Sitting Budda image at Sukhothai.

Adrian and I spent three weeks in Thailand for our honey moon and the trip involved a good bit of moving from place to place. Day in and day out there were new interesting things to see and do. Of course, I took my new SLR and among many other souvenir, we returned home with around nine-thousand pictures (isn’t digital great?).  This is also the first trip for which I have ever kept a travel journal. This is a practice I think I will continue on future trips. I wish I had done it on some of my past trips, like Philmont.

Thailand was a wonderful country, with diverse environments and culture and we tried to see as much of it as possible. We started our trip in the south and progressed to the north and there was a marked difference each place we visited. In general though, the Thai people were very courteous, timely, and attentive to requests, at least when we make ourselves understood. All in all, Thailand was one of the more hospitable and welcoming places I’ve ever been.

Well, it has been a very busy few months. If the wedding wasn’t enough, Adrian and I went on a honey moon right afterward, then when we got home, turn around and drove to Washington DC (in the middle of a really bad winter weather event). As a result, I’m taking quite a bit of time to deal with pictures from the wedding and from Thailand. This is the the first of many posts.

These pictures were taking by Josh Baker of Axulox Photography. Josh is a family friend and just brought his gear for fun. Even so, he got some incredible pictures. Here are just a few. The full set can be found here.

Christmas Lights, Angela, Adrian making Gnocchi, and Inara.

I took my camera to the B-Team’s Christmas party last Tuesday. These are some shots I got.

I decided to actually sort out what about my camera made focusing my f/1.4 manual lens so hard and I found this article about fast manual lenses and modern DSLR cameras. The root of the problem is how the camera splits light between the view finder and the auto focus sensors. The long and short of it is, that no matter how big your aperture, what you see in the view finder will likely be f/4 or smaller equivalent (at least with a entry or mid level DSLR).

This matches my experience. The depth of field in the view finder is huge even when the aperture is wide open (and you can verify that it is open by looking in the front of the lens). Even more frustrating is the fact that live view very obviously shows the correct depth of field.

This makes finding sharp focus through the view finder impossible, or at least very improbable and unrepeatable if you are using a very fast manual focus lens. The solution: use main sensor based live view and on screen zoom (when possible) to achieve razor focus.

Adrian’s Aunt Laura came to Texas to help us bake some of her families’ favorite deserts: Biscotti and Pitzels, for our wedding. I took a few pictures while the baking was going on.

A few pictures from Christmas in Rosenberg with Adrian an her Aunt.