Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross

Should have already stuck that on here just as a reminder to some as a quick and easy way to donate.

Update February 6, 2009: I haven't vanished yet. Just got a bit worn from the photography thing and at least took a break from shooting anything. After shooting a ton of snow stuff, I had a lot of deleting to do. Back down to 20 gigs of total raw files, which is pretty silly considering. I got very liberal with the whole delete images thing. It is and always will be a time eater. So tedious. I love having it very widdled down though, to something I can know what all I have and work with it. Other than that, had to spend some time on a few sales things. That and my goal has been to do all the processing to the RAW files, now that I've had CS4 awhile and know it can pretty much do all of what needs to be done, and it will save the settings as well. Before I'd just convert to TIFF and do it outside of the RAW converter. So in that sense, I have next to no images processed as RAWs. Well I do now I guess, but got a lot to go. It will be great to have them all done that way, in there and ready to go for whatever comes up. Also better to just send RAWs with their settings, out on sales things rather than big TIFF files or compressed JPGs. So yeah, this has been a large time killer lately.

I really need to get the winter accounts up. Just figuring these on the front page largely cover it, sort of. I have to get my priorities down, as accounts don't really pay any bills. I should always be stock minded first, accounts later. I never have been however.

In fun news, I just purchased a Canon 5D II. I've always owned rebels, which have done great...even if some frown on them. "You use a rebel!" gasp. I get a serious upgrade bug about 2 years into a camera. Which is why I have a Sony F707, Rebel X, Rebel XT and Rebel XSi since 2002. It has made the most sense, since you can stay with the latest technology this cheaper way. Technology now though is reaching a fairly big worry free area on quality. Or so I'm assuming, based on what has already been accomplished since that first noisy as hell F707 and still damn noisy original Rebel.

The upgrade from the XSi is tricky. The T1i looks just as good pretty much, but maybe more noise, though 3 more megapixels. 7D(18 megapixels) gets a person to 11x17 at 300 dpi with no upresing. That is a spread in a magazine pretty much. I got it in my head I needed 18mp, so I'd never have any "up res concerns" on sales later. Probably more of an excuse to just upgrade than anything, as 12mp is going to cover most any sale/license...with ease. I was selling myself on the 7D until I had to come across a damn review that compared it to the 5D II at 1600 ISO. I thought the 7D was damn near out of reach, and so the 5DII was certainly out of reach. I was already aware of how unfair a 18 mp on a 1.6x crop sensor is to 21 on a full frame sensor. But still I clicked. That began the end of my 7D thoughts. I then had a very useful realization. I have the canon 10-22mm and the 17-40mm. The 10-22 sells for $770 new right now. It only works on crop sensor cams like the 7D or rebels....50D...etc. 10mm on a 1.6x crop is 16mm film/full frame equivalent. If I were to get the 5D II I would have a similar wide angle with the 17-40 anyway, given the 5D is full frame without that crop factor. So if I sold that 10-22 I'd largely make the price jump from the 7D to the 5D II anyway....and be missing nothing(doh!). I was like, boy would it be dumb for me, a 10-22 and 17-40 owner, who doesn't shoot sports and need the fast 7D, to buy a 7D instead of the 5D II while selling the 10-22 I wouldn't need. 5D II is the cam for me and what I shoot. I'm a smidge excited to give it a whirl. Not sure what I am going to do with 21 megapixels, but I'll figure something out lol. That part is largely a piece of mind when it comes to image licensing requests. I haven't yet hit any walls on my 12 mp images. I have on the 6mp ones. 21mp opens up some larger printing options, even though yeah yeah yeah bigger prints are viewed at a bigger distance. Anyway, there is more to the 5D II than the pixels.

This from Canon at the release of it:

The size of each pixel of the EOS 5D Mark II camera are the same as the 21.1-megapixel CMOS sensor from the EOS-1Ds Mark III digital SLR, the new sensor features an updated output amplifier and an advanced color filter for better light transmission while retaining excellent color reproduction. By applying the same kind of advancements in sensor design and image processing technology as the recently introduced EOS 50D camera, but at higher resolution and with larger pixels, the EOS 5D Mark II achieves the highest level of image quality of any EOS Digital SLR released to date.

Funny they say the image quality is better than their current 1Ds III flagship camera, which is about $5000 MORE than the 5D II. Of course any day now they'll replace that flagship with a 1Ds IV. Anyway, I've sold my XSi as well as my Canon 10-22 EF-s lens to bring this expensive cam down to something more attainable. In the process I know I've hexed my 2010 chase year to hell. So be sure to be far far away from me on chase days, as I won't have anything worth a damn to photograph now lol.

