Wavelet Blog

Zenfolio’s latest mega update sets it apart from its competitors. Zenfolio has been good at well-organized configuration pages, but some complained that it is not that customizable compared with Smugmug, especially at advanced account level. With this update, the theme customization feature is hugely improved . The best thing is that you can inherit an existing theme and start tweaking the look-and-feel for all components and save it as your own theme. It is a great feature by itself, and Zenfolio’s engineers made it so easy to use, so beautify to look at and it is available even for basic account level.

Another big improvement is that user’s home page can be customized with new layouts and new slideshow. It gives users great flexibility to create elegant, professional and gorgeously looking site. I am really thinking of upgrading to Premium level.

Please also read my earlier review and visit my gallery site.

There pictures were take 3 years ago when we visited Seattle. Zenfolio’s embedded slideshow is pretty cool.

I have been thinking of displaying the photos I took at the places I traveled on Google Maps. I think it is a great way to present two of my hobbies, photography and travel. Many geotagging software can map the GPS coordinates and synchronize the timestamps of GPS and EXIF tags embedded in the photos, so they can put the pictures at exactly where they were taken. However, carrying a GPS device and keeping it on throughout the travel is cumbersome, (a camera with GPS would be nice); in fact, often that kind of accuracy is not needed. If you travel with cars most of time, there is a way to translate Google Maps’ multi-destination route to a KML file using GPS Visualizer’s services. After that, you can either overlay the KML on Google Maps, or upload it to services like everytrail or locr with your pictures. My travel page is created with this approach.

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HP’s site at Ellis St. in Mountain View is one of the most beautiful office sites in Bay Area, especially in Autumn. Poplar trees along the entire road stand straight up to 50 feet high. In November, they all turn into golden yellow color. The view is picture perfect.

But, just around the corner, where no one cares to notice, some withering leaves against the solid building foundations are also picturesque. In the Autumn, the green leaves start turning into red and eventually falling off the cane. A couple of leaves that are left are among the most saturated color. When the warm afternoon sun light them up, that maybe the last ray of sunshine they will see.

This is a post I found in Digital Photography School blog. It shows some eye-popping pictures and explains how they are taken. Great post!

21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken]

Rating:

Stunning pictures. A good reference for travel ideas.

After processing the pictures from our Banff and Jasper trip, I feel it’s time to move my photo gallery to an online photo hosting service, because I think the current presentation of my gallery website is not up to my standard and the accessing speed is slow. Flickr and Picasa are more for casual hosting. I eventually end up deciding between SmugMug and Zenfolio.

SmugMug has much longer history than Zenfolio, but as a new comer, Zenfolio has certain advantages. I don’t want to make money from the pictures and I want to do minimum customization, so my evaluation is based on the features for standard/basic users. At this time, I slightly prefer Zenfolio for the following reasons,

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Having a Canon EF 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS len only gave me the quality but not the range long enough for wildlife shooting, so I bought a Canon 2x Teleconverter to allow me to reach 400mm range. As the focal length is doubled, the maximum aperture is cut half, the len is slower. With the teleconverter, the F/2.8L len becomes F/5.6L, but IS (Image Stabilizer) feature still functions normally. The image quality is generally retained when working with the Canon L serial lenes. I can see the image is not as sharp as without the teleconverter, but I don’t notice any distortions in the pictures.

Now, the 70-200 F/2.8 USM IS len, the 2x teleconverter plus my camera body (Canon EOS 10D) weights 6.7 lb. My photo bag (LowePro Flipside 400 AW) with all the gears is more than 14 lb. The next two pictures are to compare the 70-200 F/2.8 USM IS len working with (up) and without (bottom) the 2x teleconverter. Some snapshots are followed.

I haven’t upgraded my photo gears for 5 years. I feel expecially constrained when a telephoto len is required, because my current 75-300 f/4-5.6L len can only do f/5.6 at the long end. So I finally decided to buy a Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM len as an upgrade.

This is the first L-serial len I have. Besides the glass quality, the fastness and the USM driven auto-focus, Canon’s IS feature give you 3-stop stability for hand-hold shoting. The only downside would be its weight. I took some pictures with this len and switched my previous len for comparision, then I realized how heavy this powerhouse is.

Here are some ramdom snaps to compared these two telephoto zoom lenes, (although it maybe unfair to compare a $200 piece with a $1800 one) . The one on the left or top were taken by 70-200 F/2.8L; the other is by 75-300 F/4-5.6.