miniaturized effect

I've been seeing a lot of photos simulating the effects of tilt-shift lenses lately. I tried doing my own version of fake model photography with few variations from the usual techniques employed by some photoshop geeks. Using the radial gradient tool in the quick mask mode, i was able to select the portion where i would apply the blur. Since we are simulating the tilt-shift lens, it is only proper to blur the unwarranted portion using the lens blur filter. To get a good artificial contrast, the curve adjustment layer is used to blow out the colors in the image. To achieve a level of distortion to impart a feeling of artificiality and to simulate false lighting on the model, i applied some vignetting effect putting some gaussian blur on the extreme four corners of the image. Another desirable effect would be to render some simulated lighting like omni-directional lighting or spotlight effects using the render filter -> lighting effects. The photo above was the result of the simulation of a tilt-shift lens effect of the photo shown below.

the f/1.4 advantage

Aside from being the only choice lens in available light photography, another advantage of a wide aperture lens or the so called "fast lens" is that it is capable of producing a nice blur or "bokeh". There are only few fixed lenses that can go as wide as f/1.4, namely, the 50mm normal lens, the wide 35mm and the 85mm portrait lens. Gone are the days when the kit lens of an SLR you would purchase was bundled with a 50mm normal lens. Interchangeably called as the "standard" lens, the 50mm fixed lens was virtually replaced by the more convenient stock zoom lenses of today like the 18-55mm zoom or 18-70mm zoom. Lesser informed consumers never realized that a fast prime lens like the 50mm is a lot more superior in many aspects than the present day consumer zooms. An f/1.8 50mm is considered a fast lens by any standards. It offers greater speed, that is, it can allow more light to seep in thru the lens. Compared to a consumer zoom with f/3.5-5.6 minimum to maximum apertures, the former has the advantage of having at least 3 stops which makes a very significant difference especially in available light photography. This extra stops can let you shoot indoors and with today's DSLRs where you can push the ISO to at least the standard 1600, it would afford you few luxuries in composition in low light conditions. Since the trend of consumerism by the camera manufacturers is to float the inferior stock zooms, the need to buy an off-camera flash becomes a necessity. Thus, these manufacturers will end up raking more money into their coffers. I still believe that full understanding of photography, most especially the lighting techniques, should first begin with the mastery of the "classic" 50mm lens - being the sharpest lens there is.

hygrometer

the Philippines is such a humid country most especially during the summer months of March to May. to protect my spare lens from fungus growth, i put it in an improvised "dry box", which is actually an air tight transparent food keeper, with several sachets of silica gels and a hygrometer to monitor the moisture content. if the moisture inside the box reaches a relative humidity of more than 60%, then it's time to recharge the silica gels by putting them under the sun until the red "beads" turn into blue.

Bowers & Wilkins CDM1SE

Bowers & Wilkins, one of Europe's biggest manufacturer of loudspeakers, developed the use of Kevlar, the material used in bullet-proof vests, for loudspeaker cones to reduce unwanted standing waves. The tweeter on top technology ensures that the sound remains focused and that stereo imaging is presented in three dimensional accuracy.
This model, a CDM1SE, is a pricey bookshelf speaker system when it was first introduced in the market five years ago. It was already superceded by newer models but compared to current models, it never pales in comparison to any one in its class!

Bokeh

Bokeh is a Japanese word and it means "blur", "fuzziness" or "dizziness". As a photo- graphic term, it is the word used to describe a nice or pleasant blur in a photo. A camera lens capable of producing a good bokeh or the out of focus areas in a photo is a desirable lens in portraiture applications for the simple reason that it reduces distractions by rendering the foreground and the background in an out of focus state thus drawing more attention on the subject to make it a stand out. A camera lens with a wide aperture produces a nice bokeh. The sample photo shown was taken by a Nikkor f/1.4 AF-D 50mm lens.

Low Key Portrait

In a low key portrait, there is a dominance of a dark background and this requires a more subtle lighting to create a mood and statement. The goal or purpose of the photographer in a low key portraiture is to create images with vitality and luminance despite the lack of brightness or a darker tonal balance of the photo.

