This snapshot tells you one thing. We had a clear sky and bright sunny day on 3rd day of our London travel! I captured this street view in Camden Town of London which is famous for its open-air Camden markets selling antique goods, clothing, rockers’ fashion, souvenirs and many other stuffs. Many local people (Hippies and rockers) as well as tourists come here to shop, dine and drink in Summer.

Imagine this: Can any camera capture anything in a dark without flash light?

Lighting is the single most important element in photography. No matter how expensive and advanced is your camera, poor lighting delivers dull colours, if not poor. Otherwise, if the scene or object is under good lighting, either natural sun light or deliberately arranged artificial lighting, any camera can capture it with good colours, if not great.

The above photo says it all. It’s just a snapshot with my Nikon D60 and Tamron SP10-24mm, when I spotted this beautifully lit row of shops in Camden Town. Without special setting and equipment, I was able to capture an impressive picture with striking colours!

Remember only this photo tips before taking photos: Is your subject under good and enough lighting? If not, try figuring out on how to provide more good lights onto it! With flash, reflector, or table lamp… – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

I had a pair of new workhorses recently. People call them Acer Aspire AX3950 and Acer H233H FullHD LCD combo. I called them my workhorses as they are working more than 6 hours a day for my blogging and photography hobby.

I have actually planned to upgrade my PC quite a long time ago when I realised both my PC and laptop’s 200G hard disk was going to get full very soon and Intel Core Duo with Windows Vista just couldn’t cope with my multi photo processing and blogging task. However, too many options left me undecided . Until last May when I found the Acer Aspire AX3900 fitted with an Intel Core i3 530 processor. Its design and bundled specification was just fit my requirement and the selling price was the cheapest among other brands such as Dell, HP, or Compaq. But it was out of stock! Manufacturer had stopped producing it and that was because a replacement was on its way.

I waited for nearly a month until this June when Acer finally released a replacement model for AX3900, and it is called Acer Aspire AX3950. AX3950 is actually the facelift model of AX3900. There are no apparent changes to its spec except the processor has been upgraded to Intel Core i3 540 with 3.0HGHz. Cosmetic wise, AX3950 has a mat textured front top faceplate instead of all-piano black AX3900.

The other spec of Acer Aspire AX3950 includes 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB Hard drive, DVD-Super Multi optical drive, 40-in-1 multi card reader (including Compact Flash memory card for DSLR), 8 USB ports, HDMI port, Intel GMA HD graphic card. Every Acer Aspire AX3950 is bundled with Windows 7 operation system, a pair of speakers, keyboard and mouse.

For a small factor mini tower Intel i3 machine selling at RM1,700.00, the overall performance is very good. Multi tasking photo processing could be done in ease since Intel i3 is a multi core processor. With 4Gb RAM and faster Windows 7, everything seems running smooth and fast with this mighty machine. The only let down is the built-in Intel graphic chips which is still not on par with either Nvidia or ATi in terms of performance and speed in processing graphics. A dedicated graphic card with built-in memory of at least 500Mb is necessary if you want to play fast action 3D-games which require super fast refresh rate. I still can live with it since I’m doing mainly still photo processing with Photoshop. Intel HD graphic and Windows 7 is just nice for the 64bit version of CS5.

Coupled with my AX3950 is Acer H233H Full HD LCD monitor. This is a 23″ wide screen full HD LCD which is also the cheaper option in the market for only RM660.00. Its screen is very bright with impressive colour reproduction. It’s a stylish all piano-black LCD with soft touch light blue coloured menu button. The On/Off white lit button is next to it. Navigating the menu is easy with only few but essential setting available. From there you can adjust Brightness/Contrast and Colour Temperature via RGB setting.

Disappointing part would be its preset colour setting. Both the preset Warm and Cool setting are unusable. I needed to calibrate it under User Custom using the Windows Color Management. The colour setting out from the factory is way too warm. It could not match my camera LCD, my printer or my laptop, which means it will never match other people’s monitors also. This made me mad! Whatever photo I processed  using this Acer LCD without calibration, it turned out too cool or bluish in other’s LCD! What looked colour perfect in my LCD would appear too dull in other’s and this made me crazy! After 1 month of tweaking and adjusting its colour setting, at least it looks alright now. What do you think?

Also remember to switch its default colour space to sRGB in Windows Control Panel. DON”T USE THE DEFAULT COLOUR PROFILE THAT COME WITH THE ACER LCD OR OTHERS. It will not tally with the rest of your system, and your camera. Most of the system and software (like Windows and CS5) are adopting sRGB as market standard, which the white will look white, red will look red, and the blue will look blue in your monitor, printer, Photoshop, or camera LCD. If you use colour space other than sRGB, the blue might look purple, red might look orange and so on. So be careful with this.

Overall, after using the Acer Aspire AX3950 and Acer H233H FullHD LCD for more than 1 month now, I think they are capable and fit for what I’m doing everyday, now and then: Photo Processing, and Blogging Travel. Other than that, I don’t really care… – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

London weather changes as fast as women mind. Don’t be surprise if you see bright sunshine minutes after a heavy downpour, and it rains again when you are still posing for a photo shot! This rapid change of weather and sunlight had restricted photo opportunities in London. Especially when you have limited time at one tourist spot and the sudden rain will surely ruin your photo session.

During my travel to London recently, we had 4 days visiting London. Out of that 4 day period, 1st evening was raining. The whole 2nd day was a cloudy and rainy day. We were lucky to have some bright sunlight on 3rd day but still cloudy. The 4th day was perfect but we were leaving in the morning. Basically the London sky during the period was overcast with thick cloud. How did I capture nice photos of London’s attractions then? White Balance (WB) is the answer.

