mattblaze

mattblaze, 3 days ago

Captured with a Nikkor 90mm/4.5 lens on a Sinar P camera with a BetterLight 4x5 scanning digital back.

This is really more a study in lines than anything else. The simple, unadorned design of the derelict building invites interpreting abstract forms.

mattblaze, 4 days ago

This was made with a DSLR and a swinging lens to provide selective focus on the milepost at left. This moved the plane of focus to be non-parallel with camera, yielding only a sliver in focus.

Image was was captured at "Park Junction" in Philadelphia, where the former Reading Railroad once met the former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. What caught my eye was the old school graffiti moniker on the base of the milepost, in a style traditionally used by yard workers and hobos to tag freight cars.

mattblaze, 5 days ago

Captured with a DSLR and a Zeiss 21mm Distagon lens. Handheld (there was no room to set up a tripod).

in 2009, I was fortunate to join a "top to bottom" tour of former Air Force Titan ICBM site 571-7, now preserved as a museum. Titan II missiles carried a 9 megaton(!) "physics package" in the "reentry vehicle" (which they emphatically assured me had been removed from this missile, but I still wouldn't advise upsetting them too much).

mattblaze, 5 days ago

More ICBM photos and discussion here: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/titans/

mattblaze, 5 days ago

@dannotdaniel That's all well and good, but professional users feel locked in to the many of the Adobe features. The software may have problems, but some aspects of it are the best available.

mattblaze, 5 days ago

@dannotdaniel Oh yes, and to the extent it helps people avoid being locked in, it's very useful.

But I wouldn't expect a mass exodus of existing users, especially those with complex workflows.

mattblaze, 5 days ago

@robpike And we own any nails you hit with it.

mattblaze, 6 days ago

Captured with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W (@ f/6.3 lens, Phase One IQ4-150 back, and Phase One XT camera. Composite of two shifted images (+/- 12mm from center horizontally, -12mm vertically).

Technically the "House of the Temple, Headquarters of the Supreme Council, 33°, Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, Washington DC". The local Masonic temple, museum, library, and, I'm told, a gift shop. Definitely no human sacrifices performed there.

mattblaze, 6 days ago

This is a stitched composite of two captures made from the same position, using horizontal shift movements to get a wider field of view on either side. This was really the only way to capture this building from in front of a tree that would otherwise have obstructed the facade, while also keeping its geometry undistorted. The final result is roughly the angle of view of a 14mm lens (in 35mm full frame terms), with a total of about 190 megapixels in the combined frame.

mattblaze, 6 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

I used the 32mm Rodenstock here. I could have just barely squeezed it into a single frame with the wider-angle 23mm, except that the 23 doesn't have a large enough image circle to accommodate the vertical shift needed to keep the vertical lines from converging. The 32 has a much larger image circle, and so stitching with it yields a wider angle of view than I could obtain with the 23 (which allows only much more limited movements). More pixels this way, too.

mattblaze, 6 days ago

@ai6yr Still beats facing artillery fire, though.