Phase One came up with 2 new versions of Capture One DLSR, the piece of software I'm using to convert my Canon RAW picture into TIFF or JPEG format.
The new version C1LE 1.3 seems much more accurate in terms of colours to
me. At least, it gets rid of that horrible pink overcast that I noticed in
the 1.2 version.
The whole process seems also smoother, but I'm not actually sure what the
improvements really are.
One good thing though: the upgrade from C1 DSLR LE 1.2 to C1 DSLR LE 1.3 is free of charge if you are already a registered user.
As for C1 DLSR SE (Special Edition), the main difference to me is that you can develop up to 100 pictures in one batch, instead of 20 in the LE (limited edition) version.
Once I get my dual processor G5, that shouldn't matter though ;)
Please visit (and enjoy!) Richard Bram's portfolio as well as his project, called Big hair & True love.
Richard was kind enough to leave a message in my guestbook!
It is really an honour for me to have a message from him (I don't know how
deep Richard had to "dig" the Internet to find my homepage!), as I truly enjoy
his work and think he's a photographer of great talent.
On a rainy day, around Izumi Garden, on the
way to the office, I found those little dropplets which formed an
amazing mosaic of water above my head.
Luckily, I had taken my camera with me and went for a few shots with my EOS
10D and this amazing lens that the 50mm f1.4 is.
I have to say that I was astounished when I developped the picture, as I saw
all the details of those dropplets even better than I could see it with my own
eyes! The picture looked so unreal, almost like CG or out of an advertisement
of Apple!
The pictures here are just crops of the same picture, because it would have just spoilt the whole effect to merely resize the original one: all the interest resides in the details of the pictures.
Although in photography, it is
recommended to simplify the shot as much as possible in order to put in the
front the actual subject, I couldn't resist and included those 3 points of
interest in this picture:
- The huge building of Roppongi Hills, which seems to come out from nowhere when seen from the peaceful residential neighborhood of Aoyama
- The full moon next to it (although overexposed...)
- and Mars, the little dot next to the moon.
I have to admit that you really have to tell yourself it's the planet Mars
to be impressive. Or else, it's just another dot in the sky, among the
thousands of stars...
Well, since it comes so close to the Earth only every 60,000 years, I had to
see it if I didn't want to sound like a fool ;-)
I bought some flowers for our apartment and I decided to
go for a few shots, inspired by the numerous photos of sunflowers you can find
on the web.
Those pictures are therefore far from being the most original of this kind
but it's still an interesting photographic experiment.
I tried to play with a shallow depth of field to show the same object under
different aspects, although the position of the subject didn't change compared
to the camera:
- I like this one because I played with the manual focus to show only the ends of the petals, leaving the main subject in a blur, bringing a surprising attention to what is usually left almost unseen
- This one is more classical, but I like the way the petals are flying away from the frame, I think it's a very dynamic picture
- For this one, I played with the manual focus again to show only one plane of sharpness. It gives an interesting effect, almost vertigo or as if the flower was burning, as Fred said
- Finally, a shot with a very small aperture the whole flower as sharp
We had dinner with Fred and
Thierry at "Le
Bretagne" for a change.
It's a very warm French restaurant (although the purists will say
"Crêperie Bretonne"!) serving crepes ("galettes" would
be the appropriate word for the same purists) in Omotesando, Tokyo. I really
like the atmosphere there, as well as the food, although it's not really
compatible with my diet!.
I seized the opportunity to use my camera again (it has been staying without exercise for too long, since I started to be busy in the office) and took a few shots, out of which this one of Fred with a lady in a blurred background looked quite nice to me.
I'm not sure this is street photography per se (picture of a friend, taken in a restaurant, etc.) but there was no particular setup and when I looked at the scene, within a microsecond, everything became so clear (how I should frame the picture, what aperture I should use), that I knew I had to take the shot!
As said in the "Home of Street Photography", it is just about seeing and reacting.
