Entries Tagged as 'Media'

#wtrip11 – The Video – Newcastle to Melb in 4 Min ( ripping down the Hume at 300kph )

The first roadtrip with the Wolfcat Cubs for Xmas…. and it worked. The Cubs were very well behaved. We broke the trip up and back into two days.

The video from the trip up suffered from the usual technical problems ( this time a blown power inverter half way up ).. but with a new inverter onboard I finally got a clean video run for the trip home.

This shows the trip from Edgeworth ( Newcastle ) to Melbourne down the F3, around Sydney and down the Hume, stopping overnight in Jugiong then on to Melbourne. ( Approx 1100km in distance )
The video is also availble in 720p HD as well, just watch it on youtube 🙂

( and yes that is me at 2:09 taking photos )

(as far as the map is concerned, please ignore the error that Google Maps has that refuses to let you drive down the Hume near Holbrook )


View Larger Map

On reflection it was a good drive

The car in reflection of a truck hub on the trip home.

My Top 10 Images that I took in 2011

These are my top 10 images from 2011.  Some are shots that are for sale, others are stories and events.

I’d like to thank all those that encourage my photography over the last 12 months from those that purchased prints, to the countless who RT’d my tweets and left comments here and on Flickr.  And thanks for putting up with all the #wolfcatcubs photos as well.

Hopefully next year I will be able to get out some more… but I doubt it.

Wolf.

 

In reverse order of date taken.

Now that is a bolt of lightning
Now that is a bolt of lightning
Finally got a nice clear bolt of lightning… now if only I had a clear view of the sky…..

Monstering Melbourne
Monstering Melbourne
Over 20,000 views makes this my most popular image on flickr.

and all the details on when and how this shot was taken are in my Missing from the EXIF blog post

And for sale at Redbubble

 

Simplicity
Simplicity
This has a Japanese feel to it for me. Shot from the End of North Road, at 500mm.

And for sale at Redbubble

 

Dancer
Dancer
Something about this shot sings to me. The simplicity, the story and the power.

And for sale at Redbubble

 

Mum and Zara
Mum and Zara
Choosing one shot of the #wolfcatcubs was hard, this one for me says it all.

 

Red and White – Moomba Fireworks
Red and White - Moomba Fireworks
The first time I actually went to Moomba.

And for sale at Redbubble

 

The Belly of The Beast
The Belly of The Beast
After a number of trips to Avalon, I finally got lucky. Not only did I have the right gear, (Nikon D7000 + Sigma 150-500mm Lens) but I got to see this aircraft fly.

 

Contemplating the day that was
Contemplating the day that was
One of the first shots taken with my Sigma 150-500mm. A lens that 12 months later I am still in love with.

Step by Step, showing the Lightroom processing for the the shot here

And for sale at Redbubble

 

Keep your Cool
Keep your Cool ( B&W Version )
(from one of the only out of the city photo trips I did all year)

And for sale at Redbubble

 

The long shot… North Road Jetty #nyemelb
Midnight Fireworks in Melbourne #nyemelb

Details and Background about this shot here

And for sale at Redbubble

 

 

Now I don’t want to tell the eftpos people how to suck eggs…. but

Now, I know I am not an ad executive type.  My clothes aren’t classy enough, and I don’t drive a Porsche.  Yet as a member of the great unwashed I still have a few ideas about how an ad should work.

Firstly that ad should sell something, say a product or a service, then it should make me want to get that service as soon as possible.  Certainly before I change my mind.
Hmm... Yes I'd like an icecream

Why yes, I’d love an ice-cream.  And what I can use EFTPOS for it. Why all of a sudden EFTPOS felt the need for expensive TV ads and this huge placement in Flinders St Station I will never know.  Perhaps NFC is coming soon, who knows, but I digress from my need for an ice-cream.

Low and behold, just below that giant ice-cream, the one that I can purchase on EFTPOS is an ice-cream shop.

Perfect….. well it would be….

hmmm... no eftpos

 

See that little yellow sign.  Small problem with that sign… yes, they don’t have EFTPOS.

Seriously who placed those ads in that location.  Why didn’t they either A: not put the ice-cream banner next to the ice-cream shop, or B: give the shop EFTPOS for the duration of the campaign.

Even better, they could have let two other shops, the two out of five there that actually have EFTPOS have a limit below $5 per transaction.  Why, because then I could have brought the cup of coffee that is in one of the other banners that is less than $5.  The one the ad says I can buy on EFTPOS, the one I can’t.

But then, what do I know.

P.S Dear staff at Flinders St Station, why do you get so upset with people taking photos all the time.

