Tag Archives: cameras

Found: Camera Equipment

Posted on by
2

I unpack a few more boxes and find some camera equipment I forgot I had.

Regular blog readers might know that I moved from the Arizona home I lived in for about 15 years to Washington state back in 2013. I packed my belongings over a nine-month period while waiting for my much delayed divorce to make its way through the court system. In the beginning, I packed the things that meant the most to me — heirloom items, mostly — but I also quickly packed my valuable possessions, including electronics and camera equipment. (Eventually, I packed or discarded things I didn’t really need or want, but that’s because I was bored and pissed off and I didn’t have anything else to do while I waited to get on with my life.)

The Migration of My “Stuff”

My new home wasn’t waiting for me when I moved out of my Arizona home. So the boxes went from my Wickenburg home to my Wickenburg hangar (September 2012 through September 2013) to my Wenatchee hangar (September 2013 to June 2014) to my Malaga garage (June 2014 to today). I started unpacking when my living space was nearing completion in April 2015. I’ve been unpacking ever since.

Seriously: I packed way too much stuff. Everyone who comes into my garage tells me I have too much stuff and I have to agree. I’ve given a lot away and I’ve sold a bunch, too. (Craig’s List works much better here than in Wickenburg.) The benefit, of course, is that I didn’t have to buy much when I moved into my new home. I already had almost everything I needed to make a home.

As my modest living space fills with stuff, I struggle to find places to store it all. That’s why I’ve still got about 20 boxes in the garage that need unpacking. One thing I learned is that the first step to keeping your home clutter-free is to have a specific place where everything you own belongs. If something can’t be put away, it should be thrown away.

Finding the Camera Equipment

These days, I’m organizing and arranging my garage’s shop area. Part of the job is to finish unpacking those damn boxes. So while my friend Bob was over, working on his boat, I began tackling boxes again. I had a mission: I wanted to find and unpack my games and camera equipment.

I found the games right away: Boggle, Scrabble, two (?) Monopoly games, Pente travel version, Uno, Skipbo, dominos, Parcheesi, and playing cards — including a few custom decks I’d had made not long after returning home to get divorced. I sorted it all out, with some games going upstairs to live on the bottom shelf of my coffee table and some going into my truck camper (the Turtleback) for my annual trip south. I got a lot of joy out of flattening that empty box and tossing it atop the others waiting for a trip to the recycling center.

The camera equipment was a bit more elusive. Although I had some of it in a plastic bin on a garage shelf, a lot of it was missing. I definitely remembered a light gray camera bag and two identical Nikon 35mm film camera bodies. There was a 10.5mm fisheye lens that I hadn’t seen in a while, too.

The equipment in the bin was what I’d had with me in the big fifth wheel (the Mobile Mansion) where I lived every summer since 2010 and then full-time while waiting for my home to be built. I knew there was more from my old house and I was pretty sure I’d packed it. But none of the boxes were marked “Camera Equipment” — I’d labeled every single box — and I was at a loss.

And then I remembered that I didn’t always label the boxes with the exact contents. The reason: a mild case of paranoia. If someone got into my Wickenburg hangar that last summer and started going through the boxes, I didn’t want him (or her) to find my valuables. The same thing applied to the movers; I didn’t want them knowing exactly which boxes they could find stuff worth stealing.

I looked at the labels on the remaining boxes. One was marked “Old Photos.” But I also had a plastic bin full of old photos. How many old photos did I have? I used my box cutter to open the box. And there was the gray camera bag, along with a bunch of lenses, filters, and other equipment I’d completely forgotten about.

It was like a great birthday or Christmas day: getting presents that you actually wanted.

The 35mm camera bodies — which are pretty much worthless these days — were in the box. But the camera bag was full of lenses. Not only was the missing 10.5mm lens there, but there were three others I’d completely forgotten I had. They’re all Nikon lenses and I suspect, based on their weight, that they’re of different qualities (metal and glass vs plastic). Not only do they fit the D7000 I currently use, but most of them will work with the old film cameras (if I ever start using them again).

