From Nikon to Olympus

Hi all!

It's been a while since my last post. I had to make a big decision at the end of the year 2013 on whether I should invest more on lenses to my Nikon system or to make a jump to the Olympus system. At that time I had already own a few lenses and accessories like speedlights and battery grip which was just purchased in November 2013. I was pretty satisfied with my then entry level Nikon D3200 camera but after using it for 6 months or so, you can say I have out grown it. I still love the colour renditions of the Nikon unit but due to my age and the weight of the system, I find it hard for me to bring those gears to my shooting locations which includes a lot of walking and hiking. My main transport to those rural and hard to reach places is my faithful Yamaha scooter so hauling a big camera bag with accessories and the tripod was difficult and tiring. 

Then I read a lot of reviews regarding the Olympus micro four third's system which is light and compact. The thing that starts me off was the Olympus Pen Ep2. The self portrait above was shot with it using the 45mm f1.8 lens at quite far a distance by my wife. I had to cropped this image so I looked bigger in the frame. The Olympus Pen Ep2 was sold to me at a bargain price together with the kit lens 14-42mm and also an external speedlight  was supposed to be sold separately at 1/4 of the original price. So with this camera I took it out to my favourite shooting locations and after seeing the results, I knew it would be the system for me. Then at the end of the year 2013 three days before Christmas, there was a big drop in price for the Olympus OMD EM5 and I am sold. I traded in all my Nikon gears in exchanged for the Olympus.

No regrets!

I have been shooting which it extensively for the past two months and I can tell you this....fantastic! It does what my Nikon did and even betters it in a lot of ways. I love to do HDR bracketing shots and this camera gives me the options  to do 2 to 7 bracketed exposure's images which is more than I ever need. You can get details about this camera from other websites so I will not be talking about it much here. Just look at the images above and you can judge it yourself. 

The first image above was shot just yesterday with  5 exposures bracketing and processed in Photomatix Pro and refined in another software. The second image is direct out of camera art filtered jpeg. Look at the dynamic range of the camera....unbelievable!

Of course there is now the flagship Olympus OMD EM1 which is another fantastic camera but it is of my budget for the moment. It's almost priced at the same levels to the Sony A7 full frame mirrorless camera so it will be out of reach to many avid photographers and with that kind of price many would opt for the Sony instead.

Anyway, the point of my blog this time round is to show that good images from any photographers may not have come from very expensive cameras, be it full frame, APS-C or micro four thirds or even a point and shoot compact cameras. It all depends on your needs and styles. As they always said the best camera is the ones with you, just make sure you bring it everywhere you go so you don't miss those shots.

Here's the thing, to bring it everywhere you go means it has to be small enough. I can't do that with the Nikon, that why I made this important decision to jump to the Olympus micro four thirds system so that I don't loose those important shots.

That is all for this time. Hope you enjoy those images above and the ones I had posted throughout the year.

If you have any questions, feel free to write to me! Have a nice day!

ngjames772photography: Sunrise in Kong Kong

ngjames772photography: Sunrise in Kong Kong:  I took this shot on the morning of 13th October 2013 at around 6.30 am. I am always looking forward to sunrise shots due to the wonderful c...

Sunset in Purple

 Hi! I was grounded for two weeks without a single photos taken due to the rainy season at the place where I am staying. I never give up hopes and would  bring along my camera to work just in case the rain do stops and the conditions just right that I can at least get a few shots and hope to get a great one too. You can take 50 to 100 photos of the same place and subjects but in the end only a few stand out. For this shot here I was rewarded for my passion and desire to get a shot at the slightest of opportunity. I was drinking a cup of tea at my favourite coffee shop and the rain stopped at 6 pm and upon glancing up to the sky I knew I was going to get something great. Only this time I knew exactly where I would be going because the sun would set at around 6.30 pm and time was limited. Upon reaching the spot, I quickly set up my gears and took a few shots but somehow something was missing. Most of the shots felt empty. I used the 18-55mm kit lens because that's the only landscape lens I have and at focal length of 18mm, although wide enough for my normal landscape shoots something just didn't feel right in those shots I took earlier. The sky was so beautiful then I knew I could not afford to waste anymore time! After a few more framing and shootings, there......I got this shot and I knew what I should do to the rest of the shots. You know what? Instead of making most of the wide angle the lens can provide it's zooming in that did the trick here. The space in front of me was empty with no foreground objects to focus on, just the empty sea. All the other objects were quite a distance away. By zooming in I managed to fill up the empty space in the frame and add character to the shots. I tried swapping lens and used my 55-200mm. Every shot after that improved. What I learned here is that not all landscape compositions have to be made with wide angle lens but tele zoom lens could be more effective when your nearest objects is far away and your can't walk on water! to reach it. Here is a secret I would like to share with you regarding this picture above. In normal pictures shot around this angle and time you will normally gets sillhoute pictures and because I love that little floating shed so much, I did a 3 shots exposures to create an HDR image in order to highlight what's inside the shed for better effect and tonemapped to as natural as possible. Another secret........ the sky, no doubt it was already very beautiful at that time I just needed more colour so I put a gradient tint to it using the software that I have. And this is the result I was going after. Have patience and you can create something out of nothing. Happy shooting!

