With any photo-shoot like this one, where most of the time the subject (in this case the aeroplanes) are mostly backlit, I set the camera to spot metering mode most of the time. . This way I can lock the exposure on the plane, preventing the plane from being capture as a silhouette. 

As for the gears, I used my trusty Nikon D300s and 70-300mm lens. Now, my lens is not exactly the latest and greatest, in fact it is almost 10 years old now, I used to use it when I was photographing with my film SLR. Meaning it doesn’t have any VR technology which should reduce vibrations. So, in order to get a sharp shots at the maximum zoom level, I followed the ‘golden rule’ which is maintaining the speed above the lens focal length. Therefore most of the picture in the gallery is being shot at around 1/400 s.

Anyway, enjoy the gallery below :

As an extra, we went for a meal at Footscray after the shoot. Great place to get some Vietnamese food!

Fortunately for us, the day was very good indeed. A little foggy in the morning to begin with, but clearing up during the day. The view on Portsea and Sorrento was amazing, it was certainly a good photo trip. I can recommend these two places for any photographers wanting to take a picture of sceneries.

The gears that I used:

- Nikon D300s
- 18-55mm Tamron lens
- 70-300mm Nikon lens
- Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X3

The photographs that I wanted to present today were taken in Indonesia and Singapore. This was taken late last year during my holiday but have left unprocessed since my Macbook Pro broke down.

In many respects, Singapore is in my opinion much more modern and organized than Indonesia, most of the buildings are of modern designs (eg. ION Orchard). On the other hand however, in Indonesia one can find many heritage buildings granted you go to the right places.

The photo on the left is taken from Marina Bay Sands (on the Sky Park), where most of Singapore can be seen clearly from above (here’s a link if you are interested about the building). It was an impressive view, buildings as far as the eye can see, a lot of development in progress and busy industrial ships. You’ll be able to see more shots from Singapore in the gallery below. Oh, and there are some shots from Singapore Universal Studio too, great place to have fun for a whole day!

During my short holiday though, I also went around in Indonesia, in particular Solo and Semarang city, both cities are located in Central Java. While Solo is very rich in its heritage and history of the old royal families and government, Semarang is a more populated area and is the capital city of Central Java. Visit these wikipedia article about Solo and Semarang if you are interested.

One of the most interesting photo in Solo is the interior of the meeting room in Solo’s Mangkunegaran, it consisted of great detailed and beautiful interior suited for royalties. You can see the photograph on the right. I won’t write more about the Mangkunegaran because obviously history isn’t exactly my expertise. I did had a bit of historical tour about the complex from the local guide though and it was very insightful!

On the left, is a photo of Semarang, taken from Gumaya tower and Grand Candi. Great scenery from up there, you can also see how populated the area is by looking from the photos.

All in all it was a great trip and it was great to see all the different cities and their unique cultures. Next time you visit different countries and cities, it always pays to learn a bit of its history from the locals.

Some tips and techniques when traveling around

1. If using an SLR, make sure to bring a wide angle lens (about 18mm would be enough), it’s handy when photography the cityscapes. If it’s a point and shoot, try to use one with wide angle lens, I think most point and shoot these days have these lenses.
2. When photographing architectures, when possible try to use smaller aperture, about 11 and above would be good. This is a good way to preserve all the details of the scenery.
3. Depending where you shoot, a tripod can be handy, especially at night time. In my case however, since I mostly photograph during the day, hand-held was enough.

The architecture photographs gallery

It’s been a while since I did my last photo hunting session. However, the sun was finally up that day and so myself and a friend decided to go to Hampton beach and walk along the beach to Middle Brighton, snapping possible objects and sceneries along the way. It was quite a bit of walk, but the weather was very nice and photography is always a fun thing for me. I’m glad to say that there are  quite a few good shots that I can add to my gallery today.

The gear that I brought with me  was my Nikon D300s, 90mm macro lens, 70-300mm telephoto lens and my trusty 18-50mm lens. Along with all the gear I also brought my Holga, but obviously it’ll take a while to develop the negative since no one seems to to 1 hour development anymore these days. There were a lot of things that can be taken on that day, the weather was very nice that it was perfect to snap pictures. The light wasn’t too harsh but not dark either, it’s like having a giant softbox illuminating all the objects.