Camera Equipment
With the newly found lenses, I now have seven lenses to choose from: 10-24mm ƒ3.5-4.5 zoom, 10.5mm ƒ2.8 fisheye, 16-85mm ƒ3.5-5.6 zoom (on the camera here; my “everyday” lens), 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6 zoom, 50mm ƒ1.8, 55-200mm ƒ4.5-5.6 zoom, and 70-300mm ƒ4.5-5.6 zoom.

This is not “professional” camera equipment. Back when I was shopping for my first DSLR in 2007 — right before my first Alaska trip — I bought a Nikon D80 camera, mostly because it would work with lenses I already had. It had a crop sensor, not the full-frame sensor preferred by professionals. (Learn the difference between full-frame and crop sensors here.) By the time I bought my D7000 in 2011(?), I had a lot invested in lenses and didn’t want to have to start over; that’s why I went with another crop sensor model, albeit one that’s slightly more advanced than a general consumer model: the D7000 I still use today.

Of course, it wasn’t just lenses that I found. There were also about a dozen camera filters — the good, glass screw-on type — that included polarizers, skylight filters, and neutral density filters. There are also a few collapsible reflectors that could be used to either shade or reflect light back up to small subjects. I distinctly remember using those for flower photography in the desert near my Arizona home.

And then there’s my HD video camera and all of its accessories. And my old time-lapse setup. And my geotagger. And my lightweight tripod. And lens pouches. And bean bags.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled to have access to all of my camera equipment again. I’ll be bringing quite a bit of it with me when I head south — well, we’ll see what I can comfortably fit in the Turtleback, anyway. Maybe it’ll motivate me to get a little more creative on this trip. With so much equipment at my disposal, there’s really no excuse not to be able to capture the images I want.

Night Stalkers

Posted on by
Comment

Caught in action!

Game Camera
Game cameras like this offer an affordable way to keep a record of visitors while you’re gone.

Last winter, I set one of my game cameras up on my unfinished deck. I’d found an animal turd on a piece of plywood outside my living room door and wanted to know where it had come from. So I set up the camera — and promptly forgot about it for six months.

Eventually, I got to work on the deck and the game camera was in the way. I brought it inside, where it languished on the windowsill beside my desk for a while and then brought it downstair to the big desk in my shop. I thought it had been turned off, but it hadn’t. It took pictures whenever it sensed movement until the batteries finally died.

Today, I pulled out both game cameras, put in new batteries, and prepared to set them out to see what they might capture while I’m not looking. I pulled both SD cards out of the cameras and had a look at their contents.

One camera included video shot inside the garage of my old Arizona house back in 2013. I’d set up the camera after I realized that someone — in all likelihood, my future wasband — had attempted to break in through the garage window beside the front door. Fortunately, we’d put a bar there years before that prevented the window from opening more than a few inches for ventilation. When I noticed it, the window was open and stuck hard half off its track. Since I did a lot of traveling that last season home in Arizona, I thought it might be a good idea to set up some kind of surveillance for while I was gone. We did some Googling, came upon this business: Video Cloud Surveillance Platform – Arcules – Get a demo today! And set up a consultation, which resulted in us getting the advice that game cameras in the kitchen and garage were a good and cheap solution. Fortunately (for my wasband), the only activity they captured was me and my friends coming and going.

Dawn Cat
One of my two barn cats looks out over his domain just before dawn last March.

The other camera was the one I’d put out on the unfinished deck last year. It was set up for motion triggers images. And what it caught kind of surprised me: my barn cats hanging out on the supports for the deck. Keep in mind that the only way they could get up to the deck was to climb at least ten feet up one of the posts. There was no ladder, overhanging trees, and no staircase.

Barn Cats
Here’s a shot with both cats. The surface they’re on was approximately 3-1/2 inches wide 10 feet off the ground.

