Old Lunatic

Had to go out shooting this afternoon, and as usual couldn't stop. So check this out...

Okay, not the best picture of the "Strawberry Moon" (that's the full moon in June) you've ever seen, and you might have noticed that I cleverly used the leaves to disguise the fact that the moon is still two days from full. But note that you can see the stem of that leaf.

Here's the thing...this is the full frame:

You probably can't see the distinction between the cobalt blue sky and the black trees, but I can on my monitor. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that the IBIS in the X-H1 just keeps blowing my aging (and, yes, shrinking) mind. This was taken with the 90mm ƒ/2 lens at ƒ/10, obviously in what could pretty much be called "the dark," handheld. And that leaf is the better part of a football field away from me. And I can see the stem.

You know, young people make fun of older people for marveling at things that are commonplace to them, but to that I say, wait for it, kidz. It's fun as hell to be so amazed. When I was young there wasn't a decent color film over ASA (i.e., ISO) 100 (this was at 800, three stops faster), and I couldn't handhold 1/ƒ, meaning I would have had trouble holding a 135mm lens at 1/125th, never mind two stops slower.

I don't mind admitting that every now and then I take a picture of something on my desk in the dark, just to see the X-H1 render it razor sharp at like 1/7th or 1/3 of a second. Whee.

I do own a tripod, but where's the fun in that?

I actually appreciated the fact that this was rather hard to expose. Digital cameras do so much for you that you get lazy. I'm grateful for an occasional challenge.

Enough of this, I said earlier today that I was taking the day off...off having phun with photography is all.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Brandon P: "Regarding being amazed in your old age, a quote from Douglas Adams: 1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."

Pritam Singh: "That is quite stunning. Now, thanks to the outrageous capabilities of your camera-and-lens, someone might even be able to identify the tree that leaf belongs to. My first thought was oak but on closer viewing, I think not."

Comments

[Jim]

obviously fake! ;)

[Steve Hutchison]

I am like yourself amazed at the IBIS in my Olympus EM10. I have been guilty of taking photos around the house at night with exposures longer than a second and marvelling at the results. When used sensibly at slightly faster speeds the sharpness of the resulting images in nothing short of black magic. The only downside is when people get involved. Their tendency towards movement spoils the party unfortunately.

[Andy Umbo]

I love this, I've always stopped and watched the moon. Last night, it was coming right in my bedroom window and falling right on my face. I couldn't be happier!

[Rob de Loe]

This is a nice example of what I think of as an "expectations problems". Cameras and lenses are so good that we have lost important baselines anymore for what we should reasonably expect to see in pictures.

When I'm looking at a picture on my monitor, zoomed in some ridiculous amount, and feeling grumpy that I can't resolve some tiny detail, I have to remind myself that I'm doing photography, not microscopy! The fact that I can't count the legs on a bug on a leaf 2 km away from my camera isn't photographically relevant. I can't even see the leaf with my naked eye from that spot!

In my film photography days, the loupe I used to inspect the negative or slide put some firm boundaries around what I should expect to see. The magnification button in Lightroom gives me a ridiculously powerful loupe. Fortunately, printing still provides a solid grounding for expectations.

[Albert Smith]

I'm one of those old guys that learned to shoot on film, and at .50 to .75 cents per frame with slide film, those lessons were expensive if you didn't learn what you were doing.

While I prided myself on my exposure skills, knowing when the camera's meter could be fooled and over riding via compensation or surrogate metering, the new mirrorless cameras impress me. The "what you see is what you get" rendering in the finder, showing the effects of compensation make shooting so easy.

This one feature of mirrorless make using my DSLRs less fun than they use to be, with the need to bracket and chimp to be sure of getting it right. I find myself grabbing a Fuji now 90% of the time over my Nikons.

[Dave]

Mike,

I've enjoyed "An Evening Walk" and "Old Lunatic". Glad to see you getting outside to take photos.

Seeing the first photo in the post "Old Lunatic", I didn't think the leaves would be as far away as the second photo shows.

Very good hand-holding and IBIS, although that nearly full moon wouldn't need a low shutter speed with ISO 800. Even so, to keep that leaf's stem sharp is impressive.

The biggest difference with my K1, compared to my old [and dent-less ;) ] SL, is the ability to shoot in very dim conditions with the variable ISO. And the IBIS is quite amazing, even with shorter focal length lenses. (But the camera does eat batteries, unlike the SL.)

Like you, I carry a light meter for tricky lighting conditions as shown in the third photo. Generally, the camera makes pretty good decisions about exposure.

It still hasn't become second nature to calibrate the white balance. I'm not used to having to worry about that when film was automatically compensated when the prints were made.

Thank you. Those two blog posts were simply enjoyable.

[Phil]

I know the fun and amazement of which you speak. I'm only a couple years younger than you. When I got my EM-1, it was coming on winter yet I started to look forward to after-dinner walks with camera in hand. Six years later and it still amazes me that I can wander the streets after dark and get sharp-as-a-tack shots of anything that doesn't move.

[Stephen Scharf]

Told ya it was a good camera!

[Kodachromeguy]

"Digital cameras do so much for you that you get lazy." Now you've done it. Wait for the hate mail from the crowd that converted from film but claim they've retained all their skills.

[J. N. Lauretig]

The leaf appears to be a variety of Red Oak.