What A Surprise!

After doing some quick conversions from .Raw to .Jpeg, I have to say that Irfanview is by far, the best batch converter of .Raw to .Jpeg files; use it and love it, definitely give it a try.

Today's weather was perfect, actually, this whole week's has been, and it's all better for me. Tomorrow should apparently be in the high 85's, something to look forward to!

Almost all of today's shots don't come from me, except for one. Klaudia had the camera, took around 70 or so pictures in less than half an hours time.. so I really wanted to see how many shutter actuations the old Nikon has. After being somewhat, stupid, and sticking my fingers in the shutter, I bent the shutter enough to well... you know, break it. After a hefty $150+ for such a discontinued camera, (the shutter that was damaged had over 8K + actuations and was working fine until I had to.. "clean-it" in my "early days" of photography. Well that was then, and as I finished uploading it to Flickr to see exactly how many actuations I have now, it turns out that I have exactly 8,410 shutter actuations! Seeing how 50,000 is the "specified" limit, I should continue shooting without problems :D! If my other one didn't fail, I don't see why this one is.

Well, on to the surprise. The surprise will be just a little bit below - the top pictures are mostly from earlier today.

Daisy's are finally in bloom, and what a pretty sight it is. A pretty sight indeed.

Well, Monday is right around the corner, and I hope all works well. The first two shots were taken by me, while the credit for the remaining images goes to Klaudia.

For any edited work, visit my Photostream

Here you'll be able to see what I consider to be the better shots of the group, almost always edited - with titles, descriptions, and all. 

Tonight:

After a long day of laughter, eating, passing by a Ferrari and having a close friend of mine poke fun of the driver for going 25 in a 35 because of harsh road conditions, we decided to head on back somewhere closer to home for some simple shots.


Haven't had the chance to take any long exposure shots in a while, really only because I don't like them. You have to be way too patient, and I have to say, I despise taking flash pictures. It's either daylight, or nothing. Shooting at f/1.8 doesn't really help, maybe if I had some VR lenses, but that's not part of the equation..


Nothing big here, nothing's edited, just the way some people like it. I've relied too heavily on editing lately, and Lightroom's Beta is about to expire any day now. [Please don't release the real version.. apparently when they do, the trial beta will become obsolete, although I don't understand how they could prevent you from accessing it]


View the images below, couple fire shots of tonight. Tried doing all sorts of fire shots, but for some reason they wouldn't come out well. Taken with a 35mm f/1.8G lens, $200 - and the kit 18-55mm for some (even though I don't like it -- feels too 'plasticy' in my hands)

These are nothing special, just some trial runs, because unlike everyone else that I know, I still haven't taken any real fire pictures. Wish more than anything I had a macro, these would have turned out superb.

Highlight of the weekend still has to be Monday though, and hopefully it won't get canceled.  I'll see what happens then, expect lots of images.

What's Up For This Weekend:

Here's the start to the Blog, and a start to my weekend:

So, Monday should be a fascinating day, traveling somewhere out of Chicago for some actual photography shots of abandoned buildings, model-work (hopefully!), etc.

Shooting with a friend, Canon guy. I'll get to try out his main and back-up, and tell you how the switch from a D40 to his model feels like. Having already tested the Xsi, I can tell that Canon has a strong line-up of well able cameras; except there's one problem for me. As Ken Rockwell says, Canon's have one major problem. Their button placement is all messed up. You can't delete pictures with only one finger - but hopefully it'll prove me wrong.

Being a loyal Nikon fan, I know that Nikon's button placement feels exceptional compared to Canon's.. 

Monday's pictures will be up, untouched, unedited and SOOC.

- For edited shots, in all their full glory of Adobe's Lightroom 3 Beta 2, check my flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/raresmdutu