The big lenses

Sometimes, it's great to have that long telephoto lens. They are heavy but they are worth the weight sometimes.

On my hike yesterday, I came across a family of deers. There was no way I could shoot anything decent with my Tamron 17-50mm or my Nikkor 18-200mm. They were way too far away, probably 200m from where I was, in the meadows in a clearing at the bottom of a hill -- I was at the top. I had thought of bringing my Tokina 80-400mm lens along for this hike and lucky me, I got to use it once.

400mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/400 secs:

doe in the centre, 100% cropped:

The photo above was shot with manual focus. The auto-focus had trouble finding the sweet spot, as shown in a 100% crop of an auto-focus shot below -- there were just too many things in front of this buck below:



I had also thought of climbing down the hill to get closer and shoot with the Tamron 17-50mm to get a really sharp photo but as one can see, they were observing me as I was observing them ....

Tamron 17-50mm Di II VC, part III

I visited the Tiffany Falls and Sherman Falls yesterday in Hamilton. It was a drabby day. The sky was gray and snowing. There was not much to shoot as everything looked like a photo from the past -- black and white. I wanted to test out the Tamron outdoors though so I took a few pictures. I like this lens. The photos are sharp.

50mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, 1/250 secs:

50mm, f/29, ISO 200, 1/2.5 secs:

20mm, f/9, ISO 200, 1/20 secs:

The start of a day

So this morning I woke up early, quite early in fact. It was barely 4:30am. The music I left playing last night was blaring into my ears so I guess I had to wake up. The morning feels so quiet after I turned it off just minutes ago. Anyways, I am contemplating at driving out to Hamilton this morning to do some hiking and winter photography. I had planned to be at a certain location by 9am but there is only one thing ... rush hour traffic. I might have the day off but the world is still running on its own accord. It takes 40 minutes to get to this one location but I'd be in rush hour traffic if I leave at 8am. I might sit in traffic for 1.5 hours, not something I'd enjoy. Maybe I should leave at 7am. Hmmm....

I'm also still tired. The Sound of Music did not doze me off immediately last night so I was up until 12am. I'm going to take a nap now.

NAS restored

Almost two months ago, my NAS that I built with 4 x 300 GB SATA drives died. After trying out three power supply units from old hardware I have, I thought the NAS motherboard got fried. Last week, I decided to visit craigslist.ca and found a PIII machine someone wanted to dispose of for $10. The bonus there was that this PIII runs at 1GHz while mine runs at 450MHz. A rather adventurous drive into Etobicoke and one and a half hour later, I came back home and fixed the NAS. I was lucky enough it was just the power supply unit. Apparently, all the power supply units I had tested with were broken too. Great.

The NAS is up and running. Backups are running as usual and I have access to all my pictures again.

I did not move everything over to the PIII I bought for two reasons: there are fewer RAM slots in this PIII than in mine and while a 1GHz boost would be nice, 450MHz is sufficient, and don't want to fix it if it ain't broke.

White Balance

Well, this is something I have to remember the next time I shoot anything, especially indoors -- set the proper white balance setting! Now, it sounds like a rather easy thing to do. After all, there are preset options for sunny skies, cloudy days, shades, incandescent lights, fluorescent lights, etc. but indoors, guessing what type of light bulbs are being used can be difficult. There could be a mix of incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs in use at the same time and even the bulbs could be coloured. I'm trying to stay away from guessing so if your camera has a custom "PRE" white balance option like the D80 has, that's what I'd use.

On the D80, I get to the PRE option by holding on the WB button and using the rear dialer to change the WB options until it reads "PRE" on the LCD.

To set the right white balance for the current light condition:

• Hold the WB button until "PRE" on the LCD starts blinking
• Hold a white piece of paper (I used tissue paper) in front of the lens and focus on it in the centre of the viewfinder.
• Depress and release the shutter button to take a shot of the tissue paper.
• The LCD should then read "good".
  

Leave the white balance setting at the "PRE" option and start shooting. If you move to an area of the house where the lighting changes, repeat the steps above to reset the white balance.

If you need to use flash, repeat those same steps above to set the proper white balance with flash. If you did not reset the white balance with flash but are using flash, the picture will turn out very cold blue.

