Anyone do anything special for 10.10.10?

@RowlandShaw :I agree with that. After looking at so many of them they actually started to make my head hurt :P But a breath of fresh air that should be intermixed with other types in a wedding photo shoot.

:)

@jrista Shit, I need to travel and find amazing places like that guy so I fail at capturing the beauty to his level. He sure does like tone-mapping though, but at least he knows how to not overdo it.

@Eruditass I don't think he does HDR. He definitely likes saturation, though. He takes it right to the edge.

I wish I could travel the world like that, and do nothing but photography.

What a relaxing lifestyle.

I wonder how relaxing it would be

In the same way that a golf pro might get sick of playing golf

D'you get anything to capture 10/10/10?

?

Is 10/10/10 special?

Only as one of those odd dates

ah

well, I was planning on going to Roxbourough State Park today

its over cast and the temperature dropped by like 15 degrees

so I am not so sure anymore

We had good weather here today

Although the stoomtroopers started their invasion in town: flickr.com/photos/ratarsed/5067547813

hehe

sci-fi convention time?

hey, do you use lightroom?

Started recently

not a sci-fi convention

think it was a publicity stunt for a model shop :)

Thought I'd give LR a go, as CS2 doesn't like RAW files form the 5D2

@jrista it seems to be quite good at focusing on the development process, without getting too hung up on the mechanics of fixing particular problems.

@RowlandShaw Yeah, its pretty nice.

I had a question about cropping though.

Oh?

You know how when you rotate an image, you get a grid with smaller cells.

Do you know if it is possible to change the size of those cells?

Not sure on that one

They are helpful for horizontally leveling an image, however there are times when the horizon ends up in the middle of two edges, and its difficult to tell if your perfectly horizontal.

Sometimes the legal agreements between a customer and a company sound flat out WRONG

That one definitely sounds wrong

Know of any other print shots that can do very wide panoramics?

Like, 8"x31"

I have some 12"x36" panoramic frames

I wanted to put some prints in them and see if I could sell em

I always use printitoncanvas.co.uk

They do proper wide

widest aspect being 12" x 60"

only canvas?

I find canvas suits my shots quite well

I like Wrapped Canvas myself.

I don;t think it works for all of my shots, though

I was hoping to find some kind of soft luster panoramic print

I keep meaning to get another printed up soonish

Just need to clear some wall space first

heh

my problem is I have too much clear wall space

I'm trying to find ways to fill it up.

My printer only does up to 13x19

Although I want to convince a local gallery to sell some of mine

I've been thinking about just biting the bullet and getting a real nice 24" wide printer next year

@RowlandShaw oh, that would be nice

Might get lucky

heh, ok...here is a WEIRD google fluke for you

I searched for "panoramic photo printing near 80015"

my city is called Aurora

I didn't use Aurora in my search

however, all of the results were "Aurora Borealis prints blah blah

lol

I don't want Aurora Borealis prints! :P

I want print shops near the zip code 80015 >.>

Thsi is why I use bing

Bing is good for most things

Bing.com gave me far more relevant results

I used to shop a lot through bing

because of their cashback program

probably saved some $500 or more

but, sadly, they discontinued that program :(

The bing shopping in the UK is via ciao; which in turn, isn't that great

they don't just search all online sellers for you?

Here in the US, they would search through any online seller

I normally end up using www.camerapricebuster.co.uk

Tons of them had contracts with Bing for Bing Cashback

ciao is a price comparison site

you could get anywhere from 2%-20% off of products when purchased with Bing Cashback

Nice

you could get anywhere from 2%-20% off of products when purchased with Bing Cashback

@jrista Tone mapping does not require multiple exposure, it's just local adjustments like dodging and burning

@Eruditass Ah. You think his work is overly tone mapped?

most of it no, I think most of it is very well done

and it looks closer to what we would actually see

yeah

some of the ones with plants I think could be toned down a bit

I think many of them are a tad more saturated than we would see, but thats also kind of what I like about his work

I thought it was a little overdone

would look good printed, though

yeah

I am thinking about getting one of his 24x36" prints

I have some huge walls, and I need to fill them up

BTW, for photo printing, this place "sounds" really awesome:

you're supposed to fill them up with your own shots!

bigphotohelp.com

that's why I got into photography

my sigma 10-20mm should be here next week.. mmmm...

