I first saw his photographs on ‘The Chive’, but there were no information to where it had come from or who was the owner, so the next logical thing to do was to ask Google (using ‘then and now photos of WW2’), a few links came up, one of the link was ‘Pakistan Defence’, it had the same set of photos but this time Sergey Larenkov was watermarked on most of the photos, and that was all any needed to find his site :)
The rational of the advice made so much sense… “set up your camera, then put it in continuous shooting, keep the finger on the trigger until the story ends, then go back and choose the best ones, that’s how the pros do it”, well thanks Sherlock :)
But no one ever told me how mentally difficult, to darn near impossible it would be to delete a photo, even the cr#ppy ones, lol. I know hard disks are really cheap now, but it would have been more prudent & efficient to delete the bad ones, trust me I’ve tried to delete a slightly out of focus photo of both M and M. As I placed my finger on the delete button, both palms started to sweat, heart rate more than doubled, vision became blurry and the room started spinning, all I could do was just to walk away, and let it be :)
On a serious note, continuous shooting is an absolute must for me, I would have changed my name to Frano Selak if I had managed to catch Matt or Marcella smiling at two months old on the single shot mode. So do give it a try, trying once won’t do you any harm, honest :) lol.
“Putting colours into black and white photos” would be my simplest description, I would love to mention his/her name here but couldn’t find his/her identity, for all I know it could have been Batman or Wonder Woman.
The best thing is that, this person doesn’t just transform historically important photos or portraits of famous people, he/she also does requests.
There are several reasons why modern photographers choose to take photos in black and white or transform colour photos into black and white before publishing them. To give it a somber tone (imagine a clown without make up, lol), to rid it of distractions (imagine a clown with black and white makeup), to highlight the subtle effects of textures, lighting or contrasts, and probably the most frequent one of all, giving it ‘timelessness’ quality to a photograph.
But to see these iconic photos, that most of us have seen a thousand times before, in colour, just made it more real for me, take this one (above) of ‘Dorothy Counts’ (probably was one of the bravest girl (fifteen at that time) in the entire galaxy). I don’t know, seeing it in colour just made me feel the pressure that she must have faced multiplied by about a billion (same thing for the Ann Frank’s portrait, of course it does help if you have the knowledge of who these people are).
Of course I haven’t got a clue how the ‘Architect’ of these photos had chosen the colours for the clothes, hair, chairs, background, necktie and so on. I’d guess he/she could have made research into the colour of the eyes and hair, and may be there is a tool revealing how different greys represent different colours (or am I just dreaming here).
None the less, this site is definitely worth a visit, please NOTE, parental warning, there are some iconic ‘graphic’ photos in the set.
Dear M and M,
Your mother said I am up to my old tricks again :), I’ve been pining for a DSLR since the previous one was stolen, the Nex 5 was supposed to be just a ‘halfway house’ of a camera before moving on to yet another Nikon.
But I never did move on to another DSLR, Sony Nex5 turned out to be a mistress I never wanted to leave, never wanting to get back to the Mrs., in fact there was one crazy moment when I thought I wanted to remain with her forever, then came along the D4.
Totally not worth the price and just a tad over qualified for just taking a few snap shots of you two running around. But right now all forms sensibility have left the building, only remained are the hazy impetuous of pure ‘tech lust’, lol.
So you both may be wondering ‘what are my old tricks’? Passing on current ‘gears’ to a family member in hoping your mother will give me the nod to get the next greatest and latest (often it doesn’t work, so I think I’ll need to change strategy here).
As you can see here, I am literally forcing Matt to use the camera, well not quite, he came up with the camera wanting to take a picture of me, of course it was a too good of an opportunity to just let it pass, it has lots and lots of buttons and dial that all three and a half year old child could only love, perfect, I began to teach (exaggerate) how each button is so much more awesome than each of his button on his simple point and shoot. Soon he will be running up to his mother asking if he could keep the Nex5 forever… leaving the path open to the almighty D4 and then taking over the world… haa haa haa, all I need now is the ‘ka-ching’ to get the darn thing.
(While reading through the post correcting all the mistakes (there are probably loads left), I came to wonder how on earth did I take this photo, I am sure it will come back to me soon)
Canon 1DX now has a competition worthy of its calibre, of course when destiny grants me loads and loads of dosh, there would be no other choice in my mind (come on destiny the camera comes out in February :) (why Nikon over Canon, nothing deep or complicated, I am more familiar with the Nikon’s system).