Glowing Eyes
The cats spent most of March 27 up on the deck. According to my calendar, I’d just come home from a trip to California the afternoon before.

I found about two dozen photos with one or both of the cats in them. In most instances, they were either walking right past the front of the camera’s lens or sitting on one of the 2 x 10 beams that support the deck.

Nowadays, I think I have just one barn cat: the black one. Although I saw Black Cat just last night on the pathway between his “safe place” in the shed and my front door, I haven’t seen Gray Cat for months. I’ll likely get one or two new barn cats in the spring. I got them to keep the rodent population down so the snakes wouldn’t have anything to eat and it worked like a charm — I didn’t see a single snake within 200 feet of my home or garden. This is, by far, the best way to control snakes and rodents. Best of all, since they’re not really “pets,” they don’t take much care. I can provide enough food and water in their shed to keep them satisfied for a month since they supplement cat food with rodents and their water with the chickens’ water.

As far as cameras and security goes — without revealing too much, let’s just say that I don’t rely on game cameras for security anymore. I have a far more sophisticated system with live cameras I can access from anywhere. Of course, none of that really matters when my house-sitter has a Doberman and knows where I keep my shotgun.

And I never did find out where that turd came from…

A New Camera

Posted on by
12

Will it take my photography to the next level or have I gone as far as I can go?

Desert Still LifeLast spring, I shot one of what I consider one of my best photographs. I’d been “photojeeping” out in the desert when the hedgehog cacti were blooming. I stopped the Jeep on the two-track I’d been following, grabbed my tripod, camera, and cable release, and set off on foot across a relatively flat area peppered with pink blossoms. When I saw this cactus, my eye began a search for an interesting composition. I had to get down on the ground, with my tripod’s legs as short as they could go, to frame this shot. Although I let the camera handle the exposure (as I usually do), I fine-tuned the focus and depth of field using aperture settings. Said simply: I put a lot of effort into this shot — a lot more than I usually do.

And I was very pleased with the results.

Until I looked more closely at the photo in Photoshop, using 100% magnification. That’s when I could clearly see that the image lacked the kind of sharpness I wanted in my photos. It was as if nothing in the photo was in clear focus. Given the depth of field, that just didn’t seem possible.

I had done just about everything in my power to get the best shot I could and I’d fallen short of desired results. It was like being slapped in the face.

Nikkor 16-85mm LensI started doing research. I knew it wasn’t the lenses I was using — this particular image was shot with my Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor lens, which was still relatively new at the time. Although this is not a top-of-the-line Nikon lens, it is not a junk lens. The low ISO settings on the camera should have prevented the graininess I observed. That left the camera or me.

I didn’t think it was the camera. After all, I’d come into photography the old fashioned way: using film. When dealing with film, the camera is just a mechanical device to get the exposure — at least at the level of camera I could afford. The lens handles the clarity of the image, so we normally put our money into good optics. Processing and printing (in the case of prints) are also important for the final result.

So it must be me, I reasoned. I resolved to try harder.

Time passed. I took a lot of photos. I started getting accustomed to disappointment. It was taking a lot of the joy out of photography. I’d do a shoot at an amazing place and get ho-hum images.

Nikon D80Then I started thinking more about the camera. I knew that my Nikon D80, which I’d had since 2007, had a 10.2 megapixel Nikon DX format CCD imaging sensor. Newer cameras offered higher resolutions (more megapixels or “piglets,” as my family calls them). They also offered different sensors. My husband’s D90, for example, has a 12.3-megapixel DX-format CMOS imaging sensor. And I knew that there were also cameras that had film-frame size sensors. Why the differences? Did it really matter? I began to get an education about how cameras differ in the world of digital photography.

By the autumn of 2010, I was convinced I needed a different camera. I was limited, however, because I already had a huge investment in Nikkor DX-compatible lenses. That meant that I couldn’t go with a film-frame size sensor in a new camera without buying new lenses. That also meant that any thoughts of jumping the good ship Nikon and boarding the S.S. Canon were not entertained. (Don’t get me wrong: Canon makes excellent equipment, too. But I know Nikon and have an investment in Nikon equipment; it makes no sense for me to switch.)

