Bryant Street, SF.
Panny GX7, 17mm Zuiko.
#A
Monthly Archives: January 2015
San Francisco
From atop the park in Bernal Heights.
Click the image above to download the 28MB JPG file – 12,500 pixels wide.
Click the downloaded image to enlarge.
May take a while to download, depending on the speed of your broadband connection.
There was no choice. On a fabulous cool, haze free day Bernal Heights beckoned as the sweeping views from the park afford simultaneous views of the Golden Gate Bridge, far left and the Oakland Bay Bridge, far right. Eat your heart out, Noo Yawk. From this vantage point the Transamerica pyramid is hidden behind the Bank of America tower. The panorama subtends an angle of view of approximately 180 degrees – half a circle.
7 image hand held panorama stitched in Photoshop, the combined PSD file from the RAW originals is over 600MB in size. I allowed lots of overlap between the images and the use of a distortion free medium length lens made the job easy for Photoshop to do perfectly first time.
Panasonic GX7, 45mm Zuiko, 1/8000 @ f/6.3, using manual exposure to keep the sky density constant. I cranked the ISO up to allow use of the shortest shutter speed and the optimum aperture for the superb Olympus Zuiko lens on the no less estimable Panasonic GX7. A touch of noise reduction was applied in Lightroom. If you had told me a decade ago that this sort of quality was possible with a pocketable, hand held camera I would have recommended a quick trip to your local loony bin.
Being positive
Obvious, really.
A timely reminder that no successful person in history got that way by being negative. From Washington to Gandhi, they were all incurable optimists.
Don’t hang out with negative people. They are, by definition, losers who seek to drag you down with them.
Panny GX7 17mm Oly Zuiko.
Hollywood in Kodachrome
Superb.
Click the image for Amazon.
An outstanding book with some 300 gorgeously reproduced images of the stars of the golden age of Hollywood. The care and attention to detail evident in the making of these images are really special.
Personal favorites? Why Lauren Bacall of course (on the cover, aged just 21) and Loretta Young, two of the most sohisticated beauties of the era. Today only one actress remotely has comparable presence – Angelina Jolie. Be sure to catch her in Maleficent, a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty tale by none other than Disney, of all studios. She deserves to be in this splendid book.
Kodachrome of the time came in roll and sheet film, the latter as large as 11″ x 14″ and in ISO speeds of just 8 (daylight) and 10 (tungsten), meaning lots of very bright and very hot lights to make the stars look just so. We have it easier today, but with fewer truly glamorous stars.
Classics
In Sausalito.
Panny GX7, 45mm Oly Zuiko.