My lens gears, going into 2010

Here are the lenses I am using now:

• Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR
• Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC
• Tokina 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6
  
• Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

The Tamron will be used indoors and for portraits. The Nikkor 18-200 will be my walkaround lens, when I go hiking. The Tokina will tag along on those hiking trips or vacation trips, although I find it gets very little use because of its weight -- I also have a Nikkor 500mm f/8 lens that never sees the light of day anymore. The Nikkor 50mm will be used for some portraits and in extreme low light conditions, e.g. shooting stars.

Tamron 17-50mm Di II VC, part II

Well, the Tamron SP 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II VC LD lens is in my hands. I have done some testing against my venerable Nikkor 18-200mm VR II. I had wondered if I might end up selling the Tamron after purchasing it just hours earlier... except that this f/2.8 lens has VC!

For less than half the price of a Nikkor 17-50mm, this Tamron lens gives a good punch, a definite keeper I think. Hand-held, the Tamron produces better results than my Nikkor 18-200mm. The Tamron is definitely faster and with its VC (Vibration Compensation) produces sharper images, something I have been looking for for a long time now without the need to spend $1000+. This is fairly consistent, especially indoors on a cloudy day like today. The faster lens with VC has its definite advantage. In terms of the handling, the feel is similar to the Nikkor -- plastic and light. I have no problem with that. Also, the Tamron shares the same 72mm ring size as the Nikkor so I can move my expensive UV filter between the Nikkor and the Tamron lenses.

There is only one odd behaviour I did not expect in a lens though. When VC is used with auto-focus, the lens jerks a little before stabilizing on a subject. I guess this is how VC works which is very different from how Canon's IS or Nikon's VR mechanism works. I also find the Tamron VC mechanism to be a little noisy. In a quiet room, the spinning noise is quite noticeable but outdoors, it would be inaudible.

After some hand-held testing, I decided to put my D80 on a tripod and do some quick comparison shots between the Nikkor 18-200mm and this Tamron 17-50mm. The images below are center-cropped at 100%. Note that I am NOT comparing apples to apples. The f-stops were different, I did not use the delay shutter release, and I did not have total control of the lighting -- flash light was not used and a TV was turned on (in the background). Also, in all the tests, Vibration Compensation / Reduction was used, even though the camera was on a tripod.

Nikkor at 18mm, f/3.5, 1/2.5 secs:
The colours are somewhat dull.

Tamron at 17mm, f/2.8, 1/5 secs:
Note how the colours in the checkered pattern of yellow and white are richer than in the Nikkor image.

Also, note here that the field of view of the Tamron at 17mm is the same field of view as the Nikkor at 18mm.

Tamron at 17mm, f/4, 1/2.5 secs:
















Nikkor at 50mm, f/4.8, 1/1.6 secs.


















Tamron at 50mm, f/2.8, 1/4 secs:
At the sharpest point, the image is sharper than the Nikkor image.










Tamron at 50mm, f/4, 1/2.5 secs:
Here, I was expecting a very sharp image but it looks fuzzier than the other two. Perhaps I shook the camera when depressing the shutter release or the subject was not in focus at all.

Tamron 17-50mm Di II VC

It's xmas season, and I'm thinking of treating myself to a new lens. I have been trying various lenses over the last couple of years and kept on returning to my expensive 18-200mm Nikkor lens. I guess it was expensive for a reason. :)

Well, I have been reading on this new lens, the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 Di II VC. This is a nice lens with Vibration Compensation (VC) -- another term to remember -- and I am tempted to go buy it now. Instead of buying a used copy, I am thinking of buying brand new. It will hurt my wallet a bit more but at least, I'd know I can exchange it if I get a bad copy.

50mm f/1.8E, part 2

Last night, I took my D80 with me to a restaurant called The Pomegranate, on College St. just east of Bathurst. The inside of the restaurant was nicely decorated with Iranian art. The 50mm lens I decided to carry around then, was not wide enough to take pictures of the restaurant but far in the corner, there was this garment hung on the wall. It looked exquisite. I might have some trouble shooting it with my 18-200mm lens but with the 50mm it was a snap. However, it did take me a couple of shots to get the right exposure. Damn, these manual lenses are slow to work with! :)

Anyways, I am a bit surprised to see how sharp the chandelier was. These two shots were taken at f/1.8. I don't remember the shutter speed or ISO setting.

