12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 4 (pt. 2)

3 or 4 passable shots from the D7000, and only 3 or 4 (or 5).

Even given the technical difficulties I experienced with the digital rig, I expected a better hit ratio than I got: 1/100 is better than what a good photographer might hope for,* but if I’ve revealed anything on this blog it must be obvious that I don’t much care about sharing only good pictures…

All of these were taken on my only day out of San Juan/Heredia. Alex Jara (one of the original team members in CR) took me to Cartago, to the Irazú volcano, the Sanatorio (pictured, unfocused, earlier today), the Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels in Cartago, and the Jardín Botánico Lankester. It’s a real shame the camera failed so badly at the last one… it was camera club day at the botanical gardens, and I saw and shot a number of really fun streetog-type shots of dozens of photographers shooting hither and yon. Alas: things were not focused properly.

It was cold and foggy at the Volcano, and thus hard to take pictures (or see much at all). But Allah azza wa jall made it so sunlight+water vapor=rainbows, and so the crater was pretty much one big rainbow (see above).

On our way back down the mountain, we stopped at this abutment overlooking the Sanatorio, where I snagged this picture of a flower.Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|57|©JamesECockroft-20150221

Not, admittedly, my best work.

Further down the mountain, and after a lunch of Sopa Negra con huevos—black soup (liquid from cooking black beans) with an egg poached in: sort of the Tico equivalent of chicken noodle soup—we fell in behind this truck. I liked the look of the guy lounging in the back. I think they all came from picking lettuces or something farther up the hill.Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|138|©JamesECockroft-20150221

From this, you can see a bit better the trouble I had: too contrasty. Maybe I’m just too used to shooting film? Allahu Alim. But this shot, like so many others, was just way too contrasty to be of any value to me. (I did note that the 28-105 D was contrasty… but this is too much, for my purposes, at this time.)

Anyway.

This last one is of a little brook in the Japanese portion of Lankaster Garden. I didn’t have ND filters, so I used the old narrow aperture trick to get slightly slower shutter speed. Good times.Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|185|©JamesECockroft-20150221

 

f/29? Yep. That got me a 1/10th shutter speed, enough to get a bit of blur on the water.

And there you go: the sum total of usable shots from the D7000 on this trip.

I might one day revisit and do all the HDRs and panoramas I set up. But for now, let’s move out of the digital realm and into the analog.** Continue reading “12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 4 (pt. 2)”

12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 4 (pt. 1)

technical difficulties

So many pictures to share—though far less than there might have been—and I’m already through 1/4 of the days? I need to get to sharing!

But first, a problem to note.

I pressed the shutter button on the D7000/Nikkor 28-105 D combo close to 400 times while I was in Costa Rica. Admittedly, that’s not much, but 1) I was working and 2) the D7000 is a bit big and I lack the confidence to go shooting with it alone in public.

Of those 400 shutter presses, about 50 were shots of the new team there. I was all excited to share the new team there with the old timers here, but alas: the left side of the frame is progressively out of focus compared to the center. This is a big problem when shooting group portraits.

Most of the rest were at the Sanatorio Durán, an abandoned sanatorium that is now a bit of a regional tourist/family outing/boy scout campout/spooky late-night teenage hangout type place. Everything shot there came out just too contrasty, or required too much work to process, or was just hackneyed shots of beautiful decay.

That, and the left side of the frame was more or less out of focus on every shot.

See, for example, this picture:

Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|136|©JamesECockroft-20150221(I’ve made no edits to this bad picture beyond bringing it into Lightroom 5 and exporting a jpeg for the blog.)

The focus is not spot on anywhere, but check this, of the flowers just to the right of the entrance:

In Focus flowers|Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|136|©JamesECockroft-20150221Not spot-on, but sharp enough, more or less.

Contrast with these flowers, from just to the left of the door:

Not In Focus Flowers|Costa Rica Trip 2015-D7000|136|©JamesECockroft-20150221What’s going on here?

EXIF for this shot: 1/500th (AP mode) at f/8, ISO100, 28mm (42 equivalent).

Whatever it is, it plagued every shot I took in Costa Rica. More testing is required, but it seems to be an issue with this lens only, which is a real shame, since it forms an integral part of the Scan-O-Matic 7000 mk 2, and I’ve praised its sharpness in the past.

Maybe it was off all along, but my usual composition style hid it. If so, I’m past the 180 day warranty period with KEH, so it looks like I’ll be researching lens repair options. Fun times, lucky me, and Alhamdulillah.

Anyway, the focus errors mean that I ended up with about 400 pictures that I probably won’t share because the focus is bad, but that I’ll likely keep most of to jog some memories. It also means I didn’t get good shots of the new crew. Sorry everyone! Continue reading “12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 4 (pt. 1)”

12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 3

As you may recall from my 365 project (and later posts), I sometimes struggle a bit with social anxiety bordering on agoraphobia.

It has lessened a good deal in recent years: I think it has something to do with being married and thus being around people more or less most of the time. But I felt it some the first couple of days in Costa Rica. I got over it a bit as the trip wore on, but the first few days saw me going from the hotel to Zona Franca Metropolitana where Equifax has one of its Costa Rican offices.

In addition to the iPhone, I also took the D7000 with the Nikkor 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 D (and the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 E Series, which never got used) and the LC-A and a couple of rolls of film.

The picture above is from the D7000/Nikkor 28-105 combo; the one below is from the LC-A and Agfa Vista Plus 200 film.Costa Rica 2015 - LC-A|Social Anxiety in effect 2|©JamesECockroft-20150228

 

12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 2

As I don’t have pictures that correspond to days, I’ll be sharing pictures somewhat arbitrarily, grouped according whatever whims and fancies I felt at whatever time I put these posts together.

Since I started with Hipsta- and Cinamatic, I’ll continue with that theme.

And since one month ago, I enjoyed my first breakfast at the Doubletree Cariari, here’s a nice panorama of the pool from the table where I enjoyed breakfast most every day. (Above is the view of the same pool from the bar area adjacent to the restaurant. I think I shot it around dinnertime, when I forgot to pick up some silverware at the pizza joint where I grabbed some greasy, very American-tasting, mostly cheese, Eggplant Parmesan on my second or third night.)

Something different tomorrow (or maybe later today?): I promise.

a dramatic sunrise

I’m back in Texas (and have been for a couple of weeks). Costa Rica programming will continue for awhile (11 more days, at least), but since this is the last week in the current office, I’m going to try to share some random pictures from this nondescript office park before we move to a different—but still nondescript—office park. 

And the sunrise was just amazing this morning. 

12 Days in Costa Rica: Day 1

Equifax hired some new linkage people in Costa Rica and sent me down to train them again, this time for 12 days. I arrived Sunday the 15th of February and returned to Dallas on February 27.

It was a good trip: the training went well; I stayed in a different hotel in a classy neighborhood and with restaurants nearby; I had a weekend to myself—more or less—that I could spend exploring around the hotel and doing whatever; the food was good, people friendly/smart/eager, and the weather lovely. But it was still a work trip. I put in just under 100 hours in those 12 days and since I started at 7am and went until at least 4pm, I only got out to see the San Jose or the country a couple of times.

I don’t have pictures from corresponding dates, but the plan here is to share pictures from the trip for the next 12 days: as the days and dates in March correspond to the days/dates in February, this seems like a good-enough plan.

So. One month ago today, I boarded a plane at DFW in the late afternoon and flew direct to San Jose. I sat in a middle seat and arrived after sunset, and my confidence in shooting strangers is low, so shooting options were a bit limited.