Another lazy night

Nokia UK’s official fan site NokNok.tv has posted an extensive imaging comparison between mid-rangers Lumia 720 and Lumia 820. While Lumia 720 has got much attention due to its largest f/1.9 aperture camera seen on a Lumia, Lumia 820 camera also was reviewed as a solid performer when it was launched. But Lumia 820 can’t boast of equal low-light imaging prowess as of Lumia 720 which is second best to only Lumia 920. But what happens when both are compared in many varying image capture conditions. You can go and check the full comparison by clicking source link below.

To us Lumia 820 images looks sharper in daylight while Lumia 720 looks better when light is insufficient (Check the images above). Though Lumia 720 looks to produce colors closer to reality, a trademark of Nokia’s top camera phones, Lumia 820 gives bit over saturated colors, but again captures more details.

Auto settings:

Close up settings

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This is the desert? A Phoenix area public park at midday. There is a way around the intense glare. 1/500 sec., f/5.6, ISO 100, 35mm, straight out of the camera.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

FOR YEARS I HAVE BEEN SHOOTING SUBJECTS IN THE URBAN AREAS OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA, trying to convey the twin truths that, yes, there are greenspaces here, and yes, it is possible for a full range of color to be captured, despite the paint-peeling, hard white light that overfills most of our days. Geez, wish I had been shooting here in the days of Kodachrome 25. Slow as that film was, the desert would have provided more than enough illumination to blow it out, given the wrong settings. Now if you folks is new around here, lemme tell you about the brilliant hues of the Valley of the Sun. Yessir, if’n you like beige, dun, brown, sepia or bone, we’ve got it in spades. Green is a little harder to come by, since the light registers it in a kind of sickly, sagebrush flavor….kind of like Crayola’s “green-yellow” (or is it “yellow-green”?) rather than a deep, verdant, top-o-the-mornin’ Galway green.

But you can do workar0unds.

In nearby Scottsdale, hardly renowned for its dazzling urban parks (as opposed to the resort properties, which are jewels), Indian School Park at Hayden and Indian School Roads is a very inviting oasis, built around a curvy, quiet little pond, dozens of mature shade trees that lean out over the water in a lazy fashion, and, on occasion, some decorator white herons. Thing is, it’s also as bright as a steel skillet by about 9am, and surrounded by two of the busiest traffic arteries in town. That means lots of cars in your line of sight for any standard framing. You can defeat that by turning 180 degrees and aiming your shots out over the middle of the pond, but then there is nothing really to look at, so you’re better off shooting along the water’s edge. Luckily, the park is below street level a bit, so if you frame slightly under the horizon line you can crop out the cars, but, with them, the upper third of the trees. Give and take.

There is still a ton of light coming down between the shade trees, however, so if you want any detail in the water or trees at all, you must shoot into shade where you can, and go for a much faster shutter speed….1/500 up to 1/1000 or faster. It’s either that or shoot the whole thing at a small f-stop like f/11 or more. In desert settings you’ve got so much light that you can truly dance near the edge of what would normally be underexposure, and all it will do is boost and deepen the colors that are there. There will still be a few hot spots on projecting roots and such where the light hits, but the beauty of digital is that you can click away and adjust as you go.

It’s not quite like creating greenspace out of nothing, but there are ways to make things plausibly seem to be a representation of real life, and, since this is an interpretive medium, there’s no right or wrong. And the darker-than-normal shadows in this kind of approach add a little warmth and mystery, so there’s that.

It was “yellow-green”, wasn’t it?

Hope that’s not on the final.

(follow Michael Perkins on Twitter @mpnormaleye)

Part of the Powercut series. Junior playing with the new android tab during the powercut

Funny moment when i realize he was in there while the dog near me..so sorry kitty

I just wanna live outside and having an adventure also find other people, know different culture, maybe soon i will get a job like that

it was for people like a police patrol place but know only unused place

When You looking candle in the middle of the night it’s just like hypnotizing and making you peaceful, but be careful for the fire

Sometimes i feel free for riding a bicycle in this road..like giving an opportunity and chance looking this nice scenery

are you really hiding well? since your shadow reflect perfectly?

yes i love waking up in the morning after morning sholat and go to my park also looking around for “embun” at plant

That man fix my motorcycle, not everyday someone fixed the motorcycle.. maybe once a week?

On the photography front everything picks up towards the weekend and this atmospheric snapshot proves it -

Vital Statistics:
Location – Stockton, Warwickshire
Camera – Sony DSC-HX5V
Lens – n/a
Flash – No
Other equipment – n/a

Settings:
Aperture – f5
Exposure – 1/250″
ISO – 125
Metering Mode – Multi-segment
Focal Length – 33.9mm
Compensation – 0.0
White Balance – AWB
AF or MF – AF

I have always liked cloud bursts so it is good to get one in the bag again. No planning behind it as usual and just lucky timing, still atmospheric an improvement on what has largely been dross all week. Out to the pub tonight too, which will be nice.

The next image: Nothing special but it will be almost the weekend.

The venue was saying quite a lot also. It was my first time at Hi-Fi and the atmosphere was a nice change from the usual fist pumps and faces. The lighting was just perfect too.

I actually didn’t end up using the flash for any of the final album.

