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Photography

My latest obsession is with photography. I’m hoping it’ll stick around for a long while yet, since I’ve always wanted a decent camera since as long as I can remember.

December of last year I acquired my very first DSLR, a Canon 60D. It was a sort-of Christmas present to myself (my parents and sister contributed), and I’ve been thrilled with it ever since.

I’m still very much an amateur, but I’m getting into photography in a big way. I’ve discovered the joys of street (photography), done numerous candid and portrait shots alike, and have learnt a huge amount from friends and whatever research I’ve managed to do on my own. I’ve done long-exposure fireworks photography with a friend, learnt a whole heap from the DigitalRev YouTube channel, and now even have a tripod to call my very own.

I had the semi-unique chance to shoot the wedding reception of a good friend I went to high school with the other day, and after realising I had a little more to say about it than would fit in 140 characters, I thought I’d write a little about it. That is, correct me if I’m wrong, what a blog is all about, right?

It just so happened a new lens I ordered arrived the day before the reception, a Sigma 30 f1.4. While I love my 50 1.8, it’s mostly too long for “fun” (read: random street photography and/or portraits) on a crop body — a 30mm focal length on a 1.6x crop body is much closer to the full-frame 50 equivalent, and an aperture of 1.4 is also pretty great (razor thin DOF at those kinds of apertures means your autofocus has to be perfect though, otherwise you end up with stuff that’s out of focus. Manual focus? Don’t even think about it).

The new lens arrived, and I wanted to do little more portraits with it — the reception was the perfect opportunity. A few short text messages to the groom later, and I was allowed to bring along my camera. In my mind I was the unofficial second shooter, but it didn’t quite turn out that way (more on this later).

It was the day of the big scary wedding reception, and after buying a suit in the morning, I finished work for the day and made my way to the reception. It turned out I was a few hours early, which wasn’t too bad as I got to scout out the location beforehand. I was worried about the light, and rightly so — the lighting in the reception venue turned out to be pretty terrible. Thankfully, earlier that day I had arranged for a friend to bring along his 580 EX II Speedlite. It was all pretty lucky actually, had I not had the Speedlite my photos would have been much, much worse — I doubt I would have come away with more than a handful of usable shots. As it turned out, I made excellent use of the bounce card and bounced the flash off the roof to great effect (after getting a few . It worked really, really well, and for a first timer I’m pretty pleased with how some of the shots turned out.

My original intention as second shooter was to cover the “lighter” stuff, stuff that the first guy wouldn’t have taken photos of as he was presumably focused on the bride and groom — but as we all know, expectations are far from reality. Turns out the first shooter is pretty worn out from a whole day of shooting the wedding (before, during the ceremony, and in the park after), so I get upgraded to official first photographer. The big leagues and all that. Pressure? I eat pressure for breakfast.

Roughly 750 RAWs later, and it was all over. Now that I’ve had a chance to look at the photos, I’ve got a few conclusions…

  1. White balance matters. I’m not 100% on this one, actually — some of the shots I took had a yellowish (but natural) tone to them, others had a much cooler (whitish-blue) tone. I thought some of the natural-looking shots would have been okay, but apparently not. Thankfully nothing that Lightroom couldn’t fix. Lesson learned.
  2. I thought the guy doing the wedding would have been more, uh, into the whole photography thing. A bit more organised, maybe. Turns out it was all pretty relaxed and casual, which was fine by me — I know some people  can be very particular about their photography , but this guy was pretty casual which was cool. I mean, I don’t think the bride and groom told him I was going to be the second shooter until everyone was actually at the reception…
  3. Post-processing in general kind of sucks. Flame me all you want, but I now have a heap more respect for the wizards who do crazy things in Photoshop to make photos look amazing — they’re pretty great. It’s just that the time required on an individual image is insane; maybe it’s because I’m just starting off and have no real idea about what I’m doing, but man, post kinda sucks. Thankfully, I didn’t do much post and certainly nothing that involved big ol’ Photoshop— I bumped up the exposure by a third, two thirds of a stop here and there, tweaked the brightness and levels a bit, and that was about it, really.
  4. I feel I’m at that point where I kind of have to think about the shot in order to take better photos. I mean, anyone can do the half-press, full-press of the shutter while composing photos using the rule of thirds etc, but I mean, I ended up with roughly 130 or so “usable” photos out of the 750+ I took. Sure, there were quite a few duplicate/triplicates of the same group or same person, but still, that’s a terribly bad ratio whichever way you cut it. Lots of the photos were out of focus, blurry, or the composition was fine but the wrong thing was in focus, etc. I guess it’s something I’ll have to work on, especially when dealing with dynamic subjects. The one good thing about landscapes is that they don’t move.

