Words of Wisdom.

The budget for 'Transformers' could have put 3 million kids in Tanzania through a year of secondary education.

Sony RX100 Field test

So not long after I declared my temporary war on digital SLRs I had a chance to lay my hands on a relatively decent compact camera: Sony RX100.

Since the camera has been out for some year and a half now, I'll skip the technical details as there are some detailed reviews out there. What I was interested in the most was to see how the camera performs without processing photographs externally, the results are quite spectacular, see below:

 Built in processing ('toy camera') filters

 High tonal range from intelligent HDR

 HDR effect - although this is the most dramatic version, middle and low are also applicable

 Comparison between a single image and extended tonal range above

 The built in panorama mode processes images in less than 30 seconds and 3 out of 5 times my panoramas were correct despite rather dynamic image in front of me (if you zoom in close enough you will see some mild discrepancies but if used for landscapes I am sure this will not be visible).
Compared with processing several 20mb RAW images in Photoshop - pretty good I might say.

 Good tonal range (note how the details in the black areas are still visible

Another HDR examples. Although the statue looks like badly overdone Photoshop , I am more than happy with the Marischal college building (this was done using the medium-detailed hdr instead of high).

The image below is an example of the built in filter which attempts to mimic the tilt-shift effect. Far off from the real thing but a good alternative for everyone fond off the Instagram filters.



So picking up where I left previously: this camera would not stand a chance in replacing a dSLR in studio environment, but it's more than capable of producing decent images on the go:  no need for Photoshop.

The current price is somewhere around £350 which might be a little expensive for compact camera but still nowhere close to getting a decent lens with good focal length for a DSLR. More tests to follow.

Dslrs compromised - why I am switching to mirrorless

So I just came back from a marvelous 2-week work party trip to Tanzania.
A 10-people team from Wood Group headed to a lively town of Moshi to help Vine Trust assist local charities in raising houses for the most vulnerable in the Tanzanian community.

As notable and glorious the cause was, my task was to produce bucket-loads of media which would be used in a 5-year long campaign to follow. I was assigned both the role of a photographer and a one-man-band film crew (with my colleague swinging the shotgun mic for the interviews).

The trip was a huge success and I managed to bring back some awesome photos like the ones below, but it's not about them today.

Can you justify carrying a dslr to get them? I suppose you could. 
Can you justify carrying two peli-cases full of gear, taking roughly a minute to swap to a different focal length, wipe the glass, wipe the mirror, take the dust off, take the lens cap off, take the rear cap back in, check if aperture jumped back-up or if it's still on f5.6 from the previous lens? Can you, for 13 consecutive days?

I think I had my breaking point during the safari trip.
We went for a 6-hour drive to the Ngorongoro crater so that we would never have to visit a Zoo ever again.

I tried to stick to the setup of 60D with 70-200mm f2.8. I gave my colleague in another jeep the 1d Mark III with 28-135 as she is still entering the world of manual photography, to avoid her having to change lenses.
So much like above, I managed to get some good snaps, however I was surrounded by people who have compacts for the sake of it and whose daily experience with photography is limited to selfies during a night-out; guess what? They still managed to get closer than I did.

My effective focal length of 300mm and gear with total value of roughly £1900 was beaten by cameras the size of  a credit card.

Yup. Middle-range compacts got roughly twice as close as I did with my telephoto lens, their images were not shaky as the weather was brilliant so all cameras had as much light as they needed. Even their colours were more vibrant.
My first thought was: why is this happening?!
Now, don't get me wrong. I like my dslrs. I love my 5d mark II and the unbelievable depth of field it brings to the table but I wonder: why do we do all this?
Why do we invest ten-folds of what the amateurs spend on their cameras to get 8 out of 10 times an overall similar image? I get it, I know that I can print my images to the size of the building and still expect to see some quality in them, I also know that I can beat these toy-cameras after the dusk. 
But how many times does one actually take the full advantage of the sizing? It does not really matter how big the resolution of the original file is as I'm pretty sure some 90% of these are scaled down to 1200x800 and live happily ever after on social media websites. Nobody prints their photos anymore. What if they have to? Well, this for example.



Speak of printing, after my mental breakdown and return from Africa my first destination was a Jessops store. After I shared my concerns with a customer assistant, she showed me her images she took with some 200-pound Sony compact camera. It was a Depeche mode gig, so not much of light other than the scene, yet the images are super-sharp, they were untouched, about 9 out of 10 were not blurry.
You would not tell they were not from a dslr.

