The NEX-7 & The Strawberry Festival Drive In

I've had the Sony NEX-7 for about 6 months but I've used it very little.     This is my third Sony Alpha DSLR, having previously owned a NEX-5 and a Sony A77.    For the Strawberry Festival, I decided it would be easier to grab this little camera instead of toting the D800 around.   The results follow.

The History with Sony Equipment
I like Sony Alpha Cameras.   Probably b/c of my Minolta roots or possibly b/c I've had some commercial sucesses selling licensed photos to Sony.  

When I first bought my NEX-5, I thought I was in love.   The camera was lightweight with a high resolution and fair amount of features.   Alof of people complained about the on screen menus but I found them to be fun.    It worked well paired with my telescope and the kit lens was decent.

My biggest gripe, being someone who played in HDR quite a bit, was the bracketing modes were very limited, with only .7 stepping EV supported.  I liked the swivelly screen but did miss having a viewfinder.

I eventually bought the A77.   I got mine through a contact a few weeks before the official street date.   I'd hoped the exposure stepping would have been enhanced in this, 24 megapixel machine but alas, it was not. 
Still, the A77 felt great in my hands, the electronic viewfinder was cool and the camera was packed with features. It was almost love.

I eventually sold the A77  in favor of the D800, which I love.     Still, wanting a second good camera I went with the Sony NEX-7.  I chose the NEX-7 for alot of reasons.  Partly, b/c it is basically the A77 in a smaller package. Partly b/c I'm a gadget nerd, partly b/c of the awesome APS-C sized sensor but mostly b/c I knew my d800 was too heavy to ever pair with my telescope.     The NEX-7 viewfinder works, the camera takes decent shots but still.. to my dismay.. they still hadn't fixed the damned bracketing limitation for .7 EV stepping.

Until now.

The Update

As we headed out to the Strawberry festival, I blew the dust bunnies off the neglected little NEX-7 and in a hail-mary, checked sony's support site.    An firmware update was available and in 5 minutes it was downloaded and applied.    

They did it at last...  You can now bracket EV 1, 2, even 3 steps with the camera's bracketing mode.   Coupled with RAW you can get pretty much every bit of exposure data you could ever want for an HDR or other exposure tweaked image.   

The highlight (for me) of the Loxley Strawberry Festival is the classic car/ show drive/in at the back of the park.    What a fun culture and beautiful collection of cars.

Something about this car. I took a couple shots of it a few years ago and remembered it well. You can't help but hear "Back in Black" in your head when seeing it. Tons of attitude in a neat looking, if not way-over-the-top, machine.

Something about this car.   I took a couple shots of it a few years ago and remembered it well.  
You can't help but here "back in black" in your head when seeing it.   

Tons of attitude in a neat looking, if not way-over-the-top, machine.

One of the first images that jumped out at me was this 'neath the hood shot as we walked up.

I've always found the future-retro lines of this era as pretty cool..

Could this be the organizing entity behind this car show?  Possibly.   I had children tugging on my arms and such not time to ask around for sure.

One thing about the car show at the Strawberry Festival in Loxley that always gets me, is the outliers.    

You will have these classic American cars, high end imports and every now and then something like a Nissan pickup, hood open - on display.  You can't help but wonder, parked 50 ft from a '67 Stingray or Classic Mercedes/Porcshe/Other, is the Nissan just being ironic?

And this Lambo...    I think it is hard to be more ostentatious than a Lambo..  Something about a Lambo parked in Loxley, just doesn't feel right.  ;)

Neat car though. 

Summary

With a Cruise & Disney trip a little over a month away, I'm sure that the NEX-7 will go with us.   Still, I can't, NOT bring the monstrous D800 with us on vacation to capture humungous 36 pixel super-wide panoramas with a rental 14-24mm lens.     

But, when it comes time to tromp around the parks or play in the water with Dolpins in the Bahamas, I have a feeling this less expensive, lighter NEX-7 will be in hand versus the D800.    The swivelly screen, respectable 24 megapixel APS-C sized sensor and novel electronic viewfinder should suffice to capture some cool shots.  The Sony firmware update responded to a serious missing feature with this bracketing update and the Sony ARW RAW specification stores a decent amount of dynamic range in a single image for your post-processing happiness later on.

