Smilin' Jack: Chapter 68 - Knowledge Is Power

I got a call from Michelle and we got to talking about her upcoming visit. The conversation worked around to places to go and she mentioned eating in a restaurant in some touristy place the last time they were here. Neither of us could remember where or what restaurant we ate in. And we batted that around for a while...a long while. I tried to find pictures of it and then she said she had a couple and she'd send them to me and maybe I could name the restaurant and place.

And then I got these two pics via my cell phone...which was next to useless because, well, they were too small for me to make out anything other than who it was. So she e-mailed me and, POW!! Once I was able to 'see' the picture I remembered.

We went motoring along the coast and ended up in Old Town Newport. There's a restaurant I'd heard good things about there, the Local Ocean Seafoods Restaurant. Hah!! Mystery solved!!

And here's Addie who is, obviously, pleased with her French Fry.

And me, obviously, pleased with my dinner choice (which I don't remember what it is other than that it was seafood). Oh, and French Fries. Hahaha, it was a fun little trip down the Ol' Memory Lane. More and more lately I'm needing all kinds of boosters, reminders, clues, hints and outright kicks in the butt to remember things.

Ah, a mind is a terrible thing to lose. Right next to a memory. And, as I look at this picture it appears, from my maniacal grin and the crazy glint in my eyes, that I've already lost the former. And I know I'm losing the latter.

But I'm still cogent enough to remember what happened a couple days ago and so, let's start this little walk down the Ol' Memory Lane with this bucolic picture of one of the tributaries to the Siletz River that runs alongside Wapiti RV Park.

This view is behind the Lodge Building off to the left in this picture. I hadn't realized the creek/stream/river ran this close to the Park.

The owners here have been very generous in hosting Scout events and the reason we visited on this beautiful (and, this year, rare) Spring Day in Oregon was about Scouting.

They'll be holding the WEBELOS Camporee for Yaquina District here mid-May. Troop 47 is hosting the event. Well, the Scoutmaster, Mike Freel, is honchoing it. It'll be a "Zomboree". Carol and I wanted to explore the park, we've mostly just been in the Lodge, and see where they would be holding the Zomboree.

The Lodge is on the north end of the park and, as we understood it, the Zomboree was going to be held at the southern end. And so off we went. The owner, Roger Geddes was out with his huge ride-on mower cutting the lawn.

Always the adventurer, Carol leads the way.

It really is a lovely park. Plenty of open spaces for Scouts to run around. And for the Zomboree, Troop 47 is making a 'Monkey Bridge' with rope donated by Roger.

I could camp here.

With a giant RV, power, wi-fi and ALL the appropriate hook-ups. Oh, heck, cut out the middle man and just build me a small two bedroom, two bath cabin with a large porch. Then I could REALLY camp out here. A lot.

And it is here, in this open area, that I think they will have the Zomboree. Pretty nice, eh?

It is a lovely place. And quiet.

There are some magnificent trees throughout the Park.

Afterwards on the drive back we stopped at the new Open Space at Alder Island along the Siletz.

Ever the adventurer, Carol had to look for turtles, etc., at every drain pipe. And there were like 5 of them on the trail. Unfortunately she didn't find anything. But hope springs eternal. She is, always, more adventurous than I. She is, always, ready to try the new and see what is around the next corner.

Ok, take my word for it, there IS a Great Blue Heron flying along the river here. If you've got great eyes you'll be able to make out the slight difference in color above the piling in the river. Right in the middle of those four snags. Yeah, I shot on continuous and didn't try to zoom. Hahaha, I know my limits. But there is a Heron there and it was cool watching this large bird slowly wing its way down the river.

I've been working on my patience and just as we got to the parking lot, we spotted this butterfly, an Oregon Swallowtail, flitting around. Rather than chase it, I saw where it was and waited and, doggone it, it came back close to where it had been and I caught this one reasonable shot.

OK, here's where it gets interesting, for me. For you? Not so much. Hahaha, for all two of you!!

