If you are interested in taking up photography as a hobby or just love snapping pictures of family and friends, you are probably well aware of how expensive most high-end digital cameras can be. The really great cameras all seem to be well outside your budget. In fact, if you happen to run across a great camera for around $ 3000, Continue Reading
The post Top 6 Best Cameras Under $ 1000 appeared first on Photodoto.
[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]
Throughout the rolling hills of rural Switzerland, tucked inside idyllic works of regional vernacular architecture, lie disguised fortifications of a country always ready for war. Some of these bunkers conceal gun caches, communications infrastructure and even anti-aircraft artillery.
The camouflage is incredibly convincing: a worn wood-sided barn, countryside home with cracking paint or a cute small-town cottage could all house militarized surprises.
The public is not privy to precise numbers, but estimates suggest the country contains 250 or more such structures variously disguised as buildings or parts of the natural landscape.
The Swiss are world-famous for their perpetual state of military preparedness, but few outsiders (as well as many citizens of Switzerland) are unaware just how much they are surrounded with infrastructure of war.
Christian Schwager’s relatively recent book on Fake Chalets helped make these buildings an open secret, in turn aiding preservation efforts for many of these facilities that no longer serve an official purpose.
Reporter Anneke Bokern has also delved into the history of these buildings, many of which date back to the 1930s and 40s: “Theatre painters were in charge of the paint jobs, supplying each bunker with a customised skin inspired by the local chalet style.”
“As the results prove, they went about their job with Swiss precision – although the bunkers only had to deceive at a minimum distance of 20 metres. They painted realistic window shutters, created perfect imitations of wood grain, and even took the position of the sun into consideration.”
Prohibition, otherwise known as the Volstead Act or the Eighteenth Amendment, barred the manufacture, transportation, and sale of all alcoholic beverages in …
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Over 100 bunkers and other structures left behind on the Aleutian Islands off Alaska after World War II still dot the remote countryside, crumbling into ruin.
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Sports stadiums can be contentious, particularly when located in the heart of a city, but this design works in various ways to reduce disruptions to urban …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Travel & Urban Exploration. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
A new urban park in Ontario will take sheltered but unused space below a raised roadway and turn it into a place for walking, cycling and outdoor performances.
A project of urban designer Ken Greenberg as well as Marc Ryan and Adam Nicklin of Public Work, the Under Gardiner design approach treats the area as a covered streetscape, taking advantage of rain and sun shade provided by the vehicular thoroughfare above.
Its surface programming also bridges institutional uses on either side, including aquariums, museums and other cultural buildings.
From architectural thesis research into reusing spaces under viaducts, this article’s author can attest to the advantages of using these sub-street spaces – noise and air pollution levels are actually lower directly below than they are adjacent to raised roads.
The biggest concerns are seismic, which in turn are tied to regional risk factors, and still problematic for any kind of enclosed or sheltered space, architectural or otherwise.
Existing columns and beams of the surrounding infrastructure will naturally divide the spaces into sections that act as exterior rooms while also providing ways to hang signage, wayfinding mechanisms and announcement billboards.
The project is being launched with the help of a sizable $ 25,000,000 donation from Toronto philanthropists Judy and Wil Matthews.
“The passion and financial assistance of a major donor is joining with the City and Waterfront Toronto to plan and build new infrastructure, and to showcase a new model of city building for Toronto,” said Waterfront Toronto.
Deemed unsafe and left to rot, a stretch of highway in a prime location beside a train station in Seoul, South Korea will soon get a new life as an elevated …
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Designed to shield the exposed edges of Lower Manhattan from increasingly-disastrous storms, this impressive system of parks and other public spaces is also …
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Following in the footsteps of the United States’ largest urban center, the 2nd and 3rd most populous cities in the country are each (respectively) …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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Thinking of upgrading to a newer camera but don’t want to spend a fortune? Here are two videos that will give you some options for both DSLR and Mirrorless in the under $ 1000 USD price range.
The one they recommend in the video about is the Fuji X-T10 which comes in at $ 999 with the 18-55mm kit lens.
The guys at Digital Rev TV do a humorous comparison between the Canon 700D (T5i) at $ 649 with the 18-55mm lens, and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GM5 at $ 669 USD with the 12-32mm kit lens.
Or you could take the approach in the video below (he’s talking about doing video but the same applies to sill photography). You could save your money, and work on your photography education instead. This is a great place to start right here on dPS – do a search for topics you’re interested in, invest in some ebooks or a video course.
