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Usually stuff I’ve written personally, stuff I think is pretty good.

A little more light, please.

really bad photo, but I'd love to experiment with a strobe more

I don’t know whether I just need more time behind the lens, or whether I’m just pixel-peeping more than I should be, but so much of the time I’m unimpressed with my photography; street or otherwise.

Technically, photography is incredibly complex. So much depends on the three pillars of aperture, ISO, and shutter speed, and when you’re starting out (because, make no mistake, I am still very much an amateur) getting them right to suit the conditions is hard.

So much of the time it’s like the three pillars are the world’s most intricate balancing act. Say you’re shooting people in an area where there isn’t much light. You start off in Av, at f/2.8 with an ISO of 100 — the camera says you’ll need 1/8th of a second, which means camera shake then becomes a factor. Upping the ISO above 800/1000/1250 means you have a more respectable shutter speed of 1/30, maybe even 1/60, but even at those speeds a shot can still be ruined by subject motion. In this kind of situation, what can you really do without adding more light into the equation? More ISO means your photos are starting to be fairly grainy indeed, and you can’t open the aperture any more because you’re already at the limit of your lens (or you want the DOF because nailing focus is hard, etc). Photography in these kinds of situations is seriously challenging, and it’s times like these that make you think: “hey, this stuff isn’t just child’s play”.

Being a perfectionist is hard when you’re doing photography. I’d like to think my composition is good enough most of the time, and yet, when I’m looking at my photos in post at 100%, I’m sorely disappointed to see things aren’t as sharp as I wanted them to be, or that I’ve missed focus even though it looked okay on-camera.

I don’t even know why I crimp shots when I’m shooting — things on that back LCD look so much different than they do when I’m looking at the photos 100% on the computer, and even things that look okay on-camera can turn out to be extraordinarily average when viewed 1:1. In any case, crimping shots is a really bad habit that I’ll try to break.

It’s like Ira Glass said: I know I can do so much better. I know I can improve, it’s just that when so much of my shooting is extremely mediocre, it’s depressing as anything.

It’s somewhat ironic that the only place where I am improving is post-processing. I can now do simple stuff like split toning in Lightroom, and I can even do that Schindler’s List black/white/red effect in Photoshop (I think Sin City also used this effect), as well as selecting the black and white points of a photo in Ps.

To be fair, I don’t really have a good idea of why you would want to do those effects, or how to describe the effect, and for now, my understanding of it is limited to “it looks cool”. I disgust myself.

I guess most of this dissatisfaction with my own work stems from being very well versed in a particular subject area; computers are easy for me, and I understand them well enough to be able to explain most concepts to anyone. Don’t get me wrong, photography is fun, taking photos is fun; doing it well and with understanding is something that I’ll just have to work on.

But doesn’t that come hand in hand when learning something new? Everyone sucks to begin with; some people then quit, but others go onto future greatness.

At the moment I’d settle for consistently mediocre, but I think I’m getting there. Slowly.

some dude flippin' a water bottle

Electronically Capturing Light

Yes, photography. Another day, another lens.

Wait, what?

I have a confession to make. I’ve been suffering from GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome, for the uninitiated) for a little while now, which results in me buying lots of things. Perennially bad for my wallet, but somewhat satisfying. What good is money if you don’t spend it?1

My newest glass is the arguable best of EF-S lenses for crop-sensor DSLRs, the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM. I didn’t find the DigitalRev hands-on to be all that informative (strange for them, their videos are usually top notch when they’re not fooling around doing stupid things like “horsemanning”).

 

Of course, this meant that I had to try it out. More street, anyone? The location: in and around the Hobart CBD. It was a pretty overcast day which normally would have been fine for a bit of outdoor street, but it started to drizzle heavily a little later on which meant I didn’t go for a serious walk up to North Hobart like I was originally planning to. The best laid plans, and all that.

