The First One

Hmm, the very first post of this blog had exactly the same title. Finally I had the chance to have a play around with the LX-3, and here's the first real shot taken with the camera.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix LX-3

Settings: 13sec, f/6.3, ISO 100

The sunset was showing some decent colours, and I really couldn't help but take a photo. I used the roof of my car as a make shift tripod for such a long exposure setting, and ended up cropping the bottom in LR2. Prize goes out to the person that can guess this street ... Hint: It's in Cabramatta.

On the side, to show some of the other photos taken with the camera ... I've merged together a couple of the other photos (mainly to save space)

These are the kind of photos that you would take when you're bored. A quick survey of your surroundings and a quick flick through the local paper will provide a reasonable amount of subject matter that can be manipulated. The 24mm wide angle of this camera allows you to have slightly more interesting angles and geometric distortions. Also, the macro on this camera is quite good ... and what better way to demonstrate it than to take a photo of text.

One other thing that stands out is the rendering of blues and greens by the sensor. It's definitely not the kind of blue I've been getting from the Canon 50D, and there's something about it that I really like. NB: These 6 photos are all straight out of the camera, the only processing is codec conversion from RAW to JPEG.

Looking forward to posting more from this camera, maybe it'll surprise me even more than it already has.

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Stick a needle in it

Is there really a drug problem?

There was a time when I could walk down the street and see somebody shooting up in the middle of the day without a worry in the world. Today, waiting for my train to come at central station, I glanced down at the ground and well ... guess what I found?

Camera: Canon EOS 50D

Lens: EF 50mm f1.4 USM (read the review here)

Settings: 1/100, f/3.2, ISO 500

In my opinion it's not really a problem if it isn't hurting other people. Drug users have made up their mind about their decisions, and if it doesn't pose a detriment to anybody else ... let them be.

Without a doubt this syringe should have been disposed of properly, but they atleast had the decency to put a lid on it.

Thinking about it, there are a fair few advantages to administering drugs intravenously but there's also quite a bit of disadvantages. You can educate yourself by clicking here.

About the photo, I used manual focus in live view to get exactly what I want. All the processing was done in Adobe Lightroom 2.3, only because it's so simple to get the desired effect.

So until next time, I leave you with a quote by the ever inspirational Salvatore Dali ... "I don't do drugs, I am drugs" :) Oh and kids, don't do drugs. If you do drugs you'll end up in prison, and drugs are very expensive in the pen.

To answer the question proposed earlier, testing for drugs won't solve society's problems ... we should really be testing for stupidity, ignorance and incompetence.

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Synergy, Synchronicity, & Serendipity

 "Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter." 

~Julius Comroe Jr

It was almost certain that I wouldn't get a photo worth putting up today.  Another bleak, wet, depressing day in Sydney.  I was almost desperate to get a photo, and I didn't want to believe that I couldn't get one. 

Almost given up, on the way between my garage and the front entrance to my humble abode I found what I was looking for ... well sort of.  It was more like, I knew what I wanted ... but I didn't know.  

As usual I had my 50mm f1.4 on the camera, and realised I couldn't get close enough to get the type of photo I wanted ... I needed a macro, and more light as the sun was setting pretty early.  As quick as I could, I ran upstairs, switched to my Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro and mounted a Canon 580EXII flash with a diffuser.  After some basic processing in Adobe Lightroom, we have the result ...

Camera: Canon EOS 50D

Lens: Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro

Shot Settings: 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 500, External flash fired

This photo is the farmer's daughter, the world is my haystack, and I had no idea what my needle looked like.  I'm a catholic, not a very good one, but one nonetheless.  And for this photo to happen, the raindrop had to be the perfect size, land on the perfect spot between 3 very symmetrical leaves, and on top of that I had to walk past at the right moment to pick up on the details.  Coincidence ... possibly.  

Since we live in a world of such synchronicity and serendipity where different elements combine to produce such a synergistic effect, it's hard not to believe in an omnipotent being.

Simply put, I'm just glad I was there at the right time

And until next time, Cheers

Side note: Dwight Howard had an amazing game today (40pts 14rebs) to lead the Orlando Magic to the NBA finals to play the Lakers in a best of 7 series.  Check out the recap here

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