errantember | Entries tagged with photography

With the exception of its completely unacceptable honesty level, I'm totally in love with my Olympus D-40ZOOM now that I have the new battery. It ran all day on one set of batteries, and I never got a low battery warning!

Gonna steal a technique from Ryan and post several of the better pictures from the set!

I think the honesty problem can be remedied with the addition of a small periscope for the viewfinder.

Current Location: Campus and the Drag

Click pic for more

After getting my filter for doing visible-light-only photography, I found myself wandering around downtown taking, shockingly, *pictures*.

Whining about a few truly idiotic feature choices aside, the new camera *rules*. The only regrets about buying it will belong to the offspring of the design engineers.

Current Location: South Downtown Austin

Click for the whole set.

I got my IS-1 about an hour before I left for Poly First Wednesday. Naturally I had already read the entire manual online, so I was able to stumble through these shots. The camera is factory sensitive for both visible light and Near Infrared, and examples of both are in this set. The IR-cut filter allowing me to take only visible light pictures arrives tomorrow.

Overall I'm pretty impressed so far. The camera seems to be everything I was hoping it would be, with a very few exceptions, and I'm already getting terrific shots in fairly bad conditions.

I ran out of battery power two blocks from Elysium. :)

Next time...

Current Location: Whole Foods and Red River
Current Music: The Police - I'll Be Watching You

So in response to the completely ridiculous drama over seeing through clothes with infrared photography, I've decide that the second picture I take with the new camera will have to be through someone's clothing. The camera arrives on Wednesday, and naturally I will be impatient to take the picture as soon as possible. I need to do a little more research about what kind of clothing is vulnerable to this kind of exploitation, so we can find some for our lucky model.

Volunteers?

The filter necessary for my camera to take normal optical shots will arrive ONE WHOLE DAY after the camera itself!

My life is *over*.

If you hear incoherent screaming from the direction of central Texas on Wednesday afternoon, you'll know why.

Yet another cautionary tale that white male privilege is *not* enough.

After extensive research over the past week, I've ordered a Fujifilm IS-1. I've been consistently seeing situations where the already fairly impressive low-light capabilities of my Sony DSC-F717 weren't good enough, largely due to the deliberate crippling of it's infrared capabilities. The CCDs in most digital cameras can see some infrared, but manufacturers install what's called a hot mirror that filters out this light. Given the choice between hand-modifying my existing camera, or selling it and getting an out-of-the-box modified newer one, I decided to buy my first new digital camera in years. There are a lot of things that are nice about having a digital SLR, and it wasn't an easy decision, but it basically comes down to the convenience of having a single lens for everything from telephoto to extreme macro, and the ability to do infrared well. I suspect in the long run I will probably get a DSLR in addition to this camera, for clearer pictures, more versatility, and more high-end features, but for now it's not worth the additional hassle, and, oh, the additional $1k. There are a *lot* of shots I've been able to get with the Sony's Nightshot feature, even as crippled as it is, that other photographers couldn't. Now, especially if I get or make and infrared spotlight and/or flash, I'll be able to get shots in near total darkness. Infrared photography itself is pretty interesting, too.

Current Mood: geeky

After awakening from a nap after a great day with Kat, I discovered the forecast had not only dropped to below freezing, but was to include freezing rain and sleet! I had already moved my citrus trees inside to protect my tiny orange and grapefruit harvest from the weather, but the flimsy torn-up garbage bags I had thrown up over my vegetables were suddenly completely inadequate to the task of saving my future food supply. Headlamp piercing through the not-quite-freezing-yet rain, I placed tarps over all my vegetables, almost completely covering them, including my climbing sweet peas. I overturned plastic pots on my strawberry plants, then bricked down a tarp over them, too.

Hopefully it will be enough. I can't believe it was in the high 80s a few days ago!

