The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Your humble narrator had been involved in a fun scuttle for a couple of hours, when the photo above was captured.

Depicting the Fort Pitt Bridge over the Monongahela River, this and a couple of the other shots in today’s post were shot in the name of testing out a new piece of gear, recently added to the camera bag.

I should mention that I’m obsessed with unique camera support devices. One of the few spaces wherein I ‘tinker’ revolves around building novel support mechanisms for the camera. I’m forever attaching tripod heads and ARCA Swiss plates to all sort of things – bean bags, blocks of silicone, you name it.

The new addition is a ‘Super Clamp.’ Clamp, clamp, clamp.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It needed some modification, ‘out of the box,’ to fit my particular ‘use case scenario.’ Specifically, an extended bushing which introduced instability into the mount needed to go. I ordered a smaller bushing from Amazon which I swapped in – a tripod mount screw size (1/4 inch 20 turn) on one side and tripod head mount size (3/8ths 16 turn) on the other. That allowed me to securely attach a tripod head to the thing.

I screwed a ten stop ND filter onto my lens for these, to ‘slow’ down the flowing waters of the Monongahela and capture reflections.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The beauty of this device is that it allows me to clamp my camera onto fences, poles, even fire hydrants – offering a rock steady mount.

Given that I was quite taken with the thing’s performance, it’s become a regular carry ever since. My problems have now transferred over to the lens filters themselves. The ones I’ve been carrying – for years and years – are screw on filters, which are a pain in the neck to manipulate in ‘the field.’

My problem is encapsulated in the shift to the next shot.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I had time to unscrew the filter, and ‘rekajigger’ the camera settings away from ‘long and loving’ exposure over to a ‘freeze the moment’ setting, for this shot. It isn’t always the case that I can do this quickly enough, so I often miss stuff when the camera is set up for filter usage.

Accordingly, I’ve spent a bit of cash on a new set of lens filters, which use a magnetic system in lieu of the screw in system. You do have to screw an adapter into the lens, which is ferrous in composition so when a magnet enabled filter gets close to it, the glass disc just snaps right into place.

Just got these delivered, at this writing, so the verdict is out on whether or not I pissed away my money, or if the things will work as I hope and help rather than hinder my efforts. I’ve been ‘feeling’ longer exposures again for some reason.

Comparing the two bridge shots above, you can really discern the amount of color cast which my older filters alter the scene with. All ND filters have a ‘cast,’ some more severe than others.

Also, clamps.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Can’t miss a Towboat shot though, can I?

Gotta say, I’m missing the smell of salt water these days, and it’s been a long time since I was on anything but a tourist boat.

This is about when I heard the hissing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This Canadian Doofus was angry at me.

A bit of recent research in this direction revealed that – in Pittsburgh at least – the Canada Gooses segregate into two groups. There’s a purely migratory population of them, and there’s a static one which occupies the waterfronts all year long – even in winter. The latter are larger in stature and weight, according to the Pennsylvania environmental peeps. These monstrous iceholes enjoy Federal and State protection, and their only natural predators are Coyotes, Eagles, and Owls.

These predators don’t mess with adults like the one pictured above – mind you – instead preferring to pick off either the newborn Goslings, or sick and or elderly adult Gooses who can’t fight back.

I stand by my conviction that Canada Geese, as a specie, are dicks.

Back tomorrow.

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