San Francisco City Hall

Canon A570IS

This is one of the first shots that I made with the A570IS. I took it out with me at lunch time and took a few quick snapshots with it. My office is just a block away from City Hall.

The gold trim on the dome really stands out on a cloudy day.

Hey, we're coming up on our 4th(!!!) anniversary of the forum! Where is everyone?

On one hand, I'm glad that the forum is still alive and that there are still a handful of us that keep it that way, but on the other hand I'm a little disappointed that even though we have a large roster, many on the roster seem to have lost interest, perhaps permanently it seems.

--Warren

Hand Art

Version 2:




Original:

Canon A570IS

This was seen at last Saturday's Pakistan Independence Day Festival at Civic Center Plaza.

edit: Added a version with the left cropped a bit per SteveR's suggestion.

--Warren

Gail at a North Beach Coffee Shop

Canon A570IS (!!!), 1/25 f4, ISO 200

Hi Folks, are you paying attention? I bought a Canon!!! It's my first Canon camera. This is historic!

Here's what prompted this. I was actually looking for a digicam with excellent video capability. As you recall, I borrowed Eric's old DSC-H1 mega-zoom for a weekend to see if that would fit the bill.

That camera did have great video, and the 10x zoom was certainly useful and handy, but I decided that the camera was on the bulky side and somewhat oddly shaped, and some of the controls were not very intuitive. As you saw, it was capable of great pictures, but I decided to search for a smaller camera with some other features that I was interested in.

So after reviewing tons of cameras, I decided to get this one because it had the best combination of price, features, and form factor for my current needs.

A quick review of the pertinent features:

- 7MP, optical viewfinder, 2.5" LCD, full manual mode, Image Stabilization, 4x zoom (35mm - 140mm equivalent), Powered by 2 AA sized batteries, 640x480 30fps video, face recognition AF, compact form factor (jacket pocket sized) and a few other things that I probably forgot to mention.

- I bought a 4gb SDHC card for it that is good for over 1250 pictures or 38 minutes of max quality video.

As for this picture of Gail, I am very happy with the camera's IS performance. This shot was recorded at 1/25, f4 at ISO 200, with available window light. Even though I can see compression artifacts and other pixel-level irregularities at full magnification after my post-processing, I am still very pleased with the resulting image.

--Warren

My New 28 Megapixel Superwide Camera...

I don't know why I haven't tried this before... here's a panorama of the Charles River from the Back Bay in Boston.

This 180-degree photo is actually made up of five "normal" images I took with my 18-55mm zoom at it's widest setting. Equivalent to a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera, it's not a superwide by any means. But coupled with the PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon DSLR, I was able to create this panorama in a few minutes. The resulting image was 13,530 x 2142 pixels, or about 28.6 megapixels.

I did this on the spur of the moment last weekend while in Boston for a wedding, without giving it much thought, but here is a good article by Ken Rockwell on using PhotoStitch. Ken notes that even the least expensive Canon digicams made in the last two years, come with this software. The digicams even come with a special "stitch assist" mode to make life easier still.

I see this as a good technique for making some dramatic panoramas in Annapolis and Baltimore. Look for some soon.

Camaro Racer

Nikon D100, Tamron 24-135mm

I made my annual trek to the Monterey Historic Races at Laguna Seca Raceway last weekend. Aside from enjoying the racing, I always like to wander the pit area to view the historic race cars up close. Here is a particularly handsome example of a Trans Am era, early-70's Camaro.

I decided to keep it simple this year so I only brought my D100 and one lens.

--Warren

Otakon 2008 Photos

These kids all fell into poses on their own. They're great models. I posed the "Final Fantasy Four against a blank white wall inside the food pavillion at the Inner Harbor - it ended up looking like seamless paper. Lighting came mostly from a skylight above and in front of the group. A little too much "butterfly" lighting, but all in all not bad.

Empathy

Nikon D100, Tamron 24-135mm

Restaurant Sign

Here's a sign outside a restaurant and I think it stands for 850 Montgomery St. Any of you out there skilled in Rorschach tests?

-- Eric

SF Street Scene

Ok, denizens of SF. Can you tell where I took this street scene?

-- Eric

Bike in Chinatown Alley

I was walking around SF today running errands and I caught a photo of this alley photo. It's a little gritty and a little lonely and I liked the colors.

-- Eric

Otakon Preview

I'm chargin' up my battery and formatin' my card so I'll be ready for the lively scene tomorrow at this year's Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center.

I'll let Wikipedia tell you what Otakon is all about:

Otakon is a fan convention in the United States focusing on East Asian popular culture (primarily animé, manga, music, and cinema) and its fandom. The name is a portmanteau derived from convention and the Japanese word otaku. Otakon is traditionally held on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in late summer at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland's Inner Harbor district. It is considered the second largest and one of the longest-running Anime conventions in the United States.

There was a line, which had been there since morning, wrapped around the Center, with people waiting to pre-register. I saw this young man tonight on my way back to the Light Rail station, just across the street from the Convention Center, and he was gracious enough to pose for me.

