Bee

GRD II, f5, 1/320, ISO 80, RAW

After the people portraits yesterday, I went out to take some nature and macro shots today. I think I could call this shot an environmental portrait of a bee ;). The GRD II works well for macro but I do miss the CX1 for these kind of shots, it was so convenient to have the zoom and the quality was very good.

Flower Macro

GRD, f3.2, 1/160, ISO 64, JPG

After all the b&w and sepia pictures recently I thought a bit of color would be nice. I did not take a lot of pictures but took this while out for a quick walk in the park today.

Yellow Roses

CX1, f4.4, 1/380, ISO 80, JPG, 66mm

There is something about the color yellow recently when I take macro pictures, I have quite a lot of yellow flowers or roses. While this is yet another flower macro it is something the CX1 is very good at.

Another reminder about the Ricohforum meetup tomorrow, hope to see some of you there.

Yellow Flower

CX1, f4.8, 1/160, ISO 109, JPG, 177mm

I have been out during lunch and after work to take some pictures in order to update my CX1 Review Diary. I took a lot of macro pictures and used the continuous and DR modes. I will have more updates up soon.
The quality of the CX1 is great if only Ricoh could fix the excessive noise reduction or maybe add RAW, it would be so much better.
This is my favorite picture from today. I am not a great macro photographer but having seen a lot of nice macro pictures taken with the CX1, I thought I give it a try and see what I can get out of it.

Pusteblume

GRD, f4.5, 1/250, ISO 64, JPG - Taken on 26/10/2006

Today's picture is my most popular picture on both Flickr and JPG Mag. It is also one of my own favorite pictures although I am not a big fan of flower macros. I tried to copy this picture a few times but never got anywhere close to the original.

Two People and Two Macros

This is another day with the R10 and I am still quite impressed by it and so was the guy at Jacobs when I went to pick up my GR1 pictures. Went for a walk during my lunchtime and tried to take various pictures with the R10. The best thing is how versatle this camera is, from wideangle to extreme closeup, everything is possible in a very small package. I was quite impressed with how well it performes. Sure, the IQ is not great and the lens is slow but it is the price to pay for having such a wide zoom range in a small package. None of the pictures is post processed, only one is cropped to 16:9 format and all are shot at ISO 80 or ISO 100.
Finally managed to pick up my pictures from the development but to be honest I am very disapointed, both with the prints and the bad quality JPGs they put on the CD. I just can't see film being worthwile since GRD I prints looked better, there is not sign of better dynamic range or better colors in the prints. The only visible difference is the shallow DOF but this can be worked around even with the GRD. Will replace and post the pictures tomorrow.

The Rose

GRD, f2.4, 1/500, ISO 64, JPG, 40mm

The weather has been very nice today, sunny but a bit cold, so I decided to take a stroll through Greenwich Park on my way home. I took a few pictures there and while this was initially not my favorite I saw the potential for editing it to get the look I wanted. First I wanted to saturate it even more but decided against it. The end result is how I imagined it when I reviewed the shot on the camera.

Yesterday, I reported about the Ricoh dSLR rumor based on an interview with Ricoh from Photokina published in Amateur Photographer. I found this surprising having had a long chat with Ricoh and nothing like this has been mentioned. So I went out and bought the magazine today. To my disapointment there was no interview with Ricoh nor is the magazine any good.

I've seen some amazing photography magazines in Japan but the European magazines, so far, have all been a waste of paper. Here over half of the magazines are full of advertising, the camera tests consist of diagrams and charts but no pictures. In Japan the camera magazines are almos full of pictures taken with cameras, guides and tips how to take these pictures, camera tests consist of full-page pictures taken with the cameras and the print quality is a lot higher. This means that either people in Europe are obsessed with charts and advertising in photography magazines or the publishers care only about the money they get through advertising. You, like me, will probably chose the 2nd point as the more believable one ;).