My "Super Bowl" Pics -or- Barney, Take 2

At the risk of beating a revived lighthouse, these should be my last pics for a while. I thought they'd be worth posting, despite the repetitive subject. By the way, I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but my camera is an Olympus C3020 Zoom—no longer state of the art, but still an arty enough state for me.

Since my fairly recent trip to the Barnegat Lighthouse I'd been waiting for a potentially decent night to head back and try my hand at some more twilight/night photos. With no crowd and therefore plenty of time and elbow room I figured it would be much easier to wander around at leisure and set up wherever, trying different camera settings to see what sort of images I could get. The hard part was trying to figure a night when it might not be freezing cold so I could be reasonably comfortable.

I had zero interest in the Super Bowl and I simply refuse to watch it for the commercials for as most of my family and friends know I'm a muter to begin with (apparently one of the few, but whatever). I also figure that what few decent commercials there were will likely continue to be aired in the coming weeks during other sporting events and programs. I don't need to see them the night of their "big premieres" to discuss them the next day.

So late in the afternoon I headed for Long Beach Island instead. I didn't really know how cold it would be, but it was in the 40s during the day here at home (an hour or so inland) and I hoped it wouldn't be too bad there. Luckily it wasn't. Of course, a lot of times at the shore the issue isn't so much the actual temp as much as it is the wind chill factor. But there was barely a breeze and even that was only on the oceanward side of the lighthouse, nothing near what it was like Jan 1st for the official relighting event. So the weather cooperated quite nicely.

As with all of my photographic trials some shots came out decent, others not so much. One of the problems I have with experimenting is that I don't take the time to log what settings I use for each pic. Tedious as that would be to do it would be helpful later when I'm viewing them at home, so I could really get a good idea of what settings work best under what circumstances. Oh well.

I do actually have some idea of the variations of settings I was using here and there. Bottom line might just be that it pays to take the same basic shot two or three times while varying one or two settings each time (at least until I really do get the hang of it). Some shots may come out best with one combo of settings, others with another combo. Hard to say what will look best until you see the full view.

Despite the lack of a "scientific method" to my experimentation, it was still a good learning experience for doing night shots and quite helpful. I do know I had the flash turned off for most and any shots where it may have fired, well, it didn't really factor into the resulting image one way or another.

What follows are what I've picked out as the best ones.... Or if not the best, then at least ones that show a particular something (which I'll note). I'll keep the commentary about each as brief as possible and note image file sizes in parens after the text links for anyone to whom that matters (i.e. dialup folks). Click either the text links or the ensuing corresponding paired thumbnails to view the larger images.

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1. An initial shot of the lighthouse (93K) looking at it just past the building on the right there (and from the end of the lighthouse street). This is mainly just to set the scene. The sun was setting inland behind me. Even though this shot is looking away from the sunset I like the nuanced color(s) of the sky beyond the lighthouse.

2. Same as #1, but max zoomed (60K) to focus more on the lighthouse. (BTW, when I say max zoomed, that's 3x for my camera. That was pretty much all the cameras came with back around the turn of the millennium when I got it.)

     


3. Turning away from Barney, I captured the inland sunset looking through the seawall railing (90K). Having the railing in the shot makes it "artistic."

4. Same inland sunset, but without the railing (105K)

     


5. Docked fishing boat, sunset background (86K)

6. Looking skyward at the lighthouse (34K)

     


7. Lighthouse with sunset background (64K) as viewed from the oceanside walkway. You can make out that the light has started up for the night.

8. Same view, but zoomed (68K)

     


9. Lighthouse with footlights on (39K). I took this one with my camera's preset night scene mode. That automatically makes it smaller (640x480) so I kind of would rather not use it and try to get the same shot utilizing equivalent option settings with regular modes without the preset night scene. But I wanted to try out the feature some. I had limited success with the preset night scene pics, but this was easily one of the best of those. The mode seems to tend to make the white part of Barney too bright if the scene is truly dark otherwise, but this one being taken when there was still residual sunset light seemed to come out better.

10. Lighthouse and stars (115K) . Looking up at the lighthouse (zoomed) you can see how brightly lit the lantern room is. The longer ISO exposure (400?) probably makes it seem brighter than normal, but it gives a good effect and allows you to see some stars as well.

     


11. This isn't the best quality shot, but if you look really, really close you can just make out the sweep of the light beam (60K), at least I can on my LCD monitor if I turn out the light in the room and look at the best viewing angle. Yes, you really can clearly see the beam (beams, actually, as there seem to be four of them as the light turns) when you're there up close and in person, but only well after sunset when it gets fully dark. Anybody who expressed disappointment at not being able to see the light beam that first night just didn't wait long enough, but given the cold at the time I can't blame them for that.

12. Another one not the best quality (some minor blurriness up around the lantern room), but I think it shows the light beam sweep just a little better (114K). You still have to look very close to see it in the shot, though. In person it looks more like the "pencil-thin" beam as I'd heard it was supposed to be. It doesn't show up like that in these images because of the longer exposure setting I was using, so it's more of a "fanned out" effect (if you can see it at all). The shot was taken from a different vantage point with obviously very different lighting conditions, looking over a building (the same one that was to the right in shots #1 and #2) and trees with streetlights in view.

     


13. Looking inland across inlet, with buoy (32K). Or "...distant lights from across the bay..." to quote Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters." Another shot with the night scene mode. Not a spectacular pic, but I kind of like the red buoy light reflected in the water. The light was flashing, but the longer exposure captured it reasonably well with no noticeable blur due to wave movement. As I mentioned the weather was very calm.

14. One of my favorite shots, showing the lighthouse with water reflection (36K). I took this from the same spot as pics #1 and #2. I thought the longer ISO 400 exposure setting would likely be best, but it turned out the usual ISO 100 was not only sufficient, but much better. The white base wasn't too white and the overall image came out about right, I think, and fairly representative of actually being there.

     


15. Same scene as pic #5 above, but at night with the boat light reflected in the water (42K)




These last two were taken only after I arrived back home. I decided to try an experiment to see if I could capture starlight in any meaningful way. I used the night scene mode, so again these are smaller images (640x480), but I assumed it would be necessary to use the official night mode setting to get the maximum exposure when looking at the dim light of just stars alone. I managed to frame the image so I could capture Orion with maximum zoom.

16. Orion the hunter (23K). I turned the image clockwise 90 degrees just so it would show the constellation in its traditional orientation as "the hunter."

17. Orion the hunted (25K). The exact same image, but I noticed a plane was headed East right through the middle of the constellation, so I snapped it just as the plane was at the "belt." I should have clicked just a bit sooner because the long exposure resulted in the obvious trail of the plane's lights, the three or four regular "bumpy" bits along the line indicating a blinking light, I believe. The plane was just about to head out of frame when the exposure stopped just before that instant. A better timed shot would have centered the line of the plane's flight path much better, but I'm still quite pleased with the image as it is. I think it's pretty good, especially considering that I'd never even tried to take star images before sunday night and also considering that I don't really think that taking such images is a primary consideration of the manufacturers of most digital cameras on the market (then or now).