The Retrographer is off on a trip!

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I must say this ‘travelling’ section has been pretty much neglected since the beginning by me.  I’ve been wanting to write up my past travel experiences however never really get around it!

In any case, I’ll be flying off tonight and will be away for about a month hence will unlikely be able to post anything on this blog while I’m away.  If I’m able to get my hand on a sim card, I’ll try to post things on my Google+ account.  A suggestion have been made to also create an instagram account…hmmm….

Where am I off to?  Around USA and a bit of the Canadian Rockies,  I’ll be starting at San Francisco then driving down the California Pacific Coast Highway 1 all the way down to San Diego, flying over to Tampa to check out USA’s renowned best beaches in Clearwater Beach and St Pete Beach, couple of theme parks in Orlando, appreciating the history in DC, checking out bustling New York, admiring Niagara Falls from Ontario side, driving one of the best drives in the world – the Canadian Rockies’ Icefields Parkway, and finishing in Las Vegas while making a day trip to the Grand Canyon.

Pretty sure this will give me a kick to write more in this ‘travelling’ section when I get back! *hopefully :D

Yes, this is quite a big trip.  Lots of friends reckon that’s too much for just a month…well..wish us luck!…please ;)

 

Photo of the day – Dawn Silhouette at Matilda Bay

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Actually taken this photo in my very first outing with the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 at Matilda Bay in Perth, Western Australia.  I did posted an OOC JPEG version of this shot in the Fujinon 14mm Sample Images post.  Although the OOC JPEG version is not bad however it doesn’t really do justice of how beautiful the dawn to sunrise view was.

In any case, here’s a version of the image taken in RAW.  Yes the boats moved and there’s nothing I could do about it.  Photo taken with long exposure at 180 seconds, enjoy!

PS: You can support me by using the following links when you need to browse or buy anything off Amazon & Adorama.  Much appreciate it! ;)

Best (wedding?) photography locations in Perth – Part 2

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Took these 2 photos over a month ago however only came across them again when I was going through my folders.  Many would probably argue these may not be the best locations but I don’t think anyone would argue that these are 2 very popular photography locations in Perth and perhaps even more for wedding photography?  At least that’s what I think based on my experience.

No I’m not married and no I haven’t done any wedding photography but…..I was nudged twice by 2 different wedding photographers with 2 different bridal parties when I went out to take photos in these 2 locations in 1 afternoon!

Imagine setting up your gear and started shooting when then all of a sudden a bridal party appeared behind your back, watching and waiting on you and on one of the occasions, in front of the Blue Boat House – my camera battery ran flat.  I had to quickly replace the battery and hastily took the snaps.

The first location is as I mentioned earlier is a Perth icon, the Blue Boat House in Crawley which you’ll definitely see if you drive along Mounts Bay road and you may have already seen so many version of it, in any case, here’s my version! ;)

The second location is also along Mounts Bay road however it is somewhat hidden.  I believe it is still Kings Park however it is on the Mounts Bay road level.  Although if you drive along the road a number of times you may not realise this place exist (well, I didn’t!).  To access it, you’ll need to be driving Mounts Bay road from the West to the East (towards the freeway), once you drive pass the Old Swan Brewery there’ll be a small turn into the left.  There you’ll find some of the biggest trees in Perth CBD area, you have to see it to believe it :) .

If you’re looking for other wedding photography locations in Perth, I’ve seen other popular ones are University of Western Australia, Queens Garden, South Perth foreshore, and Kings Park.  Hope you find this useful, enjoy!

PS: You can support me by using the following links when you need to browse or buy anything off Amazon & Adorama.  Much appreciate it! :)

Fujifilm X-Mount Lens roadmap latest update April 2013

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Fujifilm released an update on X-mount lenses roadmap about a month ago.  The new roadmap is quite different compared to the old roadmap however it does look less ambitious and maybe..more achievable (if we’re still on the old roadmap in about a month time they would have missed the deadline for 5 lenses!).

In the new roadmap looks like they’re pacing themselves and hopefully this way allow them to meet what they’re targeting for and more importantly hope this results in even better lenses!  The new roadmap has also included the timeline for the Zeiss lenses.  I don’t think I’ll be looking into the Zeiss Planar 32mm f1.8 as Fujifilm has the 35mm f1.4!  Whereas the Distagon T*2.8/12mm, I would really have looked into it had it come out sooner.  If all goes well I’ll be off on a big trip soon and am happy that I’ll be bringing along the Fujifilm 14mm f2.8.  Perhaps when I come back I’ll look into some results off the Zeiss 12mm and we’ll see what happens ;) .

