|
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - 2:28PM 
|
Canon 12.2mp vs Fujifilm 7.1mp; and new lens
It's a good thing I went out shooting yesterday, because the sky conditions have gone to total junk around here for the next week or so (rainy and overcast). Consequently I won't be doing much outdoor shooting unless the off chance happens that we get some lightning (which I doubt at this point). One comparison test I wanted to do with my old and new cameras was with distant summer foliage. Here is a wide shot out of my living room window with my old point-and-shoot, the 7.1mp FujiFilm s700:
Not too bad, aside from the glaring chromatic abberation in the trees on the sides. But looking at the image at full resolution is where things don't look so good. This camera has had problems on the fine scale, particularly in detail-intense scenes like this. The distant foliage is rendered in an impressionist painting-like manner - with a good bit of fine detail lost. Here is a full-rez crop:
Same scene with the XSi, wide at 18mm:
Full-rez crop:
I realized yesterday in my day of test shooting that I wasn't going to be able to do without a telephoto lens of some sort, and was going to have to buy one sooner than later. So, I stopped in at Merrill's this morning to try out the Canon EF 75-300. I mainly wanted to see if I could manage handheld shots at 300mm without image stabilization (The IS 70-300 lens is about $650 new, while the non-IS EF is $179). The nice thing about camera shops, again, is that you can test drive before you buy. I went outside on Hale Street and took a few shots at the lens' full 300mm zoom length:
Satisfied with the non-IS results, I went ahead and picked it up (I wouldn't have been able to afford nor justify the IS 70-300 anyway). So the DSLR package is pretty complete now - I don't expect I'll need any more than this for a long time.
Since the weather outside is dull for the forseeable future, I may fire up the Van de Graaff generator tonight for some indoor lightning photography. I wouldn't consider doing this without the zoom lens where I can set the camera up across the room, out of the danger zone. Stay tuned for the results...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 10:40PM
|
XSi first run - New River 'Dries' surfing
Bill Coyle and Matt (my brother) are not going to believe this day has finally come. I went downtown today and bought a Canon Rebel XSi from Merrill Photo Supply, fulfilling literally years of intentions of going DSLR. I got a good price from Merrill's on the body / 18-55 EF IS lens kit, in fact about the same as if I'd ordered online from B&H with rush shipping (and B&H was out of stock of the XSi anyway). The local camera shops have actually been pretty competitive lately with their prices. Slightly more expensive after you figure sales tax, but surprisingly not by much. I like being able to touch and hold what I'm going to spend $1,000 on, and be able to take it back to the store if something goes wrong. Anyway...
So the clear blue skies and a brand new camera meant what else - a trip to the New River Gorge for a first run. All of these photos are from the new camera (aside from the one Dries comparison shot below). I made the big photos expandable to larger versions by clicking on each respective one.
We've had quite a bit of rain lately, so the rivers were running about 3 to 6 feet higher than normal (even more in the narrow gorge). So my first stop was at the 'Dries' of the New. This section of the river, at and around Cotton Hill, is downstream of Hawk's Nest Dam - which diverts most of the river water through a tunnel to a hydro plant downstream. So, the river is usually running at just a trickle through here, hence the 'Dries' name. When the river is running high from heavy rains, the 'Dries' transform into a series of impressive rapids - the most famous being a series of standing waves at Cotton Hill. The rock formations here create stationary waves when submerged with rushing water, which are favorites of 'extreme sport' kayakers. Whenever this section of the New is flooded, whitewater fans come from miles around to 'surf the Dries'.
Here is what the 'Dries' looks like normally (from the old camera):
And here are the Dries in (minor) flood today:
Kayakers 'surf' the waves:
Today's Dries waves were pretty tame compared to how big they can get on occasion.
Any trip to the Gorge has to include the bridge in some form:
Cathedral Falls along Route 60 at Gauley Bridge:
Back in Charleston, some cityscapes at twilight:
I also bought the cable release for this camera, so it's ready for the first lightning event within an hour's drive of Charleston (hopefully which will be in the next few days).
Part of what influenced my decision to take the plunge is the fact that I'll be adding a basic photography session surcharge onto my web design fees, if a client requires photography of their place of business, products, machinery and staff (about 40% of our projects do). The photos (full rez, up to 50 images) will be delivered on a CD-ROM, as well as a group of up to 10 used on the web site itself and in the site graphics. So, I'm able to introduce another value-added service to my design projects, while paying for the equipment itself!
 | Well, Dan I remember I told you a long time ago to get the Sony TRV-900 and you did and it was a productive product. I have also told you about a DSLR and I am sure this will have the same outcome. Congrats Dan I look forward to some of your lightning and at a timely manner with no wait on film development.
