Happy Halloween

iPhone 4, f2.4, 1/15, ISO 250, JPG

Hook-A-Duck

GF1, f4.5, 1/400, ISO 320, RAW, 40mm

Talk with the Artist

GF1, f3.5, 1/500, ISO 320, JPG, 40mm

Orange Lamp

GF1, f2.5, 1/60, ISO 640, RAW, 40mm

Arena Events

GF1, f1.7, 1/40, ISO 800, JPG b&w, 40mm

Orange Sky

GF1, f1.7, 1/2, ISO 2000, RAW, 40mm

I took this picture while walking home in almost complete darkness, I could not see a thing on the screen and the AF did not work so it's not in focus but I still like how it turned out.

The Photographer

iPhone 4, f2.4, 1/1885, ISO 80, JPG

Alien?

GF1, 1/160, ISO 200, RAW

DAP Starry Night Painting

I spent the day moving flat today so did not get the chance to take pictures.
Following from yesterday's post and inspired by one of Pavel's posts about the Dynamic Auto Painter, I thought I give it a try and see how it works.
This is the picture I posted a while ago during my Looking Back week after being ran though the Starry Night preset in Dynamic Auto Painter. While it won't make me a Vincent Van Gogh, the results are excellent and great fun to experiment so give it a try.

Starry Night

iPhone 4

This is a quick snapshot with my iPhone while waiting for the train, I have processed it a bit in Photoshop to remove the noise slightly. 

Although the picture is not all that great I had the title 'Starry Night' in mind so I thought to post the poem written by Tupac Shakur and dedicated to Vincent VanGogh:

'A creative heart, obsessed with satisfying
this dormant and uncaring society
you have given them the stars at night
and u have given them
Bountiful Bouquets of Sunflowers
but 4 u there is only contempt
and though u pour yourself into that fame
and present it so proudly this world
could not accept your masterpieces
from the heart
So on that starry night u gave 2 us
and u took away from us
the one thing we never acknowledged
your life.'

I really like this poem and Tupac has written a few other very good poems in the book 'Rose that grew from concrete'.

Reading

GXR A12, f2.5, 1/270, ISO 200, RAW, 50mm

Boatride Home

GF1, f7.1, 1/40, ISO 100, RAW, 14mm, (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

Fallen Down

iPhone 4, f2.4, ISO 80, JPG

I found a really cool app called 'Pudding Camera' for the iPhone which allows to change films and use different 'cameras'. The app is in Korean but it's free and gives even more of a Lomo feel to the iPhone camera, you can choose a fish-eye camera, a camera taking 4 sequential pictures and combining them into one, a panoramic camera and other camera types while combining each with different films for the desired look. The only ownsides are that this program is only in Korean and that it can not save images larger than 1200 pixels.
I like what it can do and after playing with it I kind of hope a camera manufacturer will release a proper Lomo or Holga digital camera, something which just allows someone to have fun. It's too easy to get carried away with technicalities in digital photography and forget that photography is also about fun.

Speedy

GF1, f4, 1/30, ISO 160, JPG, 28mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

I can't say exactly why I like this picture but I do like it for some reason. It's one of those mistakes that turn out better in ome ways than expected.

Dreaming

GRD III, f1.9, 1/32, ISO 519, JPG cross process

Greenwich Maritime University

Today was the first day when I had enough time to go out and use my new 14-28mm lens for the GF1, I decided to post a series from the pictures I took around Greenwich University.
 

Street Lamp

GF1, f1.7, 1/60, ISO 1600, JPG b&w, 40mm

Colored Lights

GF1, f4.0, 1/80, ISO 400, JPG, 14mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

This is a picture I wanted to take but never could since even 28mm did not give me the perspective and field of view I wanted. Now with the 14mm lens it worked just great.

The Door

GF1, f4.0, 1/100, ISO 200, JPG, 14mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

After using 40mm and 50mm lenses for quite a while it is not easy to use such a wide lens but I like the field of view provided. Now I just need to remember to move closer instead of further away.
And I really wish the GF1 would have a electronic leveler since holding this lens level is not easy.

Look Upwards

GF1, f4, 1.3 sec., ISO 200, RAW, 18mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

Today, I got my new 7-14mm lens from Japan. It is a fantastic lens and since I am a big fan of wideangke photography it was the next logical step. I wanted to get the new 14mm f2.5 lens from Panasonic but the poor quality made me re-think that decision. While I did not have too much time to take pictures I like the lens very much so far and can't wait to try it out propery tomorrow.

Laughing Behind Your Back

GRD III, f2.5, 1/217, ISO 64, JPG cross process

Yesterday, I used manily the high contrast b&w mode so this time I decided to use one of the pictures I took with the cross process mode. Some might find these scene modes pointless since you can do this with Photoshop anyway but for me they are fun and allow me to visualize the shot with these settings applied so my composition might change but what will surely change is my approach to taking pictures and this can't be emulated in Photoshop.

Backlit

GRD III, f8.0, 1/1070, ISO 64, JPG high contrast b&w

On Friday, Ricoh has released another function enhancing firmware update for the GRD III (you can download it here). I only got around to install it today but went for a quick walk right after to try it out.

First thing, it is really cool that Ricoh has added the 'High Contrast B&W' and the 'Cross Process' modes to the GRD III (I hope we will soon see these in the GXR modules, too). The downside is that Ricoh has not added these under the image settings so they cna easily be used in any mode and also alongside shooting RAW but have instead opted to add these as scane modes. This is ok to have some fun but it limits the usability a lot since you can not only not shoot RAW alongside but you have to live with full Auto mode here.

So while I applaud Ricoh for adding these modes to the GRD III, I hope they can make these modes more usefull by moving them where they belong under the image settings. Still, how many manufacturers keep releasing function enhancing firmware updates for their cameras so what Ricoh is doing is excellent.

1h with the CX4 in Cologne

I have not been very good with updating my blog recently, it's been a mixture of not being inspired and an bit lazy coupled with some realld dull, grey and rainy weather.

So when I went to Germany again for the weekend and had the chance to take a CX4 out for a spin on a bright and sunny day I could not resist. Sometimes what one needs is not fantastic image quality and plenty of manual control, sometimes it's all about having fun and some nice weather.

I decided to post a series of some of my favorite pictures taken with the different creative shooting modes found in the CX4 and hopefully some soon in the R10 GXR module. I had the most fun using the toy camera and the high contrast b&w modes.

Since I have not posted in a while it will be a longer series than usual to make up fo it.