Do you feel the same as I do when I look at this photograph? I feel
frustrated by not seeing what Fred is looking at, by the fact that the lady is
blurred and you cannot tell what she looks like, by the apparent relationship
there is between Fred and the lady which cannot actually exist since they are
on different planes, by the crop that the camera imposes, preventing me from
seeing the rest of Fred's face, etc.
All those things crossed my mind before I took the shot, that's what makes it
so special to me.
How about you?
Of all styles of photography, one that I never dared practise is street photography.
I do like the truth captured in the pictures though. The spontaneity of
people, the lack of light setup, everything is real and truly illustrates the
society that the photographer decided to capture.
It is however very difficult to isolate the right element in the frame of the
camera which will transform a mere snapshot into a nice photograph, and above
all, do everything without being intrusive to the people you photograph.
My first attempt is a photograph of a young
lady sitting by the escalator in an old building in Shinjuku, late at
night.
I didn't especially expect to see her face so clearly, but she turned around
right when I took the picture and after all, I'm glad she did: I like the
expression on her face, a mixture of surprise and boredom.
Hoping that I will be able to take more pictures, I have added a new section to my website to gather the results of my new experiments.
For more striking examples of street photography, one of the masters of this style is of course Robert Doisneau, whose photographs illustrate more than 50 years of Paris.
The following links are also very interesting:
- The home of Street
Photography: a website where street photographers can contribute with
their own pictures to promote street photography.
I personally really like the Richard Bram's portfolio: he was able to amazingly make the advertisements in the metro interact with people, all pictures are just breathtaking! - No rules street photography: Great collection of pictures.
The site of photo.net is
wonderful site where you can find a lot of amazing pictures (each photograph
from the photo of
the week is a masterpiece), articles on various photography techniques,
forums, reviews, etc.
It is a also a very scary site if you decide to post some of your pictures
and request them to be criticized, like I did!
As soon as you post your picture, mail alerts are sent to a group of people
and then the hunt is opened! People will start giving marks from 1 to 7 to
your pictures, according to 2 criterias: aesthetics and originality. It goes
so fast, you can almost see your score being updated in real time every time
you refresh the page!
I first tried with one
picture which is quite popular with many of my friends (I personnaly don't
think it's my personal best, although the long exposure gives an unusual but
pleasant look to the picture).
The picture didn't rate that bad so far, but is way below what my friends
would have rated, I'm sure!
I'll have to carefully select the picture I decide to upload ;)
I hate the rainy season.
It's hot and humid, it's raining all the time, you can't sweat because of the
high humidity and it makes you feel sticky the whole day...
Yet, while I was waiting for the rain to stop, I noticed
some droplets hanging on a bamboo stick outside of my apartment.
I rushed to get my camera, my new macro lens and my tripod to capture this
divine instant. The picture does not really give justice to the actual scene
though... I wish I could have got closer or take more time to adjust the depth
of field but time was running against me.
I'm sure it will rain again and again for the next few days so I'll try to get a better picture then.
I'm finally ending up waiting for the rain now !
In the meantime, you can see the full version of the picture I took yesterday, also accessible from the "anything" section.
I retouched the pictures taken during Hanami with a new converter
called Capture One
DLSR, which makes the whole converting process much faster and more
accurate in terms of colours rendition.
The previous software, based on Canon's libraries is good but just takes
ages to update any slightest change, so you tend to convert everything with
the default options, which is obviously not the best way to go !...
The new piece of software is a little expensive, but you can go for a 30-day trial and test it inside-out before you actually see whether it matches your needs or not.
Well ... What can I say ... I got a new digital camera again ...
This one is the Canon EOS 10D, very similar to my D30 before, but the main
advantages are:
- a higher resolution (6.2MPixels, almost double the D30's) which will allow me to print nice posters at 20" x 30"
- a very low noise, even at high ISO, excellent for night shots or long exposure shots
- a faster autofocus and no shutter lag, which didn't really bother me anyway, but it's alwyas nicer to have :)
I took a couple of pictures, just to play with it but I won't show them
here, as they have absolutely no interest (unless you want to see my bedroom
shot or some chopsticks holders, etc.)
