Wavelet Blog

I have been using Canon 10D as my primary camera for the past 7 years. It’s like stone age old in digital camera era. Although it is true that an expensive camera body won’t guarantee you better pictures, compared with the newer versions DSLR, two major limitations sometimes do prevent me from doing what I want. The first limitation is 10D, as the very first generation of pro-mateur DSLR, is not full-frame camera. The 24mm lens becomes 35mm automatically, and this is often the crucial range in some landscape shoots. The second limitation is its poor performance with high ISO. The new camera can produce very good smooth photos even at ISO 3200.

As we are planning the trip to Japan, I finally decided to upgrade the camera as well as the primary lens once for all. I will still keep my 10D as backup – in the field, sometimes it’s really cumbersome to switch between normal and telephoto lens. Not far from my home, there is an area that stores a lot of deserted industrial stuff, machines, trucks. It is a good subject and perfect chance to try out the new camera and lens.

The following pictures are taken by iPhone, at Lake Elizabeth, one of the most beautiful scenery in the Bay Area. It was still winter in most of the country, but spring has sprung in California.

HP’s site at Ellis St. in Mountain View is one of the most beautiful office sites in Bay Area, especially in Autumn. Poplar trees along the entire road stand straight up to 50 feet high. In November, they all turn into golden yellow color. The view is picture perfect.

But, just around the corner, where no one cares to notice, some withering leaves against the solid building foundations are also picturesque. In the Autumn, the green leaves start turning into red and eventually falling off the cane. A couple of leaves that are left are among the most saturated color. When the warm afternoon sun light them up, that maybe the last ray of sunshine they will see.

After having lunch at Koi Garden last weekend, we went to Mt. Diablo State Park. Mt. Diablo offers open mountain view and many choices of hiking trails. It is perfect for family activities.

At different overlook locations, I took a series of pictures with my PowerShot A590. Came back home, I stitched them together using PTGui. The result looks satisfactory to me. Creating a panorama is pretty easy actually. Just make sure to overlap every successive frame with the previous frame by 20~30% when taking pictures. Then all you need to do is to drop these pictures to PTGui. Software can automatically put them together in the correct order and adjust brightness and contrast for you to make the stitched image looks smooth. Besides the typical image processing functions, PTGui also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range). But, I didn’t take tripod with me so I was not able to take pictures with different exposure settings. I will try next time.

The following is a 360-degree panorama I took at the summit. More pictures can be found in my gallery.

My wife and I go to Farmer’s Market regularly during the weekend. Here are some photos we took in May this year when we went to Farmer’s Market in Mountain View and Santa Cruz. More pictures are posted in my gallery.