Initial impressions of the lens: it has a pretty big lens hood (not included). The focal length ring is incredibly, incredibly smooth; there’s a tiny more friction in the 17-35 range than there is in the 35-55 range, which makes it very nice to use. The IS and AF switches have a nice, audible “click” when you move them, and the focal ring is equally smooth when you’re changing the focus, and slightly more resistive when you’re past the focal range adjustment. I honestly can’t fault it as a piece of engineering, bar for the fact that it’s slightly larger than I expected (both length and girth-wise), but I guess that’s part of the parcel when you have quality glass.

It is, in a word, excellent. Most of my flawed photos were simply and error of the guy behind the glass overestimating his abilities to take a good photo — or just simply failing to take a good photo. By my own account, I think I’m at least okay with the whole composition thing — it’s just taking the shot like I see it in my head that’s hard (well, of course it is).

Choosing this lens was difficult, to say the least. I already have comparable lenses that do the same focal range — my Sigma 30 1.4, for example, covers the same distance provided I take a few steps forward or back, and it does this at an even bigger aperture, and I already have an 18-135 which covers the same range, as well as the nifty fifty which does a similar thing to the Sigma. My current collection of glass aside, there were also many great alternatives: the 24-105 f/4L at the top of that list, followed by a few non-Canon alternatives. After taking a few photos with it, I’m pretty glad I chose this lens over something like the 24-105 f/4, purely because it’s a fantastic standard lens for a crop-sensor DSLR.

Admittedly, the 24-105 does still have a few advantages over the 17-55 — it covers a bigger range and works with full-frame cameras should I ever decide to upgrade, both excellent points to consider. It does have one thing lacking though, and that’s the 2.8 aperture. I think this means that it needs twice as much light at the same shutter speeds as the 2.8, and it might also mean I don’t get as much bokeh as I do with a 2.8 aperture (although, once again, it can be argued that the 24-105 can get more bokeh due to its longer focal length). At least, that’s what I’ve gleaned from the internet.

If there’s one thing I want to work on with my street, it’s individual portraits. I’m way too hesitant to take photos of individuals or couples when doing street as it can seem a little stalker-ish, a little perverted (if you’re talking photos of the opposite sex), and there’s already a million other things to worry about when doing street. I guess it’s about finding the line between invading someone’s privacy (if only for a moment) and being seen as a pervert — an exceptionally fine line indeed. Taking photos of individuals on the street is definitely something I’m warming up to, but I’m still quite hesitant about it for the reasons posted above. Sadly, for now, it means my photos aren’t of anything particularly interesting. I mean, who wants pictures of just nothing in particular?

You probably wouldn't want to go where that bus is going, though.

Now that I think about it, taking photos of random people is hard. You never quite know how they might react, and I’ve read enough horror stories to know what could happen. Worst-case scenarios rarely happen, but I’m still a little freaked out one day someone is going to completely lose the plot when I take their photo and, like beat me up or something. It’s a scary thought.

Then I see people like this guy doing street photography on the streets of LA, where he gets right up into people’s faces using his Leica M, and people look up, smile, and continue on with whatever they’re doing. Are people much friendlier over there, or is it all about the right approach? Which brings me to my next point…

Okay, so I’m Asian, right (don’t laugh, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS). On the one hand, I can blend great into any crowd with a decent-sized cam and people will think I’m just another tourist taking pictures of damn-near everything, which is fine. Great, in fact — people don’t think twice about the Asian guy taking a photo of a busker. The only thing is, the whole blending-in thing doesn’t quite work if you’re taking photos of people. I mean, normally you see Asian tourists with their point and shoots snapping away at nice-looking buildings or whatever, and here I am with my giant DSLR aimed squarely at them! What’s up with that?!

Anyway.

Lastly (until next time) I went to the cricket the other day. This was at 85mm on a 1.6 crop — there’s a 200mm lens limit condition of entry at that particular ground, but a) I think the guys at the gate wouldn’t be able to tell (or they just didn’t care because it wasn’t an international match), and b) I think you would be able to get a few decent shots of players if you had something like a 70-200 at the same crop factor.