What I really look forward to with the camera is seeing what is possible with those extreme ISO ranges. Rebel stopped at 1600 ISO. This goes to 3200, 6400, 12,800 and 25,600. That is some "ooomph". I want to see what it can bring out on something like the Milky Way at night. Already seen it make some crazy TL's of that at night. I'm also intriqued as hell to see what happens if you stick a F1.8 50mm on there in a pretty much dark room at 25,600 ISO lol. Yeah yeah I realize it will be noisy as hell. CS4 and other converters can remove all color noise, leaving detail as is and making the noise issue look way better. Also interested in trying out the ISO expanded the other way, to 50 ISO and seeing just how smooth a blue sky can be, as even 100 ISO will show noise in a blue sky on most cams.

Now the camera just needs to get here before the auroras/northern lights start. Sun is starting to go nuts with this extremely fast forming sun spot, which is sending off flare after flare now, and the thing is largely facing right at Earth. http://spaceweather.com/ Worth monitoring as I could see one of these things causing mid-latitude auroras at some point next week or so. But having said that, and with the camera on the way.....I've severely hexed the crap out of that idea happening.

I'll make an ice storm and other winter shots type of account somewhat soon. I think. There's a lot to cover there with sun optics, blizzard, light pillars, thick rime ice, and thick ice all involved over those several weeks. That is probably why it hasn't happened or even been started yet. I think about it and demotivate.

Update January 21, 2010: Drove up to Harlan today and found some crazy thick ice and a cool farm area.

There is a tree here with a large section of it snapped down. These are branches off of that. The smaller ones are 3.5 inches wide of ice. Some bigger ones are 4.5 to 5 inches wide. There had to be some thick rime ice inside there somewhere. I did remember a tape measure this time...but mostly that is all ice.

Same spot as the first one. Poor young tree here. Has the wires to hold it up. They seem to be working lol. Just look how thick the top parts are. The skinnier sections are thick! Those globs are just silly.

Fence out by that farm. HUGE drifts here, a good 10 foot one in the gravel road with a 5 footer right ahead of it. It was damn hard to walk up those as you could barely kick your foot down through this stuff for traction. Down further on this fence you are pretty much standing on top of it, big ice encrusted drift. More later, super duper sleepy. Oh yeah, pretty much zero melting there today yet. Going to be power poles a snapping soon as the wind gets here.

Update January 20, 2010: Extreme icing in northwest Iowa. Short on time at the moment, 7:30 p.m. been up since 3:30 a.m....just got home and got some work to do yet.

Guide wire to a radio tower.

Tree branch on fallen tree. Geee, wonder why on Earth it fell. Probably around 1.5 inches of ice from freezing rain, but the bit of rime ice on things helped it really accumulate over a larger surface area. Trees cracking left and right. Gravel roads too slick to walk on....seriously the most slick surface imaginable. Friday night into Saturday a deep surface low will move east, like real deep/985mb. Ahead of this will be strong easterly winds gusting to who knows what. Guessing the majority of this stuff will still be on things. Foggy and low 30s tomorrow and similar Friday. Potential for severe devastation over what they already have. THEN, as if this isn't enough for here, there will likely be heavy rains on Saturday with this, possibly temps in the 40s. So, you have 1-1.5 inches of liquid equivalent in the form of ice. The snow has packed down to probably 15-16 inches. I'm guessing you'd be pushing 2 inches of liquid equivalent with that on its own. The rain Saturday could push over 1 inch. Could be bad flooding. More later.

Update January 19, 2010: This is all new rime ice. That stuff the other day blew off and melted off there. It's already been replaced by branch busting rime ice, thanks to extended freezing fog. It's about to get encased in ice from freezing rain in the expected ice storm tonight.

I got up early to try and get some city light shots in the dark. The cemetery is nice because you're in no ones way and no one is staring, wondering what you are doing with a camera in mostly dark conditions. It is tough to find interesting perspectives in there that aren't being messed up by other trees entering awkward portions of the frame. Or too many trees. It's just sort of annoying for some reason.

Stuff like this on smaller branches is snapping them.

Notice the tops of the pine trees bent way over. This before the ice storm starts tonight.

Rime ice accumulations at the end of the day. This stuff is taking down small branches in areas already! What seems likely is today's bit of freezing drizzle as well as early tonight's, will slowly anchor it/freeze it in place so that when the freezing rain starts to fall, the rain isn't going to knock it off. This stuff creates a much bigger surface area for freezing rain to have its way with. This area could quite possibly get a half inch plus of freezing rain accumulation tonight. Pretty fair disaster potential in this whole area and up into northwest Iowa I think. That is if the freezing drizzle and then rain simply encases what is there. The wind was blowing these around today, branches flopping around and that stuff was not coming off. But it could also just freeze on the rime ice until it breaks the rime ice off. I think a lot of it is just going to get locked in place.

Update January 15, 2010: Couple recent things real quick. Light pillars and then rime ice today.

There were actually several eagles in the trees over there. There is one on the left above and another towards the right. There is usually one in that tree on the left, but I hadn't seen the several others there yet this year.

Update January 1, 2010: Happy New Year! Just got the whole Squaw Creek eagle and geese migration image accounts done. They are last 4 in the 2009 image by year section.

Update October 7, 2009: DVD is finally done and available here: http://www.extremeinstability.com/alleychaos.htm

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