bright's blog

P/R

2010-07-22T00:03:00.003+03:00

Street is the Day, Street is the Way

2010-07-11T01:43:00.003+03:00

Time by time it is so nice to take a day off to do some street photography.. while once a year will sometimes do, based on the experience this time, it would not hurt at all to practice it more often :-)

Got a fancy old-school lens lately, a lovely Nikkor 200mm F4 AI MF, so basically, I went down to the city to learn about the lens and to see what it was capable for. As with understanding the characteristics of it now, I've made some progress. With regards to what it can produce, you can take a closer look as follows - every single on in this post is made using this lens (I'm currently using a DX 1.5 crop factor camera, so unit actually worked as 300mm F4).

So what IS street photography? Moments with some story around it? Walking around with extra battery for your baby at your pocket and having the shutter release button burned so that there's no way later to accommodate your images to your hard disk later?

Not sure, but for me, it is something very simple. When there's street, there are people walking on it, doing something. Whenever there are people, there's always life with them. Whenever there's life around, there's always something to take a photograph of. And perhaps to tell a story later.

New people, so many faces, newborn and seniors, the way they walk, the way they talk - ain't that something admirable? So common, so usual, so daily, but still - so beautiful moments.

What a nice street entertainment - see the vibrant air around her once the flames are gone.

Must it be real life always or can it be something that brings life to photograph? A machine perhaps, even a dull van can look good, when the light is good. Look at the photo for a second and imagine something/someone else there, instead of the gray van. Wouldn't it look great with the light like this? A natural studio it was. Just in this moment, time of the day, day of the month, month of the year. The Sun and its assistants - reflections, shadows, every type of visible light you can imagine.

Or can it be detail that does the photo? Is it the clarity of the photo, a quality of it? Would the following look worse without the glasses in his hand or better without the people at background, not even mentioning the nice bicycle itself? Go get it. There are billions of photos in the world, and you can always ask more.

There's always the thrill you will be noticed and the one you are taking a photograph of, would not like it. OR, you are not noticed at all, and you get something really natural, as the life actually is, without any posing..

So nice to meet fellow photographers time by time. How do they think? How do they work? What do they shoot? Could I see some pictures? So many questions, when you see someone with a camera.

I often feel I'd like to share the moments with the ones seen at the photographs. Did it this time as well and I really hope she will be contacting me and I can send her the picture.

You know what is really exciting? You never know the answer if you say you'd like to share the picture. This time, the instant reply was "is it for for free?.." "Of course it is" I said.. "Well I guess I would not do it for free.." was the answer this time, reminding me a very similar conversation six years ago in the exhibition of cats and dogs, when I was asking for a permission for to take a photo of someone's pet. Well, this is how it goes, sometimes.

Human face, what a marvelous expression of what we all are. Age, childhood, present, future, emotions, feelings, mood - enriched with the mixture of the moment - the light around us, the environment, the people passing by..

As a final word, I'd like to quote someone (I'm sorry I don't remember who it was..), which was something as follows - humans fear time, time fears photography.

So now I know - we can fight some of the time with sometimes looking around us through the viewfinder :-)

E.

2010-07-02T11:54:00.002+03:00

Foreword to Summer

2010-06-01T00:59:00.002+03:00

In addition to the sun and weather, the shutter/release button should also be hot at summer time, so it's time to click the x button of the browser and I/O button of the computer and go out shooting :-)

Afterword to Winter

2010-06-01T00:10:00.002+03:00

No one believed in March the snow would be gone. Now, when all is green and the birds are tweeting, can anyone believe there will be any snow in winter? :-)

Pentax 645D Digital. Finally.

2010-03-11T09:41:00.006+02:00

For all Pentax 645 system fans, the long anticipated 645D is finally here:

Official announcement of Pentax

What a pleasant surprise for the photographers having some selection of 645 lens in their shelf. Pentax promises the new 645D will work with the "old" glass like a charm.

Rumors about the mid-format digital back from Pentax have been around far more than five years, when Pentax was an independent imaging company with no Hoya (purchased Pentax Imaging at the summer of 2007) and Samsung (helped Pentax to co-develop dslr-s starting the model K10D, the cooperation was announced late 2005) in the horizon.

