High Level Design

I like this photo that Erica and I took today at the Children’s museum.

Photography

Erica is turning 1 year old this weekend. Time has officially flown. Here are some photos from this month and last:

I’ve finished uploading all my content to Smugmug where I’m hosting my photos and videos from now on.

Family, Photography

Fall is coming, some leaves are already starting to change. This year I’m hoping to get out to Gatineau park more and at a better time to catch the leaves changing.

General, Photography

Not at all the shot I was hoping to get but I like it nonetheless.

Photography

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

Chateau Laurier:

Lac Pemichangan at night:

Photography

Got some more photos of downtown Ottawa this week at night. Here are the photos:

All the photos are here: http://gallery.hld.ca/v/public/photography/ottawanight/

Photography

Got my tripod last week and got out tonight with Gilles to take some photos of Ottawa at night. The sky was pretty bright since we were in town, I think next time it will be interesting to go out of town a bit to get a darker and clearer sky for stars.

The tripod is excellent. It’s a Manfrotto 190CX3 Pro with a Markins M-10 ballhead which is a pleasure to use. I was able to lock into whatever shot I wanted with no hassle and no slop.

Here are some photos:

Photography

Here is a good portrait from this weekend. Erica was awake and happy for the longest time yet.

Original is here: original

Family, Photography

Erica is now into her second month. She’s become fairly curious and enjoys staring at things while breathing heavily. Here is a portrait of her last sunday.

The full image is on the gallery

Family, Photography

Erica is getting much more bright eyed these days. Here is a cute photo of her.

I have a decent camera again so I’ll be taking more decent photos and posting them again. Its been a few months it seems without a decent camera. I have a Nikon d700 again with the 105 micro and an 18-35. I’d like to get a 50mm f1.4 but will wait till the updated version comes out in december.

There are lots more photos of Erica in the gallery. If you don’t have the login and password you can email me to get it.

Family, Photography

I’ve been spending more time on photography these days, probably due to the fact that I traded in my Olympus system for a Nikon d700. So far I’m thrilled with this camera and the simple 50mm f1.4 lens I have with it.

Here are two shots I’ve taken with it so far, both have nearly no post processing.

Heather in the sunset (now in her third trimester):

A flower in the sky:

The flower in the sky looks pretty rough because of the gallery jpeg compression. Go here for the full version that looks decent: Sky Flower Full

Photography

Mike at The Online Photographer had a great post about sensor sizes in cameras. What I agreed with most is the concept of “points of sufficiency”. He’s mostly discussing digital cameras but also points out that this applies to computers also.

Generally speaking, unless you want to run vista or a very high end recent game, a computer from several years ago is probably sufficient. In fact, as more and more web apps are created the need for faster computers becomes less relevant, things like integrated always on network would probably be more usefull, or portability.

As far as digital camera sensors go, the areas with the largest room for innovation are probably dynamic range and low light conditions. The human eye can see so much more dynamic range than a sensor can, one good example is my previous post about the lunar eclipse. To the human eye, half the moon was eclipsed but was still visible and red, the other half of the moon was bright as ever. To the camera, half the moon was black, the other half was white.

And wouldn’t it be cool to not need a flash at night?

This is probably a few years away from now, but I don’t think sensor size can solve either problem fully. Someone is going to have to be creative.

Computers, Geeky, Photography

Today there was a Lunar Eclipse and I took some photos of it from my driveway. I’m not that happy with how they turned out in the end since the details are not sharp. They aren’t as sharp I suspect because I couldn’t shoot at 1/1250 like I did in the summer, tonight I was shooting with faster ISO and shutter speeds around 1/4 to 1/40 to get decent results. I suspect that because of the slower shutter speed the photos aren’t as sharp as in the summer. I did do my best to have my tripod stablized and the mirror lock up, etc.

Here is a photo of the total eclipse:

Here is a photo of the partial eclipse about 20-30 minutes earlier:

And here is a photo that I took earlier this year in the summer.