Missing from the Exif: Over the Rainbow – Federation Square

We all know that a huge percentage of photos are right time right place.  For me this was even more so yesterday heading home from work.

HTC - Incredible S versionThose that know me know I carry my DSLR camera with me nearly everywhere.  Yesterday proves why.  The best photo is always the one you get with the camera you have.  To that end it is preferable that you have a better camera. So walking through town on my way home mother nature kindly put on a very nice rainbow. ( This shot for example is from my phone)

I had no more than 10min to spend getting shots by which time the rainbow had gone.

I used a Nikon D7000 with the kit 18-105mm lens.  When I could see where the rainbow was facing, I quickly walked up to Fed Square so I had the foreground element I was after.  Rainbows are all very nice, but framing a foreground adds an extra dimension to the shot.  I didn’t have my 11-16mm Tokina on me, so decided to go for the stitch later panorama series of photos.

When shooting panoramas it really helps to move the camera off Auto Mode as well.  This way your shot has even lighting across the whole image.  If you shoot them in auto, you will end with dark and light banding as each shot has a different exposure.  You can if you have time shoot in manual to pull up the dark parts of the shot if you want, but I was racing the setting sun with this one.

This shot had a bit of post processing as well.  Given I was racing time to get all the frames for the panorama as well. In Lightroom all that I did was just apply the lens correction to all of the shots.  This takes out the barrel distortion and vignetting as well making stitching much easier.  Then I exported all the full size images as JPG’s to Microsoft ICE.  I did try Photoshop, but ICE did a much better job of stitching.

Then came the fun part.  Images never look the same on a monitor as they do on the back of the camera.  In this case all of the Fed Square was to dark.  The sky was balanced how I wanted it, but not the people.

In Photoshop I created a Curves adjustment layer, then created a mask for the bottom half of the image. Then I adjusted the curves to help pull out the rich golden tones that I hadn’t pulled up in the raw shots.

Stage 2

All up, about 30 min of processing work for this shot…

I’m a really pleased with the final image and hope you are as well….

Over the rainbow - Federation Square

 

(P.S Now you can buy it as a large photographic print as well as in a mounted print…. )

 

Shooting Day Zero – A Guide to taking photos of your new baby.

#wolfcatcubs Awww... unbearable cuteAs you may be aware and the large bags under my eyes from lack of sleep attest to I have just become a father to twins.  Now being a keen photographer as well, I wanted to make sure I captured their first moments in this world.  I thought whilst I still had a touch of sanity in my brain left I’d write down some pointers for taking photos, and tech..I’ll leave all the machines that go ping to the hospital of course.

You’ll need to do a bit of planning, but given that you get one moment to experience, well in my case two, you do kind of want to get it right.

Firstly, work out with the one doing all the work what she is comfortable with.  This will stop arguments down the track before you start sharing photos that she and possibly the rest of the world doesn’t want to be seen.  As a friend on Twitter told me..“What has been seen, can’t be unseen”.

Whilst the best photo you always get is the one with the camera you have on you at the time, there are still a few things to make life easier.  You will want to check that you can take photos to begin with.  Some places get a bit funny about it and you certainly don’t need to be having an argument with the doctors at that time

Meet #wolfcatcubs - ZaraNext, don’t take all your gear, you won’t need it. In my case I took a D7000, and 178-105mm lens and a 50mm f/1.8 and my SB700… Not even using the 50mm lens till much later in the day. Then make sure it is all charged, days in advance. If you have a real flash, take a spare set of batteries, and spare cards for the camera as well. If you wanted to use a friends camera make sure you are familiar with it, even in automode before hand.

Double check the timestamp on your camera is accurate.  You will want that to be correct in the years to come.

So, we have the gear, we have permission, and everything is charged.  Don’t forget the camera. I know of cases where this has happened.  If you have a checklist for hospital, put the camera etc on that list. Moreover, if you don’t have a checklist for hospital, make one.

<drum roll>The big day…. </drum roll>

Unless you are a professional photographer who can work under intense emotional pressure, put the camera on automode.  You don’t want to be stuffing around with settings at the time.  Make sure if you are shooting on a DSLR, shoot RAW, at the maximum resolution your camera shoots at.. This gives you the option later to tweak white balance etc with no impact on the images.

Most important at this point, pay attention to the moment.  Sure having the photos is great, but missing the moment for a photo, I think not.  I didn’t get some photos because I was in awe at what was happening, so should you be.

Then, we you get the chance, take LOTS of photos.  Babies move a lot, at least with a real flash on the camera, which of course you can bounce behind you in a white room nicely you will get some keepers. Try not to use the onboard flash, it creates nasty shadows and points into very delicate little eyes.  Another option is to shoot at a higher ISO and in shutter priority mode at 125 or higher.