It is going to be fun just reading the various tit for tat on the forum, and nothing but burning greedy cravings for a while :)
If you need more info. there is no better place than www.dpreview.com, or more precisely http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7799914638/nikon-d4-overview/
Somehow wandered into the Google statistic page for this simple blog of mine, and found out that the most visited post of all time, is a very short post named “Is Al Gore a Lier”, I had posted a link (along with some simple texts) to a youtube video of a presentation made by Christopher Monckton in which he gave a talk to quite a large audience, using a simple Powerpoint (well it could have been Keynote) to convey his message, and it was pretty convincing.
In following to finding out that post was the most visited post, I have decided to look around, to see if this anti-global warming is still going strong and came across the video below, which is (to me) quite convincing, unless someone comes out to say that these people are not the people they claim to be, I am pretty much sold on the idea.
As usual I was looking around sonyalpharumors.com (I think the name describes itself fairly clearly), their latest poll was “Select your future A77 firmware upgrade must have features”.
The third most wished was the ability to ‘Pixel Binning’, I have never herd of this before but after finding out more, I was surprised that it came third.
Pixel Binning is the ability to choose lower resolution (less Megapixel) and have the pixel join up (so to speak) to make bigger pixel, this should achieve higher (better) signal to noise ratio (I am probably messing this up), so your camera should take cleaner pictures in low light situations (less ISO required).
I’ve been to the Sony store a few times now, only to play around with the A77… only to walk away without taking out the plastic :) Now, if the next firmware have this pixel binning and it works properly… wow, just tell me when and where :)
I didn’t even know they were mapping out Thailand, and they were using a Subaru as well, how classy :) (Subaru is not at all common in Thailand).
Of course all the images of silly street view maps with people dressing up suddenly flooded my mind, all I could do was gave it a wave and a smile, truly hoping that it will make it on to Bangkok’s street views… :) I wonder how long it will take for them to upload it?
In the latest batch I’d pulled out 217 images/clips from your SD card, from that very camera you are holding in your hands, of course most of it didn’t pass the censorship committee (the committee has one member, me).
You are just about three and a half now, and as each day passes you are handling the camera better and better, of course the flash is always on otherwise all of the photos would have been nothing but a Jackson Pollock painting.
At least you are capturing what you have intended and lately you are asking your live subjects to pose or even moving the props around to get the design you liked.
However, I wish you would stop dropping your camera though :) I think it may be too soon to talk about composition or exposure, so I am just going to let you have fun taking embarrassing photos of your parents for just a little while longer.
For some unknown reason Google did not permit ‘Google Apps’ users to have a ‘Google Profile’, consequently this meant that I could not have the much talked about ‘Google+’.
So (very uncharacteristic of me) instead of using the other Google account to create the ‘Google+’, I decided to wait until Google kindly enabled it for all ‘Google Apps’ users (like they said they would).
So for the past couple of days I have been living in the Google+ universe, this isn’t a review, just a penny for my thought here. Google+ is a new social network that uses ‘circles’ to group your flock, with interesting (fresh) UI, it is still a social network at the core (of course), but I think it is as (functional) dynamic as twitter and will probably will be as deep as Facebook but with cleaner and easier layout to understand. I like it, like many, we all have more than one pair of shoes, so I can live with just one more pair for now…
I am convince everyone who has a camera, even mobile phone camera have at least once tried a levitation / flying photo, or in plain English taking a photo while your subject is in the air after a jump. I was doing my usual browsing this morning, and ended up at digitalrev.com (can be informative and very funny ‘camera’ site), they had this short youtube vdo on trying to imitate the levitation / flying photo from this yowayowacamera.com site.
Several photos are fantastic, and totally believable (you’ll need to scroll through her album). the key being all the essential limbs are in focus (fast shutter speed) and try to hide the effect of gravity from all the parts (including clothing) as much as you can. She was kind enough to also give the detail on how she took all of her photos, definitely worth a visit.
Canon had just announced their latest professional DSLR, 1D X. Looks like I can either find a second job, or start buying the lottery again (looks like the latter will win out :)
The emptiness of the ‘tall’ back wall, with its bland washed out colour of grey, feels like a perfect amplifier of Mr. Farley’s mood that is so clearly projected from his facial expression.
