"The most important attribute a photographer can have is enthusiasm." - 365 Project, Day 351

Just like everything on this planet, you know what you want more than anybody else.  In terms of camera performance, I've known this for a wee while now, and today was a perfect example.  I was trying to get a shot of something and decided to get the Peace Tower.  This was probably the only shot I took that had an interesting sky, as the whole day was very bland.  Nothing about nature was helping my in my photography.

First, here's my shot for today.

I tried taking in-camera HDR shot with my Canon S100.  This is not that shot.  This is a RAW I edited to look fake-ish HDR.  I find it looks better than the HDR, which looked strangely similar to the standard non-edited version of this picture here.  This shot was taken at ISO 80, shutter speed 1/250th of a second at f/8.0.  I boosted the contrast and clarity to max levels, which bought out most of the detail in the final image. I simply had to tweak the shadows and highlights sliders to bring out the most detail possible.  This is the end result.

At night, when highlights and shadows are very obvious, in-camera HDR works fine, but during the day when the range is a bit more subtle, the camera struggles.  Here's the HDR shot the S100 produced.

It's a bit blurry, but that's my own fault, and that's not the point of showing you the shot.  The point is to show how flat it looks compared to my edit of the raw shot.  The HDR in definitely a bit bright, but you can see more detail and definition in the sky and especially in the snow in my edit.  The parliament building is a bit more clear in the HDR shot, but there's as much detail in both shots, if you decide to look closely.  Besides, I like the dramatic look of my own edit over what the the camera did.

Just as a comparison, as well, here's my original shot without any editing.  I took the same RAW file and simply converted it to JPEG without any editing done.

As you can see, there's not much difference between the HDR and normal shots.  The HDR may have a tiny bit more detail in the parliament building but not much.  The sky and snow are basically the same, as well.

I'll have to wait until night to take in-camera HDR shots with this camera.  You can get nice shots with that mode, but the range has to be very big.  More subtle scenes won't get that same look, unless you want a more standard look to it.  Again, most compact cameras are very good and will give great picture quality.  They'll do the best job they can do, but it may not be what you want.

I hope you liked this, and hopefully there will be three pictures tomorrow.

"There's no dividing line between adventure and photography." - 365 Project, Day 350

It was about this time last year that I was complaining about the weather, and not being able to go outside and take pictures.  This year has had a couple of rough weeks, but to be fair, it's had much nicer weather all around.  It's not as cold, though wind is sometimes and issue.  It's only mid-February, and so the next month will decide if this winter is truly better than last year's, but up until now it's been much milder.

As such, there are a few more pictures of the great outdoors from myself and the others in this project.  That's really nice to see, as there are a few more interesting things outside my apartment than in my apartment.  We'll see where the next month or so goes.

Here's what we shot this fine day.

Frank

His note: Just a broom.

My shot

Moving on to bigger and hopefully better things, I'm hoping to sell this soon to upgrade the Canon vaporware 5D Mark II replacement.

The end of an era, so hopefully the end of this project will be able to lead to something bigger and better.

"Wait a minute - I'm a journalist... I don't take sides, I take pictures." - 365 Project, Day 349

Truth be told, I'm kind of running out of ideas about things to ramble on about.  It's been almost a year now and I think I've talked about pretty much everything related to photography.  Given the last two weeks, I could talk about all the cameras that have been announced (and pretty much every company has announced new cameras), but that's pretty topical and I'd rather not talk about news all that much.

I suppose I just need to go out and take pictures to have stories to talk about.  After all, if I don't have stories to tell, I'll just have to wait until I hear one so I can relate it to you.  That might take a bit longer than I'd like, so I'll take the initiative.

Our inspiration for the day.

Frank

His note: What is it?

Pat

I was goofing off with longer exposures and noticed this line of red dots in the shot.  I looked around to figure out where that red light was and noticed my heater.  After about 10 minutes of messing around trying to write messages, this is the closest I got to anything.

Tomorrow's up.  See you then.

"Documentary photography (is) everyday reality recorded with a visual artistry that catches its 'feel' as well as its look." - 365 Project, Day 348

I was wrong.  I didn't know what today would bring.  In any case, a couple of years ago, I read The Histories, by Tacitus (which, by the way, was insanely fascinating).  Simply put, it's a recounting of one year in Rome after the death of Nero, where Rome had four different emperors.  Here's where my thought comes in.  What would it have been like to do a 365 Project in that year?

Because there was no internet, television, radio or anything else of that sort, the only thing to do would be to go out and take pictures.  Imagine the soldiers running around, the parties and the like.  It would be quite intense and very nice to see what could happen.  By the same token, imagine doing such a project, say, with Hudson while he explored Canada, or following Hannibal on his various... adventures.  Thankfully, we have books that more-or-less recount what may have happened to some degree of truth.  Unfortunately, though, last few books of The Histories are lost, and so we don't have as full a story as we should.

Here's our contribution to the history of the world.

Frank

His note: Whitney Houston dead at 48....... RIP Whitney.

Shannon

Her note: Hockey Day in Canada and Chris Phillips celebrated his 1000th game as an Ottawa Senator.

