Monday, July 27, 2009

Old Buildings and Churches in NJ

Suni, Adi and I went on old building and church hunting one weekend in NJ. Here are the results

The First Presbyterian Church, Woodbridge OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
St. Luke’s Church, Metuchen OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Barron Arts Center, Rahway OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The First Presbyterian Church, Avenel OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
St. Andrews Church, Avenel OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The First Presbyterian Church, Cranford OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A Church on Main St., Metuchen OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A Church on Lake Ave OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Another church on Lake Av. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A Statue near Barren Arts Center OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Friday, July 24, 2009

A Trip to Lake George

Every photography trip teaches me something, and this one was no different. Although I knew that we would be staying near a water body and most of my pics will involve water in it, I took a “calculated risk” of not ordering circular polarizing filter for my lenses (they were too expensive and I didn’t want to spend money on filters for sometime).

As I imagined, I absolutely missed the polarizers. The reason – reflectivity of the water. Water reflects great deal of light, which looks great for a naked eye, but in a picture – its the most dreadful thing. You end up with pictures badly exposed where ever there is reflection and picture will not be as beautiful as the scene might have looked to the naked eye.

Circular Polarizer removes reflections and enhances the blue light. Which is great for landscape pics.

So keeping in mind this issue, I had to shoot in a way which would either make the reflections look good or avoid reflections in the photograph.

Lake George is a scenic place, there are million things you could photograph – Its picturesque, its beautiful. Suni, Adi and I enjoyed the beauty thoroughly.

Here are some of the results

First day – Hotel where we stayed had a beach! and Adi loved it. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The boats moored were a pleasing sight. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The Pier was picture perfect! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This was happy to be photographed!! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A nice scene OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Views from our room on either side. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
More boats… OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
We decided to cruise a bit OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
We went on a most romantic dinner cruise! Lovely OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The flight ! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The Landing OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A Photographer and his wife – Picture taken by a Japanese tourist! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
..and as usual Adi found some friends to play on the boat!  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
totally going crazy!  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Great scenes from the cruise OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Some panoramic…. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Different shades… OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Speed boat coming straight at us OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Romantic… OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
After the cruise, its time for the fireworks. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Beautiful…
All the fireworks are tripod mounted F/4 @ 4 seconds. ISO 100 to reduce noise.
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And more… OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The 2nd day was the day for trekking!
Our little helper! Did a good job!
Do you think we were dressed similar?! hmmm…
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The forest!
Never shoot the ground when shooting inside a forest….it will be boring (unless you have exotic animals roaming around)!
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The water fall! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
In the evening we at the “Top of the World” OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Beautiful! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
After the top of the world, we went to the winery!
Impressive
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Where Suni met Mr. Frankenstein!! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Last day was the day for Prospect Mountain! Beautiful View! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
More panorama!
How I did it? With a tripod, its a composite of 8 individual pictures stitched in Photoshop.
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First thing that I did after coming back from the trip – ordered a polarizer!   :-)

Thanks for watching! Enjoy and take care…

http://photo.net/photos/puru

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Four-Thirds System – What it means?

Authors Note: This blog is compilation of information from various sources. I have tried to make it simple and interesting. Since I have tried to make it simple, its very difficult for me to demark exactly which information comes from which source. The reader will see the information blended from all these sources.

What is four-thirds system?

The Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Kodak for digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) design and development. The system provides a standard that, with digital cameras and lenses available from multiple manufacturers, allows for the interchange of lenses and bodies from different manufacturers.

Unlike older SLR systems, Four Thirds has been designed from the ground up to be entirely digital. Many lenses are extensively computerized, to the point that Olympus offers firmware updates for many of them. Lens design has been tailored to the requirements of digital sensors, most notably through telecentric designs. The size of the sensor is slightly smaller than for most DSLRs (see drawing below) and this implies that lenses, especially telephoto lenses, can be smaller. For example, a Four Thirds lens with a 300 mm focal length would cover about the same angle of view as a 600 mm focal length lens for the 35 mm film standard, and is correspondingly more compact. That is, the Four Thirds System is said to have a crop factor (focal length multiplier) of about 2.

[Outer frame is Medium format (Kodak KAF 3900 sensor)]

550px-Sensor_sizes_overlaid_inside_svg

What does this mean?

The name of the system comes from the size type of the image sensor used in the cameras. The image sensor is commonly referred to as a 4/3" type or 4/3 type sensor. Its area is 30–40% less than the nearly APS-C sensors used in most other DSLRs, but around 9 times larger than the 1/2.5" sensors typically used in compact digital cameras (see image sensor format).

The Four Thirds system uses a 4:3 image aspect ratio, in common with compact digital cameras. This differs from other DSLRs which usually adhere to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the traditional 35 mm format.

A major reason to choose 4:3 sensor proportions was similarity to the aspect ratio on standard definition television. Computer monitors also commonly use a 4:3 aspect ratio, as found in the VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA+, UXGA and QXGA standards.

John Knaur, a Senior Product Manager at Olympus, states that "The Four-Thirds refers to both the size of the imager and the aspect ratio of the sensor".He goes on to state the similarity between 4:3 and the standard printing size of 8×10, as well as medium format 6×4.5 and 6×7 cameras.

What are the objectives?

Olympus developed the Four Thirds Specification with the following objectives.

  • To propose an interface specification that will allow more camera bodies and lenses to be interchangeable, in order to improve convenience of users and contribute to the growth of industry.
  • To pursue higher image quality than 135 film cameras and mobility through the effect of size reduction.
  • To consider free system expansion.