The other 2 lenses that I’m eyeing for are the Fujifilm 23mm f1.4 and the 56mm f1.2!  This is what I meant earlier with even better lenses, if you have a look at the old roadmap, the 56mm was spec-ed at f1.4…yippie!  I know I said 2 earlier but I’ll also be interested to see sample images off the 10-24mm f4.  Whereas for the Zeiss Makro-Planar T*2.8/50mm, I’m not so sure.  I know Fujifilm makro lens is probably the slowest of Fuji X-Mount at the moment but it is f2.4 60mm.  I would hope Zeiss try to at least match the spec.  In any case that’s all for now, I’ll keep it short this time :) .

Exploring photoart with Nik Collection

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Some weeks ago I went on to trial Nik Collection.  The main reason was to try High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.  I’m not going to try to explain what HDR is as there’s a lot of websites that have covered this in detail.

I first discovered HDR photography when a friend of mine showed me a very well-known HDR photographer’s website: Trey Ratcliff’s stuckincustoms.com.  To be honest when I initially saw Trey’s works, a lot of them felt bit too fake for me and I couldn’t come to like them.  His works actually made me thought HDR = non-natural looking images, until I saw other sites showing some stunning natural looking HDR images.  Then, I said to myself, why not give this a try.

After a lot of research I’ve come to learn there are 2 very popular HDR software: Photomatix and Google’s Nik’s HDR Efex Pro 2; and after further reading Google has now combined 6 stunning softwares into 1 package: Nik Collection which includes HDR Efex Pro 2, Color Efex Pro 4, Silver Efex Pro 2, Viveza 2, Sharperner Pro 3, and Dfine 2 (visit www.niksoftware.com for more info on them).  And the best news is the price for this 6 softwares package is just a little bit more than the Photomatix price, especially when you use 15% discount coupon which is available in many sites!  Long story short I decided to give Nik Collection’s 15-day trial a go.

I initially thought that I’d only be using the HDR Efex Pro 2, but then after seeing a number of Nik’s free tutorials and what these softwares can do, I got into playing with all the 6 available softwares.  On the first few days, I can tell you Nik’s trademark “Create stunning images faster” sounded like a big fat lie to me, but I think as I’m becoming more comfortable with the workflow, it does become faster with experience.

Remember I said that I was going for the natural looking HDR images? Nik Collection is evil!  Although I tried to come up with as natural looking images as possible using the HDR Efex Pro 2, as soon as I process my images using Color Efex Pro 4 and playing around with all the filters, my images become…unnatural looking!  I must say though I enjoy the process of trialling the filters and then ended with surreal and artistic images.  Artistic images which usually you see in the movies, animations, or paintings however these origin from photographs, which is why I like to refer these as photoarts.  A few of them actually came up different from how I imagined they would be, but somehow I like them.

My trial period has finished and no I haven’t bought the collection as yet.  I’ve been extremely busy at work and home, which unfortunately have taken my time away from photography for the last few weeks.  But I think I’ll probably buy the collection as soon as I get back from my upcoming USA/Canada trip (3 weeks to go!) to play around with photos taken during the trip.

In the mean time, below are some samples of my ‘photoarts’ :) :

Other images processed using Nik Collection can be found on my post a couple of weeks ago Best Photography Locations in Perth.

Gordon St Garage

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Think it’s been quite a while since I posted a restaurant review…yup there you go, the last review was Ootong & Lincoln back in February!

Anyway some weeks ago after a morning jog, my girlfriend J and I met up with a couple of friends for breakfast at this place that I notice was and still is in Urbanspoon’s Talk of the Town list: Gordon St Garage.

It was a Saturday morning we got there around 9.30 and I think we waited around 10 minutes or so to be seated.  Their menus breakfast-lunch-dinner are displayed just outside the door so that you can have a browse while waiting.

As I walked in, I could feel the funky cool vibe and atmosphere through the setup, the music, and the people who work there.  It kinda reminds me of Little Creatures in Fremantle.Gordon St Garage (3 of 12)

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Best Photography Locations in Perth – Part 1

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If you reckon the title of this post doesn’t sound right, I would agree with you.  If it’s the best location, there really should be only a location and not more than one.  The thing is it’s quite hard to decide the best and I can’t seem able to do it, however pretty sure it’s safe to say that these locations that I’m listing on this post and the subsequent posts are some of the places that tourists and Perthians alike go to enjoy the view, the places where you would seen the pictures on postcards, the places where the professional and amateur photographers like myself go and try to capture our own version of the shots!  Must say a lot of Perthian might be rather tired of these shots :) .

I was thinking of compiling my portfolio of all the locations before I post however I think it may take quite a while hence I’ll do a part 1 first instead!