 

  1. Probably a deeper underlying issue here if I’m going about saying things like that, but that’s for another time. ↩

Photography, Take Two

I was going to go to Melbourne this weekend, but that didn’t happen because “the circumstances didn’t allow it” (whatever that means), so here I am, tapping on a few bits of plastic, sending 0s and 1s through a few copper cables, so that electric charges can manipulate crystals and make things happen on-screen. And that’s just my own computer! Technology, eh?

Allow me to dwell for a second: man, this Melbourne trip would have been awesome. Imagine it now: a hundred people at an engagement party, all mingling and interacting with each other. Man, it would have been awesome. I would have brought along my trusty Sigma 30 1.4, shot it wide open with the help of a borrowed 580 EX II, and the photos, man, the photos would have been spectacular, incredible, and all those superlatives. Alas, Things Just Didn’t Turn Out for many a different reason, and here we are. I briefly contemplated just going to Melbourne to do street photography there, but that would have been a pretty expensive expedition (not to mention I’ll be in Melbourne next week anyway).

Luckily, there was but one saving grace: I got some new glass. New old glass, but new glass nonetheless. I also had the day off from work. Rather than waste it moping around at home, I decided to go to a place I hadn’t been in a long time and try my hand at a little more street (photography). I couldn’t do any serious gaming due to the fact that all my serious gaming hardware was on the other side of the state, a by-product of having a 5-day gaming expedition with a few mates that was pretty great. We played heaps of multiplayer games, ate over a kilo of ham between the six of us, and had an excellent time. But I digress.

So, street photography. As DigitalRev says, the number one rule of Street Photography is not to look like a convicted sex criminal.

With that sorted, I headed out. The location: Salamanca Markets. I’ve said something about street photography, Hobart, and something about a lack of population density before, so what better way to solve the issue by going to a place with high population density? I’ve actually done this last time I was on safari, going to the Taste to try my hand there. I got a few keepers, but I figured Salamanca Markets would be an ace spot as well. I haven’t been in literally, years — working Saturdays has that effect. I used to go pretty much every other weekend with the family, but times change and people grow old…

Oh right, I had some new glass to test. Probably better tell you about that, too. It’s the older, now-discontinued EF 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 USM lens. Initial impressions were that it was a pretty standard zoom lens for full-frame DSLRs, and on a crop body that works out to be about 38-136mm. It’s lighter than the EF-S 18-135 I already own, plus it’ll work on a full-frame body when I make the switch. USM makes it really cool in terms of focus speed — it’s quick, and silent. Interestingly, this copy doesn’t seem to have a huge issue with gravity zoom unlike my 18-135 and other copies of the 24-85.

The thing about street photography is that it’s hard. Photography is hard. Street photography is even harder, because you have to take photos of people in public spaces (something that’s totally legal in Australia, by the way), and even better if you can do so while they’re doing something interesting or something “makes” the shot. For this reason, street is great for learning about composition — you’ve really got to get into the zone otherwise you’ll just snap away at random crap. And no one wants that!

Back to the 24-85. It was great for up-close portraits or subjects a few meters away, and is definitely a lens I wouldn’t hesitate to bring out again. It isn’t a particularly fast lens, but shooting at f/4 was pretty okay anyway. I was surprised at the amount of blurred background this lens produced, actually — doing an quick comparison reveals that the Siggy has slightly blurrier backgrounds at f/3.5 at 30mm, but in reality it’s all much of a muchness, none of which is applicable if your subject isn’t in focus in the first place 😉

Viking job losses! This guy looked at me and posed for the shot.

With street, it’s more about just capturing the moment than it is getting perfect portraits or great subjects. Taking pics of a single model with a few props is great and all, but what about capturing the vibe? Getting that shot of the moment is rewarding, just don’t chase it — let the moment come to you.

