Johan's most appreciated articles

This week I got two manual lenses, from a Dutch auction site. The first one is a Pentax Super Takumar 35/3.5 and the second one is a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135/3.5. Both are manual focus, and the modern Canon digital reflexes don't have a suitable viewfinder for manual focusing anymore, so I am eagerly waiting for the ordered adapters with a focus confirm chip! For now I use a simple mechanical adapter, judging sharpness with my eyes only. I am very impressed with the CZJ Sonnar lens so far,…

Today, a friend attended me of a new(?) research project, which tries to rate the aesthetic appeal of pictures by using artificial intelligence. http://acquine.alipr.com While I am fascinated by the idea, it seems that this still has a long way to go, and that the designers maybe focus too much on heuristics (people like a small DoF, or vanishing points, or strong colors), and less on the human context and background when evaluating a photograph. I don't know if there is something…