Author Archives: Donncha

I noticed for a while that the lens on my Sony F717 was getting just a little loose. It didn’t have the same firm feel to it that it had when I bought it a year ago. I didn’t think much of it except to presume that it was normal wear-and-tear.
Then 2 weeks ago I dropped my camera bag from my hand and it hit the floor lens first. It survived but the lens was even looser! That’d be fine with loose wemen around but not for taking photos which is how I stumbled across instructions for ripping a F717 apart! Thankfully it wasn’t necessary as all I had to do was tighten up a few small screws in the camera body and it’s back to it’s old self!
Hopefully this’ll fix it’s habit of shooting photos just a little off the horizontal. No matter how hard I tried there was always a pronounced off-horizontal lean in my photos. Yeah, it could be me too. heh.

The Gimp Guru continues his series of tutorials with an excellent one on removing haze from photographs. (He copied the technique from Luminous Landscape but the more GIMP material out there the better!)
I really like his explanation of Unsharp Mask, it’s the first one I’ve understood!

Last Monday I noticed for the first time this season, the Autumn colours creeping into the hedge-rows and trees. Hopefully we’ll have as spectacular a display as we had last year! This year I’ll attempt to record it as best I can! I went out with my camera yesterday to capture some of those changes.

The September issue of The Digital Journalist is out and it’s packed with great stuff. I just had a quick look over the Olympics article but there’s lots more there too..

Underwater cameras with remote control could be used for the swimming contests, diving and synchronized swimming – a first for Olympic Games. After some back and forth, the IOPP …. had their cameras installed at the bottom of the pools. Scuba-diving AP photographer Mark Terrill was brought in from Los Angeles with the technology he knows well and, after some trial and error, flash pictures of swimming star Michael Phelps and others moved on the “wires.” At first the disks had to be removed from the camera after races; later, wireless transmission worked off and on.

Here’s two photos that caught my attention on the SP list. They were taken in Warsaw and posted by Rami: 1, 2