Submitted by dave on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 10:30pm
Anne and I spent a couple of days in Walla Walla earlier this week. We intended to visit wineries - an industry that sprang forth in 1977 and how boasts nearly 150 entities. However, we were quickly seduced by the history of the area. Much of the "old town," near Whitman College, was built before 1900. I managed to snap a few interesting pictures as we wandered.
I'll post a few more pictures from the area later this week, but I'm posting these as artifacts of a new post-production tool I'm using on my photographs. Previously, I've used an inexpensive (now discontinued) tool from Microsoft: Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006. While I enjoyed using the suite, it didn't provide the best conversion of my Nikon "raw" camera files to JPG and I had outgrown it's photo touch-up capabilities.
Since I shoot with Nikon equipment, I decided to give Nikon Capture NX2 a try. As you might expect, it does a dandy job converting the "raw" files into JPGs. Beyond the normal photo touch-up fare, it includes some interesting tools to address image issues at the base color level. I'm just beginning to understand some of the power of this tool set.
I'll continue to work on the images from the trip, and a short travel-log (for the history buffs), for posting later this week. For the photography phans, these are a quick peek at some of my early attempts to manipulate images with Capture NX2.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 12/24/2007 - 2:25pm
Okay, this should be an interesting test. Normally, clicking on an image that is attached to a blog article will show you a new page that host the picture. However, I've now installed a new module into the Drupal engine that will allow you to browse all of the pictures on the page without leaving. It's called, "Lightbox." I really like it. Mouse around the picture to find the navigation arrows - the "X" at the bottom-right will close the image and return you to your starting location.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 12/17/2007 - 8:16pm
Now that I'm on a host that supports the common website toolkits, I've started turning them on for Gracevideo. Today I enabled the ImageMagick imaging toolkit. This should provide better quality preview / thumbnail images than we have had previously. It shouldn't cause the images to be radically larger, but perhaps a tad bit. There are several options I have not enabled (such as sharpening) and I may toy with those later. For now, we should have better images on the site when they are resized to fit.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 9:16am
My friends, Gretchen and Harry, asked if I would snap a photo for their holiday cards this year. The photo session was very informal, with no special equipment - just me, my Nikon D70s, and an on camera flash. The resulting image isn't bad, although I would have preferred if the depth of field was a tad longer - perhaps one stop. Still, for an ad hoc shoot, it's not bad. I thought the photogs might enjoy the picture. I'll tag the photo entry with the original camera information.
Submitted by dave on Sun, 09/16/2007 - 2:42pm
Today I tried some interesting photo tests with my external flash. I discovered that I can fire the flash remotely, so that the flash can be in a different location than the camera; I also learned about slow shutter curtain exposures and how they effect the resulting image. Click
here to view the gallery of images associated with the test.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 05/28/2007 - 1:04pm
I've started messing around with
high dynamic range images. Multiple pictures are taken of the same scene, with different exposures. Computer software is then used to merge the pictures into a single image. Usually, a photograph does not have the ability to expose correctly for the darkest and brightest areas in the field of view. The goal of HDR is to achieve an image that mirrors the natural compensation achieved when viewed by the human eye.
In the attached example, the sky is from one photograph, while the front of the house is from another. The computer evaluates the two images and attempts to include the parts of each image that are best exposed.
There are numerous software packages available for performing this process. I'll keep looking around until I have found one that I think works best for me.
Update: I selected Artizen HDR as my tool of choice. The results I obtained were fairly satisfactory immediately, and the control on the software is pretty extensive. I should be able to build even better images with practice.
Pages