Floating Jetty- How much is too much?

 Hi! How do you find this image? What processes did I use? Do you find the image nice and comfortable to look at or hdr-ish to a point you can't accept it? To be frank, this image was processed in two HDR software to attained this result which I found quite pleasant and almost to the original image. Many people had asked me why didn't I just process all my pictures in normal photo editing softwares for all natural results? Well I did that in the earlier days when I first started photography. Some results were ok if there were people in the images but when it comes to landscape in daylight somethings just not right. There weren't any wow factor in the images and the subjects in those images just won't pop out. In-camera processing has its limits, so do certain basic picture editing softwares. So how much is too much in terms of images processing by todays standard? I truly cannot answer that. I have tried editing one particular image in five different softwares but still could not be satisfied with the results produced by each individual softwares . Then I started to learn pros and cons of each individual software and combined them in an effort to edit a single image. Some are very good at sharpening, some are very good at contrast, some good at giving very natural saturation and etc. It was the usage of this combination of softwares that I manage to produce some stunning images by my own standard of course. I will try to process it to as natural as possible to highlight what needed be highlighted and not overdoing it to a point where the image looks out of this world where it would look more like a painting than a photograph taken by a camera. Nothing is original these days, even a slight adjusment to the contrast or colour saturation is  considered image manipulation. You can even manipulate the images while the files are still in the camera itself. Some cameras of today can even make an HDR image in the in-camera software before you even download it to the computer or print it out directly via imaging kiosks.
So the question is, how much is too much? It all depends on you, how you want your images to look like, how you want to present your images for others to see from your own viewpoints. It is your pictures, your own work of art, it belongs to you, edit as much as you want to get the results you aimed for, it is digital, nothing is wasted in the process, make that image yours and share! Any critisism is good as it is the only way to improve and to master photography. Beauty Lies in the Eyes of the Beholder! Happy shooting everyone!

Sunset in Blue

 In the past post, I had mentioned that most sunrise shots will produce bluish tint and most sunset shots will produce reddish tint.  Well, in some cases you can change the colour tones by using certain filters and may effect the whole picture and changed the mood altogether. Lets take a look at this particular photo that I shot yesterday evening. If you have seen my past blog regarding sunset shots, you will noticed that the former sunset photo was reddish in colour and the water was fiery and rough. That shot was intended to be like that where you could feel the warmth and wind in that picture. Now what you see here in this particular picture is the reverse, cool and calm. How did I do it? The secret is the use of Neutral Density filters or ND filter in short form. The main purpose of an ND filter is to blocked out the harsh sunlight and to slows down the shutter speed or to lengthen exposure's time so that you get to tame the rough and moving water for the effect you are going after. ND filters are graded in stops, how much light it will block out depending on your suroundings and the kind of effect you are after. It starts from #1, #3, #6, #9 and #10. There is also an adjustable type in the market which is actually a 2 stacked together polariser lens whereby you turned it to get the shades/stops you want. The adjustable one has its limits and is mainly for light duty works. The higher the stops number the darker it gets, more light will be blocked with progressively longer shutter speed needed. Also please take note that the darker filters also effect the colour shift normally towards cooler temperature. If you shoots in RAW you can correct the colour temperature in the editing software but if you shoots in JPEG, then nothing much can be done. you can still alter the edited photos in Picasa but has its limits. Okay, let us talk about this picture. Since I had decided to smoothen the water with the use of an ND filter, lets think for a while. Would it be nice if the water becomes reddish in colour or the blue suits it more? I think you should know the answer right? Blue would be more suited for this kind of pictures and with the ND filter attached, you don't have to do anything, the water will turns out this way, believe me! Just make sure the sky is not to bright  or the sun directly blaring its sunlight to you camera because like I said, harsh sunlight is warm light so you will get yellowish tint instead. This kind of shots is best done on an overcast day where some clouds will block out the harsh sun ray and not to heavy a cloud where you cannot get colourful sky like this. What settings did I use? I will list it out below but it will largely depends on the amount of light, time of day and what stops ND filters you were using:
a) ND #6 mounted to 18-55mm kit lens. Turn off the VR. Mounted the camera to a sturdy tripod.
b) Set the ISO to 100 for minimum noise and maximum shutter speed.
c) Set to Aperture priority mode and set it to f22 for least light to extend exposures time.
d) Compose your shot and check the exposure timed to at least 30 seconds to smoothen the water out. If the time is too short you can stack another ND filter onto the first ND filter or you can add a polarising filter to lengthen exposure time.
e) Take a test shot, if you notice too much rippling of the water of the picture came out too bright, change the exposure compensation in your camera to -5EV if it allows. Extend your shutter speed to 45 seconds or 1 minute. From now on it is trial and error.
f) Make sure you use the self timer or a cable to reduce camera shake.
For the picture above, I had to take five shots of 30s to get one right by manipulating the f stops and exposure compensation from the camera. It is a bit tricky and you will need a bit of luck to get a shot like this but it is all worth it. You can take a few hundreds of photos a day but one photo like this will make my day!
Happy Shooting! I sincerely hope that to those of you who have never tried this kind of photography techniques can start trying, there will be alot of hit and misses but it is all worth it when you hit one and you will treasure every moment of it and shares it to your friends and family.

