Bokeh

Boke is a Japanese word meaning fuzzy. The spelling has been changed to bokeh since 2000, maybe to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers, in photography. It is now a photographic term referring to out-of-focus areas (generally background) in photos. Bokeh techniques are mostly used in the portraiture and flower categories of photography. A blurred background makes the subject stand out and making the image look like three dimensional.

A well blurred background can be achieved with:

1. Wide opening the camera’s pupil (aperture)… the wider the opening, the more blur or, in photographic terms, the shallower depth of field.

2. Keeping the subject as close as possible to the camera with a long space between the subject and the background.

3. Using large focal length which simply means, in non-slr cameras, zooming in, and in slr’s, changing the lens to a longer one.

A combination of all three techniques above would definitely yield to much better results.

Method number one needs more clarification. The aperture (camera’s pupil) can be wider using small f numbers. By definition, f number is:

f# = Lf / D . . . . . (1)

Where f# is the scale used to control the aperture size, Lf is the focal length in millimetre, and D is the diameter of the opening in millimetre. Note that Lf in equation (1) is the real focal length and not the 35mm equivalent. As an example, let’s see how wide would an f/2.8 in an slr camera with 36mm focal length open the aperture:

f# = Lf / D . . . . . eq. (1)
2.8 = 36 / D
thus D = 12.86 mm.

This diameter is a very good size for a nice bokeh, assuming other factors are appropriate. Next, let’s calculate what f# could open the pupil of a point-and-shoot camera with 6mm real focal length that much:

f# = Lf / D . . . . . eq. (1)
f# = 6 / 12.86 = 0.47 say f/0.5.

Further, it would be of interest to know how effective (wide) could an f# of 2.8 in a point-and-shoot camera be compared to an slr:

f# = Lf / D . . . . . eq. (1)
thus D1 = Lf1 / f#1 and D2 = Lf2 / f#2.

Index 1 shows the p&s while index 2 shows the slr. We want to find the f# in an slr to open the aperture as much as that of f/2.8 in an point-and-shoot, so

D1 = D2
Lf1 / f#1 = Lf2 / f#2
6 / 2.8 = 36 / f#2
f#2 = 16.8 say f/16.

What does this calculation say? It clearly shows that f/2.8 in a simple point-and-shoot camera is equivalent to f/16 in an slr! Have you ever tried to get a bokeh with f/2.8 setting on your camera and not succeeded much? Well, this is the reason! With point-and-shoot cameras the best you can do for a nice bokeh is zooming as mch as you can or your camera lets. Zooming in zoom lenses dramatically raises the focal length. Assuming your regular (no zoom) focal length to be 6 mm, at 6x zoom you get a focal length of 36 mm similar to an slr, and this is the ground you can stand on with a real f/2.8 for instance.

Watch an interesting short video discussing depth of field:



Video taken from YouTube

Grammy Winner Vancouver Symphony

It was tenth evening of February 2008 when Maestro Bramwell Tovey and James Ehnes received the 2007 Grammy Award in the category of “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” for the CBC recording of the violin concerti by Barber, Korngold, and Walton with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Later, in May, this award was completed with a Juno for Best Classical Album of the Year for the same compact disc.

Maestro Bramwell Tovey was born on July 11, 1953 in England. He was educated at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of London as a pianist and composer. His second instrument was tuba.

Tovey was the music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra between 1989 and 2001. He was appointed the music director and conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in September 2000. Meanwhile, in Europe, he was music director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra from 2002 to 2006.

Tovey has conducted the “Summertime Classics” series with the legendary New York Philharmonic since the inception of the series in 2004.

James Ehnes was born on January 27, 1976 in Brandon, Manitoba. He started his music lessons at 5 with his father who was a trumpeter and music teacher.



Ehnes won the Juno Award for Best Classical Album of the Year in 2001 and was named Young Artist of the Year at the Cannes Classical Awards in 2002. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1997. He mostly plays on a 1715 Marsick Stradivarius which belongs to the Fulton Collection. His recording of Paganini’s 24 caprices in 1995 was acclaimed as a fine recording of these difficult pieces. Ehnes also won the 2007 Juno for the recording of Mozart’s violin concerti.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO), founded in 1919, is a Canadian orchestra performing in Vancouver. Each year, over 240,000 people attend the VSO concerts. The orchestra’s home is the beautiful Orpheum Theatre. VSO is the third largest symphony orchestra in Canada with 140 concerts per season and annual operating budget of $10 million.

Watch a short video of Maestro Tovey conducting the orchestra at Orpheum:



Video taken from YouTube

Persian Ballet

The art and culture society “Ballet Afsaneh” is a professional non-profit performing arts company based in the San Franciso Bay, California. This dynamic group presents performances and activities featuring dance, poetry, and music of the Silk Road—the historic trade route that stretched 11,000 kilometres across Central Asia from the China Sea in the east to the Mediterranean in the west.

The group performed a Persian ballet at the San Francisco City Hall last year during the Persian New Year (Norooz) celebrations in March 2007. The beautiful dance was accompanied by stunning Iranian music performed with Ney and Daf, Persian classical music instruments.

Watch a short video of the program:

Canon S5 IS

Canon S5 IS is the best prosumer high end, SLR like camera available.

This little S5, 120mm long, 80mm wide and 80mm deep, 450g camera (550g with batteries) is flooded with fantastic features. Let me list a few:

- Remote control of the shutter from pc; you can control the zoom lever, aperture and shutter time, and many more controls from your pc
- Amazing face detection; detects up to 3 faces
- 12x optical zoom combined with 4x digital zoom with a very efficient image stabilizer IS up to the far tele end of the zoom; also effective in video recording, thanks to the super silent zooming motor of Canon; both optical 12x and digital 4x (48x total) can be used in video recording
- Stereo sound in video recording
- Stereo sound recorder
- Aperture and shutter time(1) priority modes for professionals, full automatic mode for beginners, and also a full manual control of everything including focus for professionals and creative amateur photographers
- Two levels of macro, regular effective 100 to 500mm from the lens, and super macro effective zero, that’s right, 0 to 100mm from the lens
- Flash with 3 levels of light intensity (output) up to 5.2m effective
- Easy to use menus with each and every control at the finger tip
- Exposure bracketing with 3 shots at the compensation levels you define
- Focus bracketing with 3 shots at the focus levels you define
- Dedicated scenes mode with amazing preset controls for indoor, snow, fireworks, and many more situations
- Live light histogram which shows the light condition before shooting the photo
- Focus check right after the shot
- Red eye reduction in the camera needless of a software
- Swap colours mode, lets you switch the colour of the subject to whatever colour you’d wish!
- Dedicated rotating LCD and excellent electronic view finder EVF

When investigating the tons of reviews for this camera along with a competitive model, Panasonic FZ18 with a seducing 18x zoom, I noticed two major complaints about S5, the lens cap pops off very easily, and the noise is not acceptable in ISO settings over 400. It should be noted, this camera is not a professional SLR and it can be assumed the user of this S5 will never need prints larger than 4”x6” and very rarely up to a letter size 11”x17”, and in such sizes noise cannot be noticed even with ISO1600 for the 4x6 print and up to ISO 800 for the 11x17 print. Actually, the noise can only be clearly seen in what professionals call 100% crop in their reviews. Besides, everything should be paid for; reducing noise equals losing details on the other side! So, clean details versus noise should be balanced at some reasonable point. And about the lens cap, I really can’t imagine what pressure would have been on the motor if the lens cap did not pop off easily! You—just like myself—will definitely forget to take off the cap before turning on the camera more than 50% of the times, I assure!

The 18x zoom announced for a few other cameras including FZ18 works mostly on the wide side, say from 28mm equivalent focal length. Also, the IS does not work well on the tele side and you will have issues with your hand shake anywhere above 12x!

Bottom line… I highly recommend this magic Canon S5. I would suggest adding a set (possibly 2 sets) of NiMH batteries and charger along with a lens hood and adaptor. You can also add a UV filter to leave in place all the time to protect the lens, only, you’ll need a larger bag for this system.

Lions Gate Suspension Bridge, 2km away, full wide 36mm, 2sec, f4.0, ISO100


Same bridge, same vantage point, full optical zoom 12x, 432mm, 2sec, f4.0, ISO100


A coin almost zero distance from the lens at super macro mode, 6mm, 8sec, f2.7, ISO100... please note, when you cover the subject with the large 58mm diameter lens at zero distance, there will not be enough light for the shot, and this is the reason for this long shot with shutter time of 8 seconds! A tripod is a must in such super macro cases.