Now to badly paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart,I don't know much about animé or manga, but I know a great costume when I see one.

Roxy Swings

"Roxy" (Lynn Roxanne Gambrill Green) of The Fabulous Hubcaps lets loose with a riff on the saxaphone.

Elvis Sighted In Maryland!

I saw and heard him myself! In Pikesville, no less.

Tom Connelly, aka The Elvis Man, is a pretty convincing Elvis. Along with The Fabulous Hubcaps, he was one of the acts this past Sunday at the Dancing in the Street event in Pikesville. In addition to great live music, there was an impressive display of vintage cars and various food and services booths. Sandy and I each had a foot reflexology treatment - pretty nice!

Self Portrait at SF Art Institute

Voigtlander Bessa R, 35mm f2.5 Skopar, Fuji 400 Print Film

This image was suggested by my wife, Gail, who has a very good "eye" for interesting scenes. We have done some good collaborations together where she would suggest an idea, then I would complete the thought photographically.

--Warren

Shutterbug Excursions

ShootingUp_0734
Originally uploaded by Steve Rosenbach

I just copied this from my blog - I found this group a few weeks ago on meetup.com, and we had our first "meetup" last Saturday.

If you live in the Baltimore-Washington metro area and are looking for a lively group of fellow photo-enthusiasts, you couldn't do better than the Shutterbug Excursions Meetup Group.

Our fearless leader, Lyn, organized the group on Meetup.com just a few weeks ago, and yesterday, we had our very first meetup in Annapolis.

We met at City Dock Café and headed out along Ego Alley, then over the the Naval Academy. From there we walked over to one of the many old street that have picturesque houses along the way, like this one.

By then, we had been out and about for over two hours, and most of the gang bid each other goodbye for the day. Three of us, Lyn, Tracey, and I, decided to soldier on, and we walked back to City Dock. After a few minutes of snapping photos around the Alex Haley memorial, we were treated to a full-scale hailstorm.

No problem, we just ran across the street and took shelter in Market Place. By then, we were hungry anyway and took advantage of the food concessions inside. Once the storm passed by, we had the best lighting of the day; by then it was getting on towards 7pm, and sunset, I knew, would be around 7:15.

We took more photos on the Spa Creek Bridge and around the Eastport end of the bridge, continuing well past sunset. Here's photographic proof of our steadfastness; the picture of Lyn and Tacey is timestamped just before 8 pm.

For a bunch of people who had never met before, we all got along really well and had a lot of laughs.

as you can see, I was outgunned by all the Nikonians, most with high-end cameras. Fortunately, they all accepted me despite me being Nikon-challenged

WWSD (What Would SteveR Do?) Pyramid Shot

Sony DSC-H1

Okay, maybe this will the last shot the of the Pyramid that I'll post for a while. Does it (sort of) remind you of the kind of image that SteveR would make, maybe with a little bit of my own flavor in there? Hmmm.

--Warren

More Fun with Sidewalks

Sony DSC-H1

While walking down a very steep hill, I noticed the interesting razor pattern on the sidewalk due to the new cement vs. older cement.

--Warren

Foliage Framed Pyramid

Sony DSC-H1

We went for another of our usual long City walks today. The fog was just starting to creep back into the heart of the City. It was beginning to partially obscure the Pyramid.

--Warren

Lamp Post Framed Pyramid

Sony DSC-H1

A little classic and modern interaction going on here...

--Warren

Classic S

Sony DSC-H1

I found this sidewalk design in an alley in San Francisco.

--Warren

Micro Ducati

Sony DSC-H1

Hey folks, I took this test shot while getting familiar with Eric's Sony DSC-H1 this morning. I've always been impressed by this camera. Now that Eric has his new D40 to play with, I get to borrow his DSC-H1 to try out. I have it this weekend.

This shot was taken handheld, available light, in full-auto mode (auto-ISO set at ISO 125), at maximum zoom (12x, 400mm+ 35mm equivalent) at 1/20, f3.7. That's incredible image stabilization performance for the given focal length and shutter speed. I'm blown away by this performance.

For reference, the model Ducati is about 5 inches long, and the miniature little red corvette under it is one inch in length.

The image was cropped and processed a bit in Photoshop.

--Warren

Self-Publishing with MyPublisher

Thanks once again to Dave Beckerman for showing the way! In his blog, Dave has chronicled his adventures with publish-on-demand photo books. He tried several and found that MyPublisher did a very good job. You can see an online version of his very fine new book, Central Park Portrait, via MyPublisher's preview facility.


I just placed my order with MyPublisher late last night, so I haven't seen the physical results yet, but you can take a peek by clicking on the photo below.



If it comes out looking anything like this online preview, I'll be very happy indeed!

I encourage all of you to try this out. MyPublisher gives you free software to help you layout your masterpiece. There are several templates and other options. It doesn't even have to be for a collection of artsy-fartsy photos - this would make a great souvenir of a family vacation. In fact, MyPublisher right now is offering a two-for-one deal; for the price of one, you'll get two copies of your first book. The website explains it all - check it out at http://www.mypublisher.com