Almost Origami

Shooting RAW images and using a higher megapixel camera, means I have ended up having a large and rapidly increasing collection of “backup” disks. Also I tend to buy the “Barrel of Disks” stacked on the spindle variety (they are cheaper than the individually boxed version)

I have already discovered that using the spindle and drum as a storage is a big no no! The Disks are stacked one on each other and the recorded surface can become quickly scratched as the drum is repeatedly handled.

So I have lots of “precious” disks without a secure home. For a while I was using old floppy diskette envelopes. These envelopes worked just fine and are very compact to store in a common storage boxes (yes even shoe boxes). Then I got the idea of making my own origami envelopes. A google search will find 100s of origami folding designs for CD or DVD covers , including this amazing spiral one. However I have something much simpler and easy to do. First you need to get a blank page on your favourite word processor. Then using Tables or its draw tool, create a square box 12.5cm by 12.5cm. Align it horizontally in the center of the page but slightly below the center vertically. As long as the page is big enough it doesn’t matter if it is A4, 8” by 11.5” or quarto, it is the size of the square that matches the size of a CD/DVD that is important. You can type a label in the box and have fun with the wordprocessor’s features if you want. Print this. Then follow the pictures below. Fold along the vertical edges of your box first. Turn the sheet over and fold these two sides back on the the back. Then fold the lower flap ontop of this. Next slide in your CD or DVD and finally fold down the top flap. If you press down on you folds you do not need to stick or tape anything down. The envelope will hold its shape nicely, and it is nice and thin to store. If you wish to use recycled (previously printed) scrap paper it is very important to have a blank side for the inside of the envelope, to minimize ink contamination inside the envelope (this is particularly important if you are using laser printer or copier scrap). A final warning, not all copy papers, and especially recycled papers are acid free, which is required for long archival life of your precious photos.

Thanks to my wife who took these photos of the process

The Full 360

This 130 megapixel photosynth is based on 37 photo. It was taken handheld just south of Beach One at venus bay and illustrates the recent erosion at the back of the beach. The photosythyn was created by Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor).

Working on Raw Colour

 

Whilst I haven’t blogged about RAW format lately. Its not that I haven’t been taking lots of RAW photos. Its more that I haven’t a really  found productive way to handle processing my RAW photos. I have a pentax camera and their default RAW format is PEF version of RAW is currently ignored by picasa at the upload phase. Thats ok I can read the card a second time in the Pentax Browser. However that inevitably involves a lot of tweaking and slider adjustments for each photo individually. Then I discovered if I copied these PEF files into a folder that picasa is monitoring the file is visualized, with a set of automatic “adjustments”, just what those adjustments are and how to turn them off is a mystery. The good news is picasa doesn’t modify the file at all. I Have noticed that in lower light the jpeg from the Camera and the Picasa interpreted RAW version are often quiet different. If the image showed promise I’d usually end up fiddling in the Pentax Browser and end up with something different again. When using RAW I usually focus most on getting realistic colours from the images greater colourspace depth.

I’d heard good things about RAW Therapee but only got around to downloading it today.There is a lot of good stuff to discuss. more for later posts, but what I immediately loved was its default process, such as white balance and brightness and that are easily modified and customized profiles easily stored. You see a preview and can still adjust it further is required. If you like the preview you can save it as a JPEG, TIFF & PNG File. If you use picasa you’ll have the original jpeg, the picasa version and the RAW therapee version all side by side (like above) so you can compare and export the version you want.

Removing A Colour Cast

Having been inspired by a couple of pizza recipes on MasterChef, the results were worth a photo but alas under the halogen downlights (2,700–3,300 K) there was a strong orange colour cast. These downlights have a much lower colour temperature (those K numbers) than daylight (5,500–6,000 K). You can of course use the white balance setting in your camera and set it to artificial or tungsten. However I was hungry and just took the photos as they were. Not to worry most photo editing software will have the ability to make an adjustment for such colour bias as a post process. In picasa there is the nifty Neutral Colour Picker tool under the tuning tab. Click on the little eye dropper and them click on something in your images that you want to be white or a neutral grey tone. There is part of a cook book on the left hand side so I use that, and instantly the colour bias is removed although I also used both the fill light and highlight sliders to lighten the image a bit. An appetizing pizza bianca recorded for posterity!