My home-made NAS, part 2

I visited Canada Computers tonight. I came out empty handed. The cheapest power supply they have was $32. Should I have gotten it? It is cheap but I thought I'd salvage a power supply from another computer I have. So, we'll see. I might be able to get my NAS back in operation tomorrow. Tonight, I am tired. Eyes are droopy. Time to take a long nap until the first spec of light wakes me up.

My home-made NAS

My Network Attached Storage (NAS) machine is about three years old (?) and has seen better days. It's on a stretcher now. The other day, I wondered why my mail server was hung. I noticed later that an NFS mount point got frozen because the NAS went south.

It is probably no real news. I heard the fan. It was coughing and gasping for air a couple of weeks ago. Its legs were feeble and trembled at every rotation. I reached behind the machine yesterday and found that the fan is dead. Maybe the power supply is dead too now as I can no longer start up the computer. Completely black screen, no LED, no sign of life.

I have thousands of photos on this NAS.

I will shop for a new power supply this weekend.

Colour temperature

Here is something to play with -- the colour temperature setting. The original photo looked a little flat with a dull colour to it. I threw the photo in Irfanview and adjusted the colour temperature, turning it down until the water looks blueish. We're in the fall so the colours of the leaves should really be red and yellow now, but they are greenish in this rendition. I kinda like it this way. It looks like a late summer shot.

50mm f/1.8E

I once owned a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 and sold it to a student of arts. Well, after a friend showed how his camera was able to capture a billion more stars than my camera could on a camping trip to Cyprus Lake, I decided to get back one of those 50mm f/1.8!

I found on craigslist an old 50mm f/1.8E version. This is one of the original 50mm Nikkor made. I wanted it and knew how I would use it. During the day, my faithful 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 is still my primary lens but from time to time, when I need to shoot in the dark, the 50mm f/1.8 will be it.

So tonight, when I drove out to the Waterdown Falls, I made good with this 50mm lens.

I first shot with my expensive 18-200mm lens. The image came out too dark to work with. I could not make out anything in the image viewed on the LCD. Just not enough light.

I then remembered I brought the 50mm along. After swapping the lenses, I re-shot the pictures. I knew I could not get the same wide angle shots but at least, I would not have wasted the fuel and time driving out there.

Here was the result, colour-adjusted:

Flickr

Well, I have uploaded a couple thousand photos to Flickr. It was a painless process assisted by a Flickr Uploader software installed on my notebook. The software can do image resizing on the fly but I decided to resize my photos before uploading. I could have uploaded the original image however if I wished but it would have taken days to upload all those photos.

A couple of things I like about my Flickr Pro account -- and they may exist in the free version too -- is that you have access to online photo editing and photo management tools. With the photo editing tool, you could do cropping, colour saturation changes, brightness, contrast, and other useful photo editing functions. The management tools allows you to create collections and sets, and apply three different levels of access permissions on each photo. I could for example create a collection for my trip to California and within the collection, I could create sets for each day of the week or for specific locations and events. Because these photos are of my family, I could make it so only family members can view them. If I had wanted friends to view some pictures, I could also open them up to friends. These can be done one a file-by-file basis or set-by-set basis.

What I don't like about the management tool is, there is no way I could find to select multiple photos in set and apply global changes to them. For example, I may have a family photo set. If there are twenty photos in the family photo set I want to share with friends, I have to open each photo individually and change its permission setting. I thought you might be able to use the Ctrl key to select multiple photos but that did not seem to work.

With Flickr, I have stopped using JAlbum.

Flickr online photo album

Well, I have finally bought into the Pro Flickr account. It started to become difficult to share photos I took of families and JAlbum, while it's great, requires a desktop application to create the photo album. So, I decided to use Flickr's Pro account. At about $25 USD per year, it is a good deal. I will post more about Flickr later after I have had more experience with it.

San Francisco Bay Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge was covered in fog when I visited San Francisco for the second time. It was unfortunate because it is unlikely I will ever return to it, unless another of my cousins gets married. In any case, I made good use of my tripod and speedlight this time, taking a night shot of the Bay Bridge on the north east side of San Francisco, viewed from the corner of Embarcadero and Howard St.

