Archive for August, 2007

Samsung GX 10 - my impressions, pictures of Lodz

Published at August 31, 2007 in Lodz, Poland, technology in general and Photos. 1 Comment

Today I took a walk through the centre of my home city - Lodz, to take as many pictures as possible and make myself familiar with my new camera. So there are my impressions:

1. The Samsung GX 10 camera is very fast (compared to my old ones). Memory buffer is very big, so there is no problem in 3 or 5 shots sequences, especially while using bracketing - to merge photos taken with different shutter time or aperture to one file. Bracketing with fast 5 shots sequence is also an excellent with Tv or Av programs. You can roughly adjust aperture or shutter time, and with one klic you can have 5 pictures taken in different adjustments.

2. Fast autofocus. It is my first digital SLR camera. Before that I had been using only analog SLRs (Zenit ET and Praktica BX20) without AF. My last camera - hybrid Konica Minolta A1 DiMage has very slow autofocus. Sometimes it took ages to make it work. My ne Samsung GX 10 is pretty fast compared to Minolta.

3. Big and heavy body. Basically it is very good. Holding camera in the hands gives an impression of something solid and massive. The only problem I have is the placement of the adjust knobs. They are placed in a little bit different positions compared to my old Minolta. I needed some time to find them to change the aperture or shutter time.

4. Locks of the battery slot and memory card slot. It is not good idea to make kind of fancy thing. It is to small for me, and it don’t provide fast access to those slots.

5. Automatic CCD cleaning - very good thing, but if you have a dirty fat spot you will have to touch the CCD. I found CCD in my Samsung quite dirty in some places. It affected my photos - there was a quite big blurry black spot. After about 20 attempts to clean it with auto cleaning the dust has gone, but a dirty place remained (so I will need to clean it with some special tools).

6. Very good quality of the photos - so far I have been taking only JPGs, but I am going to take both JPGs and Raw files.

Here you have some examples and one high resolution picture:

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

Very old advertisement (probably from nineteen eighties) of Polish communist era “Dollar Shops” - Pewex.
Here is the High Res version of that photo - warning - very heavy (4,5 MB)

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

One of two Orthodox churches in Lodz. Orthodox Church of St Alexey Newsky. Church was built in 19th century while Lodz and eastern Poland was a part of Russia. Novadays the Orthodox community in Lodz is very small, so only one church is open for public. High Res (very heavy!)

The last photo, kind of abstraction I created in Photoshop using photos of Lodz two towers is available on my Photoblog:

http://www.kozerawski.com/2007/08/31/welcome-to-black-mesa-complex-east/

www.fotoblogi.eu

Dublin to Belfast only 1 minute!

Published at August 31, 2007 in Poland and Irish in Poland. 4 Comments

Today I took a long walk through out centre of my home city - Lodz. It was kind of test drive of my new camera - Samsung DX 10, but I will describe my impressions in next entry. I have already mentioned couple of times, that we have Irish pubs in Poland, and they are quite popular, even if they are not truly Irish :) We have couple of them in Lodz, at least 3. Walking through the city centre I came up against funny place. One building (an old communist era public eating-house (used to be named Balaton - after lake in Hungary), but now there is a few shops and upstairs we have two Irish pubs: Dublin and Belfast - they have never been so close to each other. It is only 1 minute to walk from Dublin to Belfast and back again.

Dublin, Belfast, Irish pubs in Lodz, Poland, Photo: Krystian Kozerawski

Dublin, Belfast, Irish pubs in Lodz, Poland, Photo: Krystian Kozerawski

kick it on kick.ie

www.fotoblogi.eu

New camera - Samsung GX 10

Published at August 30, 2007 in technology in general. 7 Comments

I had been without a camera for last 3 weeks, I missed so many excellent occasions to take a good photos. Finally bad time has gone. Today I have bought a new camera, a digital SLR - Samsung GX 10. It is 10,2 megapixel mid-level digital SLR camera equipped with Schneider - Kreuznach lens. My first impressions: it is big, it is heavy and it takes good photos, and what is also very important it is pretty fast (focusing, recording to the memory card). It will take time to get used to the placement of some control buttons, but it is not a problem at all.