ARranged ART

The final tonemapped HDRI image

This collage is a tapestry of the many bracketed photos sets used to test of my current HDRI tools. I used picturenaut in the end.. For no particular reason I arranged some stones on the weathered deck as my subject, still the collected images themselves have arranged themselves into a deeper pattern.

For PhotoFriday's topic Arranged

Tripper Map App

If you like and use flickr, why not have a look through their APP Garden, Its a place you'll find home grown applications created by Flickr members (like you!) using the Flickr API. The garden continues to flourish so go forth and frolic amongst the apps! Like Iphone apps there is a lot to waste your time on but there are some great creations and it worth an occasional wander around.

If you follow my geotagging threads you will know I don’t really like Yahoo maps and prefer to work off google earth. Well Mark Zemen (a kiwi traveller) has produce a wonderful app called Trippermap, which basically lets you geotag in flickr using google earth. Yet it does a lot more. including showing your trips in flash maps for your website or blog (see example below and the small side map & slideshow down under geotagging on the right) or browse you photos from with google earth. This is a really great tool for travellers.

Cropping & Composition

I was happy with this photo, it did achieve what I had seen. The break in the clouds the pools of light on the beach and the billowing dark clouds above. So I figure it is a good example to demonstrate how cropping can help improve composition and what Features I wanted to enhance. The Center of interest is slightly off-set to the right, something i did deliberately in the viewfinder. It has has two distinct focal points, firstly the dark against light tones in the clouds, above the brightly lit waves below. There were three distinct lines/shapes for the eye to follow already. So I concentrated on was keeping the center of interest close to the vertical line that divides the composition into two thirds and one third (the rule thirds) That just left the option of vertical cropping to more a more panoramic format, keeping the lower focal points in the golden ratio from the top & bottom. The lower cropping also accentuates the strong diagonal of the reflection on the wet sand.

The Coast (Hoody Beach)

 
For Photo Friday’s Challenge the coast
I thought this panorama of the Hooded Plover nesting areas on the Venus Bay beach would give me a great comparison between autostitch and microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). I had taken a set of very conventional overlapping photos as I panned along the beach, starting on the right and going to left (this upsets a lot of panorama joiners by the way). Both dutifully stitched the image without complaint. The Autostitched version (below and also straighten & cropped above) is nice and seamless. It also has that “true to what I saw” perspective that wide angle camera shots don’t give. The ICE version wasn’t bad either but it does have a few little jagging joins when you look in detail. I experimented with the perspective projection and  found it gave a wonderful deep view of the beach (it is a beautiful long sweeping part of the coast). This is really enhanced if you have a look at this panorama as a photosynth (at the bottom of this post)
Autostitch
Microsoft ICE
Photosynth created by Microsoft ICE
Sorry only those with microsoft windows will be able to view this synth and get the live 3D modelling effect. [Correction Mac users should be able to view this via silverlight please leave a comment if you find that works]

So much noise

That grainy speckle that often infects digital photos taken in low light, is normally called noise, (maybe it is called dark noise, heat noise or salt & pepper noise). It happens when exposures are longer and/or the ISO setting are higher because adjacent receptors on the sensor are charged up longer or more to become more sensitive. That allows heat or current leaks onto the adjacent receptor which interprets it as more light. There are a whole range of methods and algorithms to detect and try to remove this noise. Many such methods are now being built into cameras. They seek to work out what is an artifact of the noise versus real detail in the photo. Some methods look at variation in brightness or luminance (Lumina) other look are variation in hue (chroma), the little specs usually appear variable colours (see below). I find with my camera the chroma noise reduction leaves a better quality filtered image and removes the “digital camera grain” best. However all noise reduction will lead to a slight loss of detail and quality in the final results, typically a smoothing effect.

