ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Tuesday 10 September 2013

WHAT A TANGLED WEB. (10/09/13

What could be easier than taking a picture of a sky for a theatrical back drop…….Almost everything!… In my short experience of photography.

I’m down in Sherriff Hutton just outside York. I’m here to get wrecked with an old friend and take pictures of some beautiful old cars and a posh shit house and shower block. Both require multiple strobes and a very posh lens. I had three strobes all connected through Pocket Wizard to the camera, the test shots last night were a disappointment, that's a posh word for crap. I’m there with the best wide angle lens yet built for under £2k. I can tilt. I can shift, I can focus cos I have it tethered to the computer.  But computer she say no, I’m boss. I say yes. Computer she was right. One strobe wasn’t firing. That is my fault. I have two diffusers but no soft box so draped a tea towel over the third strobe. I removed the cloth and it fired perfect. Canon is cunning they can detect a pot wiper from fifty quids worth of diffuser. They won’t trick me though. I hung the same rag from a stick on two clothes pegs and it couldn’t tell. I’m not daft. Another free week on the piss. Even idiots deserve a break now and again.

Does anyone know how to scale a sky down. I have tried starting really big and then getting closeish with a 50mm lens, I’ve tried with Telephoto from 135mm to 800mm. I’ve tried building up to eighteen frame panoramas and scaling them. Nothing works. So I tried projecting them on the inside of a quadrant of a cylinder. That was Interesting. I tried projecting them onto the inside of a sphere or hemisphere if one is a pedant. All and one look worse than this.

_MG_1566_7_8_fused copy

_MG_1566_7_8_fused Which is this bit of this. I used to use Genuine Fractuals to upscale. I think the Adobe Bicubic smoother does a good job on a sky. I have this at a metre wide. And it looks fine and in scale. I  have found two wee bits of crap on the sensor. Years since I bothered looking. Olympus were good at mucking out, brilliant at building camera bodies and Zuiko lenses. They just didn’t keep pace with full frame or even two thirds and the software.

If this doesn’t work I can take eight frames of this view with a 400mm lens and merge them. That will be some file size but since I’ve got the new laptop it copes well with Baking, Rendering and Saving…even uncompressed Png file extensions. What is Png…Don’t ask me but many of the graphics folk…..

(They usually grow a little beard on their chin and have a big silver lined hole in one ear lobe. They tend to wear mascara and in some extreme cases eye liner. I’m not being sexist both sexes of the Arty Farty folk look much the same….Like some types of butterfly. I have to have a sniff to tell them male from female.) I’ve stopped doing the sniffing. When I find out I find out I’m too old.

They require Short compression Png extension files. It takes twice as long as normal Png. Why does short mean bigger. That is artists for you. Next time I find a nubile artist I’ll let her know mine is a short Png file extension.

In future I will supply uncompressed Tiff. Well I am willing to if I can sort Drop Box. Otherwise I’ll just post a memory stick. Sticks are nothing like a stick, the new ones are as big as my thumb nail. Hold 8GB so are more cost effective than Drop Box. I’m biased, I’m a bit thick and couldn’t make Dropsy Boxy work.

I’m halfway to getting on the way through yet another week.

Have fun.

 

36 comments:

  1. HI Adrian I have not a clue what you aretalking about. Hope some other bloggers canhelp.

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    1. Margaret, I have trawled the internet for the solution. The solution is that the client meets me in an artists digital domain next week and it will get sorted. It is a very complicated job. The clouds have to look one hundred and fiftieth life size. They have to be printed at about a meter wide. It is beyond me so when flummoxed scream help.

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  2. My goodness, you are deeper into photographic equipment than I realized.

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    1. Bob, I'm an anorak this image was one of eighteen taken from a tripod, leveling base, spherical mount, camera with a tilt shift lens and, and with cable release. I may not be successful but I do throw my all at the job...It's body and soul or nothing for me. I'll post some strobe lit images. They improve your normal image. It doesn't look real but they do look interesting. If it's not raining tomorrow I'll shoot three frames of a ride on mower.
      I have to go and inter flashes inside cars in the morning. Then I have to beat the wee buggers if they don't fire in sinc.
      I don't really know how the posh photographers do it. I just have a cheap seven quid million candle power lamp, I shine it and look and pop a strobe there. There is where a bit of light looks better. I can dial it up or down but that only affects exposure. I can't use any sinc speed above shutter sinc which to be safe is 1/200s. I would love a leaf shutter lens.

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    2. What Margaret said.

      As the fellow answered when someone asked him what he thought should be done about all the ignorance and apathy, "I don't know and I don't care."

      I'm not trying to be snarky; I really don't know and I really don't care. I just like to look at the pretty pictures...and read what you write.

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  3. See email re Dropbox file sharing.

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    1. Thanks John, You can sort the world. I joined Drop Box because Google told me to. Now I've joined they send me two e-mails a day but allow me to attach 7MB. Funny folk are Google. It is free but quite invasive. Mark needs Hi-Res images Mark needed Moffat Toffees. Try sending them by e-mail.
      'll have a look at your mail and thank you.

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    2. We might be talking about two different cloud storage systems.
      With www.dropbox.com you get a starting space of 1GB. I think.
      If you want to share files (photos or whatever) you upload them to a sharing folder then all you put in an email is a unique link to the file(s) which Dropbox will generate.
      I rarely get any mail from Dropbox, only when they have something new to relate to users.

