The PenFan's PhotoBlog

Our grand nephew insisted we join him and his family to the cinema one evening. Unfortunately the movie he wanted to watch was taken off for the day's screening. Feeling disappointed and dejected he was not in the best of mood so we decided to have dinner first before thinking how to fill our time for the rest of the evening. Kids being kids, after dinner he got over the disappointment  and was running all over the mall and posing for photograph. My wife was pleasantly surprised by his happy mood and quickly pulled out her XZ-1 and started snapping away.  He and his little sister were happily posing in front of the lighted fountain at the mall entrance but the tiny flash from the XZ-1 did not have sufficient power to cover the whole scene. On top of that the alternating fountain lighting from bright to dark accompanied by ever changing coloured illuminations fooled the camera metering. A 2 stops underexposed photo from the Olympus XZ-1 in Normal Program Pattern meterin...

We talked about a simplified and easy 2 layers exposure blending in the last article and so here it comes. In most scenes the dynamic range of the scenes are just slightly out of range of the image sensors' dynamic range.  Therefore, we only need to extend the highlight or shadow area by about 2  to 3 stops and the 2 layers blending method can handle that easily. This image of the The Western Courtyard of The Curve Mall created using the 2 layers manual exposure blend with The Gimp was fast and reasonably good. -- Camera: Olympus Pen E-P1, Lens: M.Zuiko Digital 14-42 mm f/3.5-5.6 II standard zoom, setting lens zoom at 31mm and f/4.9, ISO 200. The shutter speed of the two blended images are 1/15s and 1/60s. In this 2 layers method we use the +1 EV and the -1 EV photos from the three bracketed images. The 0 EV or "normal exposed" image from the camera is not required here. The +1 EV overexposed image has enough details to cover most of the scenes from t...

We saw a nice scene where the sun was shining brightly in deep blue sky and colourful flowers in the foreground contrasting beautifully with the buildings in the background. We took a shot and what we got was a well exposed building with overly dark flowers in deep shadows and a pale featureless white sky. A total letdown!  The beautiful high contrast scene was not represented on the photo we took so we became frustrated and disappointed with our camera. The problem is the tonal and contrast range of the scene is too large for the imaging sensor in the camera to capture. We had the same situation when we were at the Western Courtyard of The Curve mall.  In the center we had natural sunlight streaming in from the top of the open courtyard surrounded by a darkened but clearly visible dining area, leading towards the courtyard were rows of hanging incandescent lamps in beautiful orange glow. However it was all lost with the photo we took - only the beautiful pil...

I have some photos of Nikko Tosho-gu Shrine  a UNESCO world heritage site located in Nikko, Japan. This is the shrine with the three Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru -- the orignal Sanzaru wood carving on the top of the stable building. That is the wood carving of the  "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys -- the famous Three Wise Monkeys. There are around eight panels with wood carving of monkeys in various pose around the stable building but these three monkeys are the most talked about and everybody knows them. The photo of the three wise monkeys or sanzaru was taken almost 20 years ago during a one day tour to Nikko on a Saturday. The weather was really bad on that day. All traffic and tour buses going to the Nikko Toshogu Shrine were stopped by the traffic police for almost 2 hours due to heavy fogs and low visibility. When we arrived at the Nikko Toshogu shrine our tour leader was in...