The unit has CCD sensor (44x33mm) by Kodak, approx. 40mpix, 11,5 ftops of dynamic range and sensitivity IOS80-800. Pentax has also included dual slots for SD/HC cards, I guess majority would have been expecting CF-s instead.

The estimate price should be $10,000 with the shipping beginning early May in Japan.

Mamiya has also announced some new models lately (with the new 56mp model as their flagship) so it will be a nice year for all the mid-format fans.

Ice Age

2010-03-10T00:52:00.003+02:00

It's March. One of the coldest winter in the last 20+ years. Some pictures from January.

Site update II

2010-03-08T12:15:00.003+02:00

Some of the older posts are currently without the images/photos. I'm currently trying to figure it out how to make them appear again. Basically, as this blog is now located in google's server (not in my personal/ISP server anymore), it seems the data has been partially lost during the moving process.. I'll try to figure it out asap :-)

Edit: All pages/posts/images should be fixed now. Please report about any broken image/post you see, via comments. Many thanks.

Site update

2010-03-07T18:00:00.002+02:00

Inspired by that the blogger service no longer provides FTP uploading service (meaning you can not have the content of your blog at your server anymore, but in google's, correct me if I misunderstood it, please), I'm making some changes in my blog template. Old, broken links, new links, some layout changes, etc :-)

TriChrome Blue

2010-02-28T18:40:00.002+02:00

Trichrome Blue from Lois van Baarle on Vimeo.

Five minutes in another dimension :-)

Stages of a photographer

2010-02-20T11:32:00.002+02:00

Spread well more than the (unknown) author of this graph could most probably ever expect, the following graphic puts together the modern "journey of a photographer" quite well :-) Where are you?

Boston Big Picture

2010-02-11T23:24:00.001+02:00

Always good place to find inspiration for taking good photos:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Piano Battle (Secret)

2010-02-06T22:26:00.002+02:00

Piano Battle, from the motion picture "Secret" (IMDB Link), original title - "Bu nend shuo de. mi mi" (2007).

Jay Chou is the one with black Jacket, Zhan Yuhao is the one with white shirt challenging the "new guy" for who plays the piano better. jay Chou is also known as a film director (Secret is directed by him), composer, actor, singer and multi-instrumentalist.

The Third & The Seventh

2010-01-16T16:39:00.002+02:00

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

This is just so beautiful and "high tech" motion picture with such a warm atmosphere. Whenever you have a break with a cup of coffee or if you just feel you need inspiration, click the play button and you will be in a marvelous miraculous world. This is Full HD video, so if you look at it full screen, you get the whole emotion in so much better detail. High quality audio equipment is also recommended.

1986

2010-01-09T08:34:00.002+02:00

E. / K.

- artist appreciation -

2010-01-07T06:43:00.002+02:00

Jaime Ibarra

Something really deep and neoteric, fresh ideas and excellent combination of what photography can be in terms of model selection, stage direction, composition, and of course the use of funky colors.

Fall '09..

2010-01-06T03:59:00.003+02:00

Rojo Negro - Fashion/Collection by Tiina Talumees (Solaris, Nokia Concert Hall, Dec. 2009)
----------

A pretty kettle of fish (also in DA).
----------

Fall '09.. .. through the camera viewfinder (I'm using Nikon D90 these days (successor of D80 - my primary camera in 2008), this is currently perhaps the most precise model in terms of fitting my needs - comfortable, with good sensor and LCD, with top (illuminated) LCD and excellent battery life - what else can an amateur ask :-) Also, no "How's D90?" blog this time - would be too dry/tech (you can google about it and get million matches; let the pictures talk this time).

National Library of Estonia - Hall

----------

Together with mr. Ardo Holts, we often search for fresh ideas down somewhere in the creative place. These nice young people were chilling at Rotermann district, Tallinn (sent them this one via mail, too, but never heard from them..)

