Deboarding The San Diego Trolley At Night

La Mesa Public Library

Skater Countermeasures

The Fountain Adjacent To The La Mesa BLVD Trolley Station

Gypsy Treasure Costume Store In La Mesa

        ”Chasing It,” is a gambling term. Google it. I’m not going to explain it here. A few months back, some friends won the lottery in China. I didn’t buy a ticket, so I didn’t get to feel the joy that comes from winning the Celestial Lottery, only the humiliation of knowing I was wrong. Ever since then, I’ve been chasing it. I’ve been looking for my own Chinese Lottery and after all this time I’ve finally found it, and I’ve been fortunate enough to find it in two places. For me, that means I will be able to pull my brain back onto an even keel. I’m going to visit a cove in Japan, and a wasteland in Kentucky. I’m going to win the lottery in both locales.

The First Title Defense Of Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee

        The first bout between two coffee heavyweights took place right here on this very blog, just about a week ago. The winner was Dunkin’ Donuts Original Blend, mightily crushing Starbucks Morning Joe. I’m glad that Starbucks lost right away, and I placed Starbucks in the first round for that very reason, to watch them lose. I didn’t know they would lose, but I figured they would either lose immediately or steadily topple opponents like the stupid New York Yankees. Sometimes, you just have to roll the dice, and I’m glad I did this time.

        The new challenger is Don Francisco’s Plantation Morning Blend. If I was made to pick the better tasting coffee, based on the the photo above, I think Don Francisco has the edge. It looks to me like Dunkin’ is cowering in front of Don.

San Diego’s Second Rainstorm in 2010

Some Braved The Rain While I Sought Cover

Cats Don’t Like The Rain

        This cat was content to watch the rain from the cover of a porch. On a side note, I’d like to say that I really like my f/1.8 lens… The bokeh in particular. I’ve never had a lens this fast, and when it is attached to my Nikon D5000, it’s hard NOT to get great shots. That’s right, my shots are great!

Christ Lutheran Church – La Mesa, CA

        So, I had to choose between video capabilities on Canon cameras, or low noise at high ISO’s on Nikon cameras. I went with Nikon.

Street Lights Reflected On The Wet Street

        My old camera is a Panasonic DMC-FZ28, and at ISO speeds above 100 the shots are just not usable, because of the noise. With this Nikon D5000 however, ANY speed up to 6400 can be used for display… At least on the web.

Try On 450mm For Size

        Even though I’m eventually going to spring for a 75X telescope lens, I have to pass the time in that interim somehow, so my 300mm (450mm equivalent with my Nikon DX D5000 camera) will have to do. I missed out on the Mars photo-op last week, but whatever the cosmos hold in store for the future will be captured by me, a telescope and my camera.

Neon Is Not Exactly Photo Friendly

        Back in the days of shooting with my Panasonic DMC-FZ28, night photography was easy. Simply put, any ISO above 100 was too noisy, so all my night stuff with the FZ28 was at 100 ISO with a long shutter speed. Now that I have a Nikon D5000, noise at high ISO is not an issue, other than I feel like I have a whole new chapter of nighttime photography to learn. Other than that, everything is great.

The Mirror Above The Head Chef Tells All

        The first picture in my last post is a shot a really like, and this opinion was echoed by a fellow photographer that looked at it. That was all the encouragement I needed, so I set about capturing lightning in a bottle once again, and I failed. The pic above was taken on the sly. No one knew I was there except for the bouncer at the bar next door.

American People Being Served Chinese Food

        Yes, I admit that this shot is much less interesting than the shot I took from the outside of the San Diego Culinary Institute, but I was trying to capture lightning in a bottle, so I’d appreciate it if you’d ease up off my back about it.

San Diego Culinary Institute

        My Nikon D5000 has a boosted ISO of 6400, so that’s what I set out to test tonight. I wanted some real, after dark photos shot with ambient light while gunning the ISO throttle of my D5000 all the way to the max. The biggest lesson I learned tonight was that when you are out testing a specific “thing” on your DSLR, don’t forget that you don’t have to stick to the thing you are testing. In this case, I was out testing the 6400 ISO of my camera when I camera across the scene above. I had the presence of mind to switch the ISO to 200 before taking the shot. This resulted in the dark exterior of the building creating a frame around the soon to be chefs inside.

Compass Card Validator

        The Compass Card validator to the left was shot at 6400 ISO, and is presented to you here WAY smaller than actual size because full size was pretty noisy. Anyway, I was out looking for any dark alley type place around my neighborhood so that I could give 6400 ISO a real stretch of the legs, and my general consensus is that 6400 can not be shown at 100%, even on the web. You can still get very low light shots that will blow your mind, especially if you are from the days of film, but for the sake of passing images on for posterity, I’m going to have to hold back on 6400. What I will do is work with 3200 ISO because it is WAY less noisy than 6400, and yet is still very light sensitive. I’m going to find the sweet spot for high ISO and my f/1.8 lens even if I have to stay up all night every night. SO, with that in mind, here is where I am with this post. That pic above is ISO 200, because I remembered to change it down from 6400. The pic to the left is 6400, as is the pic below. I am now wishing that I had remembered to dial the ISO down from 6400 for the pic below because I really would have liked the sad detail in the man’s face to show through.

Unnecessary Use Of 6400 ISO