Swanning around

Here is a comparison of some basic enhancement of a RAW format photo using the PENTAX PHOTO Laboratory software versus Lightroom 4. The differences may be minor but I do feel the bottom photo captures the delicacy of the winter afternoon light the way I wanted too. I have often wondered why my JPEG image that my Pentax writes at the same time as the RAW file (a .PEF format) comes out “punchier” and “brighter” than the RAW image, even with a fair bit of tweaking. Maybe I’m not tweaking enough or doing the wrong tweaking!  Raw Therapee (a great open source program) seemed to do a better job, but a fair bit of fiddling was often required. The new lightroom BASIC development panel is shown on the right (and it is the only panel I used). The main contribution to the difference is in the White balance, which I changed to Auto (and I’m not even sure what that does, but it has lifted a green grey hazy colour cast from the background). Next i used the clarity slider Opps I probably gave away a big secret here. The clarity slider, which enhances the contrast in midtones, first appeared in in Lightroom 1.1 but was modified in Lightroom 3, and again now in 4 beta is a definitely a “secret tweak” among Lightroom fans I know. It seems to be a magic way to lift any photo, with the result a lot of folk always seem cranked it over to +100, +50ish is enough for me. Then a tiny bit of adjustment to the tonal strength of the highlights and shadows and there it was the photo I wanted to take, all on a single panel in a few seconds.

PhotoProject :: Skyscapes

The interesting clouds filling this summer’s skies have continued. I think they make wonderful series of photos. I must also admit that I like using the simple collage maker (and Picture Pile format) within picasa to “overlay” the images. I could Autostitch them for a clean finish but the stilted not quiet connected effect brings in a sense of time, or rather timelessness of the clouds billowing by.

PhotoFriday‘s Topic Cloudy

Lightroom 4 Beta

A lot of people have been speculating about Lightroom 4, mainly because adobe has dropped the price on Lightroom 3. The speculation was justified because Lightroom 4 is now in beta testing release and available through Adobe labs for download (version valid until March 2012). This beta version is not the full feature beast that Lightroom 4 will become but is designed to give those wishing to test it or evaluate it a comprehensive feel of the new features. Most importantly it will run along side any previous version of Lightroom and not trash (or even touch) your existing catalogues!

As with any time you are testing out or trailing software it is a good idea not to use your original photo files. Make a copy and work on those … paraphrased from sound advice by Juleanne Kost

Julieanne does give a series of nice introductory videos, which will get you up to speed on several new features quickly.

Most other bloggers have focussed on the Book Module, which is is linked to producing photo books via the Blurb service, which is actually available in Australia but I have not tried yet.Something to look forward too.

I must admit I am trying out Lightroom 4 beta on a 64bit windows 7 machine, compared with a 32 bit vista machine running Lightroom 3 but it is much snappier. Perhaps also it is related to not having a big catalogue, My theory is adobe has finally taken out the go slow cards of the program (ok I’m being cynical)

The really big thing for me is the BASIC tonal controls are now  simplified and more like the way I go about sketching a scene. There are separate sliders for blacks, shadows, midtones (called exposure), highlights and white.  For colour & detail the three Presence sliders clarity, vibrance and staturation are a joy and the seem to stop before that weird “uncanny valley” style lurid effect a lot of (over) photoshoped images acquire. If you are having a look at the beta start with these few controls, These few controls really lift RAW images and I think this could be the key factors in more people shooting RAW.

The other (almost) gem in Lightroom 4 is the MAP which is a location based way to organize photos, it read gps details embedded with the photo (did you realize most smart mobile phones do this) or matches a gps coordinated waypoint file with your photos by time, or even drag and drop photos onto a maps. That location data is however only stored in the Lightroom catalogue and is not embedded in the images metadata.   That’s like using keywords, tags and labels and not including them in the photos metadata either. Oh hang on Lightroom doesn’t do that either. (You can include this metadata in a copy of the photo by exporting it or pressing Ctrl-S to storing it in the original, but I’ve gotten used to Picasa which updated the original with metadata straight away)

These are a couple of my personal observation after a day an a half or part time play. Don’t be put off by my cynical comments, Lightroom 4 is a great program. I’m sure there is more goodies to find so go check it out for yourself..

One year in one image

One year in one image, originally uploaded by eirikso.

This is am amazing montage of a whole year into a single image. Based on 3888 images (around 40 per day) shot from the same spot. The fun began when all the photos where sampled for one horizontal column of pixel from each photo. Column 1 from the first, column 2 from the second and so on till all the slices where reassembled and voilá one whole year in one images. You can get more details from eirikso.com

South Bank Panorama on a grey day

The view from the end of the walkway under flinder's Street station. 20 photos in two rows autostitched into a single image.

In retrospect perhaps I should have taken a third upper row of photos just to get in the top of eureka tower.

