Two "topazed" shots from my HDR folder - a blast from the past

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I was going through my photo archives (and I have thousands of photos from shooting digital and film the last 9 years) and came across a folder marked "Topazed". This was when HDR photography was a newly discovered technique used to "jazz" up contrast and saturation of a shot. I had downloaded a trial version of the software from Topaz Labs and added it to the Lightroom to experiment with it. To achieve an HDR effect, one brackets the shot, +1, 0 and -1 or +2, 0 and -2 as intended, it is important that the camera is on a tripod, a good sturdy tripod, otherwise the results would not be very pleasing. Today HDR photography is a thing of the past, replaced by smart photo filters that can correct, alter, render more beautiful than real one's images in a thousand ways. I am exaggerating, but you get the point.

Both of these shots are HDR images. I like the fact that they were not taken to extreme, that the images closely represent what I saw and wanted to capture with my camera. The black and white landscape image below was of a park in Palo Alto late afternoon, shooting into the sun intentionally for the effect. Three bracketed shots taken in succession were then combined and converted into gray scale in Lightroom.

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The picture below of the Baskin-Robbins joint in San Jose at the corner of The Alameda and Race Street was a HDR in color. This iconic Baskin-Robbins hang out was somewhat out of place because its diner looking neon lit facade did not quite fit this part of San Jose. a mile long at best, The Alameda had a little of everything, the new and the old, a church, a Chinese take out, a fancy Thai restaurant, New York Pizza, offices and Starbucks strategically located from Coffee Bean, yes, two nemesis, diagonally from each other, separated only by the only street. A little out of place to me, I remember wondering when it might give way to something more popular with the Gen Y, or the Gen X and the Millennials, perhaps a Pinkberry. Well, it did finally give way to a burger joint - a popular joint named Five Guys Burgers and Fries that serves up finger licking good burgers, grilled fresh, variety of ways one could order one's salad, beers and sodas. Its interior decor hints of a no frills college town eatery with a hint of a pub. On most nights, parking is hard to find with patrons trying for a spot on nearby residential streets. Looking at this picture of Baskin-Robbins basking in its old glory brings back a little nostalgia, a little sadness. I feel for an iconic eatery whose time has come to pass.

I love New York, A City That Truly Never Sleeps

Time and again, I am drawn back to a particular set of photos in my collection - a set of some 30 or so photos I had curated into a special folder, all taken on a day trip to New York City a couple of years ago. If you love street photography this story may sound familiar. It was one of those days that you know you will cherish. A day you clicked the shutter away because there were so many photo ops at every street corner, every alley. A day like any other day, tourists and locals out in force to sample the city's eclectic facade, have tea and lattes at sidewalk cafes. Yellow cabs, cyclists, pizza delivery man, cops, homeless people make up familiar Big Apple landscape. On that day I had a 35mm film camera and a dSLR, one with a medium telephone lens and the other a wide angle. I shot a roll of black and white and may be 100 or so frames on my dSLR. As the day went on, I became more excited as I knew I had many shots in my cameras I would cherish for a long time. I did not exactly stake out at street corner or city bench, I was seeing the city through my lens and took the shots when the image moved me. I walked a great deal, spending the entire day in the city on foot. When dusk set in, I hurried to Grand Central Station to catch the bus for the return journey home.

IT was a journey I started out the same way I returned, I took the daily commuter bus early morning. When I arrived at Grand Central Station and stepped off the bus, the air felt dense, mist descending on my nose. I was exhilarated, happy to finally be able to spend a day in the city with my cameras. As I walked the streets, I stepped in and out of the long shadows cast by the morning light on the towering skyscrapers, stopping from time to time to take a picture. The view in front of my eyes was a scene reminiscences of the black and white photography of New York city, minus the horse carriages of Alfred Stieglitz and André Kertész.

See more of my NYC photos in a photo montage video I created for Youtube

How to get a replacement copy of the free Canon Solutions Disk Software (DPP, EOS Viewer Utility, Zoom Browser...)

You might have noticed that if you bought a Canon DSLR from someone who did not pass you the Canon Solutions Disk with the EOS Viewer, the Digital Photo Professional Software (DPP) or the PhotoStitch software you like so much, you are out of luck and will have to pay for a copy on ebay. It is a free software available to all Canon DSLR owners (well if you are the first owner that is). Similarly if you bought a new computer and do not have the original Canon Solutions Disk, you are also out of luck as it seems Canon is now providing a link on their website for an Updater instead which requires that you first have the original software installed for the Updater to work. That does not solve the problem for most clearly.

There have been other solutions suggested online (here is one dfguo.com). Some folks who are tech savvy have been able to work around it and get the Updater to install as a complete software. The work around requires editing the registry to "fool" the Updater thinking that the original software is "installed" in your laptop as apparently the Updater is indeed a full suite but won't install unless you have the original version on your computer. I did try the method suggested on dfgua.com but my initial efforts were not successful. I was also apprehensive about having to edit my HKEYs and was concerned I may end up messing up the Registry if I have another go at it. So I looked around the web for an alternate solution which I found which I explained below.

