西九文化區日落美景

 

Aperture Priority (光圈先決): f/9

ISO: 100

(Shutter Speed) 快門: 1/100 second

Focal Length (焦距): 135mm

Equivalent Focal Length (等效焦距): 216mm

Tripod Used and Image Stabilizer Off

White Balance (白平衡): Shade (陰影模式)

效果：相機會自動加暖色調，橘色比肉眼看更明顯

負曝光補償(Exposure Compensation): -1ev

Landscape Picture Style (Contrast: +1, Saturation: +1)

Evaluative Metering (權衡式測光)

Safety Precautions of Tripod Usage

Manfrotto MKBFRTA4GT-BH

Designed for the advanced travel photographer, this tripod is extremely portable and solid. Ideal for mirrorless cameras or medium format DSLRs.

Key features:

• Side-pull leg angle selector for fast adjustment
• Legs can be independently set at 3 angles of spread
• Ball head for quick and easy framing
• Rubber leg warmer (pads for camera tripod legs) for comfortable grip
• Easy link socket for arms and other accessories
• Fast and secure twist lock system
• Counterweight hook for extra stability and strap attachment

      Set Up

Unfold the legs as shown in figure 1.

Open the 3 tripod legs. To adjust the tripod's height, release the telescopic extensions on each leg by rotating Twistlock "A" about a quarter of a turn.

You should open the proximal (top) twist‑lock first, then the distal (lower) sections, when extending the legs.

      Leg Angle Adjustment

Each leg can be set independently at any of the 3 angles of spread. To change the angle on a leg, close the leg slightly towards the center column and press down the locking button "W" at the top of the leg. While pressing the button, select the new leg angle and then release button "W" to lock in position, then open the leg fully again. The angle of each leg can be adjusted independently of the other two legs.

Warning: During this procedure, please take care not to insert your fingers inside the central aperture on the spider collar.

     Adjusting Center Column Height

To release the center column "C", unlock gear "D" and adjust the height of the column as required. Tighten gear "D" to lock the column in position.

     Fitting the Quick Release Plate to the Camera

Fix plate "G" to the base of the camera by tightening camera screw in the camera's threaded tripod hole using the ring "Q" WITHOUT APPLYING FORCE. Before fully locking, align the plate "G" with the camera lens. Please ensure you have securely fastened plate "G" to the camera before use. Once fastened, push ring "Q" down so that it lies flat against the plate "G".

    Mounting the Camera on the Head

To mount the camera on the head, open lever "H" while pushing safety catch "X" down, holding them both in the open position whilst attaching the camera by slotting camera plate "G" into the top of the head as shown in figure 5. Release lever "H" and safety catch "X".

Warning: Make sure that the camera is securely locked to the head by pushing lever "H" against plate "G" (Figure 6) and checking that the camera does not move in the head.

From my practical usage experience, lever "H" cannot be completely pushed against plate "G". The reason is the indicated orientation (arrow towards lens) of the plate "G" is reversed.

    Use

The head has independent panoramic and tilt movement.

The lever "F" locks the panoramic movement.

To release the movement, unlock lever "F" by rotating anticlockwise.

Once the desired position is achieved, lock the head by turning lever "F" fully clockwise.

Warning: The lever "P" locks the ball's movement. To ensure safety when using the ball head, always hold the camera with one hand while releasing the ball.

To release the ball "L" when positioning the camera, unlock lever "P" by rotating anticlockwise.

Once the desired position has been reached, lock the ball "L" by turning lever "P" by rotating fully clockwise.

The head features independent fiction adjustment on the ball movement, which makes it easier to position the head before locking it. To adjust the fiction, ensure the ball "L" is not locked. Then hold the camera in one hand and rotate knob "N" clockwise to increase friction. Friction does not lock the camera: we recommended locking the ball "L" by turning the lever "P" fully.

Tripod Manual

Microsoft Copilot

Perplexity AI

Software for chip

Bill Gates and Paul Allen kick-started the personal computer revolution by writing Altair BASIC in 1975 to run on the Altair 8800. This software was the first product of their newly formed company, Microsoft.

Stephen Gary Wozniak is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with his early business partner Steve Jobs. Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.

The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986.