This resulted in great lighting condition to take macro photos such as the one on the left (click on the image to show larger size), there  is not a hint of harsh light which I really dislike in macros. The photo was taken using the 90mm macro lens, handheld with manual focusing. The original flower was quite small, however as with any macro photography, it always pays to have a closer look at the things around you. Such as the dried (seed pods?) in the gallery below or the photo of seeds which is my personal favorite in this gallery.

When walking around places like the beach and taking photos of the scenery, it always pay to have both wide angle lens and telephoto lens. Most of the sailing boats photos were taken using the wide angle lens, however the boat with the orange sail in the gallery below were taken using the 300mm lens. The photo of the dog was also taken using the telephoto lens, obviously there was no way to come closer without drenching the equipments. I had to actually switch the telephoto lens to manual focus mode in order to shoot the dog properly since the focusing system was not fast enough (it’s an older lens).

The Processing Tools

This is an interesting portion of the post that I wanted to discuss. I have recently migrate my desktop into a Linux system since I’m a software engineer and it’s really so much easier to develop on it. However, image editing in Linux is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, even for me. I remember a few years ago, opening RAW images and processing it with the available open source programs was really difficult.

As it turned out, there are really good software these days that one can use under the Linux environment to organize RAW files and edit them. All the images in this post’s gallery are edited under a Linux system. The setup that I have are: Ubuntu 10.10, RawTherapee 3.0 alpha for RAW files processing and Gimp 2.7. Granted both of the image processing software are on it’s development stage and by no means stable, however I have no issues whatsoever editing all of these images today. I think when the two software matures, they will be great. RawTherapee is very intuitive, reminds me a lot of Adobe Lightroom and it’s very efficient and quick. Gimp 2.7 although not available through the normal download has a lot of user interface improvements, the one that I love most is the single window mode, no more 3 separate windows open together (you’ll have this “issue” on Gimp 2.6).

If anyone is interested to get the tools, here are the ways, again, the software versions that I listed are on development, so proceed with caution:

RawTherapee: available via software center

Gimp 2.7: You will have to add the development repository first, then run the install command

remove any other versions of gimp

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gimp

The Gallery

The Melbourne Moomba Festival 2011 is not something to be missed. This was the time to have some fun and enjoy the festivities. For 3 days, the people of Melbourne gathered and enjoyed rides and fireworks. It was great to see that huge number of people from different background enjoying the festival.

Obviously this is always a good time for anyone interested in photography to get out there and grab some photos. I went and did all the photography handheld at the time (I should have really brought a monopod at least, perhaps next time), there were too many people around to be lugging my tripod. Plus I didn’t go to the festival solely for photography reasons, I went there with some friends to have some fun too. Anyway, my gear at the time is just my Nikon D300s and the Holga.

As a plus, there is always a Moomba parade on the last day of the festival. During this yearly parade, we have the opportunity to see the participant from many different cultural backgrounds. Unfortunately I didn’t get a front spot at the time due to some prior appointment. otherwise there would have been more shots from the parade.

Checkout the gallery below, oh, and I’m sure you’ll be able to spot which ones were shot with the Holga.

On the more technical side, all images were post-processed ever so lightly using Nikon View NX, Holga negatives were scanned using Canon negative scanner.

I dare say that some of the images below can rival shots taken from a DSLR in terms of composition and colours, obviously if we are talking sensor size and megapixels camera phones are puny against any DSLR. I hope this can inspire people, that to take good photos you don’t have to have an expensive DSLR or vice-versa, having a DSLR doesn’t make one a good photographer .

Here’s the gallery for your viewing pleasure:

picture taken using iPhone

Recently I have acquired a Holga, the 135 BC to be exact. This is a cheap plastic camera built for 35mm negative. Obviously the build quality is nowhere near the SLRs that I usually use, the lens are made of plastic instead of glass and the body prone to light leaks; but there is something charming about all these. They are unpredictability and the fact that you have to estimate A LOT.

The Holga looks like a point and shoot camera at a glance, however I think it requires a solid understanding of aperture, speed and focus. Even more than normal SLR, because you won’t be able to see what you are focusing on and stuck on 2 modes of aperture.

