Discover and Undiscover

You press the button, they do the rest!

thesecretofus — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:18:30 +0000

Any idea of what I have typed there in the title?

” You press the button, they do the rest ” – that’s how photographer defined ” Digital Photography “.

The broad term for this technology is “smart capture”; it lets amateurs emulate the decisions a professional with years of experience would make automatically. It irons out the issues that mar many casual snaps, such as heavy backlighting casting the subject of the photo’s face into shadow, camera shake causing a blurry image and so on.

If you bought your digital camera more than a year or two ago, or didn’t read its manual, chances are you’re missing out on some of this stuff. Much of it has arrived on the market without fanfare, in crude form, while manufacturers tinker with the technology.

So-called “face tracking” or “face detection” technology ensures that the face of your subject remains in focus at all times. You can make your camera home in on an individual or group of people, and let it automatically determine the sensor exposure, flash exposure and white balance needed in a wide range of conditions. It even lets you pan in and out on your subject, to decide whether you’d prefer a close-up or a wide-angle photo, all the time keeping your subject’s face at the centre of the frame.

The camera can spot the face of your subject by analysing their features – it can recognise eyes by the darkness of the pupils, and their relative distance above the line of the mouth; it can tell when your subject smiles by waiting until the curvature of the mouth passes a certain threshold; it can detect if a subject has blinked, and warn you on-screen, to let you take another picture.

Here are some advantages of Digital Photography:

Instant review of pictures, with no wait for the film to be developed: if there’s a problem with a picture, the photographer can immediately correct the problem and take another picture

Minimal ongoing costs for those wishing to capture hundreds of photographs for digital uses, such as computer storage and e-mailing, but not printing

If one already owns a newer computer, permanent storage on digital media is considerably cheaper than film

Photos may be copied from one digital medium to another without any degradation

Pictures do not need to be scanned before viewing them on a computer

Ability to print photos using a computer and consumer-grade printer

Ability to embed metadata within the image file, such as the time and date of the photograph, model of the camera, shutter speed, flash use, and other similar items, to aid in the reviewing and sorting of photographs. Film cameras have limited ability to handle metadata, though many film cameras can “imprint” a date over a picture by exposing the film to an internal LED array (or other device) which displays the date.

Ability to capture and store hundreds of photographs on the same media device within the digital camera; by contrast, a film camera would require regular changing of film (typically after every 24 or 36 shots)

Many digital cameras now include an AV-out connector (and cable) to allow the reviewing of photographs to an audience using a television

Anti-shake functionality (increasingly common in inexpensive cameras) allow taking sharper hand-held pictures where previously a tripod was required

Ability to change ISO speed settings more conveniently in the middle of shooting, for example when the weather changes from bright sunlight to cloudy. In film photography, film must be unloaded and new film with desired ISO speed loaded.

Smaller sensor format, compared to 35mm film frame, allows for smaller lenses, wider zoom ranges, and greater depth of field.

Ability to use the same device to capture video as well as still images.

Ability to convert the same photo from color to sepia to black & white

Disadvantages of Digital Camera:

Dependence upon spare batteries which are heavy to carry and whose lack makes equipment unusable. Batteries used by some film cameras are smaller and not drained as quickly.

Many digital sensors have less dynamic range than color print film. However, some newer CCDs such as Fuji’s Super CCD, which combines diodes of different sensitivity, have improved this issue.

When highlights burn out, they burn to white without details, while film cameras retain a reduced level of detail, as discussed above.

High ISO image noise manifests as multicolored speckles in digital images, rather than the less-objectionable “grain” of high-ISO film. While this speckling can be removed by noise-reduction software, either in-camera or on a computer, this can have a detrimental effect on image quality as fine detail may be lost in the process.

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Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photography

Photography Club Models Shooting – by Ti.

thesecretofus — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:32:33 +0000

Ok so here I come again.

But this entry will not be something about Photography history or Photography techniques, but rather about showing off my own works. I guess that’s alright, yeah?

So I attended Photography Club last week, about model shooting. The models on that day were dollies. If you are questioning yourself what dollies are, then I shall tell you that dollies are just dolls followed Japanese styles. They are cool, beautiful and stunning. Of course, they are expensive too! One dolly can cost you $100++

So I managed to capture some not-so-bad pictures there. Ok it’s SHOW time! My cousin said though they look nice but she doesn’t understand anything about Dollies so she found no interest in my pics, how pitiful =( !!!

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Wait, that’s not the end of this post, I still got one more picture to show you guys. But this one wasnt taken from the Dollies shooting, I just captured it randomly on my way home. It was stunning beautifully. So I just wanna share with you guys ..

Okay! That’s all for this post.

I’m gonna update one more time by tonight. About the development of photography. Gonna be a boring post, I suppose xD !!! But what to do? I’m doing my project !!! See ya!!