- Posted by William Coyle | |  | |
Nice one Dan, and good to see you have gone with a Canon !!
- Posted by Mick from United Kingdom | | | |
Congratulations,son. The pictures look great. Miss you.
- Posted by Mom | | | |
Monday, May 12, 2008 - 11:10AM
|
|
Another 2006 in the works?
GFS 500mb forecast for May 19
 The Plains severe weather machine shuts down for a good period beginning next week, as the upper air pattern depicted above takes hold of the country. Good moisture gets shoved deep into the Gulf, far, far away from the prime chase terrain. It's a picture reminiscent of 2006, when even the return of a good upper air pattern couldn't overcome the meager moisture quality (resulting from the previous trough's scouring of the surface). In the short term, a trough looks to be moving through the extreme southern US, bringing chances for severe weather to the Gulf coast regions (and possibly a little further north) - far from an ideal chasing setup, and more like a December pattern than a May one. Looking at the long-range models, a decent but fast-moving trough develops toward the end of next week. It doesn't look big enough at this point to make a chase trip worth the money, though - and that's even if moisture can get back in place in time. Other than that, the pattern looks pretty bland for the foreseeable future.
The 2008 season is already leaving a sour taste in my mouth as a chaser. Not only have the classic slow-moving, photogenic storms of the Plains' remote country failed to materialize - where the tornadoes have happened, they've wreaked death and destruction on par with some of the worst-casualty seasons in recent memory. Saturday's northeast Oklahoma / southwest Missouri supercell alone has already claimed twice as many lives as the Greensburg EF5 tornado did last year.
As for my chase plans, I admit I'm not too motivated at this point to spend the $1,000 to $2,000 that it will take to make an expedition happen. If I had decided to chase any of this season's setups so far, they would have resulted in miserable, expensive busts. Now I know that you have to be willing to accept failure in chasing to get to the successes, as it's just part of the game. Not even the best chasers see tornadoes every time they go out. But at this stage I'm not as willing to accept the potential of a costly expedition with no returns. When I got gas yesterday, seeing midgrade now over $4 really hit home as to how much it's going to take.
Furthermore, I've been giving thoughts to spending my Plains chase budget on a new DSLR instead, and 'returning to my roots' as a chaser by getting back into shooting lightning stills. There is plenty of that around WV and into Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina and Pennsylvania - and it would be nice to have this relaxing and less expensive subject to focus on again. So doing that, while leaving any Plains expedition funding entirely up to my tour business, is looking more and more attractive to me.
Based on the current outlook, this probability table charts the chance of our trip starting on a particular date:
| 2008 Chase Expedition - Departure Date Probability as of May 12 |
| May 9-25 | 5% | |
| May 26-June 15 | 35% | |
| No trip | 60% | |
|
|
|
|
| This weather is non-typical for this time of year.
LOL I hate it.
- Posted by Cholivan | | | |
Dan getting a DSLR would be one of the best things I have heard you say in a long time. I think it puts you back where both of us started and that is enjoying what we both have a passion for and that is lightning photography..Canon or Nikon would be the best for it.
- Posted by William Coyle | | | |
Yeah - been looking today at the Xti and the 18-55 EF IS. The lens is backordered though. Hopefully I can find something before I talk myself out of it.....
- Posted by Dan R. from Charleston, WV | | | |
Sunday, May 11, 2008 - 10:40AM
|
May 11 chase - updates
Update 4:41PM Sunday: Not much to report other than just running back and forth across the county chasing rain showers. Saw a few pieces of pea-sized hail at Bills Creek Road and I-64, and that's it. Here are some photos....
Mammatus over downtown Charleston:
Today was a day of look-alikes. Would have been a great spotter training field day of things to not call in. This had the look of a nice updraft base, bell-shape and all - but it was on the wrong side of the storm (northwest). It may have been something to watch if there had been a new storm developing there (in which case I'd expect to see a rain shaft to the right). Radar showed nothing new developing here.
A few rising scud tags were present there, but no rotation:
The John Amos plant cooling towers create quite a few tornado look-alikes, this one was probably the best 'fakenado' I've seen. There even looks like an RFD clear slot to the left. If you were a chaser and didn't know that power plant was there, you'd be flipping out topping the hill on I-64 and seeing this - of course until you saw that it wasn't rotating or moving with the storm.
Another 'scudnado' look-alike over Teays Valley Road. Around here the terrain and trees usually hide what's close to the ground, as in this case (which was nothing). Again, no rotation here, and this feature was on the northwest side of the storm.
Update 1:29PM Sunday: Redevelopment is under way to the west thanks to heating and cold air aloft.
