The Yellow Walls of Hoi An

August 4, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
White Bicycle

Hoi An Ancient town is located in Viet Nam’s central Quang Nam Province, on the north bank near the mouth of the Thu Bon River. The city of Hoi An is beautiful but is inundated with tourists. This old town has a number houses that are painted a deep yellow and make for a wonderful photographic backdrop.

Why yellow? The Vietnamise believe that yellow is a symbol of royalty. The yellow color reflects the beautiful culture of Vietnam, symbolizing luck, pride and prosperity.

Trees inside the home
A narrow yellow walled alley.
Now a one way only.

We spent two days in this amazing city this March. We photographing the markets in the aery morning, fishing villages at sunrise and sunset, street scenes during the day and lots of night photography along the river. We could easily have spent a few more days here.

Hoi An has nearly 1,000 ancient houses and of these 844 houses are included on the list of UNESCO’s cultural heritage. Visiting these home requires a small subscription of about $5 and is worth every penny.

Street Selling – from flowers to food.
A great use for a tripod
Bougainvillea
Blue Chair – Yellow Wall
Great restaurants and great food

All images in this post were captured with the Panasonic Lumix G9 and the Leica 12-60 lens. Please click on the images to open them in a larger window.

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Elders in Vietnam

August 3, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
I am ready ……….

In 2019 Vietnam has a median age of only 26. But it is ageing rapidly. Currently individuals over the age of 60 are 12% of the total population. It is expected that this will go beyond 20% by the year 2040. Clearly this iforecase ids one of the quickest increases in the world. Remember, most of the would be elders today were wiped out during the long war. This image is of one gentleman who survived and at his age, he is full of humor – he would like to marry again, “in a heart beat” he says.

The people of this country are truly wonderful. They understand the devastation but accept it – “it was not the Vietnam war” they say “it was the American war” – collectively they are building for a better and stronger economy. I have yet to see a population that works as hard as the Vietnamese.

Image captured with the Panasonic Lumix G9 with the Leica 12-60 mm lens at 50mm. Exposure triad: f/4, 1/50 sec., ISO 400. Image was converted to B&W using Capture One.

Please click on the image for a larger rendition.

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Lumix S1R High Res Mode – Palouse Sunset

August 2, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
Rolling Hills of the Palouse

This is a scaled down version of a 187 MP image of the rolling fields in the Palouse at sunset. The low angle of the sun creates lovely shadows and definition of the undulating hills. This was also a test of the Sigma MC21 with the Sigma 100-400 mm EF mount lens on the Lumix S1R.

Exposure triad: f/6.3, 1/60 sec, ISO 200. Focal length as shot: 400 mm.

I will be in Spokane, WA for the PSA conference and would like to do a photo workshop after the conference. If you are interested let me know so I can make necessary arangements.

Click on the image for a larger rendition.

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Up

July 5, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
Poge Light

Poge Lighthouse in Cape Poge across from Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard.

Photographed with the Panasonic Lumix S1R and the Lumix 24-105 f/4 lens. Exposure triad: f/14, 2 sec, ISO 100.

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Happy 4th from Cape Poge

July 5, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
Fireworks in Edgar Town across Vineyard Sound

Happy 4th to all. I am spending a few days with a dear friend in Cape Poge (a semi-private island off Chappaquiddick.

Photographed with the Panasonic Lumix S1R and the Lumix 24-105 f/4 lens. Exposure triad: f/8, 4 sec, ISO 640.

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The Palouse at Sunrize

June 23, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
Click on the image for a larger view.

The fields of the Palouse photographed along the road about midway to the top of Steptoe Butte.  It started with cloudy skies but then the sun peeked through providing lovely light. The detail captured using a 47MP full frame body with a Leica Certified 70-200mm is just exceptional.

Captured with the Lumix S1R and the S1 Pro 70-200 mm f/4 lens at 200mm.  Exposure triad: f/11, 1/40 sec, ISO 200.

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Echoing Curves

May 18, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments
Echoing Curves

The beaches beyond Marineland in St. Augustine have some beautiful rock formations. This image was captured while the colors in the sky still had some magenta while the horizon was turning warm gold. The way the ocean had receded taking sand away from the front of this rock and exposing the bright green moss caught my eye. Even more interesting were the curves in the sand, the shape of the waves and the shape of the face of the rock. Each curve in harmony with and echoing the other.

