimmick where you switch out for those EL-4's to get the frame rate from 6 to 8 per second.  It costs like $200-300 to make the upgrade.  I think the D300 gets around 800 shots per charge whereas the D70 got about 2,000.  It makes a big difference because it's pretty easy to fire off 800 shots.

 

Calvin you might want to wait for the 5D Mark II which is threatening to put Nikon completely out of business.  Lots of pros switched to Nikon this year for the D3 but many others will be switching to Canon because of this new camera.  The problem of course is that if Nikon leaves the pro business then Canon won't have any competition and innovation will slow down.  Hasselblad's 3D is way too expensive and a good and affordable digital back for existing medium format systems remains elusive.  The rental place in Cincinnati rents it with one lens for $425/day, which is insane. 

^The old arm pit method is how you developed polaroids out in the cold!

 

Ha! Polaroid! Amazing how seldom that comes to mind for me.

 

I ventured very briefly into that territory with a really cheap camera. Fortunately, none of those photos have survived.

 

The company photographer at GE in Fort Wayne shot everything with a Speed Graphic back in the day, and at one point he got a Polaroid back for it. The 4x5 black-and-white film yielded both a print and a negative. It appeared to produce a pretty good image, but after not very long, he quit using it and went back to Tri-X cut film. I never did ask him why.

^The old arm pit method is how you developed polaroids out in the cold! 

 

I think the D300 and D700 have some sort of ridiculous gimmick where you switch out for those EL-4's to get the frame rate from 6 to 8 per second.  It costs like $200-300 to make the upgrade.  I think the D300 gets around 800 shots per charge whereas the D70 got about 2,000.  It makes a big difference because it's pretty easy to fire off 800 shots.

 

Calvin you might want to wait for the 5D Mark II which is threatening to put Nikon completely out of business.  Lots of pros switched to Nikon this year for the D3 but many others will be switching to Canon because of this new camera.  The problem of course is that if Nikon leaves the pro business then Canon won't have any competition and innovation will slow down.  Hasselblad's 3D is way too expensive and a good and affordable digital back for existing medium format systems remains elusive.  The rental place in Cincinnati rents it with one lens for $425/day, which is insane.

 

Note that Canon has had full-frames in the market for quite a while, and Nikon's first full frame was the D3. Canon opted for lower-cost, lower-quality full-frames in an effort to be first-to-market -- which was a great strategy, but the capabilities of the Nikon D3 simply surpassed everything that Canon offered -- until 5D Mark II. The release of the D700 was a next step for Nikon -- it is a D300, with a few added features and a full-frame, and there are rumors of a D3 supplement -- which will most likely be named the D4 that will be in the 20-megapixel range.

 

Nikon is nowhere near bankruptcy; its cash flow is very strong (in the photography lineup) and its newer models have sold very well.

 

Anymore, comparing Nikon and Canon cameras is like comparing the size of your p###s. It doesn't really matter, and both cameras have solid backgrounds and solid cameras for all ranges and uses.

 

To Calvin: If you already own a lot of Canon lenses, it may be more cost-efficient to purchase one of Canon's cheaper full-frame cameras. The quality might not be on par with the D3, but it's cheaper and can be used as a staging for some of Canon's newer (yet to be released) models. Upgrading to a Nikon mount requires all new lenses.

Honest. I tried to stop myself, but I can't. Some days ...

 

< :type: >

To carry Sherman's size analogy a little further, it ain't what you got, so much as what you do with it. It's important to have decent optics, whether you're shooting digital or film, but the photographer's technical skill and eye for good composition and light are more important than the hardware. Most people who look at a photograph on the wall in a home, office, or gallery are going to form their impression based on its overall visual appeal. They're not going to put it under a halogen lamp and inspect it with a jeweler's loupe.

 

In the digital realm, the capabilities of computer software are making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between different technologies and hardware levels in the finished product. There's every reason to believe that advances in that area will continue at a vigorous pace. I've seen a gallery owner who was also a photography editor from a big-city newspaper carefully examine a print, and finally ask if it was shot digitally or on film. I've seen a couple of other serious photographers examine framed prints and ask if they were inkjet or silver prints.

 

I'm not not downplaying the importance of quality gear, and if you're going for big prints, high-dollar buyers and art publications, the better your gear, the better your expectations. Still, no one should consider him/herself limited by the camera or lenses he/she can afford at the moment.

</ :type: >

 

OK. I'm done now. Nap time. :sleep:

Well, there was a book I spotted at Joseph Beth that was a project designed for low-income children. They were given a cheap digital camera and told to take photographs -- of anything, basically. What was around them. While their photographs may have sucked in terms of color, composition, and etc., it was a very nice project and put together, it was visually enticing.

 

Of course, the camera you want is dependent on what you want out of it. Want photos that will frame your entire wall? Get a large format. Want snapshots? Get a regular digital camera. Want to present your images in a gallery? Get a camera that will allow you to print at least 5x7's, preferably 11x13, without sacrificing quality and color.

 

Of course, lenses are ultra important. Don't skimp on this if you can. Primes tend to be sharper than variable lenses, but it's not always practical to carry a bag full of lenses for every situation.

There was some lighting thing going on in Boston a couple of weeks ago.  Mostly underwhelming, but here's something to show for it.

 

You need to shower us with Boston pics.  It is per capita the most under represented city on this forum for photography.  Hook us up.

Wow!  Amazing boat, and nice photo.  I am always in awe of these boats when I see them.  I pulled a stupid stunt in my college days while in Cleveland one cold, snowy weekend.  After partying in the flats, a friend and I saw a frieghter coming down the Cuyahoga towards the lake.  We got on that last rail lift bridge at the northern end of the river, and rode it up, and watched the boat pass beneath us.  It was so freakin cool...and damn cold at 3am during a Cleveland winter.