Update 12:09PM Sunday: So far a chase of dying storms and technical difficulties. The Spotter Network client crashes on my older laptop, which needs the GPS for WxWorx. So no GPS data for now. The Cradlepoint access router also reset itself, and I don't have the manual to get the default password for it. So, only plug-in internet is available, limiting access to one computer anyway. So only the Chase Cam is running now.
Other than that, nothing but heavy rain out here now. I'll be going home in a few minutes. There is some clearing out west behind this line, and it's still early in the day - so there may be a secondary threat later this afternoon.
10:40AM Sunday: Heading out now - the ChaseCam will be running and my GPS position will be broadcast on Spotter Network.
| Hello,
I am a suburban Indiana mother and grandmother. I strive daily to help my children see that out of tragic circimstances, beauty and love can still shine through.
I would like to publish a calendar to help raise money for the victims of these 2008 storms. I would like to donate 100% of the profits to a fund that would help families that have to rebuild. I am most concerned with the children who will now have to forgo college, due to these unexpected expenses.
I have no experience fund raising, I am willing to dive in head first. I know that Ebay is willing to collect the profits and manage the donation.
I am looking for photos that reflect the fact that in devastation beauty still thrives. I would like to capture this theme in nature and the fury it can bring and still be a thing of extroidanary beauty, so I am looking for photos. I would also like to use photo's of people caring for other people. Victim's caring for victims. I would like to capture the love of family that still thrives even when all material posessions are lost.
You may submit phots to me at kcsshields@yahoo.com, please leave contact information if you would like recognition for your contribution. Photos submitted anonymously will remain that way. Time is of the essence. We as humans forget these lessons to quickly, "out of site is out of mind". I thank you in advance for taking time to read this. It seems to me that a small effort from a group of people can make a difference. I am making a plea to photobucket to get on board as well. Hope to hear a lot from many of you very soon.
Kathy Shields - Indianapolis IN
- Posted by Kathy | | | |
Saturday, May 10, 2008 - 2:10PM
|
More HD chase videos
I added a few more HD videos from past chases to this new video page, which I'll be updating as I get new footage.
Saturday, May 10, 2008 - 10:49AM
|
|
Tornado outbreaks this weekend - outside of the Plains!
SPC severe storm risk (left) and tornado risk (right) for Saturday
The first true 'big' tornado event of the spring 2008 season looks to commence today and continue into tomorrow - but only a sliver of it within the traditional 'tornado alley'. The mid-Mississippi valley and southern US states instead will be under the gun, something that has been common so far this year. Today's pattern favors a significant tornado outbreak from Arkansas to the Gulf Coast, with strong upper-level winds and deep moisture at the surface. The outbreak should move into the southeast states of Georgia and Alabama on Sunday as the system moves offshore into the Atlantic.
The setup looks great and the chances of seeing tornadoes are fairly high - but I decided to sit this event out. First of all, I would have needed to make the call to go no later than yesterday afternoon, in order to make it in time. I hesitated too long to make the 15-hour drive to the AR/OK border. Second, while this may turn out to be a two-day event across the south, its wide footprint between the two days means that one would likely not be able to cover both days (with sufficient sleep in between) due to the long distances between them. I figured a probable path that I would have ended up taking would have been starting in western Arkansas along I-40 this morning, then working my way eastward
through Memphis and ending up in Nashville, TN or Birmingham, AL. From there, I may have had time for 3 or 4 hours of sleep before trucking on to Georgia for Day 2, then ending up in Raleigh to round out the trip. That would end up being over 3,000 miles total - and at 400 miles per tank of gas, that would end up being a $550 fuel expense.
Now I'm an advocate of chasing outside of the Great Plains, because success can be had wherever a good setup materializes. But I've only got funding to make one solo trip this year, so I have to choose wisely. While there will be chaseable tornadoes this weekend, my budget dictates a choice to wait for another setup in better territory.
The models have seemed to line up in agreement of a big east coast trough forming later next week, after another round of southern US severe weather events. So, it's looking like any trip will be at least well into the later half of the month.
Based on the current outlook, this probability table charts the chance of our trip starting on a particular date:
| 2008 Chase Expedition - Departure Date Probability as of May 10 |
| May 10-25 | 15% | |
| May 26-June 15 | 40% | |
| No trip | 45% | |
|
|
|
|
| I can't wait to see how it unfolds. My weather is going to be in alert mode all night long.
- Posted by Cholivan from Owensboro, KY | | | |
In my amateuer mode I say good call Dan, thinking of your chase budget, early days still yet !
