July 26, 2008 Supercell Panorama

I finally got around to stitching a mediocre panorama of the July 26, 2008 HP Supercell that was west of Sunnyslope, Alberta. Im not 100% certain, but that sure looks like a wet RFD in there. If you can look super closely, you can make out a farm on top of the hill towards the bottom right, which can give you perspective on how large this storm is! This was by far my favourite storm of 2008 and I'm glad I stuck with it since early on its life, west of the QE2, it was a crappy, outflow dominate shelfy mess. The series of photo's were taken at 5:42pm according to my camera information, and the 2340UTC [5:40pm] Carvel radar scan which I posted shows what appears to be a hook, with a shot of purple [RFD?] in it. I sure wish I had a Strathmore radar scan to compare! I hope to see more storms like this next summer.

Canon Rebel XTi
Aperture: F-8
Shutter: Various
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18mm

Some HDR-ish Photos

I visited my Grannie and Grampa's farm west of Westlock in the beginning of November, and quickly took some photos, since I was mainly there to visit. I ended up bracketing pretty well every photo I took, in hopes for one day I could mess around and combine them in Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photox2 HDR photo merge command. (I'm still hesitiant in spending real $$$ for Photoshop, maybe one day, so I'll just stick to the poor mans Photoshop for now!) I also found that I bracketed some photos of the August 9, 2008 Arcus that came through as well. After merging the bracketed exposures, I did more adjusting with Corel's clarity slider to give the photo's more of a 'moodier' feel. Then I Imported the photos into Lightroom to give each photo a watermark. Done deal.

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/80

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 13mm

5 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/80

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 16mm

5 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/50

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 10mm

5 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/100

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 15mm

5 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/125

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 10mm

3 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/125

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 16mm

3 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-6.3

Shutter: 1/125

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 10mm

3 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-7.1

Shutter: 1/25

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 18mm

3 Bracketed Exposures

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-7.1

Shutter: 1/40

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 18mm

3 Bracketed Exposures

Iris Germanica

I was looking through photos of my storm chasing trip down to the USA this past spring and found this photo of some Bearded Iris wildflowers. We were waiting for storms to initiate in an upslope flow environment in the Nebraska panhandle at a truckstop in the town of Sidney, when I found these along a bank with the Nebraska plains in the foreground on June 1st, 2008. The upslope flow eventually payed off, and we were treated to a beautifully structured Supercell.

Canon Rebel XTi
Aperture: F-5.0
Shutter: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 27mm

Canon Rebel XTi

Aperture: F-7.1

Shutter: 1/125

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 18mm

It's like sunglasses for your camera

I bought a polarizing filter for my Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens today, and drove to the Red Deer river west of Penhold to try it out. I remembered seeing a sandbar on the river when I was working awile back, so I thought I'd set up the tripod there and start shooting. I debating buying this filter for awile because when shooting with a super wide angle lens, apparently vignetting is common. But I like how it eliminates glare from water, increases colors, and darkens skies. It also helps protect the lens as well. Since the filter is dark, less light gets to the sensor in the camera, so obviously using a tripod is a good idea! With more practise, I'll hopefully get a good handle on this filter, and use it accordingly, but judging from these 3 photos, I already like what it does to my images.

Canon Rebel Xti
Aperture: F-8
Shutter: 1/15
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 10mm
Kenko 77mm Circular Polarized filter.

I tried to capture everything I'd like to see in a photo like this: Rocks, driftwood, waterfowl tracks, sticks in the water and the reflection from the dry, brown vegetation along the river bank. Notice how clear the filter makes the river look. The sky is unevenly polarized due to the 10mm focal length, but I knew that was going to happen buying this filter.

Canon Rebel XTi
Aperture: F-8
Shutter: 1/50
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 10mm
Kenko 77mm Circular Polarized filter.

I thought the point of the sandbar was interesting enough to photograph! There is no annoying glare from the sun on the river, which is awesome! And because 10mm can cover a large part of the sky, the sky at the top left is more blue than the sky at the top right in this photo - the sky was polarized to different amounts.

Canon Rebel XTi
Aperture: F-8
Shutter: 1/30
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 10mm
Kenko 77mm Circular Polarized filter.

Here I set yet another narrow aperture, with a 10mm focal length towards the river to show again that theres no annoying glare reflecting from the sun. I added some shoreline and dead trees, to try to make it more interesting.

Note: Upon researching polarized filters, you have to shoot 90 degrees from the sun in order to attain the greatest polarized effect, which I tried to do my best here. Each of these 3 photos were bracketed, and there wasnt any post image processing in Adobe Lightroom, just minor adjusting when I converted these from RAW capture to jpeg. And finally, I didnt feel like unscrewing the filter on and off, to show the before and after effect, which I'm thinking I should have!