Different look at israel - Gilad Benari

I recently received a photo presentation by email. I usually avoid those, but for some reason I opened it. I liked the photos a lot!

Its a very nice depiction of the kind of landscape, street-life, and atmosphere you see around here in israel, with a very artistic and professional touch.

Check it out at http://www.giladbenari.com/

Yuval Apparel on Amazon...

you gotta be kidding me. one of the amazon ads caught my eye with a "I love yuval" t-shirt.



it appears there are some more available over there...
Yuval Apparel?

so - show some love I guess...

Shooting Volleyball is hard (but fun)!

Before we had our new DSLR, Vered shot one of my games using our Olympus C-5060 5.1 MP Digital Camera w/4x Optical Zoom point&shoot. Her heroic attempts and great results despite the slowness of that camera are available here on flickr.

I was looking for a good opportunity to shoot with our new camera. Last saturday, after my own volleyball practice, I stayed to take some photos of a game in the national league between another team from my club (KKTA) and Beer Sheva.

I took our Nikon D80 DSLR, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens, and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor we had on loan from a friend.

I took the pictures from the stands, and focused mainly on net action (as I'm mostly a net player, naturally its my main interest... but its also easier to anticipate) and serves. The challenge mentioned by anyone who tried to shoot volleyball or other indoor sports in gyms is that the lighting is not that great (to say the least). You want to have as fast a lens as possible. While my Nikon 18-200mm VR lens is great for most conditions, its VR capability doesn't help when you want to shoot action, and since its not that fast, you are left with a shutter speed that is not fast enough to fully freeze the action and provide a sharp image. The only thing to do is to go to a very high ISO (1600 in this case) and hope for some keepers if you do manage to capture a moment which is fairly static (like the fraction of time before someone spikes where he reaches the epoch of his jump). Another way is to shoot with lower focal lengths where the aperture is faster (but still towards the 3.6-4 range, not nearly enough).

I then switched to the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor. Here its a different story. Its a very fast lens, and you can shoot at 1.8 aperture and really freeze the action. I stayed with ISO 1600, and even played with higher ISOs for some shots to see the ramifications. The challenge with this lens is that composing is a real challenge since you are quite far away from the action, at least when shooting from the stands. I read great stuff about the Nikon 85mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor for sports as well as general low-light photography and especially portraiture. Its more expensive than the 50mm but might be worth it considering my photography subjects.

Another challenge was timing of the shots. The D80 has a frame rate of about 3fps which is good but not really pro-level. This means that even if you go to continuous shooting mode you need to time your sequence and hope for some luck. Getting the actual fraction of a second where the action happens proved to be very hard.
In addition I switched to JPEG mode (I usually shoot in RAW) to allow for faster and longer continuous shooting.

Anyhow, this has been a very interesting photography experience, which I intend to repeat. The guys from the team liked the pictures from what I've heard so far ;)

We just love markets

barcelona_2006-10-27_17-26-10_DSC1611, originally uploaded by yuvaly.

This was taken in La Boqueria in Barcelona

As you can see in our barcelona pictures (or anywhere else we've been for that matter...), we cannot put the camera down whenever around a market...

Barca

takeoff on the digital story blog

yrt_2006-10-10_15-06-50DSC_1075, originally uploaded by yuvaly.

check it out on http://www.thedigitalstory.com/blog/2006/10/grab_shot_67_takeoff.html

The digital story is a VERY interesting and useful podcast and "virtual camera club" I've been enjoying lately. I'm proud my grab shot was chosen to be featured...

Tamar Favorites Filmloop

Use this filmloop and the application to have a screensaver/desktop application that tracks the favorite pictures of our Tamar... (or at least our favorites...)

Riding Power station coolant...

Riding Power station coolant..., originally uploaded by yuvaly.

my first good capture of slow water... taking it at night-time reduces the complexity of bringing the amount of light down (no ND-grad or polarizers), but the lighting of the event in the background make this a nice capture I think.

probably would have been better with a tripod, but the rail of the bridge leading to this power station was sufficient more or less. Only problem is that there were many people on it, so there was still some vibration.

good thing I have the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens ...

jumper

jumper, originally uploaded by yuvaly.

Visiting Ako (Acres) I managed to capture some jumpers mid-air against the backdrop of the sea. Makes for a nice shiloutte...

Acres/Acco Festival Slideshow

Yesterday I went with the family to The Acco Festival.
While the significant half was enjoying theater, I was mainly touring the city, baby-sitting, and taking pictures. Here are the results. For non-public photos go to flickr (if you are a friend/family member...).
Hope you like the slide format...

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Night-time photography around Ayalon Highway

On Saturday we took Tamar in her Baby Bjorn Carrier and went our for a walk from home to Ramat Gan and back via Ayalon Halacha bridge.
Apart from enjoying the air outside, I had some fun taking long exposures and low-light photos of the sky scrapers in the ramat gan downtown area and of the ayalon highway from the bridge. See for yourselves...

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

muveemix try