Tag: New York

Friday March 18, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday March 23, 2011

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Out on the street at last, but still with a technical camera. Alpa makes a tiny technical camera, the Alpa TC, that lets me use my Hasselblad 60 meg back and 36mm Schneider lens in a compact, hand-holdable package. Mine looks just like the following image downloaded from the Alpa website.

It’s basically the same form factor, functionality and focal length as the legendary Hasselblad Superwide C (one of my all time favorite cameras), but digital. Very cool. How often have I raved about gear on this blog?

I’m posting two images today from the post office building on Lexington Avenue and 54th Street on an afternoon with brilliant early spring light and the attendant reflections. The first is my image of the day. Again we see how well the files from the Hasselblad back convert to black and white.

I’m posting this one just to show what is possible. I shot this pointing way up with the 36mm lens, which resulted in wildly converging vertical lines. I then corrected the perspective in Lightroom. Extreme perspective corrections are often problematic because they “stretch” pixels resulting in poor resolution. But when you start with a file captured at 60 meg resolution this really isn’t a problem, at least not at web resolution.

Plaza in front of the post office building

On this day last year: Citicorp Center

Tags Lexington Avenue, New York, Post office, Urban

Home Interior

Thursday March 17, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday March 23, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – St. Patricks Day. Why am I not out photographing the parade? After all that’s what I did on St. Patricks Day last year. Well there are couple of reasons. For me a parade is interesting if you have a privileged point of view. For example as a participant or from a high vantage point. I haven’t arranged for either this year. Absent that sometimes the most compelling images can be found by looking in the opposite direction from the parade and focus on the spectators – ground that I covered last year. But the truth is I was too busy to get out.

I did find an hour to experiment further with exploring the limitations of my Hasselblad 60 meg back on an Alpa 12 Max technical camera. Today’s assignment was to see how this combination works with focus stacking – a technique of combining images taken at various focus distances into one image, all parts of which are in focus. There is a software tool, called Helicon Focus, that makes this possible. The following image, taken in our living room, was made by combining six images with focus points from the close edge of the table to the burned out area in the room on the upper right. I used a laser distometer to measure the distances. Technical cameras like the Alpa 12 Max don’t come with focusing aids or light meters. The detail, depth and pliability of the images from this combination are remarkable. I’ll be doing more of these.

On this day one year ago: Guess what? St. Patricks Day Parade.

Tags 1185 Park Avenue, New York

Landscape Out my window Urban

Wednesday March 16, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday March 23, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – You’ve seen this before – it’s the view out of my dining room window – and I guaranty that you’ll see it again. Hasselblad has finally released a production version of the firmware for its 60 meg back that permits it to be used on a technical camera. (I had previously been using a beta version of the firmware.) I attached the 60 meg Hasselblad back to my Alpa 12 Max camera and a Schneider 36mm digital lens and spent a couple of hours exploring the limits of this combination out of the window of my dining room. Here’s a typical image. This good landscape test image for me because there is a wealth of fine detail and the streets are orthogonal (eliminating focus as an issue). The Alpa Max permits the camera back to be shifted. Here I’ve used this feature to move the horizon down – to emphasize the sky. This could have been accomplished by pointing the camera up, but then the vertical lines would have converged. Technical cameras like the Alpa are often used to photograph architectural subjects because the facilitate composing while maintaining horizontal and vertical lines in the buildings parallel.

On this day one year ago: Cash for your Warhol in Beantown.

Tags Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, New York

Landscape Out my window Urban

Monday March 14, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Sunday March 20, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is a busy week for me so I’m tucking my daily photos into odds and ends of time. I spent the day in my office but kept an eye out for good or interesting light in the Manhattan cityscape outside of my windows. I’m shooting with my Panasonic GH2 because it’s the lightest and most compact camera that I have and the selectivity of the very long telephotos effectively let me cheat, not having the time or space to actually get close to an interesting subject. Here’s the Bloomberg Building out my office window:

On this day one year ago: A dismal image of the mud season in Connecticut.

Tags Bloomberg Building, Lexington Avenue, New York

Landscape Urban

Friday March 11, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Friday March 18, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m continuing to experiment with my new Panasonic GH2. I walked down Lexington Avenue with it (an errand to pick up our dog from a haircut), taking images that I might have done with my Leica M9. Here’s a sample. The images are fine at web resolution, but don’t have the impact that the Leica files have when viewed close up or printed large.