Josef “Jeff” Sipek

Prague & IETF

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In mid-July 2017, I got to travel to Prague to participate in IETF’s 99th meeting.

The IETF meeting itself was great—lots of useful discussion about the next-generation email accessing protocol (called JMAP).

I stayed a couple of days extra to enjoy Prague, and Holly flew out from Helsinki to revisit Prague where she’s been once before—for our honeymoon.

I dragged my D750 and the two lenses with me and made to sure to take photos (almost) all the time. The gallery contains only a handful of the approximately 1100 raw files. Of those, I selected 11 for this blahg post.

Wikipedia article: Malá Strana Bridge Tower:

Wikipedia article: St. Nicholas Church with the Wikipedia article: Žižkov Television Tower in the background:

Wikipedia article: Matthias Gate with Wikipedia article: St. Vitus Cathedral peeking in the background:

The Wikipedia article: National Theatre:

Wikipedia article: Charles Bridge and a view of Wikipedia article: Old Town:

Wikipedia article: St. Vitus Cathedral from Wikipedia article: Petřín near sunset:

St. Nicholas Church again during sunset (and without the ugly Žižkov TV tower):

A gargoyle keeping the St. Nicholas Church’s masonry safe:

A view from the top of Wikipedia article: Old Town Bridge Tower with roofs and towers of (left to right):

Church of Saint Wikipedia article: Francis of Assisi, the left tower of Wikipedia article: Church of Our Lady before Týn, the clock tower and the Astronomical tower of Wikipedia article: Clementinum:

St. Nicholas Church yet again, this time from the Malá Strana Bridge Tower:

Wikipedia article: Charles Bridge, Wikipedia article: Old Town Bridge Tower, Church of Saint Wikipedia article: Francis of Assisi, and Wikipedia article: Žižkov Television Tower (from the Malá Strana Bridge Tower):

Prague offers a lot to see. The few photos I selected for this blahg post don’t show anywhere near enough of it. There are more photos in the gallery, but even those are merely highlights of what one can see in Prague. If you haven’t been to Prague yet, I highly recommend a trip.

Tallinn

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In late June 2017, Holly and I did a day trip to Wikipedia article: Tallinn. This wasn’t the first time I was in Tallinn, so I knew what the interesting parts of the old town were. As always, there is a gallery with more photos.

Tallinn’s old town is a medieval pocket in a otherwise modern city. In some of the photos you can see the modern civilization right behind a medieval tower.

A view of the Wikipedia article: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral from the tower of Wikipedia article: St. Mary’s Cathedral:

The tower of St. Mary’s Cathedral:

A section of the fortification wall that remains:

I’ve been to Tallinn twice and all my time there was spent in the old town. This makes me far from an expert about what there is to do. With that said, I enjoyed my time there and I recommend a day trip to anyone visiting nearby.

OH-LCD

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

When I attended the Kaivopuisto Air Show in early June last year, I learned about the existence of the Finnish Aviation Museum. It took me a month and a half, but eventually I found a free day to go check it out.

The museum itself is packed with all sorts of aircraft on static display. While they were interesting (and I certainly took plenty of photos of them), they aren’t what this post is about. This post is about Lokki—a retired Wikipedia article: DC-3 (registration OH-LCD) on display outside of the museum.

As luck would have it, the folks from the DC Association were there that day trying to see if they could start up Lokki’s engines—after 12 years of inactivity. After a lot of preparation, they managed to start them!

Without further ado, here are a few photos of Lokki (more photos can be found in the gallery).

Wikipedia article: Aero OY was the original name of Finnair:

One of the mechanics working on the left engine:

One of the people from the DC Association, seeing that I was obviously excited about the plane, asked me if I’d like to climb inside. I said yes, of course.

The inside was pretty bare-bones (which is to be expected of a static display that’s normally closed to public). I took a couple of photos inside, but most weren’t that interesting.

Throttle quadrant (note: most of the instrument panel was removed long ago):

It runs!

The livery is pretty simple—polished aluminum with dark blue lettering and a stripe:

I’m not really sure why they wanted to see if they could start the engines, but I’m happy that it worked out. Radial engines just have a unique roar to them.

Anyway, that’s it about Lokki. Hopefully I’ll get around to post processing the photos from the museum itself soon.