Erin puts her best foot fowardA few other tips for photos, you can act as a sense of scale.  You’ll soon forget how small they were, putting a little hand next to yours will give you that. Shoot the little details as well.  The hands, feet, ears and nose.  People look at these for family resemblance.

How hard can this dad thing be....If your camera is in fully automode you can hand the camera to the nurses or staff to get a photo of you as well.  You will want shots of you with them as well as them.

I did my 50mm shots of the girls about 4 hours after they were born once things had calmed down a little. Then I did the uploading of the images.  I took my EEPC Slate, which let me deal with the RAW files in lightroom, but onboard processing will do just fine as well for those first shots.

Hand #wolfcatcubsBlack and white photos of babies are done for a reason.  It evens out skin tones.  A new born babies skin can be anything from yellow to bright red.  Shooting RAW gives you more flexibility to process these post the event.

Then make a backup of all the images.  There are going to be images that if you lose, you will never get back.  That night I then made offsite backups of the RAW files as well.  You can never have too many backups.

So that covers your photos, but a few other things you are going to need.  If you have a laptop, take the charger for your smart phone as well.  It will run out of charge, you will be making a lot of calls. Get a cheap Bluetooth headset or a mic for your phone as well.  That way you can have a coffee and make all the calls you need to on the day without fretting about running out of charge and still having a hand free.

Finally at this point breath, relax and enjoy those memories of sleep.

 

McDonalds introduce IQ test in Job advertising…

well either that or the company tasked with making the banners screwed up.

Personally, I’ll go with the later.

IMAG0171-1

Funny thing about web addresses, is that they need a full domain name.  Not sure when that rule was introduced… oh wait when the internet was invented…

Still, at least browsers are getting smarter…  IE9 bounced me to Google as the search engine for the result..  Firefox sent me to the US McDonalds careers page….

( This was the McDonalds on North Road, Ormond )

The real reason track maintaince is so slow in Victoria

This video speaks for itself…

Metro really shouldn’t have outsourced track maintenance to birds…

Gardenvale Train Station, Melbourne

HTC Incredible S – Camera Comparison

( due to my blog being nuked when my host went down… click here for my ASUS EEPC Slate Review )

 

One thing comparing the Incredible S to the Desire that has been dramatically improved is the camera.  Not just the bump from 5 to 8megapixels, but the processing software seems to have been given some real attention.  The Desire’s camera was “flat” in the shots it took and for me wasn’t worth using.

The Incredible S however is a very rich, vibrant.  It isn’t a DSLR ( which I carry with me nearly everywhere), but it is a great point and shoot camera for a wide variety of shooting environments.

The camera does low light very well, and limits ISO Noise very very well. One issue with lowlight though is that it pushes more red into images than is necessary.  Whilst the lighting at the nightclub where I took the photos of the Cat Empire, was heavily skewed red, this red dominance also came out in the sunset shot that I took at the river, there at least I had the Nikon D7K to get a much more realistic colour balance out of the shot. Which also is a case of apples and oranges, one is phone, one is prosumer DSLR :-)

The flash on the camera is up to the task, but you will notice that the band shots don’t have the flash on, because I wanted photos of the band, not the back of people’s heads.  You might want to remember that next time you’re at a concert. The great thing is that the Incredible also remembers the last state the flash was on as well, even when you exit the app.  A nice touch, that means you can take photos quickly without having to reset the camera every time.

For reasons that are not knee bone is connected to the leg bone type of logic, if you are using the phone is being used as a WIFI hot spot ( which is great if you don’t have the USB cable with you, or you wish to share it with a few friends ), you can’t use the flash.  I’m sure there is a good technical reason for this, but I can’t think what it was.

I’d much rather that the effects vs the settings could have been switched.  Then I am a lot more of purist when it comes to photography anyway.  The face detection works really well, even if the subject is in the background of the image, and the cameras inherent depth of field gets everything in focus. White Balance etc all seem to work just fine but nested as they are, tweaking one item, such as white balance, involved more clicks as sub items take over the menu structure.

The geotagging feature is great to leave on, but is one that I would have given higher priority to in the menus.  I would love to be able to one click turn it off and on for photos as I went.  Photos from home for example would not be tagged or from a friends place, but out in public tag away is the way I like to shoot.  The GPS seems to get a fix very quickly, often one or two shots in a new location and they are tagged. A cursory look at images I have uploaded to flickr shows the location very accurately as well.

