I went downtown with Una last night to the Lotus Lantern Festival for Buddha's birthday. Out of 480+ photos, I was most taken with the one above, but there's going to be more posted here soon. Since I think G will be curious about the photo's parameters, it was shot at 1/125s f/5.6 at 28mm (46mm equiv.) with ISO 1600, post-processed with Noise Ninja and Photoshop CS2's Shadow/Highlight tool. My most effective camera setting last night was shutter-priority mode set at 1/125s. I found the best light for photos to be just down the street from all the lights assembled for the live tv broadcast, as it gave just enough light to allow a fast shutter w/o flash, but not so much light as to washout the lanterns.
The festival was tamer than I expected, but then again this was a religious ceremony. However, the ignorant supporters of Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk were in full-force with banners, successful in getting many of the parade participants to join them in chanting his name. It's a chant that sounds to native-English ears as, "Hwang you suck!"... or at least that's what I was chanting.
Anyway, Korea, wake up. Supporting Dr. Hwang is akin to supporting ex-prez Richard Nixon after his impeachment ("but he did end the Vietnam war!"). Yes, Hwang was the first man to clone a dog. But his subsequent lies and betrayal of the public, his country, and scores of terminally-ill patients is unforgivable. And to believe that these supporters then joined the tail end of the parade, chanting for Hwang. Luckily, the TV cameras had already shut off at 9:30pm.
...more photos to come as I process them!
Excellent.
You saved me the hassle of asking you the particulars in the comment section. I'm also glad to hear you used Noise Ninja for this - that's something I've been thinking about but wanted to see more results from. I don't notice any noise in the larger version of this picture, so I guess it works well. (As you may or may not know, the D70s is said to be far behind the XT in terms of noise.)
Looking forward to seeing more of these night shots...
If I didn't have Noise Ninja I would be much more hesitant to shoot at ISO 1600.
But I'm upgrading my workflow style. I've been lazily shooting in JPG, when I should be using RAW and the appropriate software. "Bibble" recently integrated Noise Ninja, and "RawShooter" is also highly regarded, both are used to process RAW images. Heck, I've got a 4gb card in the camera, which is good for ~450 RAW images, which is about my typical session size... so there's no reason not to switch.
Excellent photography, Max. I'm going to have to start saving some of your photos onto my hard drive and print a series of them for hanging in the Watson household. The shot of the Lotus Lanterns is a keeper. It's most impressive.
Thanks Dad. But let me email you the original 7 megapixel images if you want to print--they'll look much better.
Nice shot above, Max. I was at the festival as well, but it looks as if you found a better place for lighting than I. I haven't gotten around to post-processing any of my shots yet, so will just have to see what I've got when I get around to it. My hopes aren't terribly high, though.
It *really* was all about being just a little bit past the TV lights... which just so happened to be my third location. I tried before the lights, it was much too dark. I tried at the lights, it looked horrible. I moved a little bit down, towards the end of the parade, and BAM.. Which also was about the time I switched up to shooting at 1/125s from 1/100... and maybe even a slightly faster shutter would have been better.
But, now I'll remember for next time. I'm so SLR-rusty these days, even though it's been a year that I've had to reacquint myself.
You've got a 4GB card in your camera?! Wow! The biggest I've even seen here is 2GB and they are super-expensive.
The first shot here, in particular, really appeals to me and I know how difficult it must have been to get it. Well done.
Tore, I headed over to Yahoo Shopping Japan and you're right, they ARE expensive over there! What's up with that? I've watched Korea's electronics prices become more competetive with US prices over the last year as the won has strengthened, but, geeze, it looks like I could fund a trip to Japan by hawking memory cards purchased in the US.
For the record, 2gb memory cards can be had for as little as $60 and always under $100 in the US.
wow! Nice pics...makes me wanna go to Seoul...by the way, the first thing that caught my attention when i came to ur blog is that u've changed the banner to Taipei (i have linked to u at the bottom of my blog and check regularly...the banner used to be different)...can i ask did u take that picture? It looks absolutely fantastic and surreal..
hcpen- I've shot all the photos used on here on my site, with the exception of some underwater photos last December shot by a divemaster (and I gave him credit next to every photo).
The banner is random with each page load, so that even if I've been too busy to update, you'll still get something fresh-ish at the top of the page. Speaking of which, I've got a huge stockpile of photos that I'd like to put up here! If only I had a clone. ;)