Swee Ching Photography

Just recalled one of my colleague, who bought a GF1 for a holiday trip, came back and complained to me why the images are blur. After some clarification, it is the background of group photos are blur, not the subject itself (the people in the group photo). The effect of this “blur” is even worse when taking a group picture with a large landmark at the back. Unlike myself, my colleague is a compact camera user upgraded to GF1. Therefore, has very little understanding of technicalities such as shutter speed, DOF, aperture etc. Recalling on my own trip, I also had similar problem when wanting take a photo of my wife with a landmark at the back. I have some understanding of DOF, which thought my to lower down my aperture setting for a sharper background. However, it wasn’t sharp enough even at f5.6, with the subject approximately 2 metres away. So how much lower should I set? So I decided to do a quick test. Short of a test subject, I have the Starbucks bear here (about the size of a h...

Back when I was very active in photography, geo tagging photos was a very new concept. The idea of is to embed the longitude and latitude position into the metadata of the photos, so that you can lookup where the photo were taken. It is kind of cool as software and services begin to appear which allow viewing your photos by location on a map, instead of by albums which you organize by yourself. There were about 3 methods that I know to tag the photos. Manual Tagging As the name implies, tagging is done by using a software that brings up a map interface (typically relied on Google maps)for you to pin point the location where you taken those photos. This is done only at then end of the post processing workflow. One manual tagging method that I used before is from Flickr. Though workable, its a labour intensive method, not to mention you will need to have good memory if you were back from a long trip with thousands of photos to tag. Nevertheless, this was the most economic method befo...

Back in September 2009, I’ve sold off my Nikon D300 DSLR , and slowly sold off most of the DX lenses as well. After going without a DSLR for about 6 months, I have decided to settle down with the Panasonic Lumix GF1 (have it since Feb 2010). Now that I have used it extensively for about a year, I like to pen down my thoughts about my switch from DSLR to the Micro4/3 system. Just a little background, I’m not a professional photographer and are into photography as a hobby. I done quite a bit of wedding back in 2008 as favours for friends and acquaintances, but that’s about as professional as I gets. So my opinion would come at the angle of an photography enthusiast. Panasonic Lumix GF1 with the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens Thought you're happy with the LX3? My decision to abandon DSLR pushed me to take LX3 more seriously. The result in this change of mind-set yield some interesting result (in street photography and a wedding ). So I have good appreciation on how a compact camera...

Positive points I have read from the Internet so far is that the LX5 has better Dynamic Range and better noise control. But I have yet see any convincing sample that back those statements. So happen my colleague just bought the LX5, and I manage to borrow it for a while to perform some quick comparison with Adobe Lightroom 3.2 Trial. A caveat to note: the LX5 now has an optional tiny UV filter, which fit nicely on the lens barrel (very neat!). So the shots taken with the LX5 has a UV filter, while my LX3 doesn't. The Scene I placed the camera on top of a printer, focused on my colleague, recomposed and shoot. I try to have both camera shooting the exact same scene. Camera settings for both cameras: • Manual mode • ISO 100 • 1/320s • F2.0 Result LX5 LX3 Observation • It seems like the new LX5 have slightly wider field of view, just very slightly. Maybe it's due to the in-camera distortion correction algorithm? Anyhow, it's a ver...

Another good high school friend of mine got married recently. On top of being his "brothers" to overcome the obstacles set by the "sisters" when picking up the bride, I double duty as a secondary photographer as well. Not wanting to shoot with film, my only option now is my Panasonic LX3. So I took this opportunity to see how LX3 fare against the big guns in wedding ceremony photography. With a good Leica-badged f2.0 lens (that has good IQ and deliver sharp enough images), I have confidence that it will perform well, as long as I get the lighting right. So my gear consist of the camera with 8GB of storage, coupled with my Nikon SB-800 Speedlite for indoor lighting, and a small sling bag to store the Speedlite when not required. There's no TTL support when mounted on LX3, but "A" mode is still workable, but require manual setting of distance and aperture. Since I'm covering wide angle shots, I shouldn't need to make much adjustments to the flash...