A bit different subject matter as compared to previous park photos, I took these on my Nikon FE with Velvia 50 walking home from work about 3 weeks ago.
Penny for a Pose
I imagine at one point a penny may have been of some small meaning to a street performer, but that time is long past. I gave a dollar for this pose, which would make for a significantly less alliterative title.
Small Boat Sailing
Seeing the remote control sailboats in the conservatory pond made me want to set up a tiny regatta.
A New Yorker Who Despises Tourists for Good Reason
I always feel bad for the horses giving carriage rides around the park. I really have no clue how they’re treated outside of work, but life at work seems rather dreary.
I've checked email at the Met, too
I went to the Guggenheim today to catch the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately, I was careless and didn’t reset the ISO to 100 on my D200, so the images are needlessly noisy for the light I had. Also, photography is only allowed on the first floor of the Guggenheim, severely limiting what I could take.
Bath Time — Nikon D200 & Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AIS
I’m pretty happy with these bathing birds, the stars of light in reflection go well with the bird’s expression, and the spraying and dripping water captures the moment nicely. The noise, however, really didn’t need to be this bad.
Museum — Nikon D200 & Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AIS
I like the framing of this shot. It was hard to fit in “MUSEUM” well without a zoom, and I almost couldn’t get it. I don’t, however, like the brick showing behind the building. And while i could artificially move this area out of focus in post, that doesn’t seem right to me.
Waiting — Nikon D200 & Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AIS
Spiral — Nikon D200 & Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AIS
I personally make very limited use of RSS, but since a lot of people use it extensively, I’ve set up a feed and replaced the redundant blog link on the top-right navigation which brought you to the main page with an RSS link. The top left logo will still bring you back as always.
I got 2 of 3 rolls of film from last week’s pride parade back. As expected, a number of the shots were underexposed due to my forgetting to stop down for metering on the old Non-AI (pre 1977) lens I was using, a Nikkor-Q·C 135mm f/2.8. It’s nice that my Nikon FE can mount and meter with those old lenses at all.
My D60 can mount Non-AI, but not meter, and most modern Nikons including my D200 won’t even mount them, though AI conversion is still relatively easy to do. Here’s hoping Nikon’s future DSLRs will be able to deal with these old lenses better. I’m not holding my breath.
Afro Ken supports LGBT rights, you should too.
Nikon FE, Fuji Velvia 50, Nikkor-Q·C 135mm f/2.8 Non-AI
Afro Ken is one of my favorite Japanese characters. Basically a marketing creation like Hello Kitty, he has the advantage of being a dog with a rainbow afro — the perfect mascot for LGBT rights. Someone should get on that. As for Afro Ken’s holder, all I can say is you need to dress like that if you want to compete with the Afro Pup.
On a related note, I’m planning on writing part 2 of my Plustek OpticFilm 7500i review at some point soon which will focus on slide scanning, but these make a decent preview. Post processing on all photos involved cropping, color correction, and curves adjustment, though the colors of the original slides are still not well represented.
Whistle Exchange
Nikon FE, Fuji Velvia 50, Nikkor-Q·C 135mm f/2.8 Non-AI
Free whistles are obviously essential to the parade, so proper distribution as shown above is crucial.
Purple and Rainbow Flags
Nikon FE, Fuji Velvia 50, Nikkor-Q·C 135mm f/2.8 Non-AI
Velvia 50 isn’t exactly the film one thinks of when shooting people, but it’s what I had on me. In hindsight it wasn’t too bad as there were some nice colors around to capture, and the skin tones aren’t too bad.
No Rights!
Nikon FE, Fuji Velvia 50, Nikkor-Q·C 135mm f/2.8 Non-AI
This last photo looks to me like it should be black and white. I suppose that’s an easy enough change to make, but I’ll leave it like this for now.
I wish everyone a good day on this, the celebration of the birth of the United States. I’ll try and take a photo of something patriotic here in Washington DC today to put up.
Edit: As promised, some July 4th photos:
硫黄島/IÅtÅ/Iwo Jima Memorial — D200 & 85mm f/1.4 AIS
I really wish I had brought down a tripod, but I didn’t want to bother carrying it down. It would have made for some much nicer shots of fireworks.
Fireworks — D200 & Nikkor 85mm f/1.4
All content © Tai Shimizu unless otherwise indicated.
