Slideshows

Slideshows are a pretty neat way of showcasing your photographs, and there are plenty of free tools on the net that can do this for you. I came across a friend's post showcasing a new tool from slide.com that is dead-easy to use; especially if you are using a photo-sharing site like flickr. I just entered my flickr name and it pulled out all my sets. As a test, I just selected my recently shot "Toronto" set, and I was done. It spewed out some code that I just paste into my blog, and the slide show is up and running.

Very cool.

The Amazing CN Tower

Toronto At Night
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

We got up today to a bright and clear day after 2 days of heavy snow and dull weather. I thought this would be a great opportunity to visit the Toronto CN tower - one of the tallest structures in the world. The clear weather meant I would have some good photo opportunities.

We reached the tower at around 11:00 AM. It was indeed a great day to visit the place as the view was simply stunning. The only problem was that the temperature was -9 degrees and we literally turned to ice as we walked up to the tower to purchase our tickets.

Due to the cold weather, there were not much people around, so we managed to get an elevator fairly quickly - and very soon, we were on top of Toronto. I was not interested in anything except clicking away at the amazing view.

The thing on my mind was - if this is such a great view during daytime, how good will it be at night? and more importantly, how the heck can I keep the kids for 6 whole hours on top of the tower so that I could get some night-time shots of Toronto city?

I took the family to lunch in the Tower restaurant where I sipped on a cool cocktail while enjoying the panaromic view of Toronto City. Then I got the kids involved in some trick photography one guy was doing by taking their pictures on a green background and then photoshopping it to make the kids look as though they were climbing the CN Tower like King Kong.

Finally, it was sunset and the city started turning on the lights. As you can see from the picture, the view was indeed stunning.

A walk on the wild side.

If looks could Kill
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

I decided to take the family to the Toronto Zoo. Probably not a very good idea to visit a zoo during a time where the outside temperature is zero degrees.

It was freezing, with snow everywhere. Most of the animals were either hibernating or hiding in their warm homes. But there was still plenty to see and do.

The kids had a good time though the little one got tired with all the walking and the freezing cold; and I ended up carrying her most of the time.

The high point for me was this lion exhibit. It's designed in such a way that you get to see the lion face to face with only a wall separating the lion and a tasty snack. This particular lioness was looking the other way and I waited around 15 minutes near the exhibit hoping he will turn his face. Finally he did, and I managed to to get this shot.

Here are some more pictures that I took at the zoo.

Zero Degrees

First Steps
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

We travelled to Toronto, Canada - and my kids went berserk with all the snow around. Erika (my 4-year old daughter) had never seen real snow before but you wouldn't know that seeing her embrace it like a long lost friend.

I took them near the Toronto harbor area which has an outdoor skating rink. The temperature was zero degrees celsius, which for everyone (except for me and my wife) seemed to be nice and balmy.

I rented out some skates for both the kids - Shawn can do some basic skating (He learned at the Kuwait skating rink), but it was first time for Erika.

As the sun went down, I had a very hard time convincing Erika to get out of the rink.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Crib
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

Last night, I happened to be at the Catholic church just as they were unveiling this year's christmas crib. Luckily, I had my camera bag in the car.

When the organizers saw my camera gear, they immediately requested that I do an "official" photograph of their creation. This meant that I needed a tripod, which I always keep in the car.

The funny thing is that everyone who wanted to take a picture with their camera phone or point & shoot gave me a wide and respectful berth; assuming I am some official photographer - which, in this case, I guess I was.

So I ended up doing this "official" photo of the 2007 christmas crib. I also ended up taking some pictures of the organizing committee.

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year 2008.

Nikkor 17-55 f2.8, First test shots.

Souq Sharq Mall
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

I got my first chance today to try out the new 17-55 lens. It looks and feels great and allows me to take pictures that were not possible before.

This picture of a local mall is taken wide open at 17mm at f4 and ISO 640 giving me sufficient hand-held shutter speed of 1/50th of a second.

