Best place to buy used photography items

If you are looking for used photography items, this is the best place to buy. Why? - cause the rating they uses is pretty strict. I bought several items from here and found items graded lower than they should be. Like new (LN-) items are marked as excellent (EX). So you can blindly keep faith on their grading. The price a little bit high though. But the satisfaction you get from the product - thats worth it.

in reference to: KEH Camera: Used Cameras, Digital Cameras, Film Cameras, Laptop Computers and More. (view on Google Sidewiki)

Fireworks photography

I found it quite hard to take fireworks pictures. When visiting Lake Tahoe over the labor day weekend I suddenly came across the fireworks show near south Lake Tahoe. This was my first time to take fireworks pics. The main problem i faced is its very hard to predict where the main burst will happen. So framing is damn difficult. Next problem is you will want better DOF to get the whole fireworks in focus, I tried with F2.8 but found F8 or higher would be better. So for that you will need some pretty slow shutter-speed. So if you are without a tripod then don't expect to get 'awesome' fireworks pics - though you might get some decent one.

Anyway here are the ones that I got




After searching on internet for fireworks photography, I found these setting. Next time I am gonna try these.

1.
Exposure - Shutter Priority (6/8 sec)
ISO - (upto good level of your camera)
WB - AUTO (shoot raw and you can fix it later if not good)
Focus Length - Manually to Infinity
Extra - Tripod, Shutter Release

2.
Exposure - Manual
Shutter Speed - 6/8/10/15 sec(vary it if you got time)
Aperture - F8/F13.. (might try F2.8 or lower)
ISO - (800+)
WB - AUTO
Focus - Infinity
Extra - Tripod, Shutter Release

Another thing to keep in mind - Fireworks emits heavy light so exposing for long time will overexpose your image.

Geotagging your photo...

I have been searching for program that can geotag my pictures based on a gpx file. On my android phone I have this awesome app called 'MyTracks'. It records GPS tracks and let you view live data. The sweet part is this data can be exported as gpx file. There are few softwares that lets you geotag your photos based on this. I am using Jeffery Friedl's GPS plugin for Adobe lightroom. I like this plugin cause it doesn't hamper the workflow of post processing. And it works like a charm. There is also Geotag, a java software which lets you do the same thing.

I have geotagged my team offsite pictures. Here is the result.

Google Reader team on a boat trip..

On september 2, we, all the members of Google Reader team went to a boat trip in San Francisco Bay area. This was our official team offsite and it was great fun. We played this song several times and I think its still circling inside my head. Surprisingly the weather was too good that day, warm and sunny - not like typical San Francisco weather. It was almost 2 and half hours journey. Here is the route map generated from my android phone.

As usual, didn't miss the chance to take few shots. Here is the album.