modifoo

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I had a little discussion with the world’s loveliest woman, trying to define what photography is about. I came up with Framing and Lighting.

But the world’s loveliest woman said that timing should also be a part. First I thought that framing is part of timing, but then realized that there is more to it. In Framing you compose the picture. In Lighting you set the mood (which can be a complex lighting set up, or simply the choice of exposure). But then you do have to find the right moment to press the shutter release, to catch that magical moment.

Anyone familiar with photography knows about f-stops. Calculated as Focal Length divided by Diameter (of the front lens element). The smaller the value of the f-stop, the more light passes the lens, the shorter exposure time necessary, the narrower the depth of field, the lower ASA/ISO rating necessary.

Typical f-stop values are f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22 and f/32, but there are lenses with f-stops as low as 1 and as high as 128. With the arrival of automatic exoposure meters, fractional f-stops have also become the norm.

T-Stop

When you start using professional film lenses, you will come across the phrase T-stop. While the f-stop is a mathematically derived value, the T-stop is a calibrated value. Since lenses have optical elements, and each of these elements blocks a (tiny) amount of light, the actual amount of light coming through a lens is always lower than the f-stop value suggests.

Therefore most cine lenses are individually calibrated to give the actual amount of light transmitted, the T-stop (T standing for Transmission.) T-stops are always (slightly) higher than f-stops.

…or maybe 2.7D. Here a video from a researcher team that has developed software that allows for automatic transfer of 2D images into a 3D world. Amazing: Here´s a link to the hi-resolution version of the video (though it does not seem to work om my Mac), and some more samples are here. (via)

After it turned out that my old SLR got stolen on a recent shoot, I am now looking for a new one.

I’ve always liked Nikon, but since both cameras that were stolen from me were Nikons, I start to believe that they might have some sort of karma.

But seriously speaking, I took the chance - since both body and lenses are now gone - of looking into a different system. And here the Canon EOS 400D comes out as a very promising candidate. The natural competitor would be the Nikon D40. Here the Canon has a couple of advantages, namely

1. Higher pixel count
2. Self cleaning sensor
3. Wider choice of lenses (as the D40 requires lenses with built-in motor)
4. And, as it turns out, Canon offers some cash-back on selected equipment

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Gems from the Web:

• Nobody Expects the SPAMish Inquisition - An alliance of 20,000 spam-fighters in more than 100 countries are suing spammers. The suit seeks the email harvesters’ identities and more than $1 billion in damages for violations of the CAN-SPAM Act and the Virginia Computer Crimes Act.
• Photoshop CS3 New Feature Tips - Nice collection of tips on what cool things you can do with the new Photoshop.
• Morticious Thrind - Phantastic! A Blog with a Commodore 64 feel. I love it!
• Jahshaka - The worlds first open source, hardware accelerate editing and effects system!
• Gallery - Gallery is an open source project with the goal to develop and support leading photo sharing web application solutions.
• International Billboard - Phantastic overview of documentary film festivals and seminars.
• A List Apart: Articles: Contrast and Meaning - Nice list of the fundamental tools a designer has at his and her hands.
• Apple to build new features into iPhone, Apple TV free of charge - Apple said Wednesday it will leverage its proven capability in the area of software development to gradually add new software features and applications to its iPhone and Apple TV products free of charge

As previously promised to Hans, here are finally some shots from my vacation in Gran Canaria.

The first few days were raining. (more…)