Amazing Weather Photography

My father is a Meteorologist, so I have always been somewhat sensitive to weather phenomenon. Coupled with my growing interest in photography, cool weather related photos naturally interest me. I have a found a site that showcases some amazing weather photos. Clearly this gentleman is as insane as he is artistic. His website is called "Extreme Instability"

Northern Lights photos




Tornado Chasing photos (and videos)



General Photography (amazing stuff)


As much as I appreciate these kinds of photos, don't look for similar ones taken by yours truly :-)

Truly Amazing Pixels

I am very impressed with this. Imagine a 1,000 mega-pixel camera. That's right, not the cream of the crop $7,000 digital SLR body only 16 megapixel camera from Canon, but an honest to goodness One Thousand Megapixel digital camera. The printed images necessary to see the full detail are 50 FEET long...

Visit the website, and look at pictures like this one:


If you look closely, you can see the decorative frieze just above the arched entry to the tower on the right of the arcade. With this 1,000 megapixel camera, there is so much pixel data that you can zoom in all the way to here, in the Image, not with the camera:




Impressed? I am, especially when considering that the image above has been reduced from 810px down to 300px to fit this website. Click on it to see the original crop. Here is a full size excerpt of it:


truly amazing. The site linked above has several such examples, I encourage to check them out.

Cheers,

NW

On a Silver Platter...

New hard drive is up and spinning! Life is back in motion, I still have a few more DVD's worth of images to dump back onto this archive drive, and my photo shoot redeaux is scheduled for this weekend. Looks like things will return to normal once again. Whew! Wait? What is normal? Hmmm. Let's just dance around that one for now.

I had to mess around with the BIOS settings in my Dell XBS. I run two 120GB 10,000rpm SATA drives in RAID 0, so this new replacement drive should be the Slave, right? I'm using the secondary EIDE cable (1), not the primary (0). Noooope. Dell still wants to call it the Primary Master. Once I got that figured out, I thought things would be fairly automatic from then on. Silly me. The only way this drive would mount was to jumper it as Cable Select. So I'm running as Primary 0 CS on EIDE 1. Weird, but it works.

Thanks to Friend 'X' for hooking me up with a killer deal on a new Western Digital drive. 250GB's of goodness. This drive was hand picked and professionally tested thoroughly before being installed. Very cool.

What I did this weekend

Saturday's F3F race in SoCal was an absolute blast. I was the Contest Director, and for the days preceeding the event, the weather forecast was extremely uncertain. Every 12 hours, NOAA would issue a dramatically revised forecast, and in their discussion pages, they freely admitted that they had no idea what the weather would be like for this Saturday. As the CD, you have ultimate responsiblity for picking the right hill (that faces the right wind direction). This Saturday was very uncertain, but my wife and I prayed mightily for wind, and wind we got!

We had a GREAT turnout, with 19 pilots ignoring the forecast and coming out to have a
great day with us. Specially glad to see all the new faces, Target, Harry, Doug, Bob M. and others.

One the way to Vincent (my prefered slope, and the one that I annoucned the night before), I called to see if anyone's there early. I get through to Doug Cook, and he's telling me it's blowing hard from due East! Thanks to the miracles of cell phone technology, we got the entire group turned around and headed to our alternate site, Parker Mountain in
record time. I think everyone was topside and getting ready by 10:30AM. Awesome.

Check out the photo of Doug Cook and Joe Zepeda feeling the wind when we got to Parker! Winds started around 25mph and then picked up to a bit above 30mph and stayed there all day. Tasty air.



We quickly got the course set up, got everyone's frequencies and entry fee, then had the Pilots Meeting. We decided (okay, "I" decided) to have a separate Round Zero so that people could get dialed in (the fact that I had two unflown planes with me that day had nothing to do with it, honest :-) Dave Bates was first up, and was going REALLY fast, bending the wings on his Cohen F3F on every turn, until he cut, ouch!
Shortly after that Bill DelHagen got a juicy 37.02, still in Round Zero.

