1st 35L of gus

1st 35L of gus

Originally uploaded by monitorpop.

“It’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it that counts.”

Well, yes and no.

There are a lot of great things going on in today’s GR Pick Of The Day, not the least of which is that the dog is looking out of the frame instead of directly at the camera. This adds interest for the viewer. The ambient light is also amazing. But the two most exciting things going on here are the bokeh and the incredibly sharp detail.

What is bokeh? Well, to put it as simply as possible, bokeh is what happens when the background of an image is blurry to an unusual extent while the subject remains sharp and clear at the front of the image.

Bokeh can be achieved by opening your aperture up wide to create a very narrow depth of field. It’s easy to over expose your shot this way, especially in full sun, so be sure to adjust your other settings accordingly. Bokeh is a great technique to use on things like portraits and closeup shots of flowers and other objects when you want the main subject to pop out of the image at you. For more examples of bokeh check out the Bokeh Galore group on flickr.

The other stunning thing about this photo is the detail. Even in this small version of the image you can almost see the individual hairs in the dog’s coat. If you click through and view it large, or even medium, you CAN see the individual hairs on the dog’s coat. That’s a direct result of the quality of the lens that monitorpop used.

Wonderful shot, monitorpop!

Grand Rapids flickr Group End of Summer Picnic

Saturday, September 23rd for everyone (families included!)… Riverside Park: 11am to whenever

Canon’s 400D 10.1 megapixel DSLR

Found at Engadget:

Canon US is still silent right this moment about the 400D DSLR, but it looks like Canon China’s spilled the beans on their latest full-frame 35mm digital camera. Or at least we think it’s full-frame 35mm, you never know with those translationbots that mention 35mm over and over; we also think it’s got a 10.1 megapixel CMOS, 2.5-inch LCD, 9 point focus system, 1600 ISO setting, DIGIC II processor, ultrasonic dust removal, and, of course the Canon EF lens mount (for which they appeared to have announced two new lenses, the EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, and the EF 70-200mm f/4L is USM). They’re still holding out on precisely how many Yuan it’ll set one back (and when can spend said Yuan), but something tells us by the time we wake up tomorrow morning we’ll have a whole lot more to work with.

Looking at the comments, its not going to be a full frame, still going to maintain the 1.6x crop factor. Basically, by the numbers, its going to be an upgrade to the digital rebel and is going to compete with the Nikon d80, and the Sony Alpha.

Why is it called “unsharp mask” when it sharpens?

Written by FD on Photododo

A brief history lesson about an image sharpening method called “unsharp mask.” Photoshop and other image manipulation software all have a feature with this name that will sharpen an image. So, why is it called unsharp mask?

The name comes from the original photographic procedure used to increase the apparent sharpness of a photograph on film. First the original negative was copied and turned into a positive (In a negative, black is white and white is black. In a positive, it’s the other way around.). During the copy, the positive was intentionally blurred. This is where “unsharp” comes from. Then the positive and negative were put in contact and exposed to light again. The blurry portion of the positive cancelled out (masked) the blurry portion of the negative.

Despite working with bits instead of film, digital unsharp mask works similarly by comparing the source image to a slightly blurred version and subtracting one from the other.

Source: Wikipedia