Wandering in the LightWandering in the LightThings They Forgot to Tell You About DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 
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SPAM in comments
2009-06-11 03:02:00 I get waves of SPAM links in my comments, and I delete them. It seems I am the current the favourite target of some chinese spamers, so here is the warning guys, I will treat you the same. ?????????????? More About: Spam , Comments
The fruit bowl that became a set of mosaics
2009-05-24 04:16:00 I have been testing out my new camera body, a Pentax 20D, it has a remote controlled shutter release and an ?expanded? dynamic range. I figure a strongly lit ?still life? would let me test both. I also put on my long lens set it in macro and took a sequence for muti-image stitching later. The photos where beautiful but I ended up having some fun afterwards transforming the set into some wonderful mosaics. More About: Fruit , Bowl
RAWing or not?
2009-05-22 14:35:00 I am often asked why I don't take all my photos in RAW format. I do take a few, usually experimental shots in RAW format often enough but generally I just take JPEG. Originally the main reasons were the vastly bigger file size and the limited number of programs I used that could read the early propriety formats (different for each camera manufacturer and often even different camera models by the same camera manufacturer) and the fact that the conversion and tweaks took time (actually it was tedious wasted time when trying to review a large set of shots). Further a lot of "part time" photo enthusiast just got scared off trying to even understand what RAW was and how to use it. Fundamentally RAW is a little deeper than a digital negative, the analogy adobe are using to sell their "proposed standard" DNA RAW file format. RAW files are in my view more like the undeveloped image, a full dump of exactly what the camera image sensor read. It is like an undevelop...
More on geotagging
2009-04-27 09:59:00 David Crandall, of Cornell University has analysed the 35 million geotagged photos already uploaded to Flickr and produced a gallery of photos organised into maps, created accurate global and city maps and identified popular snapping sites. I have been geotagging a selection my photos since back in 2005 and was an early member of the flickr geotagging group/community. This is probably the best place still to find out how to tag your photos and what's new. Even if you don't use flickr other sites like picas web albums and photobucket let you make your own maps.
Cropping & Rule of Thirds
2009-04-19 07:42:00 I was scanning some older photos, colour prints, taken on film on a Cannon compact camera. Whilst this one was a fraction ?misty? I saw it had potential but falls down, as so many holiday snaps do, compositionally. ?Good composition gets the viewer to look into the picture, not scan across it? ?.quote from my upcoming workshop Cropping is one of the easiest ways to improve the composition of a photo, and typically that means identifying the areas of interest, and placing then is a good place for the eye to settle. The rule of thirds is often quotes a the gospel for photographers, but it is just a simplification of the golden ratio used by artist for centuries. The idea is to put the most important compositional elements, like the shore of the lake , the villa and the silhouetted trees, onto or straddling the imaginary lines dividing the image into thirds. Some digital cameras now even come with a mode to display these lines on the LCD ?viewfinder?. ... More About: Rule
developing my rock art
2009-04-17 15:38:00 I finally got around to joining YouTube not that I have gone over to the dark side, like replacing my SLR with a movie camera, no I just wanted to start showing a slideshow/documentary style thing of the creation on one of my rok art pieces, it was all made in picasa movie option. It tells the story from a future geological perspective, after the sea level rise More About: Rock
What does ?internet friendly? mean?
