Johan's most read articles

Recently, I sold my old and trusty Tokina 19-35 AF193 lens, because I could buy a Canon 17-40/4 for a very good price. First of all, the Tokina AF193 is a completely different lens than the cheap Vivitar/Tamron/Quantaray 19-35 lenses you often encounter. A night and day difference actually, both in performance and build quality. Anyway, looking back and comparing pictures, the Tokina wasn't really worse than the Canon. Granted, the Canon lens adds weather sealing and a tiny bit more cont…

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…

After having used Flickr exclusively for photo-sharing for three years, it is really refreshing to see the diversity of languages on Ipernity! I mean, Flickr is dominated by English speakers, and here on Ipernity, it is a mix of English, French, German and Esperanto (and I certainly forgot a few others too). Unfortunately I only speak and write Dutch, English and German, but I'll try to do my best ... apologies in advance for my mistakes

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,…

Since a couple of months, I'm using a Pentax Takumar 35/3,5 and a Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135/3,5 lens on my 30D. And I love them Now another one is on its way to me, a (suppposedly) "near mint" Pentax SMC Takumar 200mm f/4. In M42 mount, so I can easily use it on my Canon EOS, with the AF-confirm adapter. If the quality is comparable to the Sonnar 135, I am a very happy person Pictures should come up in about a week ... I don't expect to have it before the weekend. Edit: it arrived My f…

Yesterday I moved in here, from Flickr. Thanks to the great Flickr Importer greasemonkey script, I transferred all my pictures to Ipernity. However, I lost all my groups and albums, so it is time to start arranging things again. I'm sure I'll feel at home here very soon

Wir fahren in 5 Minuten nach Deutschland, in die Eifel (Prüm). Hoffentlich werden wir gutes Wetter mitbringen Bis später! Over 5 minuten vertrekken wij naar Duitsland, de Eifel (Prüm). Hopelijk nemen we mooi weer mee! Tot later!

Since not too long ago I am the owner of a Canon 5D (the original). Second-hand, but it's basically like new. Actually it feels very very familiar to me, since I am used to the Canon 30D already. However, a new toy is always fun ;-) and the bright viewfinder and low noise are a real improvement. My Canon EF 28/2,8 likes it too (as do the manual lenses). The old Canon EF 24-85 and 70-210 are not such great combinations, due to heavy vignetting and corner softness. Fortunately the Canon 30…

I met this guy in Tournai. He was very interested in my cameras, and he told me that he used to be a professional photographer back in the film days (Nikon FM era). Unfortunately he could only speak French, and my French is rather limited ... it would have been interesting to learn more about him. Now we didn't get much further than cameras, the colors of the leaves and the city, his film choices, and a lot of hand gestures :-) It's a bit sad that he seems to live on the street nowadays.

A happy 2010 for all my Ipernity friends!