Planet TLUG

The term bokeh is the effect associated to a blurred background and a perfect sharp subject. Our vision is like a fast prime lens. We focus on subjects all around us, and we never mind about the background, except when we see a panoramic view.

For example do this simple experiment:

With one hand close one eye and put your finger just in front of you but don’t cover the background, just move it a little bit to the right or left side, depending on which eye you had closed.
Now focus on your finger, just look at it and, don’t move your view from it! Try to see the background without moving your view from the eye. You can see that it’s blurred and your finger focused.
Now try the opposite, focus on the background and see at your finger without moving your view from the background. It should be blurred.
You have two fast prime lenses in your head! :)

We are used to see the world through our eyes, which behave approximately like a fast 50mm lens. That means that when we see a picture with a good bokeh our attention will point immediately to the subject and then we have the opportunity to admire the soft and nice texture of a blurred background.
Think about it, we are not able to see that background with our own eyes. Well, actually we are, but we cannot see it directly, we can only perceive it from the external borders or our vision.

To understand the technical details of the Bokeh, you need to understand the depth of field. For a technical explanation check the wiki. Anyway you don’t need to understand to go so deep into technical explanations to be able to use it. Let’s discuss here the practical (and funny) part of it.

The depth of field is directly related with the aperture. That is the amount of light that your lens let pass through it. The wider the aperture, and the bigger the blur. The narrower the aperture, the smaller the blur. Don’t get confused with the f/stop number. Check out the aperture controls in your camera.

Left: Wide aperture Right: Narrowed aperture

The number used to indicate the aperture is called the f-number or f/stop. There is not a concrete definition of the term stop in this context. Think about it as an attempt to say “something that stops light to enter!”. If we narrow the aperture, in some way we are stopping light to enter. The lack of a concrete context for the term “stops” could lead some confusion. Let’s focus on the practical matter: the f-number has a direct relationship with the diameter of the circle that we saw in the previous pics. Remember a big f-number indicates a narrowed aperture and a small f-number indicates a wide aperture. So don’t get confused. If somebody tells you “increase the aperture!!” what do you understand by that? Increase the f-number, “stops” light to enter or increase the diameter of the diaphragm?

Remember:

The smaller the number, the wider the aperture and the bigger the amount of light that will enter through the lens.

To obtain a good bokeh we need a wide aperture, that means a small f-number.
The best lenses to obtain this are the fast prime lens, the most common ones are the 50mm and 85mm at 1.2, 1.4 or 1.8F. Anyway, any lens that could be set to an aperture less than 2 or 2.5 is enough.

With this kind of photography we have to be specially careful of two things:

- It’s really hard to focus with such a small depth of field. We cannot rely 100% on the autofocus. Sometimes it’s necessary to deal directly with manual focus.

- In well illuminated environments we have the camera to shot at a huge speed. Depending on the equipment, sometimes the camera cannot afford the required speed. In such cases we can use an ND filter

Check these three pictures that will show the meaning of the depth of field

If we narrow the aperture, the depth of field also changes and the sharped zone increases as well.

Also, the depth of field could be used to bring to focus the subject that we are interested to show. For example, in these two pictures, the second one shows the doll in the back giving a sense of depth. If we compare the second pic with the first one, we can see how we increase that sense of depth focusing subjects that are not in the first plane.

In this video, you have the depth of field in action.

Direct link here

The depth of field is a powerful concept that we can use for many different creative purposes. From a basic understanding, it’s used to put in evidence a particular subject and to catch our attention to the sharp point. From a generic point of view, depth of field is just an art, so let’s talk about it a later post.

Check some bokeh in Flickr

In June of 2009, mobalean release a patch for the WURFL containing Japanese handsets. This patch ignored the existing data on Japanese handsets in the WURFL as it was sparse and mostly incorrect. However, this also made it incompatible with the core WURFL, and applying the patch either required using one of the more lenient libraries, or manually editing the core WURFL.

After half a year, thanks to the hard work of the WURFL maintainers, these incompatibilities have been reconciled, and the data merged into the core WURFL. Any developer using the WURFL can now use it to start building Japanese sites right away.

Because our patch has been included in the core WURFL, we will no longer maintain a separate patch file. All new handset data will go directly into the core WURFL.

The updated WURFL is available through the WURFL project page.

Bay Blade

Eric is supper into Bay Blade. Basically it is just tops that you spin against each other to see which can knock the other out or make the other stop. Funny thing is it 2010 tech tops.
They are made up of 4 different parts. The face, the metal wheel, the truck, and the bottom. The way you combine the four pieces decides how it will react when you spin it. Some combinations are for attack, others are for defence. I really do not understand how the configurations work but Eric does completely. I wish he paid that much attention at school. Maybe I can take some comfort in the fact that "it is a geometry thing" and he will get something out of it.


