jeff nichols

thanks to all for providing suggestions! Looks like I need to do some more homework and give each of these methods a try.

 

much appreciated

I have never used Layers in Photoshop, and have thus far been unable

to figure out how to use them for what I want to do. Ultimately, I

would like to mimic techniques I should have done in the field

(i.e., use a graduated ND filter). For example, I have photos that

were captured for proper foreground exposure but have blown out

skies or vice versa. Would layers be a good thing to use??

 

If I could figure out a way to merge 2 photos (1 original with blown

out skies; 1 copy with levels adjusted to produce nice

skies/mountains), this would help me out immensely.

 

Can anybody help? I know there is not a 1 paragraph answer to this

question, but any help would be very much appreciated.

 

thanks in advance, Jeff

Anupam, thank you very much...this was the instructions I needed. just returned from a trip, but much appreciated!

I have forgotten how to retrieve leaders from film rolls in which

the leader has been rewound into the cannister. I have a leader

retriever and have used it (~15 years ago), so a quick explanation

might actually work for me.

 

Can anybody help?

Michael, much thanks for the info!

Jack, mucho gracias!

 

glad you provided the info. Did you do any other traveling in Honduras? Besides spending a week on Roatan, am also thinking of spending a week potentially inland...circa gracias or Copan.

 

thanks again and cheers, jeff

Tom, thanks for responding. You mentioned getting into the back contry in Roatan....would this require anything more than my legs? Would you have any info on nice, clean and relatively cheap lodging (less than $20/night) on the island?

 

thanks, jeff

I'm traveling to Honduras for a few weeks around New Years. Anybody

have any especially nice places they would like to share, that might

allow hiking, photography, fishing, and just hanging out on

unspoiled, quiet beaches?

 

Much appreciated, jeff

thank you guys. appreciate the advice. think I will just go buy a 3/8' inch stud and make the modification myself. One of you mentioned RRS....what does that stand for?

 

cheers, jeff

first, I apologize for posting a question if the answer exists out

there which is specific enough to thoroughly describe the process.

 

I have a Gitzo tripod which I cant fit to my newly purchased Bogen

ballhead. a little background: I cant remeber the exact series of

Gitzo tripod (got it 5 years ago), but think it might be the

mountaineer (its mid weight made for entry level pro bodies and

lenses which dont get as big as the prime 300+'s. maybe it doesnt

matter which tripod it is?? My old ballhead (Bogen 308RC) with QR

plate worked fine untill the stem atop the ballhead snapped off on a

commercial flight. I seem to remeber having a hassle figuring out

how to mate the 2 together, but finally did. I am having less luck

on this attempt.

 

My new ballhead is the Bogen 488RC4. As I stare at both ballheads I

see my old head which has what appears to be a 3/8-16 (guessing?)

threaded screw (and maybe narrows down but still threaded with a 1/4"

protusion) sticking out the bottom and nothing except a 3/8-16

threaded female insert in the new one. My Gitzo tripod accepts the

screw on the old one, but my new ballhead doesnt have anything

allowing to mate the tripod to the ballhead. I first attempted to

use pliers/vice grips (everything short of my teeth) to remove the

old screw from the old ballhead and make a switch, but was unable to

do so.

 

Can anybody tell me what I am doing wrong? Should B&H Photo sent

along a screw with my new ballhead??

Kevin, I live in Juneau and although I feel odd giving somebody potential inspiration for sharing a fishing hole with me, I couldnt help but adding my 2 cents. Heather said much the same as I would. Great fishing and photo opps abound in Southeast. chum salmon peak here in southeast about the 2nd week of July. chums get old when they hit freshwater, but they are bruisers. Pink salmon peak around the first week of august. they are abundant, quick to take a fly or lure and good size relative to lower 48 trout. Coho peak in september, but saltwater fishing gets hot in august by boat and sometimes from shore. Dolly varden, cutthroat and rainbow follow the annual return of salmon into freshwater gorging on eggs and flesh. lots of trout in the rivers the same time the salmon are.

 

If you go anywhere a car can go outside of southeast alaska (i.e., base of operations out of anchorage), you will battle other fisherman for limited space. I may be biased, but have seen it myself. 100's of people fishing for spawned out (old and near death) pink and chum salmon everywhere north of anchorage and lots of people down on the kenai, but not as bad. However, the photo opportunites up north abound. no doubt about that.

 

Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest, which extends nearly into Seward (kenai peninsula). August is a relatively dry month (southeast and seattle standards apply), with lots of sun and more daylight. In juneau here, we are surrounded by coastal mountains, glaciers and sitka spruce behind (east) and the inside passage (saltwater) dotted with islands in front (west). Although the typical rainy, foggy weather has its alure (especially to those who come to appreciate it), when the sun breaks out here, it is truly amazing...especially if you get out hiking, fishing, kayaking and get a view of the mountains.