Most of all, I figured that I just enjoy taking photos of people, both posed and random candids. Which is kind of weird, because I’m not really the type — I doubt I’d be into, like, gig photography or anything like that, but doing photos of people at the wedding reception was actually pretty fun. Must be something about people smiling, or just me being behind the camera. It’s not so much as “capturing the moment” as it is about just having fun, and photography is very fun — I remember this one time I had set up a few younger couples for a group shot at the reception, and taking the shot only to have the flash not fire. Turns out I had turned it off for a few shots earlier, and promptly forgotten to turn it back on again for portraits — a exclamation of surprise and a hurried apology later, I flicked the switch on the flash back on and took another shot. Natural smiles all round, and it made for an excellent photo.

Yeah, more of that, please.

I’m still not sure where I’m going with photography. I enjoy it a lot, like, a lot a lot, but I don’t think I’ll be going pro anytime soon. It’s certainly something I’d consider, but there are certain aspects of photography which just freak me out entirely (I think most of it stems from being a little insecure about my “work” — it’s the whole process of delivering a final product to clients that freaks me out, including spending an hour in Photoshop slaving over a single photo when you’ve got hundreds to edit, and so on).

I’m not sure. I like photography, don’t get me wrong, and I’m more than happy to upload my best shots online, but actually doing something real? Just leave me to look at my photos in peace!

A Long-Time Apple Nerd’s Review of the Galaxy Nexus and First Experience With Android

To those who want to use Android, I say go for it. I don’t think that choice is wrong — there are many fine things about the Android OS and many things it does differently and better than iOS. I can understand how tech-savvy power-users who know what they are getting into would like Android. For them, the trade-offs in certain areas are a welcome sacrifice in exchange for the customizability, the different look, and the plethora of hardware devices to choose from.

via A Long-Time Apple Nerd’s Review of the Galaxy Nexus and First Experience With Android — Shawn Blanc.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Android summed up. It’s not that I wouldn’t recommend an Android phone to your mum or dad, it’s just that I wouldn’t recommend an Android phone to your mum or dad.

For those that actually like the appeal of Android, by all means, you’re more than welcome to. Hell, even I like certain aspects about Android, but that doesn’t make it the comparative “best”.

Qualifiers such as “are they buying based solely on price?” aren’t even all that relevant to buying an Android phone, as a second-hand 3GS or similar might be more suitable instead. I’d think long and hard before recommending an Android phone to anyone.

One other thing: I’m super glad I don’t work in a telco store that sells Android alongside the iPhone, because I doubt I’d be able to “sell” Android phones based on one feature alone. I mean, Google integration, absolutely. But iOS has that in iCloud. IOS is comparatively easier to sell; do your friends have iPhones? Boom, free messages between you and them. That feature alone could sell a customer, never mind an app for anything you could poke a stick at.

A Little Bias

For the past few months now, I’ve been experimenting with something called bias lighting for my computer displays. All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I would do the same.

Now it’s gotta be said that I spend what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount in time on front of LCD displays, if I’m not looking at my two LCDs on my desk, I’m staring at my iPhone on the bus, in the street, in the car, wherever.

The vast majority of my time, though, is spent in front of my displays at home: a decently-sized Dell 27-incher, and the 15-inch LCD of my MacBook Pro. They’re not the best match-up size wise, but going back to a single display when I’ve been using two for the majority of my computing life would be painful. There was a period where I went back to one due to reading something about single-displays being more productive. Needless to say, that experiment didn’t last very long — but I digress.

