Happy 100th birthday to the National Park System! In celebration, we visit Dry Tortugas National Park with this guest post from our friend, Andy Stenz. Andy is a photographer and blogger who I met many years ago when I first became involved in our local community of photographers here in Wisconsin. He has discovered the beauty and warmth of Hawaii, and soon will become a permanent resident on the island of Oahu. He loves to travel – – he’s now exploring Europe with his lovely wife, Jessica – – and was kind enough to share with us his visit to Dry Tortugas. Enjoy! And be sure to follow Andy on Instagram…
-
-
Over the years, I have posted “What’s in My Bag?” about various trips. On the last two trips, I have traveled with both digital and film cameras, and I wanted to do a separate post on traveling for hybrid shooters. As you might expect, it’s easier to travel with digital. Memory cards are small, and you don’t have to worry about the effect of x-ray machines at security checkpoints. I also feel more comfortable experimenting with digital. You can try new techniques, and the only loss is your time. However, I find that there are times when I prefer film over digital, and it’s worth the extra effort. There are…
-
Is this a cooking post or a film photography post? Well, a little bit of both. Today, I processed my first roll of color film ever, and processed it with a sous vide. Back when I shot film, I used to process black and white film myself. It wasn’t too hard, once you got used to feeling your way around a roll of film in a changing bag. I never got into processing color film, primarily because of the difficulty in controlling the temperature. I understood that temperature control was far more critical in color film processing, and I had difficulty getting the temperature right. Color film processing seemed beyond…
-
Lately, I’ve been back to shooting film, shooting both digital and film cameras on our recent trips to Anguilla, Antigua, and Barbuda. Along for the journey were several film cameras, including the Canon EOS 1v. The 1v was Canon’s last professional 35mm SLR camera, with a magnesium alloy body and weather sealing throughout. At 10 frames per second, it was a favorite of sports shooters for years. It is a solidly built camera, and fits perfectly in my hand like the later DSLRs that Canon produced. I have the HS version, which includes a detachable power booster, however given the bulk, I leave that behind. The beauty of traveling with…
-
Knowing that we were traveling to Barbuda, where I expected a beautiful night sky, I planned to try to shoot the Milky Way. I had never done it before, but why not? So I did a bit of research and here’s how I planned for shooting the Milky Way and the results. Step 1: Get away from the city! Light pollution of big cities will obscure your view of the night sky, so it’s important to distance yourself as much as possible. Barbuda was pretty far away, so I didn’t expect any difficulty here. What I would find out when setting up was that there was still a significant…
-
Recently, Olympus rolled out the latest version of its Tough camera, the Olympus Tough TG-4. This camera stands out among its competitors for offering RAW capture in an underwater compact camera at a reasonable price. We shot both the predecessor, the Olympus Tough TG-3 (our previous review here), and the new camera, the TG-4, on our recent trip to Antigua and Barbuda, to give you a real world, in-the-ocean test and comparison of the two cameras in action. With the exception of the addition of RAW capture, there is very little difference between the two models. They have the same sensor and the same lens. The both have built-in wireless…
-
I’m not really a big “activity” person when it comes to vacation. As long as I have a nice beach and beautiful water to swim in, I’m pretty much set. So when I found myself looking forward to what “the Concierge recommends” in the morning “Jumby Journal,” I kind of surprised myself. Not being one to look for things to do, I was excited to see what was “on the menu,” and had a really good time joining in. We were on the island for only three days, but we were able to participate in loads of fun activities, which left us exhausted, but really happy. Here are just some…
-
When a camera first comes out, you’ll read a lot of reviews about specifications with a limited number of tests of the camera in action. When it comes to underwater cameras, you’ll find even less. What follows is my experience with the waterproof, shockproof Olympus Tough TG-3. If you’ve come for a technical review with lots of pixel peeping, you’ve come to the wrong place. This review is based upon my use of the Olympus Tough TG-3, which was put to the test on our trip to Anguilla. I had no expectations that the image quality would compare to my DSLR. I did want something that was portable and waterproof…