Joe Wurts showed the hesitant where/how to land (Parker is unique), and then Round 1 began in earnest. We flew double rounds to minimize landings. At the end of the day, that seemed like a good decision. We landed 126 times all together, and only had one damaged nose from landing waaaayyy out behind the next ridge over, and two striped servos that I'm aware of. All three planes were repaired slopeside and
remained competitive. I am really pleased with the way everyone landed today. Great job everybody!

But who cares about landing... F3F is about flying! And fly we did. Joe Wurts SMOKED us all with an early 32.66 in Round 1, and then Rey peeled off a 37.15 in Round 2. We realized that the potential to shatter some records was there, so we made a minor adjustment to the course and triple checked that it was 100m long (it was a tad short to begin with). This made the bases more interesting, due to the shape of the slope, but it didn't seem to phase anyone and we continued to get some great runs.

In Round 3, new guy Harry_S pulled off a blistering 41.59 with a feather light unballasted carbon Banana that he's only flown only a couple of times. This is when everyone was filling their planes with as much lead as they could hold, Pretty cool!

Round 3 & 4 started out good, with runs in the low to mid 40's until poor Alexi stepped up to fly and the wind suddenly shifted hard to the north. His promising low 40 turned into a painful 57, followed by a 56. It was this pair of runs that really killed his final standings, and clearly shows one of the risks of double round flying. Sorry Alexi!

Right after Alexi and then Joe Wurts, the air remembered that we were trying to race, and came back in due east and stronger than ever. Which was when Rey decided to fling out the Arkanj and got some sweet smooth air and nailing a 38.54 with the wings bending BIG TIME the entire 10 legs of the run. He had some serious energy on that run. Round 5 started strong, with Dave Bates getting a 39, which was his just reward
after flying a really strong round 4 but getting a cut. Round 5 was nice vindication, and I'm sure it was his highlight of the day. It didn't last long though, as Joe Wurts shook off that nasty north wind feeling and turned in a juicy 37.41, easily winning the round.

Then Dan Field quieted the friendly bantering with a perfectly flown 37.65 in Round 6, and there you have it. Six full rounds with some fantastic racing.

I want to thank everyone for ignoring the forecast and trusting that the wind would be plentiful and the day enjoyable. The flying is fun, but the people really make it worthwhile. Also, special thanks to Phat Vu whose plane turned out to have some pre-existing damage and was unable to fly. Phat stuck around anyway and helped out greatly on the poles. Thanks dude!

Cheers!

Nathan Woods
SCSR > CD

Footnote: Dan Field brought back a Team USA flag from the Viking Race, and planted it in the pilots box. That was a cool thing to see there. The wind was strong enough to give the flag some weathering and character.


Full results posted here:

• www.sloperacing.com

Public comments from participating pilots, and some videos and additional photos posted here:

• www.rcgroups.com (The discussion thread starts here with weather discussion, then the subsequent pages get into the results and photos)

Looking forward to next weekend's Man-on-Man Unlimited slope race at Whitaker!

New Camera Test Photos

Okay, I don't have any of the photos from a recent product shoot due to an untimely hard drive failure, but I have do have a few of the very first photos taken with this new Canon EOS Rebel digital SLR camera. I haven't figured out how to export the EXIF data (info about the camera setup and settings per photo), but here are a few test shots I took.

Note: all of these photos have been reduced in dpi resolution to 72 dpi. The "Large" photos, other than dpi reduction, have not been modified in any way. The Small and Medium photos have been web optimized for file size, but have not had any adjustments to color, level, or sharpness. Honest!

Also note, I'm not too savvy on my plant names :-)

Red Rose
Small (400x) | Medium (1024x) | Large (3072x)



Orange...um, flower :-)
Small (400x) | Medium (1024x) | Large (3072x)



Decorative stalk plant
Small (400x) | Medium (1024x) | Large (3072x)





Family Generations (indoor with built-in flash)
Small (400x) | Medium (1024x) | Large (1600x)



Well, that's the best of the lot. I only have a few, maybe a dozen or so out of the first 500 shots taken that remain on this other hard drive. What do you think? Clearly, I have lots to learn with this camera, and I want to get better at getting sharper images, but for hand held shots, I'm satisfied. Now I just need to get my percentage of keepers somewhere up above 5% :-)

Questions? Comments? Opinions? Please use the "Comment" link immediately below this post to share your thoughts. ~NW

Technology Strikes Again?