But I wonder/worry about him and his kind of obsession mind set. Everything that comes along and is "cool" for the moment, he is so into, Pokemon, Nintendo DSi, etc. They all occupy a intense, INTENSE, interest for a moment in time and then quickly fade away. 

The affect on my wallet is usually substantial but survivable, but I wish he would get "more" out of these experiences. Recently I have been thinking he should do some other activity like Judo or learn to play the guitar or other individual thing where he can express him self with out the influence of all his classmates and friends.

I like all; well most of his friends, so the problem is not them, I just wish he would learn to be more of a individual, and less of a follower.

Either way he is a good kid, not perfect but, as close as a 8 year old with as many life hurdles as he has can be.

Finally, as a Dad with as many problems as I had as a kid, I do not think I could ask for a better son.

E./

Home Cookin'

I cook food that I think will be good. I love bacon. I love chicken. I love cheese. All 3 together are great. I cooked this receipt from allrecipes.com it was chicken and bacon with Cheese and BBQ sauce, and it turned out GREAT!

I had 2 types of mustard so I tried the all American home grown Buffalo brand Webbers Horseraddish mustard VS. a fairly fancy looking Japanese brand. In the end both were outstanding!

When it was done the cheese and BBQ sauce ran together and there while the edges of the bacon where
slightly seared. It was plump and juicy inside as well. I plan on making more stuff from allrecipes.com in the future.


E./

It snowed last night in Tokyo. It typically snows once or twice every 2 years or so and not a heck of allot when it does snow. For me it is the perfect amount. Just enough to remember how much fun I had in Derby in the winters, and not enough to be annoying. Lots of people stayed home and my morning commute was very nice and not so congested.

NEW HAIR CUT!

I had my birthday and it was kind of a non-event. We had a cake and sang Happy Birthday. After this weeks rugby game, in which I played quite a bit, we had another little , for Joffa, Warren, Paulo and I who all have birthdays with in the same week or so. Actually Warren and I have the same birthday.


After the game I met Satomi in Kichijoji and took Eric to get his haircut. I decided to get one too. It was a time for a change, so as I sat in the chair I told my barber, shave it off. He asked 4 times if I was sure that is what I wanted to do, then said "Hai Ikimasho!" or "Lets get started!" Eric seemed pretty shocked but really excited. Here is what I looked like right after. I need to get some clippers to maintain it I think.

E./



 

Anna-chan "Techno Baby"
Anna goes nuts every time I get out my phone or camera or any other piece of technology. Most of the time I think it is cute so I just give her the phone and let her have at it. She is really into the lights and colors that seem to come alive when she starts hitting the buttons. I know she does not completely understand what they mean but she likes them all the same. This time however she called my dad in America and left him a message, at 5 AM his time.

The Takumar is the name of a wonderful lens, that the previously Asahi Optical and now Pentax, gave to its lenses.

I bought one for 3000 yen ($33) in a shop in Akihabara (Techno district of Tokyo) that sells junk stuff. The glass is in perfect conditions and the big aperture plus the good ISO performance of the Pentax K-X makes a good combination for nocturne urban photography.

The lens started to be manufactured in 1962, based on the data in this database. It uses the old but popular M42 mount. Basically it’s just has a screw and you have to turn it until it got fixed into the camera body. In fact it’s not practical, it takes some time to change lenses. Actual Pentax K-X and other models don’t use that mount system anymore but there are adapters for them. I used an adapter that cost me the same as the lens!

This is the lens mounted on the Pentax K-X

I love the retro fashion of the lens :)

It’s not so big. Anyway it’s a little bit odd to see that lens in a new camera. When I see it, remembers me to see an old lady dressed as a teenager…

I love the bokeh and quality of this lens. It has a finest and soft bokeh, much better than the 50mm 1.4F for example. The aperture is manual and it’s better to use it in manual, because the camera automatic settings will get confused with no aperture control. When you use it in manual, changing the aperture and the focus, reminds me of a time where all those automatic capabilities was just science fiction. Changing manually the aperture and the focus, for some reason makes me feel a Leica experience. I just have to worry about few settings and I need an understanding of those settings as if they was part of myself. Just set the aperture, speed, focus and shot.

Don’t worry to buy old lenses. Just keep in mind that you maybe need to use only manual settings. It’s important to check carefully the lens, anyway. Scratches, malfunctioning or humidity could be there, hidden for an inexperienced eye, so if you still have no experience with this stuff, try to go to the shop with a friend that could advise you.
Soon I will publish a post about who to check the quality of used lenses.