Full album - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151597676025928.1073741827.115225135927&type=3

So the first chance for me to use my f1.8 fixed 50 mil lens, along with a stabiliser rig I was borrowing from Marty I was sure to get some good footage. Unlike my other lenses this lense didn’t have image stabilisation so it was vital to use the rig otherwise the footage would have been useless. Unfortunately I rushed into the shooting and forgot to check the format settings which were set to 720p50 and if I had changed this I could have got more light in my footage but this will serve as a lesson for next time. Regardless of this one mistake I was very happy with the footage and the lense. In post I messed around a lot with the denoiser which worked very well in removing the ISO noise, of course this wouldn’t help the sharpness of the footage it was a good lesson in low light video which will help improve my shooting in the future.

This is a portrait of my friend, Pak E. He came to Melbourne from zero and married an Australian woman. Now he owns a restaurant in Melbourne and some business companies in Indonesia. He is a friendly, a humble, a music lover, and a funny guy. On the corner of his restaurant, there’s a small space with a keyboard, a drum, guitars, etc. This is a photo of him I took last night in front of his restaurant.

Low view of the Madison rental bikes

Black and white image of a biker riding past a frozen lake in Madison, WI.

AS I was walking around, I saw this sign, I waited for a biker, I pushed the shutter button.

I took a bunch of photos of these bikes. When I go back I’ll take my tripod and probably take some more. So many things to do with them.

So, I really liked these images. I had a few evenings to just walk around State street and the surrounding area close to the Capitol building in Madison, WI and it was enjoyable. The people there are crazy though. It hit a high of 40, which to them was super hot apparently. Girls out in nothing but sports bras and shorts, kids playing volleyball in the sun and frigid wind… I couldn’t put on enough clothing. I guess that’s what comes with growing up in the south. Oh well…

These “themes” I will be displaying really just came up as I looked through the 5 days of photos that I brought back with me from my trip. Sadly, I haven’t put the best photo from my trip I have on this blog. Nor am I planning on it at the present time. As I am an amateur, I am still learning and I just don’t know how to handle these whole copyright and internet rules. People like my photos and right now, I am taking images because I enjoy them. Problem being, I see how hard it is for photographers to make a living off of this craft. Always worrying about people stealing your hard work and the time you’ve put into the images you’ve found and created. I don’t know what the future holds for me and this hobby.

Currently anything I put on this blog, WordPress has the rights to take and sell because of how their hosted site ToS agreement is written. That bugs me, yet I am not ready to commit to a self hosted site that I have to manage and work on and pay for every month. Right now, I enjoy this blog and making and sharing these images with you for free. To get around this, I’ll probably set up my flickr page to show off the real gems I have. When I do I’ll link that to this page.

Until then, read on my dear viewer.

A hobby with a possible future. I’m excited about this. My photographer friend that I end up buying most of my gear from has talked me into a D600 and all of the full frame lenses that go with it. Geez… this is an expensive hobby. I just spent 50 bucks on prints this weekend and as it was the first time I printed large sizes… my results were average. Images are too dark compared to my monitor and my blog. I knew this and still proceeded on and purchased a 20″x30″ and a cropped 16″x20″ of one of the Madison rental bike images I have for home and my office at work. I’ll have to wait till I get paid again to reprint these with a stop higher exposure setting. There is no better way to learn than to make mistakes. I just wish I would have done some test prints at 4″x6″ for 30 cents and found my error rather than a $30 print.

Lesson learned.

Till later, take care.

In Weekend watch, we are bringing to you two videos. First one is low-light imaging comparison between expensive high-end HTC One and Nokia’s mid-ranger Lumia 720. HTC One boasts of good low light performance thanks to “inspiration” taken from Lumia 920′s PureView camera, while Lumia 720 comes with largest aperture of F/1.9 ever seen on any Nokia camera. So how would they fare against each other. You know it don’t you? If not then you will be pleasantly surprised, yet again .

The second video is demo of one of the most popular and performance intensive gaming title “Asphalt 7″ heat on Lumia 520. Asphalt 7 heat has been just released for devices having 512 MB RAM and you might have seen its smooth performance on Lumia 720 earlier. So, how does it handle on Lumia 520? Again, Lumia 520 shows performance wise it is not second to anyone.

Recombu has posted a small low-light shootout between two Lumia smartphones Lumia 920 and Lumia 720 and two competitor smartphones Sony Xperia Z vs Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Here is their conclusion and we do agree with it,

Worst of the bunch is the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, with its off white balance and massive amounts of grain. Despite getting better colour accuracy, detail on the Sony Xperia Z is sorely lacking and focus is pretty off-point. Then you have the Lumia 720. In-spite of a lack of optical image stabilisation, it’s still delivered an in-focus shot complete with accurate white balance and impressive exposure. It isn’t perfect, don’t get us wrong, but it’s significantly better than the two competitor brand flagships, both costing a whole lot more.

Finally, unsurpassed, unsurprisingly, the Nokia Lumia 920 sits at the top of the low-light leader board. Focus is bang-on as is white balance and detail; it’s all there.

For a price, which is nearly half of that of Lumia 920, one can really get closet to what Lumia 920′s PureView camera is famous for!!

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While the night sleeps…