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The post Upgrading? Here are Some Good Cameras Under $ 1000 by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Interchangeable lens cameras come in all kinds of different shapes, sizes and prices, from the very reasonable to the eye-wateringly expensive. The under $ 500 category is a place most first-time ILC buyers will likely find themselves. If you’re considering a sub-$ 500 ILC, you might be stepping up from a compact, or perhaps even your smartphone. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of excellent options for under $ 500 that should satisfy the needs of many. Find out our best bets for the category. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
There’s a lot of new technology in the Sony a7R II, and here we were briefed on some of the salient features by Sony engineers during a recent Sony Digital Imaging event in Portland, OR. Join our Technical Editor Rishi Sanyal as he explains some of the capabilities of this camera, and why they matter to photographers. Click through to read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
Architects in Melbourne cite the cloth-clad dancers in the music video for Ghost by singer, songwriter and performer Beyoncé as the source of this newly-approved building, tall, slender and full of curves. Indeed, the whole building looks like an undulating figure on a pedestal, rectilinear below and organic above.
A skyline-shaping and head-turning structure, the mixed-use Premier Tower was designed by local firm Elenberg Fraser and boasts structural as well as aesthetic reasons for its complex appearance. The architects explain that “the twists and turns of this new project belie its pure and simple, first principles rationale,” representing the “culmination of our significant research into how to best work with individual site and climatic constraints, brought together using our new parametric modelling techniques.”
Structurally, the cantilever helps redistribute the mass to deal with frequency oscillation and wind loads needed to deal with local environmental conditions and meet building codes. At the same time, watching the music video (above) shows the visual source of inspiration that drove this design direction in the first place (arguably also influenced by the work of Zaha Hadid).
The distinctively exterior curviness is carried into various interior elements as well, from wavy ceilings to complex cylindrical columns, repeating the same curvilinear theme throughout various indoor spaces both communal and private.
The finished complex will house over 600 apartments and 100 hotel rooms, sitting next to Southern Cross station, anchoring a western progression within the city “heralded by the regeneration of Docklands, Fishermen’s Bend and Southbank.” Significantly taller than structures on all sides, the bold design sets a new precedent for the neighborhood. Creating a direct connection to a public figure in the entertainment industry is also a daring move, and likely to brand the building going forward, for better or worse.
High-minded Modernists of the mid-1900s envisioned futuristic all-in-one cities in the sky where we would work, place, live and love, but would have been …
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The creation of the tallest building in the world has become such a status symbol, cities and countries have stopped revealing the planned height of their …
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Shipping containers are wildly versatile for all kinds of buildings. Now they’re being used to feed the workers at the World Trade Center Building Site.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
Tapping unused sections of the London Underground, this bold proposal would create a network of subterranean paths for pedestrians and cyclists as well as spaces for pop-up shops, cafes and cultural events, all situated in stations and subway stretches of rail currently sitting idle and empty.
In the spirit of New York’s proposed Low Line, the plan involves main disused tunnels serving as primary areas for circulation and interaction. Simultaneously, putting existing but unused infrastructural voids to better use, the design calls for old reservoir chambers and exchanges to connect these larger and more open sections of the Tube.
Architects at Gensler, the firm behind the idea, developed it to address a series of issues in the densely-populated capital of England, including bicyclist fatalities on surface streets, a lack of public space and ease of movement across the city.
As a bonus, special panels lining the interior of these underground spaces would be used to generate kinetic energy from people passing through and walking on surfaces, obviating the need for external power sources. Indeed, the technology for this system already exists, and this would be a great potential application for both cost and sustainability reasons.
The development process could also be incremental, moving in stages to make transition and restoration costs more manageable and to test usage patterns. The default plan is to start with voids between Green Park and Holborn, working stations that could provide access to unused portions of the Tube spanning them. In turn, tying these spaces into the existing Underground network would make them more accessible to visitors coming into the city and locals alike.
Unlike other conceptual projects for London, like the SkyCycle,or serious proposals, like the Garden Bridge, very little would have to be added or displaced for this reprogramming approach to work. The Under Line may also borrow a bit of inspiration from this clever idea to transform Paris Metro stops into event spaces.
100 feet beneath the surface, below even the level of the London Underground, there is another layer of World War Two shelters where something amazing is …
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A unique green retreat and pedestrian pathway is set to rival elevated parks around the world, including New York’s own High Line, right in the heart of …
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New York’s elevated park is expanding in new directions both physically and proverbially, its new addition a stark circular shift from the overall linear …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
A prominent architectural firm has teamed up with an established concrete manufacturer and a university to develop a commercially-viable robotic concrete printer capable of precisely producing complex three-dimensional forms. The group aims to bridge the gap between what can be modeled via 3D rendering software and what can be manufactured in reality.