Yeah, my 5d probably beats your camera hands-down in low-light. Oh wait, your point and shoot has a built-in flash? Now that's unfair...
I get how it's all about how much you want to get from your images; but at what cost? For my 5d, I still had to have a set of separate lenses and I should own a flash-gun by now. The price tag of the speedlite is equal to a very decent compact camera. On top of all that, your images are not good in the first place. Since as a pro, you most likely do flat video or low-contrast images to have the biggest capabilities in the post-production, they do not really look that great. In most cases it's just a case of punching the footage up in Lightroom, but it does add up. So is it really worth all the investment?

do you really want to carry that everywhere?

I think the camera is a tool in the end. If you have some imagination and the creative juices flow through, you have some experience and knowledge of framing, composition and basics of exposure you will still be able to take good images, no matter if you use a Hasselblad or an iPhone. It felt quite funny being asked by the guys from our party to take their photographs for them (using their cameras naturally), but I felt flattered in the end. Nothing beats hands-on experience.

Yuk. Well, I might have over-exaggerated a little bit. 

To sum up though, I think even being a skilled photographer and owning a dslr, you should not underestimate the power of some of the compacts. I have not had a chance to do full research yet, but one thing I'm sure off  - instead of buying yet another bulky lens, I want to give it a try an invest something into a compact camera for a change and see where it takes me. In a controlled environment or if I really want to squeeze out every last bit of quality out of the situation, I would still moan but drag my 5d set, but I kind of long for the possibility of casual shooting. Even as a photographer you do not want to drag your job with you everywhere. Have a break, have a compact.

More thoughts to follow, hopefully some hands on reviews as well.

The produd children of the Information Age

I'll leave the thoughts and comments for you.

Chicks with Rocket Launchers

Drawing again!
After a short break I'm back to redoing the old characters. About all of them done now

Word of the day... libertarian.

Today I found out that despite always believing I am apolitical, I am apparently libertarian. It turns out it is basically a concept where one believes everything is fine as long as it does not cause others harm. 
Cool.

I also will be making a £7.50 secret-santa present for someone at work (credit crunch?)

Also, gold has bigger value in Poland than it has in the UK (weird).

I have also printed 500 business cards with an embossed play icon as my logo. Abandon your hope whoever contacts me through this - I could sell you just about anything and you would still see value in it.

Cha-ching.

Temples study

Another weekend study

Lesson's learnt: be patient. I'm not, yet.
PS. Might be getting a new Intuos soon!

I'm going to Singapore

Soon.
Well, maybe. I hope

Anyway, my vision slowly shapes up. More on that late.

In the meantime, I was busy with this:

Old characters redone

My latest (not so much) sketch

Further down the river

Still on it!
I don't think I'm ready for a detailed painting yet so again studying to get the values right. Time taken: around 3h

Hall of Darkness - value study

Turned out slightly overblown, but I'm practising again.
Probably took some 3-4 hours to complete.

My biggest challenge now is being patient enough to spend more than one afternoon to produce the next one. Sure will be worth it!

Recently I have been considering to upgrade my Trust tablet and came across a couple of cheapo alternatives of Cintiq displays, this one being one of them:
http://frenden.tumblr.com/post/38693256477/yiynovamsp19u

I wonder how much quality does one need to sacrifice at the third of the price but judging on the reviews, not  so much. Well, who knows...


Till next time.
P.

Digital drawing update

Been practising a lot recently. Most of these took no more than 3-4 hours (which is still very little for a rookie). My plan now is to focus a bit more and try to produce something more detailed to see whether i have moved anywhere within the last year. Fingers crossed!

More to come!

Environment Sketchup and thoughts about patience

I've done this referencing a picture I took in Barcelona some time ago.
I'm still nowhere where I  want to be but I havent been this motivated to do something in a while. Big thanks for Feng Zhu for being out there and the amazing work he does for whoever wants to improve whether it's for themselves as a hobby or getting their foot through the industry door.

I'm not in a position to give advices yet, but if I were to give one based on my own example, it would be to be patient.  I think it's especially important in the era where everything is 'served' at your doorstep which is your PC in that case. On-line easy access tutorials, not strictly legal ebooks, free of charge video lessons and the likes makes one undervalue the actual skill, time and effort put into production of these.
I find myself wondering a lot whether it all makes sense, especially seeing the pros put together their complete pieces in less than an hour when I sometimes have to struggle to get the idea across in the first 30 minutes. It's really easy to give up.