Man, I'm not having much fun with technology lately. I get a new camera, cool! My archive hard drive goes up in smoke, wiping out all the new images from a dedicated photo shoot taken with the new camera. Double bad. I have a full DVD back up that's only a few days old, but it's really annoying to loose this drive.

All my website software is pathed to this drive, and I'm in the process of finaly launching this site Live this weekend, and it's a major inconvenience to work around not having this drive.

Plus, now my friend Bob Breaux and I have to redo the entire photo shoot for SoaringUSA. That's a major drag, because spare time is in short supply around here lately! To top it all off, it appears that my cell phone has finally given up, and no longer takes a charge, or responds in anyway. Battery tester indicates that it's got juice, seems to be an internal poweramp failure. Sigh.... Between the computer, camera, and now a phone, I'm feeling the pinch!

Naturally, this is the perfect time for my day job to give me the greenlight to proceed with the Intranet revamp that I started a while ago. On top of an ever increasing workload at the office, and the new side project (one of several), I am also supposed to be working up to my Structural Exam for my Architectural License. Piece of cake, right? Sure maybe, but I've also joined the gym next door to my office, now I just gotta figure out what part of the 4-5 hours of sleep to give up that I normally get, so that I can fit (pun intended) that to my schedule.....

Movie Weekend!

This Sunday was a busy day. I rushed out and bought the Shrek 2 DVD, and the family watched it in the morning. It's still as funny as I described a few months ago here.

Then I went to a photo shoot for www.soaringusa.com, then I bundled up the family and we all went out to see The Incredibles! This movie was very entertaining, but not as funny (IMHO) as previous films such as Toy Story or even Finding Nemo. I would give it 3.5 stars (out of 5 possible).

What did I like?
I LOVED the architecture in the movie. Styled very heavily on the "Doctor No" theme of earlier James Bond flicks, with a dash of the old Disney "Tommorowland" thrown in for good measure.

The voices were great! Craig T Nelson did the main character (remember the Coach tv series?), and Holly Hunter was the wife, whose character I really enjoyed. The voices were so good, that you never heard them as the actors (It's hard to not hear Tim Allen as Buzz or Tom Hanks as Woody for example), but right from the beginning, the voices in The Incredibles was simply the natural voices of mom and dad of this family.

And what a family. The film did an excellent job portraying the dynamics of modern family. I particularly enjoyed the dinner scene, and the brief moment of self discovery when the two children were on their own. Another unusual twist to this film, and perhaps a clear sign of Pixar's successful parting from Disney in the near future is that there are TWO PARENTS IN THIS MOVIE!

Why only 3.5 stars?
This movie is chock full of great moments, witty lines, fantastic creativity, and terrific action. However, it bows too far in the direction of modern video games and death. People die in this movie, lots of them. There is a whole scene featuring a detailed close up of a partially decayed body. And at the very end, one of the characters demonstrates some VERY disturbing characteristics. I could live with the death and decay, but this final scene really killed the whole movie for me. Marni felt the same way. Based on this character, we both stated as we walked out of the theater that we were NOT looking forward to the inevitable part 2.....

Digital Resolution

Well, in my previous article I contemplated about which digital SLR camera to purchase. I finaly decided on the EOS Rebel based on sample image quality and price. This decision was somewhat forced on me by the sudden need to invest lots of money into my home PC, thanks to spurious hard drive failures, sigh.

Anyway, this decision was made prior to renting the Nikon, so I cancelled it, but still wanted to buy the camera from this particular shop, that has store near my office. But I wanted the new limited edition black EOS Rebel, not the somewhat cheesy silver one.....Samy's can't get it! So I found another shop nearby, and after a fat chunk of change later, walked out with my new rig.

I got the EOS Rebel body, the kit lens (18-55 F4-5.6 EF) and a nice zoom lens (75-300mm F4/5.6 IS EF), that's image stablized, plus a couple of batteries, a 1GB high-speed CF card, a few UV filters, and of course, a nifty bag to hold it all. All in all, it's a pretty nice rig.

