Blue Hour Blend

The Marina Bay Sands is proving to be a very nice place for sunsets. I applaud the use of pools which made a whole lot of difference in blue hour shots.

A worthy companion

Ideal compact – When one has shot DSLR (and larger) cameras long enough, this term will start appearing in the back of your mind. Nope, I’ve not found THE ideal compact yet, but I’ve got something close enough =) [long post. Beware..]

It turns out that this looked better

This was made using Photomatix 3 (together with Lightroom). I was getting a little lazy to blend the exposures manually, and it turns out that the software is capable of some pretty nice results. I personally find this better than the one below (composition and colour wise), although it might be a bit overkill with so many sunset+water+boat pics these days. I should just remove the previous post.

My first Panaromic HDR

On second looks, it doesn't even look like a panaromic image. But hey... 15 images, and some serious computing power were used in its creation. One day I'll lay my hands on that CS4 64bit. My HDD must be feeling damn angry that there's 1gb of ram slacking away while it is forced to thrash about.

I waded into the water for this shot, ankle deep in soft, greyish mud. It's low tide these days, so I hope not to waste the opportunity to get more shots like these. I'll be back!

It's over... all over.

What a luxury it is to be able to doodle on 1 photo for the whole night =)
Read on if you have such a luxury too...

After sooo many days of inactivity, i wanted something special to refresh this blog. The weather these days are dry and hot. While i do curse and swear at how much floor mopping i'll have to do, its also true that the sunset is a lot more colourful.

Exams are finally over, after less than 20 weeks of actual schooling (not counting test/break). Kindof feels like BMT, intense training/studying and stress and then poof... all the weight off your shoulders, but with the lingering worry of what's to come next.

I have no plans to go anywhere during the hols, but intend to do a lot more photography. Every shoot feels like a little holiday trip, especially those that i go solo. Its just you, and your way of seeing, unaffected by convention. I get to think aloud, commenting my own pictures and in a way, get to know myself.

While shooting this pic, i realised that i've changed a little in the way i compose. I am seeing it more as a painting than a picture. I ask myself questions like: If you were to paint this scene, what would you include? Colour or monochrome? How dark/bright would u paint this area.. stuff like that. Photography, with photoshop, gives me the power to make such decisions =)

Technical data: 5 exposures digitally blended. 2 GND8 stacked (results in the nice vignette at the top). Tokina 11-16 f11 at 11mm.

Warp my world

5 exp handheld HDR

In case you haven't notice... the above image is way wilder than usual. What happened? Make a lucky guess =D

Hmm... isn't that hard to guess eh? I gave in and bought myself yet another lens - the Tokina 10-17 FE. It's a fisheye zoom... first of its kind for DX sized sensors, and can be used on FX from 15mm onwards. (talk about future proofing)

INTRO TO FISHEYE

This lens is a SPECIALITY lens. Which means it is only useful in a few situations. Used too often, viewers will develop vertigo, and it might just turn them off. But when used the right way, it is able to get you ASS-KICKING perspectives no other lenses can.

Fisheyes have geometric instead of volumetric distortions. That is to say, objects retain the same area in the picture no matter where it is placed. Rectilinear lenses, say the 12-24, have volumetric distortions, stretching objects placed at the edges, making faces and bodies look wider than they are supposed to be. However, fisheyes curve any lines that doesn't pass through the center, so there are subjects that you shouldn't shoot with a fisheye under normal circumstances (ie buildings/landscapes).

COMPOSING WITH FISHEYES

What i love about this particular lens is the wide-ness. It's sick. You get the full 180 degrees FOV, meaning that EVERYTHING in front of you will be in the picture. That includes part of your feet or maybe your shoulder, but more commonly, your shadow. The widest rectilinear lens at the moment is the sigma 12-24, but that is only about 120 deg FOV. Imagine how much wider this is! The extreme wideness and unique distortion means I have to learn to compose in a very different way.

To get use to this new persective, I stuck the camera to my eye as i walked around the park. With the distortion, I have the ability to "bend" objects, warping them to aid my composition. This also means that how I frame my picture will be more important than before. You can't simply crop the image in post.

HANDLING & BUILT

The 10-17 is a very compact and light lens. Despite its solid metallic body, it only weighs 350g. (the 12-24 weights 750g). It is only slightly larger than a 50mm prime, making it an ideal walkabout UWA, provided you can accept the loss of corner detail when pictures are de-fished.

PERFORMANCE

Wide open, this lens is not very sharp. Purple fringing is evident, even after the Expeed processing. But stopped down to f8 and sharpness is much more acceptable, although still not as sharp as any other lens I own.

Edit: I made a serious mistake on leaving AF Fine Tune ON. (Apparently D300 doesn't allow fine tuning of different 3rd party lenses) With it off, I get much better results. This lens is surprisingly sharp all the way to the edges from f5.6 and above!

It is surprisingly resilient to flare though, and the 6 aperture blades give me very nice sunbursts. This is important as the lens is so wide you almost always get the sun in your picture.

Matrix metering will go wild outdoors, due to the super high contrast of the scene. Use center weighted, manual, or if possible, HDR like what i've did. (it helps if you can rattle off at 8fps hehe)

IN CONCLUSION this is a very unique yet versatile lens. Lightweight and compact, I believe it will be with me for the non-important social gatherings, or walkabouts more often than the 12-24.

Amidst the Cannonball trees

In my bid to secure new perspectives within West Coast Park, I ended up feeding mozzies while this picture was taken. I find that i'm still weak at composing those messy subjects into neat images. Hmm...

