Phun with Photos

Today marks a week since I replace the horrible Panasonic Lumix FX75 with the impressive Canon PowerShot Elph 300 HS. I haven't looked back since, and the little elph hardly ever leaves my pocket! I never miss an opportunity to take a few good shots and today I experimented a bit with image modification skills (GIMP for those who are curious).

I recently decided to surprise my special someone (no, not Chaz) with some great looking roses and today I noticed they had started to bloom quite nicely. This provided a perfect opportunity to experiment with the camera's color accent mode. Here are some of the picture effects thanks to the camera's internal processor -- no modifications were done to these pics after they were taken.

Original Pic

Color Accent - Yellow

Color Accent - Red

It was some pretty nice snapping, but the fun really started when I decided to clear the background of all the unnecessary elements.

Sake Fountain

If you've ever been to a hibachi-style restaurant (and if you haven't, go now! I'm not kidding...stop reading this and go!) you know that one of the key attractions is the show put on by the knife wielding, egg rolling chef. They also like to entertain you (and themselves) by squirting as much Sake into your mouth as possible while slowly increasing the distance between the squirt bottle and your mouth.

Photo Credit: Photo by Emily Anne Epstein

Before you ask, no I'm not in the picture above. What happened to me is much more entertaining (at least from my guests' point of view!)

Accepted?

Opening my mailbox today I found a large envelope from UCONN. My excitement peaked immediately, obviously thinking that if I receive a large envelope as opposed to a regular letter it means I have been accepted.

After reading it however I wasn't so sure!

Weekend Update!

The great thing about summer? The fact that you're more compelled to do group activities as everyone awakes from hibernation and returns to a social life! There are many, many activities to accomplish while the weather remains above 70 degrees and before the official start of the season (now only 2 days away!) we've already been able to achieve of a few of those.

You can see in the picture above how we preferred the dark and damp surroundings of a go-kart track to gradually emerge from winter mode...not to be thrust outdoors too quickly!

Camera Woes...and Woahs!

So why no posts for a week? Well, in a nut shell the camera arrived! What should have been a moment of jubilation and unrestrained snapping, unfortunately turned into incessant fiddling with settings to get a decent photo. Let's see what Panasonic has to say about this:

 This bright lens offers approximately 170% brightness compared to the conventional F2.8 lens and assures high image quality even in low light condition

Well that sounds fine and dandy but let's let the camera do the talking. The pictures below were taken in two different locations with fluorescent lights on. Granted it isn't bright sunlight but the camera couldn't do any better than ISO 800 and the grainy factor is turned up to eleven!