Monte Davidoff is an American computer programmer who was one of the first employees of Microsoft.

couch: a long piece of furniture like a bed, especially in a doctor’s office

rug: a piece of thick material like a small carpet that is used for covering or decorating part of a floor

Traf-O-Data was a business partnership founded in 1972 by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Paul Gilbert. The company aimed to read raw data from roadway traffic counters and process it into usable reports for traffic engineers.

reams: reams [plural] (informal) a large quantity of writing

dividend: ​an amount of the profits that a company pays to people who own shares in the company

realm: an area of activity, interest or knowledge

exclusive: only to be used by one particular person or group; only given to one particular person or group

royalty: a sum of money that is paid to somebody who has written a book, piece of music, etc. each time that it is sold or performed

cap at: set as the upper limit

sublicense: a license granted to a third party by a licensee, extending some rights or privileges that the licensee enjoys

viable: feasible; that can be done; that will be successful

ruminate: to think deeply about something

confide: to tell somebody secrets and personal information that you do not want other people to know

goof around: (especially North American English, informal) to spend your time doing silly or stupid things

Bill Gates "Source Code"

Online Dictionaries Used:

hk.dictionary.search.yahoo.com

www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com

Google AI Overview

en.wikipedia.org

Histogram in Photography

A photography histogram is a graphical representation of an image's tonal values. It displays how pixels are distributed across brightness levels, from pure black on the far left to pure white on the far right. It is an essential tool for evaluating exposure and preventing overexposure or underexposure.

How to Read the Histogram

The horizontal axis (x-axis) represents the brightness of pixels, while the vertical axis (y-axis) represents the number of pixels at that specific brightness.

Left Side (Shadows): Represents pure blacks and dark tones. A spike here means you have dark shadows, but if the graph hits a wall on the far left, you are "crushing" the blacks and losing shadow details.

Middle (Midtones): Represents the middle grays and average light levels in your scene.

Right Side (Highlights): Represents pure whites and bright areas. If the graph hits the right-side wall, you are "clipping" or "blowing out" your highlights (e.g., turning a bright sky into a solid, unrecoverable white).

Common Histogram Shapes

Different types of scenes produce distinct histogram profiles:

High-Key Scene: A bright, airy scene (like a snowfield) will have a histogram heavily weighted toward the right.

Low-Key Scene: A dark, moody scene (like a night cityscape) will have the histogram weighted toward the left.

Balanced Scene: A scene with a good mix of light and shadows will have a bell-curve shape, ideally keeping all data contained within the boundaries.

Google AI overview

List comprehensions

List comprehensions in Python are a concise way to build new lists by looping through an iterable, applying an expression, and optionally filtering with conditions—all in a single line. They are faster and more readable than traditional for loops for simple transformations.

nums = [1, 2, 3, 4]

squares = [n**2 for n in nums]

print(squares)   # [1, 4, 9, 16]

nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

evens = [n for n in nums if n % 2 == 0]

print(evens)   # [2, 4, 6]

>>> myList = list(range(100))

... filteredList = [item for item in myList if item % 10 == 0]

... print(filteredList)

...

[0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90]

>>> hisString = 'His name is Samson. He lives in Tuen Mun'

>>> hisString.split('.')

['His name is Samson', ' He lives in Tuen Mun']

>>> hisString.split()

['His', 'name', 'is', 'Samson.', 'He', 'lives', 'in', 'Tuen', 'Mun']

>>> def cleanWord(word):

...         return word.replace('.', '').lower()

...    [cleanWord(word) for word in hisString.split()]

...

['his', 'name', 'is', 'samson', 'he', 'lives', 'in', 'tuen', 'mun']

Outer square brackets [...]

Define that the result will be a list.

Without them, you’d have a generator expression instead (which doesn’t immediately build a list).

.lower()

Converts the string to lowercase.

Ensures consistency (e.g., "Samson" → "samson").

>>> [cleanWord(word) for word in hisString.split() if len(cleanWord(word)) < 3]

['is', 'he', 'in']

word → is a string (e.g., "he", "is", "mun").

You cannot directly compare a string to a number (word < 3) because Python doesn’t know how to order a string against an integer.

Doing so would raise a TypeError.

len(cleanWord(word)) → is an integer (the number of characters in the cleaned word).

This can be compared to another integer (< 3) safely.

Example: "he" → len("he") = 2 → 2 < 3 ✅

Nested list comprehension

>>> [[cleanWord(word) for word in sentence.split()] for sentence in hisString.split('.')]

[['his', 'name', 'is', 'samson'], ['he', 'lives', 'in', 'tuen', 'mun']]

Outer comprehension:

[ ... for sentence in hisString.split('.')]

Splits hisString into sentences using "." as the delimiter (定界符).

Iterates over each sentence.

For each sentence, it produces a list of cleaned words.