In this portrait, I added a deep blue photo filter and a mist filter to create a subtle tone and to draw the eyes of the viewer to study and appreciate the image more.

High Key Portrait

High key portrait is fast becoming a popular branch of portraiture nowadays. It is basically a kind of portrait where the subject or the person being photographed is placed on a light or clean background with the sole purpose of drawing the eyes of the viewer to the subject and away from any distracting objects in the background since there is no background object at all in the first place. This isolation of the subject creates a high impact image more especially if they are presented in Black & White.

What I did here is a simulation of high key portraiture using the PhotoShop. I used the extract tool to remove the background, layered it to a white background, converted it to B&W, pushed the curves to create a wash out effect and adjusted the highlights to fine tune. I was about to add a diffuse glow filter but my better judgment prevailed upon me to stop!

Black & White Conversion Technique in PhotoShop

Converting a digital color photograph into a black and white gives a totally different look into a photo. There are various ways of doing this and based on my experience after trying out several techniques, I discovered an effective method which I will share here.



First, using the Curves Adjustment Layer, i tune the contrast of the photo to a desirable sharpness. Then, I desaturate it using the desaturate adjustment layer. Applying the shadow-highlight adjustment layer dropping down all options, i play with all the parameters available to get the desired effect. This technique was the one I applied in the two photos above.




My old method of Black and White conversion is done thru the Channel Mixer. This tool allows the user to control how much each of the three color channels (Red, Green and Blue channel) will contribute to the grayscale brightness of the monochrome version of the photo. The last two photos above were converted into black and white using the channel mixer tool.

Photographing kids

Photo graphing kids is a rather tricky ordeal for a portraitist but they are indeed marvelous subjects. A good way to start with is to stoop down to their level even if it would entail you to crouch or kneel down so that you could be seeing them eye to eye.

Kids are by nature, very unpre dictable coz they move a lot so you should be prepared to shoot in continuous mode to have greater chances of capturing more wonderful moments.

Letting them pose for you requires patience and demanding time and effort so photo graphing them when they're busy or preoccupied with something or while they're at play will bring more successful results and you'll be getting or capturing spontaneous moments or natural facial expressions instead of them thinking about you with the camera which may either result in them being seen with a frozen look or showing off for the shoot.

Shown above is Jovi whose smile slowly faded when it took me quite some time to adjust my camera's settings. The kid in red and blue shirt is Iggy. He seems to be frozen while staring at the camera which is pretty bad but fortunately, i liked the result here. The kid in orange shirt is Mattie. He is showing off while I'm taking the shot.

25 years after

We had our reunion last December 29 and it was fun to see old friends and school mates. Twenty five years ago, we were just kids who will try to make and shape our future destiny on separate ways by taking different courses in college. High school or middle school is probably the happiest and most memorable time in one's life and seeing the people with whom you grew up with and shared your adolescence is a time for reminiscing old episodes and exchanging new stories in one's life. It was a day of pure and clean fun, a night of drinking and partying - and one of the happier days of my life this year! seen on the photo are two of the prettier girls in our batch 25 years ago!

warm tone and cool tone

The tonality of a photograph can either be a warm tone or a cool tone. A warm tone imparts ambiance and warmth in a photograph while a cool tone produces an impression of coolness. In film photography, you can either use a warming filter or a cooling filter to get the desired effect. In digital photography, these effects can be achieved at no cost to the photographer. If you want to make your photograph to impart a warm tone, just set the White Balance of your camera to "Daylight" while a "Tungsten" setting will have a tendency to produce a cooling effect. Shown above is an example of a cool tone while the photo below it exemplifies a warm tone.

Photographed in the example is a Direct Drive Turntable fitted with different cartridges, Ortofon Concorde Night Club E (above) and Shure White Label (below). In a direct drive turntable, the motor is located directly under the spindle (center of the platter) and is connected directly to the platter.

Svetlana 6L6GCs

Vacuum tubes never fades away unlike solid state amplifying devices where they become a fad now and a fade later. This is a fact, these 6L6s were introduced in the audio world some seventy (70) years ago and they still sell today with new production tubes coming from China and Russia. The 6L6 is a "beam" tetrode and was originally developed by RCA engineers and became an instant hit when radio manufacturers started using it in the output stages of some audio applications.