This weekend I did my first photoshoot with it, taking about 300 product photos in conjunction with www.soaringusa.com, but the lighting conditions were horrible and most of the photos turned out poorly. I also did some backyard photos, and took a few snaps when we visited some relatives on Marni's side of the family. Those turned out pretty good, but clearly there is a learning curve to this camera, and I will need to study up on it. Canon actually has a self paced online tutorial that looks very cool, and it's free with my purchase. Nice!

I'll upload some photos soon.

Digital Revolution...or is that Revolt?

Viva 'la Revolution!
I'm pretty excited. I take a LOT of photos for my family, for work (construction sites), and occasionally for web design. For the past few years, I've used the incredibly reliable Sony F-707. It can take great shots, but it's slowwww...... I miss way too many shots with this camera.

Well, one client site is needing a lot of new product photos for the upcoming Christmas season sale. Being the opportunist that I am, I've arranged to buy a nice digital SLR camera for this purpose, and of course, I'll keep it as my primary, replacing the Sony.

I have a lot of acquaintances who are digital camera enthusiasts, who have offered many recommendations, but ultimately, I've narrowed it to the Canon
EOS Rebel (now in Black!), and the Nikon D70.

I very seriously considered, but decided against the Canon 10D, because
it's; A) discontinued, B) identical to the Rebel in image quality, C) more
expensive than the Rebel, and you can hack the Rebel to unlock the 10D features?,
and D) because it's a bit too big/bulky for me, especially with the optional
battery grip.

I also seriously considered, but decided against the Canon 20D, because
it's more than I really need, and more than I really want to spend.

So why the Nikon D70 or Canon EOS Rebel? Well....

The form factor of the Nikon D70 and the phenomenal speed of the unit are
extremely impressive. It is second to none in "feel" in my opinion. Really
fits me like a glove. And it seems pretty easy to use, and the battery
is rated to last nearly 1000 shots between charges. No need for a bulky
battery grip. Also, there is no buffer lag when it writes to the CF Card.
It bypasses that process issue with nifty programming logic.

Similarly equipped, the EOS Rebel is approx $600 cheaper than the D70, thanks
to current rebates.
Package: camera body, battery, the 18-55 stock lens, and a 75-300mm F/3.5-5.6
lens (Canon includes image stabilized lens)

Additional considerations? The Canon body is not nearly as nice as the
D70. It's a tad bit too small for me, and with the battery grip, it's WAY
too bulky for my purposes. I can feel my face pressed up against the LCD
when looking through the view finder. And the shutter/mirror action just
is not a smooth and nice feeling as the Nikon. HOWEVER, the Canon offers
many decent quality lenses with image stabilization for around $450, whereas
the Nikkor lens with Image Stabilization starts at several thousand dollars,
and is only available in a few select sizes.

Everyone I spoke too wisely stated to focus (pun intended) on the lens,
and not so much on the body? so $600 cheaper and including image stabilization
and a full line of additional fairly inexpensive lenses has me really thinking
EOS Rebel? but I just can't get that groovy D70 feeling out of my mind.

So my plan was to rent the D70 this weekend, with a 75-300mm F3.5-5.6 VR lens and a non-VR (image stabilized) lens and will shoot as much as I can to compare to the Canon images. I have seen many great EOS based sample images, and find them to be stunning.
I want to see how the Nikon D70 does. I have received some sample images from the D70 from my friends, and frankly, I find them disappointing. Just not as crisp as I'd like, and some of these guys shoot with $2,000 fast glass lenses!

Digital Revolt!
I have a screaming fast primary workstation computer at home for digital image processing, web design, etc... It's a Dell XPS, RAID 0, with additional fast and very large storage drives, and packed with oodles of RAM. It's very cool and extremely fast, but lately, it's grown very unreliable. As I write this, the storage drives have disappeared from the device manager, again.

I think that the $600 cheaper Rebel is looking more and more attractive, considering that I am going to have to buy a new PC. I've grown to the point where I can't trust this one. To many weird faults, too many boot failures when the RAID array fails, too many dropped network associations, etc....

My Dad will smugly tell me to buy a G5 Mac and worry no more, but someone would need to pony up the THOUSANDS of dollars of PC based software that I would need to replace with Mac friendly versions, and that's not going to happen on my budget.

sigh.....