getting the flash off the camera

Faded rose
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

It's a theme many people will encounter. Get your flash away from your camera. Get several flashes and some radio triggers and create an elaborate lighting setup.

I'm not too sure about the elaborate setups yet but it's fun to play with this.

The Protective Filter Craze

I see this so often on the various forums and message boards. People buy a camera with a kit lens and feel the need to stick a UV filter on it.
Now, let's face it, kit lenses are good value for money but they are often not the greatest lenses on the market. Why would you run the risk of lens flaring by adding some glass to the front of the lens? Most lenses are designed as a whole package. From front to rear element they are designed to bring a good image to your sensor (or film).

What are you protecting your lens against? I've used SLR cameras for about 20 years now and I have never had front element damage. Take proper care of your gear. Use a lens hood whenever possible and use your lens caps.

Of course there are circumstances thinkable when you'd want to use a protective filter. If there's stones flying around or if you are in a situation where there's salt water spray or beer flying around for example. So, it can be useful to have a protective filter in the bag. When you do buy one, a skylight or a UV filter don't try to save money there. Get something at least multicoated. The Hong-Kong based firm hvstar has excellent prices on filters and good customer service.

Even with good filters, such as the 62mm Nikon circular polarizer, I own you still need to take care or you will end up with this:



For further reading I suggest reading what Thom Hogan has written on the subject.

Blowing out the candle on her cake.

Blowing out the candle on her cake.
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Rhianne turned 7! Proud owner of a Belle princess dress and a big girl now.

rock, water, earth

rock, water, earth
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took my lunch walk today and noticed this puddle on a rock.

Second attempt at adding the very fashionable vignetting. I think in this case it does add something.

Missing friend Chanin Nickerson

Missing friend
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Not a very flattering picture of my friend Chanin. She moved back to Canada in early august 2006. We exchanged a few emails but she seems to have dropped of the face of the planet in october 2006. I've found a facebook account under her name but even that hasn't been touched in months.

Rosey Rose

Rosey Rose
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

The little bit of glitter on one of the leaves caught my attention so I built my shot around that.

Organic apples

Organic apples
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Visit to the Olmenhorst orchard. Shot a couple of frames and we picked 8kg apples.

purple passion

purple passion
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took this yesterday. It looked ok on the camera but really spectacular on the PC. I'm very proud of this shot.

No Difference

Is one of those excellent songs by Everything but the girl.
You watch the phone Like it was the TV If you're all alone Well, whose fault can that be Your keys, your bag, the car They're where they always are And the light goes down And all the lights.. come on And they call to me Oh come on come on And you don't make, you don't make no difference to me

Excellent. Listening to it makes me see a video of someone driving trough a dark and wet city. Sometimes it can be nice to listen to something as sad as this. I found it on the excellent compilation album "Like the deserts miss the rain"

Learning to swim 2

Learning to swim 2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Is this vacation or what?

Vacation shot

Selftimer, check!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Selftimer. Somewhere in the woods near robertville, belgium.

space

space
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Taking a walk and I suddenly noticed this. Like the emptiness here.

modelling

modelling
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Last lesson in my photography course I got stuck with the first round of modelling. So I asked the teacher to take my camera and shoot a few frames.

Vermeer could have done this

Vermeer could have done this
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Is what I thought when I saw this. Shot raw, almost straight out of the camerea, only used captureNX to "cook" the file and apply a touch of sharpning (set to normal)

This was shot during a trip to the Archeon in Alphen aan de Rijn in the Netherlands. It's a theme park with buildings from 8000 b.c. to about 1500 A.D. with actors portraying persons from history.

These two ladies were from a visiting 13th century reenactment group from Germany.

View on a view

View on a view
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Shot this in the center of Hoofddorp yesterday. I like the lines and colors.

20x30" prints from a D50? Easy!

Well... according to Roman. He was nice enough to share his technique on the dpreview discussion board:




Uprez instructions:

1. Process in ACR at the largest MP size allowed for your camera. 360PPI.

2. Enhance contrast (USM 20/30/0), increase saturation (if needed), sharpen (USM 300/0.3/0) and add noise to reduce the 'watercolor effect' of the next step (0.8% Gaussian monochromatic).

3. Interpolate to 60”x40” at 240 ppi using the Fred Miranda SI Pro 2 plug-in.

4. Down sample it to your desired size (I recommend maximum size of 20”x30” for 6mp….and 30”x45” for 10/12+MP) @ 150 ppi using bicubic sharper.

5. For shots with smoother detail…add noise (3% Gaussian monochromatic) for yet more natural lookif you have a lot of smooth surfaces (No problem with detailed landscapes)

there might be slight variations in the 'usm' and 'add noise' settings …adjust these to taste.

I use smart sharpen for the second piece, but USM works fine.

That’s it.

Now....my stronger reccomendation is to just to PP up to the point just before uprezing.....and send it to a shop that has a LightJet or a quality RIP on a printer like an Epson 9800....they will uprez better than you can even with these technique....(its a small diffrence but it is better)

Roman

His album's here: http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

Quick daisy

Daisy 2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Had taken my camera to the office. Just before my shift was over I strolled out and shot this. Not too shabby!

Disaster recovery

Is an important aspect of managing any IT infrastructure. I just spent the week doing a test at IBM Almere to see if we could get a client's infrastructure up and running there.

I was really impressed by the facilities and the helpful and skilled personnel at IBM Business continuity services. Restoring a backup from a HP system on IBM hardware is very easy using their methods.

What I've learned

• Having a system state backup with NT Backup somewhere on your local drives can help a lot
• If you've restored exchange with HP dataprotector eseutil /cc is an easy way to replay your logs into your store
• The ancient Citrix 1.7 this client uses takes restoring really well
• Restoring DHCP is simply a matter of copying the MDB file from the backup location to the right folder and starting the service.

All in all an intense, tiring and very interesting week.

Hairy behind

Hairy behind
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Digitalis in my garden is attracting bumblebees. Like to see them getting in and out of the flowers.

Bakery demonstration

Bakery demonstration
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took the kids to an open day at a local bakery. Nice demonstrations, good products. I think it's important that they know where their food comes from. (Although I think I'll postpone the abattoir for a few more years)