In November, I went to Tempe Camera to learn more. I was about 75% ready to plunk down up to $1500 for a new camera. But the sales guy educated me some more. Although I’d always seen my husband’s D90 as a minor upgrade to my D80, the sales guy told me that the software was far superior in the D90. I’d get better, clearer images from a D90.

Of course, my husband already had a D90, so it didn’t make sense to buy another one. I’d give it a go with his camera.

That didn’t work. When we went shooting together, he wanted to use his camera. Can you blame him? So I’d be stuck with mine and wouldn’t get the opportunity I needed to experiment with a different camera.

Nikon D7000I heard about the Nikon D7000 in, of all places, Wilson Camera on Camelback Road in Phoenix. We’d gone in there to get passport photos taken and the guy at the counter had been almost drooling over the D7000. I started doing some research. I liked what I read. Not only was it another [big] step above Mike’s D90, but Ken Rockwell, a highly respected camera reviewer, said:

The D7000 is Nikon’s most advanced camera at any price. The fact that it sells for $1,200 make [sic] it a no-brainer, which is why it’s sold out. The D7000 is Nikon’s best DSLR ever.

Holy cow. That was quite a statement.

I did more research on Nikon’s Web site. (That site, by the way, is an excellent and well-designed source of information about Nikon products and photography in general.) I liked the feature list. Better sensor, higher resolution images, programmable custom settings, more scene modes, true 1080p video capabilities — hell, it could even do time-lapse photography without an add-on intervalometer. There are a lot more features; if you’re interested I highly recommend reading up on Nikon’s Web site.

But Mr. Rockwell wasn’t kidding when he said the camera was sold out. Once I decided I wanted one, I spent two hours trying to track one down. Amazon.com was selling one for $100 above retail price. (I don’t pay more than retail for anything; heck, I seldom pay retail for anything.) Tempe Camera only had a kit, which came with the Nikkor 18-105mm lens. I don’t have that lens but I don’t need it either — and was not interested in spending $300 more for the camera with lens. A dozen calls all reported out of stock, although many dealers were willing to let me place an order anyway. But like the true American I am, I wanted immediate gratification — or as close to it as I could get. I was going to San Francisco in a few days and planned to use my new camera there.

I wound up on J&R’s Web site. I used to shop in the J&R store on Park Row when I worked in downtown Manhattan years ago. This was back in the mid 1980s, before digital cameras, when personal computers were in their infancy. J&R then was what chains like Best Buy and Fry’s Electronics are now. (Would love to walk through J&R again; maybe the next time I’m in New York I’ll make the trip down there.) I’d bought other camera and computer equipment from them in the past. Their Web site said they were out of stock on a D7000 body only, but I called anyway. The guy who answered in Maspeth, NY (in the borough of Queens, in case you’re wondering) said a shipment had just come in and the Web site evidently hadn’t been updated yet. They were selling at retail. Brand new, in an unopened box, packaged for U.S. sales. (I asked, of course; I know what goes on among some NYC camera dealers.) Free shipping would get it to me by Friday or Monday. I asked how much overnight shipping would cost. $27.27. Sold!

I expect it to arrive this afternoon.

Nikon GP-1 GPSIn a fit of crazy shopping mania, I also ordered the Nikon GP-1 GPS from Amazon.com. This device, which can attach to the camera’s hot shoe, will automatically geotag my images. This will seriously reduce my geotagging workflow and ensure that all of my photos are properly tagged. I even coughed up the $4 for overnight shipping to get that today.

Once I get the camera and learn to use it, the ball will be in my court. No more excuses; I’ll have good camera equipment and should be able to take better photos. If I can’t — well, I’ll only have myself to blame.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this camera takes me to the next level as a photographer. I’ve got my fingers crossed.