Photo dump!

I was way behind on processing and posting photos from my various adventures. Well, I finally managed to go through and process them all, so it’s time to get them up on the blog. Rather than split them among several entries, I’m just lumping them all together in one big post. They include photos of San Francisco, SF Museum of Modern Art, a nature hike, Pescadero, Gilroy Garlic Festival, my car, and more. Hit the jump to see them all. Enjoy!

Panorama photos.

Recently, I prattled on about the features of my new little camera. However, I have not been able to showcase any of the photos taken with it. I’ve used it on recent adventures with Jatinder, and now I’m quite behind on processing all the photos. We’ve been to the Gilroy Garlic Festival and took a trip to San Francisco. There’s also some experimental panorama photos taken on campus. I’d rather have them all processed and organized by adventure, but it’s not going to happen. Instead, I’m just going to show the panorama photos I’ve captured. As I make my way through all the rest, I’ll post them.

In unrelated news, I’ve changed the layout and title of the blog. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Another new toy.

Image by deepwarren via Flickr

Speaking of new toys, I have a recent purchase besides the Blendtec. I decided to go ahead and upgrade my point and shoot camera. After a dizzying amount of thorough research, I opted for the Sony Cybershot HX5V. A brand new version of the camera just came out earlier this month, driving down the price of the older one. Having looked over the feature sets, I determined the difference was not worth an extra $160. The camera I ended up getting had the features I wanted, and was only slightly inferior in certain respects to the brand new one, but was less than $200.

This is my fourth Cybershot, since I’ve always been very pleased with their performance and quality. It would have been my third, but one of them was short lived, having been stolen from out of my old Buick. In my experience, they are user-friendly, take pleasing photos and video, have good battery life, and are just good take-anywhere cameras. They’re packed with features, easily stowed and quite affordable. Their smile shutter mode works surprisingly well and is great for social scenes. I look forward to playing with the variety of neat features on the camera. I’m sure I’ll enjoy this camera thoroughly, too.

It’s capable of an impressive ten frames per second in burst mode. I can now have fun with long exposures at night, as the shutter can be kept open for as long as 30 seconds. The lens is wider than the others I’ve had before, and the zoom is significantly longer. It has a really fun panorama mode that works wonderfully, and very quickly too. It makes getting photos like this effortless. There’s even an option for extra wide panoramas, capturing up to 270 degrees. It features a GPS function, so that you can view the locate of your photos on a map, such as Google Maps/Earth. Even the direction you were facing for that particular photo. There’s also an HDR mode, which takes two photos and merges them, to avoid excessive backlighting. Another mode works similarly, taking six photos in low light, combining them into a better single exposure. It even features exposure and white balance bracketing.

It’s amazing how far technology in these compact cameras has come. I’ve only done some brief experimentation with it thus far, but due to Photoshop issues, I can’t process them and show you. Expect to see photos from it soon enough, though!

Santana Row long exposures.

The time has come to show off the long exposure photos I took from the Borders balcony at Santana Row. Keep in mind, I didn’t have a lot of time to take these, and this was more experimentation than anything else. Still, these types of photos are really fun to take, and I can’t wait to capture more like them. I hope you like them.

As you may be able to tell, the first two were taken with the 10-22mm wide angle lens, and the others were taken with the fisheye lens. The distortion in the latter is what gives this away. The photos taken with my wide angle had neutral density filters stacked on to keep the exposure very dark. This means I could take exposures that were much longer, and therefore capture lots more light, and thus more streaking headlights and taillights, etc. My favorite is the second photo, which was a 242 second exposure. That’s why I was able to capture so many light trails. On the other hand, the fisheye lens cannot accommodate any filters, so I couldn’t keep the shutter open for nearly as long without overexposing the photos.

Time lapse test.

I recently headed to campus to try my hand at some long exposure photos. I brought my new neutral density filters to fool around with them. None of the photos I took were particularly good, but I was only experimenting anyway.  Long exposure is not my forte, but I’d like to get better at it. It takes a lot of trial and error, but the results can be amazing.

My other purpose for heading out that night was to capture some photos for a short time lapse test video. I did this at the corner of 4th Street and San Fernando, in front of MLK Library. I pointed my tripod and camera outward, trying to capture as much as I could of the traffic flow and passerby. This time, I used longer exposure times in order to give the moving objects blur and give the increased effect of motion in the final product. This also gives a streaking effect to objects of light, such as headlights on cars. It’s still not exactly what I’m striving for, but certainly closer than previous efforts.

