… has too many hobbies.

Topic:

Photography

12 posts
Apr 2011 – Jul 2025

Neat Image noise profiles for the Sigma sd Quattro H

I've developed Neat Image noise profiles for the Sigma sd Quattro H camera. These profiles cover JPEG images and RAW (X3F) images processed with Sigma Photo Pro 6. You can find additional details and download the profiles from the Neat Image website. Alternatively, the files are available here. …

A rule of thumb, that I need to keep in mind, is that it will take about the same amount of time to edit photos as I spent shooting them.

This holds true for birding (2 hours of birding results in roughly two hours of editing), and in my experience from a decade ago it holds true for music & theatre photography. YMMV.

I'm not yet sure how it maps to photos from e.g. our Grand Canyon or Zion trips, but I bet one day of trip photos roughly equates to the amount of time I want to spend photo editing in one day.

Birds in Moab and Arches & Canyonlands National Parks

My partner Thu and I recently spent about a week in Moab, Utah and the national and state parks that surround it. This is a (probably incomplete) list of birds we identified during the trip.

Brief Review: Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD

It's terrible. Don't buy it.

Photographing an unusual aurora in southeastern Michigan

Last weekend, a strong geomagnetic storm resulted in an aurora being somewhat visible where I live in southeastern Michigan. This is unusual! I didn't have that much time to prepare for it, but I wanted to share my photos (the Flickr album is embedded above) and note what …

Some recent bird photos

A complete table of Nikon 1 system battery compatibility

It took me a while to get this data together, so I thought it might be useful for other camera hoarders collectors: Nikon 1 Camera Model Battery Type Compatible Charger V1 EN-EL15 MH-25 J1 EN-EL20 MH-27 J2 EN-EL20 MH-27 S1 EN-EL20 MH-27 V2 EN-EL21 MH-28 J3 EN-EL20 MH-27 S2 EN-EL22 …

Photo sequence of Bald Eagles hunting, from Nov. 2022

In November of last year, I was lucky to observe a lot of bald eagle activity around a lake near my home. (In total I observed 5 eagles: 3 adults and 2 juveniles.) Content warning: this post includes photos, from a distance, of a dead bird. One Saturday morning, I …

Shooting Theatre, Dance, and Music

Intro to photographing plays/musicals/dance/opera/concerts, with particular focus on plays, musicals, and dance. I gave this talk for the Michigan Daily's photostaff in 2012. Alternative title: "Shooting Things That Move Fast in the Dark". The slides, with speakers' notes, are available in …

Capturing Lightning

Building an analog circuit to trigger a DSLR camera when it detected lightning.

Shooting Concerts with Strobe Lights

Many concerts these days - mainly rock/pop shows - rely heavily on strobe lights as part of the experience. Photographing these shows is challenging, even though there's (at times) plenty of light. I ran into this problem at an Ella Riot show at Ann Arbor's …