David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of science and technology from around the world
Power went out again. PSE&G says it could be a week or more before everyone has power restored. I’ve moved back into my RV (White Ram). I should have enough diesel and propane for several days. I also have about 40 gallons of water. Before I retired, the Safeway stores in PA closed and I bought a lot of food for an emergency. Looks like I will get to use it.
White Ram – My New Home. Three interior images of the “White Ram” My new Roadtrek RS Adventurous RV as I prepare to drive to Anchorage, Alaska to attend ANPAT 9 with my fellow Nikonians. All images taken with a fish-eye lens and thus the spaces look bigger than they really are! For the exterior view when I took delivery check out 15-August-2009.
Everything packed and ready to go. I tried to pack light, but still ended up with a suitcase weighing just under 50 pounds, and a Think Tank “Street Walker – Hard Drive” camera/computer bag at 35 pounds. I am going with a lighter camera kit for this trip, but added several 1.5 TB Seagate external drives with my photo library. As the trip proceeds I will mention items I forgot, and wish I had with me, as well as items I took and never used.
The camera kit for this trip includes the following: 1) Nikon D800 camera with a 16 mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens, a 17-35 mm f/2.8D wide angle telephoto lens, a 50 mm f/1.4G lens, and a 70-300 mm f/3.8-5.6 VR lens; 2) Nikon 1 V1 camera with a 10 mm f/2.8 lens, a 10-30 mm VR lens, a 30-110 mm VR lens, and a FT1 adapter; 3) Leica X2; and 4) Leica V-Lux30. For all of the cameras I have chargers, extra batteries, and extra memory cards. One nice thing is that both the D800 camera and N1V1 camera use the same battery. I also have a small Gitzo travel tripod and a SB-910 flash. I plan to do most photography when off the ship with the lighter Nikon 1 V1 camera and the Leica X2 cameras. I always have the Leica V-Lux 30 with me, and now the camera in my new Nokia Luma 900 smartphone. I have never really used the camera in a smartphone before, so it will be interesting to see what type of images I can get.
As mentioned above, I am traveling with a copy of my entire image collection with the plan to spend time key-wording images. I still use both Lightroom and Media Pro as my digital asset management (DAM) databases. I am curious about the DAM that Camera Bits (Photo Mechanic) will be releasing this year.
Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Queen Anne’s Lace Bloom at the Sourland Mountain Preserve.
Ever since I had a third party GPS unit attached to my D3x camera cause an electrical fault within the camera, I have been afraid to use a connected GPS device. However, I did like having the GPS location included with the image metadata. Both Lightroom 4 and View NX2 now have options where GPS data collected by a separate GPS unit can be added to the metadata. This requires that the GPS unit can export the data (via a *.gpx file), and that the time in the camera be set relatively accurately. The programs then compare the time that the image was taken with the location from the GPS file at the same time. This location is then added to the image metadata. I do like the MAP feature within Lightroom 4. One issue with Lightroom 4 is that it will not add the data to RAW image files, but rather create a sidecar file with the location metadata. It will add the data to jpg and DNG image files. View NX2 (since it is a Nikon product) will add the data to the RAW image file. One problem with the View NX2 process is that the Google Map that is connected during the process is in Japanese. Both products require that you are connected to the internet since they use Google Maps.
[bingMap width=600 location=”N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544″ maptype=”AerialWithLabels” zoom=”11″ pp1=”N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544″]
GPS: N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544
Early this morning NASA launched five sounding rockets from Wallops Island, Virginia over a seven minute period to study the jet stream in the upper atmosphere at the edge of space. Once the rockets reached the thermosphere they were set to release trimethyaluminum that would react to create a cloud of aluminum oxide. This mission has been canceled several times waiting for clear skies from New Jersey to South Carolina. I set up a Nikon D3x camera with a 14-24 mm f/2.8 wide angle lens and pointed it south-east to capture an image every minute starting just after midnight to see if I could to catch something from the mission. The rockets were launched starting just before 5 AM (EDT).
The following is a composite of 40 images combined using the startrails program showing the release from all 5 rockets. You see the star trails, a couple of jet trails, all five of the ATREX rocket cloud releases and as a bonus a meteor trail.