Not comparing the NEX-7 to the D800, they are different animals..   It is difficult to make a bad image with the full frame epicness of the D800 but the NEX-7 is probably "good enough" for most scenarios and just-as-good-if-not-better than anything you will pick up at a department store that masquerades as a professional-quality DSLR. The $1100 pricetag is an investment you won't be sorry with.   Sure, you can buy a $700 DSLR with similar specs but you probably won't use it as much as you think b/c of the size. 

With half the size, and half the weight, it sure is hard to beat! 

The Volcano on the Horizon

Cookout Season

Well, backyard season is here again in our neck of the woods.

We kicked it off this weekend with a fun little cookout.    Outdoor movie & seafood boil.  A nice way to start off the spring here on the Gulf Coast!

Trash on the Beach

I've had my Lightroom catalog chugging away for about a week to create a medium res backup of all my images.  It's nice to finally get back in and find some images :)

At Dusk..

I got alot of mileage out of this...   Just keep playing around with different looks.

An Evening on the Bay - Farewell to a Friend

This evening I took a brief timeout to go down to the Bay and say farewell to an old friend.

Tomorrow my sailboat, Stargazer, moves on to her new owner.

I decided over the winter that my work schedule just wasn't friendly enough to allow me to properly use the sailboat.

It took until just a few weeks ago to find the right buyer and the right circumstances.

I bought the 28" 1977 sailboat having never sailed a day in my life.  To be honest I'd only ever set foot on a few other sailboats and never crewed one.      After closing on the boat, I bought some lifejackets and started reading online.

My search queries were pretty humorous.

"How a sailboat works"

"How to tie knots"

"Parts of a sailboat"

"Understanding the points of sail"

"How to tie knots."

.... you know.. I never got good at the knot thing..

Looking back, dropping that kind of cash on a sailboat, having no clue about it, probably wasn't my wisest move.  I didn't have a clear understanding of the maintenance costs, even boating law.   

I could drive a jetski at 80 mph through a 10 ft winding river.  How hard could a 28 ft boat be?

Maybe it was some sort of mid-life crisis related to the circumstances of my parent's deaths.   Maybe it was too many rum drinks and Jimmy Buffet albums but hey, I did it.   Bought a sailboat, bought a dummies book and went for it.

So, what did we learn along the way?

How to sail, for one.  How not to sail, for two.

I also learned that I'm not yet in the appropriate stage of life to be a sailboat person.  Any number of side jobs/ full time responsibilities, a family and an often-seasick wife all told me "sell it."

Still.. sitting on the bay at a marina, the cool air on my bald head, I could hear the wind and waves calling.     Good luck Stargazer.   Treat your new owners safe, may the winds continue to be in your favor.

Distance and Calm

umm.. puts words here..

k, done.

done.

Last Night's Moon

I've spent 100's of hours behind a telescope or astro-binoculars.   Slewing from coordinate to coordinate and trying different eyepieces.    There is something majestic about actually seeing planets, nebulae, galaxies with your own eye.

I've spend just as many hours trying to capture photo and video so that I can accurately convey the experience to my friends online who haven't been able to hang out for a star session in person.    Strange combinations of eyepieces and adapters, I've connected nearly every camera I've ever had to a telescope in varied ways and the process of collecting a solid-looking image continues to challenge me. 

(This photo, was taken with an iPhone mounted onto an 25mm eyepiece on the telescope)

Whenever I look at our orbital neighbor, at the scars on the moon's surface from impacts over history, I truly stand amazed that more events like what occurred in Russia on Friday do not occur more frequently.   As if the moon is tells a cautionary tale reminder to keep one eye on the sky, you never know what's coming :)

As for DA-2012.  When it was first announced, I used NASA's own tracking app and varied data models did show an impact with Earth.  Over time, that changed.  It's always interesting to watch those models change as new data sets get parsed and added, making the models more accurate.   Fun stuff!

Life by the Bay

I've been organizing my shots from last year -- getting ready to pick up and shoot a bunch more this spring and summer, picking up the bottom of the barrel, as they say.

