Surfing the sunset
Picasa 2: Free download from Google
Before I had even hit enter on my little critic of google's efforts with Picasa I had an email saying I could download version 2 of Picasa. the link below will take you to that site.
Picasa 2: Free download from Google
There is even a new Picasa 2 blog
Picasa 2: Free download from Google
There is even a new Picasa 2 blog
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Photographing the Moon
Every now and then I find some subjects that are extremely difficult to capture on my digital camera. they are normally low light or strongly contrasting light. One subject I find hard is to photograph is the moon.
So far I have identified two causes
1) I only have 3X optical zoom and that is not really enough to get a reasonably image. I have used my full digital zoom (a further 3X and a bit)and steady the camera on a tripod.
using digital zoom (10X)
2) My autofocus gets very confused when I try to focus on a small light source in total darkness, (you can hear the lens moving in and out and see the image going in and out of focus in the VCD screen) So I have adopted the principal of manual forcus and setting that to infinity.
A surprise when using Night Scene Mode (and 4 second exposure)
Last night I also tried out The Night Scene Mode, which lets to open up to as long as possible ($ seconds seems the longest exposure I every get and the camera adjust the sensitivity (Effective ASA rating) to get an averag exposure. What astounded me was how far the moon moved in 4 seconds!
The moon rises over Lower Tarwin
Don't be discouraged by my attempts, I have seen lots of fine photos of the moon taken with digital cameras. The moral of this post is don't give up and keep experimenting.
So far I have identified two causes
1) I only have 3X optical zoom and that is not really enough to get a reasonably image. I have used my full digital zoom (a further 3X and a bit)and steady the camera on a tripod.
using digital zoom (10X)
2) My autofocus gets very confused when I try to focus on a small light source in total darkness, (you can hear the lens moving in and out and see the image going in and out of focus in the VCD screen) So I have adopted the principal of manual forcus and setting that to infinity.
A surprise when using Night Scene Mode (and 4 second exposure)
Last night I also tried out The Night Scene Mode, which lets to open up to as long as possible ($ seconds seems the longest exposure I every get and the camera adjust the sensitivity (Effective ASA rating) to get an averag exposure. What astounded me was how far the moon moved in 4 seconds!
The moon rises over Lower Tarwin
Don't be discouraged by my attempts, I have seen lots of fine photos of the moon taken with digital cameras. The moral of this post is don't give up and keep experimenting.
Google Groups : Picasa Disaster
A while ago I mentioned I was testing out some of the available photo album/image mangement software. Well it turned into a horribly complex dissapointment so I gave up.
One of the packages I tested was picasa, and I'm still using it. It works well with the Hello program, which is how I now upload my picture to this blog. Unfortunately it has let me down twice now losing all the thumbnails so my album looked empty. Whilst I am not happy about this, the really big No No, was that google took over picasa about the same time and changed the perfect usefully picasa forum into a google group. Google Groups : What happened to Picasa Forums
It was a disaster!
DON"T PANIC The picasa team in their wisdom have re-established the original Picasa Forums
One of the packages I tested was picasa, and I'm still using it. It works well with the Hello program, which is how I now upload my picture to this blog. Unfortunately it has let me down twice now losing all the thumbnails so my album looked empty. Whilst I am not happy about this, the really big No No, was that google took over picasa about the same time and changed the perfect usefully picasa forum into a google group. Google Groups : What happened to Picasa Forums
It was a disaster!
DON"T PANIC The picasa team in their wisdom have re-established the original Picasa Forums
Friday, January 21, 2005
Friday, January 07, 2005
Desaturation
This is a very interesting way to convert a colour image to black and white. I read about it in a book by Tom Ang called "Digital Photographer's Handbook". If you simply print a colour photo on a laser printer or even just simply convert it to a grey scale, you are probably aware that the image seems a little flat and dull. Different software sometimes does this greyscale conversion in slightly different ways, but results are normally not so good.
Tom Ang's idea is to firstly desaturate the colour. This process does not actually remove the colour, instead it just balances the red, green and blue channels to the tones appear neutral. Areas of intense colour tend to be lighten and deep shadows darker compare with a simple grey scale conversion. You may have already tried the saturation slide control, its usually on Hue or Hue/shift item in the menu. Most new digital photographer will instinctively move it to the right. Increasing the colour saturation, and creating a gaudy unnatural print. Instead move the slide full to the left. It gives your image the appearance of traditional black and white, a slightly more contrasty image with a richer tone range. It you truly new a non-colour image you can convert the desatuarated image to greyscale and the richer tones will be preserved.
Tom Ang's idea is to firstly desaturate the colour. This process does not actually remove the colour, instead it just balances the red, green and blue channels to the tones appear neutral. Areas of intense colour tend to be lighten and deep shadows darker compare with a simple grey scale conversion. You may have already tried the saturation slide control, its usually on Hue or Hue/shift item in the menu. Most new digital photographer will instinctively move it to the right. Increasing the colour saturation, and creating a gaudy unnatural print. Instead move the slide full to the left. It gives your image the appearance of traditional black and white, a slightly more contrasty image with a richer tone range. It you truly new a non-colour image you can convert the desatuarated image to greyscale and the richer tones will be preserved.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Some fun with lights
(post) Christmas lights 
This is just a normal suburban house (by day) but is still showing off its christmas lights (by night). It was a 4 second exposure to get the image above and I'd forgotten to bring my tripod! So it seemed the perfect opportunity to break some rules. Move The Camera!
Of course if you move the camera during a long exposure everthing will be streaked and blurred, but I couldn'r resist seeing what happens to the individual streaks of light, given there were so many lights. To be honest I took many more photos than shown here, thats the beauty of digital photography. These photos below appealed to me in terms of colour, movement and/or composition.
This is just a normal suburban house (by day) but is still showing off its christmas lights (by night). It was a 4 second exposure to get the image above and I'd forgotten to bring my tripod! So it seemed the perfect opportunity to break some rules. Move The Camera!
Of course if you move the camera during a long exposure everthing will be streaked and blurred, but I couldn'r resist seeing what happens to the individual streaks of light, given there were so many lights. To be honest I took many more photos than shown here, thats the beauty of digital photography. These photos below appealed to me in terms of colour, movement and/or composition.
