cool nectar on a hot day

cool nectar on a hot day, originally uploaded by imageo.

Just rying out a new uploader to flickr

Cresent Moon Sunset

Another Sand Goddess

Another sand ranking loosely based on one of the goddess in the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood’s painting “The MIrror of Venus”

PhotoFriday :: Sand Patterns

Sand Patterns 1, originally uploaded by imageo.

Ripple marks at low tide

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Pattern

Catch a Falling Star

Last night was a new moon and relative still. Good conditions to capture the night sky. So with a little experimentation in M for Manual on my canon, I opened it up (f4.5), set the ISO High (6400) and the exposure long (30 seconds), all on a tripod of coarse. There was a bit of cloud about but they just added to the mood. Distant car head lights on a nearby tree added to that ambience With such a high ISO and long exposure the resulting photos where littered with “digital” noise and Lightrooms RAW processor handles this well even with the luminance and colour noise sliders moved way to the right.
I did see a couple of brief shooting stars but my camera was not exposing at the time or pointed elsewhere, such is life. However as I looked in detail in Lightroom I did pick up some distinct streak which I am now fairly certain must have also been meteorites. I have seen other streak in long exposure that where a series of aligned dots, I assume these are aeroplane lights or satellite. The shooting stars/ meteorites giving a a continuous light.

Ready, Steady, Go

I like street art and particularly the more useful pieces, like seats.This one in Swanson street Melbourne is quiet fussy and busy and deep with a very busy area. I only had my mobile phone, so I started my HDR Camera+ app and waited for a group of pedestrian and a tram to go by, thinking I would have a clean shoot at the three exposures required. Well as I pushed the button the lights changed and all the folk in the background moved. Yet in the enhanced image, they are not blurred and they are in their original position in the first photo. So I need to learn a little more of the magic by which this app does its processing to get a Higher Dynamic Range.

Prodigal SD card returns

A while ago I lost an older spare SD card, it seemed to just disappeared “out of” my camera bag. Then miraculously it “reappeared” on the back lawn under the clothes line (luckily I spotted it while watering and before mowing the lawn). I can only assume it was most probably in the pocket of my clothes, went through the wash and fell out of the pocket whilst drying and sat on the lawn through 40°C plus heat and a couple of storms, I dried it off and was able to read it with no problems. Not a bad harsh environment test of the card and the case it was in.

I hasn’t been smooth sailing always for me with SD cards I have had a couple where the plastic tabs and separators around the connectors has broken off or fallen apart (and jammed in my camera!) so I’m very careful and throw out any cards that misbehave (mainly cheap noname brand ones).

Whilst on SD Cards I have found that the speed of the card makes a massive different in practice when you are using a higher end DSLR. Particularly if you are saving both RAW and jpeg version of your photos. I have been using and can recommend both the Scan disk Ultra and  Lexar Platinum II series (SDHC 60x) it’s the difference in being able to get 8 images per second or waiting more than a second between images. Only capturing in jpeg does makes things quicker (they require processing but are smaller files and therefore save quicker).

Older wallpapers available again (free download for a short time)

 

 

The gift of a 3 month pro account on flickr means some of my older (and popular) screen wallpapers are again available for free download.

Thank you Flickr

I got a nice “Merry Flickr” surprise when I logged into flickr today. A three months pro account. Ok I’m not going to go crazy and upload thousands of photos but I do appreciate it. I can also see just a few other nice updates, imprved smartphine apps and housekeeping that suggest a revitalized focus in team flickr. With all the fuss about the right to sell your photos on instagram, Flickr is probably the place to do your social (and private) photo sharing. If you already have an account go visit it, if you don’t now might be the right time to set on up.