This one has been in my //TODO folder for a bit.   I really liked it because it was of one my favorite spots and I love how the colors dance and tweak in the twilight in Fairhope in the evenings.  Ironically, I didn't do much to the color to get this effect.

Still, I had this image stashed away, awaiting various tweaks before I called it "done" -- because I planned to make a print of it for my Office wall.  I'm developing this theme of B&W/Color Alternating prints that I think will work well for this room I spend so much time in.   Over the fall, I donated so many prints that the bare walls have been a drag!

Finally, this evening I found a little time to work on the contrast and the crop, boosted some details saturated lightly. (Less than you might think!)

Pretty happy with the result!

What the Optimist Sees..

I'm not really a "The Glass is Half Full" or "The Glass is Half Empty" type of fella.  

I'm more of a, "The beaker apparently contains a substance that is currently in the liquid phase of matter and seems to occupy 50% of the available container volume." type of guy.

...and as more news of our nation's economy retracting emerged this week, I wonder how the optimist v pessimist point of views would respond to such news.    Then I turned on the news and found out.

FoxNews: "OBAMA IS KILLING IS THE ECONOMY"
  (oh, and he's a Muslim and will personally collect your guns and Bibles)

CNN: "REPUBLICANS PUT US CLOSE TO ECONOMIC COLLAPSE"
  (blame the cigar-smoking bankers and guns are bad, K?)

MSNBC: Didn't report anything.   Rachel Maddow & Chris Matthews just sat for an hour embracing an Obama Campaign poster, reciting "The Precious....."

Jon Stewart: Grilled Al Gore on selling CurrentTV to Al Jazeera and the seeming inconsistencies between Al Gore, the Mogul and Al Gore, the Climate Change Activist

Stephen Colbert:   Dick jokes and a Bill Gates Interview.  IMO Bill may adopt a more active role in MSFT in the next 2 years.

Al Jazeera: "U.S. Economy Slides on Core Economic Indicators"

..When the heck did Al Jazeera become the objective news source and did honest journalism fall on the backs of the comedian?

I mean.. I don't (really) care.. it's all just frequencies of electromagnetic radiation surfing through the air or timed flashes of light on a piece of fiber in the ground, anyway.      :)

Staight on til Dusk..

Last week was a challenge for me.   Seems like nothing wanted to work out for me.   Looking forward to a new week. :)

Things aren't always so black and white..

Daphne, Alabama

The Jungle

.. I really like the challenge of shooting through a fence and trying to hide the waffle/pattern..

The Path Beckoned

I really miss that (rental) 14-24mm lense, lol.    One day, .. soon ... :)

The Temple and the Path

Fairhope, Alabama December, 2012.

(been swamped.   some posts coming this week though :) )

Shoot the Gap

I guess another name for this shot could have been "Maximum Vignette"    

Both would work for a summer Hollywood action movie name, though -- right?

The Portal to the Future

2012..

In technology, 2012 gave us more iPhones and iPads.  We saw more-of-the-same computers.   We saw dozens of iterative Android Phones and Tablets, so many that they are like fish in a barrel, clammering over each other for momentary superiority.   Really strong products drowning in a sea of their own making.  We saw Microsoft, struggling to re-invent itself through bold, but probably - too late - to dent the universe - product releases and marketing millions.   We saw Apple, shifting under new leadership trying to maintain its stride but largely failing to dazzle and inspire.

In photography, we saw some new gear.  Much of them obvious iterations on existing strong products.   The D700 v 5dMk2 debate turned to a D800 v Canon 5D Mk3 debate.    At least Lytro tried something new.   We saw social media clammering to channel the massive flood of photography brought about largely by explosions of phone/cameras.    We saw some of the same people at the top of the social media/photography pyramid continue to inspire and train and of course, sell their warez along the way.   I saw a half-dozen around me, new-to-photography and trully talented try to break out into the industry with the same frustrating setbacks we all experience at first.  

