Snapshot Hobby

Yesterday, after I have spent the whole day at home, I decided to take an hour to walk. I did not expect that one can found so many interesting beings on the outskirts of a town. During my walk I saw rabbits, ducks with the flappers and even a deer. „It’s a pity,“ -I thought- „that I didn’t have my camera“. Especially I was fascinated by deer.
Today, though I honestly had little hope, I decided to go to the meadow, where I saw the last time the deer but this time with a camera. I hid myself in a bush from this place I got a good view on the lawn, besides I could remain undetected, so I waited. Approximately in 10 minutes came the deer, and this time not alone:

Heise Foto started a new ambitious project where all photography enthusiasts are invited to participate. It is a photo gallery where each can upload own pictures and present them to the photo community. There is an evaluation function, you can evaluate not only the image but also the idea. All images can get name, tags and description. In addition, you can classify both, own photos, as well as by other community members in custom albums. Of course you can comment all the photos. You can post your photos with CC-licensing as well as copyright-protected.
I can not say that the user interface is clear and immediately evident, but after a short time you have all the functions under control.
As for the restrictions, I can only say that the only limitation that I’ve found so far is the size of an image. Earch photo should be not greater than 10 megabytes. I find this quite generous.
It remains to be seen how this project will be developed in the future. It is also interesting whether Heise photo gallery is a competitor to the Spiegel Project seen.by, or is it just a coincidence.
Incidentally, all Heise photo gallery members who upload their own photos, have a chance each week, to win a 16GB iPod Touch.

There are not many interesting photo subjects here in winter, because the nature in a deep sleep. However, because I steel feel a need to take photos and the arrival of winter is not dwindling it, I must find some ideas. Today was a very nice day, and although I did not have much time, I was able to invest one hour in a photo-walk.
Although I felt that the chances to find something interesting at the end of the day, within the one hour walk, are very bad, I was positively surprised by the diversity of photogenic life forms, which were staying in my vicinity. Most of them were birds. I like to photograph birds. Until now I had only experience with seagulls and that’s why my first attempts to make a photo of blue tits were not really promising. The Blue tits are very small birds and they hold a much larger safety margin to the people than seagulls. My 200mm lens was unfortunately not sufficient to catch the bird. Maybe tomorrow I try again and win a bit more confidence from the birds so I would be able to make more interesting photos of them.

When I told to my brother via ICQ about the new DSLR from Canon, he said that I read something wrong, because 5D and Mark, are two different model lines, and it was impossible that this camera are real. Then he quickly checked the photonews webpages and found out that I had right. It is finally done. Apparently Canon had a kick in the ass from Nikon so they finally made something new. There is currently no any competition on the market for digital SLR cameras with full-size sensor. Even Sony made a step in this direction, but previously only Nikon and Canon were here as main players in this segment. I am sure that there is a price collusion, otherwise I can’t explain such high prices. But no matter, the main thing there new camera modell is finally here and that means that 5D soon be cheaper to have. Of course it would be great, to get the latest 5D Mark II, but let’s think about it. Who really needs a video recording feature in a camera in FullHD? That is something for tourists in shorts or mamas and papas, which want to record a video of their children for family video archive. These people would find certainly a different use for 2500 euros. Sure, there are a few changes in the technique. 21 megapixels, improved autofocus, etc. But is therefore 5D worse? In no case! 5D is a camera, which are able to make pictures in an outstanding quality, of course if you know what to do

Hasselblad makes really technologically advanced modern cameras, often on such a high technical level, that you can say that these cameras are from the future.
Hasselblad surpised us with a new digital medium-format camera. This has full 50 mega pixel and reaches a resolution of 6,132 x 8,176 pixels. That is a very high resolution at this time. The price of those cameras is very high too. This new camera, for example, costs 30 000 euros. Not every photo agency could spend so much money for a camera, the most free-lancers could only dream about it. What I do not understand why such expensive camera supports an ISO value of up to 400. I suspect that it is because of the resolution with that the noise is more visible than on sensor with less resolution. Is the new matrix of Hasselblad not good enough?
It is also interesting to know that the manufacturer of matrix is Kodak. I was always sceptical about the cameras from Kodak, but now when I know that a matrix of Kodak will be used in such high end devices, I will probably change my oppinion.
According to the manufacturer, the size of one photo is up to 300 MB. It is not only the problem of lack of space with that you will be confronted, but also you will need a very powerful computer to edit the photos. But I believe that if you have so much money for this camera, then it will be not a problem, to buy a good computer. The computer will be a bargain, compared to the camera.

Last week I flew to Porto (Portugal). I heard very often about this city and saw a broadcast on television about it. That’s why I was very interested to visit Porto.

Porto is a very old and beautiful city. You get a real feeling that you are somewhere far away from home, here. Here everything is different. This is true both for the architecture, as well as for people and their customs. If I go to Luxembourg or to Strasbourg, I get feeling to be not in Germany only by the signs in French. Even if I am in Barcelona, I see an ordinary European city, although its highlights such as Gaudi buildings, but hardly provides a special mood.
Of course I wanted to save my feelings with help of my digital camera. Fortunately, I had my tripod with me and that’s why I was able, to take panoramic pictures. Here I went as usual, I positioned the camera horizontally and made 5 images from left to right.
When I was finally at home, I joined with help of Photoshop all of these 5 images to one image. This worked wonderfully well, except for a little bug, because of the difference in focus. The biggest disappointment was that the resulting picture in relation to height, was too broad. If you see it, you got the feeling of incompleteness, you waiting intuitively for the compleating of the loading. But the image was already loaded.
I wanted to do something to correct my mistake, so I could avoid in future such strip-effects on panoramic images and I searched for the solution. I found out that this problem is actually very easy to deal, you need only to install the camera on a tripod not horizontal, but in vertical position. The images will have so a bigger height and the strip effect will be avoided.