I am a Canon user and have DPP and Canon EOS utilities on my old laptops but I recently added a third laptop to my line up. I bought this third laptop off ebay from a reseller and of course it did not have the Canon EOS Utilities bundled installed. In the past I have been able to download the full DPP software suite directly from Canon USA onto all my other computers. Things changed obviously at Canon Support desk and they decided to rein the free software in. With that change links to the full suite of image processing software were nowhere to be found. Instead what you see are links to "Updater software" only. Without the original DPP software on my new laptop, the Updater file I downloaded just will not install. A site I came across DSLR Film Noob dot Com's posting had some helpful info. After much poking around Canon USA home page (http://www.usa.canon.com) and other Canon International home page I found a link to the EOS Solutions Disk installer zip file hidden among the many Updater software links. The Canon Solutions Disk package is listed on the software page as the installer package for those who were not able to install originally from the bundled CD. To download the installer package you need a serial no and I used 0330113672. This was the number mentioned in the blog from DSLR Film Noob that had worked and the software pack downloaded quickly.
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Interestingly the same serial number is good for many downloads and worked each time no matter which model I selected, Canon 6D, or 50D or 60D, it did not seem to matter. I said this because I had initially downloaded DPPW 4.3.1 which installed fine but refused to launch greeting me with a message saying I need to reduce the display size of my screen to Small (100%) for it to work. Mine is set to Medium 150% (Control Panel - Display- Screen Resolution). I uninstalled it and went back to the same Canon site and downloaded the EOS Solutions Disk Software instead. That proved to be the better decision as in the Solutions Disk Software package are the DPP (v3), EOS Utility, Zoom Browser, PhotoStitch etc the whole suite of Canon utilities. Once unzipped, all the packages installed 100% on my laptop running Windows 7 64bit and they all work fine. They are essentially a copy of the Canon CD that is supplied with a new Canon DSLR.
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Now to get to the software download link you have to go to Canon USA or Canon Europe, or Australia or Singapore homepage, click Drivers and Software link on the top right corner, then user Product Finder, pick your model of Canon DSLR EOS. On the next page when a Recommended List pops up, select the Software tab. Find the Canon EOS Solutions Disk (towards the bottom of the page), and hit SELECT. You will prompted to enter a serial number before download begins. The file is fairly large (100M for the Solutions Disk) and 184M for DPPW 4.3.1 and may take some time depending on your internet speed.

Hope this helps some of you who face the same dilemma as I did. Cheers

Carillon Point Marina, Kirkland, Washington

We treated ourselves to a nice New Year's Day brunch at the Beach Cafe at Carillon Point Marina in Kirkland, Washington. I had Chicken Wrap with sweet potato fries and they were delicious. It was a beautiful sunny winter day and it felt more like 40s although the temp was in mid 30s. Folks were out walking their dogs, families with kids having leisurely stroll by the waterfront. There is a beautiful pier stretching into the lake. For $99, the pilot will take folks on a ride on his sea plane offering a bird's eye view of Lake Washington. It was indeed a lovely place to usher in 2016.

The panorama image was a crop of another image taken on the Motorola Luge phone. The original image had more of the pier. In addition, I had put the original image through an Aviary photo filter. Part art, part photography, this far from perfect picture has the look of a watercolor painting and I love it.

Below are two unedited images of Carillon Point Marina with Aviary digital frame added.


Whenever I am not able to lug my Canon DSLR and lenses on a trip with me, the camera on my phone comes to the rescue. I am a late adopter of the latest and newer technology anyway, one of those 3G phone holdouts. My old 3G phone had a pullout qwerty keyboard which I sorely miss today. To force my hands, one day Verizon simply decided that it no longer wants to support 3G, simple web pages that used to load and offer just the right amount of news and updates stopped loading. They succeeded frustrating the hell of me and begrudgingly I ordered a 4G Lite smartphone. I stuck to the prepaid plan with no contract. Since then this cheap smartphone has served me well and has become a second eye in many an occasion

Today is Saturday and I am feeling nostalgia......

Up in the state of Washington for a few months now and I am definitely missing the California beaches. Going through my beach photography collection a little while ago and I picked out a few photos from the album.

On a typical Saturday morning at this hour, I would already be in Santa Monica checking out the scenery and having the best R&R money cannot buy.

and on every Veterans Day the scene in Santa Monica beach

I will be back.... just not soon enough.

Oympia XA 2 - Another Gem

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Over the years I acquired two Olympus XAs with Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 lens off ebay for under $30 a piece including shipping. The XA was reputed to be "the other" camera for Henri Cartier-Bresson and his peers and many famous photos were shot on the XA. It is very small, measures just 4" x 2.25" x 1", weighs a mere 10 oz with batteries despite having a stainless steel body. For those of you familiar with Minox GL, it is just a tad bigger fits easily in one's coat pocket or purse. A rather inconspicuous little camera, it is a true rangefinder camera with a fast Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 lens (XA2), with aperture priority and viewfinder shutter speed display and a switch at the bottom of the lens for ASA/ISO selection. Very quiet shutter, almost inaudible. The XA was designed by Yoshihita Maitani, the same man behind Olympus PEN and OM film cameras. One other plus point for the Olympus XA is that it uses the readily available SR44 batteries. I would like to land my hand on a XA 4 which has a macro setting but they are hard to come by and command a high price on ebay.