Sure, the camera has nice little effects, to be honest the only one I would consider using is the depth of field filter.  Even then unless it was something I couldn’t get a feel for a particular shot that I was after.  As a rule, and this applies to all photos that you take with your phone etc, don’t and I mean DON’T apply camera filters.  Why, because in 12 months time, or even the day after you won’t have the unedited version.  The photos off the Incredible should print really well, and unless you have the “clean” version you are going to regret not having it sooner rather than later.

But, words are words, images are images…  I let them do the talking… ( ok, with just a touch of voice over…. )

(All images link to full size flickr version )

Dull Sunset Comparison

I am not a camera phone horder... just doing a review...

(Plus the Nikon D7000 that took the shot)

Nikon D7000

cloudy_sunset-nikon-d7k

Nokia N8

cloudy_sunset-nokia-n8

HTC Incredible S

cloudy_sunset-htc-incredible

Nokia N95-8gb

cloudy_sunset-nokia-n85-8gb

Nokia X-6

cloudy_sunset-nokia-x6

HTC Desire

cloudy_sunset-htc-desire

JVC GC – FM1

cloudy_sunset-jvc-gc-fm1

 

 

Xres Yres ISO Exposure Focal Length Aperture Width Height JPG Size Altitude Lat Long
Model – NIKON D7000 300 300 280 1/125s 18.00 mm F 5.60 4855 3216 6.4MB NO GPS
Model – N8-00 300 300 105 1/191.4s 5.90 mm F 2.80 4000 3000 1.4MB NO FIX
Model – HTC Incredible S 72 72 100 No Data 4.57 mm No Data 3184 1904 1MB 0 m S 37  53  35.05 E 144  59  17.76
Model – N95 8GB 300 300 100 1/500s 5.60 mm F 2.80 2592 1944 .77mb NO FIX
Model – X6-00 300 300 100 1/250s 5.20 mm F 2.80 2592 1944 .68mb 30.50 m S37  53  56.12 E144  59  5.34
Model – HTC Desire 72 72 55 No Data 4.31 mm No Data 2592 1552 .59mb NO FIX
Model – GC-FM1 72 72 100 1/109.9s 3.91 mm F 2.82 3264 2448 2.1mb NO GPS

 

Notes:

The order is how I judge the devices.

Unsurprisingly the DSLR wins :-) , Next is the amazing Nokia N8, which is simply amazing as a camera on a phone. But given the hardware the Incredible S was against, it did do very well.

DPI, the higher the number the better the print.  72DPI is great for onscreen, 300DPI is better for printing, this is reflected broadly in filesize.

The D7000 shot was taken in RAW and exported via Lightroom 3. I do have the Solmeta GPS for the D7000, but it wasn’t plugged in J, the other phones that didn’t get a GPS fix had not been used in sometime and were not already on, when I did the test.

Both the Desire and the Incredible S are lacking much in the way of EXIF data, so a full comparison of EXIF Data is not possible.  Either this is an ongoing firmware issue, or shows the limitations of the HTC Camera System.

Final point, remember that the Nokia N95-8gb is from 2007, so it is the oldest of all off the above devices by a number of years. Still the camera in that phone still stands up.

And here are some more shots from the Incredible S

Good light

macro-goodlight

Very dark room

macro-lowlight-incredibles

The Macro as I said is fantastic.  Add the touch the screen to move the focus point and you can get some great close up photos.  The text in these images is nice and crisp.

This is a pretty sunset….

HTC Incredible Sunset

Sunset - HTC Incredible S

Nikon D7000 Sunset

nikon-d7k-sunset

As you can see from above, the HTC made the sky a lot pinker than it was.  Whilst most people wouldn’t care.. I do.

And now some night shots..

First from the HTC Desire

band_shot-htc-desire

Now two from the Incredible S ( at both ends of the zoom).

band-shot-htc-incredible-1

band-shot-htc-incredible-2

And thanks for getting to the end of this rather long post…. The camera as I said is a great point and shoot, and is a good phone camera.

At the End of North Road (A flickr set)

Thought I would set up a Flickr Set for my fav place to go and get photos. The North Road Foreshore Park, Brighton. Having got a few in the last few days, which when writing the description I thought I should expand upon.

About a 10min drive from home, this is the first place I think of when interesting weather is approaching, it looks like a good sunset, or I need along shot of the city. Parking is easy ( apart from NYE ) and I know the area so well now.

Yes there are a lot of sunset shots, but that is the time I aim to get there, with winter and the end of daylight savings though, sunsets will be alot harder to get due to work etc. But it is a great place for long exposures of the city at night, even the big fireworks shows.

I hope you enjoy this slideshow and take inspiration from the fact that one simple location can provide so much variety.