So, the first 2 locations which I’m sure is up there on top of the list are:

Kings Park

Situated at the CBD, Kings Park offers beautiful gardens, parks, walking trails, and scenery during the day.  During the day you can see clearly Perth city and the Swan river towards the horizon however to my opinion and I’m sure a lot will agree the view is even more breathtaking at night.  When I was there I was lucky to have the full moon shining brightly complimenting the lights of the city.

The second photo is the photo of the State War Memorial which is also located in Kings Park.  I hope you enjoy them.

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Stumbling across a real retro camera: Halina Paulette Electric & my thoughts on Fujinon XF60mm f2.4

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Some weeks ago, a colleague of mine who’s also a photography enthusiast learned of this blog of mine.  Upon giving it a quick read, he then mentioned that he has something that I may find of interest.  Few days later he brought in a real retro rangefinder – Halina Paulette Electric; and he’s right..I do find it of interest.

Halina Paulette Electric is a 1960s 35mm film rangefinder.  Paulette sounded like French to me however apparently it’s made in Hongkong.  It has a fixed 45mm f2.8 Halinar Anastigmat lens and accompanying case.  Although I didn’t shoot with the Halina I’m pretty sure I’m likely to struggle with it initially especially in determining the distance to the photo subject to determine whether it’s in focus.  The focusing ring was rather rigid which could because of its age and the viewfinder is a just a piece glass with focusing nothing (not coupled to the focusing ring).  I think the easiest way should be to preset a focus zone and then hope you got the distance right when shooting (I thought my Canon EF was challenging!!).  Another thing that I noticed that it has a built-in light meter which the Canon EF did not have.

For those who’s interested, here’s how I think the steps to shoot using the Halina.  Once you chose and fit a film in, set the ISO of the film on the camera.  Once you’re at the area where you want to take photo, check the number on the light meter, then you set the aperture and the shutter speed and the combination of those two should be set so that the number on the light meter is the red number between the aperture ring and the shutter speed ring (this probably hard to picture but you’ll see it in the photo below).  Then you set the focusing ring, the distance marking is in feet.  If I’m to shoot with this, I would probably start with higher aperture first so that I get a larger focus zone (until I’m good at knowing how far exactly I am from the photo subject).

Then you just need to know that you’re at the right distance from the subject and shoot…simple right?!?! :)

PS: Photos are taken using the Fujinon XF60mm f2.4

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Fujinon XF60mm, 35mm, 18-55mm, 14mm lenses focus speed comparison

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I received a couple questions on emails some weeks ago on auto focusing speed improvement through firmware updates.  I made a comment on how the new firmware update for the X-E1 and the 35mm f1.4 lens have made some difference.

To answer the question I thought it’s easier to show it on a video; then I also thought I might as well put a video which shows the focusing speed on the lenses that I have.

The firmware on the gear are the latest as of March 2013:

  • Fujifilm X-E1 body’s firmware is on v1.04
  • XF60mm f2.4 lens is on v2.01
  • XF35mm f1.4 is on v2.02
  • XF18-55mm f2.8-4 is on v1.01
  • XF14mm f2.8 is on v1

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Licensing your photos, your images, your hard work!

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Since I started this blog few months ago, I’ve received a couple queries on using some of my photos.  I recall when I received the first query I was pleasantly surprised however was also unsure on how to respond to the query.  I asked few friends who then directed me to the Creative Commons website.  I did some googling and it seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but after reading and doing bit more research I have now added a Licensing page which covers the images/works that I have done.

Why bother?  In short, this is to allow your work to be used as long as you the creator is credited (Attribution).  You can then add other licences conditions such as NonCommercial, No Derivative Works, and Share Alike.

As per my Licensing page, I’ve set the following conditions Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License for my images.

Social media and your photos

During the research, I’ve also learned that posting your photos on social media like facebook, Google+, or Pinterest actually allow them to use your images for free (obviously this one liner is my understanding in a nutshell, their term and conditions are long written by lawyers and needed to be read more than once at least!).

Many, however have argued that these social medias have also stated that the creator still retain ownership hence it shouldn’t be a problem.  My thinking however the clause where it says by posting you grant the social media royal free license etc can be interpreted that even though the creator still owns the content, the social media can still use it to their benefit commercially..who knows?

So what can you do?  You can decide not to post any photos there..or what I’m thinking of doing is to post low quality photos or be weary not to post all your works there or just smack a massive watermark right in the middle of your photos and direct viewers to your website.

From what I’ve read however a lot of photographers seem to be using Flickr with the view that Flickr does not impose the conditions that the other social media websites do as mentioned above.  I’ve got a Google+ and Facebook pages (please add me if you do :) ), I think I may look into Flickr soon.