Central Florida Photo Ops

The yellow trumpet tree is very common in Central Florida. When in bloom, it is one of the most beautiful flowering trees you’ll see. When it isn’t in bloom, you won’t notice it.

Lynn and I noticed this one on the way to breakfast this morning and made a few photos on the way home. It’s already dropped quite a few blooms, but is still quite pretty.

Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)

Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)

Yellow Trumpet Tree (Tabebuia)

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Well, we had a tripod swap this week, so I went out last night to try my "new" used tripod. I made this photo in my front yard using my D90, Tokina 12 – 24mm zoom, and my new Nikon wired remote release. I set the lens at 12mm, f7.1, and exposed for 25 seconds at ISO 200, using matrix metering. I also set Exposure Delay mode on, Active D-Lighting on Auto, and used Long Exp. NR on. I recorded it in RAW and processed it in Adobe Lightroom. If you click on it, you can look at a larger version.

I like the way the palm tree leads your eye to the constellation Orion in the top right part of the photo, and the wide angle distortion causes both trees to lean in and point up. I also think the dynamic range here is pretty impressive. The moon is completely blown out of course, but the detail in the trees (lit by street lights) along with the how the stars are captured by the sensor in this camera is something I’ve never seen in a photo I’ve made before. Especially with such low noise.

Also interesting is that at 25 seconds, star trails are already visible. 25 seconds = 25/(24*60*60) or ~.1 degree. At 12mm, this lens has about a 99 degree field of view, so .1 degree is about 4 pixels.

By the way, I found out recently that the reason the wired release changed from the D80 to the D90 is that the pin out had to be modified to accommodate the GPS unit. Otherwise I could have kept and used my D80 wired release.

©2009, Ed Rosack.  All rights reserved.

We were up early last Saturday, and on the way out to breakfast, I happened to glance up and saw the sun lighting up the pine tree in our front yard. The pine needles in the top of the tree were a glowing golden color, while the lower ones still in shadow were dark green. The contrast against the blue sky was very pretty. I went back in to grab my D80 and see if I could capture what I was saw. Here’s the result (click to see a larger version):

And here’s a different perspective:

After breakfast, we stopped at a little park in our neighborhood called the Bear Creek Nature Trail, and I took a few more pictures. They’re posted here. It sure felt good to make some photos. It’s been too long.

Now I need to figure out when to re-make this photo with the moon in the frame.