A modest shoot using the Canon G12

In the three previous posts in this blog, I've told the story about "old" photos and gear I "rediscovered" while finally unpacking several boxes and containers that we had moved here from Indianapolis in July 2017 but left unattended until now.

One of the "finds" in those boxes was my Canon PowerShot G12 compact, which I acquired about 10 years ago. I used it a lot early on, just to do photography when I didn't want to lug around my bag Containing the Canon 7D I was using at the time and the lenses I could pack into it. The most recent post has pictured of that G12, if you want to go back and review them, because I'm using this post to display some of the photos I took with it last week when I did a walk-around my property in Raleigh.

The G12 enables me to shoot using RAW files, which most shooters know means you have some decent control of critical image features -- such as color and lighting -- when working with the files in post-processing. In 2010, that was a nice featured about the G12 -- it was a light vehicle to do picture-taking, and it allowed me to shoot in RAW format, which in 2010 I had been doing only for about a year or so on a regular basis. (I use RAW exclusively with my current DSLR, a Canon 6D, which I acquired in November 2013).

The G12 also had another important feature for shooters -- built-in stabilization. The top-end DSLR camera bodies produced by Canon and Nikon did not have built-in stabilization then, and I don't think they've done so even today. (Camera-makers Olympic and Sony, however, exploited that flaw by making built-in stabilization a major draw to their DSLR and mirrorless camera bodies, and Canon and Nikon managed to put it in their mirrorless bodies they would soon release to compete with the new "trend".)

So I found that because the G12 was much lighter in heft as well as smaller to hold than my DSLR bodies, I could get relatively sharp images even when the shutter dropped three to four stops slower than 1/60 (which always seemed to be the camera-shake red line for me with my DSLRs). Which I soon found out was a big deal when I shot interior images. The G12's ISO noise factor, however, was not very good. I saw more noise than I'd like at ISO 800, which quickly became my threshold for that camera when shooting in dark scenes.

But I digress. Last week, I charged the G12 battery and set off on my shoot around the property. These are images from that shoot. I begin (with the lead-off) with the very first picture I took, an interior shot of the wall of framed photos and art work in my office. It was late-afternoon -- between 5 and 6 p.m. You can see solar reflection on the Beatles art drawing. Below it, the reflection totally obscures detail in a blue-tinted monochrome version of a concert photo I took of Darden Smith in the Indy Acoustic Cafe Series concert.

The G12 photo turned out pretty sharp; I was seated in my desk chair and holding the camera. I used the Program mode, and it took the photo at f.2/8 and 1/13 using ISO 400.

So I went outside, and took the shot you see of the deck above. The image settings are f.4, 1/80 and ISO 320. I was able to keep the ISO under 400 for the remainder of the shoot outdoors.

Above: Elsewhere on the deck are remnants of our celebration the previous day of Lee Ann's granddaughter Lizzy's graduation from preschool. 

Above is a look at the most of the transformed area behind the detached garage. The previous owner allowed this area to go attended, so it was a scene of tall green grass. We didn't do anything with it until the second year we were here, which is when the transformation began. It was completed -- a good dozen or more raised garden beds -- this summer, although we'd cleared the grass by the end of the second year. Lee Ann and her daughter did the yeoman's detail work with the bed development, planting and care; I helped with a lot of the heavy lifting and soil hauling. Below is a gardenia bush (we have five on the property), which is on the other side of (and to the left) of the black fence you see in the foreground of the photo above.  

Above: This view looks over the fence into a neighbor's yard. It's farther down the property line from where the new garden beds are now. This unshorn grassy landscape is what we had behind the detached garage when we moved in.  

Above is a closeup of a bloom on the bush you see below, which is along the driveway to the detached garage.  

Above and below are shots of leaves I saw in the bush next to the one two photos above. I liked how the dried-up leaf colors contrasted with the thriving green foliage. 

The end of the deck looks over a drop of about 6 feet or so, and above, I'm standing in the drop area for this dramatic angle shot. Just to the left of where I'm standing is the spigot (belot) where Lee Ann has her garden bed irrigation valve hardware connected.   

Above: A closeup of blooms from a weigela bush that we recently transplanted from the back yard to a sunnier spot along the driveway to the main garage. 
 

Above: Another of the gardenia bushes, this one along one side of the sun room. The bush will need tramming once the blooms are spent. Below is a closeup of one bloom, and below that is the bud of a new bloom on the bush. 

Above: Another color-contrast foliage shot. 