Samsung-GX10

Here you have some specifications of my new Samsung GX 10 (taken from the site: www.whatdigitalcamera.com):

CCD: 23.5 x 15.7mm CCD SENSOR: with 10.75mp total/10.2mp effective
REC FORMAT: RAW (.DNG), JPEG, RAW + JPEG
MAX IMAGE SIZE 3872 x 2592 pixels
MAX PRINT SIZE 13 x 8.6in @ 300dpi
LENS MOUNT Pentax KAF2
MAGNIFICATION 1.5x
SHUTTER SPEEDS 30-1/4000sec + Bulb
ISO Auto / Manual 100-1600
EXP MODES Auto, Program AE, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, Shutter & aperture priority, Sensitivity priority, Manual
METERING 16-segment Multi, Centreweighted, Spot
WHITE BALANCE Auto, 8 presets, Manual, 3 x colour temperature
COLOUR MODES AdobeRGB / sRGB
FLASH Built in, GN11m @ISO: 100, Hotshoe
FLASH SYNC 1/180sec
SYNC SOCKET No
DRIVE MODES Single, Continuous (3fps for 9 frames RAW / card capacity with JPEG) FOCUS 11 AF points, selectable automatically or individually
VIEWFINDER 95% coverage
MONITOR 2.5in LCD with 210,000 pixels
CONNECTION USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
FILE SYSTEM EXIF 2.21, DPOF 1.1
VIDEO OUTPUT Still only
POWER Li-Ion, Optional AC Adaptor
STORAGE SD / SDHC
OTHER In-camera dust reduction CCD-based Optical Picture Stabilisation (OPS) Weatherproof seals

www.fotoblogi.eu

Imprisonment as a method of political battle of Kaczynski brothers. Poland just one step to coup d’état?

Published at August 30, 2007 in Poland. 0 Comments

And here we have imprisonments used as a method of political battle. Public prosecutor general and his agencies have just arrested former minister of justice and a former member of Kaczynskis’ party - Janusz Kaczmarek, who was accused of licking the confidential information, however it is clear that Kaczmarek has a lot of information about illegal activities of prime minister, public prosecutor general and their agencies against opposition and against party members to keep them loyal and mouth shoot in case of leaving the party. Opposition parties - a majority in the parliament - want to start a special commission, and want Kaczmarek to speak in the parliament (being a prime minister candidate of some opposition, a former junior coalition parties League Of Polish Families and Self-Defence), but political imprisonment will prevent it for sure. However, Kaczmarek has given evidence of possible crimes of Law and Justice party during the special interrogation in the front of special commission.

What does Kaczmarek know? It is possible that he knows about all the eavesdropping against all the opposition parties, and even junior parties in coalition with Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), for sure he knows all the details about tragic failure of attempt to arrest Barbara Blida - former MP, who committed suicide during the arrest attempt. He has knowledge about the completely illegal activity of Anti corruption bureau against leader of Self-Defence party - Andrew Lepper, to frame him into the land corruption scandal. It is said that anti corruption bureau faked official papers and documents and faked the signature of local councillor in the north of Poland. He probably knows all the details and about the other illegal cases of party in rule.

Today’s morning another two people were arrested - former chief of Police - Kornatowski, and former chief of PZU (leading Polish insurance company) Netzel. All of them are former juniors of Kaczynski.

Kaczmarek and Kornatowski were to give evidence as a witnesses in the front of special commission to investigate activities of Special Services (Secret Services or whatever). It is a clear example of shutting witnesses’ mouth.
Where do we go from here? Are we about to coup d’état?

www.fotoblogi.eu

Evil and anti EU priest Rydzyk and 15 millions Euro from EU

Published at August 29, 2007 in Poland. 3 Comments

Thanks to Polish far right government famous Polish evil, anti-Semitic, anti-EU priest Rydzyk is about to get 15 millions of EU funding granted by European Commission for his low quality university of media culture (65 place in the ranking of of 70 private universities) - a nest of anti-everything propaganda. The level of hypocrisy of that monster who spit straight into the God’s face has rose to the enormous level. He is against EU, but as usual he welcomes money, no matter where is the money from. Indeed that man has no God, no Pope nor beliefs, he has only lust of power, money and luxury.

Dear European commissioners, I hope you will prevent to send European money to support a man who spreads hate, racism and xenophobia using his Catholic radio and television (he is still a part of the Roman Church) and his school (so called university), the money collected among the many nations, religions and race.

If he needs more money, he can sell his Maybach.