You can see the EXIF info in the files to see what a difference in brightness theree was.

Photography

I made a light tent tonight to do some indoor photography at night when I typically have the time to work on this hobby. Its basically a cheap way of well lighting small objects. It only took about 30 minutes to put together and it ended up being a lot of fun… what else would you do with a kitty litter box anyways?

Here is a picture of the light tent setup:

Here are a few sample shots from this setup. All shots were taken using the 50mm ZD except for picture of the 50mm itself which was taken by the 12-60.

If you’re interested in more photos you can go to my light tent page on my gallery.

And if you’re interested in making your own here are the sites I read before doing this: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent/

Photography

I got two new tools for my photography plans. A Hoya R72 infrared filter for my sigma 30mm f1.4. I didn’t have much time to take a picture since I had to work today so all the photos I took on the front yard were over exposed, this was the best of the bunch.

I often see IR shots converted to a grey scale monotone but I’ll leave them unprocessed for a while till I learn what I like.

Andrzej Wrotniak has several great pages on Infrared photography. He has in fact more interesting things than just infrared, but here are two links to check out if you’re interested in IR: Infrared Photography with a Digital Camera Infrared Photography with the Olympus E-510

The other thing I got was an [Olympus EX-25](http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/products/lens/ex-25/ “OLYMPUS E-SYSTEM:Extension Tube EX-25″) which turns the [Olympus Zuiko 50mm f2.0 macro](http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/products/lens/50_20M/ “OLYMPUS E-SYSTEM:ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 50mm F2.0 Macro”) into a 1:1. Had even less time to play with this one but focusing was much more difficult than without the extension tube.

Photography

Here is a new photo of a Wood Duck that I took at the Montreal Biodome.

Photography

Fall is my favorite season. Here is a new photo which is my current wallpaper.

May as well provide an update on my current camera setup which I’ve been adding to fairly quickly

As I said in a previous post I have an Olympus e-510 camera which I’m very happy with. As far as lenses go here is the deal..

I got an Olympus Zuiko 35mm macro lens which was pretty good and I got my awesome chain shot from it but I really want to do a lot of macro photography so I decided to return it to upgrade to the Olympus Zuiko 50mm macro which is an f2.0 lens so its nice and bright. Since then I’ve gotten several awesome shots from it which you can find on my macro gallery website.

In addition, I wanted a good normal view prime lens. After lots of research I figured that the Sigma 30mm f1.4 would be the best option for me. Its very bright so it gives me good opportunity to get some bokeh. Ed the tree was taken with this lens.

I have on order a third lens for telephoto work. I’m pretty excited for this lens since it is very well reviewed and will be great for Ultimate games. The lens is an Olympus Zuiko 50-200mm f2.8-3.5. This lens should be lots of fun and for a telephoto with zoom its quite bright. I had the Olympus Zuiko 18-180mm f3.5-6.3 for a few days but returned it because it only felt that usable in bright daylight.

I think its a pretty slick setup. Maybe some day in the (near?) future I’ll spring for a wider angle lens for indoor or days where I only want to carry one lens. In that case currently the nicest looking option is the Olympus 12-60mm lens which was announced recently but isn’t available yet.

Anyways, that it for now. I’ll keep you updated once I have some shots from the 50-200mm.

Photography

HDR stands for high dynamic range. Google has a tech talk about it here and its worth watching if you’re into this kind of photography.

Photography

I picked up a new hobby and a new toy this past week. Its an Olympus E-510 which I’m so far very happy with.

It was a tough choice between this an the Canon Rebel XTI simply because Canon has a bigger market share and it would be nice to have lots of selection for lenses and other accessories.

Nontheless I picked the Olympus because: 1. Live View LCD. Should be fun for IR photography 2. Image stabilization built into the body will save money on lenses

I cleaned up my Photo Gallery and have a new Photography section. Here is one photo which I like taken with this camera:

Photography