Hairy HDR.

mg_4270 As per popular demand, here are a few picture of me with two and a half weeks worth of facial hair. I have the impression that I might have created an illusion of actually having a massive beard, but, as you can see from the pictures, that is far from the truth. As you probably also notice, I’m not very comfortable in front of the camera, at least not when I have to take the pictures myself. Don’t I look all jolly and excited!?

Since I was going to force myself to take some portraits, I decided to try to take some high dynamic range, HDR, photos. It’s an interesting technique I’ve been sniffing at for some time, but I’ve never gotten around to try it until now. Done right, HDR can produce some stunning results. To create an HDR picture, you take several picture of the same scene with different exposure and magically (or “mathematically”, if you will) merge these pictures to create a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas in the resulting image. Continue reading "Hairy HDR." →

And the Winner is…

As a follow up to last week’s “Snapshots” entry, here are a few words about the digital compact camera I bought in the end; the Canon Digital IXUS 100 IS.

In the store I also looked at the Canon Digital IXUS 870 IS, a camera that, according to its specifications and the store clerk, would take higher quality pictures than the 100 IS. The price was the same, but the 870 IS a bit larger and as my shopping helper pointed out; I already have a huge camera that takes high quality pictures, what I was looking for now was something really compact. And the 100 IS is really compact.

Even though I’ve not had the chance to test the new camera properly yet, I’m very pleased with what I’ve seen so far. The camera is snappy, the automatic mode works well, there is a myriad of presets if you don’t want to use the automatic mode – one example is a preset for “fireworks”, not sure how often I’ll need that – and it’s possible to manually control the ISO value, white balance and exposure control. I wish it was possible to control the shutter speed and aperture, though.

Over the next two, three weeks, I’ll most likely take a few pictures with the 100 IS and there’s a chance I’ll post some of them here for you to glare at. The photos used in the Candy Test Part I were all taken using the new camera in automatic mode, which correctly switched to macro mode when the object was moved close enough to the lens. The quality of the images is about as high as my expectations for a compact in the 100 IS’ price range.

Snapshots.

I’ve had a lot of fun with my Canon EOS 400D digital SLR. If you take a look at the entries tagged with photography, you can see some of the many pictures I’ve taken with it. I even purchased Aperture to get the most out of every photo, and I have a couple of blow ups hanging in my living room.

But there is one major issue with the 400D and the kit I’m using now: It’s just too large to take with me wherever I go. This summer I will be out and about a little and I’ve decided to see if it’s possible to find a digital compact camera that will cover my needs without being too pricey.

I’ve decided to stick with Canon since I’ve never had any real problems with any of my Canon cameras, the image quality has always been great and Canon cameras are usually scoring quite high in the various reviews I’ve read. Continue reading "Snapshots." →

Saturday Road Trip.

Yesterday me and Hans Olav took his car to Hadeland, about an hour outside of Oslo, to visit Anne-Line. Hans Olav used to live with her in a shared apartment years ago, I spent a lot of time visiting him while he lived there and actually ended up dating Anne-Line for about a month. Since then she’s found the man of her dreams, lived in Denmark, had a son (who is two years old now and have a talent for drawing and screaming) and currently she has a new bun in the oven.

We also tried to visit her in December last year, but missed her by about an hour because she’d left with her son and boyfriend for their Danish retreat. Her father was home, though, and me and Hans Olav left Hadeland with a lot of knowledge about potatoes. That’s what happens when you’re spending two hours talking to a potato farmer.

The reasons why we’re taking all these trips to Hadeland, which cannot be called the center of the Earth, is that we’re testing Hans Olav’s car: It’s the mechanic’s dream and the owner’s nightmare, and it has spent quite some time in the garage. If it ever breaks down completely, I’m imagining Hans Olav will just step quietly out of the car, shut the door, lock it, turn on the car alarm and walk away. And then it’s probably best we all just pretend the Škoda never existed.

In Limbo.

Yesterday I spent most of the day at Musikkfest Oslo with LM, her boyfriend and a buddy of his. The weather was great, the music was relaxing and I’ve got to say that the concept of a 12 hour music marathon on 30 different outdoor venues in downtown Oslo is a great idea. And everything for free as well.

It’s all inspired by the French Fête de la Musique, a music festival that began in France. So I guess we have at least that to thank the French for. I brought my camera with me, but it was LM who used it the most. Among others, she got these three pictures of two young music lovers.

In the afternoon I met a friend for beers and drinks and had a very, very good time. Again the recipe of having two beers and then drinks with funny colors for the rest of the night proved to be the cure for a nasty hangover. All right, so I didn’t manage to get to the gym today, but I didn’t spend the day curled up on the coach either. Instead I watched this weekend’s Formula 1 race (another boring one, unfortunately) and ran around a bit in the post apocalyptic world of Fallout 3.

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