 

You could visit several other communities via the Alaska Marine Highway, which is our cheapest mode of travel to the mainland and other island communities, each of which have salmon runs (they all do) and photo ops.

 

wrap this up by giving one suggestion to cover the fishing/photography: fish in juneau or Prince of Wales Island and take the ferry to Glacier Bay National Park. I think its a $50 roundtrip ferry ride to Gustavis (edge of Glacier Bay), $10 taxi ride to Bartlett Cove (inside the park). From there I would suggest 2 options: if your a kayaker...rent, buy, or steal one and put it on one of the park boats for a drop off kayak/camp trip up bay. That costs about $100, but they come back and pick you up, and its about 50 miles up bay anyways, which would take you 2 strong days of paddling to get there and another 2 to get back. The wildlife and photos are everywhere. You WILL see brown and black bears, goats, wales, sea lions, seals, orcas (sometimes), moose, wolves (sometimes), sea and land otters,......and lots of birds. I think of Glacier Bay National Park as something like Yellowstone, except flooded with 100 million tons of water. You can see some spectacular scenery by the park boats which lots of people do, but you wont be sleeping in your tent surrounded by pure wilderness at the end of the day, waking up the next morning to who know what.

 

enjoy

 

PS: if you would like more info on specific streams if you come to Southeast, drop me a line.

 

cheers, jeff

hey thanks for the suggestions guys. I figured I could use Andy's to apply borders (and works) or Mark's, which I havent completely figured out yet, but appears to do the trick. The eye dropper tool trick only tells me what is horizontal (I had already determined that) and the cropping leaving triangles wasnt relavent. appreciate ALL suggestions though.

 

jeff

Hello. I have several images which are just slightly off horizon.

they are horizontal images which need to be rotated probably a degree

clockwise to bring the horizon line parrallel with a true square or

the screen, etc. I have rotated them in Photoshop, but I am left

with a white box (not roatated) underneath. Is there any way to just

save the image, rather than the white canvas?

 

Alternatively, I could apply a border completely around the rotated

image, which would essentially hide the white area. I cant seem to

find anything in photoshop which would allow me to do this. Any

suggestions would be appreciated, thanks

Paul, thanks for the additional info. I am working on addressing your suggestions, although to be honest, I am afraid to do a whole lot, since I have had good luck with my other photos. If you dont mind, I may propose a few more questions back at you after I return from a little new years hiking/skiing/photo/party trip in the Yukon.

 

cheers, jeff

thanks for all the info folks! and merry Christmas Mark. I will check the things you mentioned, and I am fairly sure I have the options you mentioned for my monitor (not 256, but true color, etc). hopefully I can get a few of the northern lights slides to cooperate.

Mark, I have a Nikon Coolscan IV ED, Photoshop 6, monitor capable of 256 colors. I have never calibrated my monitor via software with my printer, scanner, etc. However, I have printed 50 different prints fromm slides in the last year in varying dimensions and have rarely noticed a large difference from what I see on the screen and what I see on the final printed image.....I have been extremely happy with the results on a consistent basis.....except for northern lights photos.

 

Perhaps, the only answer is to just play with the curves historgram (and others???) until something works for each photo. I suppose I was partially looking for a magical formula to use for all northern lights photos, but this is probably not possible. Mainly I just wondered if other people had seen this problem, and what they had done to correct it (even if they just respond with vague answers of playing around with histograms, at least I know this is where I need to go).

Jason, I would bet my favorite lens you (and I) are not alone for screwing up possibilities during night shooting, especially in the intense times when the northern lights are out. I have gotten many northern lights slides back with nothing in focus. I have tried turning my focusing ring to infinity, and then backing off of it just a tad, as nothing really seems to be in focus at infinity. I also shoot 1 stop up from wide open, just to ensure a little more depth of field.

 

I had my camera with me the same night, but was doing something else so couldnt take a photo. So far as the cable release: it is nice to have with you obviously, but unless your shooting 400 iso film (or equivalent pushed), its not necessary for most shots, since your shooting from 30 seconds up to 1/2 hour. that amount of time removes any camera vibration from the image.

 

jeff

got another question for you scanning guru's:

 

I am having trouble reproducing my slides of northern lights for

printing purposes. slides look good, scanned digital images look

like a freak show. Specifically, I lose most landscape features to

darkness (even when the snowy mountains, trees, foreground are

visible in the slide) and more importantly the colors and pattern of

the borealis are replaced with a vague resemblance to what I have on

film. a hazy aura radiates out from the most intense colors of the

lights, with obvious "gradations", like somebody created the color

patterns themselves.

 

anybody have any experience with these problems? I have tried

manipulating the curves and a few other quicky remedies, none of

which are helping much.

 

thanks for the info, jeff