Missing my sec sch days

We had the largest track, the biggest pool, the best view, the strongest winds... those were the days

Pandan reservoir is my favourite haunt when the weather gets real hot. I'll cycle around the 6.5km track just to feel the wind in my hair, and relive the days when I had to run the gravel path just to complete my 2.4km during sec school.

RV at that time is THE value for money school. It's near my place, and I don't have to pay maintenance for a huge track (the reservoir), nor a swimming pool (pandan public pool). And yet we do use these venues for PE. Our standard of education is not that far from what is provided in independent schools, and yet our fees are govt subsidized. Shiok.

Image above is a panaromic HDR. It almost killed my com, merging 10 x 12 mpx exposures into 1 huge 20+ mpx 32bit tiff. And I only have 512mb of RAM. Jeez.

Walkabout #32 - NUS

Seriously, this photo doesn't deserve a place here... it's meaning less.


Just trying out my HDR technique... the composition could be better. Another day perhaps...

Picture along the corridor

During the golden hour, take as many pictures as you can.

我和我自己的影子

Stamina and dedication is one aspect every aspiring photographer must have, and above all, passion as the force multiplier.

Night HDR. Something I've always wanted to do, and (after this shoot) to do more. Night is cooling, and there are many places that only shine when darkness falls.

These are the few of my favourite things

My current obsessions - square crop, infrared, frames. Shot this photo while walking back to the car from the merlion sunrise. The lush and tall trees made me want to frame everything up, and then i saw this building. It was framed so delicately by the trees around me I forced myself to setup the already stowed tripod for this shot. The IR tones further enhances the British flavour of the colonial building. It is a picture which I derived most pleasure in post processing. Finally, the square crop just made it perfect.

It would have been a little better, if the vegetation on the left were a little thicker... but this is already good enough. 知足常乐嘛！

Dear d70

Thanks to you, I could not post any pictures in time for the arrival of 2008. I know it has been a long year for you. Ever since I bought you, you have taken no less than 16000 pictures. You've been put through difficult times, under the rain, baked in the sun, exposed to gusts of sand in the outbacks of Australia, and not a moment of rest from the 3 weddings you've shot. I understand, it's tough, but dun do this to me ever again.

I've spent an hour and a half travelling to punggol, waited another few hours just for the last sunset of the year. And then you formatted my card. Without warning somemore. What are you thinking? You wanna go on strike? I know it's new years eve, but this is your responsibility. You ought to be ashamed of the Nikon badge you wear.

Now you have to force my 3 year old laptop to work OT, putting back the pieces of wadever is left in the card. He did not get a good night's sleep. People just recovered from a heart (disk) failure and you want to torture him. Naughty fella!

Now, go back into the dry box and think through what you've done. If you ever repeat this mistake again, you shall be relegated to back-up status. I'll just have to find someone else to get the job done.

Interior Architecture Photography

This is one aspect of photography where tripod is really important. And i really lack a quality one. (in fact my present one is so jialat i have fridge magnets stuffed into the legs to prevent it from slipping) Anyway, just saw some pros' works and they seemed to utilize subtle HDR for more pleasant highlights rendering, so here's my take on a landmark site at the upcoming terminal 3.

Iridescence spotted

While this is not totally uncommon, it is rare to spot one so big and obvious. I resorted to handheld HDR to capture the full range of colours present.

Tea Time

The golden sun climbs over hills,
carefully baking rolls of lush greenery.
Cool wind peels away stress and sorrow
and freshens one up for the day ahead.
What better way to embrace the moment,
than savoring a cuppa rich English Tea?

Outback in SA

Shan't mention what i've been doing in this bone-dry, fly infested land, with hardly any soul 129000 sq km around me. Any Singaporean male (or their girlfriends) would have guessed.

Nonetheless, i took the risk and brought out my full kit of photographic toys. No regrets... even though my d70's on/off switch came back faulty. The scenery was simply stunning. Never would one find such lighting conditions in this wretched island of Singapore. The strong sunshine made the "ray-of-light" phenomenon almost an everyday matter. On other occasions, the sky could be so blue i wondered why i needed a polariser. Its a totally different land.

The above is the first picture i processed when i returned. Granted it may not be the best picture yet, but it sure got a seat in the "best shots" folder on my hard disk. Watch this space as i bring more and better photos taken from South Australia.

HDR power unleashed

In the past, i wasn't too fond of HDR, cos i'm a complete idiot at the "merge to HDR" function in photoshop CS2, as well as photomatrix pro's tonemapping. Neither of them generated the results i wanted.

While trawling the net for pleasing HDR pics, i saw even more unnatural pics. Some even seemed like cartoons. Eventually, i chanced upon really impressive ones. HOW DID THEY DO THAT?

Finally decided to DIY my HDR, using layers and masks. It gave me full control of saturation, colour and contrast of the various regions. I've yet to master the right feathering pixels, hence the obvious halos around the bridge. Nevertheless, i was very satisfied with this pic.

This scene was an inspiration i got last night, when i was brainstorming for a nearby location, time and framing to test out HDR. Although i reached a little late (had to fastmarch 25mins), i managed to catch most of the colours.

This second picture is more natural. In fact it is so natural i couldn't tell it is HDR. (success!) However, comparing it with a normal exposure, one could easily identify the superior colour vibrance and contrast exclusive to a HDR image.






In case you dunno what's the difference, take a look at the comparison image.