Kaivopuisto Air Show 2017

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

In early June 2017, we attended an air show in Wikipedia article: Kaivopuisto. Unfortunately, we found out about it last minute, and so we missed the beginning which included a Finnair Airbus A350 flyby. Pity.

The show included a number of trainers and combat aircraft performing various maneuvers. Here are the highlights (for more photos visit the gallery).

Wikipedia article: Red Arrows:

A seagull joining in:

Wikipedia article: Finnish Coast Guard’s Wikipedia article: Turva nearby with Wikipedia article: Suomenlinna visible behind it:

Wikipedia article: Eurofighter Typhoon:

Wikipedia article: Saab 35 Draken:

Wikipedia article: Saab Gripen:

During one of the passes, I took a burst of images and then assembled them into a Southwest 737 “Airportrait”-style image.

Finnish Air Force Wikipedia article: F-18 Hornet:

A Finnish aerobatics team Wikipedia article: Midnight Hawks flying Wikipedia article: BAE Systems Hawk:

Even though this post has more photos than I typically share, there are many more in the gallery. So, if you are into airplanes, I suggest you peruse it.

Juhannus 2017

This post is part of a series named “Europe 2017” where I share photos from my adventures in Europe during the summer 2017.

You may have noticed that I was a bit quiet during the last summer. I have a really good reason for it: I spent five months in Helsinki for work. On weekends, Holly and I got to explore, which led me to accumulate approximately 12000 photos. Sadly, I am quite behind on post processing them all, but I will get through them eventually.

This post is about how I spent Wikipedia article: Juhannus last year.

Juhannus is the name of the Finnish summer solstice holiday. It is a time to relax, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy oneself. Every year, a nearby island, Wikipedia article: Seurasaari, has an afternoon and evening with an assortment of traditional events and bonfires.

There is of course a gallery of my photos.

Every year, one couple is selected to have their wedding on Seurasaari during Juhannus. Here is 2017’s lucky couple:

Before about half a dozen bonfires are set ablaze, a number of “can fires” is lit:

The largest bonfire gets lit by the newlyweds—from a boat:

I’m not sure how exactly the big bonfire pile was constructed, but it didn’t take long for it to grow:

So, that was Juhannus on Seurasaari in 2017. It was a nice and relaxing afternoon and evening, and if I happen to be in Helsinki around Juhannus in the future, I’ll likely spend the day on Seurasaari.

I’m going to end this post with a bit of Finnish (from finland.fi) because languages can be fun:

– Kokoo koko kokko kokoon!
– Koko kokkoko?
– Koko kokko.

Meaning:

– Assemble the Midsummer bonfire!
– The whole Midsummer bonfire?
– Yes, the whole Midsummer bonfire.

(I’m told that kokoo is a dialect form of kokoa.)

The Mobile Cat

About three weeks ago I got the idea to put a phone in front of the cat and use it to light her. It took a while for everything to align (she needed to be resting just the right way, it had to be dark, and I had to notice and have my camera handy), but I think the result was worth it:

D750: A Year In Statistics

It has been a year since I got the D750 and I thought it would be fun to gather some statistics about the photos.

While I have used a total of 5 different lenses with the D750, only three of them got to see any serious use. The lenses are:

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
This is the lens I used for the first month. Old, cheap, but very good.
Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6D ED
I got this lens many years ago for my D70. During the first month of D750 ownership, I couldn’t resist seeing what it would behave like on the D750. It was a disaster. This lens just doesn’t create a good enough image for the D750’s 24 megapixel sensor.
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 ED VR
I used this lens when I test-drove the D750, so technically I didn’t take these with my camera. With that said, I’m including it because it makes some of the graphs look more interesting.
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
After a month of using the 50mm, I got this lens which became my walk around lens.
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
Back in June, Nikon had a sale and that ended up being just good enough to convince me to spend more money on photography gear.

Now that we’ve covered what lenses I have used, let’s take a look at some graphs. First of all, the number of images taken with each lens:

Not very surprising. Since June, I have been taking with me either the 24-70mm, or 70-200mm, or both if the extra weight is not a bother. So it is no surprise that the vast majority of my photos have been taken with those two lenses. The 50mm is all about that first month when I had a new toy (the D750!) and so I dragged it everywhere. (And to be fair, the 50mm lens is so compact that it is really easy to drag it everywhere.) The 230 photos taken with the 70-300mm are all (failed) attempts at plane spotting photography.

