Дон Андре's blog/

This time it's Jörgen Camrath with a shot I've not seen before though it's somewhat older already. I think ipernity is to blame, I always get shown just a small portion of my neighborhood and the most active members appear more often then the less active ones.

Anyway, I think it's an excellent shot and for me picturing pre-Christmas shopping madness.

And thx for licensing CC!!

moty66 has a good set of pictures from Palestine. Unfortunately I have too little insight into the situation of Palestine and Israel. We always get to hear bad news from the region, killings and murders, basically it's the same. When I think about Gaza or Israel I think about helicopter raids, tank attacks and suicide bombers. It's been less news lately, but I doubt the situation has become much better. By looking at some of the picture and especially the one with the wall I suddenly realized what it meant when I read "Israel builds a wall around Gaza". Sometimes a whole newspaper article is nothing compared to just one of these pictures.

Soap factory

+Wall -Future II

Thx moty66 for uploading and licensing CC!

I'd really like to hear from you about the properties of your display
so that I know how to adjust images and what areas are still visible
and what not. I came up with this idea when I saw my photos on the
laptop of my sister. Her display can show way more black than
mine and so contrast was different and the photos looked different.

Because judging the contrast of a photo is always very subjective,
I've made two test images which I'd like to ask you to have a look
at and please tell me the lowest number you can see in the
white image and the lowest number you see in the black image.

White range:

Black range:

As for me: white = 6; black = 14, barely the 13
This means that I can't see anything past 86% black and 95% white on my monitor.

UPDATE
After 20 responses the average white level is 4 and the average black level is 8.
Thus with my monitor's 6 - 14 I have a narrower band of brightness and will see
much more contrast in the image than the average viewer. You can use these
two images to open them in your favourite photo editor and adjust the curves or
levels on the white and black until you can view the 4 of white and the 8 of black.
You should then be able to see how it would look like on an average monitor, at
least approximately since you don't know about the contrast in the midtones.
For example based on this data I made following curve:
20 -> 33, 64 -> 76, 128 -> 128, 191 -> 172, 235 -> 215
If that works I'll use that curve in the future to adjust the contrast of a picture.

I had quite a few misses with AF on my D80 recently and I thought I knew enough about the camera... During the last ball event (where I've uploaded some pictures), I had the AF set to AF-C which means continuous focus. I thought that would be better to follow moving people. But a lot of my pictures turned out blurred (which I saw too late and on the computer). I got worried about it not working correctly. What I didn't know is that AF-C on the D80 is a release priority mode. This means that when I press the shutter button, the camera will instantly take a picture and not wait for the AF operation to finish. This explains my problem as it is most likely that I pressed the shutter a bit to fast sometimes :-(

In contrast the other modes AF-A and AF-S are focus priority modes which must acquire focus before taking a picture. The mode that would have suited me best is AF-A which would automatically refocus when the subject below the AF point gets out of focus. AF-S focuses just once.

But the topic of AF is even more complex, because in the menu there are 3 more options: Single, Dynamic and Auto. I've learnt about them a while ago, but will explain them briefly: Single here means that it will always focus just below the selected focus point. Dynamic means that it can choose a different point, when the subject moves out of focus (or another moves in?). Auto will try to focus on the closest subject under one of the 11 points (you can't choose them in this). Any of these modes can be combined with AF-A (refocus if necessary), AF-S (don't refocus -> probably doesn't make a lot of sense with dynamic) or AF-C (always refocus).

AF-S is also a designation for some of the Nikon lenses, but here refers to a built-in focus motor (servo) which results in faster and more silent focus operation.

I hope I finally understood AF. Dynamic mode is still something I've not tried a lot. Release and Focus priority were new to me and made me look like a beginner :-) Well okay, I am ^^

Greenpeace is trying to persuade the CEO of Canon to speak out against whaling in Japan. Please head over to their site: www.greenpeace.org/international/news/canon-shooting-whales-240108 and read about it.

From the website:

Around the world, Canon cameras shoot whales on whale-watching expeditions but in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, many whales are shot instead with exploding harpoons. Thousands of whales, including endangered fin whales, have been killed here under the guise of "scientific research" ever since the global moratorium on whaling came into force in 1986. Whale meat from the hunt is sold to a tiny minority of Japanese people who eat whale meat -- the rest is turned into dog food or added to the stockpile of around 4,000 tonnes of unsold meat. Whales can be studied without killing them: the cloak of "science" merely allows a few Japanese bureaucrats to maintain an unprofitable whale meat industry at the expense of Japanese taxpayers. Yet this scandal continues because there is not enough domestic pressure in Japan to end it.

Take action!

There's also a new Flickr group about that.

Nikon finally announced a quite anticipated new milestone in their DSLR lineup. Fortunately for us (who got a DSLR already) the improvements are rather minimal. Unfortunately for those who think about buying, they'd probably have expected more. The two most important new features are dust reduction, which I never had a problem with on the D80, even after 1.5 years and 20,000 pictures and Active D-Lighting. Oh yes and it seems to use the EXPEED image processing engine that was introduced with the D3. I doubt this will make a difference though, I still think it's just a fancy name.

Active D-Lighting is quite interesting as it is able to better capture high contrast scenes (by underexposing slightly, thus saving highlight detail and then boosting the shadows). Nevertheless the rest of the specs speak of a 10MP, 3fps, 2.5"LCD with 230k pixel camera. That's basically the same as the D80, but in a smaller body and with lack of a builtin AF motor. I wonder when the D80 starts to drop in price more, the only argument in favour of the D60 would be size and weight.

On the plus side Nikon also announced an interesting new lens, it's the AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. The lens is basically the DX equivalent to the full frame 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G VR. I really like wide lenses and 16mm is much better than 18mm. It would have been a killer if it was 4.5 maximum aperture at 85mm, but you can't have everything. Anyway this lens would suit probably 60% of my photography needs. Unfortunately the suggested retail price is more than 600€ and with my current low profile in photographic activity that hardly justifies such an investment!

So on the good side, lots of new available things, all that would be nice to have, but none of which I need :-)