Sunset in Palm Bay, Florida - Friday, Nov. 23, 2012

This afternoon (Friday, Nov. 23, 2012) Lovely Wife and I went out to a park at the western edge of the town we live in.

There weren't but a couple of wispy little clouds in the whole sky, but the colors of the sunset and afterward were very dramatic anyway.

Usually a partly cloudy sky really helps make sunsets more colorful as they catch the colorful light, but clouds weren't really needed today.

Good times.

Max Brewer Causeway - Titusville Florida

 

This past Saturday evening, Daughter Number One and I drove up to Titusville, Fla. and went to the ocean at Canaveral National Seashore.

The sunset was good, not great, but as we headed home from the park I saw the Max Brewer Causeway lit up and very pretty in the fading blue light of the sky.

We pulled over and tried for some time exposures of the bridge and crescent moon.

A front had come through and the temperature was dropping and the wind was blowing very, very hard.

I have a big, heavy tripod and although I blocked the wind as much as I could with my body, I could see that many of the time exposures of the bridge were slightly blurry when blown up large on my computer.

These two photo came out the best of the bunch.

Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter Instructions (update 3/29/16)

Do you have a  Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter, but do NOT have the instructions?

I'll email you a copy of the instructions that I wrote for this meter.  [As of March 29, 2016, I still get requests for these instructions about twice per week, so I'm still sending them to folks.  My email is below, feel free to ask and I'll send it along to you.]

I bought a Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter  from eBay a while back.(it also meters ambient light)

My reasoning was that I could use it for both my occasional flash/studio setup type photography and also use it as an ambient meter with my old Kodak and Zorki cameras which have no built-in meter.  This older meter didn't cost me much; very much in line with how frequently I use it.

No one that I can find has placed the instructions for this 1980s era meter on the internet.

I can find a copy machine copy of the Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter instruction manual, but I refuse to pay $13 for a photocopy of it, I paid a couple of dollars more than that for the friggin' meter!

Using the FM1000 meter for both flash and ambient light work is not rocket surgery, so I just wrote my own instructions.  I used the instruction manual for the somewhat different Shepherd XE-88 Flash Meter as a basis for terminology of the parts and to get my instructions to have a similar feel to a Shepherd manual.

I'm just writing this post in case someone in the future searches for a copy of the Shepherd FM1000 Electronic Flash Meter Instruction Manual.  Hopefully search engines will list this post as a link and they'll see this.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
The Butkus.org site now has a .pdf copy of the ACTUAL Shepherd FM1000 meter manual linked on their site!  They are asking for a super-reasonable $3.00US if you decide to download it.  This official Shepherd FM1000 manual is in English, French, German, and Spanish.
Yay!
Here's a link to the Butkus site's page for the Shepherd FM1000 meter.  This page has a donation link for you to give to them for their kindness in finding and scanning the manual, as well as a link, near the bottom of the page, for the .pdf of the manual.

If you still want a copy of my incredibly verbose version, just email me as in the next paragraphs and I'll send my manual along to you as soon as I see your email.

Note about the actual manual;  I FREAKIN' KNEW THERE WAS A BATTERY CHECK FEATURE.  I'll have to update my version to include this for completeness, and to assuage my OCD in these matters.

I have the Shepherd FM1000 Flash Meter instructions in both Microsoft Word (.doc) and .pdf versions and if you need them, email me at mastersja at att.net and I'll email back to you whichever version you prefer. (That email address is current as of 3/6/2019)  (Version 4 of the instructions is available as of Monday, May 5, 2014. Email me for an updated copy if you have an older version of the instructions, see the version number in the file name.)

If you receive a set of instructions from me, please read them carefully and let me know if you find mistakes that I need to correct. (I DID go to Louisiana public schools, so there are probably some mistakes and I'd appreciate your help finding them so that I could correct the document.)

Butterfly

Nikon P7100, lens @ 202mm (35mm equiv.), f/6.3, 1/100sec, ISO 1600

This butterfly was nice enough to pose for a while on one of Lovely Wife's flowers out by our swimming pool.

Out To Sea

Nikon D90, Nikon 18-200mm @ 200mm, f/5.6, 1/30sec, ISO 800

We were at Sebastian Inlet, about twenty miles south of our home, and it was almost too dark for photos.

This one fishing boat was heading out to the Atlantic, and I did an old school panning at a slow shutter speed and took about eight frames.

This was the best of the bunch and I really like the way it turned out.

Black and White #39

Nikon D90, Nikon 18-200mm @ 200mm, f/16, 1/400sec, ISO 200

Stopped on the side of A1A while we were heading north.

The late afternoon sun was reflecting on the water, a simple thing that never fails to lift my spirits.

In addition to the sun on the water was this one sailboat moored out in the Indian River Lagoon (Inter-coastal Waterway).

I though the major contrast would look good as a B&W.

Sea Turtle Egg Nests

Nikon D90, Nikon 10-24mm @ 10mm, f/16, 1/80sec, ISO 800

Yeah, it's a pretty unimpressive beach shot, but see the stakes in the sand with orange tape around them?

Those are turtle egg nests.

Lots and lots of sea turtles lay their eggs on the coast here.

If you were a mean person and wanted desperately to get into trouble, digging up a turtle nest here will get you into all the trouble you could possibly handle.

I have always wanted to see the baby turtles hatch and try to get into the Atlantic.

I'm not even sure when that happens.

Anyway, it's still a really neat happening down here, sea turtles laying their eggs.