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    3. Should have said the sharing folder on Dropbox is called Public.

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    4. Thanks John, Daft thing is since I subscribed to Drop Box RocketMail accepts big files. It takes a while but massive files do.

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  4. OMG Adrian, you did a good job of stringing all those words and thoughts together for someone who is on free piss for a week. Or maybe it's because you are on the piss that you are so chatty today. LOL
    You know what they say > never drink and blog! Not suggesting you did :)

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    1. Carol, itwas a five pint lunch. I even found room for a steak pie and veg. It is not easy growing old ir saps ones mental stamina.

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  5. Sorry you lost me there Adrian, what are the cars you're going to see/seen?

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    1. There are six I have to do from a Model T, through to a Le Mans Blower Bentley, It's a replica but almost perfect. There's a Riley engined Frazer Nash and a similar chain driven beast with a six cylinder Alvis engine. I did his photos last year for the insurance company. Unfortunately I can't post them unless he is good enough to bring one to the pub.

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  6. Sorry Adrian but I'm a little confused! I found it easy to understand all the individual words the problem seems to be in the way that you've listed them one after the other! So the best I can do is give you a few suggestions in the hope that at least one will be suitable in way of an answer, encouragement, support or commiseration. (please except the appropriate!)

    Yeh! great stuff, love it!....[;o)

    Sorry to hear that, I hope it gets better soon...[;o)

    Keep up the good work, I can't wait for the next instalment...[;o)

    Very interesting, I bet you're really pleased with your achievement...[;o)

    I saw them in the shop the other day, I think I might buy one...[;o)

    I tried that...didn't like it...urhhgg!...[;o)

    Sounds like a plan to me, I'll meet you at 8pm...[;o)

    I hope your head gets better soon?...[;o)

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    1. I'm fine today Trevor. Perm any one from your eight and it will be fine by me,

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  7. I don't like dropbox. Png, if you are talking ".png" files hold the data for 3D images as opposed to say, ".jpg" files which are only 2D.

    I haven't a clue about the camera stuff. I despise being critical especially of something that is way beyond me. I'm going to do it anyway and say the clouds look too much like smoke to me. Perhaps it is not that they are too dark but that there is too much contrast in the color or that they are not blue enough.

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    1. David, you follow the man I'm doing these for. He puts so much time and effort in that the least I can do is do my best.
      I have now sussed the system and workflow.
      The contrast can be adjusted before print as can virtually anything. We have studio time next Thursday when all will, no doubt go belly up again. The sky is just a backdrop so can't be too crisp or colourful or it will detract or draw the eye from the modeling. Basically one has to produce a crap photograph.

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  8. I don't have a clue on how to scale the sky down ... sorry ... but I know I will return to track you down ... again and again ... kisses to your pooches ... and ... okay, one kiss for A as well :)

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    1. Cheers Cat but kisses and cuddles in the virtual world, though appreciated, don't do the business.

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  9. Out of all this I discovered a new word...bicubic! I had to look at the sucker a time or two before I could say it. then I thought , what the hell does it mean? How can something be bicubic?

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    1. Red, Bicubic is Adobe for an algorithm , a bit of mathematics converted to code. There are three versions Auto...It's okay for the web.
      Smoother for enlargement that generates extra pixels.
      Sharper for reduction it knocks a few pixels out.
      I never thought about the word....I just use what it does.

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    2. Okay , this makes sense. I get cubic and the prefix bi. I'm surprised as to what it really means.

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  10. Hi Adrian, if you are using strobes then you should be using a light/flash meter. This is essential as you have no other way to figure out what your f/stop readings are, your wonderful camera won't do it for you. To much messing about.

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    1. Horst I know. I'm an idle beggar. Flash meters are a fortune. I use pocket Wizard to fire the three 430 EX IIs and set to camera sinc which is about 1/200s. I set them all to TTL then set the camera to -1EV. Shooting in RAW I have a couple of stops to play with. With pocket Wizards little camera mounted thingy I can dial down or up ant of the three strobes. Even if I invested in a meter I bet I would still have twelve frames in the bin. Using TTL I had three yesterday. One of those was because I captured a strobe in a mirror.

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    2. Hi Adrian, not a bad Idea the way you did this, I just wonder how big are your strobes (how many watt seconds per unit). I have one 1000 watt studio strobe and one 600 watt studio strobe. I bet you could find a Light/flash meter for around 200 pounds. Try looking for a Sekonic digilite F flash meter. it does both insodent & flash.

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  11. HI Adrian... Oh dear man you need to take a walk,sit by the sea and breathe!! : )


    Grace

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    1. Grace, I worked like hell for six hours yesterday. Then I went out to the pub and chilled. I was so chilled that I had trouble walking.

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  12. Sounds like a trip to the pub might be the answer.


    peter

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    1. Peter, it was and it was also the problem. Only when I'm full of falling down water do I think it's the solution.

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  13. dat zijn nog eend dretgende luchten maar wel mooie foto,s.

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    1. Thanks, ik begreep dit niet normaal behulp van Google Translate Ik kan er wel uit.

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  14. I'm lost and I'm not sure I even want to be found.

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  15. This is fascinating; I have to confess that I've scaled down skies using distortion filters in PS. If used subtly, no great amount of distortion can be detected.

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    1. Maria, it looks to be working. I'll see what they look like when they are printed.

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