First, let’s look at the breakdown by ISO (in 1/3 stop increments):

This is not a surprising graph at all. The D750’s base ISO is 100 and the maximum native ISO is 12800. It is therefore no surprise that most of the photos were taken at ISO 100.

I am a bit amused by the spikes at 200, 400, and 800. I know exactly why these happen—when I have to adjust the exposure by a large amount, I tend to scroll the wheels a multiple of three notches.

Outside of the range, there are a couple of photos (52) taken at ISO 50 (which Nikon calls “Lo 1”) to work around the lack of an ND filter. There is actually one other photo outside of the native ISO range that I did not plot at all—the one photo I took at ISO 51200 (“Hi 2”) as a test.

Now, let’s break the numbers down differently—by the aperture used (again in 1/3 stop increments):

I am actually surprised that so many of them are at f/2.8. I’m well aware that most lenses need to be stepped down a little for best image quality, but apparently I don’t do that a third of the time. It is for this kind of insight that I decided to make this blahg post.

Moving on to focal length. This is by far the least interesting graph.

You can clearly see 4 large spikes—at 24 mm, 50 mm, 70 mm, and 200 mm. All of those are because of focal length limits of the lenses. Removing any data points over 500 yields a slightly more readable graph:

It is interesting that the focal length that is embedded in the image doesn’t seem to be just any integer, but rather there appear to be “steps” in which it changes. The step also isn’t constant. For example, the 70-200mm lens seems to encode 5 mm steps above approximately 130 mm but 2-3 mm below it.

I realize this is a useless number given that we are dealing with nothing like a unimodal distribution, but I was curious what the mean focal length was. (I already know that the most common ones are 24 mm and 70 mm for the 24-70mm, and 70 mm and 200 mm for the 70-200mm lens.)

Lens Mean Focal Length Count
24-120    73.24138 87
24-70    46.72043 6485
50    50.00000 1020
70-200    151.69536 4438
70-300    227.82609 230

Keep in mind these numbers include the removed spikes.

Just eyeballing the shutter speed data, I think that it isn’t even worth plotting.

So, that’s it for this year. I found the (basic) statistics interesting enough, and I learned that I stay at f/2.8 a bit too much.

Flying around Mount Monadnock

Last week I planned on doing a nice cross country flight from Wikipedia article: Fitchburg. Inspired by Garrett Fisher’s photos, I took my camera and the 70-200mm lens with me hoping to get a couple of nice photos of the landscapes in New Hampshire.

Sadly, after taking off from KFIT I found out that not only was there the stiff wind that was forecasted (that’s fine) but the air was sufficiently bumpy that it wouldn’t have been a fun flight. On top of that, the ADS-B unit was having problems acquiring a GPS signal. (Supposedly, the firmware sometimes gets into a funny state like this. The good news is that there is a firmware update available that should address this.) I contacted KASH tower to check if they could see my transponder—they did, so I didn’t have to worry about being totally invisible.

Since I was already off the ground, I decided to do some nearby sightseeing, landing practice, and playing with the Garmin GNS 430 GPS.

First, I headed northwest toward Wikipedia article: Mount Monadnock. While I have seen it in the distance several times before, I never got to see it up close, so this seemed like a worthwhile destination.

As I approached it, I ended up taking out my camera and getting a couple of photos of the hills and mountains in New Hampshire. It was interesting how the the view to the north (deeper into New Hampshire) is hilly, but the view more east (and certainly south) is flatter. (Both taken near Mount Monadnock.)

While the visibility was more than good enough for flying, it didn’t work out that well for photography. In all of the photos, the landscape far away ended up being heavily blue-tinted. No amount of playing around with white balance adjustment in Lightroom was able to correct it. (Either the background was too blue, or the foreground was too yellow/brown.) That’s why all of these photos are black and white.

I made a full turn around Monadnock, taking a number of shots but this one is my favorite:

Once done with Monadnock, I headed south to the Wikipedia article: Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. This is a view toward the south from near its north end:

At this point I started heading to KORH to do some landing practice. Since I was plenty busy, there are no photos.