 

You can see Flames on the right, and Bank of America in the center. If you’re really good, you’ll spot a Mogo truck passing by a couple times.

SJSU in Fisheye.

The recent photo hike I went on with David and Robert was not the first time I used my fisheye lens. The day earlier, I had some time to kill and was dying to get out and try out the new lens. My friend Niels was going to head over in the afternoon to hang out for a while, and then we were going to carpool to dinner with friends in Milpitas. Instead of just fooling around on the internet, we walked over to SJSU so that I could experiment with the fisheye lens. This first trip with the lens convinced me that it was awesome and fun, ensuring that it would get more use. Here is what I captured with it that day.

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Photo hike at Rancho San Antonio

I was able to go on a pleasant photo hike with two of my fellow photographer friends, David and Robert. We headed out to Rancho San Antonio in Los Altos. Most of the photos I captured were with my new fisheye lens. While it was a questionable lens choice for a photo hike, I was too enamored with it to care. I’m pleased with the photos I took using it, and have no regrets about bringing it.

I hope you enjoy the photos. Please subscribe if you want to see more photos and other updates as they happen.

You can see the photos that David took on the photo hike over here.

Photography gear.

Image by toughkidcst via Flickr

Just as I had expected, Canon didn’t foot the bill for the repair of my camera. I received their bill for $200, which I wasn’t keen on paying. Fortunately, I was given other options. There’s a customer loyalty program for people who send in their equipment for repair. I was offered various replacement options in the form of refurbished equipment at reduced prices. While the Canon 7D was tempting, it wasn’t the most cost effective option for me. Instead, I accepted their offer for a 50D and 28-135mm IS lens at a great price point.

I’m pleased to have the new mid-range zoom, as they’re all-around useful and I didn’t have one. However, the excitement of new lenses doesn’t stop there. I’m far more anxious to get out and play with my new 8mm fisheye lens. It’s designed for cropped sensor cameras like mine, so it’s not a true fisheye in that sense. The sheer wideness of it is impressive nonetheless. It just captures so much in the frame, and the resulting distortion is fun to experiment with. I’m dying to try it out for time lapse purposes. Driving videos, anyone?

On a related note, I thought it would be a good idea to list my equipment for reference purposes. Here you go:

Body
Canon 50D

Lenses
Canon 50mm f/1.4
Canon 28-135mm f/3.5 (IS)
Canon 75-300 f/4 (IS)
Sigma 10-20 f/4
Sigma 105mm f/2.8 (Macro)
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 (Fisheye)

Accessories
Canon Speedlite 580EX

Sand mandala at SJSU.

Last week, five Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Phukang Khangsten Monastery visited SJSU. They’re on a west coast sand mandala tour. I never would have known about it, except it was assigned as a story to cover for my journalism class. I’m glad for it, however, since it was an interesting event that I am not likely to have an opportunity to witness again anytime soon. Realizing this, I brought along my camera to get some photos. Follow the link below to see them.

Wedding photography.

I had the pleasure of attending a beautiful wedding this last weekend at Hotel Valencia in Santana Row. My girlfriend has known the bride and groom for years, and been best friends with the bride for a long time. She was one of the bridesmaids, which made it all the more important that I try to look my best for the special day. The problem was that I didn’t own a suit. I had to go and buy the whole getup in preparation for the wedding, Not just jacket and pants, either. Belt, socks, shoes, shirt…everything. The good news is that now I have a suit, should I need one again. I received compliments on it, but my girlfriend gets the credit for helping me with the shopping. I am incompetent in that regard, so she was happy to assist. There’s a photo with my lady and I at the end, so you can determine for yourself how good it looks.

I brought my SLR camera along to get as many good photos as I could. Sadly, I was foolish enough to only bring along my fixed prime lens, and no external flash. It’s my favorite overall lens, given its speed and sharpness, but the lack of zoom left me severely handicapped during the portions of the event in which I couldn’t get close to the action. This was especially frustrating during the exchanging of rings and such, when I wanted to get really close shots. You live and learn, right? Next wedding, I’m taking more than one lens. I can’t imagine being a wedding photographer. The stress of the job would drive me mad very quickly.

Here’s some of the photos I captured that day. I did the best I could with what I had.

Click photos for larger size