Night photography with an Impressionist touch...

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Until next time,


Luis

Todays snapshot...

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A slight misfocus but nothing that couldnt be remedied with Photoshop.

Until next time,



Luis

Random Photo from File

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More people like this are needed in this world...

Until next time,



Luis

Photokina 2006 bound to be the biggest ever...

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Yup, to all shutter eyes out there, it's back again for another year and it's deemed to be the biggest ever. Photokina 2006 will bring more innovation in the field of photography and certainly will live up to the expectations of many photographers out there who are waiting for some new exciting gear. Keep your eyes peeled and get your info here:

Photokina 2006

Until next time,


Luis

It's amazing sometimes what people leave on the riverside...

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It is also amazing how the course of nature and time can turn the most mundane things into something really beautiful at second glance....enjoy, I certainly did.




Until next time,




Luis

Random street snapping....

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Yesterday was a slightly busy day for me so I had to skip updating "The Viewfinder", nevertheless I produced some goods. Here are yesterday's (1) and today's (2) random snappings. Had to do some work to the last two, because somehow today, my camera wasn't much for working under the rain, the autofocus would get tricked by the falling rain! That apart from some cropping. Enjoy!

Hare!Hare!

Today's very welcome weather change

Until next time,


Luis

New Nikon beast is named...

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Finally, the beast has hatched and has been christened Nikon D80. The upgrade to the seller D70/D70s features among other things, 10MP sensor, new image processing engine, in camera image retouching and built in wireless commander. More on the new Nikon 20 day hatch beast here:

New Nikon Beast Preview

Until next time,


Luis

New Fujifilm camera takes UV and IR photos...

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Another innovative breakthrough from Fujifilm in the form of the latest upgrade to the S3pro Digital SLR. The New S3pro UVIR, takes Ultra-Violet and Infra Red photos and it is mainly aimed at forensics, scientists and fine-artists. It was also found that more could be taken out from the the SuperCCD SR sensor used in the S3pro than previously thought and that it could provide primarily to criminal law experts the ultimate tool in evidence recording at a crime scene. The camera which will be available in the US already has a price tag of $1,799 body only, while in Europe it's previous version had been banned for falling foul of new laws on the use of lead in electronic components, so it's quite likely we won't see this new version in Europe. The previous S3 can be found in shops while stocks last for 699GBP nearly half of it's original price.

Needless to say I want one :)


Fujifilm S3pro UVIR DSLR



Until next time,



Luis

Just a reminder....

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Some people have asked if any of the photos are for sale. If you are interested in a photo, please point out which one(s) and what size via email ( mrrubim@yahoo.co.uk ). I am also currently working on a new website for print sales which will open soon, so you can have a look at the full range of prints and you will be able to buy online.

Thank you.


Until next time,



Luis Rubim

Today's Random and Grabshot....

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As I was heading home with an empty card in the camera and bored to my fingernails with camera in hand, I came across the Premiere of "Lady in the Water" by M. Night Shyamalan. It was in my opinion the poorest premiere ever and Bryce Dallas Howard just simply walked out of the car and went straight to the cinema. She ended up signing a couple of autographs because the car parked too close to the public and the first thing she met on leaving the car was an outstreched arm with an autograph book. Then she took off to the cinema. I only had time for this grabshot, not great but Iwant to keep "The Viewfinder" fresh.

And here is today's random shot:

"I haven't eaten anyone yet....:("

Until next time,



Luis

Today's Random Snapshot...

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It was a matter of picking the camera and setting it up in seconds. This shot also took some Photoshop work to remove an unwanted extra pair of legs and bycicle from a corner in the picture. Doesn't look too bad, but boy was it tough.



Until next time,



Luis

The dreaded time has come....

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I need to send my workhorse away to have some minor maintenance work done to it, so we will be seeing more Fujifilm S20pro images in this blog. Nothing wrong with that, in fact it will be a good showcase for it's filmic feel and transparency like colours, overall great image quality.

Fujifilm S20pro and 10 minutes of lying on the gritty floor
in the middle of pigeons.

Which brings us to rumours that Fujifilm may be relaunching a compact with a SuperCCD SR sensor. If that is true, it is about time, it surely needs an upgrade and it's a true Fujifilm innovation, most landscape photographers and wedding/portrait photographers familiar with Fujifilm's S3pro DSLR will certainly agree. In any case, I will miss my Konica Minolta 7D's performance and superb image quality for 3-5 weeks (sob, sob). In the meantime, maybe I'll also get back in touch with film, my favourites Provia ,Velvia and Sensia.

Nikon N5005, Quantaray 35-80mm,Fujifilm Sensia 400
scanned and saturation upped in Photoshop

In any case, let's see what the weekend will bring. Until next time,




Luis

Kodak moves production to Singapore

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In a bid to "streamline" business and "boost profits" Kodak is moving it's consumer camera production to Flextronics, a company from Singapore. In my books, whenever streamlining is mentioned in business news, it means lots of job axing (as the article in the link below shows). It's a more refined way of saying it. It also means, "we're moving things to a place where we pay less for a workforce".

So it's not a surprise that Flextronics was the chosen company. Flextronics, has as it's aim "low cost, high volume manufacturing solutions" which translates to Kodak right now as,"we can sit over here and throw peanuts because there is someone on the other end that will take them". In the meantime, 27000 jobs are gone which I am pretty sure they don't mean the Research and Development Dept (when was the last time we have seen real innovation from Kodak), Design Department (Kodak cameras really need some serious plastic surgery), Marketing Dept.(they are always among the first to point the finger when things don't sell). I am pretty sure the ones to go first will be the people in the assembly lines.

Don't get me wrong, I think Kodak DSLR's produce good image quality but they are past waters and they never really took off. Design wise they were heavy and not very ergonomic (I don't mind the heavy bit personally),they were slow, processing the images from them was according to their users slow and also you weren't advised to use higher ISOs due to noise.All these are things that have little to do with the guy or gal in the assembly line.

The main reason why I am having a rant, is that a lot of companies are doing this either they really need it or not, to a certain level. And the use of terms like "streamlining" to say they are laying off people in their thousands just irritates me. In fact in Kodak's case if anything that needed streamlining is the design of their cameras.

Anyway, here's the article:

Kodak farms out to Singapore


Until next time,

Luis

Kudos Sony! GPS tracker for photographers!

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Sony has come up with a GPS tracker for photographers. By using time and location recordings from this device and the time stamp from a Sony digital camera or camcorder, photographers can plot their images to a map and pinpoint where they have been.

More information here:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06080202sonygpscs1.asp

A good photo turned great...

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I can safely say, long gone are the times when I was a purist photographer. I still keep some purist traits, I still throw away photos that I think don't meet requirements and don't like to tweak too much. But in this case I just didn't have a choice.I mean the photo was good, but it had too much of a snappy feel to me. After 4 long hours, of tweaking, cloning, rebuilding feet I got a colour result which in the end I wasn't happy with. So I gave monochrome a go in Photoshop's channel mixer. A bit of adjusting in brightness/contrast, some Unsharp masking, basically all the stuff that in my purist days I considered a crime against photography. In the end I was more than happy with the results. I look back at my purist days and wonder why didn't I just embrace digital along with film earlier. For starters I could have saved a lot more photos. Here's the before and after.

Until next time,



Luis