Keshav in B&W

Lumix GF1, Lumix 20mm f1.7

Here is Keshav channeling HCB.

--Warren

Jeanne

I've been living with a colorful octogenarian these past three months and it has been a blast. As my internship comes to an end this coming week and I fly out. I'll miss being her technology coach and disagreeing with her about practically everything.

The below illustrates an episode from a few Sundays ago:

Alex

Lumix G5, Lumix 20mm f1.7

This is Alex. I met him at the new San Francisco Leica Store. Alex is the gallery manager of the store, and his job is to line the brick walls that you see behind him in this picture, with selected works from Leica photographers. Alex is a photographer himself, but he has been too busy to shoot lately. He gets to use his choice of Leica gear from the store, lucky guy!  :)

--Warren

San Francisco, CA

I saw her lost in thought at the side of the road. She noticed me an instant before I took the photo but played along. I love it when people do that.
- Keshav Mahendru
Fujifilm X100s
Critique encouraged

Stranger Becomes Friend

Here's is Keshav, a very nice guy who I met the other day because he bought one of my lenses, the Voigtlander 35mm f2.5 Color Skopar Classic. We arranged to meet at a local coffee shop (picture #1) to do the deal. I really took a liking to him, so I invited him to lunch where we ordered one of his favorite dishes, Szechuan Shrimp (picture #2). After lunch, I invited him over to our house where I gave him my Fed 3b w/ 50mm Industar 61 (picture #3). I was planning to give away the Fed anyway, and I couldn't think of a more deserving photographer. Keshav is currently in the Bay Area for a summer internship, and he will be returning to Duke University in the Fall to finish his Business Degree. I also asked Keshav to join our blog. You'll be seeing more from Keshav soon. This series is interesting because each picture was taken with a different camera (Lumix G5 w/Lumix 20mm f1.7, HTC One X cell phone, and finally, Nikon D200 w/24mm f2.8 AF)

Keshav  is relatively new to photography, but very enthusiastic. He primarily shoots the street genre. 

--Warren 

Gail at Ragged Point (Highway 1)

HTC One X

Anyone else have any last minute entries? (It's okay to be late by a few days too) :)

Here, you can really see the limited dynamic range of the cell phone's tiny camera sensor.

--Warren

Coffee with Dennis

HTC One X


--Warren

Clarissa's Profile

HTC One X

Last day for this month's project!

--Warren

Practicing Photographer

Lumix LX5 @ 24mm

This is "Kirk". He was practicing in the field with his newly acquired Canon 100-400mm zoom. He will be going to Tanzania on a photo safari, as well as climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. He showed me a picture on his iPhone that he took of a tiger in India, and he told me a great story of how he got that picture.  I took the opportunity to do a combination project picture :).

--Warren

Bob and Pippin

HTC One X

Nothing too goofy, or humorous, just a picture of our friend, Bob, and his cat Pippin. :)

--Warren

Kristin

Lumix LX5

This is Gail's cousin Kent's adorable daughter, Kristin. We saw them at a party last Sunday. We sat at a table next to some large windows so there was plenty of good, ambient daylight for candid portraits.

So we're continuing to put the LX5 through its paces, and so far I have been very pleased with its performance, considering that it is a small-sensor compact.

I took a series of pictures of Kristin and this is the exact expression that I was after. I finally got it on the fourth shot. Children are so difficult to photograph. They are in constant motion, but when you tell them to smile and pose for the camera, you will often get a forced smile. I prefer a pose like this one, with a natural, relaxed expression and big eyes looking directly at the camera.

The LX5 was set for totally silent operation, no focus confirmation beep, no simulated shutter sound. That's how I like it. Because the camera has no mechanical shutter, its operation is totally silent, and unobtrusive which is an advantage in certain situations like this one.

In my opinion, the image held up very well to some significant cropping that I had to do in order to remove some distracting objects from the shot. The LX5's auto-exposure was very close to spot-on so I did not have to do much editing on this at all, except for the cropping, some color temperature adjustment (as per usual with Lumix images) and a little noise reduction from the RAW output. The big issue that I had with other tiny sensor P&S cameras is that some only save files in .jpg, with the resulting compression artifacts visible in even the lowest ISO settings. By using RAW output, the resulting files are really nice and workable. In the LX5's case, it seems that its RAW capability combined with excellent optics make for a very good combination.

--Warren

Impromptu Portraits

Lumix LX5

I had a coffee break with Greg this afternoon and I took a couple of informal outdoor portraits of him while still gaining experience with the LX5. For some reason, the color balance/white balance from the LX5 seems a bit wonky, requiring a lot of correction in post processing. I'll need to experiment with various settings to see if they have an effect. I shoot RAW only, so not sure if changing settings in-camera will do any good. Also, I would have wanted a little less DOF for a portrait, but this was already at widest aperture at longest zoom (f3.3 @ 90mm equiv) shooting in "A" mode. In other words, this is as good as it can be due to the small sensor size.

--Warren

The Chin

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 45-200mm

We saw Jay Leno at the Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca last weekend. He is usually there every year.

--Warren

Al In His Home Studio

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 20mm f1.7

This seems like an opportune time to post this. Al graciously allowed me to practice my environmental portrait skills with him in a session at his home studio last year.

If you're interested in seeing the full set of pictures, go to my gallery page on ViewfinderSF.com.

--Warren

Devilish Dan

Konica FS-1, 40mm f1.8 Hexanon, Kodak BW400CN

Hello, It's Me

Panasonic DMC-G1, Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8

Photo by Gail.

More goodness from the Hexanon 40mm, we were at Yerba Buena Gardens where I handed Gail the camera and told her to take my picture.

She was not used to the manual focus, but one of the three pictures that she took of me came out sharp. She took the shot horizontally, and I cropped it to portrait format in post-processing.

--Warren

Howard Reads Yiddish

A portrait of my friend and distinguished colleague, Howard.

Among other things, he's distinguished because when he joined our little team at the University, he was issued an ID card that says "Faculty," instead of "Staff," as it was supposed to be. So since then, I've referred to him as "Professor."

One day last December, as Howard and I arrived at our Light Rail destination in the morning, we got an alert from work that our building had lost power, and that they didn't expect it to be restord until late afternoon... so they were telling everyone to go home for the day. Howard and I decided to stay on the Light Rail and ride it to the northern end of the line - a nice 45 minute journey northward.

One the way back, I remembered that I had with me a copy of the "Forwarts" ("Forward",) a Yiddish newspaper I had brought back from New York some months earlier. I bought it strictly for photographic purposes - I thought it would be humorous to take pictures of people who you wouldn't expect to be reading a Yiddish publication - and Howard fit the bill. I still have to arrange to take a picture of it with one of my Asian friends.

For a while, we had this photo posted in our office between our desks as a way of showing how learned Professor Howard really was!

Gail on New Year's Eve

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 45-200mm

We went for an afternoon walk at Pacifica on Dec. 31st.

We haven't seen "people" shots and portraits here lately, so here's one to get that ball rolling.

--Warren

Night Portrait at Peace Pagoda

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 20mm f1.7

I thought that the base of the pagoda would make an interesting location for a portrait so I asked Gail to pose there for me.

--Warren

Gail at Victoria Bakery

Nikon D100, Nikkor 50mm f1.8d

Natural, ambient window light is always a good source of lighting for a portrait.

--Warren