Cambridge Audio 640P Phono Pre-amp

I recently got this phonostage to replace my QED DS-1 MM phono preamp and I would say that I'm happy to hear a big leap in the quality of sound reproduction of my LPs. Before I took it home from Audio Den, the local distributor of Cambridge Audio here, I compared it with Pro-Ject Phono Box MKII since they are in the same price range. And what's the result? the 640P is an amazingly superior solid state phonostage!!

Excited to hear it on my system, I immediately hooked it up and played some mint records to initially judge its performance. Spinning Holly Cole's "Don't Smoke in Bed" album, I was mesmerized upon hearing "I Can See Clearly" track of the album which I never heard with so much ambience and airiness in Holly Cole's captivating voice. It's like having a premium cart attached to a Technics Direct Drive turntable where details abound and soundstaging is at its finest. Since I dig Crystal Gale's vocal prowess, I tried and played some of her better albums and I got the same impression, the details are oozing with so much abundance. I used to listen to my LPs at the 12 o'clock volume dial in my M99plus integrated amp but with this high gain phono pre-amp, I'm now enjoying music at the 10 o'clock volume dial. The causal effect? it takes my listening pleasure to higher level because i can now hear a cleaner sound without much of a hum unlike with my previous phonostage. This may be attributable to its design configuration where the power supply is isolated from the main chassis, hence, unwanted noise and other interference were minimized. This design equates to a much cleaner and more conditioned sound with no annoyance from the AC power source.

Next test discs were my good old rock albums and it predictably brought out the results i was expecting. This time the instrumentation were dissected with clarity and i was elated to hear more high frequency extension and greater dynamics from the beat and thump of rock music. I can say that this phonostage gave me a warm and dynamic welcome to the world of pure analog supremacy. I can now hear extended high frequencies, more defined bass and superb spatial resoultion in stereophonic experience. Performance-wise, nothing beats this creature if compared to similar products at the same price range.... Pro-Ject Phono Box and NAD PP2, step aside coz there's a new champion!!!

Technics SL-1210 MK2

I have already photo graphed this same turntable before at the same angle but with different mood light and i keep coming back. you might now agree with me that the SL-1200s might be the most photo graphed turntable of all time. this venerable disk spinner was introduced in the market as early as 1972 and it's still kicking ass, not much with the audiophiles but with the vinyl lovers in general. perhaps, the only inherent shortcoming of this turntable is the fact that it was a direct drive spinner. for the hardcore audionuts, they would prefer the belt driven turntables because accordingly, these types would not have any micro vibrations that produces edgy sound character and they would be constantly spinning at a uniform or more refined and stable speed as compared to direct drives.

what the heck!! so much ramblings on sound quality issues... for me, the SL-1200 is a very sturdy turntable. this is the turntable that i considered as the best buy when i went back into vinyls. not that i can't afford the new production belt drives but for me, i find them quite fragile and not worthy of any experimentation. on the other hand, the SL-1200, despite being a rugged device, is seen and reputed as a high quality analog playback device. The SL-1200 is a very quiet turntable but it can amplify ticks and pops as well depending on the quality of your phonostage. i've used quite a number of phono preamp loaned by friends and paired with this SL-1200 and so far, based on what i've listened to, i'm very much satisfied with what i have... the Cambridge Audio 640P phono preamp. the one thing i noticed though is that the SL-1200 lacks the air and space i've heard from such better rigs as the Rega P3s but over all, it's ease of operation and very engaging sound attributes are what makes it so close for comfort!

103.5 K-Lite FM

On the FM band, 103.5 K-Lite, Manila's Lite Alternative, is my favorite FM station. They play a variety of musical genre, from rock to pop and mostly alternative rock. they also play some classic rock and new wave music on weekends. what I like most with this station is that they have plenty of contests where any listener can join and have a crack at winning CDs, movie tickets, concert tickets or anything under the sun.

shown in the photos is a Cambridge Audio 640P Phono pre-amp sitting on top of a Pioneer F-403 tuner.