It was a non-rainy day which is to say it was overcast, gray, gloomy and yuck but it wasn't raining. Which is, this Spring, a definite rarity. I just felt a bit of the 'cabin fever' and so, after a day of sitting around, I grabbed the G3 X and headed off to the CHG (Connie Hansen Garden).

You know what they say, "When it's overcast and gray, shoot down." And I figure the CHG is one of the best places here in LCO for that, for "shooting down" and so off I went.

And the Gardens are starting to show some color despite the delayed arrival of a true Spring. I think these are Common Day-Lilys or, for a hoot, a Wash-House Lily. And they're really colorful, too. Fits my discerning criteria for a subject.

And they had plenty of these to shoot plus there was little to no wind.

And so I thought about them and how I would shoot them and went with Av so I could open up my f-stop and get a narrow plane of focus. That's why the background is thrown out of focus and the subject, the flower buds, stand out so much.

I know you know that but I just wanted to prove, even if it something so obvious, that I was thinking about my shots. And I was kinda pleased with them.

But remember these cause, well, I don't want to give away the surprise so I'll just say, "Remember them!"

And another. It was fun shooting again. And flowers, too. I took off all the restrictions I had on shooting flowers. Hahaha, watch out!!

OK, OK, that's enough. For now.

But I do want to point out I am thinking photographically. And, seriously, these aren't that bad, are they? I kinda like them.

Alright. I've got this massively powerful camera and I shoot mostly, 99.7% of the time, in the "P" for Program mode. I think I've mentioned that, essentially, all I do is compose and then let the camera do all the rest. It's the "ISIPIS" method of photography. My own personal brand of photography since I came to digital photography. And it's worked for me so far. I've enjoyed shooting. I've enjoyed being out with my camera. It's been my reason to get out, really.

That's my lead-in to this. I actually broke out the manual and began exploring this powerful machine I own.

For the longest time I've been disappointed in the B&Ws I've shot. And so I began playing around with the 'Net and the camera and what not. I was reading and jiggling the controls to see what's what. I used "Exposure Control" to deepen the blacks and blow out the whites. It sorta helped.

And I was thinking!! Hahaha, I know you're growing tired of hearing that statement, "I'm thinking" but, really, this is all a step off the norm for me. It's new!!

And so I got this shot of the front door and the bookcase leading to my bedroom. And the tones are better.

Hahaha, then I found the "Creative Shot" program and I was off. And it was fun. It was fun discovering the other features and what they could do.

I mean, c'mon, I'd never get this effect on my own. Kinda odd but sorta OK.

And then it saturated the colors. And this looked kinda nice, too. You just put it on "Creative Shot" and the camera snaps off six different pictures...same scene but with different settings.

And the B&W setting...well, it is better than I've gotten before. This one was at ASA 200, f/3.5, 1/50.

In this one, the ASA was the same, 200. The f-stop was the same f/3.5. The only change was the shutter speed. The one above was at 1/50. This one was at 1/80.

Big difference, eh!?! Colossal difference!! Humongous difference!! And the stupid camera did it just by changing the shutter speed. Man, I need to remember this. What the what!?!

Anyway, I desperately want to shoot B&W. Maybe I'll just do the shutter speed (Tv) and simply run it up and down a couple times to see what happens.

So, the next day emboldened by my 'discoveries', I felt I should explore some other new (to me) feature. I was feeling daring and dangerous and so, without any knowledge whatsoever about RAW, I decided to go and shoot in that format.

Yeah, I had no idea what RAW was except I've heard a lot of people talk about it. I know it takes more...of something. Space on the computer, work to finish, something. But what the heck!?! It's time to roll the dice and see what comes up!! Snake-eyes, craps, whatever.

So I grabbed the G3 X and headed back to the CHG. And not only was I shooting with RAW but, (drumroll, please!!) I even brought along the tripod!! Hahahaha, I know!!! What's up with that!?!

I am going to try and take some better (technically) pictures (cuz I still feel I'm OK with the composition thingie, y'know).

And so it begins. One of my first shots in this RAW format. And, just so you know, it was fun. I had a good time. I really stepped out of my comfort zone. On this day I didn't do any ISIPIS.

