Time to get your digicam out and try to capture some of the festive spirit of the Christmas season! Post your best photos here or send them to me for posting.

The best ones willl go into a Christmas photo feature on the home page in Dec. Anything Christmas-related will do, no need to be Lamma-related, even though that would get extra consideration, of course.

Let me start with a photo taken in the Yung Shu Wan Shopping Mall today:

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Ok, one more, a much more traditional one:

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Nobody got any Christmas photos to show?
Well, here's one more, from last year:

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Beautiful self-portrait, Leggova!

I'd have joined your HK Photography Club outing to shoot Christmas decorations last Sunday if I hadn't been in bed most of the day with a really nasty cold. Still recovering, but slowly...

There are some amazing Christmas shots on the HK Photo Club website already from the outing!
This is my favourite so far, from daveb_za.

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Plus two more quite abstract Christmas shots from phoenixation (see more)

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It's beautiful~~

A fine way to end a cool sunny day - watch the sunset from the roof top through a beerglass darkly.

Wow! Great idea!

That was the sunset yesterday, wasn't it? I recognise the cloudless sky and the sunset colours, watching it from Green Cottage while talking to a new potential website client of mine...

But was it a Christmas special beer?

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Oh, and Photo of the Day for today, of course, for the idea, execution and choice of sunset, making it an almost perfect shot (except that little spot on the glass...)

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Now magically removed from the Lammazine picture. You'll have to let me in on your secret dishwashing detergent.

Hey, no dishwashing detergent, as that reduces the foam in a glass of beer if there's even a tiny amount of detergent left when you pour the beer. Detergent lowers the surface tension of the liquid, so foam bubbles can't form well.

The cleanup tool is called cloning and is a standard feature in most image processing programs these days. Basically, it copies part of a picture to another spot, using the mouse as a simple airbrush. Takes seconds and produces amazing results as long as you copy from an almost identical spot, usually closeby.

So when are you going to sell this picture to a beer company for their advertising? All they need to do is clone their logo onto your glass, maybe add a little foam...

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Still trying to get some good Christmassy photos. But the one below is the best I could come up while shooting from a moving Lamma-bound ferry. Anybody got better shots, I hope?

I tried hard to improve this horrible photo, but I failed miserably (see 2nd photo below)...

Then I tried again with a photo of the neighbouring building, trying to "improve" the blurry photo. But all I got was this friendly, grinning Alien (see 3rd photo below). What am I doing wrong, I wonder?

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Did you take this with your DSLR?

What iso was the cam set on?

I would have thought with a decent DSLR if you whacked the iso up to 1600 or even 3200 you should be able to get a sharper pic with less blur, though inevitably with a little more noise.

Have you got an IS lense? What sort of zoom are you using?

I wish we could see the metadata for photos posted.

I took a few similar ones tonight from the Star Ferry from Hung Hom with my little point and shoot Canon 850IS - had to go to iso 800 to get shutter speed down to 1/10 sec and the noise is pretty bad at full size, though I reckon if I get time to run them through noise ninja and do a bit of USM sharpening in Photoshop, one or two will be OK for printing at 4x6. The image stabilisation really helps, but with the Star Ferry bobbing up and down you can't expect miracles, especially from a P&S.

One of those times I wish I'd bought the Fuji F31

With the weather at the moment it's a great time for trying to perfect technique, isn't it? I just wish I was better with Photoshop - It takes me an age to PP just one shot.

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One of the downsides of Nikon DSLR's is their relatively low ISO settings- the other being no availability of full frame- even on the top models.

Zippy,

Many thanks for your detailed feedback!
No high ISO settings used, these were just a few quick shots in Automatic and Program mode. I'll try your good advice next time.

Still saving up for an IS (Image-Stabilised) lens. These things cost as much as the camera body. Still just using the kit lens 18-135mm, good all-purpose lens, but not great for macro shots and you get quite some lens distortion of straight lines towards the edges of the picture.

I'm new to the entire dSLR game, just got my Nikon D80 a few weeks ago, upgrading from a Nikon 5400 point and shoot. It's an amazing new world to explore, but there are still a few buttons on my D80 which I don't know how to use yet. For example, what does the "Depth of Field Preview" actually show?

I just found out today the easiest way to change the ISO settings on the fly while shooting, without using the menu...

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OK, I've had another try on the ferry yesterday. As I was the only one on the outside deck - with short sleeves and no jacket - it was easy to focus on the camera settings without "distractions" from other people.

This was shut in Shutter Priority mode, about 1/10 of a second (no IS lens); ISO 1600 (no image noise I can detect); F-Stop: f/4.5; Focal Length: 40.0 mm; sRGB. No Photoshop processing besides scaling, no sharpening.

Thanks for your advice, Zippy. It was spot on! When can we see some of YOUR photos in Photo of the Day or in this forum?

How to improve these night shots even furthe, besides buying an IS lens? Higher F-Stop?

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Yep - that's why it's worth buying a DSLR

Nice shot LG. You did well there at 1/10th handheld.

Do you use the LCD screen or the little eye viewfinder? It's often easier to hold it steady by using the viewfinder and steadying it against your face.

Glad the higher iso worked out. Beyond that, I can't help much more - I'm no expert.

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"For example, what does the "Depth of Field Preview" actually show?"

Modern SLRs operate with the aperture wide open until the moment you press the button to take the picture. Depth of field refers to the bit of the image that is in focus at a particular aperture for a particular focal length of lens and it increases the more the lens is stopped down. That is, the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field. The preview button closes the aperture to allow you to check what is actually in focus in the final picture. In low light, it's not really helpful because the image in the viewfinder becomes very dark and difficult to see.

Not a Christmassy subject, but you can see the effect of depth of field in this pic.

... which seems to have failed to make it.