2009-04-10 04:36:00 It was time for a family member to get a new camera, and there are so many around. It just had to be a camera and take nice pictures (and be easy to use and see the pictures), which narrowed the range down to a few hundred compact cameras! There is a pretty good range available now and most are not so expensive. After looking around for a camera that used SD cards (a card standard I like), used standard batteries and had a decent screen that was readable in sunlight, I was leaning towards the Pentax E60. So we choose the Fujifilm Finepix Z30, reason: it comes in a hot pink colour! What got my attention first was the sticker that announced it was internet friendly. What the heck does that mean? I scoured the manual (which is in PDF format on one of the two CDs supplied). The interent is mentioned only 8 times and as shown below it warns you, you will have to pay for internet, actually it is very legal about it ?the user bears all applicable fees?. Like most other compact cameras it... More About: Internet , Friendly
Emailing photos
2009-04-08 07:06:00 Digital cameras have advanced in photo resolution at a much greater rate than the average Internet connection capacity (and remember RuddNet is pretty much still a pipe dream). Further many companies and ISPs have limits on attachment size, frequently this is only a couple of megabytes and that might only be enough for half your photo! So here are a couple things you might want to considered and set up before you start emailing lots of photos from your new camera to aunty Flo with her old (and very slow) bigpond dial up internet connection. Go JPEGMost camera will allow you to take photos in JPEG format (the file will end in .jpg or .jpeg) or the camera manufacturer will normally bundle software to convert its .RAW format to jpeg. This jpeg format has two very important advantages Compressable, there is a trade off between image file size and quality but 10:1 compression can normally be achieved with with little perceptible loss in image quality. (almost) Universally supported for t... More About: Photos
pearl beach multi-image panorama
2009-04-07 12:40:00 I have been forced back to my old faithfull olympus, but the panorama feature semed to be malfunctioning so I did this in autosketch. I still like the extra wide angle More About: Beach , Multi , Image , Panorama , Pearl
Not good
2009-04-01 08:08:00 Is it sadder that I have just worn out my third pentax body in 30 years, or that I still have the other two? My much loved K100D gave out last week when I was taking some shots for the virtual gallery try-out. One moment I took the card out and loaded the photos onto my computer (via picasa import as usual), I put the card back and turned on the camera and a momentary flash of the familiar then nothing, and nothing is what has been happening ever since. The real problem is I can not longer find a place around here to get it fixed (the typical camera shop says, ?Is it under warrantee?? ? No? ?Ok, it will be cheaper to buy a new one?. The K100D is just three years old, the others lasted better (ok the second film body is still officially working, if I keep the rubber band around it to stop the back opening unexpectedly). I would so dearly like to get it fixed at a reasonable cost More About: Good
well not exactly free anymore
2009-04-01 06:10:00 At first I thought the email from kodak may have been an april fool?s day joke, or maybe a phishing scam, sadly it was neither. I have stopped uploading to easy share long ago, but I did get a few photos printed and was happy enough with the services, Now the Free service isn?t quiet as free anymore, from now on if you don?t make a purchase to won?t have free one line storage. Once upon a time the brilliance of Kodak easy share was sharing your family and special occasion snaps with your friends & family in such a way they could also order prints, not anymore! Special Note to Members: In order to maintain free storage of your images on the Site, you need to make purchases totaling at least $4.99 or $19.99, depending upon your storage usage, at least once every 12 months. extract from the fine print in kodak?s easy share gallery terms There is no need to panic there are plenty of other ?free? on-line galleries, try picasa web album, flickr, photobucket, they also allow s...
an insight into my art
2009-03-30 07:49:00 There is a bigger perspective to my art, than what you might just see in here. This Xmind mind map will let you get started (and keep track of things I am interested in and doing). More About: Insight
DestoryFlickr
2009-03-26 13:22:00 I have really been having my problems with flickr of late, actually just using it via Telstra's Next-G (more on that below), but this isn't a hate campaign its a new application. DestroyFlickr, by DestoryToday, is an alternate way to view and share flickr content, based on Adobe AIR so it will work on Windows, Mac & Linux. It is slick, displaying photos on a dark background, offers drag & drop uploads and downloads and seems fast, but to be honest it does not offer anywhere near the functionality of Flickr.com, but it is worth a look. So what are my problems with Telstra Next-G? I am a moderator for the VIC/TAS thread of the Australian Photographers!!! group and each fortnight I need to access the competition thread and tally the scores. Sound easy enough BUT it is virtually impossible if I am trying to access flickr via my Next-G wireless modem. It just times out, disconnects, hangs half way through displaying the page or other frustrating misbehaviour, and all this f...
