Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Your Photos on a Diet!

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

A couple of days ago I read an interesting article about JPEGmini on PetaPixel. JPEGmini is a new image compression service that can magically reduce the file size of your JPEG photos by up to 5 times without any visible loss in quality. Today, before uploading a new photo to my photoblog I decided to give this new service a try.

After post-processing the image, I exported it into the highest quality JPEG format at a resolution of 1800×1200 pixels. The image that came out was about 916kb. After uploading it to JPEGmini the size of this image was reduced to only 134kb. So, it has been reduced 6.8 times. And yes, without any visible loss in quality. Amazing huh? :-)

JPEGmini

The file size of the final image has always been something I took notice off, because the template I use on my photoblog requires much higher resolution images than most other templates do. Normaly I would try to keep the image size under 350kb in order to keep image loading quickly. But with use of JPEGmini it seems that I’m now able to deliver higher quality images that are loaded even faster. Cool! 8)

Posted in Computers, Photography | 1 Comment »

Panasonic DMC-LX5: Shallow Depth of Field

Monday, August 15th, 2011

At first glance the Panasonic DMC-LX5 may look like another point-and-shoot camera, however this little fellow has a lot more to offer. One great thing about this camera is the wide-aperture lens. While being a zoom lens the maximum aperture starts at f/2.0. Fully zoomed in the maximum aperture will drop to f/3.3. These large apertures will not only help one while shooting pictures in lowlight situations, but also makes it possible to isolate a subject by making use of the so called ‘shallow depth of field’. For example take a look at the coneflower below.

Coneflower

This coneflower was shot with the Panasonic DMC-LX5 at f/2.0. See how the shallow depth of field singles out the flower while at the same time reducing the effect of distracting background clutter. Another great feature is it’s ability to take macro or close-up shots. More on this subject soon :-)

Posted in Photography, Review | 1 Comment »

Microsoft Camera Codec Pack

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

Until a few months ago, one would need additional software to get Windows Explorer to display RAW images shot with a digital camera on a 64-bit windows system. For example Canon and other vendors don’t bother to provide one for systems like these. In order to preview RAW images in the Windows Explorer one would have to buy software like FastPictureViewer.

But now happily enough Microsoft has filled this gap and provided the ‘Microsoft Camera Codec Pack’. They have released both a 32 and 64-bit package. You can download and read more about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26829.

Great huh!? :-)

Posted in Computers, Photography | 1 Comment »