- Posted by Mick from United Kingdom | | | |
So far I'm glad I stayed home - looks like a mess out there now where I would have targeted (central Arkansas). There have been a few tornadoes in there, but from the looks of radar and the storm reports so far, it is not yet the big outbreak that was expected. The storm of the day so far looks like the SE Kansas/SW Missouri supercell that has produced a series of strong tornadoes. It's still early, but only a couple of hours of daylight left out there, and no sign of things really getting going anytime soon. In fact a lot of the storms look to be weakening now.
- Posted by Dan R. from Charleston, WV | | | |
Friday, May 9, 2008 - 2:21PM
|
Going HD! Blog/site video tests
Update 11:52PM Friday: Added a couple more HD clips from past chases (see below).
Although I technically 'went' 1080i HD with my footage acquisition in 2005, I haven't been able to display it on the web in actual HD due to limitations in technology. But thanks to ever-increasing broadband speeds, better software and faster computers, that has changed - and I've finally got a finished system now for posting high-definition videos to the web.
I prefer embedding video into web pages rather than direct-linking to files, since it's more search-engine friendly, less likely to be hotlinked/lifted, and I can keep the Google ads above the video (I need all the extra gas money I can get to keep doing this!). Unfortunately though, 1080i videos and even 720p videos are too wide to fit into a standard 1024 design layout. So, the compromise was to create a slightly smaller preset export format in Premiere for a 944x528 HD WMV file that will fit inside this blog's layout (with the left and right sidebars removed). I kept the same bitrate as the 720p clips, which means that the 528p clips should be a little higher in quality. With the CS3 upgrade and this new process, it will now be just as easy for me to post HD clips to the web as the old standard-definition process was. So consider this blog and the stormhighway.com web site to be 'officially' HD!
Here are a couple of older clips re-encoded in the new format:
HD CHASE VIDEO: November 15, 2005: Intense lightning near Griffin, IN
HD CHASE VIDEO: April 23, 2007: Tornadoes in Protection, KS
HD CHASE VIDEO: February 12, 2006: Cathedral Falls in snow - Gauley Bridge, WV
HD CHASE VIDEO: May 8, 2008: Lightning in Charleston, WV
HD CHASE VIDEO: March 8, 2008: Icy car crashes on tape - Charleston, WV
| I like it. Nice quality. Good job.
- Posted by Beau Dodson | | | |
Thanks Beau - I appreciate the link on the stormreport.com site!
- Posted by Dan R. from Charleston, WV | | | |
Friday, May 9, 2008 - 12:26AM
|
Northcentral NC tornadoes & dramatic video from Alabama
Four blog posts in 24 hours? Must be May..... Quite an intense severe weather event on Thursday night across the Piedmont/foothills regions of Virginia and North Carolina. I've been watching radar off and on during the event and have noticed a few intense circulations on radar. Damage is being reported with many of these storms, which jugding from the strong circulations were likely caused by tornadoes. A few tornado reports centered around the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area note numerous vehicles overturned on I-40.
SPC storm reports for May 8
The squall line that eventually evolved from this complex is one of the stronger ones I've seen on radar for this region. I gave a brief consideration to chasing this event, but elected to stay home. I don't regret that decision due to the fact that most of the action happened at night, but still an interesting event nonetheless.
On a related note, check out this video from Huntsville, Alabama, showing a detailed view of a tornado tossing cars in a parking lot! This is one of the most impressive tornado videos I've seen lately:
VIDEO LINK: Tornado tosses cars
North Carolina and Virginia may continue to be a severe weather hotspot this weekend. The pattern for Sunday looks very interesting to me, so much so that I won't rule out a chase. In fact, if events like this continue, I'll forego a Plains expedition and focus on these closer-to-home opportunities!
Thursday, May 8, 2008 - 4:51PM
|
May 8 lightning
With gas at $3.70/gallon, zero-mile chases are always nice. A few small storms were able to put some very limited instability to good use over Charleston this afternoon. Lightning was frequent, but not that impressive. I did manage to catch one strike from my living room window.
Click for 528p HD clip
I've been shooting the majority of my weather footage in 1080i high-def since October of 2005, but due to the enormous file sizes needed, I haven't been posting them online in HD format. However, I upgraded to Premiere CS3 last month, and in playing around with it I've found that its new HD Windows Media encoder is pretty efficient. The video above is downconverted from 1080i source to 720p WMV-HD, yielding a file less than 8 megs for a 17-second clip. That's not a bad file size for web purposes, and the quality is OK. The drawback is the 3.6mbps variable bitrate I'm using won't stream well if your internet connection's down speed is slower than that (so the file will need a longer buffer time). So from now on, I'll be posting future videos in 720p HD. Full 1080 files are still too big/processor intensive for most visitors' computers and monitors - but in the next year or so that will change as more people upgrade their systems.
I'll probably post a few clips from the past in this HD format in coming days.
|
