David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Northern Lights in Norway. The entire sky just exploded just after midnight on Valentines day. My fisheye lens was not wide enough to capture it all!!!. Images taken with a Nikon D800 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 3200, 16 mm, f/2.8, 2 sec).
Since the US Government shut down all the National Parks, Monuments, and other “non-essential” government facilities closed. The organizers of ANPAT 13. We have been scrambling to find places for the four vans to go out and photograph. The plan was to spend time in Grand Canyon National Park. Many signed up for the trip specifically to see the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Our van’s assignment for the day included Lower Antelope canyon, on Navajo land, and thus not closed. Horseshoe Bend, the upper vista point is on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land — technically closed, but no one was there to stop folks from hiking to the upper view vista point. Restrooms being locked at the Horseshoe Canyon vista parking lot was the only sign of the shutdown. Since Grand Canyon, one of the most visited National Parks closed, many others like us were looking for alternate places to visit. The parking lot for Horseshoe canyon was near full with many folks already at the overlook. Rather than fight for a spot at the favorite viewpoint, I found a different place with a good view. I mounted a camera with a fisheye lens on a sturdy monopod. I then held the camera over the edge
Horseshoe Bend, Arizona. Image taken with a Nikon D4 and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 100, 16 mm, f/11, 1/200 sec). Camera mounted on a monopod held out over the cliff. Nikonians ANPAT-13 on a day that the National Parks were closed. (David J Mathre)
One of the issues I have had with the Nikon 1 “mirrorless” cameras is the lack of wide-angle lens options. The widest angle available with the initial set of lenses was 10 mm f/2.8 prime. This has a 77° field of view (FOV) equivalent to a 27 mm lens on a full-frame (FX) DSLR camera. I like taking wide-angle panorama landscape images when traveling. In order to do this with the Nikon 1 camera requires taking several images and then stitching them together during post-processing. Before going to Norway, I saw a note on the internet that the Olympus FCON-T01 Fisheye converter uses the same 40.5 mm thread that the Nikon 1 10 mm f/2.8 lens uses. The 0.74x adapter increases the FOV to something like 20 mm on a FX DSLR camera. I took this combo with me to Norway, and published an image of Greenland from 36,000 feet using the combo. (19-February-2013).
Since returning from Norway, Nikon released a new wide-angle telephoto lens for Nikon 1 cameras – the 6.7 – 13 mm f/3.5-5.6. At 6.7 mm this lens has a 100° FOV equivalent to a 18 mm lens on a FX DSLR camera. The following three images were taken with the Nikon 1 V2 camera 1) with the 10 mm f/2.8 lens; 2) with the 10 mm f/2.8 lens and the Olympus fish-eye converter; and 3) with the 6.7-13 mm lens at 6.7 mm. The wide-angle image with the 6.7 mm does not have the fish-eye curvature effect. Indeed, when in Norway I found that when I used the Olympus lens I would need to keep the horizon right at the middle of the image. I think that I will be adding the 6.7-13 mm lens to my light-weight travel kit.
Note: Nikon changed the threading on the 6.7-13 mm lens to 52 mm, so I can’t use the Olympus adapter with this lens 😉
While on the Copenhagen to Newark leg of the flight home we crossed Greenland. Someday I want to visit Greenland.
Time-Lapse Video of a Hike down Park Avenue in Arches National Park. Winston Hall talked me into carrying a tripod on my shoulders so the DSLR camera would be above my head. We set the camera up with a fisheye lens and had it take images every 15 seconds. I used the ~900 images to make a time-lapse video of the hike.
Thanks to Jim Batey, I’ve added an image he took of me wearing the Tripod Headcam.
