24 May 2009
Flickr: A photographer’s best friend ★

Flickr is what the photo magazine was for then when the internet and digital photography was a mere imagination, it’s the facebook for these images where aspiring photographers meet and showcase their latest work.

If you browse Flickr’s 7-days most interesting photos which are randomly picked beauties, will flick upon you dozens of fresh inspiration for us to explore, it’s like skimming through magazines for pictures, yet this one’s for free.

the offerings

I took this routine a little bit further, for every inspiring artist I came across with, I add them to my contact, and for the same manner, I bookmarked the ‘From your contacts‘ page so that I can keep tabs on their inspiring work and keep the juice free flowing.

natural beauty

So why don’t we go ahead and flick, while you’re there, here’s our flickr page.

Sunday, 24 May 2009

iPhone loves your Canon

The great thing about the iPhone is that it’s a device with many faces. What was perceived as a wrong move when they decided to go Soft-key, they created an important space in the crowded mobile devices: a touchable layer of experience that bridges the missing link between us & a device.

I’ve been wondering when something like this would come up, and I’ve got my answer today. Enter DSLR Remote by onOne.

Personal interaction between a a human and a device is known as ‘User Experience’. Perceivably, there are two layers in which user experiences takes place, first is the physical layer (hardware), second is the binary layer (software). What the iPhone added was a set of sensible layers that enables iPhone to respond intuitively towards the basic rules of human physical interaction. And this is an important layer that often is missing from other technical devices, like a camera.

The idea of interacting with your DSLR via your touch, and series of other iPhone-like behavior, e.g. shake, pinch, tilt, etc–is going to give a lot of new frontiers and creative space for photographers in creating their artwork.

I’m not sure how far onOne will go on this exciting new App, I will have to get myself a new iPhone to give it a try. Here’a picture taken by the Canon EOS 5D Mark II triggered with the DSLR Remote App for iPhone. Stay tuned!
Hoops go the shot!

iPhone App from onOne – One onOne with Mike Wong.

Gallery: PDN Photo Annual 2009 Winners

23 May 2009

Photo District News, one of the longest standing (one of our favorite) professional photography publication has just published the online gallery of their annual competition. Head over to the gallery for some of the best work from the industry’s best eye.

PDN Photo Annual 2009

PDN Photo Annual 2009.

20 May 2009
Hollywood in your hands ★

Ever realize why the videos you shot with your sonys or cellphones does not look even close to what you see on screen, say your favorite tv-show, like house?

Hollywood movies, or higher budgeted production uses a 35-mm video camera, whereas your standard video’s sensor size (film size) is about the size of your fingertips. So why such a huge difference?

The larger the size of the sensor (film) the bigger the depth-of-field (put your finger a couple of inches between your eyes, and try focusing to your finger tips) the blurred area behind your finger is what’s called the circle of confusion resulted from your focused subject closer to your eye. This phenomenon, has an appropriately coined japanese term “bokeh” that simply means that blurry effect produced by lenses.

Recently we see the rise of HD quality video capturing from a digital SLR (Canon 5D Mark II, Nikon D700 and a few others lead the way), given such feature, paired with dSLR’s extensive lens collection, we can produce Hollywood looking movies from our own backyard.

Here’s a fine example by one Philip Bloom. Shot in available light with a Canon 5D Mark II paired with a Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 lens over a couple of nights, the following is what came out straight from the camera. All shot was captured handheld using the Z-Finder from Zacuto to give the camera a proper video friendly viewfinder and stability.

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/4704533[/vimeo]

Head over to Philip’s Blog for behind the scene shot & full HD video download.

The Bigger Picture: NY Times’ full screen photo gallery

19 May 2009

Following the path of WSJ’s radical, yet successful move of bringing the big picture to the web (previously considered as taboo)–The NY Times team now presents us an even bigger picture. A full screen gallery of daily photographs from their archive.

It was the issue of control & copyright from the publisher’s point of view, as the web matured into a more connected, more civilized digital society. Thanks to flickr, twitter and hyper connected real-time soc-nets like facebook, digital contents became more accessible to the larger public thus threatening the existence of conservative media.

The question remains, whether local web operations like Kompas, Media Indonesia or Tempo will follow suit?

nytimeslensblog.jpg

The Lens Blog – NYTimes.com.