----------

Magenta Mania, Chameleon Lounge, Kuressaare

----------

Road to Pädaste Manor (Muhu Island)

----------

M. (Kadriorg, October)

----------

M. (Kumu, October). How would this look without the lens flare? We should send this question to Sigma, the lens used was 70-200 F2.8 (never a problem with shooting under similar light conditions with Niko 70-200 F2.8VR; perhaps this is where the 3x price difference comes in). I'm also not quite sure about if the girl(s) were happy with the results, so I'm already looking forward to this summer to make new shoot :-)

----------

Unknown Tourist (Tallinn, October).

----------

Amrita (Oriental Dance Festival). Though not offering the sensitivity the full frames (D700, D3s) can do, D90 is a major step forward from CCD sensors produced at 2003-2008 (typically Sony's 6 or 10mp CCD-s).

----------

Lil' Painter (B&W version in DA)

----------

J. (Viimsi, Oct).

----------

J. (Viimsi, Oct)

----------

H. (Suurupi, Nov).

----------

Red Heart (Nov. Maidla)

---------

Vanamõisa (Dec, the last day of 2009).

- artist appreciation -

2010-01-06T02:32:00.004+02:00

While I try to select some pictures from the Fall '09 to upload, I'd like you to visit this gallery:

Kristo Vaarmari - Fotoblogi

The blog/gallery belongs to Mr. Kristo Vaarmari, one of the finest (photo) artists in Estonia.

Note that as with today, there are 300+ images there, and if you have time (hours to time)

to crawl through the excellent photos, I guarantee you'll not be disappointed.

HNY :-)

2010-01-05T20:51:00.003+02:00

Happy New Year! At northern pole of earth, it is nice winter with record snow levels, so nice time to grab some snow pictures. Also, time to review photos from the 2009, and most probably to post some of them here as well :-)

Kata bag challenge

2009-11-04T16:46:00.002+02:00

Haven't found a photo bag perfect for your needs?

Design your own :-) >>> Kata Bag Challenge

Zhang Jingna's excellent work

2009-11-02T22:31:00.002+02:00

A must-see, here: Zhang Jingna's works on DeviantArt :-)

Not to mention profile visits (more than 5,000,000 in seven years), every single photo is just soooo good masterpiece. Original ideas, excellent composition and concepts, photo shoots most probably accompanied a pro team - stylists, make up pros, lighting specialists - all this later on gone through digital darkroom with excellence in after editing photos.

U2 Live from the Rose Bowl

2009-10-27T19:14:00.004+02:00

Official channel of U2 at YouTube has finally managed to put together the video of the Great Event - as they say, Greatest Band at Largest Stage with about 100,000 listeners. All this - U2's 360C 2009 concert - took place on Sunday evening in Los Angeles, Pasadena, at Rose Bowl Arena. It was also the first rock concert to be broadcasted live worldwide via YouTube. If you look at the video from start to the end you see other cool elements used - for example fragments of the songs here and there (like the words from actual Space Ship) that were also represented live (not recorded before).

As with the stage itself, there's probably no one other one at the horizon, performing so well in terms of light, colors, variety, show and you-name-it. Just so much above the rest, just so unique, powerful and stunning - like another world :-)

As with the phenomenon of U2, this is as amazing as their live shows have always been (also, you might like to check out ZooTV live from Sydney (1993) concert - still a very good show, even now if you look at it sixteen years later, especially, I'd recommend checking out the intro for "where the streets have no name"). But why are the band still so popular? Is it because they always introduce new songs, is it because of their well know ageless conservative style, is it their power, message or something else?.. Well I don't know the answer, but I think people around the world do know it, as most of the 2010 tour tickets are sold out AND selling the tickets, once they become available, is a matter of minutes and hours.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the latest concert video.

Word Cloud

2009-10-16T17:45:00.006+03:00

What a fancy thing :-) useful, yet funny :-) (Visit wordle.net to create your own). The Word Cloud seems to tell more than a thousand words :P

Canon 40D Challenge

2009-09-18T18:17:00.003+03:00

Shortly after the lovely mini-Olympus was sold (I still miss it :-) ), there was a chance to try the legendary XXD series semi-pro body by Canon - a 40D this time (Many thanks for Helen for making it possible :-) ). The first Canon from this line was probably Canon D30, a nice 3megapixel DSLR, first "small" sensor DSLR by Canon. The evolution after that was 10D (6mp), 20D (8mp), 30D (8mp, but lots of improvements for body), 40D (10mp), and finally 50D (15mp). A couple of weeks ago, Canon 7D was also announced. It is still arguable whether the 7D is the successor of 50D or has Canon launched entirely new line for high end half-frame cameras.

