Well spring is here, I guess the dragon's breath melted the snow and I am doing this my long over due post!

 I have been teaching at Hokkaido University of Education at the Iwamizawa campus since October of 2011.  We started a new school year and I am teaching a new course called Outdoor Photography, or OP for short.  So now I have motivation to renew my photography blog, so that I can share it with my students.

Below are a few shots from the winter of 2011. It was a record snow fall year since they starting taking records in 1946, lots of shoveling and many buildings and trees were crushed or damaged. The skiing was great though! The shots are from a backcountry ski class trip to Sandan Yama, north of Furano in Hokkaido.

Photography in snow is challenging, the high contrast is difficult to capture and exposures require special attention. The cold tempertures and moisture require special consideration for our photography equipment.  You have to keep your batteries warm (above freezing) and you should keep snow from melting on your camera.  My wife Pamela, gave me a hint she found on another site to use a small paint brush to clear the snow off your equipment as it falls.  It works well, buy a small brush at the dollar (hyaku en) shop.

Spring time!

These few shots are recent photos, April 2012, after the 3 meters of snow finally melted and the flowers popped out almost overnight.

This is a Tonbi, a common raptor that in Japan seems to be the equivalent of the turkey vultures in North Carolina.  They fly quite close to the ground.  I shot this one hand held with my Sony Alpha (A55) DSLR and an old autofocus Minolta 500mm, F-8 reflex lens.  A reflex lens is like the astonomy telescope design, a mirror reduces the length and size and weight.

 Autofocus reflex lenes are very rare, Minolta made one of the only versions I have ever known of.  The lens is probably made in the late 80's, I bought it used from Ebay before I left the USA, about $450.00.  Its not a main stream lens, so do not rush out to buy one unless you already have several lenses and some extra cash. 

If Sony made one, it would probably retail over $2,000.00.  Thats why most of my lenses are old, high quality inexpensive used Minolta lenses that fit Sony DSLRS.  These lenses were designed for 35 mm film cameras.

Minolta bought out Konica cameras years ago, then Sony bought out Minolta brand cameras to get into the digital camera DSLR business.  There has been a huge market for good Minolta lenses since, I have bought several Minolta cameras from Craigslist so I could get the lens that came with it.  The camera bodies are almost worthless now, they make good paperweights. I donated some to a summer camp that uses film cameras in their program for kids.

The autofocus is fast and the lens is lightweight and portable relative to the super-telephoto length of this 500mm lens.

Its about 6 inches long.  A normal 500mm lens would be about 15-18 inches long.

This view from the front of the lens shows the unusual design.

The next one is a close up of the inside center of the lens.

I shot the three photos above with a Minolta 100mm macro (close up) on my Sony A-55 DSLR.

For old timers like me who got into photography before digital was a household word, this 500mm lens is the equivalent of a 750 mm lens if on a 35mm film camera.  Basically the sensor in the digital camera is small, which means the image is 1.5 times larger than it would be in on a 35 mm film plane.   So a 100 mm telephoto lens is a 150mm equivalent if using an APS size sensor in a digital camera.  In recent years they have been making full size sensors for DSLRs which improve quality and jacks the price up.  I have not bought one yet.  The full size sensor means a 100mm telephoto lens is still a 100mm telephoto, not multiplied as it would be on an APS sensor.  If this is too confusing, no worries, I will do a post on basic focal length in the future to simplify the topic.

The shot above was from my apartment window at mountains tha are at least 10-15 miles away. Using the 750mm equivalent, is like the view from binoculars or a telescope.  This image was shot at 1/200 of a second, but I braced against the window sill to steady the camera.

One very important aspect of a reflex lens is it a fixed aperture lens. There is no moving aperture, its "fixed", in the case of my Minolta,  at f 8. Aperture is the opening in the lens that allows light in for the exposure. It is similar to the iris in the human eye.  So on this unusual lens, you cannot change the aperture.

So you should shoot on aperture controlled setting on your camera, then the camera will adjust the shutter speed automatically to expose based on a constant f 8 aperture.  You could expose manually, choosing the shutter speed yourself, as long as you remember to keep the aperture on f 8. 

The shot above shows trees from a few hundred yards.  The telephoto lens "compresses" the image, so it appears flat.
An aperture setting of F8 requires a lot of light in general.  A long (telephoto) lens generally needs a fast shutter speed to prevent blur from movement by the photographer.  

The shot of this small hawk was shot at 1/4,000th of second. It was flying and I was tracking
hand held. It looks OK now, but if I crop it close, its blurry, as seen below.

So combining these aspects of this lens, you need to use a tripod for long exposures or shoot in bright sun so you can hand hold it with out blurring. 

The good news is you can increase your ISO (formerly known as ASA) in your DSLR so you can shoot a fast shutter speed.  The newer the camera, the faster the ISO will be.  The very fastest ISO is often not very good quality, so its better to stay in the midrange if you plan to enlarge the photo.  An old rule of thumb if you are shooting handheld photos, (no tripod) your shutter speed should be similar to or a higher number than your focal length.  For example a 100 mm lens could be hand held at 1/100 or 125th of a second or faster.  So with this 750 mm equivalent lens, my shutter speed should be 1/750th of a second or faster, such as 1/1000 or 1/2000.

All these aspects, F-Stop, shutter speed and movement all have to be coordinated by the photographer to acheive the desired image.  It seems complex at first, but its like driving a car, if you learn the gas, the brakes and the steering one at a time, eventually you can combine them to get where you want to go!