Mon, 17 Aug 2009
New toy: Nikon NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4D prime
Ever since I first borrowed such a lens from Tiago, I loved it. People have often told me that the pictures I took at Debconf8 were great; well, they only were because I borrowed that lens for half a day. I did the same thing at Debconf9, and again came up with wonderful pictures. It's not just the lens, of course, but it helps. I've been wanting to buy this thing ever since.
I can't really afford it yet, but I just didn't care anymore. So today, I went to the shop and bought the thing.
In short: I'm not regretting it.
More on my Flickr photo stream.
Thu, 06 Aug 2009
'night
Didn't feel like cooking today, so I went out to have a steak in a nearby tavern. As I had finished my meal and walked home, I saw the moon peep through the clouds, right around the corner of where the apartment is. I just had to take a picture, so I went home, grabbed my camera, put on the 18-70mm lens, and went out again.
Taking a picture with 4 seconds of exposure isn't easy, especially so if you don't have a tripod. But after six tries, I managed to come up with the above. It was a matter of sitting down, leaning one arm against the wall to the left, and not breathing. Oh, and cropping some wall away afterwards. But hey.
I'm not 100% happy with the result (the top edge of the frame should've been a little higher), but it's close.
note: this was written last night, but the commit failed because I misconfigured my server. Whatever.
Mon, 10 Nov 2008
Belgian Griffins - Lille Vikings: 30-0
Soccer fans will see the above score as immense, but this isn't soccer; it's American Football.
Yesterday, the Belgian National American Football team played a practice match against the Lille Vikings, and won by four touchdowns and a field goal. Unfortunately they missed one of their conversions, hence 30 points rather than 31. They actually even scored a safety in the final seconds of the match, but the officials did not count it.
Still, that's a good score, so congratulations go out to all Griffins.
The game took place on the new field of the city of Andenne, in Namur—in fact, it was part of the official opening ceremony—and will be the home field of the Andenne Bears team that plays in the LFFAB, the french-languaged American Football league of Belgium. This field is now probably the best field of its type in all of Belgium, and I imagine we will be seeing it more often from now on.
Anyway, the main reason I was there was bifold. The first was called Joris Verhelst:
Number 85, my brother. The second was my D50. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to get a good action shot of my brother. He's a Tight End, and did get his share of the game; but when he did, either I was too far away, or someone else was in the picture, or—as happened all too often yesterday, since the lighting was rather dim—the picture was too blurry to make out anything interesting.
All in all, it was a nice day, and the ending was really great:
See you next time, Griffins!
Sat, 10 May 2008
New lens
As a sort of birthday present to $SELF, I got myself a new lens for my camera yesterday. Well, new—it was a a second-hand lens. In Merksem, apparently there's a photography shop that sells second-hand photography material; so I sold them my 18-55mm lens which was the kit lens of my Nikon D50 (I also have a 18-70mm one which outperforms the 18-55mm in all aspects except weight), and got me a Sigma 28-300mm (f/3.5-6.3) for about €150. That's before subtracting the €25 that I got for the 18-55mm.
The new lens isn't better than the 18-70mm in all aspects (it's not very good for objects close to the camera), but it's a good tele zoom.
So today, with this great weather, I went to the nearby nature area of the "Oude Landen", and tried out the new lens.
I love it.
Really.
Mon, 19 Mar 2007
Bornem Titans - Antwerp Diamonds: 0 - 6
My brother has been playing American Football at the Antwerp Diamonds since about a year now, and he's playing along in the official competition's matches this season. Not that there's much of a season, with only 6 teams in all of Belgium, but okay.
This sunday, they played against the Bornem Titans; and since he'd been asking me to come along to take some pictures of their match, and since I hadn't been all that productive on the camera front lately, I decided to come along.
They even won, although it was quite close: getting within 5yd of the goal line three times, only scoring once, and then even missing the conversion isn't exactly what they'd call a "perfect match", but it's good enough.
Also more pictures in my gallery.
Thu, 08 Feb 2007
Snow
I woke up this morning to ...
Hmm, no, let me rephrase that.
I woke up today to find this:
It's been ages since there was still snow around noon. Climate changes, anyone?
Thu, 14 Dec 2006
A trainride at dusk
Dusk is getting pretty early this time of the year; a picture taken at 15:39 already has a low sun, with the sky getting kinda red around 16:28. Oh well.
Two days ago, I had forgotten my laptop's battery charger at home. So when it was empty, I didn't stay at the office; instead, I took the train home. At that specific time. I did have my camera with me, though, and taking pictures on the train is fun. It's not easy to do well; most of the pictures taken on the train are bad, but there are some exceptions.
Before I left, there was a nice light from the sun playing on the station platform. It took me a few attempts to get the exposure right (the first few were simply too dark), but this one has nice colors.
While the train was waiting in Antwerp Central station, I was playing with the camera's settings a bit; amongst others, I had totally miscalibrated the white balance setting. When it left again, I forgot to set the white balance back to what it was supposed to be, so the next few pictures were blue and ugly. Except this one—that is, it's blue, but not ugly.
When arriving home, I was greeted by this magnificent sky. I love this picture.
I did take some more pictures on the train; but like I said, it's pretty hard to do that well; and while I didn't throw all of them away, I don't think most of them were well suited to be put online.
click on any of the picture thumbnails to get larger versions.
Some mail is welcome in /dev/null. Real mail, however, is welcome at my email address
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