Took a couple of shots today. Still high over getting the GFFN FA Unicorn Gundam so forgive me for the solo shot in this set.

This is definitely the current prize piece on my desk and I am absolutely loving it. If Bandai does decide to release this as a Metal Composite, I might end up selling my kidneys for it. This 1:144 scale is already gorgeous. Imagine it in 1:100 scale glory!

Above is the view from my office desk. On nice bright days like today, I get to see really nice cloud formations from outside my window. What appears to be rain clouds on the left ARE actually rain clouds moving away from the city where my office is. Shame I couldn’t remove the reflections of the flourescent bulbs on the window glass.

If you’d seen my desk back in late 2010, you would wonder how I am even able to get anything done. There were papers everywhere. I even went so far as to stash away all of my toys and all the office stuff just flowed onto the vacated office desk real estate. This year though, I really cleaned out a lot of corners from the desk. Now I have a healthy amount of space for some items on the right side and then the office stuff are on the left, most of which is hidden from this shot.

Both shots taken at my office desk. First shot has that Batman-overlooking-Gotham inspiration.  She’s holding the beam saber from a GFF Blue Destiny Gundam.

Coffeebugg was asking me the other day about the EXIF data from my shots. They’re now loaded in my deviantart account and you can view the details from there. Just click on the image and you’ll go straight to my dA page.

I had a very restful weekend. I hardly did anything on that weekend except stay online, watch movies on my laptop and do some reading. It was a good weekend spent on resting and clearing my mind to be ready for the things that may come my way this week.

How was YOUR weekend? How was YOUR Monday?

Saw this rainbow outside my window this afternoon. It was longer when I first saw it. It significantly shrank by the time I found a decent shooting angle from another window. And by the time I was done shooting, the rainbow had already completely disappeared because it had started raining again.

Large version download from my deviantart page. Wasn’t able to adjust settings properly since I was rushing to capture this moment.

Purchased the Coffee of the Week at Starbucks a couple of days ago and was toying around with the LX3′s custom white balance that I decided to test it out on the CotW coffee bag.

Our coffee for the week is a Sumatra/Peru blend. Nice asian flavor with a good kick. This is one of Starbucks’s organic blends. We got a Starbucks Passport when we purchased this. It’s some promo that Starbucks is running where when you buy ten packs of coffee beans from Starbucks, you get one more free.

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I do love photography much, but I love admiring other people’s work just as much and wish I could shoot as good as they do. A colleague of mine, and fellow blogger, Maki, showed me a type of photography I did not know existed until I actually saw her work. It’s called infrared photography.

Wikipedia on IR Photography:

In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm. Usually an “infrared filter” is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera, but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum (the filter thus looks black or deep red).

When these filters are used together with infrared-sensitive film or sensors, very interesting “in-camera effects” can be obtained; false-color or black-and-white images with a dreamlike or sometimes lurid appearance known as the “Wood Effect,” an effect mainly caused by foliage (such as tree leaves and grass) strongly reflecting in the same way visible light is reflected from snow^[1]. There is a small contribution from chlorophyll fluorescence, but this is extremely small and is not the real cause of the brightness seen in infrared photographs. The effect is named after the infrared photography pioneer Robert W. Wood, and not after the material wood, which does not glow under infrared.

The other attributes of infrared photographs include very dark skies and penetration of atmospheric haze, caused by reduced Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, respectively, compared to visible light. The dark skies, in turn, result in less infrared light in shadows and dark reflections of those skies from water, and clouds will stand out strongly. These wavelengths also penetrate a few millimeters into skin and give a milky look to portraits, although eyes often look black.

What I find amazing with this kind of photography is the surreal effect that it does and the amazing contrast the is produced in the pictures especially nature shots like tree foliage. You could almost see every leaf detailed out in the photo. There are also some very stunning shots of nature being reflected on glassy water which is absolutely amazing.

Her love  for photography and travel mixes well since she mainly shoots landscape photos and the images that she produces are absolutely stunning!

Hit up her blog for more of Maki’s amazing work in infrared photography. You can also see more of her photos in her flickR page.