PhotoProject :: SkyScape (video)

If you got a new camera for Christmas and have already amassed a lot of photos, plenty  of them great! Why not make them into a slide show movie. Often the software that came with you camera includes a “make movie” option, if not Picasa has a neat movie option, albeit without to much individual slide control. If you want a little more creative control The free t download Windows Live Essentials movie maker is worth a look, but I still think Microsoft’s Photo Story 3 for XP is the best slideshow maker around for free.

I made this very simple movie out of 10 hand held images of a stormy sky last night, I just wanted to see if there was anything new in Picasa 3.9 in terms of movie making (there isn’t that I could see). On the plus side picasa movie is very easy to use and takes very little time to create something interesting. It also takes care of the upload to you tube

PhotoProject :: Skyscapes & Reflections

An autostitched set of 18 photos in two layers gives a big sky wide open feel. (Notice the two ducks on the lower right, they are but a single duck and an artefact of the stitching process. I like to leave such happenstances in my panoramas to give incentives for the keen observer)

Just what have you agreed to?

If you use any of these social network services you may be very surprised just what you have agreed that others may have access to or can use from your posts. Now is a good time to review just what you are allowing.
http://mypermissions.org/
originally posted by +mike elgan on google+

DON’T PANIC [yet!]

If you took my earlier advice and upgraded to Picasa 3.9 you may have noticed that it links to Google+ Photos not Picasa Web Albums. The actual photos are in the same place this is just a different view. However that view does have a few differences and omission. You can always (well at the moment) get back to the traditional Picasa Web view easily using this link.

https://picasaweb.google.com/home

 

Google do have a summary sheet noting the changes to Picasa Web Albums once you join Google+.

One special condition worth noting is that much of your web album may suddenly be FREE not counted in your 1024MB storage limit. Once you sign up for Google+ any photo less than 2048 pixels and any video less than 15 minutes does not count against your limit. I dropped from 24% used to 2.68% used!

Three of changes worth noting, that are not mentioned in the google list above, but which may be very important to many existing users are -

1. You can not share with your friends or family just using an email invite alone. You can still send an invitation email to view your photo BUT unless the recipient has a google account they will not be able to view the photo. This effectively means Picasa Web Albums is no longer suitable for private family albums unless the whole family join google+ or get a google account. I EXPECT THIS WILL BE A DEAL BREAKER FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. If you have family members worried about privacy, don’t upgrade to Picasa 3.9 and perhaps stop posting family to picasa web.
2. The Picasa Web Album view still lets you set your creative commons licencing (albeit under allow reuse item). Whereas there is no mention of licencing in google+ photo. Does this mean google is abandoning creative commons? I EXPECT THIS WILL BE ANOTHER DEAL BREAKER FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE.
3. The picasa web view shows how many times a photo is viewed. The google+ photo view just show the number of +1s and comments.

Waiting for the cool change

The rteally hot summer weather has been here for the last couple of days and last night was particularly hot and unpleasant. It clouding over and looks like a stormy cool change will be here soon, BUT its just getting closer, hotter and nothing on the radar to even hint at rain.

I have not been very successful using the blog this button in picasa 3.9. Whilst i can upload the picture I can not add any text into that post. I always get the script error message displayed below.

Blue with an Australian Summer Intensity

Summer is arriving at last, the hot weather part, and the sky has cleared to its intense blueness. This blue is not that easy to capture with a camera, especially a cameraphone. The problem being, for most of the day in Australia the clear sky will bleach out to white (being the highest intensity light (according to your light meter, when it compares the light to the foreground objects). There are some well established ways to get around this.

1. Use a polarizing filter, works well but these filters can be expensive
2. Expose for the sky, Point the camera high in the sky and half press the shutter release (this performs the exposure and auto-focus on most new digital cameras, set to green or Auto mode). Then pan down to your preferred picture view and press the shutter button all the way down. This keeps the exposure setting of the sky but on your new phone. Most probably you will have a nice sky but the foreground will be blocked out very dark, with little detail. Such dark silhouette can be dramatic but you probably wont be able to tell Arthur from Martha.
3. Use the HDR process to extend the dynamic range of your photo. If you look back through my post you will find this requires taking several exposure of the same image and then post processing these (using special software)

This photo series was taken at 3pm (2pm without daylight saving and about 7 hours before sunset) using the updated HDRCamera app on my android phone. The beauty of this application is that it automatically undertakes the post processing in your smart phone. Ok it does take a while, but the results are usually great, this image for example does captured that warmth and  intense of our summer sky nicely without making a silhouette of the gun tree.

Thomas Hawk @ Googleplex

This is quiet a long video, but it is a talk by Thomas Hawk, who you probably already know of if you are on Flickr or Google+. If you don’t know of him he is worthwhile following. He has two massively ambitious projects, one to publish 1 million photos in his life time and the second to photograph Americas top 100 cities. This is a refreshing simple presentation of how one photographers works, how he makes time and uses it as efficiently as possible and still has a real life, There is also a fair bit about sharing photos on-line.

PhotoProject :: Focussing on 50mm

One exercise often recommended to students of photography is to just use one lens, no zoom, and use the camera viewfinder to crop and compose your final image, Just using a single prime lens (a fixed focal length, which is most likely to be a 50mm lens for a DSLR cameras) is a good discipline because without the access to a zoom you are forced to think of your position relative to the subject and the light. The red  scooter in a grey city street made for a prefect interesting image, but I had to move in closer and lower. I also wanted to upload my photo to Google+ and have become a bit square crop oriented, with is very much the fashion there now (I assume because the square thumbnails look neat). So I just worried about the vertical position as I took the photo and I did trim it in Picasa before upload.

By the way I tried uploading this directly from the new Picasa (3.9) and ran into a lot of hassles.

Photographers Stocking Fillers

I had hoped to get this finished last week, but here is a list of smaller items that a photographer might appreciate in his or her Christmas stocking (I have tried to keep below $20/item)

Memory cards

One of the beauties of digital photography is you can take lots of picture without spending a fortune getting them processed. The limit really to how many pictures is the capacity and number of memory cards. If your photographer use SD cards, get him or her a few more and perhaps a card wallet to hold them. Right at the moment 2GB & 4GB cards are the best value and hold decent number of photos (even RAW) However check that the camera can take SDHC cards (HC is for High Capacity)

USB Memory Card Reader

You don’t need to buy the expensive ones, a simple all in one card reader with a USB plug can be stored in you camera bag. Then when you are on holiday or you are out and forgot your cameras upload cable you will have a backup.

Baby Tripods

There is a multiplicity of these from tiny desktop legs, that only support small compact cameras (not larger DSLRs), to the unusually named gorillapod, that has flexible legs, that can even be wrapped around a stable object but only a 325g lifting capacity.
One nifty small tripod-ish support that is a fraction dearer than my under $20 limit is the manfrotto pocket support. Its strong enough to support most grownup DSLR but small enough to leave on your camera.

Dust Cleaners

Notice I haven’t used the term lens cleansers, that is because most lenses these days are coated with specially formulates but thin anti glare and flare coatings. these layers are very easily rubbed off with even the softest cloth. Also it is a good idea not to use and liquid lens cleaners on your lens or even the LCD screen on the back of the camera. A soft micro-fibre cloth, not a paper tissue which will leave troublesome fibres everywhere, is generally all that is required to keep your camera body clean. An old fashion brush and blower are also useful.
Dust on the cameras sensor is a different matter and the camera owner should consult his/her camera manual.

Gift Vouchers

Most good camera stores have gift vouchers covering a wide range of items, from actual photography demonstrations and lessons, book to discount prints and photobooks. It seems such voucher begin at around $15 and can run into the $100s (it could buy a camera) So don’t get carried away keep the vouchers simple when giving them as the stocking filler.

Hot Shoe Triple Axis Spirit Level.

This is a pretty specific bit of gear but very useful for anyone who is keen on multi-image stitched panorama. Haven’t found an Australian supplier yet, but included it in the list in case you spot it a a camera shop.

PhotoProject :: Urban Abstract

Urban Abstract, originally uploaded by imageo.

Taken om my Android cameraphone using the HDRCamera app. This was directly uploaded to flickr from my phone and then blogged from flickr.

There are pictures waiting to be taken everywhere. Having a camera in your phone is a great way to start capturing more of them

New lights in the lightbox

The Google+ lightbox was already nice, but it has been imp-roved. The lightbox is the area you go into when you click on and are viewing a photos. Google’s lightbox is black, and there are a lot of folk who prefer that (eg Lightroom users) and others that hate it. In theory the black borders will give photos a “lift ( according to the block border enthusiasts it apparently boos the intensity of colours and the luminosity of the light, I think these is an optical illusions in the viewer). The problem them in things written in the black boarder can be very hard to read, so google+ has white boxes into which comments etc are placed. It is a nice slick update and very simple to pick up and use.
Have fun tagging your christmas snaps or adding santa hats and antlers (watch the video carefull and you will see how to do that)

There is always someone

Have you noticed that just as you set up a shot and press the button someone is likely to wander across your photo and cast an awkward shadow of even block out part of your subject? For conventional HDRi\ this can be a disaster, or a lot of cropping. These where taken with my android phone using HDR Camera, which has a “feature” that it uses the first photo as a reference and other items in a single frame only will be removed, rather than included as a ghost. Not sure how its done but it does take some stress away.
I took this photo series of a decorated CFA van to test a theory I have that HDRi is a good technique for the harsh Australian summer midday sun. With a single exposure they best I would have expected was a bleached out sky and the silhouette of the white van (blown out with no detail) against the background trees dark in shadow.
PS: If you want to get the “official” CFA/DSE Bush Fire warnings and alerts on your smartphone for this sumer visit this link.