Remember I asked you to remember a picture I posted earlier in this narrative. I wanted you to sorta fix it in your mind so you could compare it to this one. It appears to my tired and worn out eyes that the colors are just a bit better in RAW and the pictures seem to be a bit crisper in detail.

And I like the composition.

OK, so, it was pretty much the same as shooting in JPEG. I set the camera to Av and, because I wanted my subjects to stand out against the background, I chose the smallest aperture that was available, f/5.6. I also, because it was a relatively bright day and I wanted as little noise as possible, chose to shoot with an ASA of 200. Hahaha, yeah, I was going way off the reservation, even choosing my own film speed.

Ok, so to review, I am using a tripod, shooting raw, selecting my own f-stop and picking the film speed to optimize the quality of the final shot. Hahaha, who is this guy!?! Is this really Jackie!?!

It was a semi-quiet day and so everything was clicking. I admit that I don't care for using the tripod. I mean I recognize its value in creating a crisp photo but...there's that awful 'but'...it just slows things down. I really like shooting ISIPIS (Ok, in case you forgot from when I explained this acronym in a previous chapter, it stands for "I See. I Point. I Shoot.") I like the freedom, the movement, the laziness of not having to work out the picture, yada, yada, yada.

I feel the pictures are of better quality. Compositionally, I'm satisfied. But, yeah, I feel they're a tink better with the RAW, and the tripod. And choosing the aperture and ASA.

Just for the fun of it, while I was wandering around the Garden, I got this 'context' picture. Kinda lets you know what the CHG is like since, mostly, I shoot really close. It is a nice place. Small, but nice.

I learned that you can't shoot B&W in RAW. Nope. But you can convert it with your computer. OK, bottom line is that I do think RAW snaps the picture up. And then when you render it in B&W, WOW!! There is just such a wider range of tones available.

Isn't this so much better than the other B&Ws I've done!?! Oh, yeah, it is.

I also learned that because of its size, you can't shoot continuous. That's a bummer.

OK, I also learned, after the fact, that RAW is simply an uncompressed file. (I honestly don't completely understand all this. Well, to be honest I understand very, very, very little of this RAW thingie, maybe 2% total) This means that all the colors that you saw are still there in the picture, making it much larger and more detailed. Being larger takes more time for the camera to process and store on the memory card. Shooting in JPEG, the alternative, means that every picture is automatically 'compressed' by the camera. This means the camera picks what it thinks the 'correct' or 'true' colors are and compresses the shot into what it thinks is right. In doing that, you just lose a lot of tones, colors, hues, details, etc. But it makes the file smaller and easier to manage and store.

So you can't shoot continuous in RAW because it takes too much time to store each new file, or picture. I did miss being able to shoot with bursts.

OK, so with RAW there is no mode for B&W and no 'burst' shooting. Pretty much the only things you can do in RAW is pick your shutter speed, f-stop, ASA and whether you want to do the manual focus thingie or go with automatic focus (AF). But with the limitations you get more detail and control of the final product. Fair enough.

Fun Fact: You've seen where I refer to the film speed as ASA and nowadays everyone refers to it as ISO. What's the diff?

First the acronyms. ASA stands for American Standards Association while ISO is for the International Standards Organization. Key word in both is 'Standards'. They're both a way to measure how sensitive a film (or a setting in digital) is to light. ASA was the industry norm when I first became involved with photography. I would have to decide which film to buy based on the shooting situation I thought I might be shooting in. If I knew I was going to have a lot of light then I would buy an ASA 100, 125 or 200 (occasionally, when I was feeling really dangerous but wanted to risk it to get deeper colors and detail, I would buy some ASA 64 chrome film. But like I said, this film was so slow I needed a good light day to use it and I couldn't always count on that). I generally bought 200 to 400 ASA film. For B&W I usually bought Kodak's Tri-X. Hahaha, no more. I do not regret going from film to digital one bit. Not one single bit.