Now is the 2nd question. How could we adjust the WB of our digital camera? WB exists only in digital camera. Digital camera converts analogue lights into digital colour. Different colours are being calculated digitally based on the white point the image sensor received. However, white will appear too yellowish under halogen and too bluish under fluorescent due to their different colour temperature from different light source. This is when the WB setting of our camera comes in. WB is a feature of digital camera to adjust its white point colour temperature to adopt the different ambient lighting so you can see the actual colour of the scene. Auto WB setting is the camera technology to adjust its colour temperature automatically to adopt different ambient lightings. However, AWB doesn’t always correct.

When the sky is overcast with thick clouds, the colour temperature is much lower than expected. In this case, AWB would adjust White point of the scene to a much higher colur temperature and the image will appear bluish than what is seen by our eyes. Take a look at the above travel photo which I took on the 2nd day of my London visit. It is supposed to be an attractive shot of the Victoria Memorial with Buckingham Palace as background. But the overcast weather had actually ruined the image with dull colour.

Firstly, the image is still slightly under exposed eventhough I had increased the Exposure Value by +1/3 stop. 2ndly, WB is out. This problem happened to many of my London travel photos. As I mentioned above, the rapid change of weather had made selecting WB of my D60 difficult. Switching to Daylight preset WB may be perfect for one shot but may not be for the next if the weather changed.

The same problem happened if we thought of selecting Cloudy preset WB for this scene but the complex ambient light from the overcast sky and pool water reflection had fooled the Nikon WB sensor and the image appeared to be much yellow than actual, as shown in the above photo. But some may prefer it as it shows warmer and more dramatic colours!

For these kind of weather in your travel destination, the best WB setting I would prefer is still be the AWB, if you are shooting JPEGs (If you are shooting RAW, forget about the WB setting as you can select the destined colour temperature at a later stage). Set WB setting to AWB and shoot all the way! Leave the colour correction at a later stage by adjusting colour temperature of the image with either CS5 or Lightroom 3, to whatever colour temperature you prefer…

The above photo is the result of what I adjusted during post processing with Photoshop. By increasing  the brightness and reducing the colour temperature, this was actually what I’ve seen for the Victoria Memorial of London, with also an increase in colour saturation.

Conclusions? WB setting is critical for photo shooting under one fixed ambient lighting, like studio or museum shooting. Pre-set your camera WB will easily produce a set of perfectly coloured photos collection that is ready for printing direct from camera. However, if you are shooting outdoor travel scenes, especially in a travel destination that have fast changing weather, like London in Spring, switch your camera WB setting to AutoWB. It would be easier and safer to shoot using AWB to get good result for most of the photos. Then play around the slider of Photoshop to adjust the image colour temperature, to what you prefer, not necessarily to what you’ve seen in actual. And this is the most useful purpose of adjusting White Balance. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

I’ve finally seen it! I’ve finally seen the original painting of Mosa Lisa! A portraiture masterpiece by Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa is one of the reasons why I was going back to Paris and Louvre Museum. I wanted to capture it with my Nikon D60 this round on my Europe travel and I satisfactorily did.

I shot it with my Nikkor 18-55mm mid zoom hand held and this is what I have captured. The original colour vibrancy of the painting to some extends faded away eventhough several preservation and restoration works had been carried out. I decided to restore it with the latest digital technology of PhotoShop Elements8 to get back the vibrant colours of the Portrait of Mona Lisa and this is how she looks…

Ever wonder why Mona Lisa is so fascinating to talk about, eventhough it was created way back in the 16th Century during the Renaissance? Being one of the most famous painting in the world, Mona Lisa (or Lisa Gherardini) is actually not popular for her beauty. Neither is the painting. What people discuss most on the portraiture is her smile, her gesture, her eyes and off course, the painter behind, Leonardo Da Vinci. Being one of the greatest artist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, scientist, mathematician and writer in the Renaissance, portrait of Mona Lisa was one of Leanardo final arts before he died in 1519.

According to the records, Portraiture of Mona Lisa was done in the Tuscany region of Italy and eventually brought to Paris in 1516. While some believed her husband Francesco del Giocondo invited Leonardo over to have a portraiture to his wife before their marriage, others reckoned the painting was started after the delivery of their second baby.

The best discussion on Mona Lisa is her eyes which would keep looking at you at any viewing angle (though I believe all portraiture are the same ). Her smile is also arguably the best of all where the famous ‘Mona Lisa’s smile‘ is coming from.

Whatever is it, with all the stories behind the painting, Mona Lisa becomes so popular among travelers and artists from all over the world who desperately hoping to see her in person. Where is the original painting located now? She is currently being hung on the wall inside the Louvre Museum, the famous travel destination of Paris!

Don’t get so excited though. She is highly protected by security and climatic glass screen and being rail guarded with securities that visitors could only see the 77cm x 53cm painting from 20 feet far away!

But don’t get upset as well. For Europe Travel Tips of the day: Taking photos of Mona Lisa is thankfully allowed in Louvre Museum of Paris. Just remember to bring along your long zoom fast lens and you can still capture it up-close!

Follow up next would be all my even more exciting travel experience and travel stories happened on my Europe travel. If you wish to get all my story updates, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog feed via RSS Reader or email, it’s free!

I just can’t wait to show more of my photos taken during the trip! See Ya! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

I found out recently this photo viewer engine called Cooliris Wall is quite interesting and comprehensive. I’ve been looking for plug-ins to be added onto my blog to showcase all my travel photos gallery so far and this is one that I quite like. Check it out below:

I’m still working around to get it permanently featured in Travel Feeder though. Please let me know how it looks to you and any comments would definitely great to hear! Ciao! - Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog