D 217 - Wrinkles

Accidental head turn.

D 168 - Swingallows

And sometimes a night can look like a day.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

D 166 - Night of the Lush Green

A scene that attracted attention on a dark, cloudy night.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

D 105 - Too close

Macro and lighting experiments.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on tripod, white-sheet reflector.

D 97 - Nightime sneaking

The moon was close to full, the sky was almost to clear. The night was bright and inviting without being overwhelming.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30. Mounted on gorilla-pod.

What I learned

I was using a manual lens at night with very little ability to precisely focus the lens and with a need to have large depth of field. I ended up with exposures from 30 to 60 seconds and ISO boosted up to 200-400.

I'd decided to start shooting SooC (Straight out of Camera). So no editing here, although I had to fight myself not to correct the exposure with Lightroom sliders. I broke at noise removal and did some.

D 95 - Cone

A spruce cone, one of the treasures gathered while walking in a park with a two year-old.

Equipment

E-510 with 6+15mm extension tubes and Pentacon 30. On a tripod.
Changed to monochrome with selective color mix, adjusted levels and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

I was considering publishing this photo in color, it had such a nice warm colors:

But all in all I decided that colors are stronger in the background than the cone and divert attention from main focal point.

I was surprised when while taking this photograph my camera refused to turn on the long exposure noise reduction. I was changing modes back and forth and it was the same everywhere. I knew this option was active when I was doing the same kind of shots before. Only later I realized that I'd changed shooting mode into a series of shots and that (go figure) blocked noise reduction.

D 90 - Not all that glitters is gold

Macro close-up on a hand sharpened pencil.

I'm trying to make some improvements to the visual side of the blog every once in a while. I think that the dark borders around photos help to frame the compositions within them.

Equipment

E-510, 6-15-27mm extension tubes and Helios 44-4. Flash with a soft-box, aluminum sheet reflector.

What I learned

Not every macro proves to be as fascinating as those of thorny chestnut skin. Perhaps most man-made objects are just a very poor imitation of mother nature.

If you look at natural objects you will find them showing new fascinating textures from naked eye view all the way to atomic structure. At every level there is an organization of elements because the nature "made" them as a bottom-up designs - the characteristics of the smallest particles forces specific arrangements at higher levels.

When man designs and produces an item, he thinks top-down. He knows what he wants in the end and then works out what materials and arrangements to use at smaller scales. And there is no particle in this universe that would naturally form itself into a blender, bicycle or a Zuiko Digital lens. So at some structural level man-made things have to be clumsy, simplified, dull and ugly.

Or so says Zarathustra.

D 86 - Chestnuts

Macro festival goes on.
These are some dried chestnuts skins from the Fall. I never thought that they had so much texture and color in them.

Equipment

E-510 with 15mm (the 1st photo) and 48mm (the 2nd one) macro distance rings between the body and the Pentacon 30 3.5. Tripod
Aperture f/22, exposure 30+ seconds. Mirror lock-up.

What I learned

Distance rings are excellent but they severely decrease the amount of light reaching the sensor. So do very small apertures, which are necessary to get some depth of field.

I had some wild ideas today, one was to put the distance rings between the camera body and the Tair 300mm lens. I got a 1:2 magnification factor from a distance of about 2m from the sensor. But the lens is so heavy that I can't hold it steady enough for macro.

D 84 - Red Hole

I got myself a new toy!
Three macro distance rings for m42 lens mount. This allows me to use my Helios and Pentacon lens as excellent macro equipment.

With all three rings attached Pentacon 30 3.5 focuses from about 1-2 cm from the lens surface and the Pentacon a maximum f/22 aperture. I must measure what magnification factor it has effectively. But this looks like about 1:1 or even larger.

Equipment

E-510 with 3 macro rings and Pentacon 30 3.5 at the end.

What I learned

Gadgets are a fuel for inspiration. I myself regret to conclude this but this is a verified fact.

D 77 - NKVD on Victory Square

A dubious result of carrying a camera with me at all times. This particular times were completely inebriated and late for the last bus home.

This place is really called Victory Square in Polish but the fur hat isn't Russian.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on high ISO (thus the noise) and long exposure (thus the blur). But the lamp light was too good to waste by turning the flash on. Or so I thought at that time. Well, maybe "thought" wasn't the word to use in my condition.