Portraits is one of the most extensive fields in photography because it’s the direct interaction with a very difficult thing. The thing we want to shot is a living entity and it doesn’t follow a natural instinct pattern. That thing is also intelligent, or some of them pretend to be so improvisation is a must and hunting the right moment is an instant of spiritual inspiration. Well that thing are “we”, humans :)

To shot portraits do we need a studio? do we need a special high quality gear?
Of course if we have a studio, the knowledge, the time and the equipment we can do almost anything! But usually we lack of the necessary tools when we find the right person and the right moment to shot a good portrait.

This little Howto will explain how to do it with a DSRL, a small flash, an extension cable and a white sheet.
All this stuff can be easily carried in a bag.

Ok we are ready to shot portraits that looks like made in a studio.
Now the only thing we need to understand is the light.
Think about light as it was a high pressure water stream but without the damage that the water can produce. It’s easy to see the root source of a stream of water but it’s really hard to understand where the light comes from.
In a studio we can control light sources and direct it where we need. In case of an improvised portrait we have to minimize as much as we can non controlled light sources. That’s why we need a flash and a reflector, just to overcome environment lights.

Many other factors will come depending on the situation and the subject. For example, a cap, long hair, color of the skin and so forth. All of this can only be understood with practice and the practice is the funny part of this :)

How to make the background dark?

The darker the environment is the easier for this kind of portraits.
In case we have to take it in a well illuminated environment, we have to play with aperture and lights.
The flash light will be stronger than interior lights and this will help us.

For example, instead to bother a real model let’s take a drossel figma dool that will never complain to be tortured with the flash :)

This is the artificial illumination of a neon light at home. This is the illumination as perceived by a naked eye.

What we have to do is set the camera parameters so the background and the subject get totally dark without flash light. In this case I chose: aperture f/11 and speed 1/250.
Just increase the speed and reduce the aperture to minimize as much as possible the light that pass through the lens.

This picture still contain some information, if we increase exposure, brightness and fill light in Lightroom we can see that behind that dark square there is still something

So at this point we have to set our reflector as close as possible to the subject as well the flash. We don’t want that any light goes to the background, we want it dark.
This is the final result

Here you are, portraits everywhere and no need of studio or too expensive illumination equipment.

Finally this is the way to put the reflector and the flash.

In case the background don’t get totally dark, don’t worry, you can always use some post processing to make it dark :)

Check these pictures, they were made with the same technique in bars and streets:

I just ran into this obscure problem with Puppet. I’m writing it down in the hopes I will remember not to do something like this again…

$ sudo puppetd --test --noop
/opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/network/http_pool.rb:41:in `read_cert': super: no superclass method `read_cert' (NoMethodError)
        from /opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/executables/client/certhandler.rb:62:in `read_cert'
        from /opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/executables/client/certhandler.rb:24:in `read_retrieve'
        from /opt/local/bin/puppetd:347

THE FIX

This error is caused by old puppet binaries that were installed from source that were not removed with subsequent upgrades of puppet itself. The newer versions I am installing install via packages which always installs puppetd into /opt/local/sbin.

To fix this, delete the old puppet binaries from wherever they were installed. In my case it is /opt/local/bin

# Hope there aren't any useful binaries named pu* that are not puppet-based
$ rm /opt/local/bin/pu*

Now we have a working puppet run!

$ sudo  puppetd --no-daemonize --verbose --debug --onetime --test
debug: Failed to load library 'selinux' for feature 'selinux'
debug: Failed to load library 'shadow' for feature 'libshadow'
debug: Puppet::Type::User::ProviderNetinfo: file nireport does not exist
debug: Puppet::Type::User::ProviderLdap: true value when expecting false
debug: Puppet::Type::User::ProviderPw: file pw does not exist
debug: Puppet::Type::User::ProviderDirectoryservice: file /usr/bin/dscl does not exist
debug: Failed to load library 'ldap' for feature 'ldap'
debug: /File[/var/puppet/state]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl/private_keys]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet/ssl]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl/certs]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet/ssl]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl/certificate_requests]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet/ssl]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/clientbucket]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl/public_keys]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet/ssl]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/lib]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/etc/puppet/ssl/private]: Autorequiring File[/etc/puppet/ssl]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/client_yaml]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/log]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/facts]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/run]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet]
debug: /File[/var/puppet/state/graphs]: Autorequiring File[/var/puppet/state]
debug: Finishing transaction 80433160 with 0 changes

IMJ Mobile has released Mobile User Book 2010,  a collection of 8 surveys (in Japanese) about the following topics:

• Mobile Video Usage
• New Mobile Services and Technology
• e-Commerce Sites
• iPhone
• Cloud Computing (what is the connection to mobile?)
• Industry's Usage of Mobile Sites
• Usability of Mobile e-mail Magazines
• Flash Mobile Site Usability

The book is available for download as a free pdf, so if you're interested in mobile in Japan, it's worth checking out.