I came across this page of monitor tests on a photography forum.
Will have to ask Professor Rosenthal about them…

Fast cars don’t quite do it for me… then again I have one.  Just don’t drive in NYC much/at all.  But faster lenses; that’s a different deal.  I came across a blog entry titled 14 Super Fast Aperture Lenses Worthy of Note which had some really exciting pieces of glass (did I really mean what I just said??!) featured.   The images below are from that article but linked to dpreview posts.

 

Canon 30D, hand-held, 1/60, 200 ASA.  Talk about shallow depth of field!

The first time I shot images for this exercise, I was able to use the Tiffen filters provided, but I didn’t shoot in monochrome.

A week later I reshot the exercise using colored gels.

The results were similar to Microsoft’s legendary “undocumented features” (i.e. your computer automatically restarting): a learning experience provided by an unwanted event.

I couldn’t figure out how to merge the separate layers into one channel even using Adobe’s guide.

Image J made the process much easier , though the results were not what I was expecting to see; at least not without further experimentation, observation, and additional thought.

I shot an HDR test using a location on NYC’s historic Orchard Street last week.

You can get an idea of how clear the sky was by the shadows cast by railings on the top floor of the building on the west side of the street; across from the subject building. This image is a composite of eleven separate images during “golden hour” using a Canon 30 D with a 15mm 2.8 on a tripod with cable release at 50 ASA. I shot the gray card and used that to set my white balance. The final image is the result of eleven separate images.

Clicking on the images will open larger images in new windows.

Using the lens correction filter in Photoshop I attempted to adjust the “fisheye” effect:

Note to self:
While I am in New York, I really need to get away from my desk and shoot more.

Views of a millimeter scale and a Variac using a really neat little microscope supplied by Professor Rosenthal and taken with an iPhone 4s.

Sometimes I want to see things up close.  I use my scanner for that:

“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
— Albert Einstein,  On the Method of Theoretical Physics

When I whined to Professor Rosenthal that my camera wouldn’t accept a white balance from something that was out of focus, what a pain it was to have to set the gray card down, and shoot from further than arm’s reach,  he deftly pulled out a sharpie, drew a black “X” from corner to corner of a gray card, presented it to me and said,
“There.  Now it will focus.”

Experience.  Genius.  Wisdom.

Thanks.