Archive for November 1st, 2023
Scuttling wide
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Testing out a couple of newly acquired lenses, a humble narrator debarked Pittsburgh’s ‘T’ light rail service at its terminal stop, which is dubbed as ‘Allegheny.’ Allegheny is across the street from the sports ball stadium on Pittsburgh’s North Side, where the Pittsburgh Steelers do their thing. I had walked and described this path in detail last week – here, and here. A pretty decent scuttle this is, I would mention, one which is about 5 miles long and involves negotiating several flights of stairs, while offering interesting scenery that’s quite ’photogenic.’
At the start of the endeavor, I had outfitted the camera with an extremely wide angle prime lens of 16mm which offers something like 140 degrees of view. There’s a decent amount of distortion inherent to this kind of ‘fish eye’ dealie, although a true fisheye would be more like 8mm. I was trying to ‘get to know’ the thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I learned on this walk is that the focal point for the lens needs to be in the dead bang center of the frame, or you’re going to get a significant amount of optical fisheye distortion. Look at the way that the truck in lower right leans into the shot above, for instance. This is after the photoshop lens profile is applied, which somewhat ameliorates these distortions, I would add. There’s a way around this sort of thing, with a different kind of wide angle lens that’s called a ‘tilt shift,’ but there you are.
A humble narrator was heading towards the West End Bridge pictured at the center of the shot, which is described in one of the posts linked to above. It was overcast and cool out, but I was sweating a bit as I was really leaning into the walk and moving somewhat rapidly. According to my phone’s health app, this part of the walk was 12,162 steps long, which translates down to about six miles. The trick to it being ‘good cardio,’ according to my team of Doctors, revolves around getting the pulse rate up to a certain level, and then steadily maintaining that pace over an extended interval of time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had two new lenses which I was trying out on this walk, the 16mm and a 50mm. I kept on beating down the urge to swap the 50mm onto the camera until I reached the southern shore of the Ohio River which is spanned by the West End Bridge. Along the way, I narrowed and then opened the aperture, shot from the waist and from above my head. I overexposed and under exposed, pointing the thing ‘up, down, all around.’ As mentioned – getting to know it, trying to find what the thing couldn’t do, and how and why it would fail.
More tomorrow, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 