What is more interesting for me is that at this ultra-wide angle, the distortion (though it exists) is minimal and well-controlled.

This is going to be the lens that stays on my camera body 95% of the time from now on.

The beast has arrived.

1755Lens-Black
Originally uploaded by goan_in_q8.

I have been toying with the idea of purchasing this lens for a long time, but the price was just beyond my reach. I just could not justify paying $1400 for a lens with a range of 17-55mm, when my $300 18-70mm DX lens was giving great results, plus extra range upto 70mm.

But what sets this lens apart from the 18-70mm lens is that this is a fixed focal lens - just like my 80-200 f2.8. It has a constant maximum aperture of f2.8, which means that regardless of what focal length I choose, the widest aperture is guaranteed to remain at f2.8. This is great for low light photography.

I was finally convinced to pick this thing when I saw Amazon offering it for $1200. Though not cheap, I decided to throw caution to the wind and closed my eyes and hit the order button.

The first impression I got when I held this lens in my hand is that I better hit the gym. The thing is built like a tank and carrying this thing around for a long time is definitely going to test my frail muscles.

I have not yet got a chance to test the image quality of this lens, but I am looking forward to doing so in the next few days.

Farewell to a trusty tool.

DX1870
Originally uploaded by goan_in_q8.

I just sold this lens, as I ordered the Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 lens, and expecting to receive it in the next few days.

The 18-70 served me well during the 2 year that I owned it - first on my D70, and then for the past few months, on the D200. It is fast, wide, light in weight and offers a good zoom range that is ideal while travelling, or general walkabouts.

As of now, more than 90% of the work posted on my flickr account is taken with this lens. I had come to learn it's quirks and how to work around them. For e.g., it distorts heavily at the wide angle. In this photo, the nearest lamp post looks like it is curved instead of appearing straight. Nothing much can be done about it because that the nature of lower-end glass.

The 17-55, on the other hand, is a professional grade lens, and hence distortion should be minimal. I say "should", because I have not yet tried this lens, nor held it in my hands. I have simply ordered it based on the recommendations of fellow photographers.

Some people asked me why I would give up the advantage of the wider zoom range (18-70), and pay 4 times the price for a lesser zoom range (17-55). Well, it's true that I will be crippled because I do not have anything from 55mm to 80mm (My 80-200 f2.8 does duties from 80 to 200mm).

However, it's not just about zoom range. For e.g., for half the price, I could have picked up the 18-200 VR wonder lens. But what sets the 17-55 apart from all these amateur lenses is the constant f2.8 aperture for the entire zoom range. That means, whether I set the lens at 17mm or 55mm, I can keep the aperture at 2.8, which in turn, means I can shoot great photos in very low-light conditions.

At least, that's the theory.

And my 1300 dollars are riding on that theory.

Perfect Timing.

Kuwait Cityscape
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

Even though this picture took some planning and patience, in the end, it was a result of many factors coming together to result in one of my best night-time exposures.

1. My tripod was acting a little wobbly, so just before taking this shot, I visited the shop from where I purchased it, and the wizard there magically made it into a rock-solid tripod.
2. I had observed that it was a full moon the night before so I knew it would be almost full moon on this night - and the moon would rise at just the right time (around 7 p.m.).
3. The weather has been absolutely fantastic the previous night when I took this picture, and it appeared that the same would repeat again.

I was technically sick but I was not letting an opportunity like this pass me by. I packed my gear and headed towards the KPC building which provides one of the better viewpoints of Kuwait City. I arrived at the exact moment that the moon poked it's head over the buildings and I started clicking away - varying my shutter speed between 10 seconds to 30 seconds (maximum possible on my dSLR, without switching to bulb mode).

My only problem was the strong breeze that was whipping around. Even with the solid tripod, I was worried it would cause blur in the pictures. Luckily, most turned out pretty well.

Here are the 3 that seemed to be the better of the lot.