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Not my sports car, taken while standing on the lower deck of Kingston ferry in Seattle

Messed this one up real good... double exposure but surprise.....


Palm size XA - No more excuse for leaving my camera at home
Great info on the Olympus XA and many classic cameras at Photoethnography.com. This is absolutely my favorite Go To site if I am looking for well documented and researched info on classic cameras.

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On a slightly off topic subject. If you have a dead meter needle (viewfinder) which happens in many of these well loved classics made at least 3 decades ago, try shaking the camera gently (an old trick), and point the lens at a bright light to nudge the needle back to life. Sometimes that jolts the needle back to life which in my case worked for the second XA in my possession. XA uses two cds cells, one for the viewfinder meter and the other for the lens shutter. The viewfinder meter/needle is the one that most commonly gives up from lack of use/age. This little trick reminds me of an old Weston light meter I had, which needed some help to start working again.

YouTube videos

A slide show/video of photos taken on a day trip on foot to New York City, South Street Seaport, lower Manhattan and Wall Street. New York City is a city that never sleeps, full of life, sights and sounds, plenty of photo ops. My camera set up that day was not fancy but it was adequate for street photography. A trusty Canon 10D and the poor man (woman)'s L lens - the legendary "beer can" - Canon 70-200mm f/4 zoom and a cheap Tamron 19-35 f3.5-4.5 wide angle made for a very rewarding outing in the busiest city on this side of the Atlantic.



This second video is a collage of sepia photography most created with the help of Photoshop software and a few from my Lith printing collection. I love sepia and the warm tone :)



The last one is my favorite. It was a video compiled from digital photos shot on my Canon Elan and Canon 10D with Tamron 28-250mm f/3.5-5.6. This was at the annual Cinco de Mayo festival in downtown San Jose California a few years back. The kids were so adorable. It was one of those days you look back every so often and wish you have more of them.....Enjoy.

Grifone Sangiovese - Glorious Tuscan Red

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You may know that I love wine, good wine, especially those that can be had at a great price. My favorite place to shop on a weekly basis is my neighborhood #Trader Joe's. It is the first question I ask whenever I am considering moving to a new town/city - "Where is the nearest Trader Joe's?" lol.

So you can imagine how happy I was when I spotted at the end of the wine aisle at Trader Joe's a bottle of #Sangiovesee that looks yes, very Italian with its red label. The label is elegant, very European, not quite French but definitely warm, Mediterranean......The label reads Grifone Sangiovese, Together with cases of Sangiovese is the #Primitivo (hmmm, don't know anything about Primitivo but now I am really intrigued and definitely want to try out the Sangiovese that is selling $3.99 a bottle). I have had Sangiovese on many occasions and love it with spicy Asian dishes and Italian pasta, and the Sangiovese has a bouquet that is between a very robust Shiraz and a mellowed down Merlot, but perfectto on a day of good company and good food.
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I bought two bottles of Grifone Sangiovese that evening for a mere $8 and promptly came back for more. It was a beautiful red and upon doing more research on the web, I came across this review by Gil Lempert - Schwarz of Las Vegas Review Journal who describes the Grifone Sangiovese so eloquently in his article HERE and I quote "On the nose: There is spicy black fruit, sweet tobacco, balsamic reduction, cedar box, ripe red cherry fruit..........On the palate: The wine expands to show its ample vibrant red and black fruit medley, dominated by the classic — similar to the Chianti zone ...and he goes on to say - Yet another killer value from the heart of noble winemaking in Italy. It’s very Italian and very Tuscan through and through..."

Buy the Grifone Sangiovese and Primitivo by the case and drink them before the end of 2016 - Gil Lampert tells his readers. That is exactly what I am going to do on my next trip to Trader Joe's. To me, it is truly amazing that Trader Joe's can bring such great wine to the US and sell it at the stores for a mere $3.99 (in California) a bottle!!
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You can read the full review by Gil Lampert - Schwarz here on Grifone Sangiovese and on Grifone Primitivo

Also on the #Grifone in the Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer HERE

On the right - Pizza freshly made at the local cafe restaurant at Monterey Bay Marina - First hot meal after pulling into Monterey Bay having sailed some 20 hours non stop from Sausalito chased by a storm that was nowhere on the map on NOAA the morning we left Sausalito. It was cold, damp and foggy throughout the entire journey and we were glad to finally be tied to a dock. This yummy pizza was just what we badly needed

The Magnificent Seattle Waterfront at Dusk

Up in #Seattle since Jan 5th when we drove his Ford Explorer packed with office equipment, computers, books, clothing and made the 18 hour 2 night journey north from Ventura California. With a bit of good luck we found a furnished studio in downtown Seattle 3 blocks from Alaskan Way and quickly set up base. It is still winter and most days it is either cloudy or rainy. When it rains in Seattle, the sky just opens and it rains cats and dogs the whole day long. We have also had a few days of glorious sunshine and temp is normally in the mid 40s to low 50s, what you would call mild winter days. It is comfortable as long as one is properly dressed for the weather.

