Ravsitar’s Travels

4th of July

By ravsitar | July 3, 2008

So it’s the 4th of July and I’ve been damn lazy about getting posts put up here. No good reason really. Just haven’t been doing it.

Work’s been good. Being a Professional Engineer was cool for the fist 4 hours. Then a client (and Architect) called with some “problem” that they felt needed my attention and I was back to business as usual. Been pretty busy lately, even though the department is a little light on work. No problem really as people are off on vacations all over the place.

Been out taking photos a couple times with Mitch and company. I’ll get them processed soon and make a proper post about them. Some cool stuff that I’m actually gonna have to do some extensive work on. Lately most of my photos get a quick bushing with Bibble and then they’re done. Good that I’m getting great results with only minor post processing. Bad because that means I’m not stretching myself as much as I should be.

My mom was up for the last week visiting. She comes up every summer for a few days to hang out and shop and such. Nothing big planned this year. I have to save up my vacation time for the TFTTF workshop in San Francisco later in July. We did go up to the North Shore over the weekend. That’d be the Northern Shore of Lake Superior. Got some great shots of waterfalls and lighthouses. They’re in the post processing que and will be finished before the end of the month…… honest.

I’m in Greenfield, IA for the 4th of July this year. My highschool is holding an Alumni Basketball Tournement. I’m not in aceptable shape to play (bad knees and a bit of “office wight”), so I told the organizers that I’d bring my gear down and take some photos at the games. I’ll probably put some on a CD for the local newspaper to use. I did head to West Photo and rented the excelent Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens. It’s fantastic and should be a wonder with the 51point AF system on my D300. If I had a spare $1600 laying around, I’d buy one of these. Anyone out there want to give me $1600?

To tied you over until I get some time for more post processing here are a couple photos I took this evening of my brother James. Shot with the 24-70mm at f2.8, ISO640, and run through Bibble for a quick polish. The DOF is a bit shallow, but the contrast and sharpness is great.

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Ravsitar - Professional Engineer

By ravsitar | June 19, 2008

Just found out today that I passed my Professional Engineering Exam! I’m a Professional Engineer now! This allows me to be a project manager and actualy get credit for doing design work on project. Also means a lot more responsibility. But it’s so great!

I’ve been fairly busy this last couple weeks. Got through all of the photos that needed to be finished.

This is just gonna be a short update. I’ve gotta go get some groceries as the cupboards are bare.

Latest photos:

Topics: Photos | 2 Comments »

Super Auto Focus Power Activate!

By ravsitar | June 2, 2008

Back again. I had planned on writing this earlier last week. Trouble was that I didn’t have the photos processed to go with the post until just yesterday. But I’ve got a few other things to go over before I get to that.

Summer Movies: Yeah! Summer movie time is here. I’ve all ready seen several of the newest movies and there are many more on tap for the summer. Get you’re thrills in this summer. I have a feeling that because of the writer strike earlier in the year, that many of the movies planned for next summer (2009) will be delayed some months (or a whole year). First off, the movies I’ve seen:

Iron Man: Simply awesome! I didn’t read much of the Iron Man comics. I knew the premise and general idea of the character. A good solid plot with enough action to keep the pace moving. The effects are stunning.
Speed Racer: A good action flick. Personally I liked it. The look of the film was great. Everything was so saturated and stunning. Some of the cuts seemed a bit hectic (done to enhance the speed of the racing), but overall I enjoyed it.
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull: I’m a big fan of the original Indy movies. They had great flow and story. And the action was well balanced with comedy. The new one has most of that. Some of the effects tend to take over (unlike in the first ones) and overshadow the performance. It takes a bit of time to get used to the Older Indy, but he’s still got it. I’m not sure the Shia LaBeouf will be able to take over (if that’s the intent of the creator).
The Forbidden Kingdom – I’m a huge Jackie Chan fan. I love hid fighting and comedic timing. This was a great twist on the classic Monkey King legend. And let’s not forget Jet Li. Fantastic fight scenes. Light and fluffy feeling. Nothing scary or over the top.

Here’s a quick list of upcoming movies that I will be seeing:

Kung Fu Panda
The Incredible Hulk
Get Smart
Wall-E
Hancock
Hellboy 2
The Dark Knight
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Star Wars: The Clone Wars

So it’s going to be a busy summer.

With that bit of stuff out of the way, time for photos.

My youngest brother James runs track and cross country at Central College in Pella, IA. This past school year, I’d been unsuccessful at attending a meet. Last fall (during cross country season), I was busy with the TFTTF workshop here in Minneapolis. Earlier this spring (during the beginning of track season) I was studying hard for my Professional Engineering examination. Thankfully, a few weeks ago, timing and location worked out so that I could attend the track meet at Wartburg College.

I managed to talk Mitch into letting me borrow his Nikon 70-300mm VR lens for the week. A feat in itself if you ask me. He covets that lens (and his 11-18mm). But he owed me a favor. This would be the first real test of the D300’s 51point super AF system. For the most part, I shot on Shutter Priority (1/80 to 1/800), ISO 400-800, Continuous focus, High speed shooting (6.5 frames per second), with the dynamic 51 point 3D focusing turned on. I took a lot of photos! Several hundred during my brother’s race. He runs the 5,000m so I had multiple passes to photograph. All in all the photos turned out good. By the end of the day, I was getting a grip on the focusing system and what it can do. I even managed some panning shots that I deemed acceptable. I do want to try this again.

A few other tidbits of info. Yes the track at Wartburg is ORANGE. Distractingly orange. I also had a hazy overcast day to shoot in. I put the white balance on overcast and took shots of my gray target (some laminate counter top samples that are close enough to neutral gray for me) and fixed it in post. I did try a few shots with auto white balance. The camera didn’t do too badly, but it really pulled the color out of the track and left everything a bit cool (way cooler than reality). Still, I’ve found that I can get really good results using my counter top samples and setting the white balance on the camera to something specific (not auto).

Here are the photos. More can be seen on my Flickr page

Topics: News, Photos | 1 Comment »

MMMMMM Flim

By ravsitar | May 19, 2008

As most of you know I’m a digital shooter. As a matter of fact, I never seriously shot a film camera. Sure, I had a point and shoot film camera (who didn’t), but I didn’t get into photography until after digital cameras were mainstream. My first experience was playing with a Ben’s Nikon Coolpix 990. And then a bit later, Lane bought a Nikon Coolpix 995 (a huge improvement). So with the last bit of my student loan money, for my graduation from college, I bought myself a Nikon Coolpikx 4500. That worked great until I got deeper into photography and bought a DSLR. Back to the point. Last year I was looking around for a new photo toy and found a Nikon N80 on craigslist for cheap. Bonus that it would work with all my lenses (though it can vignette with DX format lenses) and it functioned almost identically to my D70.

So after running a plain old roll of color film through it. I bought a couple rolls of Kodak Tmax 3200 black and white film. This stuff is ISO 3200 and grainy! But it gives photos a pleasing look without any processing. These photos are all pretty old (from last October), but I didn’t have a good way to get them from the film to my computer. I don’t shoot enough film to make a scanner viable. In the end, I sent them off to Scancafe for scanning. It took a long time, but they results are good and the price isn’t bad either. I did very little work on the scans after getting them back. Mostly just an auto-levels and straighten in Bibble.

Here are a few examples