What I learned

It is hard to make long exposure photos. It is very hard to make them while being totally smashed. Each time I looked at the LCD to frame, my labyrinth went a bit crazy, my upper body went backwards and I had to try to compensate it with my hands to keep the camera steady. I wish I could see myself doing that. Must have been quite a disturbing sight.

The city is amazingly quiet on Sunday midnight. Even more so, when two major local football teams (soccer for some) play an evening match.

All restless souls of that night had been pacified in clashes with the police. And then it was quiet. Shhh... shhh... It was so still and so peaceful until I felt like singing on the bus. :D

D 73 - Make ends meet

The last due photo because of weekend slacks. Another take on the candle lit clock.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Maybe I can skip posting on weekend but I'll try to take photos to post on Monday. Catching up for half of the week is not very inspiring.

D 72 - Already dreaming

Shooting late at night as usual. But cutting sleeping hours to just make this 'one more shot' from another angle seems like a noble sacrifice.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Discarding out of camera JPGs as a rule is not always a necessary thing. When you have little time left to make, edit and post a photo they are sometimes just good enough. It's not like I'm doing large prints here, where every little difference counts.

D 71 - Ouf of the corridor

Scarce light and high contrast.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

Some tripods are better and some cost a fiver. Mine is the top of the line Chinese crap but it doesn't fall over or collapse under the weight of a DSLR. So it is useful. I wish it had a ball-head for easier framing and an option for mounting the head on the under side of the shaft for frog perspective shots.

D 69 - Lightpainting

Light painting was another technique that I don't really care for much. Some works with it are stunningly beautiful but they need a level of planning and directing on the set which is just as intimidating.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

I hoped to achieve a 3D effect with a short focal length. But it either needs wider lens than 28mm or some additional treatment of the light source to make itself more 3D.

D 53 - Charming the Spring

Another photo that sort of came out in green-yellow hue. Looks like someone here is looking forward to the snow melting away.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios lens. Longer exposure in place of flash.

What I learned

In body stabilization of Olympus as compared to better high ISO performance of Nikons and Canons is a double-edged thing. It's a pain in the back when you want to catch your kid running around or other scenes with people in motion, because it allows you to shoot at longer exposures but it doesn't compensate in any way for the motion within the frame.

However in such cases as my today's photograph it is great to have an old manual lens stabilized and shoot just slightly softened picture at 1/6 second shot from hand.

D 50 - The World, spinning around

Big day today.
We cut our son's hair... and he ain't like it a little bit.
Fortunately he quickly forgot about it and went on having fun all around our apartment.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, flash on slow synchro, softbox.

What I learned

Slow synchronization of the flash is a fun technique. It works great with panning. The thing is to make a good balance between natural light coming on the sensor and the flash strength.

D 44 - 'Banana'

"Banana!" This is just how my son over there demands to get some fruit.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, flash with softbox.

What I learned

Sometimes there isn't just time to sit to work it out properly and any photo must make do.

Another thing is this funny effect that I get when making a photo with exposure time around 1/20 - 1/5 of a second with flash. I wonder how to use it creatively.

D 39 - 90 Degrees

I wasn't particularly inspired for some few days, but I'm trying to be regular with the Project 365 and I made myself take the camera, tripod and make a photo which I thought about yesterday. So this is a square composition.
I can't say it knocks me off my feet. But I can't remember any square based composition which really impressed me.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 lens, on tripod.

What I learned

I was wandering if I had to take longer focal length lens to make this square look right-angled and flat but it was o.k. with Pentacon's 30mm.

Unfortunately I noticed again how vulnerable to front light this lens is. I had a strong light source at about 45 degrees right from the optical axis of the lens but the contrast on that side was dramatically reduced. I admit, that I don't have a lens hood for Pentacon yet.

I'm still not happy with this composition. Again it isn't really a square.

D 24 - The Star

Od Dark Light Back

Od Dark Light Back

High in the sky or just within reach? The star - symbol of hope and things we are looking forward to. This are my two takes on another random topic.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 and in case of my son's photo built-in flash with softbox.

What I learned

This self imposed random challenges are a very inspiring concept. It almost seems to easy to just pop up with some more or less universal symbol and work around it. At least it is so for me.

D 11 - Y2K+10

Od Dark Light Back

Od Dark Light Back

Happy New Year!
The photos are too straightforward to write anything about them. This is simply a happy time!

Equipment

Both: E-510 with ZD1442, no flash.

What I learned

In 2009 I learned that... Hahaha! Forget it, I'm on booze.