Yesterday we decided to do a test run on the light rail transit from #Westlake Station downtown to #SEATAC Airport. It cost a mere $2.75 per trip and takes about 40 minutes from point to point. Hence it is very convenient to fly in and out of SEATAC if you live downtown not mentioning the many restaurants and shops on every block. Driving can be nerve wrecking though, pedestrians and tourists everywhere. However #Seattle has a very good public transit system that connects downtown with nearby suburbs and one can definitely do without a car. Parking is prohibitively expensive and if you are looking for an apartment downtown, be sure to ask if you would have a parking spot.

On the way back from the airport, we got off at #International Station/Pioneer Square, 3 stops before #Westlake Station and walked home along the waterfront. It was a beautiful late afternoon and we caught the sunset just in time. I am a happy camper each time I am near the water.........

Here are a few snapshots taken with his #HTC One smartphone. It is amazing that these shots are so good that to me they rival those taken with my DSLR. You be the judge. Unfortunately I did not have my Canon 10D and lenses with me, it was too heavy to be lugging them around in a backpack, instead I opted to take the# Olympus XA2 loaded with a C41 Kodak Black and White film and did some black and white instead. I hope I have at least a few good shots from the 35mm film.

Finally below a picture of the beautiful Seattle skyline. Steadying the #HTC One on top of the giant binoculars on the pier was a key factor in getting a decent night scene. The IS (Image Stabilization) feature is another vote for getting a HTC One smartphone. Shot is not perfect but on a 8x10 print it will probably look good enough to frame. A small Gorilla pod would definitely help and again I left home without it.

No wonder my DSLR stays at home more and more these days.

Paper Artist program on my Samsung Tablet 2 10.1 - WOW

I have had my #Samsung Tab 2 10.1 inch for over 2 years and only yesterday I discovered it is pre-loaded with a really cool program called "Paper Artist" which allows me to turn images into beautiful art. If you have the "Paper Artist" program, the possibilities are literally endless. All one needs is a good photo or art work (your own ideally) to start with and you can let your creative juices run wild. It is with much guilt therefore that I made the following digital art :) (using my photography). I cannot paint nor draw well but I "look" like a genius here. I am not sure what to make of my accomplishment...... Below are a few I like:

#Lake Union, Washington State

Enjoy and would love to hear your thoughts

Why Camera Lens Fog and How to Prevent It

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This is an article I wrote for Associated Content (later acquired by Yahoo and became Yahoo Contributor Network). Guess Yahoo did not think it is worth their while to host and assign resources to it and they are shutting it down end July sending many self employed writers into survival mode. I am posting it here so folks can continue to read this article.

Why Camera Lens Fog
The reason why lens fog up is very similar to why our eyeglasses fog when when we step from a nice warm car into a colder outdoor or vice-versa, when we step outside from an air conditioned car to a hot outdoor. If left unattended, this will lead to mold growth on the lens interior (and exterior) and by then most remedies are too late and the lens is basically useless. If your lens fog often, there is usually more to it than just the fogging. The lens is probably rather old or has probably seen some serious wear and tear . Moisture tends to creep more easily inside an old lens that has not been well cared for when it is subjected to extreme temperature shock. If that is what inflicts your beloved lens frequently, I am afraid it is time for you to think about getting a new lens when the next big sale come around.

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Let's start with steps you can take to reduce fogging:
Always put your camera/lens in a Zip Lock bag before and after using it and zip it airtight. It does not matter whether you were using it indoor or outdoor. It must become a second nature to you if you care about your camera. This is especially necessary if you have been shooting in the cold and are returning to your warm car or going indoor where the temperature is warmer. The air inside the Zip Lock bag acts as a cushion and will allow the lens to adjust to the temperature change more slowly. Any condensation due to extreme temperature change will accumulate on the inside surface of the zip Lock bag. Try to give it some time to adjust before you pull the camera out again to shoot indoor. Be gentle with your camera, great photography often comes from time spent composing the image in your mind and not from an impulsive shoot.

Shooting winter/snow scene, being outdoor on a chilly day for many hours. If you plan on doing outdoor photography the next day, think ahead. Put your camera and lens inside a large Zip Lock bag. Zip it tight and leave it in the trunk of your car (I would only do this if my car is parked in my garage and can be locked up of course). This will mean the lens should be at about the same temperature as the outside temperature when you pull it out to use the next morning. Also if you are stepping out of a warm car into the chilly air to take a snapshot when you are driving and your camera is coming right out of your backpack in the warm and toasty car, keep your camera close to your body inside your fleece jacket until you are ready to use it and do so quickly. Have a Zip Lock bag handy, put the camera in the Zip Lock bag and zip it tight before you get back into the car.
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An old lens will be more prone to fogging as mentioned above (unless it is the expensive Canon L lens with weather sealed lens elements). This can become a big problem over time and mold can infest the inside surface of the lens. Can that be fixed? you ask. Yes, but at a price that is prohibitive and highly uneconomical. The camera shop technician will likely advise you to get a new lens from his colleagues in the sales department instead due to the cost of repair. There is also no guarantee that the mold will not return once you had the lens clean.

