I just got back from my New York trip, I brought my new Canon S90 to see how well it performs. You might have already read my previous post/review about buying Olympus e-p1 and returning it for Panasonic gf1 but I decided to return that as well for the s90. This is a great camera to have for vacation since it is so tiny and I can carry it in my pocket without feeling like a tourist. I am not going into the details of the camera but I will just briefly explain how I took each photos.

outside of rockefeller center, angels and tree & columbus circle shops in new york -

iso320 1/25 f/2                                                   iso400 1/50 f/2

– The camera takes excellent night shots but I wish the dynamic range a lot higher, you can see that it has trouble collecting information from the brighter area.

iso200 1/40 f/2

time square in new york, raining – I use photoshop in many of the night shots to calm down the lights so they are not so washed out. It really difficult to get shot like this without using multiple exposure shots and stitching it back, the digital billboards would all have been washed out.

iso800 1/50 f/2

New york night scape on rockefeller observatory – In photos like this, you can see a lot of noise in the background but it definitely does way better than most other P&S camera.

iso640 1/640 f/4.0

statue of liberty from staten island ferry in new york – S90 has a decent zoom range, I was able to get pretty close to the statue of liberty from the Ferry ride.

smoky manhole in new york – I love the color inherited by the smoke from the background, and s90 did a great job in capturing that!

f800 1/50 f/2

cathedral in new york – My friend who was with me during the trip has a GF1, he was struggling to hold his camera still for a difficult shot like this one. But I had a easier time holding the small and light S90 during long exposure shots.

Grand central station in new york – This shot was taken from three different exposure, S90 can not retain the detail on the window, it would just show up as pure white when the rest of the scene is properly exposed.

iso640 1/15 f/2

devine bar in new york – A candid shot of my friends in a bar/restaurant. The restaurant was really dark but I was still able to get a clear shot of their faces.

iso800 1/50 f/2

MOMA museum, starry night by van gogh – new york – I do not understand why people are so bothered by the lose rear ring dial, I don’t think it was that lose and never once did it interfere with my picture taking experience.

cemetary in Trinity church in new york – A thing I do not like about the design of this camera is the way the flash pops out, my finger is usually covering that portion of the camera, sooner or later I will drop the camera because of it.

f800 1/50 f/2

cathedral in new york – Unfortunately the S90 is not wide enough so I had to stitch three different photo to show the entire cathedral.

iso80 1/60 f/4.5

fruit stand in china town, soho of new york

time square in new york (done in multiple exposure)

iso800 1/6 f/2

saint paul cathedral in new york

iso800 1/15 f/2

st. paul devine cathedral

Overall the Canon S90 did a great job, I love the night shots but it is difficult to get good dynamic range without multiple shot and that is not always possible when traveling with other people. The battery life fairly decent, I was able to get 200-300 photos all with the Raw+Jpg combo, many times flash was used and I spent a lot of time using the preview feature too. However, I was able to carry my S90 at all time while my friend with the GF1 often has to think twice about carrying it with him. I like to hear your feedback on what you saw here and hopefully it helped those of you who are still debating about which camera to get. As you might already know, I am still an amateure photographer, please critique my photos to help me take better photos in the future!

This is a video of me sketching a random portrait in photoshop using a wacom tablet, I’ve included the video and also some screen shoots.

Here is the video of the sketching process, you can read below for details.

I start with a grayish background for mid tone and just start sketching the shape of the face.

I didn’t really sketch everything in detail because I will leave that for later, but for now I blocked in some of the shadow areas to make the shape more three dimensional.

Next I blocked in some highlights and the basic shape of the hair. At this point I have a better view of what the final picture will look like, so it is good to start make some major changes before its too late such as the shape of the head, position of the eyes and so on.

Than I added some streaks of hair to show the direction of the hair flow.

After you are done blocking in the basic shapes and final positioning of the facial features you can start defining the detail on the face.

In the final picture I brighten up the drawing and even out the tone and added fine streaks of hair.

Here is a video of me painting Iron Man in Photoshop. Again its probably pretty fast but you get the idea, comments and critiques are welcome!!

I sketched it out with plain black line than shade it in to get a feel of the volume. After I am satisfied with the volume I went in and painted the details including the reflections. Once in awhile I will tone down everything using the level tool so I can add more darker shades and brighter highlights because I often get carry away with using too much highlights and shadows. You will notice that I did not really color it, instead, I changed the color using gradient adjustment, I colored one layer to red and a second layer to gold because thats pretty much all the colors he has, than cut it out so I get two different colors. Than I use dodge and burn to bring out some of the back lights. So as you can see, you do not need to paint everythin, Photoshop can help you get to where you want faster.

Here is a time lapsed painting of Storm, the costume in this painting is from X-men the movie, I know its a little bit fast, I was trying to stay within the limitation of the video sites, but you get the idea. Please feel free to make comment and critique, thanks!!!

Storm