BEFORE

AFTER

From my perspective noise reduction is the one remaining obvious thing missing in picasa’s simple photo editing tool kit. Unfortunately the best NR (that's Noise Reduction) Software is still relatively expensive and mainly available only as plug in for Photoshop & Lightroom. Don’t despair, a free download trail of noiseware (either as a plug in or standalone) will give you decent results before you need to fork out big bucks. The above example was created with the Noiseware Community Standalone version (free and no trial period). Good Noise filters are available for Gimp.
There is a lot of hype written on the net about NR tools and most are actually much of a muchness, but without testing it is difficult to appreciate subtle differences. Pro Photography Show gives a decent review of leading NR software by way of a number of downloadable high resolution before & after images so you can see for yourself.

It is wise to have at least one such NR filter method available to help you recover an occasional dark photo or even a whole series from your party when the photographer may not have be concentrating.

Softly Softly

 
Using the Focal B&W filter in Picasa to take attention away from the inevitable truncated leaves and buds on the edge of the photo

After the rain II

 
Things around my garden have been enjoying the recent rains, and the lighting this morning was perfect.

I still prefer to use manual focus when taking macro (close up) photos of plants, their intricate shadows and patterns can often fool the autofocus into blurring your subject while bringing a leaf or twig off to the side into sharp focus. Autofocus can be particularly difficult when you subject is light (a white flower) and your background dark (in shadow)

Back in the Aviary

I have been using the toucan colour editor in aviary lately, to help select harmonious colour schemes in my photo impressions. It have a variety of nice features that I assume are primarily there at the request of web developers. However what I want to write about here is the rapid expansion of capabilties and connections aviary now offers. If you have broadband connection (I would not recommend using it, or any other graphic heavy application on a slow or flacky connection) you may find to can get a photo filtered, cropped and published to the web quickly and easily, probably in less time that it takes Photoshop or Corel Draw to open on your PC. It seems particular popular with those using Facebook & Flickr, being able to read and edit images on those services as well as publishing to them. It also offers a number of ways to share and publish images in the web and a good selection of social networks. You can use your existing twitter, facebook, google or Yahoo accounts to login if you don’t wish to join. Best part its still free.

Their byline says it all -

Aviary is a free, powerful suite of browser-based design tools for people who love to create.

The best way to keep up with their developments is to have a look around their blog.

Extreme Sunshine Pano

For Photo Friday's topic sunshine

This is a preety extreeme multi-photo autostitched panorama. Covering a view from south to north (looking west) and the horizon to straight above.

Not a Fairy to be seen

 
Mosaic of fungai, up close and personal

Flying the flag

 

My Photo Impression Methodology

I have been creating a type of Photo mosaic, I call them Photo Impression, for several years now yet I find it is the thing I end up re-explaining most. I’m not trying to keep the method a secret or mystify it but it is considerable more complex than “using photoshop with a background texture”. In fact I like the way collage, mosaic and Photomontage can extend a subject, there is a lot more that digital photography can offer than just photoshop trickery. Quiet a few notable artists like Dali, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol & David Hockney have been investigating parts of this process before me.

 

There are three main steps I undertake. They map nicely into painting steps and terms. The initial tonal map is like a sketch where I am investigating the tone, balance and composition. I prefer to work monochrome here. Next is the paint stage, where I analyse the colour in the original image looking at colour contrasts, compliments and harmonies. I like to restrict the number of colours, much like the impressionist painters, as it gives a more powerful results with potentially a stronger emotional connection for the viewer. At this stage I select existing photos or make computer generated patterns or even take new photo to build a small library or images that form my palette of tile. Next I get to choose the brushes to make my marks, only these are the patterns and shapes of the small sub-tiles which make up the final image.The shape, size and type of pattern repeated in the images develop the texture that allow me to bring a delicious additional depth into the works.

I do use computer software, mosaic creator, to build the final image and this can take several hours, frequently requiring over night runs. The preliminary stages are sometimes done on the computer sometimes manually and usually take weeks to months of contemplation. 

Green Glow in the West

Tonight was overcast with a little drizzle at Venus Bay but around 8:25pm there was a strange phenomenon . An eerie green glow started in the west. It grew brighter till about 8:30pm, then gradually faded till around 9:00pm. The moon had set at sunset so I can’t easily explain the source of the light.

Retracing Darwin

My Exhibition of Photos, Painting and Rock Art is coming up this weekend.

Opening 2:00PM

Sunday April 18th

Gecko Studio Gallery

15 Falls Road, Fish Creek

South Gippsland

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin Of Species, Norm Hanson followed the trip Darwin undertook in 1836 from Sydney to Bathurst through the Blue Mountains. This exhibition of Photography, Paintings and Rock Art is inspired by what Darwin saw.

The Exhibition runs from April 18th to May 15th, 2010.

An Overcast Panorama

I have been experimenting with Microsoft's ICE image stitcher and in particular its projection feature. The perspective mode does give a convincing 3D panprama effect, albeit with a very distorted image edge.

For PhotoFriday topic overcast

Travelling Stuff

To say I travel a lot, is an understatement! I am well over the implied romance of flying and I particularly zone out through the airport ordeal. With security now beefed up it is time to slim down the stuff inside my camera bag, which I always hand carry on flights. I haven’t got enough trust established to let anything breakable go into checked in baggage. I also always hand carry my laptop computer. None of this seems to come under special scrutiny from the Security X-ray team.

So what to I like to carry?  As little as possible. Extra memory cards, SD cards are getting cheaper and are the best way to give yourself extra capacity. Don’t be afraid to buy extra cards along the way (but they will be overpriced in those duty free shops). Next I have a simple USB memory card reader. I have an SD card reader built into my laptop, but not many cyber cafes do. I can also easily transfer stuff to clients computers via this card reader. This has saved my bacon many times. Next I have my phone and a cable to connect it to my computer, and still use it occasionally as a GPRS modem (this is painfully slow but works reliably). I also have a Next-G modem (not shown, because it lives with my laptop) with which I have a love/hate relationship (its broadband and fast but annoyingly flaky).
The gem in this collection is the USB key. It is loaded with camera friendly Portable Apps, an open source open platform that allows programs to be run from a USB key, without requiring anything in the registry or to be installed on the host computer. Here are a collection of utilities I like to travel with and have used a lot.

• Autostitch (*), my favorite panorama stitching program.
• Cornice Portable, is an image viewer has thumbnail previews, full screen modes, rotation, slideshow modes and EXIF support.
• Exif Reader (*), is a small freeware utility that extracts image information from EXIF/JPG files.
• JpegView Portable, is still an unsupported test version, is a small and fast on the fly viewer/editor.
• GIMP Portable, is the popular open source image editor packaged. Has lots of features but comes with a longer learning curve. It has a massive fan base and good on-line Tutorials & Forums.
• Mosaic Creator (*), this is a wonderful collection of photo mosaic tools. I use this for my photo impressions.
• Noiseware (*), is a really good digital/heat noise remover.
• Photormin, a really simple image editor for fast resizing, basic retouching, and cropping. Probably I will replace this with JpegView before long, but still like its speed.
• Picturenaut (*), if you don't have version 3.0 download it now, this a very easy to use HDRi tool and does a beautiful job without lots of tweaking. 
• XnViewPortable, to be honest I’d rather used picasa, but in a pinch this is a very competent photo simple editor/ photo  manager/ viewer/ converter that can even be used in a cyber cafes. There is a decent community of  XnView fans out there and the on-line forum is a great place to get assistance.

