A blog about random things

Limited depth of field week - part III

2009-10-31T17:35:00.003+08:00

- ISO 80 - f4.8 - 1/250s - No flash	- ISO 80 - f4.8 - 1/200s - No flash -
- ISO 80 - f2.8 - 1/640s - No flash -	- ISO 80 - f2.8 - 1/1000s - No flash -

I was playing around with the limited depth of field so much that I have decided to post more pictures regarding the matter.

Top left - I can't seem to stop taking portrait shots of cats. It's so frustrating when they do not cooperate with you. But when they do, the results are worth all that effort.

Top right - Standard long range "macro". The composition is not great. Practice makes perfect.

Bottom left - I saw an article in the Borneo Bulletin regarding macro shots last week. It talked about the "dew on leaves". I had some success at it (by accident :) two posts back). Rather than the dew on leaves, this is some sap coming out of a cracked mango.

Bottom right - This is my first ever macro shot of living spider. I found it by accident when I was taking some macro of nearby flowers. You can also see an ant to the right of the spider. Cool.

Limited depth of field Week - Portraits

2009-10-25T19:05:00.003+08:00

- ISO 100 - f/4.8 - 1/160s - No flash -	- ISO 200 - f/4.8 - 1/250s - No flash -
- ISO 100 - f/4.8 - 1/160s - No flash -	- ISO 200 - f/4.8 - 1/250s - No flash -
After picking up some hints from fellow photographers, this is what I managed to do with my P&S. Kinda fun to shoot portraits with limited depth of field. I only wish my subjects would stay still long enough for me to take a snap.

Long focal length lens is preferable for portraits... unless you want to be up-close and personal with a "typical" 35mm lens. I ended up with somewhere around 200 mm focal length for the shots to get a decent blur for the background. This is also due the cats do not like me approaching them. The distance to the background also plays a factor. The top left photo shows a minor background blur due to it's proximity to the subject.

I still need to work on the composition for a portrait. So it'll be a while until I am comfortable enough to take people portraits in public.

Limited depth of field Week

2009-10-21T05:26:00.010+08:00

- ISO 100 - f3.2 - 1/160s - no flash -

- ISO 100 - f3.2 - 1/320s - no flash -

- ISO 100 - f3.2 - 1/320s - no flash -

I am glad to say that I'm backkkk! After the death of my old and trusted Acer Travelmate a few months ago :'( died primarily of motherboard failure as well as corrupted hard disk. Which means, I have to recover all those important documents, photos, songs, videos and the like from the disk which is a pain.

Due to that, I am forced to relocate my work to an unbranded Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz computer that I had build with an aging & equally slow S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266] graphics card as well as reinstalling those custom softwares for image processing.

Anyway, I have decided that this week is my "Limited depth of field" week. This could be anything like a macro shot (just like the three pictures on the left) or the ever so popular portrait with those bokeh backgrounds. Currently, I'm learning to make the latter out of my trusty p&s camera. Let's just hope that some will be successful so I could post them.

p.s. The last two pictures contain some contrast enhancement I have been playing around recently.

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - WYWY reflections

2009-05-26T00:12:00.003+08:00

One of the famous food places in KB. As usual, I am aiming for a mirror reflection.

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - DST Main office

2009-05-26T00:04:00.002+08:00

The photo was taken from the parking lot which the security guard was kind enough to let pass. Thanks Mr Security Guard person. :) The post processing is heading in the artistic direction. I have not been producing these kind of images for a while.

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - Jetty at Kianggeh

2009-05-25T23:55:00.001+08:00

This is where I took the pictures from in the last three posting

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - BSB at night

2009-05-25T23:50:00.004+08:00

This is a panorama taken on the same day, same location, different azimuth. This is a single exposure with 5 shots.

Added: 26th May 2009
Here is the larger version of the image.

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - Arts & Crafts Center

2009-05-25T23:42:00.005+08:00

Another attempt at the project taken from the same location as the previous post, just looking further ahead. Still suffer the same problem but minimised somewhat in post processing.

iso [i, saw] the slow it down - Colourful trees

2009-05-25T23:29:00.003+08:00

I was not too happy with the results but I got a few encouragements from Dudsy65 and others about it. So here it is. You'll notice that the fluorescent lights are smeared, the exact location of fingerprint marks on the lens.

"iso [i, saw] the slow it down project" failed attempts(?)

2009-05-17T20:06:00.003+08:00

This is my failed attempt at tackling the slow it down project. My original plan was to use an old school science project to lower down the amount of light into the camera, just like a neutral density (ND) filter. Yup, you guessed it from the images above, pinhole cameras. I have been researching this for quite some time. Luckily this project came through. Unfortunately, directly capturing a pinhole image from a point & shoot is not great. At least for my gear, Canon PowerShot A650IS. The original images were very blurred, only post-processing allow some decent images to come out though blurred and very small.

Now I have to think of another method to tackle the problem.

Pre-cursor to the "iso [i, saw] the slow it down project"

2009-05-17T01:26:00.005+08:00

Just looking around looking for subjects to capture on camera. Malangnya, I think I found a nice place to shoot it but tak sempat nak tunggu sampai malam.

Anyhow, this is a panorama shot, single exposure and 9 images. I did some post processing to improve the blueness of the sky, increase the colour saturation, increased the local contrast and some sharpening. In total, ngambil masa dari awal konsert akhir AF sampai lah habis. Maklumlah, masih belajar gunakan software lah katakan.

Komen & kritik tah.

iso [i, saw] the sell your car project - the X-cave-a-tor - a different kind of car

2009-05-10T13:05:00.006+08:00

I thought this is a nice variation to the "iso [i, saw] the sell your car project". Hope people would like it :-)