OK, back to the topic...On an international level, the ASA system was superseded by the ISO film speed system sometime between 1982 and 1987. Although the name changed, the arithmetic ASA speed scale continued to live on as the linear speed value of the ISO system. Essentially they're, with very small, tiny differences, the same thing. And so I still use the term, ASA, when referring to the film speed. I'm old. Sue me.

I pretty much stayed at f/5.6 (which was the biggest aperture I could get using the zoom) for all the pictures. I had zoomed my lens out as far as I could so I could key in on my subject and definitely throw everything around it out of focus. Plus I like the way the zoom stacks things up. But mostly for the focus thingie.

And I learned that in RAW, and I don't have a single clue as to why, the farthest I could zoom out was 220mm. This on a camera with a 24-600mm zoom. Maybe it was something I did wrong but I pushed the zoom out as far as I could each shot and found it stopped far short of what I usually expected. I ended up moving closer to the subject to get the frame, the zoom that I wanted. And I checked the information on these shots and all of them were with a focal length of 220mm.

Strange.

But, OK, I adapted and moved closer when I needed to. Another decision. Whup!! I am on a creative roll!!

Slow down, Speed Racer!!

Hahaha, this was fun.

I saw this fat ol' Bumblebee flitting around. I knew I wanted to shoot him in RAW and so I did yet another thing that I don't usually do. Actually two things!!

Thing One: I listened (really, I remembered being told this so many times). Carol's told me dozens of times to observe and see where the bird lights. Even if I miss at that place the bird will come back to it again. I usually wait for 30 or so seconds and then, using ISIPIS as my guide, I move on. Without the shot.

OK, so Thing One was taking advice. Now for Thing Two: I was patient. I am not known for having a lot of patience, especially in photography (remember ISIPIS? You could say it should better read, "I See, I Point, I Shoot, I Move. Make it ISIPISIM). I normally wait a short bit and then, even if I don't have the picture, I do ISIPIS and add the IM. It seems that just as I move or maybe a second later, the shot I was waiting for happens. Ah, Karma, why do you hate me so?

But this time I saw where the Bumble had been and knowing I was shooting RAW and tripod and all that I wasn't going to chase it around trying to catch it as I usually do. I set the tripod and focused on the place where the Bumble had been and...waited. And waited.

And sure enough that sucker came back!! I caught him!! I actually got maybe 5-6 pictures of him on this bush but only two were acceptable. Why? Because remember I told you I was shooting Av (Aperture Priority)? This means the camera. using the information it had vis-a-vis the f-stop and ASA I selected, had to choose a shutter speed that worked to get a good picture. And because of the light, etc., it selected a shutter speed of 1/60. Which is cool but if there is any movement it will cause a blur. And that Bumble, he moved. So most of the pictures of the Bumble went into the trash can but I did get a couple and I was happy. And I learned. If I'm shooting Bumblebees I need to prioritize the shutter speed and not the f-stop. D'uh!

I had fun and I learned. And I like what I shot. It was a good day.

And then, because I had the tripod and I now know where the self-timer is hidden at, I shot this. I only did it once because I was so embarrassed doing this one that I quickly picked up the camera and moved on. But what the hell. I rarely get a shot of myself and here I am in the Garden environment. Looking a tad bit self-conscious but, nonetheless, enjoying myself.

Another environment shot. You two guys rarely see the CHG. You see the flowers but not much of the CHG. So, OK, I feel this kind of picture, like the selfie above, is cool.

Walking out, I saw these delicate beauties and stopped to get a few.

For the second year in a row, I've had a pair of mallards coming to my place to eat. And they came back again this year. Then, after about three weeks of seeing them I opened the blinds and saw this!! Two drakes!! What the...!?!

I now have two mating pairs of mallards. The guy on the left, with the long Daffy Duck looking beak, is new. But he and his hen have joined the menagerie. How cool is that!?! So now, not often but often enough, I have four different ducks stopping by.

I've taken to, when I'm refilling the bird feeders, spreading some of the seed around on the ground for them. I tried putting out vegetables from a can but they didn't touch them once. No more for that. Seed it is.