Above: A crop of an attempted close-up of a very small bloom on a plant the women of the house are waiting to plant somewhere. I learned with my closeup attempts that the G12 doesn't handle those very well. This one turned out pretty sharp; others I attempted were not. Below is a closeup of early fruit on a lemon bush (the fruit starts green and later becomes yellow) that we have on the patio next to the deck. We also have a lime bush, but while its foliage is plentiful, no fruit or buds yet. 

Above and below are two more floral closeup attempts. I forget the name of the flower above; the one below are blooms from a pink yarrow. We also have some yellow yarrows, which last year Lee Ann learned are a key ingredient to a home recipe to minimize itch from poison ivy. That was important for her, because being so close to wooded areas on two of our four property lines, we come across a lot of poison ivy.   

In what Lee Ann developed as a "puppy garden" -- memorials to her dogs Bear and Molly, as well as dogs owned by her son here in the Triangle and a dog owned by Lee Ann's sister back in Indiana -- the figure of a Molly-like puppy (Molly was a purebred Yorkshire terrier) sits with an angel (above) that Lee Ann acquired to watch over the dogs. Below is the holding area of a bird path in the puppy garden. The boulder is for the benefit of smaller birds.   

Above: Garden gloves gathered in one spot at the end of a hard day in the yard. 

Unearthing old and/or presumed lost cameras, a lens and rolls of color film

The last two posts here were dedicated to the digitization of color film prints I'd had made of pictures taken to Texas and Cooperstown, N.Y., in the 1990s. I'd found the pictures -- which I hadn't set eyes on in probably 15-20 years -- in heretofore unopened boxes packed for our move from Indianapolis to Raleigh three years ago.

I also found some other sentimental photography stuff, such as four rolls of unused color 35mm film, packed securely in the plastic containers they came in. I must have bought a bunch at one time when they were on sale back in the late 1990s, when I was still using a film camera.

Three of the rolls are Kodak GOLD 200 ASA 24 exposure rolls; the fourth is Scotch ASA 200 24 exposures. The Scotch and one of the Kodak rolls are pictured at right. Not sure where or why I picked up the Scotch; I don't really remember ever using Scotch film before (or even remember that Scotch made camera film), but there it was.

The film reminded me that in some other unopened box from the 2017 move I should find some forgotten camera gear, such as the film camera I last used when I returned to my photography hobby in the late 1990s. After searching for a bit more in the detached garage, I found the Canon Rebel G. But that wasn't all.

I also found two digital compact cameras -- a Canon PowerShot G12 (lead-off photo and photos above and right) and Pentax Optio Z10 (below) -- as well as a Canon FS10 digital video camera, and, wonder of wonders, the long-lost Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD crop-factor lens that I'd acquired for my Canon 7D camera body, which has an APS-C sensor of 1.6. It was a lens I thought I had lost a good five or six years ago or so. But, since I've used my Canon 6D camera body almost exclusively since acquiring it in 2013, I hadn't had an urgent need to find or get my hands on that 18-280mm crop factor lens. Besides, I'd bought at Tamron 28-300 f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens for the 6D, and it can be used on the 7D as well. 

I spent the next day and a half cleaning dust and smudges off the compact cameras and video camera, inventorying the accessories with each of the cameras, then taking steps to replace key missing pieces. For example, I found no CR123 batteries for the Rebel G, no battery charging dock for the G12, no charger and cord for the Optio Z10 and no charging cord for the FS10 digital video camera. I didn't worry too much about the FS10, but I spent about a half-hour hunting around on the Internet looking for the missing parts for the other cameras, found and bought them all eventually and sent for them. Of course, no sooner had they all arrived when I actually did find the charging dock for the G12, but ... it doesn't hurt to have a backup, I guess.

After getting the G12 battery recharged, I actually went out and did a shoot on the property with it one day last week. It worked just fine, and I'll present some pictures from it in the next post. It had been so long since I used it, I could not immediately find the zoom control on the built-in lens. It wasn't that important, though; for the first shoot, I just moved forward or backward to compose.

I will say this much, though; the camera in my iPhone 11 is more versatile, lighter, and delivers more pop in the pictures. Additionally, I can quickly edit photos in the iPhone 11 and upload them to my SmugMug galleries in short order. With the G12 (or most other cameras), I have to upload the pictures to my PC and edit them in Photoshop Elements before preparing them for gallery uploading. Sadly, I think the G12 is a dinosaur among today's technology. It's video is still decent quality, but then ... so is the iPhone's. The Opti Z10 and Rebel G are obsolete as well, but I'm still going to try and tinker with each at some point in the weeks ahead.