Museums in Kuwait

Kuwait National Museum
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

A local advertising company found my work through Flickr, and approached me to do a series of photos on various places of interest in Kuwait.

I jumped at the opportunity because, for some reason or another, I had never visited most of these places in my 15 years in Kuwait. I was provided a list of places to photograph. Some of them were the usual suspects like Kuwait Towers, Liberation Towers, Scientific Center etc., for which I already had some some good pictures. The second list was exclusively for museums, which I had never visited.

So during the weekend, I packed my photo gear and headed out with my son in tow (he loves to accompany me on my photo shoots). We first reached the Memorial museum (next to the KPC building in Shuwaikh). The place looked deserted and closed. After poking around the place a bit, we found one lady who assured us the museum was indeed open - and after paying the KD 1 entrance fee, opened the museum just for us!. The museum was very interesting with a sort of an automated guided tour describing the whole Iraq invasion / atrocities commited / liberation etc. through an audio commentary accompanied by mock setups.

This pretty much described the reception that we got in the other museums that we visited (Al Hashemi II marine museum, Tareq Rajab Museum, and the biggest of them all - the National Museum). In all the places, it looked like we were the only people who visited the museum that day, which is a shame really because there is some really fascinating stuff there.

I will visit all these museums once again - but this time, without the camera equipment so that I can appreciate them better.

It's all about Perspective

Kuwait Grand Mosque
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

We've all seen pictures like this. They suffer from a phenomenon called perspective distortion. This happens when you take a camera and point it in such a way that the lens is not parallel with the ground. For e.g., when we find a building that is high, our tendency is to point the camera upwards. This distorts the image and it feels as though the building is going to fall down.

Perspective distortion happens because the lens is not able to resolve straight lines as straight due to the angle at which the lens is positioned. For architechture photography, this type of distortion is not acceptable, and photographers use specialized lenses called perspective correction lenses.

Since a normal user will not use PC lenses, Here are some ideas to avoid perspective distortion in your pictures.

1. Instead of shooting from up close, try to find a location further from the subject and use a telephoto lens to take the picture.
2. Shoot with perspective distortion and then edit in Photoshop. PS has a feature that allows you to do perspective correction.

In this picture, you can clearly see the perspective distortion as the tower of the mosque seems to be falling down - even though the horizon line is straight. But in this case, it's okay. I actually like the effect.

Here are some more pictures I took from the same vantage point that exhibit perspective distortion.

Maximizing your Dynamic Range

Kuwait City at Night
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

Our cameras (whether digital or film-based) are limited by the amount of dynamic range that they can capture. In photography, dynamic range refers to the difference between the darkest and the brightest area in the picture frame. So if you are trying take a picture where some part of the picture is extremely bright while other parts are in shadows, your camera will struggle to get a decent exposure of the scene. That's why pictures taken on a cloudy day look so great. The dynamic range is low enough for the camera to capture everything within the frame perfectly.

Films are generally better at capturing dynamic range while the tiny sensors on digital point&shoot cameras or cell phones are the worst offendors. Digital camera manufacturers use different techniques to overcome the limitations of their imaging sensors. The current champ in dynamic range capture is the Fuji FinePix S5 Pro which uses 2 separate imagers (one for highlights & one for shadows), and then combines them during post-processing to give you an image with a much better dynamic range.

A software based alternative for maximizing dynamic range is to take multiple exposures of the same scene at different EV values and then combine them to generate a single image. Obviously, this will only work for static objects such as archtechture or landscape.

Last year, HDRsoft created a lot of buzz when they introduced a software called Photomatix that merged multiple images using an unique algorithm called "Tone-mapping". I got involved in the buzz and went ballistic with the software, creating some freaky tone mapped images.

