Sun in Splendor

The expression, "to hose the Doris" is paparazzi argot for "keeping the button pressed and taking as many frames as possible — in the shortest time — of a female celebrity." [ The Online Photographer ]

Amsterdam HDR photos High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR) photos of Amsterdam. Be sure to view this one full size, and check out the birds. If you like it be sure to check out the whole set . [ mmeiser blog ] Here is a superb explanation of the why? as well as the how? of HDR Imaging, as a response to a limitation of digital cameras — The dynamic range dilemma. As digital sensors attain progressively higher resolutions, and thereby successively smaller pixel sizes, the one quality of an image which does not benefit is its dynamic range. This is particularly apparent in compact cameras with resolutions near 8 megapixels, as these are more susceptible than ever to blown highlights or noisy shadow detail. Further, some scenes simply contain a greater brightness range than can be captured by current digital cameras of any type. The "bright side" is that nearly any camera can actually capture a vast dynamic range — just not in a single photo. By varying the shutter speed a...

Kevin Bjorke points describes John Paul Caponigro's method for converting color digital images to black and white : "His method was different from what I have been using, and I like it a lot." It uses Adobe Photoshop adjustment layers. [ Bjorke * BotzBlog ]

Photographs are the evidence of your engagement with the world , writes Stu Willis. "The camera lies when you lie; it reveals truth when you unearth it. Photography is a metaphor for living; the camera an instrument of consciousness. Find the frame." Ways of Working is a series of 10 articles on how to take great street photographs. [ blimps are cool ]

The Leica Users Group The Leica FAQ John Brownlow Kyle Cassidy 's The Truth About Leica Cameras Ralph Gibson Leica Camera Wikipedia entry on Leica

Inside my Fear , originally uploaded by FotoRita . For more photo goodness, Visit my flickr photostream . Accompanying this marvellous image by FotoRita is this text (here machine-translated from the Italian original: "I have thousand reasons for being angry with same me. One between all, the inability to listen to me. Why they are scappata? But yes, I have made like always, I have let go the taken one before jumping in the empty one. This is the just occasion in order to put tacere the daily voices that by now insist on my nervous system unstable weak person and. I can myself be earned a paradise piece! They only angle of perfect world for me where to defend my being woman, and where the cosmic delirium goes to get lost. Well, I can return behind. I say while I dry up an eye with a cleanex. I turn to me, I try to move a first step and via, the sidewalk that begins to turn whirling. Nothing to make, for a long time to be straight me is impossible. The rimorsi do not hel...

Happy , originally uploaded by piecesofme2005 . For more photo goodness, Visit my flickr photostream . A beautiful, relaxed photo , nicely configured in black-and-white, by PiecesOfMe2005 . On Flickr

Scarlet Ibises , originally uploaded by Dirk-Jan . For more photo goodness, Visit my flickr photostream . Marvellous photos by Dirk-Jan on Flickr -- have a look ! technorati tags: photo , photograph , bird , suriname , flickr Blogged with Flock

The Romans called the rugged coastline of western Brittany, Finis terrae . Finistère, the end of the world, where even today, time appears to have come to a standstill. French photographer Michèle Le Braz set off with her Leicas M6 and M7 to capture the soul of the Finistère country and its people in timeless black & white. [ Leica e-magazine ]

The digital Leica M8 really is tempting, despite the crazy-high price (nearly US$5,000). That is far too much for even a very fine camera. Even taking into account its luxury-item "surplus value," it ought to be priced between US$2,500–US$3,000. I imagine that would be the price, were it not for the strength of the Euro relative to the dollar. But putting the price aside, there is another thing that must make even a brand enthusiast -- or brand loyalist -- to reflect on whether it would be worth the trouble to make the change. The thing is, the Leica M8 's digital sensor turns a wide angle lens into a "normal lens," and a normal lens into a "long lens." To get the wide angle coverage to which I have become accustomed with my Leica M6 + Summilux 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens — and keeping the unique characteristics for which I have used Leica lenses in the first place — I'd have to buy another lens -- a Summicron 28mm ƒ/2 . That would lose a stop in speed, too. ...

Here's how the Leica M8 deals with digital artifacts introduced during low-light exposures — When using higher [ISO] sensitivities — and in particular with dark, even surfaces — a certain amount of noise will become apparent. To reduce this annoying phenomenon, following exposures with slower shutter speeds the LEICA M8 automatically takes a second "black picture" (taken with the shutter closed) . The noise present in this parallel picture is then digitally "subtracted" from the data set for the real picture. This doubling of the "exposure" time can be significant — in particular at longer exposures — and must be considered. During this time the camera should not be switched off. For shutter speeds of 2s or more the message Noise reduction in progress... appears in the monitor. — Leica M8 Manual

In A special note for Leica M8 users , Leica points out an interesting design choice, and its consequences: Above-average sensitivity for infrared light (synthetic fabrics are rendered with a slight magenta offset) . During the development of the LEICA M8, we made important design choices to insure that the camera delivers the quality in images the Leica M System is known for. Keeping the protective glass cover on the sensor as thin as possible on the one hand has the benefit of allowing the full potential of Leica lenses on the LEICA M8 to be utilized with respect to their sharpness and contrast rendition, but it also absorbs less of the infrared light. In everyday photographical use the resulting above-average sensitivity for infrared light may lead to a faulty color rendition, especially in the case of synthetic fabrics which - depending on the ambient light - cannot be rendered fully black but only with a slight magenta offset.

