Once in a while, we get a digital camera that offers the best of both worlds – a relatively portable size, not to mention a performance level that is high enough to be considered as semi-professional. Well, it is worth noting that the recently announced Sony NEX-F3 digital camera is one of those machinations, where it is capable of shooting professional looking photos despite housing its innards in a compact, pocket-sized chassis. This enables budding shutterbugs to explore the creative world of high-quality, interchangeable lens photography without breaking their back in the process.
The Sony NEX-F3 will come with a similar space-saving mirrorless design that can be found in other models within Sony’s E-mount family, in addition to featuring the more advanced, 16.1-effective megapixel Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor, which is actually identical in size to the sensors that can be found in traditional DSLR shooters, now how about htat? The large sensor is capable of drinking in more light whenever it wants to capture images, resulting in flawless, low-noise photographs and crisply detailed Full HD videos (60i/24p) if you so desire.
Not only that, photographers with a simple working knowledge of the system can also create images with beautiful defocus effects in a jiffy, where the subject will remain focused sharply against a smoothly blurred background. Want to capture self portraits? That is not a problem, as the NEX-F3 camera will also be able to let you capture decent looking self-portraits for once, thanks to a 180° Tiltable LCD display, which is a first of its kind where Sony’s E-mount camera line is concerned. All you need to do is hold the camera at arm’s length, flipp the LCD screen vertically, make the necessary adjustments via the on-screen preview image, and you are enroute to properly framing your self portraits.
The Sony NEX-F3 will play nice with the FDA-EV1S viewfinder accessory that is sold separately, and will also come with a high-quality, premium-feel grip for a more comfortable handling experience and can be juiced via either USB or a standard AC outlet. Prices start from around $600 onwards, whole those who want the bundle with a new SEL18200LE telezoom lens can pick one up for approximately $850.
Press Release
The Pekin Public Library will offer “Photography for the Digital SLR Camera” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 24, in the library’s Community Room.
The program, presented by Gordon Lofton, will discuss composition, framing of the subject, the “rule of thirds,” auto focus issues, and auto exposure issues. This class also will discuss moving digital pictures to the computer. Students should bring their camera, and may bring a laptop/notebook if desired.
For more information, or to register, call the Adult Services Desk at 347-7111, ext. 2.
KUWAIT: One of the photographs by Dalia Khamissy. Her story is told by the mourning families of those that were kidnapped during the Lebanese Civil war.
KUWAIT: The Contemporary Art Platform (CAP) recently inaugurated a photography exhibition at the CAP Platform, Kuwait in Shuwaikh. The display showcases the work of six female photographers who are a part of a photography collective called ‘Rawiya’, meaning ‘she who tells a story’. The Rawiya group was founded by female photographers from the Middle East. The exhibition is a collection of six stories told from the point of view of the women’s camera lenses. The photographers participating in the event are: Myriam Abdelaziz, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Laura Boushnak, Tanya Habouqa, Dalia Khamissy and Newsha Tavakolian.
The first story is told by Newsha Tavakolian’s subject, Maria. Before her sex-change operation, Maria used to be called ‘Asgar’, and was a married man and truck driver. This subject believed that she was born the wrong sex. After years of suffering, Asgar decided to undergo an operation, christen her new self ‘Maria’ and was introduced to the family as a long-lost aunt. Maria’s life seemed to be going well for a while until local newspapers started running stories about her true identity. As a result of being featured in the media, Maria now lives alone in a small apartment, with no job.
Laura Boushnak, the second member of Rawiya, decided to make her subjects into storytellers as well. Throughout her series of portraits, she has photographed illiterate Arab woman and asked them to participate by writing their own stories on prints of her work. This series focuses on the class of literacy in Egypt where nearly half of the women can’t read or write. Taniya Habjouqa invites viewers into the daily lives of women living in the Gaza Strip. A series of photographs prove that even in a place filled with ruin and destruction like Gaza Strip, one can always find joy, love and laughter. The pictures demonstrate that no matter how hard a person’s situation is, they can always make the most of it. In these pictures, Habjouqa chronicles how women in Gaza are strongly motivated to pursue their education, continue caring for their families as well as have fun and enjoy the simple beauty of life.