Some guy shouted to me as I was taking the pic that this was a common occurrence in Hobart. I think he was referring to why grown men were wearing bright red dresses in broad daylight, but I can't be sure.

Judging by some of the shots from today’s expedition, I still have quite a bit to learn. All the photos you see are the pick of the bunch, and none of them are particularly great, I can find flaws with many of them. In any case, I put some more time behind the lens — and that’s only a good thing, in the long run.

Occupy Hobart? I didn't even know that was a thing...

Final comment: Salamanca is much more of a tourist attraction than I remember. I saw a disproportionate number of “serious cameras”, including what I’m sure was someone with the elusive, green-ringed 70-300 featuring Diffractive Optics (but curiously, no L glass to be seen). Camera models varied: most were Canons, but I did spot the gold-ringed Nikon variety every now and again, as well as the odd Pentax or Sony. DSLRs were the choice du jour, outnumbering micro 4/3rds and compacts. Why is this interesting? I have no idea, it just is to a camera nerd like I.

Apple’s iBooks Author, Interactive Textbooks, and All That Jazz

Below is an article that I wrote for MacTalk a few weeks ago. Thought I’d post it up here for posterity. Published without pictures unlike the MacTalk version.

Alternatively, Apple’s latest foray into the big bad world of education (and why it matters).

I’ve now had the whole weekend to think about what Apple’s education event means. Somewhere between the new Star Wars MMO, some epic rounds of Battlefield 3, and something that I’m calling “general internet procrastination”, I’ve thought about the implications for the education sector that this event has wrought.

As a quick recap, Apple released iBooks Author for the Mac alongside a plan to shake up the textbook industry as we know it (also featuring the iPad, iTunes U, and a few big-name publishers). There are those that think Apple don’t care about pros anymore, but Apple’s education event held in New York was proof enough that (and perhaps now more than ever), Apple cares about education.

What happens when you can’t see the forest for the trees?
Before we get into the meat of what all this really means for the future of education as we know it, I’d like to dispel a few misconceptions about iBooks Author that seem to have cropped up.

Firstly, there’s a few people getting caught up in the iBooks Author EULA, and how it apparently (depending on your preferred interpretation) dictates, totalitarian-style, what you can and cannot do with the app. Specifically, people have their underpants in a twist over the fact that books created using iBooks Author can only be sold via Apple; the question is, is that actually so unreasonable? Some say the whole situation draws certain parallels to the similar iOS/Mac app and Xcode equivalent, but others still say that’s different because Xcode doesn’t attempt to dictate what you can and cannot do with output from that app — iBooks Author, on the other hand, does. If we’re being really pedantic, there are even those that liken the iBooks Author EULA terms to what would happen if Adobe said you could only use files originating from Photoshop in a certain way. Those people are pretty far off the mark.

Let’s get one thing clear: Apple isn’t taking your copyright away.

Your content that you put into the app is still your content, you still retain full copyright of whatever material you put into an iBook, and pigs still don’t fly. Frankly, I think the whole “iBooks Author is telling me what I can and can’t do with files I produce using the app” is just a cry from those who are overly concerned about proprietary software and certain usage scenarios. Yes, Apple should probably open up iBooks Author (and iBooks themselves) to an iOS-like enterprise implementation, where books can be distributed internally in a company without having first been published to a public iBookstore. For the moment though, selling your iBooks through the iBookstore just means that you’ll get many more eyeballs on your content than if try to hawk it yourself. It’s also important to note at this point in time that you’re still very much permitted to give your work away for free — Apple aren’t preventing you from sticking your iBooks Author-produced iBook up on your website somewhere and letting it people download it for free. No, I guess the message from Apple here is that iBooks created using iBooks Author are much like iOS apps you create using Xcode: feel free to do other things with your iBook, but if you want to sell it, your best chance of success lies in the iBookstore.

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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!

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).