Sunrise in Kong Kong

 I took this shot on the morning of 13th October 2013 at around 6.30 am. I am always looking forward to sunrise shots due to the wonderful colours of the sky in early hours of the day that is bluish and cool. In order to take shots like this I will have to reach the designated spot half an hour before the first light appears. Once I reached there I will checked out the surroundings for potential shooting spots where the best of shots can be produce as the time is short this kind of shoots. The moment the sun appears, all the nice colours of the sky will be lost. Camera settings for shoots like this are as follows:
a) Mode: Aperture priority and set to f/8 or f/11 for maximum depth of field.
b) ISO: 100 for least noise and also to slow down the shutter speed to optimise misty water effect.
c) Shutter speed: Since you are in Aperture priority mode, the camera will decides for you.
d) Focal length: Widest as possible /18mm.
e) Sturdy tripod is a must for sharp images due to the long exposure time.
f) Filters: Polarising filter for good colour and water reproduction and a #4 ND filter+polarising filter once the sun appears.
g) Shutter cable: Better if you have it or use in-camera self timer to reduce camera shake.
Take one or two test shots to check the exposures of the images. If it is to dark or too bright(which is not acceptable in sunrise shots) change the exposure settings via the exposure compensation function in the camera for optimum exposures.
Of all kinds of photography, sunrise shooting is the one I like best because each and everytime the results will amaze me and my friends for the colours it produces is unmatched to shooting at any other time of the day.
If you have never tried sunrise shoots before, it is time to try it and I promise you that you won't regret it and will go back for more.........Happy Shooting!

Seascape in sunset

 Have you ever wonder how to take pictures like this? What are the techniques, settings and equipments? Actually it is not that hard. You must first study the weather and the sky for  the shooting day. Hazy and heavily clouded sky will not make the picture looks good. Some cloud is good to block out the harsh sun ray if you are shooting towards it which is what we wanted to do anyway. When you reach your destination, scout around the place for some interesting objects for your composition. The objects could be on the sandy beach or in the water as long as it could be included in the picture to make your composition more dramatic. It is not advisable to compose your picture with the object in the dead centre of the frame. It will not look nice. Bring it a little bit to the off centre to leave some open space for inclusion of extra things like the pillars you see in this picture.
For most shots, I do not like to place the sun in the center. I would prefer to place it either to the left or to the right side of the frame. The reason? Well, take a look at this picture. you will see two main colour to the sky. On the left it is blue which is not effected by the sun and on the right it is orange. It also gets reflected to the water so there is more colour to this composition. If you framed the sun in the centre, all you will get is one bright orange colour to the whole picture. How much of the beach to be included in the picture depends on your taste and the kind of compositions you have in mind.
Equipments? A tripod is a must have item. The sun is low, the amount of light is not enough to allow you to handheld the camera at slow shutter speed in order to produce correct exposures. In order to highlights the tree trunks and the pillars, HDR techniques are going to be needed here. In a normal single shot picture of this kind, you are most likely to produce a silhoutte photo. Most of your objects in the picture will becomes black in colour. In using HDR techniques, you can produce pictures like this as seen with your eyes there and then. You can feel like you are in this picture! This is the kind of pictures I like to take and I will share it with you. HDR may not need to look "painterly", you can edit to your liking, for me that would be as natural as possible.
When everything is set up and ready, take three to five shots of the same scene with different exposures of -5,-2,0, +2,+5. Make sure you don't move the camera. If your camera has the auto exposure bracketing function,  set it and let the camera do the work for you. As for me, my camera Nikon d3200 does not come with this function so will have to do it manually. Here is how I do it:
a) set the camera to manually mode. If your camera comes with auto ISO, turn it off and set the ISO to 100 for minimal noise reproduction.
b) set the Aperture to f8 or f11 if you have a mild ND filter which will help in producing misty water effects or set to f16 or f22  if no filters used. Also put on the polarising filter for better contrast to the sky and the water.
c) shoot in RAW if you can but jpeg will also get you the result don't worry.
d) now look into the view finder or live view if you like to compose using the LCD screen and the exposure
 metre will show its current exposure. Dial your shutter speed dial to underexposure to -2 or -5 depending on how many exposures you are going to take. Take care not to move the camera while doing this. Take the shot via cable or self timer because you don't want to move the camera. Then dial the shutter speed until the exposure metre indicates normal exposure(middle) if you intend to take three exposures and take the picture. Dial again for the next shot to +2 or +5 for overexposure and take the shot. I prefer doing it this way because it is easier then changing exposures compensation in the camera as it is more of a hassle and also when you load up your pictures in the computer it won't be able to detect the exposure values.
e) process your images with any photo softwares that can merge these photos for example easyHDR, Fusion HDR or the one I am using the Photomatrix Pro.
f) after merging the photos, edit as you like. You can edit in as many programmes as you like for the effects you are after.
Hope this will help in your future shots of these nature. If you like to know more in depth, please feel free to write to me. Happy Shooting!