Here, one can see the bridge was poking into the clouds and the lights on the bridge were dispersed in the foggy atmosphere.


I started experimenting with flash options only on this trip to San Jose. At the wedding I was at on Saturday, I was trying to take pictures of people with city lights in the background. I knew if I had used the typical flash sync, the background would be virtually totally dark as the camera would not have captured enough of the ambient light. Shooting without flash means people have to stand still like a rock, an impossible feat. So then, I tried a mix: shooting without flash to capture the ambient and manually pop a flash to illuminate the subjects in the front. It worked but not too well -- parts of the subjects were translucent as I did not point the flash in the proper direction. I then thought about using slow-sync flash.

This is the result of a slow sync (front curtain) -- that is me standing in front of the Bay Bridge. The picture would be more interesting if I had stood a little more to the right but this photo is to show how the slow sync helped.

San Jose, California

Well, I am in San Jose, California. The wedding has come and gone last night. I have more time to do some photography now.

Here, you really need to have a car to get around. There is no transit systems like those in Toronto. There are some bus lines but probably 99% of the population here drive or if you don't have a drive, you ride a car. I will either rent a car or borrow one from my aunt or uncle. For this trip, I brought a GPS Navigator. I am not a big fan of it but in hairy situations, it could get you out of trouble, unless it got you in trouble in the first place. I prefer a paper map (or Google Map) to have an overall picture of where I want to go before heading out. The GPS Navigator can only give a bird-eye view of the immediate areas, not the overall picture. You'd follow it blindly. In 2.8 miles, exit right, in 1.5 miles, keep left, in 7 miles, keep left, in .2 miles, exit at Hyllier Ave. ....

Anyways, my plans are to return to San Francisco. I was there last Friday, but since I am meeting with Naomi this Friday, I will go in as early as I can and roam around until meet time. During the week, I might also drive down to Las Vegas after all. I was planning to go to the Yosemite National Park and camp overnight, but some people didn't think the trip would be really worth it.

Well, if I capture something interesting, i.e. not the "touristy" picture, I'll post it here.

Megapixels aren't important?

I suppose megapixels are not important if you know exactly what you are taking and how you are taking it. Sometimes however, the megapixels really help.

In this one shot of a waterfall, I took a wide landscape shot. I knew part of the picture would be washed out as the morning warmed up and the sun started its climb to its apex point. It was only 9am but the sky was quite brighter than the shadows of the fall. I took the picture anyway.

Here, I cropped the picture, removing the washed out part and got this shot of the waterfall. Still lots of pixels in the cropped version. Not too bad.

Point-and-shoot ain't so bad ...

On Sunday, after a fairly long morning of hiking and shooting, my friends and I went out golfing. I could not imaging carrying my DSLR around for 6000 yards so I just took my trusty Canon SD110 3.1MP point-and-shoot.

This is a great camera for day use. It has a landscape and macro mode. In macro mode, you can get pretty close to a subject and blur the background out. This photo of the daisies was 100% cropped and sharpened in Irfanview.

This shot of the golfer was cropped and colour-adjusted (increasing contrast and lowering the gamma in Irfanview). The original photo does not show much of the orange hue in the sky but the colour adjustment really brings it out.

Not too bad for some older technology!

Nikon to Canon?

Have you ever purchased some software and ended up ditching it for another solution because support service was so poor? How about ending a relationship with a car dealer because their service shop was unfriendly? The same goes for everything, and I think companies should be careful who they have representing them on the support line, whether on the phone or behind a counter.

What can drive someone from buying a Nikon to a Canon camera? A friend was looking at Nikon cameras but switched his mind to a Canon. In his own words, "I've been looking at the Canon 50D for a while now. I ruled out a Nikon because the woman at the service counter at the Nikon service centre was friggin damn ass rude when I took Jenny's camera to get looked at."

There you go folks. Some PR lesson for the big corporations.

Sunsets

If you live on the hills of a metropolitan area, you are likely going to see amazing skies every night. I don't. I live in the suburbs far away from the hills so when the opportunity of a golf game came up, I thought, if we tee off at 5pm we would probably run into the sunset before we finish the game.