Captured with the Panasonic Lumix S1R with the 24 – 105 f/4 lens. A Benro filter holder with a 3 stop ND, a polarizer and a 3 stop soft edge grad was used for this image. The lens was at 35mm and the exposure triad: f/8, 8 sec, ISO 100.

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Marineland Beach – A1A St. Augustine

May 17, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments

Sunrise on the Jetty

Sunrise the day before leaving St Augustine was mostly cloudless with just a small band just on the horizon. The few clouds were enough to defuse the light and create a lovely warm glow on the rocks. I set up the Lumix S1R with the 24 – 105 f/4 lens. A Benro filter holder with a 6 stop ND, a polarizer and a 3 stop soft edge grad was used for this image. The lens was at 52mm and the exposure triad: f/10, 15 sec., ISO 50.

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Lumix S1R – The value of great resolution with good pixels

May 16, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments

Last month I spent a few days in St. Augustine at Florida’s Birding and Photo Festival. I took the Lumix S1R along even though I knew I would be shooting predominantly with the Lumix G9 and the Leica 100-400, an ideal bird photography combination. I was also hoping to try out the Sigma MC21 and some of the long glass that Sigma makes – more on that in future posts. For my very first shoot I decided to lave the G9 behind and just use the S1R with the Lumix Pro (Leica certified) 70-200mm f/4. Boy was this a great combination. The following images are an example of what impressed me most.

I am a strong believer on exposing to the right to maximize the ammout of data captured and this root image is an example of this technique.

The image below is of a Roseate Spoonbill that had landed near some alligators to drink water.

Focal length 200mm – Exposure triad f/4, 1/800 sec., ISO 160

Typically I will adjust exposure, white /black points, highlights and shadows to get the image to what it looked like. These adjustments are shown in the screen capture as below.

As the composition was limited by the focal length of the lens I decided on a tight crop while maintaining the reflection as in the image below. The original image is 8368 X 5584 pixels and the cropped image is 1934 X 2528. Though not exact it is close to a 2X crop or the equivalent of a micro four third sensor. This provides a field of view equivalence of 400 mm.

This image has been resized down to 1400 px on the long side for web presentation.

Seeing the detail and the quality of the cropped image, I went a step further and cropped further to 1934 x 1434. This is approximately another 50%.

Once again this image has been resized down just a bit to 1400 px on the long side for web presentation.

In my opinion this is a perfectly good image and useable in and digital competition as most competition require the image to be 1400 X 1050 px.

So why not take it one step further. A severe crop of the neck and head.

This image has not been resized – it is 546 x 817 px

To further test the quality of images from the S1R, I took this small jpg image above and resized it to 1050 px high.

Resized to 1050 px high

Using the same original jpg image a further resize was done to 1920 X 2678 px. This is more than sufficient for any screen/monitor display and any photographic competition.

You should be able to double click this image to see it at 100%

ull disclosure, I am a Lumix Global Ambassador and use Lumix cameras and lenses for my photography. I will say that after using the S1R for a month, in my opinion, it is an exceptional camera and the best digital camera I have used to date.

The LUMIX S1R is Panasonic’s new 47.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor camera.

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Vietnam – 2

March 31, 2019 by sverma | 0 Comments

Nam Cuong sand dunes were amazing – though there was not much texture in the sky the dunes were a beautiful sight. They were really pristine till a bunch of tourists started climbing the slopes. Managed a few shots before the decimation.

Panasonic Lumix G9 with the Leica 12-60mm. Exposure triad: f/8, 1/160 sec, ISO 200

A local Cham cowherd had brought his bulls and a wagon that had truck wheels to help traverse the dunes. Lovely warm light on this man’s made for an interesting candid image.

The Chăm Pa now a minority were dynasty that extended across the coast of central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century AD. They were absorbed and annexed by the Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mạng in AD 1832. They are the poorest people in Vietnam.

Same equipment as with the dunes. Exposure triad: f/4, 1/25 sec, ISO 200

Why miss an opportunity – here are his bulls that he had unyoked from the wagon.

Exposure triad: f/3.8, 1/50 sec, ISO 200

A young Cham girl plays with simple toys while sitting on the dunes in a pile of tires.

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