Your mind was automatically directed to sex, wasn’t it? Admit it. With a title like that, everything point to the sexual fetish that is Voyeurism. If you search the web there are lots of sites (there it goes again, the mind floating to those sex ideas) that define this clinical psychology called Voyeurism, but today I’m here to talk about things other than sex. Let’s talk about photography (for a change).
After buying a Nikkor AF-S DX VR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED and taking it for walk and a couple of shoots, I’m fascinated by this lens. This lens has an excellent zoom and allows you to capture really nice photos without interfering with the natural behavior of the subject. Sometimes having this huge lens extended in some direction generated some awkward by the people close to you, but I must face my natural shyness and if necessary explain what is the intention (no harm, no foul).
In fact, and here comes the origin of the title, I liked so much the ability to take “distant” photos that I’m considering investing in another tele-zoom lens after making the most of 200 mm. The Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED is an excellent candidate, and will be in the shortlist when time comes. Here is an interesting review. As you can see in Nikon’s lens simulator, the zoom at 300 mm is amazing.
A while ago, I became aware of the potential of using RAW files after reading some very interesting articles [1][2] on the subject. Since then RAW is the everyday choice unless speed between shoots is important or, more frequently, when the memory card is starting to fill-up.
Using Ubuntu (and GIMP) to setup a workflow, I found a very useful tool to transform RAW files into JPEG. Simply,
sudo aptitude install ufraw gimp-ufraw
and you’ll install a very useful standalone (ufraw) GUI tool, that also can be used to batch process in the command line, and the gimp support to import RAW photos.
If you don’t want to lose post-processing time, most digital cameras have a RAW+JPEG mode in which they store the final JPEG image while retaining the ‘negative’ RAW file. I find this the best compromise… when I have lots of memory space available.
“I need an Exit..”
This photo was taken on my way to work. Strangely enough, the arrow indicating the emergency exit also points in the direction of my office. The actual exit is between this arrow and the entrance, which sometimes makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just use this exit and return home. There are days like that…
One of these nights, I was doing the usual zapping and by chance I stopped at Fashion TV to watch something that seemed to be somehow out of place for this channel. After a minute, it became clear that it was the making of for the Pirelli Calendar for 2009. The pictures are awesome, but the photographic session progressed in a very bizarre manner.
As any amateur photographer, I would love to participate in something like this but I don’t believe I’ll ever be that lucky. Again, although I still don’t understand why do the models submit to such a treat, I must admit that the results are extraordinary.
August 19th, 1839 was the day that photography was “officially” born, after the patent of the Daguerreotype (an early photography development procedure developed by Louis Daguerre) was acquired by the French government and given as a “gift to the world” during a presentation in the French Academy of Sciences. The complete and very interesting timeline is available here, or here and another one here.
Currently, the August 19th is used to celebrate the World Photography Day. I’m a little bit late but here’s my contribution.
I love photography and any thing related to it. Photo journalism is one of the many areas that I enjoy and the work of Michael Kamber (for New Your Times) just made me really thing about life. The work presents shoots taken during a USA military mission in Iraq, during which the 2nd Brigade Combat Team was attacked (suffering a casualty). The quality of the photos and the comments of the photographers made me think about how fragile is human life. I think one of photography’s main goals should be to make people think more often about that.
©Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Although loving photography, specially when focusing on nature, I tend to miss most opportunities to visit photo-exhibitions installed nearby. Usually I know about them just after they have finished or when it’s totally impossible to unschedule some other event. But this time I just passed in front of the entrance and could go without entering.
So, I spent almost two hours marveled with the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007 exhibition, installed at Freeport. Visit online here.
Award Winner @ Natural History Museum § Ben Osborne
Along with photography, I think I have a new addiction! To blog… that’s my newest addiction.
I’ve taken three days of vacation, plus the weekend to rest. But I found myself in front of my home PC for the entire day. I did not spend the whole day writing posts. Still I manage to spend the entire day… creating new photo blog using Wordpress as blogging engine.
The new Photoblog is called Experiment, and you can visit at experiment.marcosbento.net!
Some of the content from the previous blog attempt was moved to the new location, but more will be available quite soon. Follow the news using the feed.
The acronym ISO stands for a lot of different things, but for this post ISO will be used to define Film Speed, as it is known in Photography.
Film speed describes the index of sensitivity of the film used by analogical cameras, and is also used describe the speed of light capture in most common digital cameras.
A film may have a low ISO index (called slow film) meaning that it is less sensitive, and thus, needing more time of exposure. On the other side, a high ISO index film (called fast film) is very sensitive needing less time of exposure.
Another thing to consider is that using a fast film your photos will seem to be more grainy. So I try to use the lowest ISO possible. As a rule of thumb: use ISO from 80 to 200, for sunny days outdoor photos; ISO 400 for usual indoor/shady photography; anything higher, from 800 to 1600 is used only if the lighting conditions make it necessary.
In practical terms, try the film speed simulator available here, and see for yourself the differences between using different levels of film sensitivity.
It’s raining… Today I won’t be leaving home with my SLR hanging in my shoulder, ready to take a couple of photos to add to blog! What can I do when raining?
Well, this post has 7 very good advises to be taken by anyone trapped at home in bad weather. The last advise is keep shooting, and for that you can find here and here a couple of suggestions.
To finalize, here are some great photos taken during rainy days.
