I think sometimes we can all be very ignorant with all the technologies rapidly developed around us. We get so used to it that we forgot what it was like before. Well, I at least that’s what happened to me before I decided to dismantle my old PC after upgrading into a new one. It’s quite impressive if you think about it, that such small components can do so much more these days for us, I mean…imagine running photoshop with only 16 colours graphics or 8 MB of RAM… So I decided to take pictures of the prominent components, who knows I’ll need them later (maybe for show and tell to the next generations? hmm…).

Anyway, this is just a quick post to put up my chips shot. These photos are shot using 90mm macro lens and 1 studio light with softbox. All focusing and exposure settings are done manually.

To the right is a graphic card fan and to the left is the macro photo of the components that made up the graphic card. This graphic card is ATI 9500 series, which is outdated but not that old.

This still has 128MB memory, I still remembered the times when I used CGA graphic cards and later on 256K VGA256 color cirrus logic graphic card…and I thought it was stunning with all the colours. Now we have all the glory of 512mb plus graphics!

The other component which I think worth taking picture of was the processor. Such small component that can compute exceptional amount of information.

The picture on the right is the now discontinued Pentium 4 processor. I was fast…years ago…now compared to the new ones its running like a turtle. But that’s what happen all the time, its just because how we got use to the speed. It was the exact same feeling when I changed over from Intel 286 to 486DX2 with 8MB RAM.

Here are more pictures to share:

Alright…end of a kinda geeky post, next post up will be more on photography

Moomba festival, the yearly fun for everyone, rides, games and fireworks!

To some people it is a time to have fun and to some people it is an opportunity to practice the night shot. Yes, slow shutter, tripods, lights and fast movements. This year I’m rather pleased with some of my shots, since I actually brought by tripod again. Last year I came out with very little usable night shots simply because I can’t be bothered to bring a tripod (so I can do more things with less hassle).

Slow shutter hand held

That doesn’t mean that without a tripod you can’t take any picture, all you have to do is know your minimal shutter speed, ISO and steady hands. The shot on the left was shot hand-held at 1/30 s, f/3.5 ISO 800. The resulting image shows how fast the movements were and it actually gives a hint of happy people on board the ride. Thanks to the bright lights from the ride itself, the children on board were illuminated quite well!

Here’s another picture (right) that I took hand held, good lighting in the venue really helps with these shots. When it comes to fireworks however, there is no escaping from using a tripod. There are also different pointers and tips that I’d like to share with you when taking picture of fireworks.

Photographing Fireworks

If your camera is capable for full manual control, this is the time to switch it on. Forget about auto-focus and auto exposure, most camera will not be able to calculate the settings correctly. What I did was:

1. Set the focusing to infinity. Auto focusing will be quite hard or impossible since there is nothing to focus in the sky until the moment the fireworks started and it’ll be too late.

2. Set your aperture high to preserve the details (around F16 and above).

3. Set the speed around 2-4 seconds. With this low speed, the fireworks trails can be recorded and more fireworks can be captured.

4. Set the camera trigger to wireless remote (or you can set timer for 2 secs or lower), this was needed to avoid camera shake by hand when pressing the trigger button.

5. Arrive early to get a good (and if possible comfy) spot.

And that should do for the settings. As for the picture taking, I mount my camera on the tripod and adjust the position to where I estimate where the fireworks will be displayed. Then, just enjoy the show while snapping the pic (peering into the viewfinder and adjusting as well obviously).

Moomba Fireworks

The picture on the right was taken using f/25, 4 s, this way the fireworks trails was evident and the smoke appears hazy. There are a lot to learn about photographing fireworks and I’m still learning as I go as well. However the pointers above are the ones that I have learnt and applied for a while. The fireworks was not the only exciting thing however, there was this rock band playing pretty good music too.

Of course because this is a photography blog, I can’t help but to share a bit of phototaking for these kind of situation. A band, low light and glaring spotlights, requires something more than full automatic settings.

I shot those two using spot metering and speed priority mode. In order to get the singer’s face into the correct exposure, spot metering on the face is needed, otherwise the camera will think that the scene is too dark and it’ll boost the exposure. Usually leaving us with very bright white faces…overexposure. On the other hand I left it to the speed priority mode to get a decent hand-held speed (about 1/200 for the above shots) while maintaining the correct aperture settings automatically. Apart from that the iso was set to 1600, a bit grainy, but it does the job.

Hmm…and the last thing, I can’t help but think that some clown statue can be quite scary…they should be made cuter or funnier…

Whenever there’s a lot of excitement due to “internationally recognized” celebrations such as the Chinese New Year, it’s always a great idea to bring your camera with you. Even if it’s just your pocket camera, like the one I had last time. It was a great day, sunny and not too hot. So I decided to take a walk with my friend, for the reason to avoid bearing the weight on my neck, I didn’t bring my SLR, I brought my little Nikon S200 instead.

Festivities!

Good thing I brought the camera, because such view like the one you see on the left is not something that you would normally see. Everyone went out and enjoyed the day. I mean, look at it, the picture on the right.

The watchers, the dragon...

The sides of the parking lot is just full of people, watching the Chinese Dragon.

In a situation like that one, an SLR would have been great. First its faster at focusing, secondly there’s the wide angle lens which would have covered more and hence captured the moment better.  Well, that’s a lesson, don’t be lazy to lug around your equipment, especially on such a good day.

Another thing to remember is always pay attention of the surrounding. Who knows, maybe we’ll capture something very interesting.

The festival on the day amazingly reaches almost every part of Chinatown, going though the shops and throughout the street. Its almost as if we are in Asia on the day.

The Lion and the Shops and the firecracker, you can almost hear how loud it was...

Street Stalls, here's something you don't see everyday in Melbourne

It was such a good day, especially if you think that  another 43degree day is coming tomorrow.