Monday, February 28, 2011

Innocent design looks kinky


This picture lacks composition but yet raises eyebrows..

Innocent design looks kinky

Article source : 2dayblog


Friday, February 25, 2011

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Helvatica Font to improve dull photos


When a bad photo is taken, usually due to poor composition or exposure, there isn't much that can be done..

Digital filters and colour levels adjustments can only do that much.

But wait, there is a little trick to make your pictures more interesting...

A font named "Helvatica".

Classic example in the link below.


Photo origin : The Million Word Year


Compound Eyes 24 Feb 2011


I caught it resting on the leaf of one of my potted plants outside my house at 2am in the morning.

This common housefly was quite docile and allowed me to take many shots with flash.

That was until it realized of the intruder to its peaceful rest and turned around to face me.

That momentary confrontation allowed me to take a final portrait shot of its compound eyes before it dismissed me as a nuisance and flew into the night.











Turn around and confronted the intruder before it flew away

Some sharpening was applied via GIMP and using the "unsharp mask" filter to enhance the details of the compound eyes.


Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Changi Jetty


Late night at Changi Jetty.

I name this shot "Battleships"!


Battleships @ Changi Jetty


Admiralty Park Macro Shoot 22 Feb 2011


Buddy Alex Neo texted me "Good weather and clear sky today!" in the morning.

So I took half day leave and we went to shoot some insects at Admiralty Park.

Here are some better macro shots of the insects we found.


Compound eyes!



White Spider that resembles a crab. Very small eyes!



Favourite Macro Bug, stays still and poses for long periods of time.



This bug looks almost like a fish!






Tuesday, February 22, 2011

ISO, APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEEDS and EXPOSURE


This article below was a casual writeup by me on Clubsnap forums, where it first appeared. I was writing a reply to (Sam Goh) my brother-in-law's post in his thread where he was asking for some guidance in using his Canon G12.

Higher ISO [ more sensitive to light, allow for bigger apertures (smaller F numbers) and shorter (faster) shutter speeds to achieve the correct exposure ]
However, as ISO goes higher, your picture will turn out less sharper.
Lower ISO will result in sharper images.

Higher F numbers (aka smaller apertures) will result in sharper pictures but will require shutter speeds to be longer to achieve the correct exposure.

Faster shutter speeds will prevent handshake blur and reduce subject motion blur but will require an decreasing F number [ larger apertures ] in order to achieve the correct exposure.

On the other hand, slower shutter speeds is sometimes preferred to capture the motion blur intentionally [ ie moving headlights on road at night ]

This formula served me well

Perfect exposure = (F number)/(Shutter speed)
ie Shutter speeds are inversely proportional to the aperture.


And if the metering system of the camera still shows that the pic is under or over-exposed when u have reached the limits of both the apertures and shutter speeds of the camera and still unable to achieve the correct exposure...

It's time to up the ISO.

My advice.
indoors during the day : ISO400
indoors at night with fluorescent lighting : ISO800 (ISO400 if using external flash)
outdoors during sunny day : ISO100
outdoors during overcast day : ISO200
outdoors during night : ISO800 and above depending on intended exposure time(shutter speed) and flash or non flash
For long night exposure outdoors, can try ISO100 for landscape with long exposures.



Last but not least,

Taking a photograph is like filling a bucket of water..[ aka achieving correct exposure ]

How long you wanna open the tap for [ shutter speed ] 
and
What is the diameter of the water pipe outlet [ aperture ]?

The 2 critical factors and have different values and will eventually fill up the bucket..

The only question left is how fast you wanna fill it up.