How does it work?

The image sensor in a digital camera can be compared to a “deep well.” You cannot see the bottom of the well unless you lean over it. In the same way, light inclined at an angle cannot reach the image sensor (i.e. the bottom of the well). Many of the current interchangeable-lens D-SLR cameras using traditional 35 mm film camera lenses are very susceptible to loss of sharpness, chromatic aberration, and shading of peripheral areas. Wide-angle type lenses are especially problematic since oblique light inclined at a large angle tends to enter the peripheral areas.

benefit_img02

benefit_img03

With the Four Thirds system, the diameter of the lens mount exceeds the sensor size and the digital-dedicated lens design allows all the light (even on the periphery) to travel perpendicularly to the surface of the image sensor. The result is a sharp, clear image reproduction throughout the image plane.
Linear propagation of light and the high imaging performance made possible by the digital-dedicated design are the biggest features of the Four Thirds lenses.

So, What are the advantages?

  • The smaller sensor size makes possible smaller and lighter camera bodies and lenses. In particular, the potential exists for very fast lenses and very high quality lenses at lower costs. Currently this is evident to some extent in the Olympus E-4x0 and E-620 bodies, in the kit lenses sold with the E-4x0 and E-5x0 bodies, and in longer telephoto lenses.
  • Greater depth of field at any given aperture and focal length due to the smaller format. This is an advantage in many applications (macro-photography in particular), but a disadvantage in others (portraiture) where a shallow depth of field is desired.
  • Telecentric optical path means that light hitting the sensor is traveling perpendicular to the sensor (as seen in the figure above), resulting in brighter corners, and most importantly improved off-center resolution, particularly on wide angle lenses.
  • Advantage of 2x crop while shooting with telephoto. A 300mm 4/3rd lens is equivalent of 600mm for 35mm format.
  • Because the flange focal distance is significantly shorter than most competing mounts (such as Canon FD, Canon EF, Nikon F and Pentax K), lenses for many other SLR types, including the old Olympus OM System, can be fitted to Four Thirds cameras with simple mechanical adapter rings. (Such mechanical adapter rings typically require manual setting of focus and aperture). In many cases this produces excellent results, especially with longer focal-length lenses and lenses at smaller apertures. A series of tests by John Foster (Using OM legacy lenses on E1 body) provides a demonstration.

And the disadvantages?

The disadvantages are not really disadvantages with the development of advanced technology, as you can see

  • Smaller sensors collect less light in total than larger ones, and thus have a weaker signal-to-noise ratio. Images made with a Four Thirds sensor will show more noise at the same sensitivity than those made with larger formats, although the noise performance of Four Thirds is only slightly worse than APS-C.  However, with advanced image processor in the E-systems, Olympus has almost eliminated this disadvantage.
  • A telecentric optical path means more aggressive retrofocus design for wide and normal lenses, which makes them bigger, and makes wide apertures harder to achieve. With latest high-tech lenses (especially the 9-18mm and 12-60mm lenses, not to talk of their super high-grade lenses) Olympus is now on par with the competitors.

Other Factors

  • Since the practical lens aperture for a given angle of view is smaller, the minimal depth of field will be larger, providing less subject isolation.
  • The aspect ratio of pictures taken with a Four Thirds camera is 4:3, while all other DSLR cameras and full frame 35 mm film cameras take pictures with an aspect ratio of 3:2. Nearly all compact digital cameras take pictures with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
  • For traditional print and frame sizes that have an aspect ratio of 3:2 (e.g., 6×4"), photographs will have to be cropped or printed with borders to fit these sizes. The same applies if the picture is to be used for a wide-screen application.
  • Other traditional print sizes (5×7", 8×10", 11×14") are closer to a 4:3 aspect ratio than they are the 3:2 aspect ratio, meaning the photographer does not need to crop as much as would a user of a 3:2 format. The same applies for pictures to be used on standard PC screens and non-HDTV television screens.

For more information on how Four-third system was born – You can read these interesting stories

http://www.four-thirds.org/en/special/index.html

http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/special/passion/episode1_01.html

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Shooting the Moon!

One would think that shooting the moon is probably easiest, because it seems pretty obvious logic that since moon comes out at night you would need a slow shutter speed. Right?

WRONG! :-)

If you are shooting the  moon – I mean shooting THE moon, which means moon is your only subject in the picture and not shooting a landscape with moon in it –  and if you have a slow shutter speed then you would end up with a picture like this

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This is shot at Aperture Priority with F/7.1 and shutter 1/6 sec @ ISO 200. As you can see its obviously terribly over exposed and also a slightly blurred because moon has moved (I used tripod & remote shutter release to shoot this, so no chance of camera shake). If I had used a smaller aperture and slower shutter speed the result would have been worse.

The reason why the obvious logic doesn’t work is because, although its night time on earth, its actually daytime on moon [now that’s a revelation, isn’t it ?:-)]. So when you use the aperture priority or shutter priority or any other auto or semi-auto mode, the camera’s metering system thinks that since the ambient light is very less, it needs to compensate. So it averages the light from all sources (which is essentially just the moon light + the darkness of the night) and the chooses the aperture or shutter or both as the case may be.

This averaging distorts the exposure leaving the moon itself badly over exposed.

So the best way to shoot the moon is to have the camera in Manual mode and set the aperture and shutter manually as if you were shooting in a shade during daylight.

So for the picture below I chose the same Aperture f/7.1 but I chose a faster shutter at 1/160 @ ISO 200.

As you can see, its a prettier sight :-)

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Happy Shooting!!