And hey, with the Rebel G, I have all that film to use. I hope there is a place somewhere in Raleigh that still processes film, though.

Above is the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens I thought I had lost. The first three photos below are different views of the Canon FS10 digital video camera I haven't used at least since I got my first iPhone in 2012. 

Above and below are shots of the Canon Rebel G film camera. 

Going back in time ... to 1994 trip to MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

My trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., in late October 1994 was memorable on a couple of levels, one expected and another unexpected.

The expected was seeing the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, something that at the time had been at the top of my list of places I wanted to visit (this was before the term "bucket list" became popular to describe that kind of thing).

The unexpected was the spectacular autumn colors in the Allegheny Mountains that I would see on the drive across western New York en route to Cooperstown. Sadly, I did not pull over to photograph any of those scenes. Today, I'd have done so in a heartbeat.

I saved all my picture-taking on the trip for Cooperstown, and specifically, for Doubleday Field and the MLB Hall of Fame.

Some of those shots -- all taken with the Kodak Star 335 (see previous post) are sprinkled throughout this post. I'm not claiming any are spectacular; their purpose for inclusion in a post is merely historical. In fact, several of the shots of Doubleday Field were marred by discoloration after the film was inadvertently exposed to light (probably in either the loading or unloading from the camera) before processing, so ... I cropped around those glitches and healed where I could.

Leading off the post is a shot of the main entrance to Doubleday Field, which is just a few blocks from the HOF and is where for year MLB has held its annual Hall of Fame game between two teams from the big leagues on the weekend of the HOF induction ceremonies in August.

Below is the main entrance to the HOF, which I took after leaving the museum for the day. It was late afternoon, and there was considerable noise, so I processed this image in my Noiseware software.

The statues of legends Babe Ruth and Ted Williams (above) greet visitors just inside the main entrance. I don't remember now exactly where the photo below of the very first induction class of 1936 was displayed, but I'm sure it had a prominent place. 
  

The HOF has a whole open area devoted to the Hall of Fame member plaques. The photo above is a perspective shot, the first below is a section of four, a composition I made to include one of boyhood heroes, Hank Aaron (upper left). The second photo below was my other boyhood hero, Eddie Mathews. Both Aaron and Mathews got their start with the Braves franchise, which had several outstanding teams -- including National League pennant winners in 1957 and '58, and World Series champs in '57 -- in Milwaukee when I was growing up. 

The shot above and the first two below are from an exhibit dedicated to the National League Braves' period in Milwaukee, which lasted from 1953 (when the team moved to Milwaukee from Boston) to 1965, when the franchise moved to Atlanta. 

Above: An exhibit dedicated to Hank Aaron, who are the time I visited was baseball's all-time home run king. In my humble opinion, he still is. 

Above: An exhibit dedicated to the Brewers, which started as the new Seattle Pilots franchise in 1969, and after just one year, moved to Milwaukee, where the Brewers have been ever since, being one of the rare teams (I believe the Houston Astros are the only other) that have spent time in both the American and National leagues. 

Ty Cobb, the all-time hits leader until Pete Rose erased his record on Sept. 11, 1985. As controversial of a player that Cobb was, I've always had a soft spot for him since I learned that he once said of Eddie Mathews early in Mathews' career: "I've known three or four perfect swings in my time. This lad has one of them." 

A co-worker at The Indianapolis Star was a fan of the National League Giants, and I'm sure I took the pictures devoted to the 1951 pennant-winning New York Giants above and the exhibit below for Candlestick Park, where the Giants first played after moving to San Francisco in 1958, for his benefit. 

I didn't take the photo of the Ebbets Field exhibit above for anyone in particular. I've always had a fascination about that ballpark ... maybe because of how it was magnified in Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer" book. Ebbets Field was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers until they moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and the Brooklyn stadium was torn down not long afterward.  

I'm one of those baseball fans who always detested and rooted against the New York Yankees, but I'm big enough to acknowledge that the Yanks had some fabulous teams through the years and amassed an incredible string of American League pennants and World Series championships. The franchise exhibit is above; one devoted to the team's great home-run hitting and run-producing tandem of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth is below. 

The shots above and below are the three photos I took inside Doubleday Field that are presentable for the blog. I had to do some touch-up on the one above and applied a radical crop on the right side of the first one below (you can kind of see the fringe of discoloring on the right side. I liked this first one below so much because it showed the autumn leaves sprinkled on the outfield grass. And the trees in the background of the one above give you an idea it was late October: There is still a hint of color in the leaves.