But who would want to give up?
On top of enjoying doodling in Photoshop, I feel I sort of 'owe' it to drawing as this was the background that I came from and if it wasn't for the early doodles, redrawing Dragon Ball characters and sketching up the evil guys for my Fallout RPG, I would probably be holding a 3rd pass financial degree working away in Starbucks. But here I am.

  So thanks to whatever and whoever helped and in short - well, watch this space as I will move forward.
Thought of the day - stay patient.

Geez I'm a terrible motivational speaker

Marauder

Desert

Doodling around, work in regress 

Swordsman drawing

Another freshly baked digital, it even managed to get some attention on deviantart.com! 

High res: http://air-force-1.deviantart.com/#/d5qzuhs

Photo update - on the way to Campbeltown

The last 'dust-it-off' entry, I promise.

Since recently I had an honour of taking part in my first business trip (oh, the business trips are amazing, do go on business trips!) and since I work with cameras... well, we obviously had cameras!

Some snaps on the way to Campbeltown:

Digital illustration update

I'm still very far away to even remotely call it something profitable (if I was so inclined...) but this does not change the fact it's still a good hobby/free-time killer.
In the last couple of weeks I've been abusing my tablet a little so this is some results:

AN OPEN CALL TO ARTISTS!

Yeah, why not.
It's a copy of the ad I posted on gumtree. However low, chances are someone might actually come across this here, well...



Hi all, 
I am looking for talented people throughout Aberdeenshire who consider themselves underexposed (or something). Daily I work in oil and gas industry but I am getting involved as much as possible with talented locals and societies in the area. 
Anyway blah blah, to cut it short: 

THIS IS AN OPEN INVITATION to whoever is involved in just about anything. Are you a local band and could use a music video? Freestyle performer looking forward to put together a mixtape? Abstract artist painting with your elbows? You name it. 

There are no catches, I'm not doing this for any cash whatsoever. The most I can get out of it is couple of seconds for a showreel maybe. I'm just looking for interesting things/people to film. I shoot on Canon 5dmarkII (which is rather decent piece of equipment), have necessary lenses and whatnot. 

Anyway - if you made it this far it means that you might be in the group I am looking for. If so, send me a sample of who you are, interest me somehow, tell me what are you involved in, you can film it even with a mobile as far as I'm concerned. There are no tips & suggestions and as of now I'm not 100% what I'm doing but there's not much to loose. 

Anyway - if you made it this far it means that you might be in the group I am looking for. If so, send me a sample of who you are, interest me somehow, tell me what are you involved in, you can film it even with a mobile as far as I'm concerned. There are no tips & suggestions and as of now I'm not 100% what I'm doing but there's not much to loose. 

Yes, free video. Excited. Go.

AUSA Fashion Show

Hi again!

The video below features some highlights from the fashion show organised by the students of University of Aberdeen. Like the video or not but you have to give it to them - they did put a lot of effort into it.

30-11-2012 // Garage music club
Outtakes from the Fashion Show.

// Audio used:
Sam and the Womp - Bom Bom
Franz Ferdinand - No you girls
Franz Ferdinand - Take me out
DJ Format ft. Chali 2na & Akil - We know something

I do not hold any rights to the audio used in this clip, the video is for educational purpose only. AUSA's Charity Campaign who organized this Fashion Show is a non-profitable organisation.

Breakdance school video - sick!

Another relatively new video - this time I had a chance to work with a fabulous breakdancer Navid Sobhani.

Check this out, some sick moves!

---

2-12-2012 // MacRobert building (University of Aberdeen)
Footage from the last breakdance session for this year at the University of Aberdeen.

Navid's breakdance club is open to beginners and pros alike. The participants meet on Wednesday evenings and typically Navid would spend the first hour as a teacher revising the basic steps and introducing some new moves. Within the second hour the performers form an open circle: an opportunity for the beginners to showcase what they had learnt and a 'battle ground' for the more experienced.
If you wish to get involved drop Navid a line at navidbreak@facebook.com or simply come around to one of the classes.

Audio used: Robyn vs. Teddybears - Cobrastyle

----

I do not hold any rights to the audio - the video is for educational purposes only.
Navid's Breakdance Society is a non-profit organisation.

Shortsfest 2012 in 3 minutes

I've been dusting the video archive for a new showreel and found out I've never came to edit anything of the Shortsfest from last June which I helped film.
This is some highlights from the 2-day long festival held in Glasgow. Music not for the faint of heart.

Enjoy!