Long time no see! I haven’t been updating the blog regularly but you can always follow my work on Flickr (if you don’t know my username, just look in one of my pictures).

Today I went to Lisbon (the capital of Portugal) with the purpose to take some photographs on the “tourism circuits”. I’ve published this set on Flickr, which contains the best 28 pictures in my view.

You can see it by clicking here (unfortunately, I couldn’t publish Flickr’s embed flash). Hope you like it!

Yes, it’s the first picture that I share here where I’ve used fully manual settings (and made me see that I don’t need Sony’s help anymore). In this picture I wanted 2 things: the lowest noise possible and the background out of focus. This is done by using low ISO and big aperture (lowest numbers). Bearing this in mind I’ve used ISO 100 and f5.6 (the biggest my Minolta lenses can do at 80mm).

Now it’s a matter of exposure. Yesterday I’ve learned that my camera seems to like pictures with more light than me. This means I couldn’t trust the light meter to do what I wanted as I was always aiming for something near -0.7EV of what it considered the correct value. In this particular picture it was a shutter speed of 1/500 that gave me what I wanted.

I shot this with manual focus, but that was a “just because I can” thing (xD). Since I was too lazy to go to the WB menu (and I still don’t understand it very well) it was in Auto WB and that turned white into yellow. So, I’ve applied the preset “Color Process 2″ in Aperture. That made the colors correct but they weren’t what I wanted so I’ve changed the saturation value to 1.19.

As you can see, describing a manual picture is a big process. But I was also inspired by what I consider to be the greatest album ever done: Awake by Dream Theater. I know this isn’t a music blog but just give this album a try.

Go ahead and download this on Flickr!

Smile! by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso Não-Comercial-Não a Obras Derivadas 2.5 Portugal License.

One of life’s little ironies – nothing heightens the foreboding of dark clouds like a sudden burst of sunshine. willow tree sublime … Read More

via avant garden photography 365

Since it was just to have a picture in that particular group, I didn’t care too much about the camera settings and just shot in Auto. The real secret of this photo is Aperture. I’ve used the preset “Toy Camera” to make the vignette and to saturate the picture.

If you want, you may download Woody in Flickr.

What about you? Have you took any picture to your toys? What did you thought of the group?

There’s a snake in my boots! by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso Não-Comercial-Não a Obras Derivadas 2.5 Portugal License.

To take this photo I’ve used manual focus to blur what I wanted (and not what my camera wanted). I think (but don’t remember well) that this picture was took in Auto mode but should have been in Macro.

Available for download at Flickr.

Lettering by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.

This photo was took in the Program mode (P in PASM) and with the creative settings in Black and White. No flash was used and no other special settings.

Picture available for download at Flickr.

Unavailable by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.

Well, today I had the opportunity to photograph my sister’s school play. It was interesting to learn some things about medium light and telephoto photography. But since the pictures needed to be good, I didn’t have many opportunities to “play” with the settings. So I’ve tried to watch what the school photographer was doing but that wasn’t much helpful since he set up his camera at the beginning and then just shot.

I believe that this week I can try some low light shooting at a religious fair that’s happening where I live. If I can do that, I will post some of those photos here on the blog.

Once again, thanks for all your visits!

I knew that the focal length for 35mm was different that the one for APS-C sensors. But I thought that it wouldn’t make a diference. Until I’ve read about the crop factor. It turns out that my 35-80mm Minolta lenses are 53-120mm in my A230.

How?! The diference in the size of the sensor means that the focal length of 35mm lenses will have to be multiplied by the crop factor of your camera to get their equivalent focal length on your DSLR. So there you have it, your old normal 35mm lenses are now telephoto lenses on your DSLR.

An here’s a piece of advise: search for a DSLR that is compatible with your old 35mm lenses and get surprised!

EDIT: I’ve decided to illustrate what I was saying with a picture from the same subject, took with the same machine but with both lenses.

This is the picture with the Sony lenses at 55mm.

And this is the same subject with the Minolta lenses at 80mm (120mm in digital language). Curiously, the EXIF data tells me that the lenses were at 80mm and not their correct digital focal length.

The color differences between the photos don’t have anything to do with the lenses. It’s because the photo with the Sony lenses was took on a cloudy day in the afternoon and with the Minolta was on a sunshine morning.

This photo doesn’t have any mysteries. No changes in settings and no computer editing. Purely a macro taken with the macro mode (the one with the flower). And I just took this photo with the purpose of showing my iPhone.

As usual, you can download this photo in my Flickr.

It’s a me, iPhone! by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.

Light traces are amazing and extremely easy to do! All you have to do is to put your camera in Shutter Speed Priority mode (the S in the PASM, probably located in the mode dial) and set it to a slow shutter speed (in this photo I’ve used 20 seconds as the shutter speed). Taking a photo in this conditions (low light and slow shutter speed) is really hard when you don’t have a flat surface to place your camera or a tripod, believe me. You don’t need to but I’d recommend using manual focus for this picture so you can focus whatever you want. Now wait for a car to pass by and press the shutter button!

In that picture, the lights look like neon (which is pretty cool) but that’s because it was edited in Aperture. The temperature used for the White Balance was 3504K, Exposure is set to -0.3, Black Point to 8.09 and Brightness to -0.25. Definition value is 0.25, Saturation is 1.4 and Vibrancy is 0.1. If you’re not using Aperture, this settings’ name can be different, but I believe you won’t have difficulties finding them.

This photo is available for download in my Flickr.

The Light Is Coming by Afonso Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Portugal License.