Archive for the 'Photography' Category

EF 50mm f/1.8 II

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I bought a nice new lens for my camera some weeks ago. It’s a basic 50mm lens, but with a quite wide aperture, 1.8. Perfect for taking portraits and pictures with short depth of field.

I was adventurous enough to take my camera with me to a couple of parties last weekend. But I’m glad I did, since I got quite a few nice pictures. But then again, I shot almost 1200 pictures in two days, 200 of which were worth showing…

I’m amazed that I actually was able to take the pictures since I was as drunk as anyone else on those parties. However, It’s a well known fact (?) that alcohol breeds creativity ;)

Partially desaturated image in Gimp

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Hahaa, more Gimping going on here. I decided to try to make a partially desaturated image and it wasn’t hard at all. After learning how to make a blur frame and a vignette effect in Gimp, this was a piece of cake.

Following the same basic steps - duplicate image, add layer mask, manipulate lower layer, delete from layer mask - this image was done in about 10-15 minutes. The only thing taking time was the manual paintbrushing at the edges of the mushroom.

I’m starting to like Gimp more and more… Let’s see what else I come up with in the future.

Gallery facelift

I just finished installing a new theme for my gallery. It’s based on the “Carbon” theme I used before, but this “Gecko” theme is a bit cleaner and narrower. A bit more stylish IMO. I also added a bit of customization (the banner and a custom css image frame).

Creating a blur frame in Gimp

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I had a chat with a friend of mine yesterday about photography and naturally there was a lot of equipment geek-talk. I realized (once again) that I’ve only got crap lenses to use with my D30, so when I came home I started browsing around for a pre-used lens. The requirements were (in priority order):

1) wide aperture (F1.8 - F2.8) and
2) wide angle (17/18mm)

I found a Sigma lens that would fit my needs perfectly. However, my wallet disagreed almost instantaneously. Okay, but let’s just see what the lens can perform. Googling around for some sample images, I stumbled upon an image with a blur-frame. I thought it looked interesting so I decided to postpone my lens-hunt and start fiddling with Gimp instead. The reslut, as you can se, is quite satisfactory.

Continue reading ‘Creating a blur frame in Gimp’

New header images

I decided to update the header background images with 13 of my own pictures instead of the ones bundled with the theme.

Hope you enjoy the change.