Wonderful photos at River of No Return , taken with a Noctilux, the superfast — ƒ/1.0 — 50mm lens from Leica. The photographer is Shig, also known as "Fast-Eddy" , whose photo gallery is here . The Noctilux. I don't have a Noctilux ; I've never even seen one, except in product brochures. It costs US$3,795. Its owners rave about it. Here are Web sites which treat this legendary lens . Available light. I like to take pictures in available light. I take pictures mostly after dark. My first Leitz lens was a ƒ/2.8 40mm Summicron. I struggled to get photos at night on dark streets and in bars and restaurants. For a long time, I regarded an ƒ/1.0 lens as a kind of holy grail for low-light photography. Low-light technique. Right now the experienced photographer will shake her head — what I was struggling against was not a slow lens (ƒ/2.8 is not slow), but my own lack of technique. I wasn't getting the most out of a fine lens — after all, mos...

Carson Wilson has published an intriguing essay, Oranges and Apples -- There is some truth in this observation: people now use digicams instead of film for many purposes. But their choices often result from economics rather than the technical superiority of digicams. Digital photography is amazing and impressive in many ways, but if you choose it over film, expect to make sacrifices . I've assembled articles here exposing these sacrifices. I do this, not to make a case for film, but to temper the popular view that advances in digital photography have now made film obsolete. [ MORE ] [ Oranges and Apples ] t d f Buy Leica cameras at Amazon.com -- Your purchase through this link will support my photography!

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Biography is the first full biography ever published -- a vivid portrait of this complex, curious, brilliant man. Cartier-Bresson. The twentieth century was the century of the image -- and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was the eye of the century. Through the decades, this eye focused on Africa in the 1920s, the tragic fate of the Spanish Republicans, and the victory of the Chinese Communists. It was Cartier-Bresson who fixed in our minds the features of his contemporaries: Giacometti and Sartre as characters from their own works; Mauriac mysteriously levitating; Faulkner , Matisse , Camus , and countless others captured at the decisive moment in portraits for eternity. Cartier-Bresson was among the founders of Magnum , along with Robert Capa and others. He was married to Magnum photojournalist Martine Franck . The biography. An intensely private individual, Cartier-Bresson confided in his close friend Pierre Assouline over a number of years, ...

A man who had been photographed in a public place — Times Square in New York — sued the photographer in civil court , claiming that the resulting photograph had been shown and sold without the subject's permission. He lost the suit: it is — and has always been — perfectly legal to photograph a person in a public place in USA without asking anyone's permission . [ New York Times: Arts and Design 2006 March 19]

Browsing the stacks of the Santa Monica Public Library , I have discovered Rome for Ourselves by Aubrey Menen . Introductory Note. This is a book about Rome. It is, therefore, a book about history. I live in the middle of the twentieth century. I have seen a lot of history made in my time. I do not think much of it. I do not know anybody who does. This book is written with that experience in mind. A book about Rome must also be a book about great men. They bedevilled all my younger years. Most of them are dead now. One or two turned out to be maniacs: others have been shown to be fools. One or two great reputations remain. But I suspect that a great man is a person about whom one cannot yet tell the truth. So it would seem to me. I am a child of my times. ... I am ashamed to admit that I had never before heard of the Irish–Indian writer Aubrey Menen. He's smart and funny, and writes from a committed, original, and individual point of view. He wastes no time getting to the point. ...

Ma passion n'a jamais été pour la photographie «en elle même», mais pour la possibilité, en s'oubliant soi-même, d'enregistrer dans une fraction de seconde l'émotion procurée par le sujet et la beauté de la forme, c'est à dire, une géométrie éveillé par ce qui est offert. Le tir photographique est un de mes carnets de croquis. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson -- The Mind's Eye: writings on photography and photographers My passion has never been for photography "in itself," but for the possibility, in forgetting oneself, of recording in a split-second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what is offered. The photographic shot is one of my sketchpads. I have made photographs at different times in my life for different reasons. When I was a boy, I was much more interested in the cameras themselves -- the gadgetry -- than in the photos they might make. I had a hand-me-down Kodak dual-lens reflex, a little tin...

Mannikins in Siena, Tuscany. Taken with a Leica M6 camera with a Leica Summilux ASPH ƒ/1.4 35mm lens. For more photo goodness, Visit my flickr photostream . Reading Michelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films . I am a little bit sad that the authors have so confidently sub-titled the book, The Complete Films , since the director is still alive, although very old, and disabled by a stroke. But even as recently as three years ago Antonioni had made a short film as an episode in the feature EROS . I hope that the authors of the book will be proved wrong. Antonioni is a very great artist. I am also reading, in a desultory way, The Dark Heart of Italy, by Tobias Jones . The author, a young Englishman named Tobias Jones gives a tour d'horizon of Italy in 2004 -- not the land of Verdi and Michelangelo, but the land of Berlusconi, the corrupt, super-rich media mogul who -- until very recently -- was at the head of the government. There's nothing remarkable about the form of the book -...

The new Leica M8 digital rangefinder accepts all M-series lenses The best reason for getting any Leica camera is the Leica lens . Leica lenses are superlative -- not just a little bit better but significantly better than other lenses for the "miniature" 24 cm × 36 cm (35mm film) format. A photograph taken with a Leica lens rivals a photograph made with a 6 cm × 6 cm | 2¼″ × 2¼″ "medium format" camera, in sharpness, resolution, contrast, etc. Now that extraordinary level of imaging quality will be available for digital images, too. I have a Leica M6 film camera with a 50mm Summilux ƒ/1.4 lens, a collapsible 50mm Elmar ƒ/2.8 lens, and a marvellous 35mm Summilux Aspherical (ASPH) ƒ/1.4 lens. It is wonderful. Many of the photographs in Sun in Splendor were taken with my Leica.