Dalia Khamissy’s story is told by the mourning families of those that were kidnapped during the Lebanese Civil war. It is estimated that over 17,000 people were kidnapped between 1975 and 1990. Khamissy contacted some families of those who went missing and photographed the family members with the possessions they left behind. As for photographer Myriam Abdelaziz, she introduces the viewers to an exceptional dialogue between the Egyptian people and the walls surrounding them. In the streets of downtown Cairo, members of the recent revolution have been expressing themselves on the walls. Abdelaziz’s photographs capture the cycle of graffiti that has been posted, highlighting the changes that Cairo is undergoing.
The portrait series, presented by Tamara Abdul Hadi’s, has been on since 2009. The photographer had seen Arab and Muslim men being negatively represented in the media after the September 11, 2001 events. Abdul Hadi attempts to break down the stereotypes surrounding Arab men by displaying a series of photographs that display the beauty and softness of Arab men from different parts of the world.
Location: Contemporary Art Platform Kuwait Industrial Shuwaikh, Block 2, St. 28, Mezzanine level of the Life Centre “The Other Resurrection”. The exhibition will run from May 16 until May 30, 2012.
By Sawsan Kazak, Staff Writer
So, you’re in the market for a new digital camera. You’ve gone online and maybe into a store or two to check out what’s available.
Perhaps you found yourself feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the new features and advances in technology. You’re not alone.
Today’s digital cameras do more than just take photos. They capture high-definition video, help you share your photos instantly online and automatically adjust settings to take the best possible shot in any situation or lighting condition. And the technology is always changing.
So how do you know which camera is right for you?
Scott and Kelly Schoeberl, of Olive Juice Studios and Apple Juice Photography in Rochester, say it all comes down to the kind of pictures you want to take.
“I think you have to do a real self-assessment of how you’re going to use the camera and what it is that you’re going to be taking pictures of,” Kelly says.
Everyone knows what happens when you look into the sun too long.
Now imagine staring at the sun while those searing rays converge into a laser-like beam through the lens of a camera. It would be like focusing a magnifying glass on your eyeball.
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Ring of fire eclipse
Starting at about 6:20 p.m. Sunday, the moon will move in front of the sun, causing an annular solar eclipse, often called a ring of fire eclipse, in southwest Utah. Along the Wasatch Front, viewers can see a deep partial eclipse, which will cause the sun to look like a crescent. The sun will be in full “annularity,” when the moon best covers the sun, for four minutes at 7:31 p.m. as viewed from a vantage with a low horizon between Cedar City and St. George.
SLC viewing locations
The Gateway fountain » 450 W. South Temple
Salt Lake Library Square » 200 E. 500 South
U. of U. South Physics Observatory » 125 S. 1400 East
Salt Lake County
Dimple Dell Recreation Center » 10600 S. 1000 East in Sandy
Weber County
Weber State University observatory » 1551 Edvalson St. in Ogden
Iron County
Kanarraville » “Sweet spot” is Spring Creek Road, the primary viewing site until full
Cedar City » Discovery Park/Cedar Middle School, Ashcroft Observatory
West of Cedar City » Highway 56
Parowan Gap » Program, including a guided tour of lunar petroglyphs and a short hike to equinox Kairn, will begin at 7 p.m. at the Kiosk
Mountain locations (pending access) » Brian Head Peak; Brian Head Resort (Giant Steps $8 for Sky Lift Ride, weather permitting); Point Supreme (Cedar Breaks National Monument, no services)
National Parks » These will have programs and activities: Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges National Monument
Source » Seth Jarvis, Clark Planetarium; Patrick Wiggins, NASA/JPL solar system ambassador
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Pre-eclipse party
Speakers will discuss why the annular eclipse occurs and how to safely view it. Safety viewing glasses for the following day’s event will be distributed for free and activities range from decorating cookies to learning about the phases of the moon to building mini rockets.