(*) These are not a specific Portable Apps versions just the freeware/ shareware /demo versions that runs perfectly from the USB key. To install them on the USB Key simple copy the installed software directory into the PortableApps directory on the USB key.

A new acquisition to the kit bag is a Sony Walkman Series B USB MP3 player. It is the size of a normal USB key but it is primarily an MP3 audio player, but unlike my IPod nano it receives FM radio and it is a one button to press Voice recorder. My Olympus software bundled with my older CX4000 incorporated support for sound commentary on each photo and at the time I though what a waste of space. Now I’m changing my mind, I have found having an easy to use dictaphone that can hang around your neck is very useful when your hands are full of camera. Music & Podcasts sound pretty good on it as well. I also now have all my camera manuals stored on it.  Something indespensiable when you are out the back of nowhere. It is labbelled 2GB but I have found there is only about 1.7GB of usable space left for other things. Still that is plenty of space for all sorts of stuff not only music, and I prefer to keep it only half full incase I have a lot to say. One downside is that Photo Kiosks don’t seem to be able to read it. So I don’t recomend it as your only transfer key or for the PortableApps.

Behind iPad Hype, a photographer’s view

The internet and particularly its blogs and podcasts are  currently full of the buzz of discussions and speculation about the iPad. It has been release now ín the USA (not Australia yet) and the best I can judge is the most common assessment is.  it’s fast. Ok! Is it useful? Will it dominate in some way that makes it the next big thing? Well the next most common comment is that’s it’s a big version of the iPod touch. Ok! That’s good for a lot of people especially those with fading eyesight, but hardly earth shattering.  It’s supposed to be a Kindle killer, What the heck does that mean?

What about the iPad’s usefulness for Photographers?

Already I know the iPad doesn’t have a camera.
Can you easily transfer photos from your camera to the iPad? Probably not easily, but it should be possible with new cables, yet to  be released adaptors or even the eye.fi card (this won't work see coments). There is an camera connector kit due to be offered by Apple in late April, which will be two little adaptors, a USB connectors (assuming your camera has a USB cable) and a SD Card reader(assuming your camera uses them).
Can you use the iPad to do some post processing in the field? At present you are really limited to iPhone and iTouch applications and the screen on those devices was too small to allow any really sophisticated processing so there is really isn’t anything much (eg Photoshop.com mobile) Maybe with the iPad there may be a version of Photoshop, Picasa or Lightroom cut down to be an iPad app. Perhaps Picnik or Aviary will be the first. This is all very promising but still mostly vapourware. However, there is already an official flickr iPad app in the iTunes store (its free to download). Another good field app might be the  marrying of GPS data such as a wayfile (the iPad doesn’t have a built in GPS either) from perhaps a blue tooth connected GPS and photos using their EXIF time stamp to “automatically” geotag the photos. Stop the vapours are suffocating!
Could you use the iPad as an extended Viewfinder?
This is a neat idea, and is probably technically feasible but may need some extra hardware/cables/bluetooth device? Ok its more vapourware!
Can the iPad be used as a backup device?
It will fit neatly enough into a camera backpack. The first version is 64 GB, which is a fair bit of memory but you would need some of that for your other apps. Again Ok that’s not a lot given the price of an iPad, and maybe not enough given the size of images now captured on some camera. But being realistic 64GB of SD cards will be less that a quarter the cost of an iPad, you just can not look at the photos on the SD cards themselves.
Is the iPad a good presentation device?
This is where it scores really well, It is ideal to run simple presentations (slide shows) and show off gorgeous photographic ebooks. This is a medium I expect to become very popular soon. However remember the presentation and the ebook will probably be generated on separate a computer with more capable software (and a mouse and keyboard)

So my conclusion, don’t necessarily be swayed by the calls of magic and wonderment, it may take a while for the IPad to become an indispensible tool for a photographer.