December 23, 2011
Taking Photo of the Moon with a Point-and-Shoot Camera (and some othe dirty tricks)
One night during the full moon, you stroll around the park and you notice a big bright beauty moon (with a Stanford Bunny look-a-likte on its surface) in the sky. Luckily, at that time you are taking your trusted Point-and-Shoot (PnS) digital camera with you. You turn on the camera, aim to the moon, and take the photo. You then check the taken photo. Disappointingly, the moon appears very bright unlike what you see with your own eyes :
- A moon…or a sun ?
Yes, the moon is very bright ! You quickly rush home, and googling around. Some sites suggest you to set the camera to the manual mode, and then adjust the exposure amount to the lowest. You follow the advice, try again, but to no avail, the moon still appears too bright (but, in some cases might work, it depends on the type of your PnS camera). Sadly, you give up and decided try to move on.
But wait, don’t give up yet, because :
- You haven’t taken an arrow in the knee.
- There is one possible way without resorting to purchasing a DSLR camera
And, how is it ? It’s simple. Just enable the flash when you take the photo ! And, at last, you manage to take the photo of a moon (complete with the Stanford Bunny look-a-like) :
- Now it works !
So, what happen ? It is simple, first, the reflection on the moon is still too bright for your camera even though you set the exposure to the lowest. Second, by enabling the flash, the PnS camera basically automatically adjusts its setting to the lowest senstitivity (such as reducing the shutter speed). After all, when the flash is enabled, in the usual condition such as taking photo in a room, the flash light will be very bright and the PnS camera has to compensate this by automatically reducing its sensitivity (e.g. reduce the shutter speed).
BTW, when you take the photo of the moon, don’t forget to set the focus to infinite and do optical zooming until the end.
Oh, what was the camera I used to take these photos ? It was Canon Powershot A2100 IS. Here are more photos of I took with this tiny guy :
- This Lunar Eclipse photo was taken on 10 December 2011. Since the moon was not as bright as usual, I took this photo by using long exposure (around 8 seconds). A tripod would be useful in this case.
- Double Lightning. Lightning appears very brief, so it is hard to take the right moment to take its photo. Two possible ways to take this photo : (a) by using long exposure (b) by enabling continuous shots (i.e., by keep holding down the shutter button, the camera will keep taking photos). For this photo, I used the latter method.
- So, what’s so special about this photo. In this case, the light is very bright from the sky behind. So, when we took the photo in the usual way, my friend appeared very dark (After all, this camera cannot take HDR or RAW photo). So, to get around this, I just enabled the flash so that it can illuminate my friend. So, now you have learned two unorthodox ways of using flash : to take photo of the moon and to take photo in the daytime.
- My eye, in close up. Love the iris ? Here’s how to take the photo by my own. (1) set it to Macro mode (2) put it very near to my eye. (3) used another hand to hold the flashlight to illuminate from the side (4) put a mirror behind the camera, and used another eye to see the preview from the camera display through the mirror reflection.
Note that there exists a firmware hack for Canon PnS cameras called CHDK which enables us to have greater control on our Canon PnS cameras. Unfortunately, it is still not available yet for Canon Powershot A2100 IS. That’s why I relied on these tricks to take some of these photos.
So, that’s all folks for today. If you have any suggestions, comments, or interesting tricks for PnS digital camera, feel free to share in the comment.
BTW, if you want to use these photos somewhere else, please notify me first. Thanks !
August 19, 2011
Music Video for the Ghost Month
So, now is the Ghost Month in Chinese calendar. How about if we enjoy some horror songs, taken from some game OSTs ? Best enjoyed alone at midnight, loudspeaker in the maximum volume, with all lights turned-off, and air cond in the coolest/coldest setting.
Sleeping Priestess from Fatal Frame
Hasizoroe from Kuon
April 21, 2011
Theme Song
Buy the soundtrack of games or movies and we often see some of the track titles like “AAA’s theme”. These tracks are associated with certain characters and hence they’re mostly played during the scenes involving the particular characters. Sometimes, the tracks manage to somehow describe the personality of the associated characters and sometimes may fail to do it.
Now, back to real life. Sometimes we heard people say like : “Life itself is a drama stage/movie and we’re the main character” (citation needed, if you know, please provide me with the source). Truly, during the course of our life we make interactions with various other ‘characters’, and some of them may leave impression in our life. Imprinted into our brain is the memory, experience, and feeling involving said ‘characters’, thus if we somehow stumble upon something related to particular ‘character’, we may remember both the memory and feeling about the person. Depending on each person’s personal experience, one of these nostalgic elements may be : “Music”. Occasionaly, some music may be involved during our interaction with the other ‘characters’. For example, with ‘character A’ discussing about music B, or listening to ‘character A’ singing music B, or ‘character A’ introduced music B, and so on. As a result, we may associate a song with a ‘character’ we know, and thus somehow becoming the ‘A’s Theme Song” for us, personally.
Here I list down theme songs of several ‘characters’ I know in my life, who leave impression to me. Sorry, due to personal reason, I won’t tell you who the songs are associated with. If you’re one of the ‘characters’ associated with one of these song, you may or may not know it that it’s actually your theme song for me.
Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For you
七里香 (Common Jasmin Orange)
Kiss the Rain
I Know him so Well
我只在乎你 (I only care about you)
Tifa’s Theme
And now, what song do you personally consider as my theme song ?