@Eruditass I do, generally, however I do like the work of some other photographers, and I have more wall space than I could possibly fill with my own pictures

then there will be a couple weeks over overcooked HDR shots that my friends will have to endure before I settle down

I'd love to get my hands on the 8-15 :)

@RowlandShaw Me too!

how much does that cost, anyway?

has the price been revealed?

I have two photos from other photographers -- although one of those was my dad :)

fisheyes are interesting

yeah

especially for night sky milky way time-lapse shots

I've seen some amazing videos from sundown to sunup, showing the stars and milky way move across the sky from horizon to horizon

they used the older 15mm fisheye though

£1394

I've seen some good astro timelapses

oof

too bad I suck at astrophotography. I blame my location?

yeah, location is usually the problem

I tend to like rectilinears like the Sigma 8-16mm for landscape though

I wanted to get up into the mountains this weekend to shoot some sky

but it got all stormy and freezing cold

fisheyes are great for certain architecture and action stuff like bike tricks

@Eruditass Agreed, I prefer rectilinear for landscape.

I'm heading up to shoot York Minster soon

Lately, many of my best landscape shots have been done with my 100-400mm telephoto

gonna loan a 18-40

it's really hard to get a good landscape with telephoto

@RowlandShaw Oh, cool place.

you must have a good eye

@Eruditass I wouldn't say that.

Its different, but I wouldn't say any harder.

I got this with my telephoto yesterday:

jon-rista.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d30f8xu

nice, I need to go on some photo trips

I never even considered telephoto for landscape until I read this, by Andy Mumford:

nd-magazine.com/articles/art6.php

@Eruditass: Do you have any of your work online? Flickr?

some is on flickr, most is unfinished on my hd

it takes me forever to be satisfied editing

what is your flickr account?

@Eruditass Aye, I spend a lot of time working and reworking most of my work as well. I think it takes me at least a week or two to be barely satisfied, then I spend the next month getting prints to come out how I like.

most of my flickr is of people

flickr.com/photos/eruditass

I have so many shots from like a year ago I need to go through

I'm liking: flickr.com/photos/eruditass/4844888272

thanks :)

I think I've put up like one landscape because the rest I've been trying to learn how to process them better

@RowlandShaw Indeed, very nice. :)

@Eruditass What do you use to process your photos?

:D This is a good shot: flickr.com/photos/eruditass/5022506578/in/photostream

As is flickr.com/photos/eruditass/4481153801

Wow, this is an amazing shot: flickr.com/photos/eruditass/4481127973/in/photostream

Your focus there is impeccable

Thanks, now I might have some more motivation to go and edit some more :P

@jrista That was pure luck. On that rig, I had to stop down by turning the preset ring and easily moved millimeters during it. It just happened to go off at the right time

:)

Sometimes thats all you really need...a little bit of luck. :D

Spotting the photo is just as important as capturing it

Aye

@jrista I currently use lightroom but have bracketed a number of my shots in hopes of combining them.. photomatix?

I got pretty lucky both spotting the sunset photo I linked above, and capturing it. I had to run back to my house, get my camera, and run back to a spot where I could photograph the scene. I got there just as it got interesting. :)

@Eruditass Ah, yeah, photomatix. I've used that a bit...I don't really care for it much. It seems to automatically "overdo" tone mapping, and I've had a hard time optimizing the results. It also seems to really bring out the noise, enhancing it rather than dulling it.

Well, great job knowing where to go to take it. I hope to take some great ones like that in the future

Yeah, I've read some tutorials on how to make it look realistic and not overdone

@Eruditass Thank you. :) I hope to take more like it too. I really recommend trying out your telephoto on distant landscapes...it can do wonders. :)

Next time I go out for landscapes, I'll be sure to bring one

I found this article at luminous landscape yesterday, too:

luminous-landscape.com/columns/composition-3.shtml

It talks about how to choose the right lens for the desired composition, and he describes "large", "medium", and "small" landscapes taken with different focal lengths.

This article on HDR processing looks interesting

neilvn.com/tangents/2010/07/11/hdr-technique

Granted, its all in the 4x5 format, but I think the concept scales well.

@jrista what software do you use to process?

Hmm, have you ever tried "exposure fusion"?

@Eruditass I'm primarily a Lightroom user, however I generally use Photoshop to print, merge HDR, and merge Panoramics.

