Almost as good as new – Singapore Kite Festival

A couple of weeks back, we had a lovely weather for the week-end and by complete chance this was the Singapore Kite Festival. NTUC, which is a kind of local “Union”, organized this day out on the Marina Bay, right in front of my office, and their own nice office building.

So a lot of people, kids running around, kites, sun, colors, but also acrobats, jugglers, and much more. A perfect opportunity for a photo walk, and by the number of cameras around I was not the only one to have the idea.

In my current line of thinking that nobody cares if I miss or succeed in an individual shot, let’s try to make things a bit more fun and bring along a manual lens. Namely the very nice, 70-210F3.5 Angenieux zoom lens. This is a very nice piece of kit, made in France and still goes our second hand for a bi of money. I bough it second hand in Belgium back in 93 or 94 for the equivalent of then 500 EURO. It has a constant aperture of 3.5 which is fast enough with the auto-iso option of the D700. Using a manual lens with the D700 is very easy as you can either rely on our eyes or use the internal rangefinder. Using a digital body, if you miss a shot no bid deal, you can try again at no costs.

Just a couple of negative remarks:
– the Angenieux focuses the opposite was to the Nikon lens

– the infinite focusing does not seem to work well

– it looks to me that with manual lenses the D700 has a tendency to underexpose the shots…

  

Above: The waterdrops stilt walkers

Above: I like very much the colors and the “dark side”, pity the woman on the right is not totally in the frame.

 

Above: the wind garden, close, wide open
  

above: one of the pro kite flyers 

 

above: all ages gathering at Marina Bay this day

Above: one of the artists, a mime

 

Above: there was even a band playing

 

Above: A very funny juggler, unfortunately I have no outstanding shot of him.
 

The lens is now mounted on the Nikon F… (to be followed)

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Temple in Penang

Mosaic on temple roof in Penang

This is a close up shot of the roof of a temple in Penang (Malaysia). The mosaic is made of broken piece of coloured china bowls.

Picture was taken with the D700, I have brought along the manual focus zoom Angenieux 70-200 F3.5. Not as practical as the nikkor 70-210 F2.8D, but a bit lighter. I realy like the look of this picture, really film like; the vigneting is out of the box. One funny thing, the focusing works the opposite way to the nikkor lenses so your have to turn your focusing ring the opposite way to what the rangefinder indicates.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Angenieux 70-200 F3.5
Post Processing: Lightroom 3.3

Singapore River Festival 2010 AIR

Photo: Sunday 27^th June 2010, a show on Singapore river for the annual River Festival.
Camera: Nikon D80, Angenieux 70-210F3.5
Touch-up:Lightroom 2.x / Bibble Pro 5/ PSP Elements 4.0

[Anglais]

Today was a manual focus day, digged out the Tamrom 28mmF2.5 and the Angenieux Zoom 70-210F3.5; both lens fit on the Nikon D80, but the light metering does not work. So a bit of guess is required. I think this picture was taken with ISO1000 and High NR reduction, F3.5 and 1/50s; not as bas as expected, finally the worst part of the picture is the framing.

Post processing: Basic edition in Adobe Lightroom 2 (Frame, rotate, white balance, exposure), Noise reduction and Sharpening in Bible pro 5, for export to Flickr final histogram and frame with Photoshop Element 5.

[French] Dimanche 27^th Juin, un spectacle pour sur la “Singapore river” pour le festival annuel de la rivière. Aujourd’hui une journée de mise au point manuelle, j’ai sorti le Tamron 28mmF2.5 et le zoom Angenieux 70-210F3.5; les deux objectifs se montent sur le Nikon D80, mais la mesure de l’exposition ne marche pas. Un peu de pifomètre est nécessaire. Je pense que cette phot a été prise à ISO1000 avec le réglage (optionnel) High NR réduction, F3.5 et 1/50s; pas aussi mal que je le craignais, en fin de compte seul le cadrage est loupe.

Retouches: Edition de base avec Adobe Lightroom 2 (cadrage, rotation, balance des blancs, exposition), Réduction du bruit et aiguisage (?) avec Bible pro 5, et version pour Flickr avec création d’un cadre et réglage final de histogramme dans Photoshop Element 5.