The Author – Bart Busschots
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Mar
9
Photo of the Week 3 – El Castell de Guadalest
Filed Under Photography on March 9, 2008 | 1 Comment
This photo was take way back in 2000 with the Olympus OM-1 I inherited off my parents. This was my first real camera and was completely manual. It was a great way to really get to grips with the technical aspects of photography. This photo was taken on our first trip to Spain as a family and it’s a trip I have many very fond memories of.
El Castell de Guadalest is an old medieval town high in the mountains in the provice of Valencia in Spain. It has been largely preserved and is now a tourist attraction. The village is surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs and can only be entered via a single gate which has been cut into the rocks. The beautiful white tower you see in this photograph is perched at the top of the cliff over-looking the entrance.
Click for Full-Size Version (1.1MB)
Since good old fashioned 35mm film doesn’t store EXIF data I can’t give any technical specs for this shot.
[tags]Spain, El Castell de Guadalest[/tags]
Mar
2
Photo of the Week 2 – A Fresh Winter Morning
Filed Under Photography on March 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This photo was taken on the morning of the 21st of December 2007 in St. Joseph’s Square on the South Campus of NUI Maynooth. St. Joseph’s Square is at the heart of the historic old campus in Maynooth and is the home of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth as well as NUI Maynooth. As well as housing academic departments the old campus also doubles up as a park for the residents of Maynooth who love to walk in the picturesque grounds.
Click to View Full-Size (1.8MB)
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/200 Sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Auto
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, NUI Maynooth, winter[/tags]
Feb
24
Photo of the Week 1 – An Evening Stroll
Filed Under Photography on February 24, 2008 | 1 Comment
Inspired by Ann Teliczan’s Michigan Sweet Spot photo blog I’ve decided to start sharing my favourite photos on a regular basis. My library of shots I consider worthy is not that big yet so this will be a weekly photo blog for now. The pictures posted will not necessarily be taken on the week they’re posted, in fact, they most probably won’t be. I’ve set up a separate category for these posts within my main blog so they will show up in the regular RSS feed but it’s also possible to subscribe to just the photo blog category.
Now lets get the show on the road! The first photo I’ve chosen to feature is one I took while on holidays in Belgium last Christmas. I’ve captioned it “an evening stroll”. Some of you may not know that I was actually born in the Village of Duffel in Belgium. Duffel is bisected by the river Nete and there is only one road bridge across the river in the village so it’s vital artery for road and pedestrian traffic. This photo shows that bridge silhouetted against a fabulous winter sunset on the evening of the 28th of December 2007.
Click for Full-Size Version (2.3MB)
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AF-S 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/200 Sec
- Focal Length: 35mm
- Focal Ratio: F4.8
- ISO: 800
- Exposure Compensation: -0.67
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
[tags]Belgium, sunset, Duffel[/tags]
Feb
18
Aperture Priority – Get More Out of Your DSLR
Filed Under Photography on February 18, 2008 | 3 Comments
When I first got my Nikon D40 I left it on full automatic mode and basically let the camera choose everything except the zoom. I got some fantastic shots that way but I soon started to crave more control. DSLRs like the D40 give you a number of manual modes to choose from so it’s not an all-or-nothing choice where the camera either looks after everything or nothing. Instead you can choose for a half-way-house where you control the element that’s most important for you and leave some or all of the rest up to the camera. The two most common semi-automatic modes are S (shutter priority) and A (aperture priority). Since almost everything I shoot is animate and stationary I don’t have any great need for control over the shutter speed. However, for the kind of shots I do like to take I like to have control over the aperture. This is why my camera spends almost all it’s time in aperture priority (A) mode and almost all of the rest of the time in full manual mode when I do mad things like take pictures of stars.
