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My Fascination with Great Lakes Ships

I have always been fascinated by the ships that ply the Great Lakes. From the elegant grace and design of an Edward L. Ryerson to the sheer, brute size of the 1000-footers, they are something to behold. This site shares some of this majesty from the Soo Locks and down Lake Michigan to my stomping grounds ... Menominee, MI and Marinette, WI; or, wherever I come across a ship to photograph. There is also a "General Photo Gallery" which has photos of many different subject matters ... not just ships.


The Camera That Makes It All Possible (upper right)

The camera that I use is a Sony Mavica model FD-91. It is a digital camera with a 14X "Optical" zoom lens, which is comparable to about 525mm zoom on a 35mm camera! Its "Steady Shot" feature allows me to take all of my photos hand-held...even at full zoom. The camera compensates for small movements while taking a picture, so a tripod is not necessary! Many of the shots on this site were taken at full 14X zoom. I use the "JPEG-normal" mode when shooting; that gives me pictures that are 1024 x 768 pixels in size (I have re-sized some of them to 640 x 480 for use on this site). The storage medium is 3.5" standard floppy disks, and I can usually get 15-20 pictures per disk with an average file size between 50KB - 130KB. This is not a "Megapixel" camera, but I think that you will see that it is more than adequate for my purposes. Unfortunately, this camera is no longer available form Sony. They have up-graded it twice since I bought it in Jan. 2000. The FD-95 and CD-1000(?) have replaced it, and they are great cameras; although Sony has dropped the zoom to 10X (which is still very good).


April 2005 NEW Digital Camera Up-Date:

I recently purchased a new Olympus C-765 digital camera. This camera is a 4 Mega-pixel camera and boasts a 10X Optical Zoom along with a 4X Digital Zoom (or a total of 40X combined zoom). I still don't care much for Digital Zoom; though I understand that shooting at maximum resolution, one can get a fairly good photo using PART of the Digital Zoom; BUT, Optical Zoom (which is True Zoom) is still best! I have taken some indoor photos with the Olympus, and am very pleased with the results. However, I recently tried some night shots with it and was VERRRRRY pleased with the results. If you go to the "2005 Menominee & Marinette Ships" page of this site and scroll down to the photos of the "McKee Sons" (4 photos dated April 28), you can see what this camera can do after dark! I took the original photos at maximum resolution (2288 x 1712 pixels) using a "TIFF" format (File Size = approx. 11MB per photo!) and then used a photo-editing program to re-size them to 1024 x 768 JPEG-format for this site. Also, I took those shots using a "monopod" (one leg) instead of a tripod, only to find out that I had to keep the camera virtually STILL for about 35 - 40 seconds! Phew! I blurred about half of the photos I took that night; but the ones that came out were very nice. Next time I'll use a tripod!


Nov. 2007 NEW Digital Camera Up-Date:

I just purchased another new digital camera. This one is a Fuji FinePix S8000fd. The camera's main features are: 8 megapixel resolution, 18X "Optical Zoom" WITH dual image stabilization (invaluable for shooting handheld) plus 5.1X "Digital Zoom" - now, from reading the rest of this page, you will notice that I am not a big fan of "Digital Zoom"; however, this camera changed my mind about that (to a degree anyway). That gives you almost 91X total zoom, but at full zoom range the photo quality suffers quite a bit. The camera uses 4 "AA" Batteries (high-capacity NiMH rechargeable batteries are a big help here). The camera has a "traditional" viewfinder ("EVF" - electronic viewfinder ... like a viewfinder on a traditional film camera) and a large 2.5-inch LCD-screen that can be used as a view finder or to view photos stored on the camera. It can use "xD picture card" or "SD" memory cards for storage PLUS it has 58MB "internal" storage built in. For those who like manual features (focus, lighting, etc.), this camera has about everything you could want. I have only tried it out briefly; but, already I like what I see! At 8 MegaPixels, the photos are high quality. For a camera in the price range of $300 to $400 (new), it is a tremendous buy (in my opinion).

Click Here to see a photo taken at about 50X "total" zoom (18X Optical Zoom with about 3X Digital Zoom). This photo of the stern of the old steamship, Reserve, which is being cut down to a barge was taken from about 1/2 mile away! That is not too bad (especially for using a fair amount of "Digital Zoom")!


Notes on Digital Cameras

Which digital camera is right for you? That is a question to ask yourself before jumping into the wonderful world of digital photography. What will be your primary uses for your new camera? For me, a long zoom lens was critical...ships are not always close to where the photos are taken. Let's talk a moment about the difference between "Optical Zoom" and "Digital Zoom". Optical zoom is "true" zoom (WYSIWYG) while Digital zoom is an "artificial" zoom (like enlarging a photo in a browser...after a couple "zoom-ins" the picture gets very grainy). Therefore, Optical zoom is what you will want to look for in a digital camera. Also, many digital cameras rely on an LCD-screen for a view-finder; the only drawback to that is that LCD screens are difficult to see out in the bright sunshine. The FD-91 has both an LCD-screen and a "Normal" (like you have on a regular camera) viewfinder; something that I have really come to appreciate (thanks to the sales person who suggested this when I was shopping for a digital camera). If you are taking pictures that demand intricate detail, then a higher "Megapixel" camera should be considered. The difference in photo detail (in early model digital camera) was most noticeable when going between a 2 megapixel and 3 megapixel camera; the results were quite dramatic. The Olympus camera (above) is a 4 megapixel camera, and the photo quality is great. The Fuji camera (above) is 8 megapixel, and the photo quality is even better! Remember...only you can answer the question, "Which digital camera is right for me?"

Addendum: Digital cameras are now available up to 11 Megapixels or more! The balancing act as I see it is: How much Optical Zoom do you need? There are still quite a few cameras available with 10X Optical Zoom (which is quite adequate for objects at a distance), and the newer ones go as high as 18X (splendid); and how much detail do you need for what you want to do? The higher the "Megapixel" value, the more intricate and detailed your photos will be (also much larger File Sizes, so be careful). ENJOY!!!