We sort of did. There were a lot of trees and it was cloudy so when the sun set, we barely noticed it. My eyes were scanning the sky however and saw a tint of red in the horizon. I took a few shots.

I played a little with the colour curve in GIMP to accentuate the red a little but it was amazing to the naked eyes.

Oh yeah, I lugged my D80 around on the golf course. It would have felt like a big rock, but I had bought a golf cart, finally, earlier in the day!

Always have a camera on you

It is rare to see Hwy 401 totally empty. This was the Expressway earlier this afternoon. On my way back to Mississauga, traffic slowed down to a halt. Something was amiss so I tuned in to 680AM. There was an accident up ahead near Keele St. A plume of black smoke was supposed to be filling the air.

I pulled out my D80 and shot this:


As we got closer, I could see firetrucks in the far distance. The fire had subsided already and no smoke in sight. I zoomed it:


Getting closer to the scene of the accident, I could not stop the car, so I just swung the camera over my left arm and shot blindly. I had no idea if I shot anything good. Well, these shots were not too bad!




You might be that next news reporter, if you had your camera with you.

Photo Stiching

To really capture the perceived beauty of a scene, one shot from the camera just might not do justice. You need to recreate the scene with a panoramic view of it. Our eyes can see almost 180 degrees. My lens at 18mm is far short of the field of view from our two eyes combined. Fisheyes or lenses at 10mm will give us the field of view we want but photo edges are always highly distorted and they are expensive. I think panoramic features of point-and-shoot cameras are great. My D80 does not have such a feature but that is ok.

I was doing interior camping at the Frontenac Provincial Park in Ontario a few weeks ago. To shoot the panoramic scene above, I first used the Aperture Priority mode or one of the other Auto modes to figure the proper exposure settings, then switched over to Manual shooting mode with those same settings. Without a tripod, I panned the scene quickly, shot the scene in 7 small increments.

I just downloaded Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/) to stich the photos together into one panoramic photo shown above. Hugin did a wonderful job. I selected the photos for it to stitch and away it went. There was no need to tweak anything. The black background that is not part of the actual photos were left in the photo to create an interesting frame around the panorama.

The photo below is the same as the one above except that I played with the curve a bit in GIMP.

Bare essentials

I just had a thought.

Over the few years I have had my D80, I have collected many camera equipments and gears and sold some. I found some quite useful and some tend to stay home 95% of the time. For those newbies to DSLR world, below are the things I find essential almost everyday and things I can live without for a while. This list might help you decide what to buy for yourself:

The bare essentials:

• A telephoto (18-200mm) walkaround lens
  
• A good UV filter that stays on the lens all the time
• Vertical hand grip with a built-in battery (good for over 1000 shots)
  
• 8 GB memory card (good for about 1000 Hi-Res photos)
  
• A hotshoe flash with a diffusion dome
• A (foam) bounce card
  
• A school knapsack (or if you want to be fancy, a camera case/bag)
• A point-and-shoot camera
• Leather hand strap
  

That is pretty much what I carry around with me everyday. Then, there are the stuff I leave at home that I use frequently. These are stuff I would naturally bring with me on a long trip, but if it's a short trip within the city, they stay at home:

• Micro-fiber cloth for cleaning the lens filter
  
• Dust blower
• Artic Butterfly brush for cleaning the sensor
• Wet cleaning kit for cleaning the sensor
• Rechargeable batteries for the flash (I have two sets -- one in the flash, one outside ready to be used at any time)
• Extra memory cards (I have 17GB in total I think)
• Memory card reader (I have two)
• A computer to view photos on
  
• A file server or a couple of USB disk drives (I built a RAID-5 NAS to store my photos in)
  

And then, there are items that rarely get used. They go into my luggage on long trips too:

• Tripod (I have a great OPUS tripod)
• A DYI lightsphere
• Extra lenses (my 18-200mm tend to stay on the camera all the time)
• Extra camera batteries (my vertical hand grip with the built-in battery tends to stay on my camera all the time now and I never have to switch to another battery as long as I recharge it before a shoot ... but I would carry the extra battery if I shoot an important event)
• Circular Polarizing Filter
  

That is about it. Have fun.