But the problem with "tone-mapped" images is that they look too artificial. Photoshop CS2 has a more subtle technique for merging multiple exposures. In this example, I used the Photoshop menu option "Merge to HDR" to combine 7 different exposures taken at +/- 1EV apart. This essentially created a 32-bit HDR image. The image was then converted to 8-bit using the "Exposure & Gamma" option, which essentially tries to balance the contents of all the 7 images to give a well-balanced photo.

And the best part is that it does not look artificial like tonemapped HDR. A normal person looking at this example photo will merely thing it is a nicely exposed image.

World Diabetic Day

Blue Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

While browsing through Mark's blog, I learned that Kuwait Towers have been lighted up in blue colors. I did not know if this was going to be a permanent setup or something temporary. All I knew is that it was a photo opportunity, so I packed my camera gear and headed out to the seaside.

The Towers indeed looked eerie and a bit out of this world. Today, I learned that they were lighted up as a commemoration for the World Diabetes Day. I also learned that Kuwait Scientific Center also took part in the campaign, and kicked myself for missing that opportunity.

Here are few more pictures that I took of the blue towers.

The Multi-Cam 1000 AF Module

Flugtag Rescue Team
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

My D200 may look like a camera from the outside, but it's a complex electronic machine inside. It's a serious piece of machinery designed with a professional in mind - starting from it's durable magnesium-alloy chassis to the various sealings designed to protect it in harsh environments.

The biggest change for me though, has been the auto-focus module embedded in the camera. The Multi-Cam 1000 autofocus module allows for fast and accurate focusing in all kinds of situations. Just a generation ago, professionals sneered at the idea of auto-focusing lenses, relying on their hand-eye coordination and their gut instincts to get the perfect shot.

But technology evolves rapidly, and today, auto-focusing technology has matured to the point that it will be a rare sight to see professionals using manual focus lenses.

While an experienced professional can pull off a shot like this using manual focusing, the rest of us mere mortals need the technology provided by these professional cameras to get the desired result.

To read more about the Multi-Cam autofocus module, use this link http://www.nikonians.org/nikon/d200_multi-cam_af/

Flugtag Kuwait

FlugTag Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

A Flugtag (German: flight day, airshow) is an event in which competitors attempt to fly in homemade flying machines.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugtag

Kuwait had it's first Flugtag event on Nov 2 2007. I had marked this event in my calendar ever since it was announced about 6 months ago, as I knew it would provide some great photo opportunities.

Even though I was feeling a bit under the weather (due to my asthma acting up again), I decided to head off to the show and dragged my family along with me. I packed the Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 lens as I knew it would provide me with the necessary reach to shoot the event. When we reached the event area (Marina Waves), I was a little apprehensive that the lens may not be good enough - especially after I saw some photogs toting lenses that must have been around 400mm at the telephoto end. My apprehension was quickly put to rest once I selected a nice vantage point and tested the lens. The range of 80 to 200mm was more than sufficient for capturing action shots (though I would not have complained if I could somehow afford the Nikkor 200-400 f4).

I set the camera to group dynamic AF, so that the camera could quickly achieve focus on the moving subjects, and set my camera to continuos shooting mode.

The camera/lens combination performed superbly. Even though the lens does not have VR (vibration reduction), I never needed it for this particular event as it was bright enough for me to shoot in the 1/1000th second range at around f4 to f8, with the ISO set to it's base 100.

K810i v/s the D200

Kuwait Sunset K810i
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

I have always been cynical of the so-called "camera-phones". I don't actually remember shooting any pictures with the various phones that I have owned in the past - starting from the various i-mate models to the last phone that I owned - a 2.0 megapixel capable Sony Ericcson P990i.

The reason is simple. The pictures suck. When I say that the pictures suck - I don't mean that the results are lousy. I mean they are really really lousy.

But technology keeps improving, and I hope we reach a stage where I can give up my dSLR in exchange for a phone that allows me to talk, SMS, take pictures, listen to music and manage my contacts & calendar.