A Bundle of Goodies from Google

Google has its update to Picasa (version 3.9) ready for download, but they are not pushing it out to existing Picasa users just yet. Like a lot of their other recent releases it is very Google+centric. Offering easier ways to upload to Google+ (with an oversized green share button on the photo tray) including name tags of your Google+ Circles. The actual details of this name tag sharing is a bit more complex than I need to discuss here, but the essence is you tag your photo in face recognition with someone in your Google+ Circle or even just has an email address associated with them, then they automatically show up in the share box for that photo in Picasa web Album (even though that may be otherwise private). In other words if they are in your photo they will be able to see it (but they are not notified). This is a sensible default in an otherwise very public social network centric places that the web seems to becoming. Read more detail here.

The BIG difference with Picasa 3.8 is the link to Web Albums is now called Google+Photos, and that is exactly what it is, if you are already signed up to Google+. If not you with see an offer to join Google+ but don’t panic you don’t have to join. The conventional Picasa web album view lives on (it and Google+photo are just different ways to view the same on-line photos) and you still have the 2GB of free space. Actually if you join Google+ you may find your free space climbs again because they then don’t count small images and short videos.

If you have become interested in Picasa on your PC (or MAC) because you have started looking under the bonnet of Google+Photo. You will appreciate this share to Google+ button because it works a lot like the share feature in the Google+ app on your smart phone. Only in this case the photos can be shared “directly” from your computer, with a few option that you may choose to define but most of the information is taken from the image itself. This type of effortless transfer is what “cloud” computing promised long ago, but is only just getting around to deliver.

If your an existing Picasa user don’t worry to much about the changes, they are really just a bit or a “clean up” to the screen real estate and  the user experience with be pretty much as you are used to be. One change that worried me at first was the size of the share button on the photo tray left not enough room for the button I had grow to love.

Before 3.8

Now 3.9

Not to worry the configure button tab lets you bring back the “one click” buttons you like. Ok they are not exactly single click button but they do give single click access to wizards that take you through the more common processes  If you haven’t used them take the opportunity to try them out when investigating Picasa 3.9.

Possible you have already seen or heard rumors of the plethora of new editing effects. Don’t get too excited they are mainly “fun” filters (like the fun effects in Picnik or Befunky). When you click on a single photo you still get the same editor dialogue on the left hand side. The difference you will notice is the tabs at the top of this dialogue area, there are now 5 tabs and they have icons rather than text. The first three are as before, the last two are are sub-titled more fun effects and even more fun effect, which is what they are, the fun end of town! Ideal for fun on Facebook, Twitter and other distractions

There is one new edit features that I think will appear to the more purist end of the photography spectrum, ok the ones that have been exposed to Photoshop or more particularly Lightroom. Its side by side editing (finally!) It not only lets you have the before and after images side by side, you can also compare different photos and side by side can be swapped to above and below. You access this feature from the little  A A or A B boxes above the image, in a single photo display.

Download Picasa 3.9 now (remember its free), don’t wait for the roll out, you won’t regret it.

HINT: One final recommendation if you have bought anyone a camera for Christmas, buy them an extra memory card. You can even put the download of the Picasa 3.9 installer on the card (as an added bonus). I’m sure they will find it will be nicer software than is bundle with the camera anyway.

Birds of Kalista (revisted)

There have been some elaborate changes to the bird feeding at grants picnic ground at Kalista, Whilst it is undoubtedly been carried out in the interest of keeping the wild birds healthy it does seem a little heavy handed.

Visitors must purchase a token from ‘Grants on Sherbrooke’ kiosk to enable them to enter the fenced Bird Feeding area and obtain a measured amount of seed to be offered to the wild birds. Visitors are not permitted to bring in their own seed nor offer seed or other food items to birds outside of the Bird Feeding Area.
There are no other areas within the Dandenong Ranges National Park where seed can be offered to native birds.

If you have just come to photograph the birds their are plenty still hanging around, looking for a feed..

Patterns

Have you seen this man?

I have just had a bit of fun with a chrome app called OU PhotoFit Me, its put out by the Open University in the UK, as a promotion for enrolment in their Psychology & Social Science courses  This is clever marketing.

You wouldn't recognize me from my PhotoFit but it was fun trying to get some resemblance. I guess I don’t look in the mirror enough and the body parts are definitely from the young and beautiful people. So perhaps this is the “I wish” Photo Fit.

They also have a few suggested celebrities you should try out for a Famous Face Fit, I’m sure you will be able to do better than the ones posted so far. Have a play in the app below.