Instant Krazy Glue

This article is not about photography but because I have used Instant Krazy Glue a number of times already to build and fix photography stuff, I thought I'd mention a tidbit here. If you go buy Instant Krazy Glue, make sure to buy the 4-tube package.

See here: http://www.krazyglue.com/products/product_detail.asp?pc=KG867&g=10

The package contains 4 small tubes of Krazy Glue. This is great because often, I only needed a drop or two of the Glue. If you have used Krazy Glue before, you know once you open a tube, it is likely going to harden inside. Having these small tubes means if it hardens, I'd be wasting only one small tube instead of an entire big tube. Now, these small tubes do not have a cap so after use, if you want to store away the remainder, use cellophane wrap to wrap up the dispensing head air tight. After a month of storage, the tip of the dispensing head will harden so you may have to cut the tip the next time you need to use the tube. Needless to say, you need to be extra careful cutting the tip. You do not want any Glue to squirt out onto your fingers, face, etc.

I was able to store and use and re-use an opened tube this way for up to 5 months. Instant Krazy Glue is great!

D80 actuations

At the rate that I shoot, I fear my D80 will die from too many shutter actuations. I wondered then how many actuations it can bear. There is no definitive answer but then I thought some averaging might help.

I found this website where people post their numbers: http://www.olegkikin.com/shutterlife/nikon_d80.htm

It would appear the chances of the shutter dying increase significantly after 90K clicks.

My D80 might have about 3 more years left to go. By that time, I would have upgraded. I hope.

Stofen or Lightsphere?

My SB-800 speedlight came with a diffuser dome. When I bought it a couple of years ago, I did not know the Stofen omni-bounce is virtually the same as the diffuser dome. I got curious now, after building my DYI Lightsphere. I was curious to know if the Stofen is better or worse than my DYI Lightsphere.

So, I took a few shots inside my room. The diffuser dome was angled straight up and at 45 degrees. The DYI Lightsphere pointed straight up.

When the diffuser dome was angled at 45 degrees, it created fairly sharp and dark shadows. Everything that was lit was bright. My blue wall looked a little washed out, but this is definitely better than shooting without the diffuser dome.

When pointed straight up, the dome created softer shadows, and the blue of the wall was bluer than the first shot.

With the DYI Lightsphere, the shadows are much softer still, and the blue of the wall has a similar tone as the blue of the second shot.

From the few shots I took, it looks like the DYI Lightsphere would create a more pleasing photo than the diffuser dome. However, my DYI Lightsphere is much bigger than the diffuser dome. When I go to a wedding this July, I would like to bring my DYI Lightsphere. However, it looks ugly and is clumsy to carry it around.

Rubber zoom ring on Nikkor 18-200mm

After about two years, the rubber zoom ring of my Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens showed signs of age. After Cuba, the rubber started to loosen up. It got stretched by about 3mm. I got so annoyed by the loose rubber ring. The feeling of looseness was not fitting with a camera, so I decided today to do something about it.

After playing around with it for a bit, I figured there was no glue holding it together. It was just a rubber ring. So I slid it out. What you see below is the underside of the rubber ring pulled over the extended barrel.


Here, I removed the rubber ring from the lens altogether:


I could not think of a way to compress the rubber ring so there was only one solution -- cut it (note the length of the segment was cut):


After cutting it, I wrapped the rubber "ring" around the lens and used Instant Krazy Glue to connect the two ends together. I use Krazy Glue for many things, including the Gary Fong Lightsphere imitation.


The Krazy Glue line looks like a scar but at least, the rubber ring feels good to the touch. It is tightly wound around the barrel.

Nikon sells these rings for $10 I believe.

Artic Butterfly, or not?

I have used Visible Dust's Artic Butterfly many times over. It worked flawlessly, always as expected ... until a couple of days ago.

Returning from a camping trip, I decided to clean my sensor for this weekend of dragonboat festival at the Toronto Centre Island. I was confident the Artic Butterfly will remove a couple of annoying specks of dust on my sensor.

Here was the before-cleaning shot:


After brushing across the screen once, here is what I got:



Yikes! I brushed across the screen a second time, and a third time. The gunk was stuck firm on the sensor filter!


