Another frustrating day. The wind came up and stayed up. I had hoped to get some nice pictures of wild roses over lunch, but the wind was whipping them around in a frenzy.
The wind continued into the evening, screwing up any chance of going paddleboarding on Chestermere Lake as we had been hoping. I figured I could use the old fallback and try for a few flower shots in my yard. Not only did I still have the wind to contend with, but my hands are back to shaking when I try to hold them steady. It is frustrating as hell.
I cranked the ISO on the camera up to 1600 and underexposed by just over a stop with the in-body stabilization turned on. It was enough to get me through this shoot, but I’m really going to need to get more religious about using my tripod or at least a monopod. Topaz DeNoiseAI dialed the sensor noise back down to a normal level making the shots usable.
I did get a couple shots at Gray Park using my reversed Helios lens during my lunch break, but they were no screamin’ heck. That wind, right? It took me one hundred and thirteen attempts to get two workable images. I deleted a large pile of crap off my cloud drive this evening.
This evening’s happy accident was discovering a mass grave. In this case I discovered that the fallen petals from a lilac bush in my front yard were accumulating under my front step. I have not actually ever run into this before. Normally the wind takes the fallen blossoms and they are never seen again, except perhaps, whever they pile up in Saskatchewan.
The evening ended with my daughter taking our cat, Aristaeus, out to explore the front lawn in his harness. She is still working on harness training him and he seems to be enjoying it. He loves any sort of attention and he especially loves being outside and chewing on the lawn.
It was another day where I didn’t get the photos I had been hoping for, but I did get some photos in the end and that’s what counts.
Today’s camera was a Canon EOS R5 with the Helios 44m-2 58mm f2.0 lens followed by a SMC PENTAX-A 100mm f/2.8 macro lens mounted using a Fotodiox PK-EF lens adapter. The mass grave and cat images were courtesy of my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra mobile phone.
