GX GARNERINGS

(Photo extracted from Panasonic website) The newest firmware version 1.3 for LX3 will be available for download in a day here . LX3 users are reminded to fully charge the battery before the updating the firmware, and format the SD Memory Card used for the firmware update before taking photos.   A non-fomated SD Card so used may cause your LX3 to malfunction and/or decrease the number of pictures that can be taken.

This morning I went through the archive and arranged some links to my two favourite old projects. Links to Posts on Flash The series of archived posts written specially on tips and tricks in flash photography can be viewed after the following links: 1) Flash Photography and Effects 2) Flash Play, Light Painting 3) Three Ingredients for a Flash Trick Links to Posts on Photographing Kids And some personal experience on shooting pictures of kids are revealed in the two posts as follows: 1) Above the Kids 2) Hold on for a Second, Kids!

If you, like many of our fellow photographers, are wondering which camera is the best, you ask the wrong question. The brandnames are the least important.  What is important is how you make the best out of a camera.   If the metering had been left to the automatic pilot, the camera would have come up with images totally different from the ones posted here today.  Since a camera sees the world in an average grey tone, the images would have turned out either with unpleasingly bright areas in the background or with extremely dark tones in the foreground.   I primarily go on full manual with my GX200.  For the scene of these photos, I exposed the image for the background and dial up one step to faithfuly recreate the brightness of the background while lightening up the dark foreground a wee bit (so that the first few flights of stairs are not reduced to pitch black). So, any photographer should be obliged to train up not only his/ her eye for good sh...

This week, we've been looking at some of my personal experience in taking street shots. This is the fourth post. (Crossing in the Rain: I was hiding behind my umbrella and held up my GX200 to compose the image freely) Over the past three days, we've reflected on the settings I saw fit for the stret shots of human conditions.  The word "human conditions" refers to scenes invloving passers-by and their acitivities. As such shots are taken in the street and, for one reason or another, mostly without the subjects' knowledge, the strategy is a far cry from the rest.   There are there are some pointers I find useful and hope to share with you from my experience. 1) Subjects engrossed in their some activities fall prey to your camera more easily.  They seldom notice things happening around, not even if you hold the camera up to their eye level. 2) A camera neckstripped to your neck alerts your subjects less than one being handheld.  When you've got ...

This week, we've been looking at some of my personal experience in taking street shots. This is the third post. (Three Talk: The fruit traders are talking to an acquaintance at a cul-de-sac. I was actually crossing a road when this shot was made. Without a chance to pause my steps for the shot, I pre-metered the scene by checking out the lit street before crossing the road and settled with the high shuttle speed lest my movement blurred the image) Yesterday, we got down to the nitty-gritty of some of the customised settings I used for taking street shots of human conditions. Today, let's continue to dig into the rest, viz., the focal length at 28 and the ISO at 200. Focal Length My impression is that on most of the recent serious impacts, the zoom range falls on below 28mm to around 140mm. I stored 28mm as the default focal length setting for street shots of human conditions for two reasons. First, my experience shows that a street shot of people done at 24mm normally sprea...

This week, I'd like to share with you some personal experience in taking street shots. This is the second post. (News Report: Stopping at the traffic night, the ladies were overheard exchanging news about the kids and comparing notes on their perfomance at school. On several earlier occasions, I had found the possible novel angel of taking pictures from my waist level of passers-by holding an umbrella. I hadn't managed to take any until this one. Since there were actually three ladies gossiping and the sidewalk was extremely narrow, I could easily catch their attention even if I paused for half a second to shot. So I opened the aperture wide for a fast shutter to compensate my quick steps going past them. The blind composition was made possible by luck, anticipation and lots of practices) Yesterday we stopped at the setting I used for the street shots of human conditions. I promised to dig deeper into each component of the setting. To recap the setting: focus fixed at just o...

This week, I'd like to share with you some personal experience in taking street shots. This is the first post. (The Metalsmith: He sits in front of his tiny shop, bearing his upper body and chitchatting with his friends. I figured out how to take the shot some 30 steps away. The shot was done as I walked past him without alarming him) I have been working on several on-going photographic assignments, some finished whereas some not quite. In either case, apart from the busyness of life which affords me little time to sort the photos and research about each topic, the daily street shots have generated a certain amount of interesting images for me to write about each day. By the way, the number of photos posted on this site is nearing 500. Of the street shots I have taken, images of human conditions account for a lion's share. Among them, I surmise that over half were taken at a close distance. By the word "close", I mean within one metre, or around 3 feet. You may revi...

I went to a humble exhibition yesterday, and was glad to see my work on display along with the great images of other photographers. The theme is about man and the environment.  I submitted one of the photos taken for the LNII project (check out the "Link to Special Projects" tag in the right sidebar if you are interested). Have a great day!