A friend invited us for a weekend getaway in Palm Springs. Normally, a no brainer, right? Now consider the 105+ degree heat! Well, how can you say no to a vacation home with this backyard? I got up early the first day to catch the sun rise, then I just took some shots around the pool with the 90'MEM. I also shot a couple of rolls with the Rolleiflex SL66, but I'll have to wait a few weeks to get that processed to share. You can see the full set from this weekend [HERE].    
1 Comment
This evening was the "Family Fun Night" at my nephew's middle school. Since he was in the school Jazz band, I was there to take a few photos of his performance while my son had a blast playing at the various booths of games.    I brought the 90mm Macro-Elmar but forgot to bring the hood, so I ended up with a bunch of photos with flare. I tried to use my hand to shade the lens, but it didn't work very well. I switched to the 50'Lux once the light got a little low       
Now that everyone has gave their thanks, it's time to go back to our regular lives, until Christmas comes. Dropped off my niece to LAX today for her return flight back to Michigan. Took advantage of the nice sculpture in the background... 
Bought some Christmas lights this year... figured we'd get more into the spirit of it this year. This special, but I did break out the macro adapter for the 90mm Macro-Elmar. 
 This has been one hell of a late summer. We haven't even need to turn on the air conditioning for the whole year until this past couple of weeks. Didn't want to stay home, we decided to go take a swim... I brought the M9 with the 90mm Macro-Elmar, and of course, my latest toy, the Rolleiflex MiniDigi. Rangefinder focusing really isn't that difficult, my wife was able to pick up the camera can capture of few shots of me playing with my son.       Here are few shots from the Rolleiflex MiniDigi:      Some things are just irresistible... I've tried really hard to resist this little guy from eBay, but I finally broke down and bought one. It's super small, probably about a little over 2 inches in height, yet has all of the elements that makes it look authentic. You have to pop open the focus screen on the top in order to see LCD screen for framing and shooting, and you have to turn the crank to arm the shutter after each shot. Of course, the 2-megapixel images that it captures isn't worth much praise, but the fun is all in the act of shooting this vintage-looking little toy. Below is a shot of it next to a AA-size battery and a couple of first shots I got from this camera:      The Ringling Bros. Circus is in town, at the Staples Center, and my mom bought tickets for us to take my son to see them. I was worried about them not allowing cameras so I did a quick search online. I found that they had a strange rule of not allowing lenses longer than 3 inches. Good thing Leica lenses are known for their compactness, and my 90mm Macro-Elmar is only about 1.5 inch when collapsed. It's funny... at the entrance, the lady checking bags saw my camera and told me to not to extend my lenses because they will catch me.   Well, of course I packed my latest new toy, the 35'Lux, but I shot mostly with the 90'MEM. Being handicapped at f/4, I set the ISO to 800 and locked myself with 1/90 seconds shutter. I figure I just try to minimize the camera shake and hope to bring up the exposure in post-processing. It turned out well, although I wish I had capture the human cannonball with more crispness. The full set of images, including some tigers and elephants shots can be seen [HERE].
 Today was Aidan's second swim class (I missed the first one). He's not yet comfortable with putting his head under the water, but I could see that he was really trying to be brave. I hope that he will eventually get over that fear and really enjoy swimming. Afterwards, we took him to eat his favorite food: Pad See-Ew, a Thai dish. Then he suggested that we walk all the way home. "In this heat?" I said, "well, okay..." I hope THIS doesn't become a habit ;-)          
Huge congratulations to the not-so-little niece! Finally finished editing through the 280+ shots from last night and came away with about 100 good ones, see them [HERE].    I took some liberty of converting a few of them to black and white, and left the color version in as well. Without a high power zoom lens, I had to go with the 90mm and heavily crop some images. So the super-zoomed shots may be only good for web display and won't print well.
Without any flash, the 50'Lux did its magic after the sunset, and I think all in all, the M9 covered the whole event pretty well. I had to keep an eye on the ISO and shutter speed to keep noise and blurs to the minimum. 
We were sitting in Islands, the awesome burger restaurant, but I had the 90mm MEM mounted. The decisive moment was fleeting so I had to take a quick shot. Although my son's chin was cut-off, which is probably a big no-no in portraiture, but I still love this intimate shot... Sure, I could be biased :) By the time I changed lens and tell my son to try again, he's no longer interested. That's just how it is with kids, there are more decisive moments to miss than shooting on the streets.   |
AuthorDavid Young Archives
July 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
