The Newtown Pentacle

Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi

What rats see

with 2 comments

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

While walking to the nearby T light rail station after leaving the Sly Fox Brewery just after sunset, as described yesterday, one decided to keep on shooting and installed a lens on the camera body which is particularly ‘bright.’

What that means is that the design of the thing allows for an aperture of F1.8, which absolutely drinks in light but creates a fairly narrow depth of field. Whatever I’m focused on will be tack sharp, but everything outside of a fairly narrow zone will fall off into softness. In short, if you’re focused on something far away whatever’s close to you is going to appear fuzzy and soft and vice versa.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This makes it fairly important to carefully pick what you’re focusing on, of course. A lot of the daytime shots I present here at gathered at a narrow aperture during daylight, usually F8. Alternatively, tripod shots can be as narrow an aperture as F18, which I’ll use when I want everything in frame to be sharply focused and cause those neat little starbursts to form around artificial light.

One has a series of lens based ‘formulas’ for various circumstances. I won’t bore you with all that, however, the technical camera stuff. If you’re interested, ask me when and if I see you in person and I’ll be happy to offer a lesson.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A 20 minute ride on the T light rail found me back in the Pittsburgh Borough of Dormont, where HQ is located. This is about 5 miles away from the spots in Allentown, along Arlington Avenue, the PJ McArdle roadway, and the Sly Fox Brewery where this most recent series of posts were recorded.

Back tomorrow with something different.


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In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.

Written by Mitch Waxman

October 11, 2023 at 11:00 am

2 Responses

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  1. “F/8 and be there!

    georgetheatheist . . . front page's avatar

    georgetheatheist . . . front page

    October 11, 2023 at 5:40 pm

  2. […] This 2023 post is from Pittsburgh, and describes a short walk back to the light rail which I took, after having a beer and photographing trains. […]


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