San Joaquin “Big” Valley Towns

By Tom Paiva on

Last week, while driving to San Francisco from LA, I decided to scout some of the Valley farm towns heading north.  I also wanted to try out a new camera in the field that I just bought.

The towns are Patterson, Newman and Gustine, in central CA.  There is a lot to be shot there, if you like the agriculture industry, which I do.  Back in the 70s and early 80s, I lived in Stockton for a few years, so the sights and smells were familiar.

The camera I purchased is a Sony NEX-5, which I became smitten with while playing with one in NYC last month.  I spoke with a National Geographic photographer in NYC who used one on assignment on South America and loved it.  Its low-light capabilities interested me (including a top speed of ISO 12000 with a multiple exposure stacking capability to reduce noise considerably; and  auto customizable HDR).  With an APS sensor size (very large for a point-and-shoot) and 14.5MP which renders much better tones and sharpness than my former point-and-shoot cameras, appealed to me.  It is also both completely automatic and can be used manually to whatever degree you want including interchangeable lenses.  You can set shutter speeds, apertures, ISO, turn off the auto-focus and it you have the option for shooting RAW files, too.  It also has “bulb” for long exposures.  I purchased the 17-55mm zoom and 16mm “pancake” lens which makes it a very small package.  What makes this camera appealing is its very small and light weight because it does not have the pentaprism of a typical single-lens-reflex (the “bump” on top).  It uses the chimp-screen for all composing.  Without the lens, it is a similar size to the smallest point-and-shoots.  This enables virtually any other 35mm lens to be able to be used via adapters.  I bought the Nikon and (older) Canon FD adapters as I have many of these older lenses kicking around.  There are mounts for Minolta, Pentax, Sony Alpha, Olympus, Canon EF and Leica bayonet or screw mount, too.  This will give new life for older lenses and give the flexibility that view cameras have, being able to use virtually any lens made.

Here are a few images I shot at twilight and at night with the camera.  All are hand-held, leaning up against the car or poles or whatever to help steady the shot.  All are totally unmanipulated in “post” or Photoshop, and are the downsized for this blog-post from the as-shot jpeg files (I also shot RAW, but felt I did not need them for the web).  I did have the built in “Dynamic Range Optimizer” set to 2 out of 5 to lower the contrast a bit and save the shadow/highlight values.

I was temped to drive up this ramp and see-saw down the other side, but my better judgement told me otherwise.  Note the nice pink light on the side of the wall.

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I wanted to see how the camera did with that sodium vapor lamp shining directly at the camera.  It seemed to do just fine, with  no visible flare and held the highlights and shadows well.  I like the clouds in that rich, blue sky contrasting with the warm SV lamp.

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I had to shoot a few shots of this view to get one sharp enough, since this is a 1/2 second exposure–hand-held.  As you can see, the image stabilizing system works quite well.  Note how I placed that lamp behind the pole.  This was shot from the car window, working between traffic at “rush hour”.

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The sky was quite dramatic and the color was barely discernable, but came out well in the photo.  Note how I hid the light fixture.  There is excellent tonal range throughout.  Even though it is slight crooked, I wanted to show the un-altered image.

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For those of you who are wondering if I still shoot film, here I am shooting in the middle of  a lonely valley road with the 4×5 camera.  4×5 and 8×10 are the only films I shoot anymore, with the relentless progress with digital capture muscling out the smaller formats, with the Sony making a major milestone.

No cars came by for the 15 minutes I was there setting up and making two different shots.  I shot this with the Sony hand-held at a half second, being careful to block the street lamp with the 4×5 camera body.  It is slightly soft, but considering the awkward position I was in, it is not bad.

In the next post or two, I will show some 4×5 views and discuss them.

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