Missing from the EXIF: Lightroom Tweaks to Contemplating the day that was

So I finally have a Nikon D7000 to play with.  Sadly it is not mine however, and I shall cry myself to sleep for a while over that.

To put the camera through it paces I thought I would head to one of my usual spots, take just the Sigma 150-500mm lens and see what I could get. Whilst looking for shots, I walked back from the jetty a bit and found the perfect composure I was looking for.  I am a big fan of taking photos of people, where you can’t tell who the person is.  If you want to enter shots into competitions for example, they often want release forms for the subject.  Not having the subject identifiable fixes this issue.

I took 18 shots to get this one,whilst it is either the first or last shot that ends up being the keeper, this was in the middle of the series.  I was looking for a breaking wave and the girls hair to be flowing just the right amount. All the while I was kneeling on concrete to get the right angle for the shot as well.

Here is the Final Version of the Image as you can buy it on Redbubble

Each of these images opens into a new tab/window, in Flickr Lightbox mode so you can see all the details.  These are untouched screenshots, so that you can see the whole process I went through. You will notice a few extra steps, where I tried a few things, which didn’t work, then carried on, such as a black and white version. But I haven’t commented on them.

The time frame for this processing was just under 5 min of actual sitting in front of the computer time.

Stage 1: This is the Raw Shot. So, I know I have the composition right, but the colour balance and weighting of the shot isn’t quite what I was after…

contemplate-stage-1

Stage 2: As my Sigma 150-500mm Lens is in the Lens, issues such as barrel distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration can be fixed in one click.

contemplate-stage-2

Stage 3: I knew I wanted to pull the blacks up in this image, so I did a quick tweak of the black clipping just to see if it was worth progressing with the image processing. Often, once you start processing, with an end result in mind, you will come across images that you just decide not to finish with.

contemplate-stage-3

Stage 4: Ah Autotone… I like you as much as I hate you. It always overblows shots as far as I am concerned. I always end up pulling the shot back, but it can be a good quick fix to a number of issues.

contemplate-stage-4

Stage 5: And yep, the next thing after the autotone, is to pull the exposure back from the +0.65 that Lightroom’s Autotone did, back to +0.23. So some of the image is brought out, but not to much.

contemplate-stage-5

Stage 6: And like Stage 5, this was a tweak to pull the brightness down, so that the image is a lot more muted over all.

contemplate-stage-6

Stage 7: I needed to go back and pull the blacks up a bit more at this point, to push detail out of the shadows that had crept in so that your eyes follow the lines in the image.

contemplate-stage-7

Stage 8: Hand holding a 3kg lens of camera and lens in high winds whilst kneeling on concrete does of course mean your shot is never going to be perfectly straight. This was just a tweak to the rotation to line up the vertical elements.

contemplate-stage-8

Stage 9: This is a two stage process. Firstly using the Brush Stroke tool, I selected the girl, and the pole she was leaning against so that I could apply a filter directly to just those parts of the image. As Lightroom, remembers the last settings, it of course made them over exposed, but it is handy to see the shapes that I was covering.

contemplate-stage-9

Stage 10: Now I just reduce the exposure on the brush tool path, from 1 to -0.88, which drops the colour and the detail from the girl leaving a stronger shadow and removes the distraction of the details of her clothing, but keeps her hair and the rest of the image in balance.

contemplate-stage-10

Stage 11: Once you have finished doing the major changes to the balance of an image, what looked straight before may not look as straight again. So this was to fix the aesthetic straightness of the image.

contemplate-stage-11

Stage 12: In all the above tweaks the golden colour had become a little washed out. So this was just a tweak to the Clarity and Vibrance to pull the image up a bit.

contemplate-stage-12

Stage 13: And to finish off, just a small push to the saturation to ensure the image colour and feel was as rich as I wanted.

contemplate-stage-13

And the Exif Data for the Shot:

Camera Nikon D7000
Exposure 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 250 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:02:19 23:02:36
Exposure Program Shutter speed priority AE
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:02:19 19:56:42
Max Aperture Value 5.7
Subject Distance 10 m
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Auto
Focal Length In35mm Format 375 mm
Scene Capture Type Standard
Gain Control None
Contrast Normal
Saturation Normal
Sharpness Normal
GPS Latitude 37 deg 53′ 28.29″ S
GPS Longitude 144 deg 59′ 6.89″ E
GPS Altitude Ref Above Sea Level
GPS Altitude 2 m
GPS Map Datum WGS-84
Creator Tool Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3
Lens 150.0-500.0 mm f/5.0-6.3
Approximate Focus Distance 10

and the Flickr Version of the Shot…
Contemplating the day that was