There is a slight hope in sunlight rushing through the gap in the curtain, behind Chris the wall is unnaturally lustrous. The hanging fag from a mouth that simply just ‘couldn’t bothered’ and the dull gold crown together with a generic white vest was absolutely perfect for a tired mournful king.
Placing Mr. Farley right at the bottom and in the middle of the composition, I could feel the heaviness of anguish that he is carrying upon his shoulders (pushing him down, being swallowed out of the frame), cutting him off just slightly below his chest just forces me to concentrate on the subject even more, no clutter, no other lines to consider, no shadows to draw my focus, no colours to pull me away from the lifelessness objective of the photo.
I believe he died of a drug overdose, I have always loved some... liked most... and didn’t care for a few of his work. I remembered I was shocked when the news broke. I like comedy and I was hoping he was going to make all of us laugh for a lot longer, much longer.
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Source: I think I first discovered this photo on Chive (not sure though), but decided to find the source of the photo, hoping to find the photographer’s name or something , to give it the credit where the credit is due. Decided to Google Image ‘Chris Farley’, it came up on page 11, after a couple more click the trail went cold at reform.lt. The trail went cold here because this site has nothing but photos after photos in one never ending page (love it), couldn’t find a search option after scrolling endlessly for a few minutes I gave up, will try again later :)
On the table are, SLT A77, D7000, D300s’ replacement and Nex7, don’t ask me why Canon isn’t on the list for a APS-C sensor based system, it hasn’t been on my list for quite some time now. Anyway, the indecisiveness is a real pain, back and forth like a four way see-saw in my mind, several times as soon as I was happy with my decision something caught my attention and the whole see-saw starts all over again.
The top of the list is A77, so why the see-saw? SLT system, losing a bit of light somehow bothers me, I know that it shouldn’t as the IQ should really be the final point, but now in choosing the lens apart from the focal length multiplier one will now have to calculate the real f. (minus half stop) for the aperture as well is just a little too much for my liking. Apart from that the real thing that bothers me is the pixel density, 24MP on an APS-C (affects low light performance) is way above my need.
So why is the A77 on top of my list? Every review on the net seems to indicate that the AF is insanely fast and accurate, this is so important to me, of course I am still waiting for my most trusted reviewer, dpreview. Apart from the AF, and on the same level of importance would be the low light performance, I would put myself in a ‘passionate’ amateur slot, so a bit of noise would be fine but again this is ranked very high on my list (many will now say why not go with the Nex5n? I already own an Nex5 and really wanting something with more manual control).
D7000 ranked second, but purely on an emotional side, this camera is over a year old, if I have to wait I would rather wait for the D300s’ replacement, but who wants to wait for something that could still be nothing but a drawing on some line manager’s desk.
I am a normal consumer, I am not taking some high roads here and will admit that silly little things that shouldn’t matter does matter, like in the example above buying a year old system is an obstacle in my mind. The other thing is new tech. I fully appreciate that new tech. does not mean better results (our individual ability is probably the most important variable here), but if there was a chance to try it, I would, did not hesitate to get the Nex5 as soon as it came out in Thailand.
Looks like the problem would be over with another site that I trust, sonyalpharumors, well, rumour is a rumour but this site is pretty much spot on most of the time. Looks like an off shoot of the A77 is in the pipeline if it turns out to be identical to the A77 but with lower MP, this would easily stop the see-sawing for good, even if I have to wait (and pine like crazy) for six months I would.
Nothing to do but wait and go back to enjoying the still very capable Nex5 :) haa haa haa, greed and gluttony is a terrible thing, tech. is more addictive than narcotics :) Now perish the thought of Nex 6.5, identical the Nex7 but with lower MP, I swear I just saw the see-saw creeping again… haa haa haa, only kidding.
For the past few months or so I have been wanting to use another template on this blog, the original template that I have been using started off as a basic off the shelf theme, then with the power of internet I began to add things to it. Wanted a 3 levels drop down menu (had that), wanted a page navigation (had that), wanted little icon on my internet browser tab (had that), wanted round corners (had that too), the list goes on and on (even the ‘comment’ module I had to use Disqus). It looked fine when the page was loaded, but if you ever looked at the code behind it, it would give you fevers, I call it my private Frankenstein, for it was truly, truly messy.
But I had to do it that way, because when I first started using Blogger, the amount of customisation was very limited, and pretty basic, besides I was having far too much fun researching and trying different things, the community of bloggers on the Internet are amazing!!!
