Just about Photography

This tutorial for you that loves black&white(BW) or monochrome photography. Actually camera (DSLR) can take the photo in monochrome but sometimes it’s better to take photo in standard/color mode. The reason is convert color photo to monochrome is much easier than coloring monochrome photo. If you want the best result for converting monochrome photo, I suggest you to take photo in RAW format. Using RAW format, you can change many things, like color balance, brightness, etc before you convert it to BW. Most of photographers take photo in Jpeg format because it’s much practice and the file size isn’t too big. If you take photo using Jpeg format, there are many ways to convert the photo become BW. I use photoshop to convert photo become BW - in photoshop there are 2 common methods: desaturate and channel mixer. Using desaturate is very easy, you just go to Image->Adjustments->Desaturate or Shift+Ctrl+U. I use photo from my tutorial before. You can see original photo (after editing) and desaturate image below. (more…)

This article is reverse idea from my article before… I suggest you read my previous article before read this article. This article is trying to repair distortion effect, especially for fisheye lens distortion. Fisheye lens has good distortion especially for full frame camera (ex: EOS 5D, EOS 1Ds, Nikon D3), but someone maybe didn’t like the distortion - he just need the 180 degree view angle - in this case repair the image is quite necessary. I will use defisheye as terminology for repairing image from fisheye lens. When you use google to find the way to defisheye image, maybe you will know there are some methods to defisheye the photo. If you use ImageMagick, there are Fred’s ImageMagick Scripts for defisheye the photo, if you interesting you can go to his web. I also checked in flickr, there are discussion of this topic - you can see here. Here, the programs that many people use: Capture NX, Panorama Tools, Fisheye Warp, Hugin, etc. I use photoshop to defisheye the image, generally there are two ways: use plugin or without plugin. (more…)

Long time not to take Taipei 101 photo because of my thesis. As photographer, I need to refresh our mind by take *nice photo. Elephant Mountain is good place for hiking and viewing scenery. We can see the Taipei 101 with the city - not only that we also can see sunset. I also ever go to Tiger Mountain - comparing city view from Elephant Mountain and Tiger Mountain, I’ll definitely choose Elephant Mountain. The Elephant Mountain hiking route also not very far compare to Tiger Mountain hiking route. I go with my friends - one is nikonian (use D40) and the other is canonian (use 450D). We go together because take photo alone isn’t interesting at all. Different than my photo before - I try to use minimize editing process - in order to increase my photography skill with minimal editing. Elephant Mountain in Chinese is called 象山 (read: xiang shan) - below is photo of the ‘象山’ sign - we will see this sign before we reach the place to take Taipei 101 photo.

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First, I suggest you to know what is HDR - you can see here for the definition. If you still confuse read that, maybe you can go to flickr, and search HDR. Most of HDR editing applied on landscape photo, I don’t think people will take a portrait in RAW and editing in HDR mode. For anyone want to know the detail about RAW can see here. Generally, RAW is better than JPEG because you can set anything like white balance, contrast, saturation, etc in computer without loss of detail / very minimal loss of detail. But for documentary photo, I don’t recommend you to take photo using RAW format - it is not necessary, because you don’t need many post processing. For landscape photography, most of photo (original) is flat without sufficient contrast. Simple editing tips for landscape photography can be seen in my previous tutorial. (more…)

Long time not write my blog because I am busy doing my thesis. Anyway I already complete my thesis and now waiting my Professor back from Japan and China, boring to wait him I try to write my blog again hehe….

As usual I will give you comparison between original photo and my editing photo: (If you think the result is bad or not important, you can skip this tutorial)

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First you must read this link about the fisheye lens - but if you already know about what is fisheye lens or fisheye effect you can skip that link. If you search on google about fisheye effect using Photoshop - you can find that the common way to make this effect is using spherize. Because I don’t have a fisheye lens so I try to edit my photo using spherize effect. From my point of view this method isn’t good - later you can see my explanation. What is the special abilities of fisheye lens?…. this lens has special distortion - actually we don’t want distortion in our lens but for fisheye lens is different. (more…)

June 14th, 2008 is graduation day for National Taiwan University of Science & Technology (NTUST) or 國立台灣科技大學 (in Chinese). In this important day I am not also graduation photographer but also as participant - because I will graduate on July 2008. This graduation day is a little bit different than graduation day in my country (Indonesia) - in Indonesia all participants should graduate then can join graduation ceremony - but in Taiwan all participants can join graduation ceremony no matter you already graduate or not. (more…)

Computex Taipei 2008 is very interesting exhibition in the beginning of this month (June 2008). This exhibition has been held from June 3rd - 7th, 2008; in this exhibition you can see many technology about computer such as chip set, memory, graphic card, etc. For me as foreign student in Taipei, I think this exhibition is different from common exhibition in Taiwan because many foreigners come here to see the product - and many Taiwanese are ready to speak English - in common exhibition they prefer to speak Chinese. (more…)

First you can see the result here or in my flickr…..

If you don’t like or don’t wish to know how to edit my bad original photo become like this photo you can skip read this review and close the window. In this review, I will describe the step how to make “normal” original landscape photography become more than normal landscape photography. What you need to edit the image is “program”, in this case I use Adobe Photoshop - you still can use other image processing program although the result maybe a little bit different. Below I will describe it step by step so you can understand how to do it.

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Photographer should be know this problem, dust is a common problem for SLR & DSLR camera, if you don’t know about SLR or DSLR stands for - you need to read this link. Not all photographers know that not all dust will be visible on picture. To explain it, let me categorize three kind of dusts (then you will know what kind of dust that will be visible on the picture) and you will know how to solve it:

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