Feb
1
My First Real Astrophotos With My Nikon D40
Filed Under Photography, Science & Astronomy on February 1, 2008 | 8 Comments
This week I’ve started on the next rung of the Astrophotography ladder. Until now I was just taking a few hand-held shots of planets in the evening twilight. While they were nice shots, there is a lot more to astrophotography than that! What I’ve started experimenting with this week is using my very bright F1.4 30mm prime focus lens for longer tripod-mounted exposures. I’m already in love with my prime focus lens but this is yet another reason it’s the best €300 I’ve ever spent. I get a lot more use out of it than I do out of my zoom lenses.
Jan
18
New Wallpapers Added to Gallery
Filed Under Photography on January 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Because of the initial problems running the GIMP on OS X 10.5 Leopard it’s been a long time since I added more wallpapers to my gallery. The new wallpapers cover a summer scene in Cavan, autumn leaves in Maynooth and a Belgian winter wonderland.
You can see my wallpapers here.
[tags]Wallpaper, Winter, Summer, Autumn[/tags]
Jan
17
Photographic Evidence of my Geekiness
Filed Under Photography, Computers & Tech on January 17, 2008 | 2 Comments
I’d meant to post this picture last night as part of my post reflecting on the Macworld 2008 Keynote but I forgot. I just found it sitting on my desktop today and decided to share it anyway. Since the keynote is no longer streamed live by Apple we Mac faithful who can’t make it for real have to try get what ever scraps of info we can from those lucky few who can. You obviously can’t rely on a single source since Macworld Keynotes tend to take down websites and different people will report different bits of info. You also need to be prepared. You need to get into the relevant IRC rooms early before they fill up etc.. To facilitate all this I created an extra space in Leopard in which I laid out everything I needed and had it all ready to go well before kick-off. I took a screen shot which I’ll stick in at the end of the post.
You can see that I had MacRumours’ coverage open which turned out to be very good. You can also see Twitterific open showing the ArsTechnica twitter feed which turned out to be not so good – Macworld was just too much for twitter which fell over in a heap. Next up I had two IRC sessions going, one to the ArsTechnical room for keynote coverage which proved to be the best coverage I got, and one to the IRC server of my college netsoc. Finally, I had iChat open to make sure I didn’t miss anything that Allison of the NosillaCast podcast caught, and later to chat to Victor from the Typical Mac User Podcast who was actually in the keynote.
[tags]Macworld, MacRumours, ArsTechnica, Apple[/tags]
Dec
11
Night Time Photography – Another Reason to Go Fast Fixed Focus
Filed Under Photography on December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
When I recently purchased a 30mm F1.4 fixed focus lens I explained my reasons for doing so while reviewing the lens. Today I realised I left out yet another reason to add a fast fixed-focus lens to your collection. Because fast lenses gather insane amounts of light you can shoot hand-held at night and actually get good results. I did manage to get some night time images before using the standard 18-55mm zoom that comes as part of the Nikon D40 kit, but that was really working at the limit (see the results here). Because that lens is quite slow at F3.5-5.6 I had to crank the ISO up to 1600 and even then the exposure times were still very high. This resulted in images that were grainy and a lot had to be junked because they were blurred to a greater or lesser extent.
On my way home from work this evening I had a go at some night time photography with my new F1.4 lens. It was such a nice experience! With the ISO turned down to 800 I could easily take hand held shots that look pretty good.
You can see the results of my work in this gallery.
Dec
1
30mm F1.4 Lens from Sigma – First Impressions
Filed Under Photography on December 1, 2007 | 2 Comments
I’ve been looking for a good fast fixed-focus lens for a while. It was quite tough because I have a Nikon D40 and very few lenses autofocus on this camera because it doesn’t have it’s own built-in focusing motor. This means that only lenses that contain their own motor will auto-focus on the D40. After a lot of searching I finally settled on the Sigma 30 mm F1.4 DC lens. It arrived earlier this week so I’ve been doing a little playing around with it since.
[tags]30mm, Sigma, DSLR, Nikon D40[/tags]
Oct
7
Major Gallery Update
Filed Under Photography on October 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Although I’d been pretty good about actually taking pictures over the last two months I haven’t been very good about uploading them to my gallery. I’ve remedied that today. Check them out: