E.

Foreword to Summer

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

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.

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

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

Site update II

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

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 :-)

Stages of a photographer

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

Always good place to find inspiration for taking good photos:

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

The Third & The Seventh

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

E. / K.

K.

H.

J.

E.

- artist appreciation -

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..

Rojo Negro - Fashion/Collection by Tiina Talumees (Solaris, Nokia Concert Hall, Dec. 2009)
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A pretty kettle of fish (also in DA).
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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

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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..)

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Magenta Mania, Chameleon Lounge, Kuressaare

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Road to Pädaste Manor (Muhu Island)

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M. (Kadriorg, October)

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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 :-)

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Unknown Tourist (Tallinn, October).

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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).

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Lil' Painter (B&W version in DA)

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J. (Viimsi, Oct).

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J. (Viimsi, Oct)

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H. (Suurupi, Nov).

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Red Heart (Nov. Maidla)

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Vanamõisa (Dec, the last day of 2009).

- artist appreciation -

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 :-)

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

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

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

Zhang Jingna's excellent work

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

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

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

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.