I took the camera out last night with it set to ISO 12800. Now, maybe not a lot of you understand what that means, so I’ll try and explain.

There is a trade off between “film” speed (it’s ability to respond to the light it is trying to capture) and quality. The higher the film speed (aka ISO) results in more grain, or texture, appearing in the image. With the advent of digital, we call this phenomena “noise”. It’s kind of like tuning in your TV with rabbit ears. The lower the ISO, the better the reception.

At ISO’s above around 400, most consumer cameras will pretty much render a static laden image that just looks bad. In the film days, ISO 1600 was pretty much as high as I would “push”.

I had my camera with me last night and decided to take a couple of (boring) shots to see how well ISO 12800 might look. The results remind me of the old days with Ektachrome 400 pushed to 1600…

Straight off the camera with only a crop and saved as a JPG resized for the web.

And the detail.

These were all shot at dusk.

Here’s an HDR version from a bit later…

With the current advances, and a Canon 7D in my hands, I now feel that an acceptable image in low light is more available without a tripod.

Braden and I headed up to Madras Saturday to watch the Air Show and generally just hang out. Pizza by the slice, vintage aircraft, and classic cars were the order of the day.

We visited all of the vendors while watching and waiting for the A-10 to make it’s flight. The acrobatic shows are wonderful, but there’s just something about the roar of a military jet…

Here’s some pics from the day:

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Sometimes when life gets busier than it needs to be, I find myself looking for some solitude. I found it this weekend in the far reaches of the high desert of Oregon.

The grand vistas combined with the small details and the lack of people was very refreshing.

Tomorrow I start a new job. Same circus, different tent.

Here’s some images from my trip.

Last night I headed up into the mountains in an attempt to make an image of the Perseid meteors whose majestic show is currently peaking. I saw a lot of streaking meteors, but didn’t fair too well with making an image of them. I’ll try again this weekend.

Here’s one from the night. If you look real close you can see a couple of the Perseids…