Category: Photography

I love photography. For me, it’s like painting, but better. And more accurate. And unlike painting, I can actually participate. I am not a big success or great master by any means. But I enjoy taking pictures. I also enjoy looking at other people work and sometimes sharing it. When I do, this is the category that I use.

Girl and ice cream

Girl and ice cream

Olga and I went for a sunset walk in Molos promenade today. I was surprised to find a lot of people there. Some were running, others walking, yet another others – sitting on the benches.

There were a few photo opportunities. The best two were the girl with an ice-cream and a couple of kittens. The girl was the best ever, but she was almost running trying to catch up with her parents, so I had only one shot. I guess with better cropping the image can get better. Kittens, though were very atmospheric and would have been much better on the video. They were very synchronized. They were sitting and moving their heads in exactly same directions at exactly same time. Very cool. But they were wild and were scared away when I tried to get closer.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-09-28_POTD

dump_photos

I am using dump_photos.pl script to copy (or move) images from my Canon EOS 300D to my computer. Canon’s in-camera filesystem is not very convenient to copy files manually, because images are distributed across a number of folders (100 images per folder thing). Canon original software is for Windows only and is way too complicated and slow for such an easy task.

My script uses standard Perl modules (Getopt::Long, File::Copy, and POSIX) to copy or move files to specified or default (date-based) directory. It also mounts the Compact Flash before processing images, and umounts it after everything is done. It also uses jhead to optionally rotate images based on the information in EXIF header.

Run “dump_photos.pl –help” for a list of options. Although it was tested only with my Digital Rebel, I think it should work fine with most of Canon cameras.

dump_photos.pl

Canon rules

PhotographyBlog has quoted press release from Canon which shows why exactly Canon rules and owns. For those, who is not going to click through, here is an executive summary: Canon is announcing 90 new products in 2004, which roughly one product every four days. 19 out of these are new digital cameras. Canon is the only company in the world who is not only developing, but manufacturing itself all of it’s cameras, sensors, and lenses. It pushes a whole tonne of money into Research and Development. This year it will be 8.2% of its all global revenues, which is almost 2 billion Euro. And blah blah blah…

Not only they do a lot, but they do it well too. Same site has a link to one week with Canon EOS 20D review. Faster power-on cycle, more settings and effects (like black and white photography with colored filtering), better focusing system, better battery, and less noise in low light conditions. In the review, there is an image shot in candle light with ISO 1600 setting, which has alsmost no noise. They boast that ISO 1600 with 20D is roughly the same as ISO 400 with 10D. Now, that’s an improvement!

Anyway, the point is – Canon rules and owns all the way!

Picture of the day

Mythos Beer

I’ve got only one picture for you today. But one is all you need. I took the picture of the bottle which was standing on the balcony table. It was dark already, so I failed to realize that the black border on the top wasn’t from the camera, but from the balcony edge. I’ll try to remember to use some reference point in the future.

I have tried this new beer today – Mythos. It is a new brand of the Greek lager that they started to sell in Cyprus. I did like the taste of it. It is rather simplistic, low carbonated, a little bit bitter, and soft. It is a kind that is good to drink together with food. It also reminded me of beers I used to drink while in high school.

I forgot to check the price tag, but it wasn’t anything high (I’ve got a pint together with two sheftalias for less then 5 CYP). I guess, I’ll be drinking more of it in the future. It is a nice choice for times when Carlsberg is not available or slightly overused.