When » 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 19
Where » Aquatic Center at the Hills, 2090 W. Royal Hunter Drive, Cedar City
Cost » Free
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That’s part of the dilemma facing photographers who want to shoot Sunday’s “ring of fire” solar eclipse, which will grace the nighttime skies beginning at about 6:20. The eclipse can be viewed in its full “annularity,” when the moon best covers the sun, from anywhere between Cedar City and St. George.
Just putting a regular filter in front of the camera lens won’t work. Remember, the sun’s rays will be concentrated when they hit the film or digital sensor and likely will fry the camera.
The other problem is if you use a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, in which what you see through the viewfinder is what the lens sees, the sun could literally burn your eye while trying to photograph it.
Astronomers say the best option is to get a “Baader” solar film, a filter used for optical telescopes to view the sun. They can be placed in front of the camera (never put the filters behind the lens) to protect both the sensor or film and your eye. They are sold for as little as $13, but at this late stage you’ll likely also pay a lot more in one-day shipping.
Some believe a “shade 14″ welder’s lens, the same filtered glass used on the front of a welder’s helmet, can be used. As a result, industrial supply shops such as Airgas in Salt Lake County have been selling the pieces of glass like hotcakes this week for about $3 apiece.
“We’ve sold everything we’ve had and re-ordered more,” Airgas sales representative Bruce Jensen, “We’ve been selling the heck out of them.”
While it’s fine to use a welder’s lens to watch the eclipse with the naked eye, it doesn’t work as well for photography because it tends to produce multiple images in the picture, Clark Planetarium director Seth Jarvis said.
You could use the same paper glasses the planetarium is selling for the eclipse for the front of a camera, though they may be too small to cover the front of a lens big enough for shooting the eclipse.
People shouldn’t even try to shoot the eclipse with camera phones or point-and-shoot cameras because the lenses are too small and would produce tiny images, said Patrick Wiggins, NASA/JPL solar system ambassador to Utah. He recommends using at least a 500 millimeter lens or longer (the focal length or how far you can see with the lens).
Freelance photographer Jimmy Urquhart, who is photographing the eclipse for Reuters, has been experimenting with shooting it with three to six layers of “neutral density” filters taped in front of his camera. These filters, which you can buy at a photography store in larger sheets, normally are used to cover studio lights.
“A lot of us [photographers] are trying to figure out how to do this and are sharing results,” he said.
While he has produced decent images so far, Urquhart said he still doesn’t know if using the neutral density filters will prevent damage to his camera. And he’s definitely not looking through the viewfinder while he shoots the sun because they are not good enough to protect his eyes.
“I can’t tell anybody this is the right way to go,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to blow up my camera during this assignment.”
Unless you actually buy a Baader filter in time, Clark Planetarium’s Jarvis says there’s not really much else you can do.
“If you’re a photographer and you haven’t made your plans, then don’t worry about it,” he said. “Think about photographing the eclipse of the sun on Aug. 21, 2017. That will be a total eclipse of the sun, and it will be amazing.”
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Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Melonie Magruder
Staff Writer
May 15, 2012 — Angelenos rarely get the opportunity to really
see the sky. Smog and light pollution conspire to deprive residents of
the ethereal magic overhead. But a new exhibit at the Annenberg Beach
House in Santa Monica changes all that.
“Skyscapes,” curated by Bruria Finkel, presents three different
artists (herself included) who have trained their various camera lenses
on the cosmos above, and the result is mysterious, startling, humbling
and begs the question, “Is all that going on overhead and I just
never noticed it?”
In delicious irony, the first image presented is not literally a “skyscape,” but
local artist Lita Albuquerque’s “… Reverse Sky Over
Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica.”
It’s a large photo taken of Albuquerque’s art installation
created in 2006 at the bottom of the world, where she laid out 99 bright
blue, fiberglass spheres on a vast, white ice lake.
The blue spheres, tethered to the white expanse, were a mirror image
of a constellation above and constituted a breathtaking realization of
environmental art. Fortunately, Albuquerque was able to capture the stark
imagery in all its glory and hers is a perfect piece to begin the Annenberg’s
exposition.
Albuquerque shot closer to home with other pieces, including in a triptych,
which she said was as much a commentary about the rules and surprises
of photography as with unexpected views of L.A.