Briefly speaking the camera has an aperture of f/8 or f/11 depending on the cloudy/sunny switch,  speed of 1/100s or bulb and 4 modes of focus. Like I mentioned previously, there is no way to preview the focus therefore our estimation is the only tool that we can use. The 4 modes are either 1m, 2m, 6m or 10m from the subject.

The film that I used were Fuji Xtra 400, I developed them in a store then scan them with my negative scanner.

Get Creative!

The biggest reason that has driven me into using a Holga is to get creative and practice my composition. By taking away all the SLR precision settings and huge amount of storage, I was able to focus more on composition and think carefully about exposures and focus.

The picture on the left is taken using bulb shutter speed. If I remembered correctly it was around 1 second. I held the shutter button for about 1 second then I let go.I didn’t have a tripod at that time hence I hand-held the camera. One tip  get usable images with the Holga, one will have to be very steady and avoid breathing while taking the shot because the plastic body is very light and prone to movements. Then again, maybe you do want some movements to for the sake of creativity .

Another way to get some more interesting images is by utilizing Holga’s multi-exposure. With this camera you will be able to take multiple shots on a single negative frame. This is similar to the multi-exposure mode on proper film SLRs such as the Nikon F-801s. The image on the right shows 2 exposures on 1 frame.

Last but not least are light leaks, which under some circumstances can be used to our advantage (perhaps not so much on the left image), but the image should give you some idea what the leak would look like on this type of Holga.

So, after 2 rolls of film, I had quite a bit of success, most of the pictures are usable and only a few with severe exposure errors rendering them unusable. See the gallery below for some of my favorite shots. It’s quite certain that I will continue shooting more interesting things using the camera.

Well the point is, that in this condition there is no reason to be down and stop taking lots of photos. In fact, these kind of situations are perfect situations where we can explore our creativity. Remember that with proper compositions there are millions of ways to create special photos out of ordinary scenes.

In my case, it was obvious that the fog would eliminate possibilities to take landscape scenery shots as long as its there. Therefore what I do is focus on nearer objects and use the foggy environment itself to create the shots. I’ll have to admit though, that I’m quite fond of vignettes and darker tone photos. On the other hand, indoor objects when possible always offer great opportunities for your winner shot.

And one last important thing: don’t forget to enjoy the trip and have fun!

Here’s a couple of the photos that I have taken on the trip.

I”m now back on pursuing my photography interest after being really pre-occupied with many other things Anyway, on to the subject: handheld night photography. I’m sure many would think that this is absurd, one would need a tripod for night photography right? Well, yes and no. There are variety of factors that would affect our results in handholding the camera.

For me, the main reason I handheld the camera at the time was because upon entering the Luna Park, we noticed that there was a big sign saying “No Tripod”. Hence for the sake of appropriateness and understanding I put my tripod back into the bag. This turns out to be a good opportunity.

So how do we do this? How do we photograph in low light condition without a tripod and expect to get a clear view ?

1. Use a fast lens if there’s any. The lens that I was using was the f 2.8 Tamron.
2. Use higher ISO. If your camera permits, use the around ISO 1600 or higher. Be careful with this since you’ll have to compensate with noise
3. Know your exposure rules. Don’t forget the unofficial rule of thumb: your focal length is around  the minimum shutter speed. So if your lens focal length is 50mm, then your minimum shutter speed is 1/60s. This works most of the time.
4. Be steady, make sure you are holding your camera in a steady stance. Use both hands with elbows close or resting to the chest.
5. Pick the right spot, there are places where you can rest your camera (and your hands) on for steadier shot.

Above are the few points that helped me get the shots that night.

Handheld photography is also made easier if it not pitch black yet, and it adds a lot to the composition.

For example, the shot on the right was taken just after the sunset; the best thing about that time is that its dark enough for us to capture the artificial lights and its still light enough to capture the scene easily without using too higher ISO. So another lesson to add: pick your time carefully.

One last tip before the end of the article: always shoot in RAW format. In case you get underexposed slightly, there is still chance to save your shot. Sure RAW is much larger in file size than JPEG, but with large memory cards these days, it shouldn’t be a problem.

So…to conclude, handheld night photography is possible given the technique and location. Maybe not so recommended, but will be handy when tripods are not possible.