In other News, I've finally been Assimilated. I've somehow managed to live without an Ipod until now, but with the anticipation of professionalizing my firedancing and photography, it was time to bite the bullet. I managed to score a 30gb Ipod with Video for about $180 delivered on Ebay, and it arrived in a shockingly short period of time. I also got a new stereo for my car with a full Ipod interface, allowing me to browse my collection from the stereo. Finally, I checked my Sony AV cable, and, as I suspected, you can use it with the Ipod as long as you realize the red wire is now the video and the yellow wire is one of the audio signals. I didn't bother to test which audio signal was which, but I added tape markers on the cable so I can tell at a glance which one to use with the Sony and which with the Ipod. I also downloaded a copy of iSquint since I had video encoding problems with iTunes.

Current Location: Home and wet.

While I may have mentioned the existence of The Plan here, I haven't really given any status updates recently. This major theme is Changing My Life Between Burning Man 2006/2007.

Goal: Save the World by Ending the Neo-Conservative Domination of the Government of the United State of America:
Done.

Goal: Professionalize Photography:
I did my first real professional shoot for Sky of Hipnautica recently. I got paid for the gig, and will be getting model releases for the bands involved. I learned a lot about club photography, infrared photography, stage smoke, and post-process noise reduction.
( Read more... )

Normal pictures can only show about 7 EV (levels) of difference between the darkest and brightest part of a picture. This can make it hard to photograph things like a mountain sunset, since the sun is very bright but everything else is more than 7 EV away in the dark. By taking several pictures at different shutter speeds and combining them mathematically, it's possible to get a final picture where both the sun and the mountains are visibly exposed. This technique is called High Dynamic Range photography. The upper-left picture is the final result, while the other three show the range of exposures taken for reference. Notice that both the highlights of the darkest and shadows of the brightest originals are all present in the finished product. This picture shows details from over an 11 EV range squashed down to fit onto a normal computer monitor, which can only display about 1/2 of that dynamic range.

Thanks to Ryan Hayes for turning me onto this.

If there's one thing I've gotten from my Burning Man decompression experience this year, it's that it's time to stalk mannequins.

One night recently I was waiting for a friend at Whole Foods. I noticed the displays across the street were visually pretty interesting, so I pulled out my camera and started panning around. That's when I noticed the firmly erect nipple of one of the mannequins on display. The entire montage of me creepily hiding in the dark across the street to take secret pervy pictures of a non-victim was too fantastic to resist. I immediately formed the intention to develop a new disturbing habit of stalking mannequins throughout Austin (and why stop there?) Once I get my car fully legal again to assist with the inevitable (and likely highly amusing) interaction with curious police hard at work protecting the harrassment-free work environment of the local plastic undead, I'll be ready to get started. I'm tempted to get a party together and make it into a theater experience, but I think to begin with it's more authentically creepy to do it alone.

You can bet the pictures will be on Flickr. Oh yes they will.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Behind the lens, across the street, in the dark.
Current Music: Every Step You (don't) Take

Since I haven't been writing much recently, and a picture is worth a thousand words, I can give my editor a total tummy-ache without ever lifting a pen by posting a link to these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25788039@N00/sets/

Included are pictures from the Flipside 2006 Decompression and several recent firedancing practices where I was able to use my new Sony DSC-F717 to good effect.

Current Location: Inside the Pinhole

I recently had my Nikon 4500 ripped off at a Goddess Night event, and suddenly found myself in the market for a new digicam. My original plan was to poll my friends for likely candidates, then borrow each one for a few days to see how it performed. Experience tells me that simply looking at online reviews and a few minutes in the store aren't enough to really tell me if a camera works for me. My first prospect was a Panasonic DMC-F27. I spent two days of intense shooting with this model, taking over 500 pictures both during day and night, and below are my overall impressions. Several of the better pictures I took are posted here.
( Read more... )

There's been a great debate over photography at the annual Critical Tits bike ride at Burning Man. For the uninitiated, hundreds if not thousands of women go topless, many get body painted, and then they ride across the playa in a huge solidarity parade. Naturally lots of men with cameras show up, despite the fact that BM has rules against taking recognizable pictures of people without their consent. Of course, not all the pictures are recognizable. My comments are on page 8, posted as errantember.

I need a photography icon...