What to do if you have a foggy lens?
If your lens fogs up because it has just gone through temperature shock. Remove the lens from your camera bag. Use a clean lint free cloth (lens cloth) and wipe the dust and moisture off the exterior of the lens. Dry off all other parts of the lens well and place the lens on its side about 10-12 inches from a reading lamp. Rotate it 45 deg every 20 minutes or so to allow the lens to warm up and dry evenly. The lens should clear over time so relax. Don't check on it every 5 minutes. It will likely take anywhere from 1-3 hours for the lens to clear completely depending on how big the lens surface area is and how bad it has fogged. I am assuming that is the only problem you have. Once the lens has cleared. Hold it up against the light to see if there is any other dirt or problems. If you see dusts hopefully on the outside, clean the exterior lens surface gently using lens cloth and cleaning solutions.

If you don't already use a lens filter on your lens, get one! A UV/Haze filter will do the job. It protects the front element of the lens in case you accidentally drop the lens. More importantly, the filter adds an extra insulation between the cold air and the actual lens surface and often that will prevent fogging of the lens as the air between the filter and lens surface helps protect it from the temperature shock. Changing lens. If you need to put a new lens on, make sure the camera power is turned off before you remove the lens and put the new one on. Static will draw dusts onto the camera sensor - the most delicate and important part of the camera. This will result in black round spots appearing on your images. The dust spots will first show up on your landscape photos (when you are shooting at smaller f/stops, e.g. f/11, f1/13, f1/16) and they will become more and more apparent and will eventually show up on all your digital shots, ruining the pictures. Do not attempt to clean your digital camera sensor yourself, no matter how much you want to. Any mis-step can ruin your camera for good. A reputable camera shop will do the sensor clean for $60 a pop.

The moral of the story: take great care of your camera equipment. Give it plenty of TLC. As you know, water and electronics don't mix well so treat moisture on any part of your camera or your lens as your biggest enemy. Dry the moisture off thoroughly with lint free cloth each time. To clean the front element of the lens, spray lens cloth with lens cleaning fluid and wipe it gently, recommended after each photo session. Put the lens cap back on, never leave your camera lens exposed. Many things can happen to your camera when you least expect it. Little things like that may be a no-brainier. Simple preventive measures will go a long way in keeping the camera in ship shape condition for many years to come. I have seen many camera disasters: A friend of mine once dropped a brand new camera into a bucket of water while on a sailboat at the dock. Despite grabbing it out of the bucket in a split second, removing the batteries and wiping it dry, that camera was finished. Finito!!. Nothing would have saved that $490 Canon A640 from the water. Ouch! but to make a point, cameras don't like water!!

Footnote: For years, I wrote articles as a Yahoo contributor (formerly Associated Content) and Yahoo has just announced they are shutting that down, and all the contents and rights will be returned to the writer/contributor. I have expected it for some time now since Helium (a similar article site) "went off the air". I wrote a total of 40 articles on photography, food and How To and so I am going to be posting some of the more popular articles on my blog to make them available to readers after July 31st.

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover .....

In my last post I talked about my "ugly" Quantaray zoom lens which came with a Canon Elan SLR film camera I bought off ebay. There was definitely no "love at first sight". With the signature green lettering at the rear end of the push pull lens barrel, this CN-Tech (Quantaray, made for Samy's Camera?) 75-300mm zoom lens has a max f-stop of 4, a deal breaker in low light. This lens is old, manufactured ages ago! I did not expect much. When I first tested it without film, the focus seemed fast, albeit a little noisy but the noise is not any louder than the Canon EF 70-210 f/4 lens. The lens is light, made mostly of plastic. The push pull zoom barrel is slightly stiff but works nonetheless. The only way to judge the lens is to shoot with it. Armed with a fresh roll of Neopan 400 film in the Elan with the rather unconventional looking lens I set out on foot to the harbor at 4pm yesterday. The harbor was picture perfect as always. There were many sailboats, power boats and a dozen very salty looking fishing trawlers. This is a place of my daily evening stroll except that this time it was 4pm and the sun was a long way from setting. The 400 ISO film was an over-kill but it was the only film I had left. There were a few kayakers and paddle boarders in the water, a group of school kids and their parents with puppies in tow having some family fun. The sea surface sparkled and danced in the gleaming sun.

"Three kayaks at the Rent A Kayak Center, Neopan 400, Adonal, Elan, Quantaray CN Tech 10 75-300mm f/4-5.6"

It was easy to finish 36 shots on the Neopan 400. I could always find photo ops, even the most mundane objects. I am a sucker for lines and shapes, hard shadows. Give me anything and I will find an interesting angle to make a photo out of it. As soon as I got back to the office, I developed the negative (Adonal 1:50, 11 minutes) and was pleasantly surprised. Nearly all the images from this roll were fantastic (if they were not it was my fault entirely). Focus spot on, images sharp. In black and white film, the inferior Quantaray glass almost did not matter. The 300mm focal length was definitely very handy.

