Monday, June 28, 2010

Currently Obsessed With...

...the Sony Alpha Nex 3.


I've been looking for a good compact camera for awhile now. Since buying my DSLR, I've used my old point and shoot maybe once or twice. For one thing, the photo quality isn't too great (especially after seeing the shots from my canon). I've also misplaced the battery charger, so it's been dead for about 7 months. I love my DSLR and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good starter camera, but obviously I can't carry it around with me at all times and because of that, I don't have any pictures of my friends from the past year (unless they've accompanied me on one of my photo excursions) -- all the photo files on my computer are of my niece, nephews, and random inanimate objects.

My DSLR is a canon. A Canon Rebel XSi 450D to be exact:


I love this camera and don't think I would ever stray from the Canon brand for big purchases. I've heard the setup on a Nikon is a little more confusing (especially after using a Canon), but aside from that I just love the style and body of my Canon.

As far as point and shoots go, I trust the Sony brand. My very first p & s was a Sony, purchased back in 2004. It took excellent pictures and lasted about 6 years until it went a little awry, but even still when it works, it takes decent pictures.


I purchased the Nikon Coolpix most recently in 2008 and wasn't very satisfied.


The camera takes decent outdoor pictures, especially once you play around with the settings, but the indoor and night photos are terrible quality...very grainy, and the flash is so strong it picks up pieces of dust in the air, creating specks in the photos. The one plus of this camera: it's compact and thin design.

The Sony alpha nex series debuted earlier in May and is basically a compact point and shoot with DSLR quality and manual capability. There are also a variety of lenses available for the alpha nex (shown below), so it has that DSLR quality to it too.


Basic features include 14.2 megapixels, a tiltable LCD screen, and video recording capability. I think the main difference between the alpha nex 3 and 5 is the specifics regarding video recording capability. I didn't entirely understand the technical terms about this but the alpha nex 3 is $100 cheaper than the 5. I also wouldn't need the interchangeable lenses (I have my canon for that) so I'm seriously considering purchasing the sony alpha nex 3 that comes with an included 16mm lens. Any thoughts or suggestions?


This has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks

All Aboard!

Union Station is really beautiful.



I saw it for the first time last week.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Fiesta de las Flores

I spent last Saturday morning at the Fiesta de las Flores in LA (on Olvera Street to be exact). I read about the fiesta on a photography website a few months ago as a great place for amateur and professional photographers to go shoot, so I was really excited when Saturday finally came around. I was a little put off by the fact that there were no flowers in sight, but there was still an overwhelming amount of scenes to photograph. A lot of dancers, musical groups, and street vendors. My anticipation for street photography was satisfied, which is apparent in the slide show I put together below (too many photos to post individually). For some reason, blogger never uploads my videos so I had to embed it through youtube.



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I just watched the video with the sound on and noticed there is background music. Weird, I didn't sync any music to the slideshow when I created it. This was the first time I've used iphoto to make a slideshow...I guess it automatically adds music?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Monday, June 7, 2010

Saturday, June 5, 2010

B & W







I have a penchant for leading lines, geometric shapes, and heavily-saturated-high-contrast black & white photos.