A virtual gallery
2009-03-26 01:31:00 I'm experimenting with ways to create a virtual on-line gallery, which the viewer can browse through in their own time. This is just a trial based on microsoft''s photosynth with some of my recent "rock art". If you have already used photosynth click on the link to download the driver for your browser. More About: Gallery , Virtual
patterns in the mist
2009-03-19 12:42:00 It was dark, wet & cold but the patterns in the stray at the base fo a waterfalls made a wonderful abstract composition More About: Mist , Patterns , The Mist
very disillusioned with blogger & google
2009-03-18 01:02:00 I still think blogger is a good tool and a wonderful way to record what I am doing and thinking about my photography as I go along. Best part it is free.However, trying to maintain a some enthusiasm and pride in what I am doing is becoming very tedious.I am finding my photos used in a lot of place without any acknowledgement to me, presumably that have been found in google images or flickr. Ok I am putting copyright noticed into many of the likely to be stolen images now, but I would rather trust people just to acknowledge me. I actually like the creative commons approach to sharing.At least two groups of "camera reviewers" steal my blog posts, copy and paste the lot and repost it as their own in sites. in total. The moral problem here is I am not acknowledged and the sites involved use google's own ad sense, so google is potentially rewarding them for stealing my and many other bloggers work. I have a very persistent "hacker" automatically posting gibberish Chinese comments as me ... More About: Google , Blogger
click, click, click
2009-02-20 00:18:00 Today was bright and sunny, so attempting to photograph the dappled light in the beech forest, on the Kepler track, gave a very contrasty result. The strong light is appealing but the shadows are dark and featureless and the spots of light burnt out. So I set my camera to bracketting, for two reason. Firstly it might give me a better ideas of the right EV adjustment (but judging this by comparing small images on the LCD screen outside is not really a reliable approach), Secondly it gave me the opportunity to post process the set of photos as a HDRi image (using the three exposures to get detail into the murky darks and/or washed out whites). I had plenty of card capacity (doing the three clicks at every photo soon eats up storage space if you are not careful) so most of my photographing in the forest was bracketted To keep everything simple while I travel I just have picturenaut on a memory stick, so I have been relying on its fairly automatic tone mapping selection. ... More About: Click
What a contrast
2009-02-19 09:37:00 I am returning home from New Zealand to bush ravaged Victoria, and the fires are still burning (seems like everywhere). Such a contrast More About: Contrast
Moon over Lake Wakatipu
2009-02-14 10:38:00 This morning was still cold in Queenstown and some clouds hung low over the mountains and with the moon still low in the sky. The reflection on the lake was very photo worthy and looked just as good in several increasing wider vistas. More About: Moon , Lake
The super wide angle lens
2009-02-12 04:06:00 I know I have mentioned this before, but it is worth mentioning again in the context of capturing ?big? landscapes. The vantage point I had at the roaring meg bend in the kawarau river drops off down into the river and the hill towered about me. Something impossible to capture, even with my 8mm lens. So I took a whole series of views, more or less in three passes but with a lot of overlap, and many not in order. I was surprise autostitch didn?t complain. The results illustrate the usual perspective that mutli-image stitched panoramas give much more ?realistic? perspective (ie closer to what a human experiences) than any fisheye lens, which might cover a similar width of view. More About: Super , Wide , Lens , Angle , The Super
Overexposure
2009-02-11 06:59:00 High altitude & a bright sunny day equals overexposure on modern ?automatic? digital cameras, the problem yet again is the light meter and how it is set to adjust exposure. The first thing to do is to check the ISO ASA settings and set them as low as possible 100 or 200. This effectively desensitizes the CCD sensor that records the image digitally. It is the same as using a film that is less sensitive to light. Traditionally using film in an older SLR you could ?stop down? a couple of f-stops (which forced slight under exposure). Some digital cameras will still let you do this, but more now use an EV adjustment. One EV is roughly like each f-stop (it halves the light). To compensate for bright day/high altitude normally change EV to ?1.0 or ?2.0. Different cameras have different ways to set the EV compensation, but it is frequently available as via a combination of button, dials, sliders or discs so you don?t have to resort to the menu. So do yourself a favor, and read up how to...
Ragged edges
2009-02-10 11:55:00 I?m still enjoying the vista of New Zealand?s southern island, so much so that I am taking multi-overlapping photos of nearly everything. Since I?m doing this handheld I end up with ragged edges from the autostitch process. Normally I trim those edges off but ofr this series there is a certain charm in having a black matte absorb the jagged edges.
View from the top
More articles from this author:2009-02-10 07:27:00 The Christchurch Gondola takes you high up onto the crater rim of an extinct and largely submerged volcanco.The 360 degree vista of the Banks peninsula, Christchurch and Canterbury plain is spectacular. In this series I took 136 photos (not many been used here) to create these multi image panoramas using my old favorite autostitch. I then did throw the full 136 photos at autostitch, just to see what might happen, and the result were fine (ok in detail there are some funny artifacts and duplications) More About: View 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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