"ABOVE - Giant shovels used by harbor fishermen"

An interesting side note on these giant shovels. These huge shovels have a 16 x 12 inch pan size and measure almost 5 ft long with the handle. Fishermen use them to quickly move buckets of shaved ice into 5 ft x 5 ft x 5 ft blue plastic tumblers as hundreds of freshly caught squids come off the conveyor belt into these tumblers. The tumblers of shaved ice and squids mix are then loaded into a 20 ft container, hauled to Long Beach Harbor and shipped to China for processing!! The squids, cleaned, cut, sorted and packaged in some port city in China would then make their way back to the US supermarkets. This sounds crazy but true

And below is my Elan and Quantaray CN-Tech 10 telephoto lens that could produce such respectable results. One thing to note. This is a film only lens, it does not work with Canon dSLR

This Quantaray zoom lens cost me almost nothing, $25 to be exact. It is now a keeper. Work with the limitations of one's gears, one shall be rewarded with good results!!

Getting Back To Film After A Long Hiatus ......

I have not shot a roll of film in quite a few months. Jan to April each year is when I am busiest, as my other day job is that of a tax preparer at a CPA office, 60 hr week for about 10-11 weeks. Finally that is over and I can have a bit of R & R. Fall 2013 I bought a basic Canon Elan camera body on ebay (just because... it was cheap, I could not past it up). It came with the ugliest looking Quantaray telephoto lens. I wanted to see how bad a cheap lens can be. It actually seems to focus rather fast although it is a slow lens with max aperture of 4.0. It does not hurt to have a 35mm film SLR lying around that could share some of the better lenses I own. I also added to my gears a 200mm f/2.8 L lens from ebay, for $200. Before you said Wow, what a sweet deal! It is cheap for a reason, it has a broken USM motor and only the manual focus works. That did not bother me, I was after the glass and bokeh of a prime L lens within my budget for a hobby. My kind of photography is slow mo anyway. I prefer to take my time to shoot and let my heart leads.


First off I am so out of practice that I had to reel the films thrice as they kept kinking on me and all that inside a large changing bag. Still it did not feel like it was properly done but I eventually gave in and decided I am going to develop the film and live with the consequences. Rodinal/Adonal is always my developer of choice and it gives me good control over the development. It is a one shot developer which means I can prepare just enough for each run and not worry about the rest going bad on me.


The Canon Elan turned out to have an unpredictable shutter (no such thing as free lunch.. things are cheap for a reason, I can only laugh at myself now).The shutter jammed at low speed and I had to turn it off and back on for the mirror to return leading to light leaks on the entire roll. It would work at fast speed, but the entire roll had already been exposed while the shutter stayed open when it jammed. This roll came out blank (clear) except for the frame numbers. I had a second roll of Neopan 400 shot partly on the Canonet QIII 17 and partly on the Canon Elan with the 200mm f/2.8 L lens that was processed along with the first roll of Neopan 400 in the same tank. You can imagine how relieved I was to find a few good shots on the second roll.

Sleepless in Ventura Harbor, borrowing a line from the movie

We live on our 35 ft 1963 Pearson Alberg sailboat (hull #7) (named Sashay). Living in a small confined space (78sf to be exact) on a sailboat is not for everyone but for the right person (persons), it is the best life money can buy.

Ok, I miss having a garden and a real kitchen. In exchange I get to fall asleep to the gentle roll of the tides at night, waves crushing on the breakwaters a short distance away. Each morning, as I peek my head out of the companion way hatch to get ready to start the day, the smell of the pacific ocean and the crisp cool air welcome me. Every so often, a family of harbor seals can be seen frolicking in the water while the pelicans and seagulls yelp loudly and flutter their wings as they protest my intrusion into their space when I walk the harbor slip to the marina building.

Seals frolicking against a backdrop of boats at Ventura Harbor Village, Canon 10D, Tamron 19-35mm Wide Angle with CPL, 8:45am Jan 4 2014

Our office is located some 500 feet from the marina, which means most days when I do not need my car to run errands I could walk along the harbor front to the office. If I am early enough, I catch the beautiful first light.....sleepy sailboats and their reflections on the glass like water. My favorite morning is when the harbor is shrouded in fog...Most mornings as luck would have it I am caught without my cameras which I keep in my office. The fresh misty morning air around me, I stop for many minutes soaking up the priceless view no money can buy, before continuing on my short journey to start the day.

A Chinese junk lookalike - a Bed & Breakfast in Ventura Harbor, Canon 10D, Tamron 19-35mm Wide Angle with CPL, 8:45am Jan 4 2014
Sunset is always magnificent, the water sparkles and gradually turns into beautiful hues and glows as the sun disappears behind the horizon. Nature picks up her paint brushes and gets to work - a watercolor, a gouache or oil. Why would I live anywhere else? (unless it is a small place in the wine country at the foothills with plenty of grape wines, fruit trees and herb gardens).