The first panel, shot with a Canon 5-D and a special lens, shows a view
of the sky from a palm tree-framed vantage point in Malibu (“It’s
where I grew up as an artist,” Albuquerque said) at 7:56 p.m.
“A digital camera sees colors the human eye cannot see,” Albuquerque
said. “I was working with an astrophysicist at the time, and he
told me the location of stars in the sky changes perceptibly every four
minutes. So I kept shooting every four minutes.”
The third panel in the triptych was shot from the same viewpoint fourteen
minutes later and the difference is so dramatic, the camera caught shooting
stars in the image.
Sandwiched in between these two images is the back of a man’s
head standing on a balcony at the Getty Center, looking toward the ocean.
The man’s image has an almost Magritte flavor – a tiny figure surrounded
by a vast blue-black cosmos dotted with stars. Albuquerque took the shot
with her iPhone.
Another artist featured in the exhibit, Chris Garland, has the advantage
of living in Palm Desert with its thinner, drier air. He says he shoots
with a Sony “pocket camera,” and his photos reflect sweeping,
gigantic, crystalline skies of clouds, sunrays and serrated mountaintops.
His “Prince Charming,” a shot of a massive cloudbank, makes
you wonder if he was that kid that lay on the grass and picked Santa
Claus or football players out of the clouds above.
“I started shooting this kind of work a couple of years ago around
Palm Desert and Coachella,” said Garland, who was proudly overseeing
his first professional exhibition. “I love the brightness and feeling
of the desert. There are so many details that are unexpected and you
just don’t notice until you are right up on them.”
Finkel herself said she has been absorbed “for years” in
capturing moments in the sky. When she recently visited Albuquerque’s
Santa Monica studio and saw the huge Antarctic “skyscape,” she
immediately said, “I have a great idea for an exhibit.”
One of Finkel’s series features some electric sunsets, taken on
very smoggy days. The dusky sky, made ochre and purple through the lens
of air pollution, is anchored by the silhouette of a lone electric pole,
the wires sloping downward in testament to the grounded fate of humanity
in an expansive universe. Greenhouse gasses never looked so beautiful.
Finkel’s “Sky Paintings 1990 – Present” displays
a series of 30 Spectra Polaroid images on archival paper, enhanced with
oil crayon. The images prove that, like a snowflake, no two skies are
ever the same.
“I started this series back in 1989 when I was working on a large
acrylic piece for a show in Germany,” Finkel said. “I wanted
some images of clouds so I got this Polaroid and started taking photos.
Most are done right from my front yard. They really are Santa Monica
skies.”
A few years ago, Finkel came across the Polaraid photos again and started “playing
with them.” The resulting series shows a chronology of the Southern
California sky as per the atmospheric sciences.
Sadly, with the advent of digital cameras, Polaroid stopped manufacturing
its signature flash and print camera, which have now become a collector’s
item. Bruria plans to continue using hers until “something new
comes on the market.”
“But it won’t be the same,” Finkel sighed.
She still believes in the power and possibilities of digital photography,
however. This summer, she will be conducting an artist’s workshop
at the Annenberg and urges interested photographers to bring their cell
phone cameras.
“Digital cameras see color and images after the sky is too dark
for human eyes to distinguish anything,” Finkel said. “We
want to encourage everyone to look at the sky differently.”
“Skyscapes” runs at the Annenberg Beach House through
August 12. Brurua Finkel’s artist workshop takes place July 31,
6:30 – 8:30 p.m. More information may be found at http://beachhouse.smgov.net/
MIDDLESBROUGH, England, May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Engineers at SABIC UK Petrochemicals Limited have improved equipment monitoring in hazardous areas with the help of the next generation of ATEX explosion proof digital cameras.
CorDEX Instruments’ ToughPIX 2303XP has been adopted by SABIC UK’s site engineering team at the company’s Teesside petrochemicals plant, which has resulted in significant time savings across a number of projects.
SABIC UK is a member of SABIC, one of the world’s top 10 petrochemicals companies, which is a major producer of plastics and chemicals and employs more than 33,000 people worldwide.
