Translucent Green Leaf

A really big leaf, photographed contre-jour.

I always wanted to say that!

Contre-jour, not big leaf.

View From Eastport

If you've been following this blog, you know I'm fascinated by reflections in water. I've found that early morning (or late afternoon/early evening) is the time to catch the most dramatic reflections.

I think it's because the low angle of the sun acts like a spotlight on the horizontal surfaces of the buildings and boats, which then have plenty of light on them to reflect back onto the water. Whatever the reason, get up early or hang out late if you want to catch the good light.

I took this photo at 7:30 AM one morning from Eastport, across Spa Creek from Annapolis. Full disclosure forces me to admit that this exposure was a mistake, as I didn't notice that my camera was still set for an exposure compensation of minus 1-1/3 stops. I saw the error of my ways right away on the LCD, set my camera back to "neutral", and took several more "normal" exposures.

Back home last in my digital darkroom, I decided to open the "bad" file in Photoshop Elements and see what I could do with it. All it took was to lighten up the high values with the Levels dialog to brighten up the buildings and reflections. This left the dark values in the sky and the water pretty much as they were and resulted, I think, in an image that has more dramatic impact than the original scene.

To us old-timers, there's nothing too surprising about this - we all know about how underexposing transparency film can sometimes increase saturation and contrast to produce a more dramatic version of what we see with our eyes. There's no free ride, though. In the old days, this technique could result in noticibly increased grain in the dark areas, like the sky in this photo. In the digital world, the equivalent of grain is noise. When I magnify this photo on my computer screen, I can see the noise in the dark areas.

On the other hand, the photo prints really nicely as a 10-inch wide print. The noise isn't noticible at this size, but I wonder how it would look enlarged to 20 or 30 inches?

One thing I can say for sure is that this image as a 10-inch print passed a critical test.

My wife likes it!

Juxtapostion

Reflection of the Chrysler Building, an Art Deco masterpiece, in the rectilinear glass curtain wall of the Grand Hyatt Hotel across Lexington Avenue.

Late Night Light Rail

Channeling Dave Beckerman, I snapped this Friday night on the way home from Karaoke (yes, I suffered for my music, now it's your turn!)

Again, it was a nice test for my new Canon S90. At ISO 800, f/2.8 at 1/15 sec, its a very clean and sharp image.

First Day Out with Canon S90

Thursday morning, I put my new Canon S90 into the little Tyvek® envelope in which it came and slipped the package into my pants pocket. That was the whole point of getting this thing, so I could take it everywhere and never be without a camera.

So here's Dev, who along with his wife owns and operates the Loft Deli a few blocks from where I work. Dev always has a smile and a good word for me whenever I stop by to buy a sandwich or some trail mix.

Aesthetics aside, from a technical standpoint, the image is remarkably good for a compact digicam. The EXIF data says 1/30 second at f/3.3 and 10.7mm (which is almost exactly equivalent to 50mm on a 35mm camera.) More importantly the ISO is 800.

If you click on the screen capture at right, you'll see a pixel-peeping section of the image, displayed at 100% in Photoshop.

What impresses me is how little noise there is at this ISO value. With a typical pocket-sized digicam at ISO 200, and certainly by ISO 400, I would expect to see quite a lot of noise in areas such as Dev's face and the even-toned wall to his right.

Another nice thing is that this is the .jpg almost exactly as it popped out of the camera. I had only made very tiny tweaks to exposure and color balance at this point, and no sharpening.

So far, so good!

This Boy's New Toy

Oh boy! My new Toy!

I've been wanting to get a new pocketable, carry-everywhere camera for a while, and my 60th birthday, plus some cash burning a hole in my pocket, made for a convenient excuse.

What was I looking for? Oh, not too much. Image stabilization (lacking in my 4-year-old Canon A620,) 28mm equivalent on the wide end, excellent image quality for making up to 13"x19" prints... RAW capability would be nice. Oh, and all of this in a size small enough to disappear in a pants pocket.

Not too much to ask, is it? Actually, digital photo technology has progressed so rapidly that there are plenty of cameras today from many different manufacturers that could fit the bill. I've always been very happy with Canon compacts, so I wanted to stick with that brand. Even so, there was lots to choose from (except for the RAW part.)

I decided to go with the Canon S90, mainly because of its good looks. Just kidding, but it is a nice-looking little package.

I've just barely unpacked it, so I don't have much to show you at this point, but I wanted to give you some idea of its size in the photos here.

The top photo shows the S90 compared to my monthly transit pass, which is the same size as a credit card. In the lower photo, the S90 looks positively svelte next to my trusty old A620.

Here's a very positive review of the Canon S90. You probably should also read this other, not quite as glowing review as well. I included it for the sake of full disclosure and also because I've found Imaging Resources to be a reliable information source.

More to come on the Canon S90 soon.

Namaskara!...

I was delighted to see that I had a visitor for Bangalore the other day - and one who actually stayed for several minutes and looked at a few pages. So many of my hits have a visit length of "0:00" (not sure what that really means!)

I hoped you liked what you saw and visit again!