It does not take a lot to make me happy.

Adobe Photoshop Elements - Using Artistic Filters

I am having some fun this first day of 2014. For anyone interested in photography or art or the creative side of things, there are so many tools readily available today which means endless digital darkroom possibilities. One of such tools I use is Photoshop Elements. I am still with my 2.0 version that came with the Canon 10D I purchased from another photographer in 2006. Photoshop Elements 2.0 is ancient by many accounts. However, I have no need to upgrade to the later versions as all I need are a few standard editing tools and artistic filters to let my creative juices run.

Having shot stock photography for quite a few years and only just stopped doing so in earnest recently (stock photography business has slowed for just about every photographer that depended on it). My external back up hard drive boasts of thousands of images I took over the years....Sweet.. artistic filters, layers, the possibilities are really endless when I am in the mood to create.

Above - Wish You Were Here Postcard - Photo of a candy/nut kiosk taken while I was visiting an indoor farmers market in Allentown, Pennsylvania this past summer. Cutout filter applied (Filter -> Artistic Filter -> Cutout)

Left - A card created using artistic filter (Filter - > Sketch -> Graphic Pen). This source image actually came from my Samsung Galaxy 10.1 which takes rather good pictures

Fooling Around With Photo Editor On My Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

By far one of the best utilities (and most used) on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the Photo Editor, which allows me to add filter, photo frame, edit contrast, hues or crop with just a few taps. B & W and Sepia are my two favorites not forgetting the Polaroid frame.

Photography meets art

Measure
Ok, I do use my Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 as a tablet, that was what I bought it for, as a second device and when I am away from my desk. It powers up from Sleep mode instantly, the battery lasts me a good 10+ hrs. Connecting to wifi hotspots in public is a breeze, no complex set up, locate and connect or a prompt to enter password if necessary and you are off to web surfing. Camera is not bad, front and rear facing, it is real handy and lets me capture a candid shot for a blog post. Other than occasionally freezing up on me after an Android/Samsung software update, it has been money well spent.

Olympus XA - Neopan 400 Professional 135-36 film, Adonal developer and Boats in Ventura Harbor

Both neg's were scanned using SVP FS1700
Firstly, the film grain was visible in the scan, I love it! one could never re-create that look on digital. Secondly, the top photo was taken around 8am ish when the harbor was shrouded in fog, it was not quite a sight. The element made for perfect backdrop. The lower photo was shot late afternoon approximately two hours before sunset..... In both situations, the Olympus XA handled both shots beautifully. See last blog post below for a picture of this wonderful little gem of a camera

Neopan 400 Professional is one of my favorite films, I am so disappointed that it is only available in 35mm format and Fuji has decided to discontinued the 120 format. I just reminded myself to order more to stock up on these precious films.

Koni Rapid Omega sample shots - Camera is heavy but the huge negative is jaw dropping and wonderful

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Here are two scanned sample shots from the Koni Rapid Omega 6 x 7 rangefinder medium format camera (see picture of the camera in my earlier post below) Kodak Tri X 400 120 film, developed in Agfa Rodinal 1:50 for 13 minutes, Ilford Rapid Fixer. Neg scanned on Canon flatbed scanner, invert, and levels slightly adjusted. As I won't be able to set up a home darkroom for a while longer, I will have to contend with digital scans but all is not lost, it does give me a glimpse of what I might be able to print from the negatives. Koni Omega is a 6 x 7 camera and the negative did not quite fit the neg holder that came with the scanner. I was not thrilled with the scan results, even at 600dpi. I was more interested to see if I have messed up the shutter speeds/f-stop since I was using the sunny 16 rule. it is a test roll so I was not expecting much. Looking at the negatives on my light box, the images had good sharpness, contrast and bokeh.


These pictures were shot in old town San Juan Bastista, California. A town that had the look of an old western town, forgotten, left behind in the mad tech rush of the 21st century, complete with western style saloons on Main street, a few adobe houses interspersed with brick red and blue walls, an old church, a rather quaint town. On that day, there was a gathering of a small group of classic cars whose owners had driven all the way from San Diego. Hanging out with good friends outside a cafe soaking in the sun. I chatted with a gentleman who asked about the chunky camera in my hand. He told me he shoots digital now, his film cameras are now collecting dusts on the shelves, he added "I now take pictures with my iPhone, and never missed a shot".

One of the few quirks of the Koni Rapid Omega is that until one gets used to the film advance lever it is very easy to accidentally overlap images. Below is one such accidents that turned out pretty interesting and instead of cropping it, I decided to leave it alone.


