Flashlight Ceiling Beamshots (Take 1)

Gallery: Flashlight Beamshots (Ceiling / Take 1)

I've decided to take my experience in compressing a photograph's dynamic range and apply that to rendering flashlight beam-shots in such a way as to show all the subtle colour differences and beam artifacts. There are many subtleties to the beams produced by various flashlights and while it is relatively easy to see these differences visually when shining against a blank white wall, it is not so easy to capture on camera, at least not with a single photo. Combining the large, 'domed' LEDs with high precision, polished reflectors and anti-reflection coated lenses in modern high-end flashlights can also create colour artifacts in the beam, sometimes quite obvious and other times more subtle.

I have endeavoured to somewhat accurately portray these differences in the gallery which you can access by clicking on the above image. Not only might these beam-shots be of interest to other flashlight aficionados, those that sometimes call themselves "flashaholics", but some of the subtle patterns and coloration are also quite beautiful in their own way. I need to be careful, since with my growing collection of lights, I may be well on the way to "flashaholism" myself! A great resource, if you want to learn more about modern high-end flashlights, is CandlePowerForums.

The middle image above (and the first image in the gallery) show the collection of lights, diffusers and filters that I photographed. There are many notes following in this blog entry, describing the test conditions, which lights were photographed etc. One thing that I will stress right from the get-go is that the photos in this gallery can in no way be used to judge the relative brightness of these lights. More details follow…

[update 12/31/2013]: added one missing photo and revised the order of the gallery and descriptions slightly to make more sense.
[update 1/1/2014]: Added labels to each shot in the gallery and fixed a few minor things in the article. Happy New Year!
[update 1/6/2014]: Added in the Thrunite TN32 beam-shot and took out the laser+refracting head to keep the gallery at a clean 35 shots.

Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R: First gallery of tests...

Gallery: First Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R Tests

Click on the image above to see my first image gallery of tests with Fujifilm's brand new and superb XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide angle lens. I have now tested this lens quite comprehensively and am extremely impressed with its quality. The only remaining question for me is how flare resistant it will be when placing the sun inside the shot, or just outside the frame. Sadly, the weather simply has not cooperated for me to do a test like that yet.

For a detailed review I wrote, see here: NEW! Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide-angle lens...

Fall colours, fog and GX7 followup...

Stanley Park Fall Colours (click image for gallery) - X-E1

It was a good year for fall colours here in Vancouver, with a nice spell of good weather before the major fall rains hit. This meant I could get out a few times and get some nice autumn shots for a change! The above image, and linked gallery, were taken with my Fujifilm X-E1 and all images were processed primarily in PhotoNinja v1.2.1 with a minor followup in Lightroom before exporting the gallery. It was an absolutely gorgeous day that Sunday, and there were many vibrant trees and lots of colourful leaves on the ground. The rest of the images galleries in this posting have photos taken with my new Panasonic GX7 and just processed through Adobe Lightroom...

2013 Utah Trip - Days 1 thru 4...

Old Faithful, in Yellowstone National Park, at the tail end of an eruption (click image for gallery)

This is the first in an upcoming series of posts with image galleries from my trip down to Utah in May, 2013. This gallery has images taken during my drive down to Yellowstone in Wyoming, my first time visiting the park since I was a child where I only had a plastic squirt-gun shaped like a camera. I really wanted to take photos, just like my parents were doing, but was far too young at the time to have a real camera. The squirt-gun was the next best thing my parents could think of at the time and they got me one on that trip. I really enjoyed pretending to take photos with it!

Being a child with a short attention span though, I recall uttering the phrase "You seen one geyser, you've seen them all..." at one point during the trip, which really annoyed and disappointed my parents, especially my mother. At the time, I really did not appreciate all the traveling and exploring I did with them during every summer vacation, but it obviously rubbed off on me. Today, I can't picture a year going by without one or more major trips where I go camping, hiking, and explore new areas, taking lots of photos along the way.

At some point, either during that visit to Yellowstone with my parents, or perhaps a day or two after when we continued on our way, I left the little black plastic squirt-gun camera in the parked car, and with closed windows and the hot sun beating down, it melted into slag! I was absolutely crushed at the loss of the camera and was totally depressed and upset. One of the happiest moments of the trip came when somehow, my dad was able to buy another one in a different store and surprise me with a shiny and perfectly, miraculously, intact new toy camera. In retrospect, that generosity makes my impatience and "attitude" at the time all that much more regretful...

Road-trip! Brand new 2014 Subaru Forester 2.0XT...

View into Succor Creek Canyon in Oregon (click image for gallery)

Sorry for the long delay, as this is the first update in a few months. A few people have already asked me if I had stopped blogging! Nope, I was just really busy at work and hadn't been doing all that much shooting. Mainly lens tests in fact, including the new Nikkor AF-S 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G and the Nikkor AF-S VR 70-200mm f/4G... both of which I bought actually. The brand new 18-35mm replaced my AF-S VR 16-35mm f/4G and the 70-200mm replaced the bigger and heavier f/2.8G VR II. I find both these lighter, less expensive lenses to generally perform as well (or even better) for my needs than their heavier and more expensive counterparts. For example, the 18-35mm is actually more flare resistant than the costlier 16-35mm! I also tested the new AF-S 80-400mm Nikkor zoom and although it is excellent, it has a zoom range that I don't often need, so I cannot justify its expense at this time.

Anyway, in mid-May I left on a solo road trip to the Southwestern US again, this time making my way through Yellowstone National Park and Dinosaur National Monument on the way down to Utah. I also visited Fantasy Canyon southeast of Vernal, Utah for the first time and it truly has some bizarrely eroded sandstone formations! Watch for more blog posts in the near future with some additional photos from the trip.

This "off-topic" blog posting is mainly all about my new vehicle, a brand new 2014 Subaru Forester 2.0XT, the Canadian "Touring Edition" model. It conveniently arrived (barely) in time for my trip and after being shod with some proper off-road rubber (four 18" Yokohama Geolandar A/T-S tires), and after a quick 900km break-in drive through the Fraser Canyon where it proved fully functional, I was off and heading south. An image gallery with twenty shots of the new Forester on my trip can be accessed by clicking on the above photo, which was taken on the way home through Oregon. Many of the photos were shots of various backcountry campsites where I stayed (not official campsites, just nice out-of-the-way spots on public BLM lands) and a few just show the Forester within the spectacular scenery I was driving through.

SFU with the Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 R

Gallery: SFU with Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 R

On a beautiful Sunday yesterday (finally a nice day on a weekend!), I shot some images with the new XF 14mm f/2.8 R at Simon Fraser University. The gallery contains some more comments on this lens as well, but to summarize, I'd say that since it's such a stunningly good ultra-wide-angle lens, it would actually be worth buying an X-E1 body just to be able to use it, even if you don't have a Fuji X system yet! Well, in my humble opinion anyway. Can you tell I like this lens?

Fog & Fourteen: Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 R Review

I was at the Port Mann Bridge on a foggy night yesterday and captured some shots with my X-E1, including a bunch with the superb new XF 14mm f/2.8 R wide-angle lens, the latest addition to Fujifilm's excellent X-body lens lineup. This lens has a focal length equivalent to a 21mm on a full-frame camera. Many years ago now, back in 1984 in fact, I was shooting with my brand new Nikon FE2 and I remember being impressed after seeing the full arc of a rainbow in a Nikon brochure, and that was taken with a 20mm lens. If I had to choose any one ultra-wide-angle focal length, it would indeed be right around 20mm mark, so this new lens is exactly what I had been waiting for. Quite simply, the optical quality of this lens is stunning, one of the very best ultra-wide primes I have ever shot with. For a variety of initial images shot with the 14mm, see the following gallery...

Gallery: Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 R - First Tests

The above gallery also has a condensed review of the 14mm lens, but see the rest of this blog entry for further details, clarifications and sample images.