I believe the edges of the sensor was very dirty. I must have touched the edge and dragged the dust or some other gunk across the sensor filter. It was horrific! I could even see the streaks of dust or other deposit on the sensor filter with the naked eye. Well, it was ruined I thought. I guess only Nikon Service could fix this mess. That meant lots of wasted time and trying to make it to their office before they close at 5pm or something like that. Just then, I remember Cesar had bought a wet cleaning kit.

Cesar's wet cleaning solution is called "ultrapure optic cleaning fluid" made by American Recorder. A few drops on the swab and a couple of swipes across the sensor filter removed most of the gunk, and another couple more swipes to remove all the gunk. A strand of the swab or dust got left behind on the right edge of the screen after the wet cleaning. I then used the Artic Butterfly to remove it.

After the first application of wet cleaning (still some dusts):


After a second application of the web cleaning and then the Artic Butterfly:

Gary Fong Lightsphere

I was at the Henry's Photographic and Digital Imaging Show in Toronto yesterday. I was surprised but delighted that Gary Fong was there, promoting his Gary Fong Lightsphere and his new book, The Accidental Millionaire: something... -- I think that is what it is called. Since I heard about his Lightsphere and always wondered if it is any good. His demonstration of the Lightsphere was quite captivating. There is always a big crowd around his booth and his presentation on Wedding Photography drew huge crowds. I went away thinking.

I got back home and started searching on the web for a Do-It-Yourself kit. I found this website: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Gary-Fong-Lightsphere/

I knew I have somewhere in the house or in my car or translucent hard plastic I could use and mold into the DIY version of the Lightsphere. I found it in my car.

Based on the instructions from the website, I built this DIY Lightsphere. Instead of using velcro (as the instructions specified), I applied some Instant Krazy Glue to bind the ends together so the whole thing keeps its shape. My DIY-Lightsphere fits nicely over my SB-800. It is no where as good as the Gary Fong Lightsphere, but it will do.

The results were good. This DIY-Lightsphere does diffuse the light although I am not sure if it works as well as Gary Fong's.

Now, I got curious. I had built a bounce card out of foam before, so I had to test this DIY-Lightsphere and my bounce card. As it turns out, inside my room, there is virtually no difference I could see.

Would a Lightsphere make a bigger difference in a big hall with high ceiling? I don't know although it would make sense it would.

My Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 lens

Another one has left my collection. It is not a big collection but nevertheless a collection. I had once acquired and let go of a Nikkor 50mm f1/8, a Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5, and the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8. These are all fast lenses but my expensive 18-200mm f3.5-5.6mm lens finds its raison d'etre over and over again.

I still have the Tokina 80-400mm lens and a Nikkor 500mm f/8. The Tokina is a monster lens that weighs a ton. Will it be the next to let go? Probably not. I still need a super-telephoto lens. The Nikkor 500mm was a give-away and I just like the fact it is a mirror lens. I have not looked around but I cannot imagine anyone make these mirror lenses anymore. So I have one of a very few.

What I learned from Costa Rica, part 5

I woke up this morning and thought, wow, I'm up early! It was barely 6am. My phone wakes me up at 6:30am everyday with its quirky, annoying melody. You have to wake up or plug your ears for a few minutes until the phone alarm dies.

I get too accustomed to the réveil-matin. In fact I start to take it for granted as with many other modern amenities. I expect it to wake me up at 6:30am every weekday.

Going to Costa Rica, I was relying on my phone to wake me up before the sunrise so we could take full advantage of the early days and perhaps get some shooting done before it gets too hot and too bright. As it turned out though, my phone needs to see the network for it to display the time! My CDMA phone works only in North America so it was in fact useless in Costa Rica. I could not make calls with it or even use its clock! My body clock had to be it. It had to be re-adjusted for Costa Rica, which oddly enough, worked.

Anyways, remember to take with you a working alarm clock when traveling. Just remember also that the alarm clock will not wake you up if you had too much fun the night before.

Holding your camera

I remember a couple of friends were shooting with their compact and DSLR cameras. Their pictures turn out a little fuzzier than I'd expect. Whether you are shooting with a compact camera or a bigger DSLR, there is a trick that can help stabilize your shots. Perhaps there is a better method but this is what I do when I point a camera at something and shoot without flash.