Me

I was testing out the ISO performance between the Canon 7D, Canon S100 and Fuji X10.  This is the X10 sample.  Though the S100 and 7D can go to ISO 6400 (and ISO 12800 in the 7D's case), full-size, 12MP pictures top out at ISO3200 on the X10, so that's how the samples were shot.  I'll go into more detail in a future post.  I decided to finally do this given I might not have my 7D for too much longer.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow.  I'm not sure what day of the week it'll be.  Sunday, I think.

"There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way." - 365 Project, Day 347

Cameras definitely fix people, it's undeniable, especially in Ottawa.  No matter how big or small, as soon as I whip one baby out and point it at something, people look at me funny.  They're eyeing me, making sure they're not in my shot.  It's very strange, and a big reason why most of my street shots are from the side or the back.  If I tried shooting someone from the front, they'd be, in their eyes, considerate and move out of the field of view.

I heard once from a TV show (and I can't remember which one, but it was a news report-type show) that if you walk around Los Angeles with a camera crew, people will come up to you and be curious about what you're doing (the idea was, because it's Los Angeles, everybody wants to be an actor).  In the same vein, I've wondered how people would react if I went to a city with more people that want to be where they're going quicker.  Say, New York City, or Los Angeles, or Hong Kong; would my cameras attract more or less (or the same) attention there?  I've missed a lot of decent shots because people move out of the way to not step into my field of view.   I try to be discreet, but maybe I'm just too charismatic and people simply notice me.

Once more, and you probably expected this, our contributions for the day.

Frank

His note: Part of my steering wheel.

My own self

By any stretch of the imagination, or by any definition, my movie collection is pretty hefty.  It's probably part and parcel of my interest in photography.  Somewhat of an oblique homage is this shot, not really reflective of Mr. Kurosawa's style or anything, but it's the most interesting way I could think of showing what I have.

I think I may know what tomorrow will bring.

"Always carry a camera, it's tough to shoot a picture without one." - 365 Project, Day 346

All cameras can shoot video (and most of them in high definition), most cameras can shoot black and white and sepia (for some reason Sony forgoes these filters), some cameras have a burst mode of up to 60 photos in a second, some cameras can yet do more, such as in-camera panorama shots, in-camera HDR, in addition to every colour filters and effect you can think of.  My Canon S100 can even do super-slow-mo at 240 frames per second (which, by the way, is a lot of fun to watch).  Oh, and they also take normal pictures.  This last feature is the only thing that, by my estimation, 70-80% of people buying a camera want out of a camera.

Why add all these bells and whistles?  I pride myself on utilising any gizmo I have to its full potential.  A few people have actually commented on how I use keyboard shortcuts to do what I want instead of always using the mouse, for example.  I've used more options in the Fuji X10 and Canon S100 than most people, I believe, but there are a few modes I would never try (such as toy camera effect, colour swap on the S100, and the pro- portrait and low-light modes on the X10.  I do like a lot of these little features, but even I can't see the use of some of these.  Some filters and features in the S100 are useful: fisheye can't be done easily without Photoshop, and so is nice to have in-camera, and ditto for in-camera HDR.  The Movie Digest mode is fun to have because editing small clips together is time-consuming and tough to process on an older laptop.  However, some of the simpler things are mind-boggling to me.

If this camera can do RAW, and is, say $450, this isn't a camera for the general population, and so people buying this probably won't mind, say, taking the RAW file and creating a black-and-white shot out of it, or taking  a picture and making a fake lomography effect.  I suppose if Canon offers some of these effects on their lower-end cameras, they'll justify the price of more expensive cameras by simply including these bells and whistles for people who won't use this camera for RAW shooting.  However, this gets back to the question of my spend $450 on a compact if you're not going to take advantage of everything it can do?  Maybe I just don't get it.

Here's what we did get today.

Frank

His note: Indispensable tool.

My shot

My friend asked me to take a picture of the sunset today, so I figured a panorama shot would be a good idea.  This is pretty much my view from my balcony - all of it.

Find out what will happen to us tomorrow.

"...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude." - 365 Project, Day 345

It's nice to show everything there is to show (I myself love wide-angle photography), but sometimes it's better to focus on one thing and let the imagine run wild about what's happening in the outer edges of a shot. Seeing, say, a photograph of someone with a big smile taking a picture at a fair or circus, but not seeing what this person is shooting is just one example.

Sometimes it's pretty obvious what's excluded, but that's okay, because the photographer figured that wasn't the most interesting subject out there.  It's all about the mood, the atmosphere and the intent.  Happy shooting!

Here's our output for the day.

Frank

His note: A large metal feather well balanced on a local monument.

Myself

I once took a picture of some arid, caked earth.  It was a hot summer for a while and the ground was completely dry and even cracked.  For some reason, I like cracks in things.  The paint here is peeling off, and it has lost its colour.  I also didn't want to show everything simply because looks better this way, not knowing what's around the sign.  (Hint: an intersection.)

What's tomorrow?  It's another day for pictures!