The theory behind bias lighting is that it’ll increase the perceived contrast of the display, as well as relieving eye-strain. It has a few other effects as well but those two are the main ones I’m really interested in, particularly as the lights in my room stay off for the most part (yes, my LCD tan is working out very well, thank you).

So I guess the question you’ve all been waiting for: how well does bias lighting work in practice?

The answer? I’m not exactly sure. Like I said, I’ve been using it for a couple of months now, and there’s definitely no discernible difference. Perhaps my piddly little 6-LED strips aren’t bright enough to have an impact on my gargantuan 27-inch display, perhaps I’m sitting too close to the monitor for them to make any kind of a difference, or perhaps I was expecting too much out of bias lighting in the first place.

Perhaps I’ll notice a difference when I turn them off for a month or so – but that’s for another time.

NYE 2011 Fireworks

I got a real camera for Christmas, a Canon DSLR, and the perfect time to take it out was the fireworks spectacular on New Year’s Eve for some tripod-assisted long-exposure photography.

Of course, I don’t actually have a tripod yet, so I had to go with a friend who was also interested in doing a similar thing. I borrowed one of his tripods, and off we went…

First we had to actually find a spot. Nutgrove Beach seemed like a good candidate, but it turned out it might have been a little too far away.

Admittedly, the above photo was taken at a focal length of 18mm (28.8 35mm equiv), but even at 135mm (216) I think it would have still been sub-par. You might have gotten Wrest Point in the shot, though.

We relocated to somewhere a little closer to Wrest Point, just on Sandy Bay Road.

I’m not sure that would have been any better. Slightly, but still not all that great.

Gratuitous iPhone shot of the “family” fireworks from basically the Wrest Point carpark entrance. Not bad, but even better when done on a DSLR:

After that we had about a few hours until the actual fireworks started, so we decided to play around with some more long exposure photography.

And then I did some shots I’ve always wanted to do… (They’ve been done to death, yeah, but I hadn’t shot them before.)

We looked at a few other places, but ultimately ended up across the river for the main event.

Blue dot is us, purple pin is where they launched the fireworks from (or thereabouts). We were right on the edge of the water, so a little closer than what the blue dot actually says we were…

10 second exposure at 69mm at f/5.6. No post, because I’m not exactly the type (and haven’t quite figured out how yet).

The End of 2011 (Things from the Camera Roll)

It’s been a great year, here’s some shots I took before I got a real camera…

This is probably the first real-world thing that I’ve seen that has apps for all four platforms. All the four platforms that actually matter, anyway 😉

So I ordered an M4A1 off the internet. Sadly it was only a replica and made out of plastic, but it’s pretty nicely weighted and is a 1:1 replica of the original. I stuck a very real holographic sight on it, and now it actually looks kinda like the real thing. If you pull the trigger it makes lights and sounds and vibrates! The charge bolt isn’t pull-able though.

Bought a labeller. Labelled it labeller, as you do.

Went lawn bowling with a few of my colleagues. You might laugh, but lawn bowls was actually pretty good fun — crazy boring to watch, but an excellent game of skill.

Windows 3.1 install floppies. We discovered disk 6 a little later.

Posted this photo when the whole #occupywallstreet thing was going on. I am the 99%, occupy Rock Band 3, etc, etc.

Bought a Battlefield 3 poster. I haven’t played as many hours of this as I would like (only 70 hours in game), but that’s for another time…

Apparently, Woolworths now sell SD cards. Not a huge capacity, but at least a decent enough class. Cheap enough to buy in emergencies, too.

Now that’s more like it! I imported a whole heap of things from B&H in the US, including an awesome Eye-Fi card with built-in Wi-Fi (it was a bit more than $18 though), a lens hood, 100 shots of Polaroid 300 for my sister, and a few other assorted goodies. Shipping was about 5 days during the silly season via UPS, which wasn’t too bad at all…