I’ve never been to this airport before and landing at new airports is always fun. The first interesting thing about it is that it is situated on a hill. While most airports around here are at 200-400 feet MSL, this one is at 1000 feet. The westerly wind favored runway 29 which meant I got to see a second interesting aspect of this airport. The beginning of runway 29 is on the edge of the hill. That by itself doesn’t sound very interesting, but consider that the runway is at 1000 feet while the bottom of the hill (a mere 0.9 km away) is at 500 feet MSL. That is approximately a 17% grade. So, as you approach the runway, at first it looks like you are way too high but the ground comes up significantly faster than normal.

I am still hoping to do my originally planned cross country flight at some point. Rest assured that I will blahg about it.

Plane-spotting in Manchester, NH

Last weekend I got to drive to Wikipedia article: Manchester, so I used the opportunity to kill some time near the airport by watching planes and taking photos (gallery).

The winds were coming from the south, so runway 17 was in use. I think those are the best plane spotting conditions at KMHT.

It is relatively easy to watch aircraft depart and fly directly overhead:

Unlike all my previous plane spotting, this time I tried something new—inspired by Mike Kelly’s Airportraits, I decided to try to make some composite images. Here is a Southwest Boeing 737 sporting one of the Wikipedia article: special liveries:

It was certainly an interesting experience.

At first I thought that I would be able to use the 7 frames/second that the D750 can do for the whole departure, but it turns out that the planes move far too slowly, so the camera buffer filled up way too soon and the frame rate became somewhat erratic. What mostly ended up working was switching to 3 frames/second and taking bursts. Next time, aiming for about 2 frames/second should give me enough images to work with.

Even though I used a tripod, I expected that I would have to align the images to remove the minor misalignment between images due to the vibration from the rather strong wind and my hand depressing the shutter. It turns out that the misalignment (of approximately 10 pixels) was minor enough that it did not change the final image.

Here’s an American Airlines commuter taking off from runway 17. (I repositioned to get a less head-on photo as well.)

For those curious, I post processed each of the images in Lightroom, exported them as TIFFs, and then used GIMP to do the layering and masking. Finally, I exported the final image and imported it back into Lightroom for safekeeping.

As a final treat, as I was packing up a US Army Gulfstream took off:

As far as I can tell, they use this one to transport VIPs. I wonder who was on board…

Visiting Helsinki

Back in July and August I got to visit Helsinki. Needless to say, I dragged my camera and lenses along and did some sightseeing. Helsinki is a relatively new but welcoming city.

July

My first trip there was in early July (7th-10th). This meant that I was there about two weeks after the summer solstice. At 60°10’ north, this has been the northernmost place I’ve ever been. (I’m not really counting the layover in Reykjavik at 63°59’ north, although I do have an interesting story about that for another time.) If you combine these two relatively boring facts (very far north and near solstice timing), you end up with nearly 19 hours of daylight! This gave me ample time to explore. Below are a couple of photos I took while there. There are more in the gallery.

Approaching Wikipedia article: Senate Square and the Wikipedia article: Helsinki Cathedral:

The cathedral:

Not far from this (Lutheran) cathedral is an Eastern Orthodox cathedral—Wikipedia article: Uspenski Cathedral.

And here is its interior:

Like a number of other cities in Europe, Helsinki is filled with bikes. Most sidewalks seem to be divided into two parts—one for walking and one for biking. The public transit seems to include bike rentals. These rental bikes are very…yellow.

Suomenlinna

On Saturday, July 9th, I took a ferry to the nearby sea fortress—Wikipedia article: Suomenlinna—where I spent the day.

Of course there is a (small) church there. (You can also see it in the above photo in the haze.) This one has a sea-fortress-inspired chain running around it.

The whole fortress is made up of six islands. This allows you to see some of the fortifications up close as well as at some distance.

There are plenty of small buildings of various types scattered around the islands. Some of them are still used as residences, while others got turned into a museum or some other public space.

August

The August trip was longer and consisted of more roaming around the city.

The Helsinki Cathedral in the distance.

There are a fair number of churches—here is the Wikipedia article: Kamppi Chapel.

Heading west of the city center (toward Wikipedia article: Länsisatama) one cannot miss the fact that Helsinki is a coastal city.

Finally, on the last day of my August trip I got to see some sea creatures right in front of the cathedral. They were made of various pieces of plastic. As far as I could tell, this art installation was about environmental awareness.

I took so long to finish writing this post that I’ve gotten to visit Helsinki again last month…but more about that in a separate post. Safe travels!

Powered by blahgd