For LX3 users out there, good news! Panasonic has released a new update for your Lumix LX3′s firmware. Here’s the changelog from the site itself:

1. Improved auto white balance performance.
2. Auto Focus speed-up.
3. Recording function with an aspect ratio of 1:1 has been added.
4. A white balance (WB) bracket function has been added.
5. [HIGH DYNAMIC] has been added to scene mode.
6. [LENS RESUME] has been added to the [SETUP] menu.
7. [MENU RESUME] has been added to the [SETUP] menu.
8. The exposure compensation and the auto bracket compensation can now be set up to ±3EV.
9. Position of the guide line can now be set.
10. It is now possible to display the highlights in playback mode.
11. It is now possible to record the user’s name in the picture.
12. Digital red-eye removal has been modified.
13. Items saved in the custom set have changed.

So hit up the link to Panasonic’s firmware page and download your firmware upgrade. What I liked about this upgrade is the improved white balance performance and AF speed-up. The WB bracketing is also an awesome added feature. The Lens Resume and Menu Resume are more of conveniences and nice-to-haves but I’m glad they’re also in the upgrade.

Took the camera with the new firmware out for a spin and shot some cards I printed out.

No editing was done on this image except for the watermark. The camera was set to Auto White Balance. Focusing was speedy and this is awesome when you want to take a lot of macro shots with the LX3 or if you’re taking group pictures. One of the complaints I got before when I was shooting group pictures was the focus time took too long so usually I would start AF and do the countdown when I’ve done the half-press.

So far, so good. I’m liking the new changes and the fact that I can now store my name in the EXIF data through the camera itself.

How about you? Did you upgrade already? Share your thoughts.

My deviantID. Shot by my brother, post-processed by me. Need to make sure the proper people are being credited.

Sooooooooo yeah. It’s been quite some time since I last uploaded stuff into my hardly-used Deviantart account. But these past couple of weeks have brought back the fun in shooting and post-processing photographs that I’m loading shots in dA too, instead of just in Facebook and Flickr. Well, that also simply means that if you’ve seen my Flickr page or my Facebook albums, you’re not missing much.

I just find it interesting that I haven’t been this eager to share my work since…well, back in grade school. Hope it lasts. If not, then that’s one more account to gather dust when the magic disappears.

But does this mean that I’ll shoot more and more “normal” photos and less and less of toys? Hell no. It’s just raining like crazy outside so it’s tough to take out the toys and shoot in natural light. But damn, when that Puchi Nendoroid Vocaloid set comes out, every place I go would have a shot of those babies in it. That’s fo sho.

Started this personal photo set in Flickr where I compile my favorite shots. Right now, there’s only one picture in the set that I didn’t take myself but did post-processing to it. There is no photo manipulation done on any of these photos aside from applying color balances, curves and adjustments to the photo’s colors.

Not the Gundam, but just as awesome.

Taken with a Lumix LX3.

A shot of all my Nendoroids out on display. Loving the vibrance of the colors.

Tried out the different modes to get a handle of how to use the LX3. It works almost like a DSLR but of course, my fingers were used to searched whatever buttons were on the 400D whenever I need to adjust something whereas for the LX3, you had to scroll through some menus when you want to go full manual. Nevertheless, if you know how to mix and match settings, then you shouldn’t have a problem with the LX3 on full manual once you know where stuff are.

Manual Focus

Manual focus is done using a nub on the right side of the LCD display where the middle part of the screen is highlighted, indicating which part of the screen you really want to focus on. I tried it out on Nendoroid Nozomu.

Dynamic Color

The mode that I often shoot with is Dynamic Color. It looks really vibrant and I don’t feel that the blues are too bright. At least that’s my opinion. Whenever I’m shooting my toys, I use Dynamic Color. This brings out the vibrant colors on my toys.

Dynamic B&W

Most of the shots I saw that were used as samples for the LX3 were using the Dynamic B&W shooting mode. I do like black and white shots and this camera is no exception in creating sharp pictures. The picture below accentuates Nozomu’s despair.

Desaturated Shots

I like taking desaturated shots with my Canon 400D and I was wondering if I could replicate it on the LX3. I feel like I didn’t come close. The level of setting customization for shooting modes isn’t as extensive or intuitive as the DSLRs.

General Thoughts

The LX3 fits the purpose of a prosumer point-and-shoot to use in place of a DSLR when you don’t want to lug around a heavy rig. Although it’s predecessor, the LX2, has telephoto capabilities, the LX3 fits my needs which is nice macro photography. And who said it doesn’t generate nice landscape shots?

The view from outside my office window. No post-processing involved other than resizing it to fit my blog.