The K810i is a step in the right direction.
1. It can synchronize with Outlook to keep all my contacts & calendar in sync. This was the most important feature for me.
2. It doubles up as a very good MP3 player with the additonal 2GB card that I put in the phone (it came with only 128MB). I can now go jogging with just the phone, instead of a phone AND an iPod jangling in my pocket.
3. Amazing battery life means I don't have to worry about charging it every day.
4. It supports stereo bluetooth output, which goes nicely with my stereo bluetooth headset that I had originally picked up for the P990i, but never really used it as the connection with the P990 was a bit flaky. Actaully, everything with the P990 is flaky.

And now for the most important part. It's much acclaimed 3.2 megapixel camera with "auto-focus" and a real "xenon" flash.

It sucks.

But at least when an opportunity arises out of nowhere, and I don't have my dSLR camera with me, I can feel comfortable in the knowledge that I will be able to capture that moment with the K810i, in all of it's sucky, noisy 3.2 megapixel glory.

Flamingos - A little bit closer.

Synchronized Eating
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

Last week, I tried photographing the exotic flamingos that make Kuwait their home. My effort was a little bit off, as they live in this kind of a swamp that is pretty difficult to get close to.

I thought I'll give it another shot hoping that it is high tide which would make the flamingos a little more accessible. Well, it was not high tide (need to check the tide calendar before trying it next time), but luckily for me, a bunch of flamingos were feeding very close to the shore.

I used the same lens as before, 80-200mm f2.8. This picture is a 100% crop of the 10 megapixel image. A 400mm would have been just the ticket to get a closer shot of these amazing birds.

Bracketing with D200

Surreal Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

If you have a penchant for bracketing your exposures, there is no better tool than the D200. You can bracket upto 9 shots at varying exposures from 1/3 to 1 full stop.
For those who love HDR photography, this is indeed a drool worthy feature. My earlier D70 could do only 3 shots in auto-bracketing mode. I still managed to get some decent HDR photos though. I can only imagine what those pictures would have looked like if shot with the D200.
Even if you don't like HDR, the ability for such a wide range of bracketing means that you can enable bracketing for most of your shots and then select the best exposed one. Nowadays, memory is very cheap so storage is definitely not a problem.
In this shot, I took 5 exposures at 1 stop interval and then merged all the 5 pictures in Photomatix software.

Flamingos in Kuwait

Flamingos in Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

I was quiet surprised to learn that there are flamingos in Kuwait; as I had never seen a single one in my 15 years of living here (except in the Kuwait zoo).
Apparently, they are found only in a specific area in Kuwait. There is a sort of a sanctuary near the Shuwaikh hospitals area, and the flamingos are found there.
I decided to check it out so I packed my camera gear and headed towards the Al-Sabah maternity hospital; as I remember seeing an access area to the beach there.
I was indeed surprised to find a whole flock of flamingos near the waterside. Unfortunately for me, it was low tide and it was not possible to get close enough to them to get a decent shot.
This was shot with my 80-200 f2.8 zoomed to it's maximum of 200mm. Not good enough!.
Now I need to visit the place again during high tide, hoping to get a little closer to the birds.

D200 and high ISO

Shark (Scientific Center)
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

About a year back, I visited the Kuwait Scientific Center aquarium. At that time, I had my trusty Nikon D70, and the versatile 50mm f1.8 lens.
I have never been comfortable shooting above ISO 800 on the D70 as the images turn extremely noisy, so I had to limit myself to ISO 800 and open the lens wide to it's maximum aperture. Even after stretching both the camera body & the lens to it's maximum, I had difficulty getting sharp pictures. I remember thinking to myself that this particular setup demands a D200 body, and a lens that can open up to f1.4.
As it so happens, I managed to upgrade myself to a D200 body, and acquire the superlative Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens. I was eager to try this combination at the Scientific center but had to wait for a few months for the opportunity.
I finally got my chance last week. As I had expected, the D200 could handle the high ISO with aplomb. Coupled with the fast aperture of the Sigma, I managed to get some great pictures of the sea life on display at the aquarium.