Irresistible
Another one of those I simply could not pass by.
5D, 24-105mm at 47mm, 1/1500, f/8, ISO 250
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Monthly Archives: March 2009
The Red Door
5D, 24-105mm at 47mm, 1/1500, f/8, ISO 250
Posted in Photographs
Xanadu
Simply irresistible
Mooching about on and off Columbus Avenue – that most cosmopolitan and charming of San Francisco streets – I spotted this on Maiden Lane and, well, how on earth could you expect me to resist it?
5D, 24-105mm @ 24mm, 1/125, f/6.7, ISO 400. Verticals and barrel distortion fixed in ImageAlign and PS CS2
The fine 24-105mm Canon L lens has a bad case of barrel distortion at 24mm, which really comes to the fore when strong verticals are involved, so I ran the image through Photoshop CS2 (from Lightroom 2) and the ImageAlign plug-in to fix that, as well as to correct the vertigo-inducing perspective distortion. A matter of a mere few seconds of work for a much improved image.
High time Adobe added this functionality to Lightroom. Do you know of a distortion free zoom lens? I do not.
For a daily snap be sure to visit my photoblog Snap!
Posted in Photographs
The photo press
Where I get my news
Human nature and the realities of capital costs dictate that most fields of enterprise will have a handful of dominant competitors – be it arms makers, foodstuff manufacturers, clothiers or camera makers. Likewise, there is only one Wall Street Journal and only one Variety, the latter for the Hollywood set.
In photography, growing up in the UK, it was The Amateur Photographer. Sure there were others, but none was published weekly and none published as much of my work as AP did – so obviously I liked it! The closest the US ever got in print was Shutterbug, a magazine whose sycophantic ‘reviews’ of gear reflected nothing more than pandering to their advertisers. An abomination.
Given that print is dead – the next few years will see the New York Times, the WSJ and every major US and UK newspaper cease print publication – where does one go for photography news? For me it has long been DP review which brings with it British journalistic integrity (a concept foreign to US shores) and a no-punches-pulled style to its equipment reviews. Sure, the guys doing the reviews couldn’t take a picture if their lives depended on it, but we are talking test charts here, not the Vogue studios.
A perfect example of the quality of DPR’s work can be seen today in their interview with the big digital cheese at Panasonic. A couple of excerpts indicate just how insightful their work is:
Translation: Dummies. We downloaded what they knew about optics and now have left them behind owing to our vastly superior knowledge of digital processing. No need to pay these fellows royalties for their dated designs any more.
Translation: Yup, another thing we picked up from Leica. The M rangefinder was the most perfect body shape ever made for hand held use. We will make it better.
There are lots of other review sites out there but none compares to DPR for breadth and depth of objective reporting.
And when that M-Panny with a 35mm f/2 lens and a full frame sensor appears, you will have to get behind me in the line.
For a daily snap be sure to visit my photoblog Snap!
Posted in Photography
The new Bernie
Hiding out
If you are going to hide, a big city is the best place, as this shot of a newly-escaped-on-bail-Bernie, snapped on Montgomery Street in San Francisco, testifies.
5D, 24-105mm at 98mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 400
And he can positively guarantee you 1% a month in perpetuity.
For a daily snap be sure to visit my photoblog Snap!
Posted in Photographs
Oh! deer
Mind yer ears
One of the charms of rural California is that you can be tooling along in search of spring wild flowers one moment and find yourself photographing deer the next. This white-tailed specimen was busy enjoying lunch when I chanced upon him.
5D, 400mm at f/5.6, 1/1000 hand held, ISO 250
And, as this chap’s ear testifies, the Disney concept of sweet little deer with shining noses being all cute and cuddly could not be further from the truth. How do you think he got that?
When processing in Lightroom 2, I find there are two lenses in my little collection that consistently require my default RAW sharpening-on-import (+46) to be reduced – the 200mm and 400mm L models. At any aperture these are simply breathtakingly sharp, provided you manage to hold them still, that is.
For a daily snap be sure to visit my photoblog Snap!
Posted in Photographs
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