Well, one of the first things that makes Canon different from the "rest", is the size of their sensor. When Nikon, Pentax and Sony have the crop factor of 1.5 (the sensor size is approximately 23*15mm), the crop factor of Canon's cameras is 1.6, with the sensor size being around 22*14mm. So theoretically, the image quality might be a tiny bit worse, however in real life Canon has always built superior sensor, being one of the first using CMOS technology instead of CCD (as with the big competitor Nikon, the first CMOS sensors were available at 2008 (Nikon D90, D300), while the famous 10D released back in spring 2003. CMOS outperform CCD-s mainly in two areas: first, they consume less power; second, they produce less noise. The capability of the sensor was also one of the main reasons I wanted to try something from Canon as well - I hadn't had any Canon in my hands for a longer period of time so far :-)

One of the issues people often like to argue about, is "where" the XXD line of canon really stands, compared to the Nikon's cameras at the same class? It is more or less agreed that the entry level DSLR-s used to share the same, "beginner" class - So Canon's 300D, 350D, 400D, 450D and 500D were considered be direct competitors for Nikon's D50, D40, D40x and D60. The qualities characteristic for this class was all plastic body, penta-mirror viewfinder and battery lasting not so good as in their big brothers. At the time 40D was released, it was more expensive than the Nikon D80, and not as expensive as the Nikon D300. At the same time it had faster focus, faster continuous shooting, metal body and CF card over the Nikon D80, but its build quality was not up to Nikon D300 level. So to summarize this paragraph, the XXD Canons had so far being class of it's own, more or less. At the time this post is being written, 2009, the market is much more sophisticated, so we can not even narrow down the classes, as we could, so far.

Another chaos has always been with the names of the two "Big" boys. 300D, D300, 40D, D40, 60D, D60. Can you tell, which are Canon's models, which are Nikon's? Probably not if you have not been fanatic camera geek over the last couple of years. The holy web is giving several answers to us here as well, with one of the dominant reasons being the marketing departure of each company - when the model names are similar, the users get confused, so not the Canon nor the Nikon has no certain advantage of sales, when it comes down to model names.

What is really excellent with 40D, is it's high speed continuous shooting - 6,5fps (it's like a sewing-machine :-)), which makes it excellent 2nd camera for any pro shooting anything that moves fast, whether it is sports, nature or anything else. The build quality of the 40D was not as good as I'd expect for a semi-pro body, in fact the more "amateurish" Nikon D80 even felt better. The battery lasts around 1000 shots, the viewfinder is excellent, the auto-focus is fast. What else can you ask? :-) The body itself is pretty large, compared with its smaller brothers, or Nikons 70-80-90D line. Though both Nikon and Canon come from Japan, there are fundamental differences in logic - starting from in which direction the exposure compensation wheel turns, to a small little details through both the physical and electronic user interface. Take Canon 40 (50)D and Nikon 80D (90D) and use them side by side, and you learn it in seconds - so different units, yet both ate very usable.. One thing that you instantly notice about 40D, is its relatively loud shutter noise. According to the forums, the new 50D has VERY silent shutter, so hopefully this will be a a tradition - to produce silent shutters - from this point on :-)

The bottom line - it seems the Canons are not built for me :-) Is it that I have used Nikons too much, is it the physical size of XXD bodies or is it something else - I just find Nikons to be more to my taste. Should I be able to use any additional Canon's pro body in the future, I'll definitely post some comments and pictures here as well - never say never :-) .. All the pictures seen here are shot with 50mm F1.8 prime or 17-40mm F4 L.

Olympus E-410 + 14-42mm challenge :)

2009-09-18T15:49:00.006+03:00

:-) I guess summer trends are not so sitting-in-front-of-computer with blogging-tweeting-crawling through the internet in Northern Countries :-) The Fall sounds much better :-) Lazy afternoons, short days, endless nights with favorite music - why not to write an article or two time by time when there's even not light enough to do something outside? :-)

(Click to the images for bigger size, they're mainly 800-900 pixels wide/high, so you can see some more details).

Short after the D700 test I found myself thinking about the "new toy" for summer - I never had tried any Oly(mpus) for a longer period, so this time the roads crossed with a tiny (okay, todays small "micro" 4/3-s are smaller) olympus E-410. How did it feel, in a word? Good! For its price :P I picked up one used paying approximately $200 for it (14-42 was included).

First emotion having the small oly in my (small) hands - it's not big at all! Compared with the (relatively) big D700, both in therms of size, weight and price :P (I think the price difference is about 10 times, whether it is new or used unit.. the weight difference is perhaps not so giant, perhaps Nikon D700 weighting approximately tow E410-s).

Besides tons of other differences between these units, one of the most obvious difference is the sensor size - this is also probably the main reason I wanted to try the 4/3 system - I wanted to know HOW good/bad the sensor actually is, in different (light) conditions. Just for reference, E-410 was released somewhere at spring 2007 - this is more than 2 years ago: today the latest 4/3 cameras (E-30, Panasonic GF/GH-s) have far better sensors than the one used at 410). Olympus is widely known for its high quality optics as well, so whenever someone has been loyal to Olympus brand in the previous decades, the bunch of lens collected at the photo shelf might be well worth considering continuing the adventure with having a nice olympus body in addition to the old traditional film one.

The build quality is relatively good. No plastic nigs-nags, the small body feels solid and thick. The lack of solid handgrip can at a glance be considered as disadvantage, however this is something one can get used to, relatively quickly. The whole E-410 concept can definitely be considered as something very compact - add the new "pancake" (some newer 420-s ship with 25mm pancake lens) lens here, and there it may fit some pockets! :-) Not a shirt-pocket, though.

One thing that you might instantly notice, after downloading the files to your computer and reviewing them after that, is that the images are pretty much "cube" like - this is due to the 4:3 aspect ration, which is a step closer to a "cube" than traditional 3:2 aspect ratio image. I guess coming from 4:3 the traditional 3:2 may look like a panorama? ..

I'd say the capability of the sensor was exactly near to what I was expecting. Almost as good in terms of sensitivity, as the bigger old CCD sensors at Nikon D70/D80, but not having as much dynamic range, which is also very logical because of the small size of the 4/3 sensor. So the quality is better than the best compact in the market, but far from the quality of latest entry-level DSLRs (Nikon D5000, Canon 500D, etc). To get the most out of the camera, of course it is a good idea to shoot RAW - you just get more color data this way, so less blown highlights and burned blacks.

Any downsides as well? Yes. The LCD screen is not the best out there. Even the old 2.5" 230,000 dots (Canon 5D, Nikon D80) screens are better. I'm not sure about the resolution with 410, but the viewing angles are bad, and the screen contrast is very, very bad. In it's class (2,5 low resolution LCD-s), one of the best LCD screens I've seen is at Pentax K10D (I guess samsung has developed it - it really outperforms the competitors screens - good viewing angles, good colors and contrast, also very sharp, though has the same 230k dots). If you have seen the new 3,0+ 920k screens, this 410-s screen is definitely not something you'd like to dream about.. The speed of the camera was not great as well. Relatively slow autofocus, file recording time and speed of use in general. But again, when you look at the price, the whole unit is very very good.

Using the camera more than 2 months I learned what I always learn with almost any camera - it really does not matter if you have the latest pro body or the cheapest entry level body - when you need to do a picture, you get it with your current camera, IF you know what to do - so understand the capabilities of the camera, conditions of light, shooting object, desired result, etc :-) Maybe still ONE thing I never got used to - it is the same lack of handgrip, which made the camera somewhat uncomfortable to use..

All the photos seen here were shot with the "kit" lens, Zuiko 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 :-) Obviously, the DOF and other image parameters is not near where it should be with some of the (portrait) photos, but overall - the kit lens performed pretty well :)