One gets 10 shots per roll on the 120 film. The negatives are 6 x 7, that is 2.7 times larger than a 35mm neg. If you are looking for a negative to print easily into a 8 X 10, the 6 x 7 camera is the most suitable film format. I am looking forward to getting the two rolls of Velvia shot also on the Koni Omega developed at a lab soon.
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Below are two on slide film, the resulting colors and hue rather lomo I must say:

A second pit stop along 101 I made on the way south from San Jose to Ventura, Franciscan Mission in San Miguel with its beautiful old Adobe building. You can read more San Miguel Mission
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and finally here is a picture of the Koni Rapid Omega 100

Back to my roots....back to film that is

Guess I have had a long hiatus from blogging. Sometimes one gets caught in the fast lane and it takes some doing to get off that "Going to Nowhere" train. I have not done much shooting, the influx of Instagram, Pinterest and the likes mean stock photography is bidding time. To survive and stay relevant, these stock photo agencies find ways to jiggle their existing contract with contributors so they can keep more of a shrinking pie and pay the contributors less. I know that day would come, sooner than later. I stop shooting digital, in fact I sold most of my lenses and kept only my Canon 10D. I was so happy to pick up that film camera again and to process my own film....There is something special about shooting film I cannot put it into words but you know what I mean.

I acquired a Koni Rapid Omega with 120 back on Ebay for $69 Buy It Now price (I got lucky) plus $23.95 shipping. A beautiful medium format rangefinder camera, the Koni Rapid weighs a good 4.5 lbs. It is a beast!! I love shooting street photography, the impromptu scene, the not posed images. Being able to use available light, finding subjects in ordinary places makes shooting so much more rewarding for me. I will now add the Koni Rapid Omega to the list of cameras I enjoy shooting: Mamiya RB ProSD, the Bronica Zenza S2A and now the Koni Rapid Omega. They all share a few things in common: sharp lenses, weigh a ton, battery-less, totally mechanical. What a bliss!


In the last 6 years or so, I have gone through a few photo enlargers, setting up a home darkroom whenever possible (call it the learning curve, finding out what your like and what you don't and the quirks). However, each time I was getting ready to move, I dreaded having to move it and so I got rid of them by passing it along to the next person. Amongst them: the very massive Beseler 23C, the Saunders LPL, Omega D6, Omega C700 the list goes on. Up until this morning, I was effectively "enlarger-less". However my photography world just got that much better as I spotted a Durst M601 in superb condition for sale on Craigslist for $30 last night. I decided I had to drive 50 miles south to go and get it, never mind I can't set up a darkroom now. What a great enlarger! Everything I wished the other enlargers could be I found in the Durst. Solid, steady, extremely well built means one can print without worrying about the enlarger moving or shaking ever so slightly. The glass negative holder holds one's negative flat no matter how long one has been printing (not curled as with many negative holders when things get hot). Two sliding red knobs on the neg holder allow one to adjust the masking on the negative as desired. Not having to remove and reposition means less dusts will be introduced!! The column measures 3 ft, the base 20 x 20, the head can be tilted and locked at an angle for larger enlargement. The movement up and down is smooth, quiet and the knob handle folds and locks (much like the winder on a Bronica). Made in Italy, this Durst M601 for $30 has to be one of my best hauls ever ($50 including gas)! Never mind that my printing will have to wait until I can find an abode that has an extra room/garage or outside barn for the darkroom again.

A still life....Kodak EIR film....and the late afternoon sun

This photo has a special place in my heart. A photo I shot in a dingy garage years ago, and a still life put together invited by the light. The garage had a low window with many 50s style square glass panes. It sits just above the ground, much like a basement or a daylight window. As winter approaches, the window would ever so gently filter in just enough light from the afternoon sun, and warm the garage. Each time I would stare at the window and the long shadow on the floor...saying to myself that I must put something together quickly and shoot this light before it disappears.

Positive "high res" film scan with SVP FS1700 Negative and Slide Scanner, Kodak EIR film, no post process
The wooden background panel had quite a history. I bought it from another flea market seller on Melrose in the Fairfax district in LA. I was attracted by the beautiful big bold paint strokes of the sunflower, painted in lime yellow and green. The seller told me it came from an old house and that the panel was a salvaged door. Someone he knew was an artist and decided to paint the panel hoping to sell it as a work of art. The seller wanted $35. We haggled and finally settled on $15. It was heavy and it was 3.5 ft wide and 4 ft tall and almost 3 inches thick. I lugged it 200ft to the parking lot to my car and was relieved it would fit inside the trunk of my old Jeep. It is perfect as a table top in my future garden, the money would be well spent, I consoled myself.

The antique garden jug belonged to my housemate. It had beautiful lines and despite being a little beat up, it looked elegant. I needed something to prop up the garden jug and balance the composition, the wooden carpenter step ladder looked perfect for the part, it completed the composition. I moved them around just a bit until they looked right...

I set my film camera on a tripod and proceeded to shoot a few frames. I had imagined the shots and wanted to capture the light before it is out. Much later when I was nearly finished with the roll of film that I realized I had one of my two remaining rolls of Kodak EIR color slide film in the camera. Until today I cannot get over how a simple still life at the spur of the moment can be so out of surreal, so beautiful and timeless.

Sometimes we spend days chasing after that perfect shot, and it is staring right at us, if only we take a pause..........