So I wanted to start again, using one of Google’s free template, this would clear out all clutter that had accumulated. I miss my drop down menu very much, but I am hoping one day a kind Google employee would have time to come up and offer a drop down menu for us mortals, instead of me using the hack and slash method to get the drop down menu, or the page navigation :)
I am pretty happy with this simple look, but most of the posts’ layout have gone a little wonky, and here begin the long task of looking at all the posts to correct the wonky ones, lol. It was just like when I moved from WindowsLive to Blogger.
Now, only an hour later I am beginning to change my mind… Image stabilisation is the issue here. Without any research, I believe that all of Sony A-mount lenses do not have stabilisation, instead they rely on in body stabilisation, so if I use the A-mount lens with the LA-EA2 adapter on my Nex-5, I won’t have image stabilisation (the native E-mount lens for Nex has OSS (lens stabilisation)).
So the plan to use A-mount lens on my Nex-5 may not be such a good option after all, back to the drawing board, must remind self to buy a lottery this evening, lol.
With the announcement of the new Sony SLT A77 the greed inside me have been stirring again, since the Nikon D90 was stolen I have been living (very happily) with Sony Nex-5, the aim have always been to move to full-frame after the Nex-5, I have no preference for the brand but the investment in the (future) lenses would ensure that I’ll have to stay in that brand’s eco-system until I win the lottery :) 
Each of the body is in the range of between 1,400 USD to 1,800 USD (body only), a good Full Frame zoom lens will set me back another 1,000 to 2,000 USD. Putting the two together is a bit much, so I have to come up with an alternative solution.
Instead of focusing on the body, I have decided to look at the lens (Sony, Canon, Nikon) first, this will dictate my eco-system for the future. Canon seems to have a better range of lens follows by Nikon and then Sony. 
Rumours has it that the LA-EA2 will be around 300 USD, add this to the price of the FF lens may be the best solution for me at this time, but this of course is in hope that Sony will release a good FF body in the future, my preference have always been low noise in low light conditions, Nikon seems to have this cornered (low pixel density), let’s hope Sony has some tricks up its sleeves :)
I have never thought the smaller size would matter, but it really does, to have an APS-C in a much smaller package meant a lot less hassle to take out the camera just to take a couple of shots. I was so keyed up to get the FF D800 (or whatever Nikon was going to call it), but right now my decision have made a total u turn (perhaps because I am certainly not a professional). FF is still the way to go, but I am not going to put up with the weight nor the size of the ‘usual’ DSLR.
There is a rumour of a ‘Translucent’ FF from Sony that is supposed to be making an appearance in 2012, I am still in two minds about this route, splitting the light between the EVF and the Sensor is bothering me, although there are some massive advantages, but loosing the light? eeemmmm, frown, frown, frown…
I was excited about the Nex 7, and was already counting the money in my pocket (to give to the camera shop :) haa haa haa), but Nex 5 is still performing well, so I have decided to let this one go, perhaps the next Nex (Nex 9?) will be a mirror-less FF that will accept all Alpha mount lens, with lightening fast and 100% accurate autofocus, and EVF with 100% coverage, in body stabilisation, built in flash, built in GPS, and full weather seal, just realised I’ll certainly be waiting longer than the infamous D800/900.
I am sure millions and millions of iPad2 users are totally productive, creative, original and even innovative using the darn thing. It arrived in the mail today (got it for the wife), after setting it all up with Gio’s various email accounts, filled it up with all of the modern lifestyle necessity, aka, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, a good selection of games and other apps (mostly not native to iPad2). I found myself fiddling with it for a few minutes, then putting it aside like a yesterday’s toy.
It was ‘SO’ nice to have all the extra real estate (especially for email and web), the native ipad2 apps look great, for me this device will play more of a consumption role rather than creation role.
Was it worth it getting the top model, perhaps not, but the original plan was to load it up with all of Matt’s vdos so the 64 option at that time was even too small, but right now can not be arsed to rip the dvd into mp4 just yet.
It would be fantastic to have one of these in my hands during one of the numerous ‘waste of time’ meeting, but apart from that I can’t see myself fighting the wife just to take turn on it, let alone getting another one for yours truly. Now, my iPhone is a different story, no one can tear that away even from my cold dead hand, of course unless they were going to swap it with a Samsung Galaxy S II :)
