PESO 2010 #56 - An empty street

PESO 2010 #55 - Ice cream

PESO 2010 #54 - Evening walk

PESO 2010 #53 - Megadrive

PESO 2010 #52 - Evening walk

I admit, the low light photography really grows on me...

PESO 2010 #51 - Miserere

I met Miserere (*) back in May 2010 in Chicago. He's incredibly nice and astoundingly smart guy. Therefore if you hear him decline the above compliment, just don't believe him :-). Here is him doing seemingly his usual two cameras-one guy trick...



(*) Miserere has another web site - right here.

P.S. A bit of techno-babble... The above image was processed with Topaz Noise. Initially I thought it had too much noise which made me hesitate to publish it. As it is now, it seems more or less acceptable...

PESO 2010 #50 - Moshe Aviv Tower

A co-worker of mine is living on the 59th floor of the tallest building in Israel - the Moshe Aviv Tower. Recently I chanced to pay him a visit and even get up on the roof which is approximately 70 stories above the ground. Unfortunately I did not have my camera gear with me, but I had my cell phone :-).

PESO 2010 #49 - Cormorant

After all these years I still don't know why, but cormorants are PDML birds... So, in a manner of speaking, Galia has become more PDMLer than before...

PESO 2010 #48 - Pizza

Among other extracurricular activities, Galia studies cooking. This pizza was really delicious, and I am saying it not because I am Galia's dad, but because it was tasty.

PESO 2010 #47.1

I have been asked to provide comparison images for my Topaz Cat PESO.

First, completely unprocessed crops:





Then, my attempt to LightRoom 3.2 noise reduction:





Sans the minor difference in brightness between these four and the Topaz Cat images due to my general post processing of the full image for presentation it seems that LightRoom does really good job at noise reduction. I still prefer Topaz but it is of course influenced by the fact that I recently paid money for it.

Finally, as Miserere rightfully requested to show him some prints, all this pixel peeping is of very specific and limited value, but I had to have my portion of "fun", hadn't I?

PESO 2010 #48 - Ralli Museum Caesarea

Two more from my cell phone photography series. I wholeheartedly recommend you visit Ralli Museum Caesarea if you happen to visit Israel.

PESO 2010 #47 - Topaz Cat

It seems everyone in Pentax land is getting excited about noise performance of K-5 and K-r - two most recent and most up to date offerings from Pentax. It goes without argument that noise performance of K-5 has improved significantly on K-7. However K-7 is no slouch. At this moment I see no particularly strong reason to shell yet another 4 figures in USD for the new camera. Rather, I bought Topaz Denoise for approximately 1/20th of the price of brand new K-5. Here is a picture I took not long ago and processed it with Topaz Denoise. It was shot at ISO 1600, f/2.5, 1/50 sec with FA 77/1.8 Limited.



Two 100% crops for your inspection:





It seems to me that I can actually shoot safely at ISO 3200 now, although previously I limited auto ISO to ISO 1600. Of course this is not wondrous ISO 25600 or even ISO 51200 of K-5, but it will satisfy my needs quite nicely.