Saturday, November 23, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
NovemberLight2 (updated)
(23 Nov: I added three pics.)
Update:
Taken with iPhone 5s. With HDR, which fought a valiant fight against the surprisingly contrasty light this afternoon.
Apple is to be commended for not overdoing the HDR (contrast correction by combining several exposures) so as to get the unrealistic images where a sky is about as dark as a black cliff. No, it just corrects to get a bit more detail in the shadow and highlights, good.
This fantastic light, along with the dramatic clouds and the autumn colors, makes this quiet burg look grand. (Carefully choses viewpoints and compositions don't hurt, of course.)
Update:
JP said:
On a cloudy day, the building and gate in the first photo would be foreboding. Excellent detail, depth of field and composition.
On this lovely day, I did not see it as foreboding. But:
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Makroscope
Another solution to macro: the Zoerk Makroscope Type 1.
I've long wondered why we didn't hear of high quality close-up front lenses like this. (Basically just a loupe for the camera.) But of course for really high quality, you need aspherical lenses, which are expensive, but has become much less so in recent years, and this lens has two of them. And it will works with a lot of different lenses and cameras. (so long as the lens front is not too big.) The quality will remain at the quality your own lens has, this is a very good product. Of course, being that, it's not a cheapo thing either, around $400, plus a converter ring if your lens doesn't have to have a 52mm filter thread.
The photo below was taken by a simple Canon G3 "compact" camera, with the Makroscope. So it's also a road to makro without an exchangeable-lens camera.
(I hear it can also be combined with macro lenses to get even closer than one to one.)
I've long wondered why we didn't hear of high quality close-up front lenses like this. (Basically just a loupe for the camera.) But of course for really high quality, you need aspherical lenses, which are expensive, but has become much less so in recent years, and this lens has two of them. And it will works with a lot of different lenses and cameras. (so long as the lens front is not too big.) The quality will remain at the quality your own lens has, this is a very good product. Of course, being that, it's not a cheapo thing either, around $400, plus a converter ring if your lens doesn't have to have a 52mm filter thread.The photo below was taken by a simple Canon G3 "compact" camera, with the Makroscope. So it's also a road to makro without an exchangeable-lens camera.
(I hear it can also be combined with macro lenses to get even closer than one to one.)
Photo by Knut.
Has the self-driving car at last arrived?
Has the self-driving car at last arrived?, article in TNY.
Levandowski says, our fear of driverless cars is increasingly irrational. “Once you make the car better than the driver, it’s almost irresponsible to have him there,” he says. “Every year that we delay this, more people die.”
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Novemberlight
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Olympus E-M1, 75mm 1.8 at F:1.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 200. HDR in-camera (which limits the ISO to 200, an oddity of the camera).
(Notice how pin-sharp it is, despite full aperture/opening. That lens is outstanding.)