Update : A soundtrack from .Hack//Sign is perfect as my theme song, as it’s the theme song of a character called B.T. (initials of my name), never mind about the character is actually a girl.
March 16, 2011
My Chinese Names in Various Languages/Dialects
Being a person of Chinese descent but was born in non-Chinese (Indonesia) country, I have a Chinese name in addition to my official Indonesian name (also..internet name : Eon Strife, and nickname during my undergraduate time : Zero). Actually what I have is not one, but two Chinese names : 陈森涌 and 陈松生. Why I have two Chinese names ? Well, that will be the story of another time (confession : too lazy to write the story down now). And now, the interesting thing about Chinese language is that for a Chinese character (kanji), there are various ways to pronounce it (in other word, many dialects). This is due to the size of China, comprising many states/provinces/kingdoms (in the past) with their own local dialects (small tidbit : Chinese dialect spoken in my family is Minnan(闽南话)/Hokkien(福建话)). Furthermore, in the past, the Chinese influence spread to neighboring countries/kingdoms/empires through some channels such as trading, religion, annexation, etc. So, it’s not surprising to find Chinese characters in neighboring China countries, such as Japan, Korea, or Vietnam, but with different pronounciation. Curious, I try to find how my Chinese names are pronounced in various dialects/languages. And here they are :
- 陈森涌/陳森湧
- Official Mandarin (普通话/国语/华语) : Chen2 Sen1 Yong3 (chénsēnyǒnɡ)
- Minnan(闽南话)/Hokkien/Fujian (福建话) : Dan2 Sem1 Iong3
- Chaozhou/Teowchew(潮州话) : Dang5 Siem1 Iong3
- Cantonese (广州话) : Can4 Sam1 Cung1
- Suzhou (苏州话) : (unknown) Sen44 Ion51
- Shanghainese (上海话) : Dzen Sen Ion
- Guangyun (广韵) : Drin Srim Yiongx
- Japanese : ちんしんゆう (Chin Shin Yū)
- Hangul (Korean) : 진숲용 (Jin Sup-Yong)
- Vietnamese : Trần Sâm Dũng
- 陈松生/陳松生
- Official Mandarin (普通话/国语/华语) : Chen2 Song1 Sheng1 (chénsōnɡshēnɡ)
- Minnan(闽南话)/Hokkien/Fujian (福建话) : Dan2 Siong2 Seng1
- Chaozhou/Teowchew(潮州话) : Dang5 Song1 Sêng1
- Cantonese (广州话) : Can4 Sung1 Sang1
- Suzhou (苏州话) : (unknown) Son44 Sen44
- Shanghainese (上海话) : Dzen Son Sen
- Guangyun (广韵) : Drin Song Sräng
- Japanese : ちんしょうせい (Chin Shō Sei)
- Hangul (Korean) : 진송생 (Jin Song-Saeng)
- Vietnamese : Trần Thông Sanh
Sources :
- Voice Dic : http://cn.voicedic.com/
- Wiktionary : http://en.wiktionary.org
February 27, 2011
Paper Submission to Elsevier
Done ! At last finish the paper submission to a journal published by Elsevier. The submission system (EES : Elsevier Editorial System), however, has many requirement, it’s not your straightforward-just-upload-your-pdf system. Instead, we have to upload the manuscript in .doc or .tex, and all of the figures have to be uploaded separetely. After some trial-and-error, at last I managed to submit the paper successfully at 5.00 AM (GMT+8:00) and while uploading at the same time I was reading Marvel Zombies comics (flesh…flesh..flesh..). There are several things I need to highlight during the submission (note that I use LaTEX) :
- Raster images. They do not accept the images in .png format, hence I tried to use the .pdf format. And one thing, is that when we specify the image filename in the .tex file, we have to write down the extension. In my original manuscript, it worked when I compile the .tex file in my PC : \includegraphics[width=2.5in]{figure_01a}. However, for the Elsevier submission it has to be : \includegraphics[width=2.5in]{figure_01a.pdf}.
- Bibliography. If it’s in a separate file, we also have to specify its file extension when we include them in the .tex file : \bibliography{template.bib}. And, the .bib file has to be uploaded with the type “Manuscript” (if this selection is available), the Elsevier system will not compile it if it’s included as other type (such as e-component).
- Upload tool. When we upload the files, there are two upload tools we can use, the classic and the enhance (with the animated progress bar). For some unknown reason, uploading my video file (50 MB) took 7 hours by using the enhance one (according to ‘time left’ information), and the webpage somehow automatically refreshed after the uploding progress was around 12% (Meaning, the upload failed). Then, I just used the classic one, and I sucessfully uploaded the 50 MB video in around 15 minutes !
- Confirmation/Approve. When you have already approved the generated .pdf and the submission, you’re unable to upload anymore (eg. revised paper), unlike other submission such as EasyChair, where we can upload until the deadline.
That’s all, the tricky things about Elsevier submission system. You can view some necessary information of this submission system :
- Guide for Authors [ http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/717010/authorinstructions ]
- EES User Guide for Authos [ http://support.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/116 ]
- Author Artwork and Multimedia Instructions [ http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authors.authors/authorartworkinstructions ]
- Preparing Documents with LaTex [ http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/latex ]
- LaTeX Submissions in EES [ http://support.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/144/kw/latex ]
