Nikon D300

Backlit Bridge

BacklitBridge
Nikon D300, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6

Here is another of my shots from my Europe trip back in 2010.  After my stay in Oslo I had business for one day in the outskirts of London.

I took a day off to walk around London a bit and I started out at the Tower of London.  This show was taken just outside on the bank of the River Thames.

I had to navigate my way around several busloads of tourists to time the shot just right with the smaller boat caught in the reflection of the sun.  They were all trying to capture a similar shot with themselves (and their many friends) inside the picture, whereas I was trying exactly the opposite…

More of my London shots are on Flickr here.  Cue my Dear Sweet Wife asking for a family trip there, especially to the capital (or is it epicenter?) of her fabric world Liberty of London.

A Very Forward Ship

Fram
Nikon D300, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6

This is another shot from my 2010 visit to Oslo.  The statue is of  Fridtjof Nansen standing in front of his creation, the icebreaker Fram or "Forward".

A who's who list of explorers used this ship in the last 19th and early 20th centuries including Nansen and later Otto Sverdrup exploring the arctic and finally Roald Amundsen exploring the south pole.

It was restored in 1935 and continues to stand to this day in the Fram Museum in Oslo.

Moody Oslo Waters

Boat
Nikon D300, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6

I am finally getting around to bringing the photos I took while on a business trip to Europe in the Fall of 2010 into Lightroom and Flickr.

I spent a week or so in Oslo and a few days in London.  I had borrowed my Dear Sweet Wife's D300 for the trip and had a Saturday in Oslo as well as a day off in London to do some photography.

The weather was on the grey side while I was in Oslo, they were getting some of their first serious snow of the year.  Even though the light and colors were a bit drab I like the mood I was able to achieve with the above shot.

Eclipse 2012

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Nikon D300, Nikkor Ai 200/4

We were thinking of driving north today to catch the ring of fire, but it had been a crazy busy weekend so far so we settled on watching the eclipse 2012 from the comfort of our back yard.

I setup my F6 to shoot a multiple exposure on a single frame of film, trying to catch the eclipse from start to end.  But I wasn't going to put all my eggs in one basket so I shot a number of digital shots with our D300 as well.  Both were on tripods.

I was using live-view mode on the D300 to compose via its LCD screen and take shots.  Then I checked for artifacts, camera movement (some shots were over 1 second long), and exposure via the histogram.

I started using a few neutral density filters and stopping down to f/32, but that result disappointed me.  It was full of artifacts from an extreme overexposure of the sun despite my attempts to reign in the light.

I had purchased a few "safe for eclipse" solar viewing glasses which we were using to observe the eclipse as it happened.  I stuck one in front of my camera (instead of the ND filters) and amazingly it produced better images!

The above is one of my favorites, and I put a few others up in this Flickr set.

Now I just have to wait for my film to come back to see if my multiple exposure worked out.