A history of Photography.

thesecretofus — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:45:37 +0000

Hi there! It’s Ti again. First of all, I want to say sorry to my dear blog which I have abandoned for quite a while. Secondly, I want to ask where are you, my dear Joel? The glider thing is coming you know and yet we haven’t even bothered preparing things *sobbing*.

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As you know (I’m referring to out dear tutor – ms Ng, yeah) , my second target which was set in my ICA 1 is all about Photography. So I’m here (again) to blog about how photography actually came to life, how it began and how it changed the world of art.

The informations posted below are collected from various websites ( I’m exaggerating a bit since there are only 2 of them ). I’m not so good at history so actually all of them are typically copied and pasted. But I do read all of them, yeah! So excuse me for the history, ms Ng! I hope the next post about Photography skills and all that I can give my own comments and opinions!

And yeah, ms Ng and folks, do you know that Ti is actually a not-so-bad photographer too? Do visit my flickr for pictures, they were all taken by me! Yeah! Here is the url to my flickr, duhhh, I don’t know how to link in wordpress blog! So I hope you don’t mind copying and pasting this url into ur web browser! Here you go, people!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiphotography/

Cheers!

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Beginning of Photography

[ Well, I'm a bit curious how to take picture with this "camera" ] =)

First, the name. We owe the name “Photography” to Sir John Herschel , who first used the term in 1839, the year the photographic process became public. The word is derived from the Greek words for light and writing.

Before mentioning the stages that led to the development of photography, there is one amazing, quite uncanny prediction made by a man called de la Roche (1729- 1774) in a work called Giphantie. In this imaginary tale, it was possible to capture images from nature, on a canvas which had been coated with a sticky substance. This surface, so the tale goes, would not only provide a mirror image on the sticky canvas, but would remain on it. After it had been dried in the dark the image would remain permanent. The author would not have known how prophetic this tale would be, only a few decades after his death.

There are two distinct scientific processes that combine to make photography possible. It is somewhat surprising that photography was not invented earlier than the 1830s, because these processes had been known for quite some time. It was not until the two distinct scientific processes had been put together that photography came into being.

The first of these processes was optical. The Camera Obscura (dark room) had been in existence for at least four hundred years. There is a drawing, dated 1519, of a Camera Obscura by Leonardo da Vinci; about this same period its use as an aid to drawing was being advocated.

The second process was chemical. For hundreds of years before photography was invented, people had been aware, for example, that some colours are bleached in the sun, but they had made little distinction between heat, air and light.

The first successful picture was produced in June/July 1827 by Niépce, using material that hardened on exposure to light. This picture required an exposure of eight hours.

On 4 January 1829 Niépce agreed to go into partnership with Louis Daguerre . Niépce died only four years later, but Daguerre continued to experiment. Soon he had discovered a way of developing photographic plates, a process which greatly reduced the exposure time from eight hours down to half an hour. He also discovered that an image could be made permanent by immersing it in salt.

Following a report on this invention by Paul Delaroche , a leading scholar of the day, the French government bought the rights to it in July 1839. Details of the process were made public on 19 August 1839, and Daguerre named it the Daguerreotype.

The announcement that the Daguerreotype “requires no knowledge of drawing….” and that “anyone may succeed…. and perform as well as the author of the invention” was greeted with enormous interest, and “Daguerreomania” became a craze overnight. An interesting account of these days is given by a writer called Gaudin , who was present the day that the announcement was made.

In 1851 a new era in photography was introduced by Frederick Scott Archer , who introduced the Collodion process. This process was much faster than conventional methods, reducing exposure times to two or three seconds, thus opening up new horizons in photography.

The next major step forward came in 1871, when Dr. Richard Maddox discovered a way of using Gelatin (which had been discovered only a few years before) instead of glass as a basis for the photographic plate. This led to the development of the dry plate process. Dry plates could be developed much more quickly than with any previous technique. Initially it was very insensitive compared with existing processes, but it was refined to the extent that the idea of factory-made photographic material was now becoming possible.

The introduction of the dry-plate process marked a turning point. No longer did one need the cumbersome wet-plates, no longer was a darkroom tent needed. One was very near the day that pictures could be taken without the photographer needing any specialised knowledge.

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Oh My God – that’s all I can think of now. It has taken me 2 hours to digest the whole thing and select only the main points to put up here. I guess some of our folks here will be too lazy to read, am I right? Because even the main points seem to take centuries to read and digest … *Sobbing* …

Next entry coming up soon.

Next entry’s title: Development of digital photography.

♥ The very first entry! ♥

thesecretofus — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:18:24 +0000

Well Hi people! Ti’s here ♥ !

I have just created this blog and it’s gonna be our Project! “Our” here includes Joel and I. Together, we’re going to write this blog and make it as attractive as possible!

Bye guys, see you in the next entry!

♥

Ps: Well yeah I just want to show off a bit. The banner of this blog was done by me. Hehez, it took me 5 mins working on one of my picture taken last week. Do give me some comments if you happen to read this line =p. I appreciate it very much! Thanks!

♥