Technology - David Mathre Photography

Monday (10-December-2018) — New Jersey

Indoor Nature in New Jersey.

Most of the herbs I planted in a hydroponic garden have sprouted. This is day 10 since I set the system up. It will be interesting to see how big the herbs get. I am going to need a larger system for growing indoor lettuce this winter. A couple of the cactus plants have started to bloom after I moved them indoors for the winter. The cactus flower images were taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera and 80 mm f/2.8 macro lens.

Individual images from the slide shows can be viewed here.

Saturday (01-December-2018) — New Jersey

Adventures of iRobot.

Time-lapse video from the perspective of an iRobot floor vacuum. Images taken with a Garmin VIRB-360 camera. I am actually impressed with the iRobot. I thought the floors were relatively clean, but had to stop and empty the bin several times. I guess my beard has been shedding. The robot does this random walk as it moves through each room. It automatically stopped and switched direction when it came to the stairs to the Great Room. At the end of an hour when the battery was getting low it found its way back to the charger.

Thursday (29-November-2018) — New Jersey

Elby Electric Bicycle.

I picked up an Elby 9-speed electric bicycle. Some assembly required — attach the left pedal, and straighten the handlebars. Plus adjustments to the seat height. My last bicycle was a single-speed Schwinn that I had trouble getting up the hill to my house. The Elby has four-levels of power assist, and four-levels of battery regeneration (when going downhill or breaking). A bit of a learning curve to figure out how to use the SRAM X5 derailleur for shifting since the levers were a bit too close to the RC3 controller. I also installed a mount for my Garmin VIRB-360 camera (the bike has a USB power outlet). Once I got things figured out, the power-assist was great, and got me up the hill to my house. One potential downside is that the company that provided the BionX 500 watt DC motor for the bike went bankrupt. I look forward to having the bike along for my next road trip.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Elby-9 Electric Bicycle. Image taken with a Leica D-Lux 7 camera (ISO 200, 21 mm, f/4, 1/125 sec). (David J Mathre)

Three-Years Ago (21-November-2015) — Cuba

Gone to See Cuba 2011 People to People Cultural Exchange. Day 3 of a Street Photography Workshop led by Steve Simon.

One thing I noticed in Old Havana were the power lines. They don’t have to worry about snow, but do need to worry about hurricanes.

Sunday (28-October-2018) — New Jersey

Backyard Autumn Nature in New Jersey.

It rained on Saturday, total accumulation just under an inch (23 mm). When I woke up Sunday, the clouds were beginning to clear, so I put the Garmin VIRB-360 camera out to see if I could catch some dawn cloud colors. I ended up leaving the camera out for 12 hours, connected to an external USB battery. I’m starting to play around with Adobe Premiere Pro for processing videos. The eight-bit range of colors and light recorded in the jpg images does limit the amount of processing going from the dark predawn to some sunlight. In the end, I compressed 12 hours to 1 minute time-lapsed video displayed both as a 360 degree panorama, and side by side little-planet and tunnel views. Bottom line, I can do better with the dawn cloud colors with raw images, but don’t have the time to individually process nearly 9000 images. A lot more to learn with Premiere Pro (and maybe After Effects).