Reality Bytes *alpha*

Last April 24 was really one fun-filled day with a very great learning experience for 40 photographers in Cebu. Canon and IMag Photography held a joint Portraiture and Color Management seminar, with instructors from the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging or PCCI, Dail Derri and Jun Miranda, held at Crown Regency, Cebu. A lot was taught from portraiture photography (with the chance to shoot with models) to great color management techniques and concepts. Canon also introduced two of their new SLR products; the EOS 550D and EOS 1D Mark IV, together with some of their new printer products. Other than the great learning experience was also the great eating experience. Sana next month or next year ulit. :D *laughs*

I was ready to work and do some research when I noticed how green Google's search page banner was. Then I realized, today is Earth Day! *laughs*. As soon as I got home, I grabed and searched in the deep labyrinth of my laptop's hard drive. I collected all my nature shots from my 2010 365 project and got these 15 picks that I  dedicate to mother nature. Hope you like them. Composed, authored, and photographed by yours truly. :)

You can also view my photostream and my nature set in Flickr for more photos. Once again, Happy Earth Day everyone! ^^

This review is kind of delayed, but anyway, I'm posting a review for it. hehe.. Last April 17 was Ayala's free Photography Workshop for A-Card holders. I'm not a card holder but I just availed for my friends A-Card. hehe.There were around 80-100 participants for the Workshop itself and around 35 participants for the Photography Contest (I just hope my entry got it's way into the top 10 *fingers crossed* :s ). Speaker was Joey Tanedo from UP Diliman. Here are few photos I got from the event.

Microsoft just announced the release of a new member of their development series. Behold, the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010! The latest Visual Studio release integrated with the latest .NET 4.0 Framework and the latest version of Silverlight. VS 2010 introduces various edition variants to fit developers’ needs.

• Visual Studio 2010 Professional
• Visual Studio 2010 Premium
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
• Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional

Features for these respective editions are quite many to mention so I provided links of these editions’ respective profile and overview. :) Express edition for 2010 is also available for free.

• Visual Basic 2010 Express
• Visual C# 2010 Express
• Visual C++ 2010 Express
• Visual Web Developer 2010 Express
• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP

These express edition applications are available for download in this link. Microsoft also offers a free trial of MS VS 2010 Professional. You can also check out this link for more information. :)

I have finally completed the lens set fit for my DSLR! These lenses might not be the most impressive when compared to those L-lenses and the like, but at least, I’ve got the focal length range I need for my photo-shoots. :)

EF 75-300mm USM III, f3-5.6 This is the first ever lens I had when I bought the 500D. Used in Sinulog 2010 celebration and on some (semi) macro shots on my boring free time. I did not really enjoy the performance of this lens especially on low light conditions. Considering its focal length range, I could not use it as an all around lens. Also, not to mention chromatic aberration problems on full focal length shots. But based on its performance during Sinulog last January 2010, I was able to capture great shots as long as the sun was up and with some manual exposure adjustments, even with the crowd in front of me.

EF-S 18-55mm IS f4.5-5.6 Sad to say I regret purchasing the 500D without this kit lens. I could not maximize on practicing with in-depth photography without (at least) an all around lens such as the 18-55. Generally, image stabilization capability of this lens is above average. And generally, the 18-55mm is a good all around lens (that’s why it was a kit lens in the first place. hehe).

EF 50mm f1.8 This 50mm is the best for portraiture shots even when in low light conditions. This lens is also good when in DOF shots with bokeh on the background. Depth of field on your shots are minutely adjustable given it’s f1.8 maximum aperture. As a prime lens, it has no focal length. With it’s fixed focal length of 50mm, you might need to do the “cha-cha” when taking your shots. Since this has no USM, expect a loud noise when in AF mode.

Hopefully, I will be writing full reviews on these lenses based on my user experiences with them. In this way I could also share this with those starting with photography and hopefully help them answer all the confusing questions like how I started in all of this. :) To all my fellow photography-enthusiasts out there, keep those shutters clicking and flashes bursting. ^^

I discovered this new blogging medium through a friend of mine and I never had the intention of registering to this service. Until I realize that Posterous was just that easy especially for starter bloggers and even for casual bloggers. As their tag line goes; “The simple place to post everything.” Because it’s indeed simple. What makes Posterous simple and flexible for me is because of its basic and useful features that are helpful for bloggers and the like. Its support for casual blogging, cross posting, and retweeting made it indeed simple to post everything. You can also check out my Posterous through this link. :)

Now this might be intersting. Trying out Posterous for the first time. :)

I found this new amazing feature from Google when I opened to checked my mail this morning. It’s the new Google Buzz. Buzz is a new add-on that Google added over their Google Mail (GMail). It works similarly with that of Twitter and Facebook’s News Feed wall. If you’re familiar with these two social network services, I’m sure you will not get lost when trying out this new Google feature. It includes the following cool features:

• Micro-blog buzz messaging. Publish buzzes privately or publicly
• Connect to other sites such as Flickr, Picasa, and Twitter
• Google mail box integration
• Comment, Like, and Share your buzz posts or posts of those you follow
• Muting of posts when you don’t feel you don’t care on a post’s updates

To get to this feature, you will simply need a Google Mail. You can create one through GMail’s registration page. After logging in to your new account, or your old account if you have one, Buzz will be accessible on your account page’s left panel. Happy Buzzing! :)

Whew! It had been a few days already since the Sinulog celebration. Anyway, I have finally set my gallery of the selected shots I've took during the Grand Parade. It was not really a good day to take pictures because of the rain. You can view more pictures in this and this link.

Finally, after many weeks of waiting, my Windows 7 upgrade order finally arrived! *yey!* But still, I was dissapointed of how the shipping process turned out. It took almost a month instead of  the promised 9-12 days. whew! There were a lot of inactivity going on until I thought of receiving my order was already impossible. The whole delivery process really had a lot of customers getting frustrated with how their processing turned out. I hope Mentor Media would be able to resolve those issues with some other customers who have not yet received their orders. :) Now that I finally have a genuine Windows 7 installed into my system, it's working above satisfactory so far. It is less resource hungry than that of my previous system. There were a lot of improvements especially in running Lenovo applications and drivers. Sound and video also improved. My Windows 7 experience is so far, so good. I just hope I don't run into problems in the future.