Asset surveys, maintenance programmes and fire safety measures are key priorities at industrial sites and high quality digital photography enables engineering teams to work more effectively, ensuring that equipment and systems are running efficiently and safely.
Assistant technical engineer Wayne Douthwaite said: “For a site engineering team, a high quality hazardous area camera is an essential tool and the ToughPIX meets our needs perfectly. It does everything we need it to do, in areas where normal digital cameras are not allowed, and its robust construction gives it a much longer life-span than other cameras we have used in the past.”
Encased in aluminium with an ultra-bright display protected by armoured glass, the camera is custom designed for use in the harshest environments and can capture still and moving images in AVI format of up to 10 mega pixels. The next-generation device is also ATEX and American CSA certified to take images within Zone 1 IIC T4 and Class 1 Division I B, C, D hazardous areas.
The ToughPIX 2303XP camera has been used by the team on a number of projects including: monitoring process-critical valves, a tank decommissioning project and tank rim seal fire detection work.
Mr Douthwaite said: “Using our photographs we have also been able to show the maintenance team which pipework and associated instrumentation has to be disconnected and removed as part of a tank decommissioning project. Without the camera this would have required a member of our team to point out or mark the assets before work could begin so it represents a significant time saving for us.”
Business development director for Teesside-based CorDEX Instruments, Marcus Halliday said: “We have refined and updated our digital camera range following excellent feedback from industry. The ToughPIX 2303XP is the next generation in explosion proof digital camera technology which offers the very latest functionality and the best possible results in the field.”
CorDEX Instruments has also developed CorDEX CONNECT™ – a desktop package that boosts the capabilities of ToughPIX 2300XP Series cameras and is included as a complimentary ‘add-on’ package for customers.
CONNECT™ allows users to exclusively organise and manage information and images taken in the field with the ToughPIX 2300XP Series. It can generate reports and quickly manipulate images downloaded onto the system. Users can simply download images, edit then instantly annotate to produce reports.
CorDEX has developed technologies ideally suited to the hazardous environments of the energy industry. Its intrinsically safe and explosion-proof equipment eliminates the need for shutdown or hot work permits in Non Destructive Testing (NDT) and inspection.
The UK headquartered company has a network of distributors across the North America, South America, Africa, Australasia, Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East. For more information, visit
http://www.cordexinstruments.com
SOURCE CorDEX Instruments
Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
Consumers looking to step up from a point and shoot to a digital SLR camera will no doubt be trying to decide between the best-selling Canon Rebel T3i ($749 with lens) and the new Nikon D3200 ($699 with lens). We’ve been playing with the D3200 for a few weeks, and wanted to register our impressions:
The D3200 beats the Rebel on specs and video performance. The Nikon has 24.2 megapixels vs. 18 for the Rebel. In reality, either are fine for most folks, but if you do a lot of cropping, you’ll appreciate the extra megapixels.
On video, the Nikon has another advantage: It will auto-focus during recording, which the Rebel and other Canon cameras will not. Otherwise, both have big 3-inch LCD screens, dedicated video recording buttons and have menus that are dedicated to idiot proof photography.
(See sample photo of lemon shot in Automatic. Look how sharp it is.)
The big decision about which brand to go with for an SLR, which has interchangeable lenses, usually comes to down to your home inventory: If you already own Nikon lenses, you’ll want the Nikon camera, and vice versa.
Both the T3i and D3200 are great cameras, but if you come to it as a brand new SLR consumer, the video autofocus alone is enough for me to send you toward the Nikon.
Tears welled up in former Houston police officer Andrew Blomberg’s eyes as he heard “not guilty” Wednesday after spending weeks on trial for his role in a 2010 police beating caught on security video that shocked Houston, including the mayor and police chief.
“It’s been a long ordeal,” Blomberg said afterward. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my entire life” was police work, he said. “I’m just glad this part is finally over.”
Just outside the courtroom, black activists also had tears streaming down their cheeks as they exploded with angry shouts alleging racism and corruption because the case had been decided by a jury of six white people.
Blomberg, 29, is white; the teenage victim, Chad Holley is black.
Throughout the emotional trial that ended after three weeks, Blomberg’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said the video was “ugly” but that Blomberg, one of four former members of the Houston Police Department criminally charged for their roles in the incident, was not part of the swarm of officers who punched, kicked and stomped Holley.
DeGuerin’s defense was little consolation to the black activists who said prosecutors intentionally tanked the case.
“They knew what they were doing with an all-white jury!” community activist Quanell X shouted. “Nobody believes any of the other trials are any good, either.”
Mayor’s statement
Mayor Annise Parker said she disagreed with the verdict and maintained that Blomberg and the other three officers who were fired will never work for HPD.
Parker also said she understood why people would be taken aback by the verdict. “I fully expect that there will be a lot of unhappy folks with this verdict and we will hear about it, but I don’t expect any inappropriate reaction,” Parker said.
Holley’s attorney, Ben Hall, as well as U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, called for the federal Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston to take over the prosecution. The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Blomberg and his attorney denied the case was about race.
“This was not — is not — a racial thing,” said DeGuerin. “It has been made into that by others for their own reasons.”
To pick six jurors and an alternate for the misdemeanor trial, the prosecution and defense had a 60-person pool fill out questionnaires. As in a capital murder trial, the questionnaires were graded and prospective jurors were questioned individually, winnowing the pool to 19 people over about a week.
Of those 19, said defense attorney Todd Ward, two black potential jurors were struck from the pool by Blomberg’s attorneys. One said he had been arrested several times unjustifiably, and the other was an employee of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Despite the result, legal experts said they could not find fault in the jury selection process.
“It looks unseemly, but it’s not illegal,” said Adam Gershowitz, a University of Houston Law school professor. Because both sides questioned jurors individually, unusual for a misdemeanor, he said the method seemed thorough.
“It’s hard to find fault with that process,” Gershowitz said.
Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas School of Law, agreed.
“Being suspicious as to why a jury acquits is certainly understandable but we have to trust the process,” Corn said.
He also said it would have been a difficult case for prosecutors to win.
“The other reality is that it is very hard to convict a police officer,” Corn suggested. “Because a police officer begins a trial with a powerful presumption of legitimacy and propriety.”
Lykos responds
Assistant District Attorney Clint Greenwood, chief of the county’s police integrity division, had no comment on the verdict or the criticism.
District Attorney Pat Lykos issued a brief statement: “Although I respectfully disagree with the decision, I accept it and thank the jurors for their service.”
“Our prosecutors conducted themselves with professionalism and dedication to the pursuit of justice,” the statement reads. Lykos said the office is prepared to go to trial on the three other officers charged with misdemeanors for their roles in the beating.
Jurors’ identities sealed
The jury reached a verdict after almost seven hours of deliberations. After the trial, they told state District Judge Ruben Guerrero they did not want to comment publicly on the case. Guerrero refused to provide names of the jurors to the Houston Chronicle and said he planned to seal their identities.
Blomberg had faced up to a year in jail if convicted of official oppression, a class A misdemeanor.
He was the first of four former officers to go to trial in the March 24, 2010, beating.
The surveillance video shows Holley, 15 at the time, falling over the hood of a police car as he flees a burglary with several other young men. Holley can be seen rolling onto his stomach and putting his hands behind his back when HPD officers, including Blomberg, appear to stomp, kick and punch the teenager.
Holley was not seriously injured, and was later convicted of burglary.
When asked if he thinks the other three officers charged in the beating are culpable, Blomberg said: “That’s for a jury to decide.”
Chronicle reporters Mike Glenn, Chris Moran and Lindsay Wise contributed to this report.
brian.rogers@chron.com
twitter.com/@brianjrogers
Today only, JustDeals offers the refurbished Polaroid i1437 14-Megapixel 3x Zoom Digital Camera in Titanium (pictured) , model no. CIA-1437TC, or Red, model no. CIA-1437RC, for $39.77. With free shipping via coupon code DEALNEWS1, it’s the best price we’ve seen for this camera. (It’s also $24 under the lowest total price we could find for a new unit.) Features include a 3x optical zoom, 2.7″ LCD, 64MB internal memory, Secure Digital card slot, USB connectivity, and more.
A 90-day warranty is supplied, although it’s unclear who supports it.
