Lunar Eclipse

Tonight there was a total eclipse of the moon. They say it won't happen again, at least here in Minnesota, till 2010. I've never tried photography the moon so I figured I'd give this a shot. Ha! pun!.

It was a crystal clear night however it was also only 1 degree out so I decided to try shooting from a window. I did go to the trouble of opening the window for each shot thinking that I would avoid the distortion of the glass. But now I wonder if I just introduced distortion of all the heat waves I was letting out!

The experiment was so-so. None of the shots were very sharp but the exposures were fairly ok. The left most exposure was of the complete eclipse. I had to drop the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/4 ofa second just to get anything. It was only then that you could see into the shadow. All the detail was always there in the previous shots but was overwhelmed by the bright side.

Shibuya Panorama Revisited

I just had to go back into this panorama. So much of what makes this corner so cool are all the huge video screens. I think there are 3-4. But the pano doesn't really show them. The overexposed one on the right, called Super Lisa, was kind of unavoidable but the monster one right in the middle, the Q-Front, is barely noticeable - and its 3 stories high! It was bad timing that there wasn't a feed when I snapped the 3 shots for the panorama.

But looking through all my photos of that evening I came across a shot with a decent exposure of both screens. So I just had to go back in. The Super Lisa monitor was simple. I cropped out the screen area on the original and scaled the image to fit. A little color correction and it was done. The Q-Front was a little more tricky because of the grid running through the image and the building. But actually the grid helped me register the 2 as I scaled down the image on a separate layer. Once in place I used a little math to do the combining. I set the image layer blend mode to Add which takes the pixel value of the top layer and adds it to the pixel value layer underneath. So white (256) + black(0) = 256 (white). So what happens is that all the black of the image at a value of 0 does not get added to the original wall color. No need to do a ton of erasing. Neat huh?
One last thing I had to do was to go into the added images and try to match the noise. It's a little weird to think about adding noise but if you looked really closely you would notice the videos being smoother then the surroundings. That can tell the brain that something funny is going on.

To me this now better captures my experience of Shibuya even thou it is not a photo of a real moment in time.

Shibuya Panorama

Another panorama from Tokyo. This time in the trendy area of Shibuya. This corner is the Time Square of Japan making it probably the second most over photographed spot next to Mt Fuji. But for good reason becuase it is so cool. Never the less it's one of my favorite places and deserving of a place in my blog. This was another set of photos that I had forgotten about and had never assembled until now.

Here is a google map of the area. The blue marker is where I was standing.


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Tokyo Panorama

I've been spending some time reviewing and cleaning out my digital photos. With Lightroom it's a pleasure not a chore. I discovered some shots from Tokyo that I never got around to assembling into a panorama. Worked out anyway because now I have good software to do it.

This shot was from the top of the Mori Building in Roppongi. A beautiful new tower. Just to the left of center is the Tokyo Tower. A well know Tokyo landmark that, yes, is a ripoff of the Eiffel Tower. In the distance is Tokyo bay. You can just make out the Raindow Bridge that crosses over to Odaiba.

As you can see it was a hazy day which always leads to dull low contrast photographs. Yet with Lightroom I was able to easily extract enough contrast to make a decent, thou not great, shot. To give you an idea of where I started, here is what the center shot looked like unprocessed.

Japanese Food in St Paul

Seems like Sushi resturants are popping up everywhere in the Twin Cities. Recently a new one named Giapponese opened in Woodbury near our home and I'm told another one named Akita Sushi and Hibachi is on the way. These two join Sushi Tango which opened last Summer in Woodbury. What is going on?

For the last year Linda and I have been very happy with Murasaki in Stillwater, MN or would make the trip into downtown St Paul to Sakura or the St Paul location of the long time favorite, Fujiya. I don't really consider myself a huge sushi lover. I'd rather have a bowl Japanese noodles or Tempura if given the choice. But I will also happily eat sushi from Target for a fast lunch so I'm no sushi snob.

We've already eliminated Sushi Tango from our list. The service was terrible 2 of the 3 times we've been there. There was nothing spectacular about the sushi or the courses like tempura to over come the apathy of the wait staff. Too bad as it's the closest to our house.

As I said before we really like Murasaki. It's a no thrills restaurant with a good selection of Japanese dishes and good sushi. It reminds me a lot of typical family owned restaurants in Japan. Although I'm pretty sure no one there is Japanese. Hey, that's ok.

The new kid on the block is Giapponese. We went there a week ago and have already been back. I love this place already! It's a hip place with a mod decor. They don't have a big selection of Japanese hot dishes (not as in Minnesota hotdish silly!) but the sushi is excellent. Monday we sat at the sushi bar which is something we never do. I guess we like to look at each other when we eat. Well this time we sat at the bar and got to interact with the sushi chef who, yes, is actually Japanese! But the best part about Giapponese is that they serve Japanese beers on tap! I've never seen that anywhere in North America let alone Minnesota. BTW they also have Fat Tire on tap which is also something you don't find around here. I'm really pulling for Giapponese to make it.

Although technically in Minneapolis there is also a new sushi spot just north of the U of M campus called Obento ya. I met a few friends there for dinner. The unagi was cold and they had no beer license. That place is dead to me.

If you haven't been to a sushi resturant you may want to learn a little from this video before you go. If you've every been to a real Japanese restaurant you will find it very funny.

Haleakala Panorama

Another panorama on top of the volcano. The last one I swear. Panoramas seem to always be horizontal so I decided to try a vertical along the valley bottom. When taking pano photos it's important to shot in fully manual mode so that the exposures will be the same across all photos. With this shot I had to balance between the bright sky and background with the dark foreground. That is another reason why shooting in RAW is great because I can play around with the exposures once I get back home instead of trying to get it right on the spot.

Haleakala Summit

After my epic climb up the mountain, I pulled out the camera equipment to record the strange and beautiful landscape. It's hard to believe I'm on the same island. It's more like being on the Moon.

On the extreme right edge in the far background you can begin to see the sloop of Moana Kea on the big island.

This panorama is facing north into Haleakala valley. According to the pamphlet the volcano crater has long since eroded away. What we now see is a valley dug into what used to be the top.