I just had a quick play with Microsoft’s PhotoSynth. A useful tool for combining lots of photos of the same scene and displaying in an interesting and different way.
This is my first attempt, far from perfect, but interesting non the less. Taken at Crich Tramway Museum of the H. Slack’s Gavioli organ.
Well as promised (threatened) here is my first attempt at shooting video with my 7D. As you can see it is far from perfect and would have benefited greatly from a little planning before hand like a script or even just a shot list but … I didn’t know how long Chris and James would put up with me sticking my camera in their faces while they tried to cook.
You will quickly see that shooting hand held is not as bad as it could be but my initial attempts at shooting hand held are not as good as they should be!! Another problem I had was accurate focussing while shooting. I don’t have a focus puller device or even rails to hold it so I am now trying a piece of white electrical tape on the focus ring and marking relevant distances off on that.
It’s just a bit of fun so enjoy.
It is available in HD (1280×720) on You Tube.
I may have to change the background music, I borrowed this piece from Microsoft which was fine to show friends but now I have published it on You Tube they may object. I am already in dispute with You Tube over another piece I uploaded some time ago where someone claims to own the copyright of the music I used and that was all Royalty Free, from an excellent DVD by Andrew Kramer at Video Copilot called Pro Scores. The frustrating thing with You Tube is that although you can lodge a dispute you have no way to add any information to backup your dispute and no way to contact them. I tried sending several emails, most were rejected by their hyper efficient spam filter and when I did get one through the response was “…your message will not be reviewed”, it would appear you can only contact them to complain about someone infringing your copyright.
Anyone who has been to see the Video Copilot site will immediately notice a slight influence in my opening title.
Its been a busy few days. Went to an open day at Annabel Williams Studio on Friday. If anyone is thinking of attending one of their excellent courses it is a good idea to go to their open day (it isn’t a hard sell for one of their courses) or perhaps one of their short courses to get a feel of the type of style they use. Not everyone responds the same way to instruction. One of the speakers was an ex student of their “Bespoke” course, a lovely and genuine young wedding photographer called Jodie Chapman have a look at her web site.
Sunday I was judging at Southport Photographic Exhibition with the redoubtable Bob Moore and renowned Don Byatt. 1300 projected images with a very high overall standard. Any that got accepted did very well and there were many excellent images that just fell short of the acceptance level. The awards were a very close fought contest, we would have liked to award twice as many certificates as were available. There was no disagreement to the top three in the projected images.
Some of the best ideas just tripped themselves up at the finish post with little things like not grounding people and objects. That tiny little shadow that you may not even notice when its there is very conspicuous by its absence.
There were very few landscapes entered in the projected section and even fewer that made it into the exhibition I did see a few that would have benefited from use of HDR techniques.
HDR, High Dynamic Range imaging was developed as a technique in the movie business to, about ten years, give extra control over lighting effects without significantly degrading the image. The technique slowly migrated to the stills and with the rise of digital photography gave a fairly quick fix to the limitation of the sensors (and film even more so) on not having enough dynamic range to properly capture shadow detail and highlight detail at the same time. This became very popular on the International Salon scene for a couple of years. Now there are lots of rumours that it was only a passing fad and is now out of fashion. I think, perhaps, this rumour has been taken up by those who either don’t know how to effectively use it or mistakenly believe it is simply a rather wild effect.
The truth of the situation is more likely that those who have been using it quite well have now gained to skills to use this technique to its best which can improve a suitable photo immeasurably.
The process is really quite simple, take two or more shots of the same scene at different exposures and combine these to create a single image in 32 bit space. You can then work on your image quite considerably without causing any damage to it like posterisation or pushing any data off the ends. You can then convert it back to 16 bit to tidy it and put in the finishing touches ready to print. There are a few difficulties in this, the first one is that 32bit cannot be displayed accurately which can make it tricky to edit and look very flat and dull, in fact most users completely bypass actually working in HDR which is, arguably, the most powerful aspect of this technique. They tend to use it simply as a way of combining the images and then getting access to the very powerful tone mapping controls of some of the more sophisticated HDR software. This leads me to the next problem, 32 bit images have to be converted to 16 or 8 bit to use, this needs some sort of tone mapping and where the process becomes rather subjective even, dare I say, artistic.
It is very easy to produce something that you can say Wow! that’s different, it must be good. Unfortunately “Wow! that’s different” doesn’t stay different for long and it soon becomes just another filter/effect that spoils what probably was a good image. How many tried the Cokin filters when they came out and how many tried the filters on Photoshop, its part of the learning curve, having gone through that phase it allows one to know how and when to use this effect.
What we are seeing now is HDR being used to improve images, to enhance the light and produce an image that the photographer saw and felt but the camera was unable to record. The early adopters of this process have a huge advantage now, they have got their messing about phase out of the way and can use this powerful technique to improve their image making.
I am working on some thoughts on HDR and a series on using Digital SLRs to shoot video – I got a Canon 7D shortly before Christmas and want to share the tips I have found to shoot better video.
Here are some initial thought on the 7D.
The 7D is a superb camera very responsive with a professional feel. Not as solid at the 1D tanks but much better than the xxD series and I managed to get it for about the same price as my venerable 20D. It’s very good in low light slightly more noisy than the 5DII but, to me, it is a little more pleasant and acceptable except a very high ISO (above ISI6400). It is better built than the 5DII and very usable to shoot sport in any weather.
Here is a shot from a family portrait session recently with Nicola and her beautiful, photogenic and very well behaved baby. This was taken between group shots and I just managed to catch the moment before it had gone.
I shot this at f/11 which is well into the diffraction limited zone for this sensor, it won’t be quite as crisp as it could be but for most normal uses no-one would ever know. If you want the sharpest possible image you need a damn good lens and to keep the aperture at f/8 or below
I shall put up a short video I did over Christmas in the next few days. I’m sorry but it will be the ubiquitous test video we all must get out of our system before we can move on to produce our masterpiece (Ha – I wish).
Congratulations to The Impact Group who won the January PSA EID Group D competition.