(Norman) Foster + Partners are working with Skanska and Loughborough University as well as various industry contractors on this 3D-printing project. Their primary joint goal is reduce the time (from weeks to hours) and increase the options available for the on-site deployment of concrete, creating new possibilities for one of planet’s most ubiquitously-used building materials.
Essentially, a computer-controlled robotic arm lays down layers of concrete, each building on the previous according to a programmed sequence. A highly-controlled extrusion of cement-based mortar, precisely positioned according to computer data and obviating the need for solid material inputs.
Currently, a phase two prototype has already been built and the team is working on a newer and more-mobile version able to create high-complexity shapes on building sites.
The results so far are promising: structurally-robust forms that would be difficult if even possible to create via conventional concrete construction techniques of either cast-in-place or precast varieties.
Whether the building is a bare-bones warehouse or five-star hotel, demolition is an equally messy business – but perhaps it does not have to be. What if …
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The writing is on the walls, but only when they get wet – that is when the secret messages or hidden designs appear in these seemingly innocuous concrete …
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Combining ancient earthen-architecture approaches and cutting-edge robotic technologies, this contour crafting process promises a revolution in how we address …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]
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This shot was lit with one light on the subject along with the Christmas lights.
You can have a luxurious bokeh in any of your images for the low cost of $ 4.99. Yes, you heard me right, just $ 4.99. How, you ask? I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me – Christmas lights.
Just a single strand of Christmas lights and a couple of flash units are all you need to immerse your subject in full-blown bokeh bliss. This isn’t a double exposure or a Photoshop trick. It can all be done in camera in a single exposure. I bought a strand of cheap Christmas lights from the store, draped them over a C-stand arm so that the lights were layered and overlapping. I used a Canon 100mm f/2 lens that I had borrowed from my buddy for the shoot.
I also had two flashes. The background light was set to 1/8 power (in manual mode) and gelled red, aimed at the red wall behind the subject. The second light was set to 1/16 power and shot into a silver umbrella about seven feet away from the subject.
Note that the output on both speedlights was set rather low so that I could shoot with a wide open aperture. The large aperture, combined with a slower shutter speed of 1/30th, helped me attain a proper exposure when shooting the low watt Christmas lights. In order to properly pull off this technique, the room you are shooting in can’t be too bright, whether it be overhead lights or window light – the ambient light can’t overpower the Christmas lights or this won’t work.
Once I was ready to start shooting, I made sure that I was standing within two to three feet of the lights and the subject was five feet beyond the lights. Depending on how close I was standing to the Christmas lights, the size of the bokeh would change. When I was closer to the lights, the bokeh spots were larger and, accordingly smaller when I was further away from them.
One issue that you may encounter when shooting through an object is that the lens will try to focus on anything in the foreground. This is a problem, since what you want to focus on is behind the Christmas lights. There are a few ways to get past this. The first is switching to manual focus. But I don’t trust my eyes enough for this option.
The second option is the enabling back button focus on your camera. This is the option that I use. Enabling this feature is a bit different for each camera, so you’ll have to look up how exactly to do it on your specific camera body. Basically what it does is allows you to shoot without the interruption of autofocus, and when you want to re-focus, you simply press the assigned button on the back of your camera and resume clicking.
The third option is only available if you have a zoom lens that allows you to set your focal distance. For example, I have a Canon 70-200 f/4L IS which has a switch that, when flipped one way says 1.2m to infinity, and the other way says 3m to infinity. That means that if I don’t want to focus on the object in the foreground, I would select the 3m to infinity option so the lens doesn’t look for anything closer than 3 meters, which saves the lens and battery some focusing time.
This shot was lit with one light on the subject and one light gelled red on a red background.
Now you’re ready to shoot. Play around with your camera’s placement in relation to the Christmas lights. As you move around, pay attention to where the colored bokeh is falling in the frame. Is it on the subject’s face? Maybe move an inch to the left so their face isn’t green. Or maybe you want it to be green. Take a shot and then move a bit and take another. Play around with size and placement of the bokeh and have fun!
Standing further away from the Christmas lights makes the bokeh smaller. |
Standing closer to the Christmas lights makes the bokeh larger. |
The post How to Create a Unique Bokeh Portrait for Under $ 10 by Nick Fancher appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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