Here are the steps:

1. Raise your camera to your eye level to shoot with both hands.
2. Tuck your arms in your chest.
   
3. Look through the viewfinder (or look at LCD if it's a compact camera). Think and compose your picture.
4. Before pressing the shutter release button, take a deep breath.
5. Exhale slowly.
6. As you are about to finish exhaling, your body will feel calm.
7. As you are still exhaling the last bit of breath, keep your eyes on the subject and depress the shutter release button.
8. Hold your breath.
   
9. While the shutter opens, a DSLR will blank out. This is the hardest part of holding your camera still because you cannot see what you are shooting anymore. Keep holding your breath until the shutter closes.

This method should work for shots close to one second.

Another Step Closer

Last September, I wrote how the Nikon D90 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 were bridging the two worlds of compact point-and-shoot and the DSLR cameras. Today I stumbled upon yet another such pioneer -- the Canon PowerShot SX1 IS. This camera is not available in North America yet for some reason but its lesser sister, the PowerShot SX10 IS is.

I won't detail its features here. There are many reviews out there already. Basically however, this is one camera that I would seriously consider as a quality alternative to a low-end DSLR kit. Its 5-100mm focal length range is equivalent to 28-560mm on a 35mm. That is a wicked optical zoom factor and an awesome range. I saw some photos taken at the 100mm focal length, and with IS in bright light conditions, the photos turned out excellent, for a compact camera. Under certain conditions, it can outperform a low-end DSLR with a cheap kit lens. Check out the reviews yourself.

After reading the reviews, I started to think there is a new class of cameras: the hybrids. These hybrids are not exactly like the compact point-and-shoots. They are not really all that compact. This SX1 is rather bulky. It looks like a DSLR on the outside and is bigger than the truly compact cameras. This camera is a point-and-shoot but it has enough knobs to tweak to make it to work like a DSLR so it's not really a point-and-shoot -- and who is to say a DSLR cannot be point-and-shoot? I know some starters use their DSLR strictly as a super fancy point-and-shoot camera. I suppose we cannot use the expression "point-and-shoot" anymore to differentiate these two classes of cameras. It is not a point-and-shoot as we know it, but the SX1 is definitely not a DSLR by definition either, as it has no mirror inside. It does however have a fairly sizeable lens like those found on a DSLR although the lens is not removable. It does also have a hotshoe mount and has no perceivable shutter lag commonly problematic in many point-and-shoots.

The SX1 is a hybrid trying to define a new class as the world might consider it as an on-the-field emergency replacement for a broken DSLR, or even as a DSLR replacement for landscape and candid photography in bright daylight.

If you are an avid compact camera user who is thinking of trying a DSLR but does not want the heavy equipment and bulkiness of the DSLR, the Canon PowerShot SX1 IS is the camera for you. Wait until it arrives in North America -- don't buy its lesser sister, the PowerShot SX10 IS which goes for about $350 USD in the States. The SX1 is considerably more expensive but when it arrives (if it does), its price would have dropped significantly.

Sepia, A Warm Touch of the Old Past

A little warmer touch -- I converted the original image (see previous post) to sepia. The original bluish tone brings back memories of the bone-chilling cold night that it was. I thought this sepia image is nicer. The reddish and yellowish tone gives an image a warmer feel of the festive mood.

Nikon D90

Well, on New Year Eve, I got to play with Jenny's D90. It was a marvel of technology. The look and feel is very similar to my D80 so I had no trouble using the camera. It felt right. Many things about the D90 are the same as the D80. However, what really stood out what the new CMOS sensor. I was astounded by the clarity of pictures taken at ISO 1600. At ISO 1600, pictures taken with the D80 look like crap -- awfully grainy to be of any use except for documentary web pictures. The D90 on the other hand captured what looked like on the big LCD very clear images with very little noise. Qualitatively, I'd say the D90's ISO 1600 is equivalent to my D80's ISO 800. There is clearly a huge gap in system performance.

Well, I hope to see some of the pictures taken last night with the D90 soon!

Happy New Year!

P.S. Despite a camera's lackluster performance in low light conditions, one has to know how to work with its limitations. As we were walking back to the parking lot, I braced myself against pole and took a shot of the CN Tower from the CBC plaza (I think that's what it's called??) with my D80.