Tag Archives: photos

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!

Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary – iPhone OS 3.0

Everything from the iPhone OS 3.0 keynote this morning was evolutionary, not revolutionary. There wasn’t anything announced that would change the game for Apple – nothing like, for example, the Pre’s gesture bar, and the implementation of a curved touch-screen.

But enough of being negative. More of that later 😉

For now, we’ll just take a look at what’s changed. For both developers and users, we have:

  • 1000 new APIs. Huge news for developers, ‘cos it means that they can implement things in new and exciting ways. For example, APIs for streaming audio and video, and also for in-game voice chat.
  • Maps built-in. Previous to 3.0, if you wanted to view a map inside of an app you’d have to exit that app, and load up the Maps application on your iPhone. Now that’s gone. At the heart of the Maps application is an API that allows devs to showcase those maps inside of their own app. No more exits from apps.

Push Notifications

  • Push notifications. They only drop the all-important standby time by 20%, compared to 80+% when you run an app in the background. It’s also scalable to suit the mobile network, which is awesome seeing the iPhone is now in 80 countries, with hugely varying mobile networks. Reason for delay? Unprecedented influx of apps that wanted to use the Push service, which meant that Apple needed to “re-architect the architecture”. Heh. Unfortunately, this means no backgrounding of apps… but you knew that already, yeah? Wasn’t battery life and performance the reasons that Apple introduced Push Notifications in the first place?
  • iPod library access. Means apps can use your iPod library to play music in-game. For example, a radio in EA’s The Sims (coming soon) could play music that you already have in your iPod library. This is a small, but significant feature as it now allows third-party access to the iPod library – something previously unheard of, as traditionally, the iPod library has been restricted to Apple-made apps only.

In-Game Purchases

  • In-game purchasing. Allows users to buy things (extra levels, goodies) in-game. Yet another way for Apple (and developers) to make money. Personally, I’m not a huge fan for paying for something I’ve already paid for, and then paying for it again. And again. And again. It’s goona get old, real soon.

Right – so onto the big guns, yeah?

Cut Copy Paste DemoCut, Copy, Paste

  • Cut, copy and paste. Done, and dusted. Well done, Apple – everyone said they were going to do it, and they have, with no less than one of the most brilliant implementation I’ve seen.

Bring Your Own Maps

  • Core Location for turn-by-turn. It’s coming, alright. Bring your own maps, but it’s coming. Finally, I might add.
  • Farkin’ MMS, haha! People complained, and Apple listened. Support for audio, pictures, location data, all within the standard SMS application. No substitute for bluetooth file transfers, though.

Multiple Photos

  • Attach and send multiple photos in emails. Something else which was highly requested, and another one of those “why isn’t that already in there” features. Good work, Apple.

Landscape Keyboard

  • Landscape keyboard. Across all apps, you can now have the landscape keyboard in your SMS, and in your emails. Awesome. Personally, the landscape keyboard takes up too much room (obscures things above it), but yeah – if it’s there, then I’d probably use it.

Forward and Delete

  • Forward and delete individual messages. Yet another highly requested feature, yet another score for Apple.

Third-Party Accessory Support

  • Dock connectivity + third-party accessory support. For developers and users, this is a huge plus. Imagine a keyboard plugged into the bottom of your iPhone, an FM transmitter with an app on your iPhone that allows you to control it, the possibilities are endless!!

Spotlight

  • Spotlight. Unified search on the iPhone, just like it works on your Mac. Search everywhere, including Mail headers, subjects, bodies, as well as Notes, etc.

Notes Sync

  • Notes sync. Finally.
  • Stereo bluetooth streaming – A2DP. Not avail on the first gen iPhone, though. Another +1 for Apple.

Overall, not bad, Apple. Not bad indeed. Definitely one of the better events to get up for, and one that will send the blogosphere into a frenzy.

I was planning to jailbreak my iPhone, but it looks like I’ll hold out till 3.0 is released. June can’t come fast enough!! BRING IT ON! 😀

Personally, I’m hoping we’ll see a lot of tiny improvements not important enough to warrant their own part of the keynote. Like Custom SMS tones, Apple. We’ve got shake to shuffle, judging from the above pic, we’ve got the peer-to-peer gaming via bluetooth (yes, even in the iPod touch, apparently it can be “unlocked” to use the hardware), and we’ve got the copy and paste, and we’ve got the turn-by-turn.

What about all the stuff we didn’t get? At the QandA session, their answer to tethering was “We’re supporting tethering in the client side, we’re building that support in. We’re working with our carriers around the world. We are building that support in.” Sure, it might take 2 years, but it’s coming.

Bluetooth file transfers? I wouldn’t count on it. When the question was asked at Q and A, it stumped the team. Read whatever you want into that, but it’s probably a ploy by Apple. There’s no way they would have NOT considered that to be a very real possibility, esp. with jailbreak apps that do it already.

So… Apple is awesome, and there’s not much more to it. I’m sorry I turned on you when the Pre was released, Apple. 😀

Final thoughts – now, about this evolutionary, not revolutionary thing… While today’s releases were certainly impressive, most of the features weren’t entirely unexpected. Amongst the throngs of turn-by-turn, MMS, and copy and paste, there’s nothing that we didn’t think was going to be put in. While 3.0 will be awesome, it’s really just a filling out of all the features that were supposed to be there in the first place, and even then, there are still things missing – tethering, for one.

Think about it this way – how long has the iPhone been released for? How long have people wanted copy and paste? How long have they wanted turn-by-turn? I know people who bought iPhones primarily for their turn-by-turn ability, and those folks are going to be over the moon from today’s announcements, sure. But what about the rest of us?

I guess the question you’ve got to ask yourself is – how does this change the game for Apple? And the answer? It doesn’t. There’s nothing that changes the face of the mobile industry as we know it.

When it was first released, the iPhone was a completely revolutionary device. No other gadget I’ve seen yet has come close to the market impact that the Apple iPhone has (evidence for this is every Tom, Dick and Harry having one in the streets), and I’m not entirely sure that the iPhone OS 3.0 is the one that’ll change the game for Apple.

Impressive? Undoubtedly.

Evolutionary? Decidedly.

Revolutionary? I’ll let you make that decision for yourself.

Comments below. Thanks to Engadget for the images, and to both Engadget and gdgt for their coverage of the event, of which most of this post is based on.