Watch a video introducing Canon S5 IS:


There are a few more samples on my photoblog. Also more professional reviews can be seen on Steve’s Digicams and Digital Photography Review.

(1) Professional photographers use the term "shutter speed" but this term stands for the length of time that the shutter remains open to let the light pass the aperture, and the unit of this quantity is seconds; so, I would rather call it "shutter time".

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's day...

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's day, filled with love and happiness.

Pictures at an Exhibition

It was Feruary 1874 when Mussorgsky visited an exhibition of the paintings of his newly deceased friend, Viktor Alexandrovich Hartmann (1834-1873), the Russian artist and architect. Impressed by most of the watercolours, Modest composed the famous suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, for piano solo. The music is considered a showpiece for virtuoso pianists; however, it is so gorgeous that has been arranged for orchestra many times by many musicians so far. The arrangement by Ravel is the most often performed and recorded. Most of the paintings inspired by the great composer are lost; either yet undiscovered or, sadly, destroyed by time.

Mussorgsky uses and repeats a theme that represents the movements of the visitor from one picture to the next. This is just like leitmotiv used by Wagner or idee fixe used by Berlioz in his fantastic unique symphony to show a specific idea repeating all the time. Mussorgsky calls it Promenade. It’s generally in b-flat major key, with alternating 5/4 and 6/4 rhythms. The melody is melancholic, showing the musician’s deep grief for his gone friend.

Video part 1
Promenade (0:24 to 2:05)

Picture No. 1: The Gnome (2:05 to 4:40)
In e-flat major with a 3/4 timing, shows a little gnome, clumsily running with crooked legs.

Promenade (4:40 to 5:38)

Picture No. 2: The Old Castle (5:38 to end)
In g-sharp minor with a 6/8 rhythm, shows a medieval castle and a troubadour singing in front of it. This is said to be a Hartmann’s watercolour of an Italian castle.

Video part 2

Promenade (0:00 to 0:35)

Picture No. 3: Tuileries (0:35 to 1:36)
In b major 4/4, shows the gardens of Tuileries around the castle at the centre of Paris. The original painting only shows an empty garden but, for musical purposes, Mussorgsky added to the image children chattering and playing in the garden.

Picture No. 4: Cattle (1:36 to 4:12)
In g-sharp minor with a 2/4 rhythm, shows a Polish cart moving on enormous wheels.

Promenade (4:12 to 5:00)

Picture No. 5: Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells (5:00 to 6:16)
In f major with a 2/4 timing, the original work by Hartmann is a set decoration design for a ballet. The original work was Tribly Ballet scored by Julius Gerber and choreographed by Petipa performed in 1870.

Picture No. 6: Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (6:16 to end)
In b-flat minor 4/4, this picture is sometimes called Two Polish Jews, but the title provided above is the one as seen in the original Mussorgsky’s manuscripts. These were 2 separate paintings by Hartmann combined in one single musical movement.

Video part 3
Picture No. 7: The Market at Limoges (0:00 to 1:30)
In e-flat major with a 4/4 rhythm, shows women quarreling in a market in Limoges, a city in central France.

Picture No. 8: The Catacombs (1:30 to end)
In b minor 3/4 (largo) and then in b minor 6/8 (andante), shows the artist (Hartmann) examining the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern.

Video part 4
Picture No. 9: The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (0:00 to 2:58)
In c minor 2/4, shows a clock in the form of Baba Yaga’s hut on fowl’s legs. Baba Yaga is, in Slavic folklore, the wild witch and mistress of magic.

Promenade (2:58 to 4:05)

Picture No. 10: Great Gate of Kiev (4:05 to end)
In e-flat major with a 4/4 time, shows Bogatyrs, heroes in Russian epics and a sketch of a monumental gate designed by Hartmann but never built.

Photoblog

I would cordially invite all friends of this weblog to visit my new photoblog, "Pictures. . . at an Exhibition".

As I mentioned in the previous posts, I have recently fell in love with photography as a new hobby. It actually happened last December, although I started photography with a Canonet 28 when I was 14!

So, please do not expect some professional exceptional photos, but only a few pictures of mine as an amateur and with basic gear as well.