Category Archives: equipment

National Parks on the Fly

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When Your Free Time is Limited

 
The May calendar had only a few days left to fit in a visit to two of my favorite places – Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks so it had to be a quick trip. I initially thought about flying to nearby Jackson and renting a car but instead I decided to drive the 3000+ miles lugging a small satchel of clothes and a bunch of camera equipment.

While the drive is long, I totally enjoy the fast changing vistas traversing our impressive interstate highway system and then the spectacular mountains and landscapes of rural Wyoming.

You can read about my six day cross country drive from Grand Rapids by clicking here. Otherwise continue on for the small scrapbook of my visit to the parks.

After 1500 relaxing miles on the lightly traveled highway I arrived at Jackson Hole and the Tetons. I immediately went into visitor mode and armed myself with a couple of cameras to record this quick visit. Following are some of the highlights.

Grand Teton National Park

This is an area of the Tetons settled in the 1890s by Mormans from Utah

The iconic T.A. Moulton barn with low clouds obscuring the Tetons

Here you can see the low water level in Jackson Lake

The water flows from Jackson Lake Dam into the Snake River

This is the Snake River at Oxbow Bend with Mt. Moran in the background

I tried to duplicate this familiar view at Snake River Overlook made famous by Ansel Adams

Another picture of the T.A. Moulton barn after the clouds have lifted

This furry marmot is a resident of Mormon Row

Chapel of the Transfiguration is an Episcopal church in the Tetons

This is the picturesque interior of the church

From a distance the Tetons remain an impressive backdrop to the valley

The popular Jenny Lake is still covered with ice in early May

Yellowstone National Park

This is the iconic Old Faithful Inn

The interior of the Old Faithful Inn is simply breathtaking

A huge crowd of visitors are awaiting the eruption of Old Faithful Geyser

As expected the Old Faithful eruption happens right on time

The Grand Prismatic Spring one of Yellowstone’s most colorful thermal features

Here is some of the hot runoff streaming from the Grand Prismatic Spring

This bison is strolling along the pathway at one of the geysers

I was surprised to find sandhill cranes in Lamar Valley

This herd of bison is relaxing in the Lamar Valley

Here is a lone bighorn sheep near Slough Creek

This is a newborn bison calf

This Yellowstone tour bus is easily identifiable

The Roosevelt Arch marks the North Entrance to Yellowstone

This is the roaring Upper Yosemite Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

The Yellowstone River is pouring over the Upper Falls

 

 
You can see that I packed quite a few activities into a few short days in these two national parks.

Can you tell that I thoroughly enjoyed the mini-vacation?

 
 
Written by Arnie Lee
 
 

High Key Photos

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Creating a Stark Black & White Effect

Every once in a while I like to experiment with high key black and white photos. A high key photo has most of the mid-tones removed, leaving only the darkest part.

There are basically three ways to do this:

  • Overexpose the subject leaving little detail of the mid-tones.
  • Use high contrast film eliminating or minimizing the mid-tones of the original.
  • Use digital software to achieve a similar effect.

Here are a few examples using all three techniques.

cc-by-ndlicense logo  This work by Arnie Lee is licensed under a Attribution-No Derivatives (CC BY-ND 4.0)

Transferring Old VHS Movies

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Sharing my VHS movies in the digital age

I’ve had a couple of boxes full of VHS cassettes sitting in the basement for years. When I finally started looking through them, I saw that some of them dated back to the 1980’s – they’re more than 30 years old.

I shouldn’t have been surprised since we bought our first VHS camera when some of our kids were just babies. We have cassettes of babies, of birthdays, of holidays, of vacations, of weddings, of …. I think you can name other events as well.

My goal was to convert them so that the family would be able to easily view them on their computer or digital device. Initially this looked like an enormous task, but soon after I got started this turned into an enjoyable project.

Follow along as I go through the steps.
One of the items on my “to-do list” is to convert these old movies to a form that the family could easily watch and enjoy the events that we recorded years ago. But first I had to locate a VHS player. We hadn’t owned one for years.

I found one for sales in our area for a reasonable cost.

Next I needed a device to convert the video frames to a digital form that is copied to the computer.

Searching the Internet I found this inexpensive (about $10) device. The three connectors (red, white and yellow) plug into the VHS player and the other end is a USB connector plugs into my computer.

If you use a Windows computer, the above Video Converter comes with software to record the video to your computer. I use an iMac so the QuickTime application is used to record the digitized video.

Using QuickTime I watched the conversion of the first cassette on my computer screen. I was satisfied with the high quality of the resulting video and accompanying sound. However I immediately realized that this project was going to take a long time. Since many of my VHS cassettes were “full”, a two-hour recording takes two hours to digitize. Thankfully I could perform other tasks on my iMac while QuickTime was running in the background. To conserve time, I resigned myself to convert only one or two cassettes at one sitting.

By the fourth or fifth cassette I realized that I had a problem. Some of my cassettes were recorded at a “slower” speed (to save money by conserving recording capacity). As these cassettes were played, the movie would run at double speed with the sound garbled. The above video player that I purchased did not have a way to replay at this slower speed.
I tried to fix this by replaying the resulting digitized file at a slower speed but the video and sound were poor.

So I went searching for a second VHS player that was capable of playback at the slower recording speed and found this model for a reasonable cost.

After three weeks of converting boxes of old VHS cassettes I now have a large library of old family movies that I’m able to share with others digitally.
Sample movie converted from VHS cassette to digital mp4 file from 1990
All of the effort turned out to be a lot less than I expected. I’m glad that I undertook this project and have already had lots of feedback from many of the faces in these “old” movies.