Vin0×64

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Last sunday was the perfect day to try again something I had already attempted a few months ago. I found the idea on a flickr group (Bokeh smooth & sikly). The goal was to take a shot with heart shaped bokeh.

The setup itself is not so hard in fact. What we call bokeh is this bunch of round colored spots made by shiny out of focus parts in the background of a picture. You can often find it in city night shots, where every light becomes a source for nice bokeh, provided you have a wide enough lense. Those spots appear round because it is the shape of the diaphragm. It’s quite easy to figure it out. The light coming from the out of focus parts of the scene, instead of going through the center of the lense, go everyway and “hit” the border of the diaphragm. As such if it was possible to have a different shaped diaphragm, it could be possible to give shape to the bokeh.

Read on …

Here’s for the pleasure a shot dating back to this summer of a flying bee gathering pollen.

As is my habit, I had published it first on Flickr but some of your comments lead me to post it here to add a few details.

Contrary to what some of you may think, I had no specific set up to shoot it, no tripod, no additional light sources or specific triggering mechanism. It also explain why it’s maybe not a tremendous shot either . But I did it as I felt it, by hand.

Read on …

Here’s the opening ceremony of the new Apple-Store in the “Carrousel du Louvre” in Paris. It is the first Apple-Store in France, so it was an important event for the french Mac-addicts. This shot was taken a few minutes (seconds) before the actual opening.  You can see the staff applauding the people massed in front of the store.

Read on …

Timelapse movies, as defined in this wikipedia article , is a film played faster than it was recorded. Or more specifically, to record a film more slowly than it will be projected (24 frames per second in general), which has the effect of accelerating the movement of subjects.

If we push the trick to the extreme, this is the kind of method used to show flower grow or spend a day in a few seconds. And this can be done with a camera. Indeed it is sufficient have it take images in a constant position and at regular intervals and then assemble them at 24 fps (or less) to give the illusion of a film.

Finally, if you combine that with the technique described here to make HDR photos (high dynamic) you get a HDR-timelapse movie.

All this is possible with the Nikon D300 and a good tripod. Read on to understand how I did this with Photomatix, ImageMagick and Quicktime.

Read on …

Twin trumpets

During our walk around the Trübsee lake in Engelberg we came across a lot of mountain flowers, some of which you already saw before. But I particularly liked those two, tiny, fragile, white with a tiny yellow, sunlike spot on the petal. Besides they looked like twin miniature trumpets playing in the wind.

Have a nice week end everyone.

Camera Model: NIKON D300, Lens: 90 mm f/2.8, Focal length: 90 mm, Exposure: ¹⁄₂₀₀ s à f/10 ISO 200

View on black

Here’s a last view of the Trübsee lake ine Engelberg, Switzerland. You get this point of view from a king of playfield a few minutes walk away from the telecabin station.

I Wanted to play a little bit with a long pause to have this quot;icyquot; effect on the water surface. So I used a cokin ND8 Filter. The only issue is that it tends to turn the picture a little bit magenta. So I played a little bit with the white balance in Lightroom to get back to normal tone. I also darkened the sky a bit so it has more depth.

Camera Model: NIKON D300, Lens: 18-70 mm f/3.5-4.5, Focal length: 24 mm, Exposure: 1,6 s à f/22 ISO 200

View On Black