Inner comprehension:

[cleanWord(word) for word in sentence.split()]

Splits the current sentence into words (default split on whitespace).

Applies cleanWord(word) to each word.

Produces a list of cleaned words for that sentence.

Inner brackets → build a list of cleaned words per sentence.

Outer brackets → collect those lists into one big list.

Together → you get a nested list comprehension that structures text into sentences → words → cleaned words.

The variable sentence is a string (str).

Microsoft Copilot

拍攝夕陽西下的法門

White Balance: Shade

效果：相機會自動加暖色調，橘色比肉眼看更明顯。

進行負曝光補償(exposure compensation)。

978-957-106-0873

The Canon EOS 1500D does not include a built‑in “Vivid” Picture Style. You can get very close to a “Vivid” look on the EOS 1500D by using the built-in Landscape Picture Style, then pushing a few settings a little further:

Sharpness: raise it a little if the image still feels soft.

Contrast: +1 or +2.

Saturation: +1 or +2.

Color tone: leave at 0 unless the colors start looking unnatural.

For your Canon EOS 1500D with the EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, start with Aperture Priority (Av), f/8 to f/11, ISO 100, and set white balance to shade for warmer sunset tones. A good starting point after the sun is hidden by the hill is to meter for the bright sky and then dial in about -1 EV to -2 EV exposure compensation to keep the colors rich and avoid a washed-out scene.

Evaluative Metering

在攝影中，矩陣模式（Matrix Metering），通常也被稱為評價測光（Evaluative Metering）、多區測光或平均測光，是現代數碼相機中最智能化、最常用的測光模式。

Once the sun is fully behind the hill, the scene usually gets darker fast, so the camera will choose a slower shutter speed in Av mode. Using a tripod, keep ISO at 100 and let the shutter slow down. This matches common sunset shooting practice of using smaller apertures and controlling exposure with shutter speed.

With advanced skill, manual mode can be utilized. With a tripod, you can use a much slower shutter and get cleaner sunset color. Settings: f/8 to f/11, ISO 100, and a shutter speed around 1/4s to several seconds depending on brightness. Set the white balance to shade. Focus on the hill edge or a distant subject using manual focus. Image stabilizer has to be turned off when the tripod is used.

www.perplexity.ai

Fujifilm X-A2

16mm (APS-C, Crop factor: 1.5x)

Scene Mode: Sunset

f/8, 1/125s, ISO 200

March 30, 2017

Dictionaries in Python

In Python, you can safely use a trailing comma in dictionaries (and other collections like lists, tuples, and sets).

my_dict = {

    "x": 10,

    "y": 20,

}

In Python, dictionary keys have some important rules and behaviors.

animals = {

    'a': 'ape',

    'b': 'bear',

    'c': 'cat',

}

animals.keys()

Output: dict_keys(['a', 'b', 'c'])

animals.values()

Output: dict_values(['ape', 'bear', 'cat'])

list(animals.keys())

Output: ['a', 'b', 'c']

animals.get('a')

Output: 'ape'

animals = {

    'a': ['ape', 'abalone'],

    'b': ['bear'],

}

Each key ('a', 'b') maps to a list of values.

This means you can store multiple animals under the same starting letter.

animals['b'].append('bat')

You’re accessing the list stored under key 'b' → currently ['bear'].




.append('bat') adds 'bat' to that list.

.append() modifies the list in place (it doesn’t return a new list).

if 'c' not in animals:

    animals['c'] = []

    

animals['c'].append('cat')

Check if key 'c' exists




if 'c' not in animals: → looks for 'c' in the dictionary keys.

If 'c' is missing, it creates a new entry with an empty list

Append 'cat' to the list

Now animals['c'] is an empty list [].




.append('cat') adds 'cat' to that list.

defaultdict is a special type of dictionary from Python’s collections module. It works just like a normal dictionary, but with one big advantage: if you try to access a key that doesn’t exist, it automatically creates it with a default value instead of raising a KeyError.

from collections import defaultdict

>>> animals = defaultdict(list)

>>> animals

Output:

defaultdict(<class 'list'>, {})

This is the string representation (__repr__) of a defaultdict object.

Inside the angular brackets < >, Python is showing you the default factory function used to create missing values.




<class 'list'> means: whenever you access a missing key, Python will automatically create a new empty list for it.

The {} part after the comma is the current contents of the dictionary (empty at the moment).

})

So the whole thing reads as, “This is a defaultdict whose default factory is the list class, and right now it contains an empty dictionary.”

Microsoft Copilot