Photography – Page 5 – Famous last words of Marius

Low hanging clouds – winter is coming

Posted on 23 April 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

On Tygerberg Hill are some radio masks and this morning one of the masks was sticking out above the clouds.

It is an overcast day here in Cape Town and the air is starting to get nippy. Winter is on its way but there is something not right with the weather here in the Cape. What is this with the thunder this morning and it is not the first time this month. We are not suppose to get thunder and lightning here in the Cape.

More photos here: My Photo Gallery – Clouds

Technorati Tags: clouds, winter, thunder, cape town

Geese on a chimney

Posted on 22 April 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

I found these Egyptian Geese (at least I think they are) on the chimney of a neighbours house this morning.

More photos can be found here: My Photo Gallery

Technorati Tags: egyptian geese

Canon Powershot SX10 IS — playing with the zoom

Posted on 16 April 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

Today I played around with the zoom on my Canon SX10. Here are some of the results:

100mm F5.7 1/500s ISO200 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto
This was taken at the maximum optical resolution of 20x (560mm equivalent) with no digital zoom. To give you an idea, this guinea fowl were about 200 meter from where I took the photo. Not bad at all.

This is the same quinea fowl as above and the photo was taken from exactly the same spot. Only difference was that I added 2.28x digital zoom to it. That is about 1276mm equivalent.

100mm F5.7 1/500s ISO200 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto
To be honest, I was very surprised at the quality of the digital. One read and hear so much about how useless digital zoom is, but from the above it sure has its uses when one needs to get in closer to your subject.

Technorati Tags: optical, digital, zoom, canon, powershot, sx10

Water at 1000fps …. amazing

Posted on 5 April 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

Schweppes “Burst” Commercial

What an amazing ad. Just show what one can do with a slowmotion camera. This was taken at 1000FPS (frames per second) .. now that is fast. To compare — your home movie is normally around 30FPS and those you see in the cinema at around 24FPS.

Technorati Tags: schweppes, slowmotion, ad

Sunrise with my new toy – Canon SX10

Posted on 26 March 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

I have so much to learn in this photography game. This morning I took these .. again just with the AUTO mode of the camera and re-size with GIMP.

12mm F4.0 1/400s ISO80 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto

27mm F4.5 1/500s ISO80 Auto Metering: Pattern WB: Auto

Technorati Tags: canon, sx10

Are we seeing the start of Winter in the Cape?

Posted on 25 March 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

This is the mist and clouds that came rolling over the hill this morning. Are this the end of Cape Summer and start of Winter.

These photos were taken with my new Canon PowerShot SX10 IS with no editing at all. All that I did was to re-size the images.

Technorati Tags: winter, canon, sx10, powershot

New office view

Posted on 10 March 2009 by Marius — 2 Comments ↓

Yesterday I officially moved to our new IBM Offices at Century City. This is the Sunrise that greeted me at the new office. What is view .. I can get used to this. And it cuts my driving distance to work in half and driving time by even more.

Technorati Tags: office, view, century city, ibm

Photos from the week past

Posted on 1 March 2009 by Marius — No Comments ↓

Cape Town is one of the host cities for World Cup 2010 and a new stadium is busy being build. Here, the half (or maybe three quarter) build stadium is covered with mist. Hope that it is not an indication that this stadium will become a ghost stadium

Yesterday, myself and a friend (thanks Marita) spend the afternoon in Houtbay enjoying some fish and chips. The wind was howling as can be seen from the white on the water and it was really unpleasant but it was nice none the less.

Houtbay without fishing boats is not Houtbay and being so unpleasant and windy all the boats were in the harbor as can be seen here.

Currently it is very hot in Cape Town and there is fires burning in the Stellenbosch/Somerset West mountains and the sky is covered with smoke. On my way, taking my son to varsity in Stellenbosch, I took this photo of the sun behind the smoke.

This photo does not do it justice since the sun was bright red, not pink like in the photo.

Technorati Tags: houtbay, fire, world cup, 2010, cape town, sun

Makro service (good) and Canon Powershot SX10 IS

Posted on 30 December 2008 by Marius — 1 Comment ↓

We as South African complain so much about the bad service that we receive in this country but when we get good service we tend to keep quiet about it. Today I want to talk about the good (actually great) service I received from Makro.

I receive Makro’s catalogs via email and they advertised a Vodacom Weekender contract for R135.00 plus a Canon Powershot SX119 camera for free. Knowing that you do not get a SX119 camera, I send an email mentioning the mistake and asked whether this free camera is the Canon Powershot SX110 or the Canon Powershot SX10. Makro responded that it is the SX10. Knowing that the SX10 cost R2000.00 more than the SX110, I double checked with them and they confirmed that I will receive the SX10. Now if you make the calculation of R135.00 for 24 months plus connection fee of R202.00 means that I can get a R5000.00 camera for about R3500.00.

I went down to my closest Makro (Milnerton) and showed them the email with the confirmation that I can get a SX10 with the Vodacom Weekender contract. Not surprising, they said that it is the SX110 and not the SX10 as mentioned in the email. Not wanting to argue with the lady behind the counter, she was just doing her job, I just left and then send a complaint email via Makro’s website explaining the situation.

The next day I received a telephone call from Makro Milnerton enquiring what my complaint was about. After explaining the situation, Makro decided to honour the commitment made in the email to me.

Yesterday I again visited the Milnerton store and am now the proud owner of:

and a Vodacom Weekender contract.

Just goes to show that sometimes when one does the effort, you can still find businesses that is true to their word. Thanks Makro for doing the right thing and I will surely do more business with you.

As you can see the camera is still in its wrapping. So you might wonder why I did not play with it yet. I actually want a Canon Powershot SX1 IS and ORMS has agreed to swap the SX10 for a SX1 and I only need to pay the difference of about R2500.00. The SX1 should be available in SA by mid January so I cannot wait to get it swapped.

Technorati Tags: canon, makro, service, sx10, sx1, powershot