On the other hand, while I was about to do some more test shots, Pitou came
in the way. I guess she just had to, she is my favorite live model to test out
all the digital cameras I've ever had !
So here's one
picture of Pitou, shot at ISO 400. Still amazed by the lack of noise !
Also, the full size pictures shows sharp details I've never seen on my D30 !
I can't wait to have some pictures printed...
I purchased an application called BreezeBrowser, which is much more powerful
than the one provided by Canon (although using the same libraries).
It allow you to convert the Canon RAW format into TIFF or JPG, while keeping
the EXIF information (which tells you what focal length, what aperture, etc.
you used).
I also use it to create my galleries with the nice HTML generator.
I'm just back from my trip in France where I could try out my new camera: a Canon EOS D30
It's truly a nice camera and I was just stunned to see the quality of the
pictures I could get with this camera.
I've always known I was interested in photography but I didn't have the time
or the courage to get into it, that's why I started with a digital camera last
year. After a while, I started buying photography books to improve my skills
but I quickly realized the difference between a compact camera and a SLR
...
The first chapter of the book was mentioning about setting the aperture to f/16 (the sunny 16 rule) but I was so frustrated when I realized my camera wasn't able to go beyond f/8 that it didn't take me long to get this D30 !
On top of being extremely fast in terms of autofocus (compared to any other compact camera), you can buy different lenses for each style of photography (that's actually where it starts getting expensive !)
I recently got another digital camera ! I know, I know ... Some of you will say I'm a little spoilt, I don't know how to save money, but I was still a little frustrated by the previous one, especially for the not so good performances for night pictures or simply because it added some noise to the pictures. The new one is the Canon PowerShot G1, released a few months ago, it's just better ! It has a higher resolution (3.3 Million of pixels vs 2.3 for the previous one), better colors, the image is sharper and it has hundreds of manual settings ! I haven't really had the chance to take new pictures though, but I think I'll just walk around next week end to test it to its full extent ! In the meantime, you can still check the pictures of Pitou I took with this new camera, especially effective for close ups !
Here I am again ! Well ... Do I really have to say it again ? Yes, it happened again, I was lazy ! Even though I have my own computer now, it's still pretty difficult to be motivated when you come back from the office late at night or when the weather is nice outside on weekends :)
Anyway, I'm back with some more pictures, easily transferred to my homepage thanks to a digital camera that I got recently. It's really something that I wanted to have for years, but I wasn't really satisfied with the quality so far, but they're really getting better these days ! The one I got is a 2.3M pixels camera and above all, the colors are great. It was really something that I was really concerned about, even more than the resolution, but they finally convinced me :P ... Anyway, now it's getting really easy to take pictures :
- no need to buy films (much cheaper this way !)
- no need to wait for the film to be over to see the result
- if the picture is not perfect, it's still possible to modify it with PhotoShop, for example
- easy to put on a web page (no need to scan the picture, which always takes hours, and you don't get the finger prints or the dust spots on the picture !)
- you can see the picture and decide to delete or keep it right after checking
- it's now possible to have the pictures printed with a very good quality
Of course, there are some drawbacks, which should be fixed in the coming generations of digital cameras, I hope :
- the flash and the zoom are not as powerful
- the quality cannot compete with a good analog camera, but the difference is hardly noticeable when printed
- it's still quite expensive !
However, I really don't regret it since I love to work with digital pictures. The thing is that now, I'm also interested in photography and I know I can take as many pictures as I want without being afraid of wasting some film :)
If you're interested in digital cameras, I highly recommend the following web page : http://www.dcresource.com, where you should check what a digital camera can do nowadays (http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/nikon/coolpix990/ especially !!)
So be aware : this homepage is going to be updated more often !
