New York Skyline from City Island

When we lived on City Island back in 2012, our little house was at the end of the street and we could see part of the Manhattan skyline from the porch, across Eastchester Bay. The skyline was actually pretty small, since City Island is about 12 miles away as the crow flies. I took this shot from the street out front, with a 300mm lens racked all the way out on a tripod.

City Island is a pretty cool place, it is part of the Bronx but feels very much like a small town. There is a single 2 lane bridge that connects it to the mainland and at one time had a monorail on and off the island. The main drag, City Island Avenue, hosts a number of small shops, 2 grocery stores and a bevy of Seafood restaurants. I don't use the word 'bevy' that often, but it's a good one. On summer weekends and especially holidays, the little 2 lane bridge is bumper-to-bumper traffic of people trying to get onto the island to eat at the Crab Shanty, or one of the many Sammy's restaurants. The sailing around the island is good, and you can reach Port Washington across the mouth of sound in about an hour or less.

We considered moving there permanently too. It was very family friendly and very neighborhoody. Anyway, so I was taking the photo as there was a James Beard Foundation event going on and the Empire State Building was going to be lit up in honor of that. At least that's what my memory is telling me. At the time, my company had just finished a relaunch of the JBF website... Ok, yeah, I think the website had just relaunched, and they were having their annual awards ceremony.

Even neater than City Island is the small mile-long island that sits just a half mile to the east, Hart or Heart Island. It has been the home of a civil war prison, missile command center, and potters field. It was also featured as part of a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode. Law and Order, and Law and Order: CI, are the only good ones.

This is Bea

Named after Bea Arthur, Bea does Bea things. She is what some would call flighty and perhaps a little slow. We, however, assume she is running about doing Bea things, taking care business and generally being cute. As this is a full time job for her, we let her be.

I love the shallow DoF (Depth of Field) this 35mm f/2 lens gives me. Fully open at about 1 foot from her face, it gives a focal plane of about 1 inch, which for this was perfect. For a human person it might be a little to shallow. Their, eyes may be sharp, but their ears and nose might be out of focus.

For a given lens at a given focal length, 35mm in this case, there is a plane of focus in which subjects will appear to be 'in focus' or acceptably so. Imagine looking down a long hallway and focusing your camera at an object midway down the hall. That object and anything else in the frame that is in the same plane (parallel to the film plan and perpendicular to the lens axis) will be in focus. Objects behind and in front of that point will fall out of focus. Now imagine taking a group shot of people standing in front of you and all at the same distance from the camera. If you focused on the person in the middle, the people on the left and right should also be in focus for the most part. If however, there were to two rows of people, one behind the other, you may find that by focusing on the person in the middle of the first row will keep the first row in focus, but the back row will be out of focus.

There are two ways to handle this (oversimplified) scenario. The first is to stop the lens down, that is, to put your camera in A(perture Priority) mode and raise the F number. The second is to change the focal length of the lens if it is a zoom lens. Changing the F stop will decrease the amount of light being let into the camera, but will increase the depth of the plane of focus.

For Bea, this would have brought her nose and ears in focus. If you zoomed in your lens, you are changing its focal length which has a similar effect. By controlling the aperture and focal length of your lens you can create images that reflect what you saw in your mind and made you pick up your camera to begin with.

This post was originally written 4 years ago, Bear has since passed, to our great sadness. She was affectionate, and gentle, and weach  miss her very much.

New Job, New View

My new job is very similar to my old job. I develop Drupal websites. We've moved back to City Island, NY with our two cats Gary and Bea. On Monday night, one of our clients, The James Beard Foundation, held its annual awards ceremony at the Lincoln Center. As part of the media for it, the Empire State building was lit a brilliant orange.

From my porch, I took a few photos with my D80 and a 300mm lens. On a sturdy tripod, lowest ISO, and self-timer (no MLU):

Silver Vs. Silicon

Here are two shots, comparing a 10.2 MP camera (Nikon D80) and a 10.2 MP film scanner (Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III).
This test is purely subjective- being performed in curiosity and free time mode rather than lab coat and pen protector mode. The list of differences and variations are in fact longer than the similarities between the two tests. :+)

Here is example A and B:



And now a crop of A and B:



Whats not scientific about this?!
Along the way I realized the number of factors which invalidated this test were so numorous that there was no point in comparing the two anymore.
If you look closely, one sample is definitely grainier, and one has a wider tonal range. These too are misleading, and both can be attributed to the user and not the medium.

Film has a couple things going for it. Silver atoms are small- smaller than the photosites of a CMOS or CCD sensor. This means more detail can be captured on film and reproduced on paper in the darkroom. Film can also hold more tonal range than digital, 7+ stops compared to 5ish.
Digital has some advantages though. Its wicked fast for review and publication! If you need to do post processing there is no loss of data from scanning as with negatives.
Even with these reasons there still isn't a grand canyon sized difference in quality. Unless you have access to very expensive equipment, you won't be realizing the full benefit of film if you scan it for printing as a scanner is just a digital camera. You're just taking a digital picture of a really good picture.

The above images are pretty similar aren't they?
It might just boil down to convenience. Do you have time or facility to develop your film? Do you want to spend time in digital post-processing? Do you need extreme detail on poster-sized prints?


...
And no, I didn't forget to mention which was film and which was digital.