As a nation, we saw the continuance of the polarized politics that prove our form of Government no longer works. Our country is still dedbating the same issues they were 20, 30 years ago.   Abortion, gun control & equal rights for citizens.  We the taxpayers pay them to flip back and fourth on these topics every four years in probably the greatest con-game ever devised.   We heard about the dangers of fiscal cliff's and then road right over it.  We heard about a pending apocalypse and skipped right over that.  We watched a monster commit unthinkable atrocities to children and our typical national response to limit the rights of citizens in response.    We watched one of Washington's most powerful lobbies respond to the event with a poorly times, weak and tired argument instead of contributing to a national discussion on the viability of Assault Weapons.    After all Mortal Kombat is to blame.    (throws freeze ray, then teleports to the next paragraph)

As a family, my wife and I watched my children grow a little older and develop little quirks and nuances that will one day form their adult personalities.   Ever-pressed by the notion that these little people in my house will all-to-soon be big people moving away to their own lives, I tried my best to balance work & life.    In that balancing act, something always gets dropped but from the smiles of my kids and the conitnued paycheck, I guess I got the balance right.

As a career, I came to some powerful realizations concerning others' motives and planted the seeds for future endeavours.    I can't control my title, I can't control the markets but I can always make plans and work towards the goals.  In the end, I'm sure it will all work out well.  

As for what 2013 will hold?  I'm sure that next December the Earth will still be spinning.  We'll all be a little older, we'll have crappier music to listen to and we'll see more of the same.   A government that disappoints at least half of the population (the left or the right half, does it matter?). We will see companies do what companies do, maximize profits and we'll see employees do what employees do -- gripe about their bosses.   We'll see death and life, we'll be touched by extraordinary loss and inspired by moments of magic.   That's life.  and it continues in a new arbitrary unit of measurement today, that we call, the new  year..

I hope yours is fantastic.

Spanish Fort Veteran's Memorial Cemetary

A few hours ago the Veteran's Memorial Cemetery in Spanish Fort was dedicated.

An agreeable nod to today's significance in US and Military history.

This project has been 10 years or more in progress, with proponents making dozens of trips to D.C. with no expectations to "get anything" out of it in return.   I visited the site and it is a tremendously nice location.

From a photography perspective, the thing that makes a cemetery interesting is the stories of the heros who are memorialized within it's grounds.  This cemetery's story is just starting.  

While the photographic results of my lunchtime outing are underwhelming, I met and spoke with a couple of the more outspoken of the 500 Veterans that attended today's ceremony.  

Utopian Ideas

Quick question for those who may be Fairhope - knowledgeable.

During the photo walk last weekend, I noticed this young lady riding a white bicycle downtown.   

Just curious.. has anyone seen this collegish-aged kid riding the white bike through Fairhope dressed essentially like a younger Gwen Stefani in pastel colors. I'm just curious, is that some sort of marketing gag for this business: 

or is it just some artsy kid going about her day?

Because, if it's marketing, I'm trying to envision that job interview.

"so, basically I need you to dress up in bright pink/blue combinations in a costume that is a cross between a antebellum maiden and light/hipster pop-rocker-theme and ride a bright white bike up and down the block to promote our stuff.."

Meet Ace (He Needs a Home)

We tried to adopt this little guy over the weekend.  We kept him for a 'trial run' over night.  

He was great with my kids and in/around the house but my son's allergies got out of hand really quickly. 

(Which was strange b/c this part lab/ part hound mix isn't really known to be an highly - allergenic breed)

My son's dog allergies are off the chart - so we didn't get the Adopt Ace. Sunday, he went back to his temporary home.

Ace is about a year old, pretty much fully grown but with a good bit of puppy playfulness.  He's a Baldwin County Humane Society Rescue dog from Summerdale currently residing in a home/kennel in Daphne.

If you know someone looking for a family dog, I couldn't imagine a better fit.

Baldwin County Humane Society Posted about him yesterday on facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151326912710049&set=a.171235535048.150603.59130605048&type=1&relevant_count=1

and they have some info on their site here:

http://baldwinhumane.org/Adoption/AdoptablePetfromBARC/tabid/920/agentType/View/PropertyID/683/Default.aspx

Adoption fees are waived in December and the dogs come with some rudimentary free obedience training, either in-home or on-site with the trainer.

Like I said, if you know someone looking for a great family dog you can contact the Baldwin County Humane Society at this number:

251-928-4585 ext 100 or (toll free) 1-800-547-6518 (Mon-Thru 9am-4pm CST).