Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
Daily photo for 1/22/12 - Venice Pier at Dusk
Tripod, Nikon D80, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ND grad filter, f/22, ISO 100, 6 second exposure
Timing - Although I arrived before sunset, I waited for a while afterwards to get these colors. The sun set at 5:15; this shot was taken about 5:30. Continue reading »
During a recent trip to Death Valley National Park, I often took a step back from my ‘big’ camera and pulled out my phone to make some panoramas. If you want to see the big camera photos, click this – Death Valley 2011. The iPhone panoramas are all linked below – the first set was exported from the amazing Photosynth iPhone app and the second set was stitched using AutoStitch. I wrote about both apps in this post a few months ago.
At first glance, the Photosynth panoramas look weird and terrible. Keep in mind, though, that they are full 360° in all directions and when you constrain it to be a 2D rectangle, things get a little squished. Click the ‘interactive’ link below each image to see it how it was intended. The Dante’s View Photosynth turned out particularly well, in my humble opinion.
The AutoStitch panoramas are much prettier, but of course lack the interactivity and imersiveness (?) of the Photosynths. AutoStitch can handle multiple rows of photos, but in all the cases below I just did a single row. It’s interesting to see what textures and scenes each app could handle gracefully.
Zabriskie Point [interactive]
Dante’s View [interactive] Continue reading »
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
Daily photo for 11/4/11 - Pleasure Pier
It rained today, and post-storm photos tend to be quite lovely. For me, the logical thing to do was head down to the beach near the Santa Monica Pier around sunset. I’ve done that many times before, but I can’t say that it ever gets old. Continue reading »
Circular polarizing filters are great for saturating colors and preventing unwanted reflections. At least that’s what the internet says but it’s no substitute for discovering on my own, so I spent $150 on a 77mm Promaster filter down at Tuttle Cameras when they were having a big sale. Check out the dramatic difference in these unedited photos:
 Minimum polarization... |
 Maximum polarization! |
I mean, wow. Right?
I wanted to share a couple of first impressions. First, there’s a light loss of about 2 stops. That’s like shooting at 1/60 instead of 1/250 or f/5.6 instead of f/2.8. Or just setting your camera to -2 EV. In a more practical sense, it means you might need to use a tripod when you wouldn’t normally have to, like after sunrise or before sunset. Continue reading »
Last year, I wrote The Amazing iPhone Camera Comparison using an iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G. This year, I am doing the same thing with the iPhone 4S and 4. Being able to compare the quality from the two cameras has given me a huge respect for the iPhone 4S – the quality difference is amazing and makes the iPhone 4 feel like a toy.
Yes, I made this image in MS Paint.
For the tech specs below, I included my numbers from last year’s post and added the ones for the 4S. Most of the numbers came from directly observing the EXIF data off of the photos, which included shots of the sun (for max shutter speed, etc) and a dark closet (for highest ISO, etc). Continue reading »
Oh yeah, it's got the GBs
Although I never considered myself one of ‘those people’, I got my hands on the new iPhone 4S the day it came out – Friday, October 14th. There was no line late in the day at the AT&T store, but still a bit of a party atmosphere. We were served popcorn and cotton candy while a DJ spun off to the side. What a strange phenomenon.
Having owned the iPhone 4, the successor is a bit underwhelming. It’s awesome, for sure, but the differences are subtle compared to the huge leap between the 3GS and the 4. But hey, that’s why it’s called the iPhone 4S – the fact that it’s just an upgraded version is right there in the product name. Continue reading »
My wife and I recently returned from an amazing 3-week trip to South Africa and Mozambique. Along the way, I used the Photosynth app on my iPhone to capture full 360° panoramas of all of the places we stayed and a few places we visited.
Now I share them with you.
Church Square in Pretoria, South Africa
Each of the links below will open in a new page on photosynth.net, where you can pan around and zoom in/out. Be sure to try it full-screen.
My wife makes many cameo appearances, as does my shadow and feet. Not all of the panoramas are complete due to space constraints and/or laziness. Please ignore any weird artifacts or ghosting effects – Photosynth is a quick-and-dirty tool. OK, let’s get started!
As I’ve been using my iPhone for the One/Day Project, I’ve developed quite an interest in the various ways to enhance the iPhone’s camera. Unfortunately, the genre of iPhone photography seems to have already jumped the shark. In addition to some truly ridiculous physical add ons, there are literally thousands of apps available. Of course the vast majority are terrible. Just terrible.
One area that I consider legitimate is panoramas. Since your phone is now a camera as well as a computer, it’s cool that you can take and stitch multiple images into panoramas with the same device. Panoramas allow you to create higher resolution images than is possible with the camera alone. It’s great for capturing the big picture and being able to immediately share it.
Palisades Park - my daily photo for 4/23/09
My interest in panoramas has pointed me towards three apps – Pano, AutoStitch and Photosynth. All three have their pros and cons which I’ve briefly laid out below, along with some sample photos of the same scenes for comparison. Continue reading »
Yikes, what an official name. If you want to know what AF-S, VR and IF-ED means, head to Ken Rockwell’s page about it. I’m going to go ahead and call it the Nikon 70-300mm, because that’s what a normal person would call it.
70-300 w/lens hood on my D80
I bought the lens from Adorama – a factory-refurbished model at an additional discount, so it was a great deal. It came with only a 90-day warranty and no fancy packaging, but I’ll live. As you may have read in my previous post, I was planning on renting a fixed 300mm f/4 for an upcoming Africa trip, but it was simply too heavy. The 70-300mm is one stop slower (f/5.6 instead of f/4) and in general lower quality, but it has vibration reduction and it’s half the weight! And half the price!
Size Comparison
You can see from the photo above that it’s by far my biggest lens, although it’s only 6 ounces (170g) heavier than the 18-200mm. I plan on taking both of those zoom lenses to Africa and leaving the macro and f/1.4 lenses behind.
Zooming is a big plus! In theory I like the idea of using a high-quality fixed lens and moving myself to ‘zoom’ in and out, but I won’t have that luxury on the safari since I’ll be in a Land Rover 99% of the time. Looking at other folks’ photos from Kruger outings, we’ll almost certainly see animals close to the road, and I don’t want to be stuck at 300mm if that happens.
Regarding the photo at right, however, God help us if we are ever that close to a hippo. But hopefully you see my point.
I have a big trip planned, worthy of a big lens.
Sharing
Later this year I’ll be in Kruger National Park in South Africa, where there be many animals. Of course I’m struggling with what lenses to bring, and I want to share what I’ve learned so far, a bunch of photos, and why I won’t actually be taking this lens.
In the past I’ve rented a massive Sigma zoom and an ultra-wide Tokina lens and haven’t been particularly impressed, so I wanted to stick with Nikkor this time around. I wanted a long lens (obviously) but wanted the superior quality of a fixed focal length, rather than a zoom lens. I looked around – mostly at Nikon’s website – and settled on the 300mm f/4, which is the equivalent of 450mm on my Nikon D80′s DX sensor. Continue reading »
