Friday, August 8, 2008 at 16:31 A HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo taken from the office.
The HDR looks relatively normal. Not that bad if you think that I shot the 9 images with the bare hands.
More HDR on my flickr page
HDR, flickr, photo in Photography Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 19:52 Have been experimenting with photoshop actions the last couple of days. The latest action (a vintage look) I created (with some help / ideas I found on the Internet.
Combine this with the border/watermarking action and you get the following result.
Learning a bit every day.
Photography, actions, photo, photoshop in Personal, Photography, Software Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 21:44 I've been using for about two years now, and today I found the stats page (you need to log in to view your stats). No idea if this is new, but it sure gives a nice breakdown on your photo activity.
flickr, stats in Personal, Photography Friday, August 1, 2008 at 17:16 Ever since I started uploading photos onto the Internet I needed a way of 'protecting' my images. I could choose to upload a very small photo, with terrible JPEG artifact, but that's not the way you want to be remembered. Especially today. Today we have the bandwidth and the online storage to upload large images, so why not do that.
If you don't want that other people (or companies) to (financially) benefit from your hard work (1, 2, 3), you may want to 'tag' your photos. Just to make sure who created the original image.
When you shoot lot's of photos and share them with others on the Internet, you don't want to manipulate each photo. You would want to automate this.
Thankfully, there are numerous programs out there that can do such a thing. Some are free (free as in speech, and free as in beer), and others are commercially available.
actions, photoshop, tutorial, watermark in DRM, Photography, Software, Tips'n Tricks Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 11:25 I got my wire remote (MC-30) for the Nikon D300 recently. Finally able to start shooting in the dark (on a tripod) without the fear of movement unsharpness.
More photos on my flickr page
HDR, photo in Personal, Photography Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 20:03 Nikon released a new firmware update (v1.03) for their D300 DSLR. The new firmware should fix certain battery related issues.
Be sure to get it.
Nikon, firmware in Photography, Software Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 0:29 
Last monday was the day of my return from the Big Apple a.k.a. New York. It was a 7 day (5 nights) trip the the wonderful city of New York. The weather was great, and the company was even better :-P .
The holiday had a bit of a slow start, because we missed the plane (my bad), but, with a four hour delay, we finally got underway. As usual, plane trips suck bigtime. Cramped seats, and no sleep.
When we arrived we got our NY City Passes + 3 day bus tickets. This way, we got discounts (or even free entrance) at sightseeing. After all, we're still Dutch ;-) .
During the 6 days we saw it all (well, almost....);
We even visited the theater on Broadway. The show we saw was a comedy (not a musical!!!) on 48th street called 'The 39 Steps'. A play by 4 actors playing over 150 characters.
During this stay I shot nearly 500 photographs. Some of those can be found on my flickr page.
Holiday, New York, photo's, sightseeing in Holiday, Personal, Photography Monday, June 16, 2008 at 16:59 For my trip to New York City I need a (zoom)lens with a wide angle. My current 24-70 (which is a great lens) doesn't give me the wide angle I need on a crop-camera. So I was looking for a zoom lens with a bit more wide angle.
The 17-55mm f/2.8 AF-S DX (etc) would suit my needs. Enough wide angle and a bit of zoom. No need for 100* zoom lenses because it's New York. Everything is cramped on top of each other. If I need zoom, I can always get a 1.7TC @ Adorama or B&H Photo in New York.
The 17-55 is bit on the expensive side (>1000 euros), so I rented it for the week @ Kamera-Express. Not that expensive, and now I got a decent lens for exploring New York. I just hope that the lens isn't that good, otherwise I need to have it ;-).
Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 12:56 
Last Thursday, I received a phone call from my local photography store. At first I thought that my 52mm circular pola filter had arrived, but NO... The long awaited arrival of my Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S lens had come.
First, I noticed that the lens was heavy and large (compared to my 'old' Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8). On the other hand, the Nikon is 4 times more expensive....
Most notable when shooting the the lightning-fast auto-focus. On the D300 is a 3D-tracking mode. I had no problems in tracking a couple of (really) low flying F-16's that day. Normally, I have a hard time tracking birds (which don't fly that fast). So thumbs up for the Silent Wave Auto-Focus (AF-S).
There is a downside to this lens (apart from being heavy)... It makes you wanna upgrade every other lens. Currently the 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED AF-S, or the 17-55mm f/2.8 IF-ED AF-S DX, and the 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S comes to mind :P
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 20:02 When I bought my Nikon D300, I got a free copy op Capture NX (v1.3.0). After installing, the application reminded me to update. There were a couple of new versions available (current version is 1.3.3).
This is were the quest began......
The Nikon Update application kept crashing on me. 50MB downloads took over three hours (before crashing), while a single download from the support pages would take 5 to 10 minutes. So I needed to get the files from the web instead of using the updater.
First, the D300 was bought in the Netherlands, so you might think that the software would also be the Dutch version. I wouldn't know this because I install everything in English (if there's a choice). So I downloaded the Dutch updates from the Nikon support pages.
Note: I used the 'Dutch' CD which came with the camera.
None of the updates worked (Error: No version of Capture NX was found)....
I literally downloaded 12 different versions from different continents. Finally, I found a 1.3.1 update (a file called cnx131_en.dmg) which worked. So I needed to get English versions of the software. Not US, or Canadian versions, but English versions.
After this it was easy; Created an account on the UK Nikon support website and found Nikon Capture NX v1.3.3 for OSX. This update worked. So finally, after a gazillion downloads, multiple crashes, and 5 hours well spend, I got Capture NX v1.3.3 up and running.....
So, even if your camera is officially purchased in the Netherlands, you need to get the updates from the UK.
UPDATE: It seems that I'm not the only one who ran into this. I keep getting referers from some fora around the Internet.
I think that if you're running Windows instead of OSX you might have similar problems. So yet another crossplatform solution :)
Nikon Capture NX, Software, Update in Annoying, Apple, Personal, Photography, Software, Tips'n Tricks 
