Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Back from Hawaii
My wife and I returned this past weekend from a week in Hawaii. All of my blog posts from last week were actually scheduled in advance. We spent 3 nights in Waikiki on Oahu and then flew to the island of Kauai. While this was a vacation and not a dedicated photography trip, I spent plenty of time taking pictures of course.
My total for the week was 2,583 pictures but that number is really meaningless because I was in a lot of rapid-fire mode situations. The first was a helicopter tour of Kauai (with no doors on the helicopter) during which I took 600 shots trying to get something, anything, sharp. I love shooting from a helicopter though my wife only managed 4 shots with her point-and-shoot because she insisted on holding on for dear life! (Actually, considering how she is very afraid of heights I'm just proud she went at all.) My stomach was fine during the flight but afterwards I was instantly very queasy thumbing through the pictures on the back of my camera and thinking that nothing whatsoever came out sharp and usable. Thankfully though, having just completed a pre-edit checking for sharpness I'm happy to say that I did get some great shots, though there are also tons of pictures in there I wish were usable but are simply not. Lightroom 2.0 has been invaluable to me as I compared duplicates side-by-side on my second monitor to judge which one was sharpest.
I also did several snorkeling "dives" with the Canon G9 in an underwater housing. My first few attempts were really horrible, but I made some progress and continued to refine my camera settings and technique. On our last full day of the trip we drop to Tunnels beach on the north coast of Kauai, and WOW was it great! The water was crystal clear with tons of fish. I still didn't get anywhere near the number of decent shots that I wanted, but I did manage to see a sea turtle and get at least 2 or 3 good pictures of it. I'll blog more about my snorkeling photography experiences soon.
We had a good time, and I'll be posting pictures from Hawaii during the coming weeks.
My total for the week was 2,583 pictures but that number is really meaningless because I was in a lot of rapid-fire mode situations. The first was a helicopter tour of Kauai (with no doors on the helicopter) during which I took 600 shots trying to get something, anything, sharp. I love shooting from a helicopter though my wife only managed 4 shots with her point-and-shoot because she insisted on holding on for dear life! (Actually, considering how she is very afraid of heights I'm just proud she went at all.) My stomach was fine during the flight but afterwards I was instantly very queasy thumbing through the pictures on the back of my camera and thinking that nothing whatsoever came out sharp and usable. Thankfully though, having just completed a pre-edit checking for sharpness I'm happy to say that I did get some great shots, though there are also tons of pictures in there I wish were usable but are simply not. Lightroom 2.0 has been invaluable to me as I compared duplicates side-by-side on my second monitor to judge which one was sharpest.
I also did several snorkeling "dives" with the Canon G9 in an underwater housing. My first few attempts were really horrible, but I made some progress and continued to refine my camera settings and technique. On our last full day of the trip we drop to Tunnels beach on the north coast of Kauai, and WOW was it great! The water was crystal clear with tons of fish. I still didn't get anywhere near the number of decent shots that I wanted, but I did manage to see a sea turtle and get at least 2 or 3 good pictures of it. I'll blog more about my snorkeling photography experiences soon.
We had a good time, and I'll be posting pictures from Hawaii during the coming weeks.
Sunset on Waikiki beach on Oauh, Hawaii.
Labels: Hawaii, Oahu, travel photography
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9:33 PM
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2 Comments:
I imagine that trip was a blast. Did you do any whale watching? ;) Hey, I notice that you use two monitors. I am now using two monitors with Aperture 2. Did you buy specific monitors for your pictures or did you just grab what was laying around? My second one was something laying around and I have the hardest time getting the color right on it. My main Monitor is a 24" iMac. The color on it is absolutely gorgeous. I have actually stop using color correction with my printing company.
Hi Calvin,
No, I haven't been on another whale watching trip since our last hurling adventure. :)
Yes, I've used dual monitors on my imaging workstation for many years now. About two years I ago I upgraded to dual ViewSonic VX2025wm monitors. Each is 21" widescreen I believe. The ViewSonic brand generally gets great reviews from imaging professionals. Of course, there are super high-end graphics displays that you can spend thousands of dollars per monitor on as well. I was very, very happy with both of them until about three weeks ago when an entire line of pixels when out on on one of them. :( It was on the primary monitor, so I switched them to move the bad one to the secondary position. Still, it's very annoying. Other than that, I've been very happy with them. I just can't work in Photoshop any longer without having all the pallets on the second monitor, and now I'm loving that Lightroom 2.0 supports dual monitors as well.
For color calibration I use a Gretag Macbeth calibrator. I HIGHLY recommend them. I thought my display colors were accurate before I started using one of these a few years ago. Boy was I wrong! I use it on my laptop and imaging workstation regularly to keep the colors in check.
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