Nope, but I heard that was a much more natural option in Photomatix

Oh my fine art papers, being able to fully control black and white points and fine-tune levels adjustments has been critical.

Yeah I want to get into HDR/panoramas, should I skip photomatix and just go with photoshop?

@Eruditass Photomatix does exposure fusion now?

yep

@Eruditass I would say use Photoshop. Its Merge to HDR feature is really nice. I used it a lot in CS3 when I first started photography, simply to get the extended DR. It is pretty easy to use. I've been experimenting with it in CS5, and it has changed a bit. I am having to relearn it, but it seems more powerful than before.

@jrista Too many articles.. bookmarking. Should be working on homework :/

Panoramics are pretty easy and basic in Photoshop. I've heard that the Hugin tool is better for panoramics, but I haven't spent the time to try it yet.

Hm, so many options. Maybe I'll play around with the free stuff first

Heh have you tried out the content-aware-fill stuff?

If lightroom ever gets better print adjustments like black/white point adjustments and soft proofing, I'll probably be a 99% lightroom guy.

@Eruditass Oh yes!! OMG, Content-Aware Fill is the coolest friggin feature EVER!

haha damnit, I was hoping you said it sucked so I don't have to buy it

I just used that today on another panoramic. I honestly don't think I could live without CAF now.

Its literally like magic! :D

have any before/after shots?

I've only heard of it's awesomeness

you use them to fill in the spaces and uncrop?

yeah, probably

let me dig some out

I keep meaning to install the tryout for CS5

heh, seriously, CAF has been a godsend. One of the things I hate about the 450D is its view finder is only like 95%

so, I am ALWAYS capturing junk near the edges that I don't want, but can't see in the first place

That's what crop is for ;)

CAF has been able to clean up a lot of that stuff beautifully

yeah, but some of my shots, I didn't want to crop, because there was good content along the edges that I liked

using Lightroom's damn circle spot removal gets pretty annoying

yeah

and it kills my system for some reason... I think I need more RAM

heh I had to make like 20 circles for a damn pole

Lightroom IS a ram hog, that s for sure

I have 12 gigs, and my system tends to use around 7-8 gigs when I am running photoshop and lightroom

its insane

lol

I've only 4 Gb, but it seems happy

This shot is the original

You can see some sticks at the bottom, and a rather unsightly root mid way up the left edge

I'm stuck at 2 gigs and want to upgrade to windows 7 64bit before getting more ram

This one was fixed with CAF, and removed both the sticks at the edge and the unsightly roots with perfection

Nice

I don't think I kept a "before" version of the panoramic I'm working on right now

How the heck does that work?

that thing on the left would've been a pain to clone/blend given where it lay

I did a bunch of cropping, but there were some tree tops along the bottom edge. I could have cropped them out, but I would have lost quite a bit of useful content along the bottom.

that's cool how it put treetops where it removed it, just like what is actually near the top of the frame

CAF let me edit out the tree tops without losing useful content on the panoramic

you should watch adobe's CAF videos

@RowlandShaw it's pretty ridiculous

@RowlandShaw I wish I knew. Best I can tell, it is a combination of random generation algorithms, cloning, and healing.

Must have a "few" heuristics

It seems to use near-by content, with a bit of randomization, healing blending, and possibly even total image analysis

The part where the roots were, it really seemed like it figured out it was a reflection, found the part of the image that was being reflected, and used that content to fill in the area where the roots were.

yeah, its probably very heuristic

MAGIC

its just magic :)

lol

It does take some getting used to. There have been times when it miss-calculated the fill or the tone, contrast, brightness matching.

Sometimes you need to remove something in pieces so it will generate the proper content, and which pieces you remove, and in what order, affect how the algorithm works.

Once you learn its nuances, though, its an extremely powerful tool.

That's freaky

"with and without the road"!

lol

I think the first video Eridutass linked is a bit bogus.

I experimented with CAFing large areas like that road. I didn't have NEARLY as much success as the Adobe guy in that video.

in what way?

wow, this is just messed up

The content starts to take on a more patterend look, and LOOKS fake, when done on large areas.

@jrista Ah good to know it's not voodoo and that was marketing

I guess that's the advantage of a low res youtube vid

lol

yeah

that video is different, too

he is using some kind of brush

maybe I just havn't found that tool yet

@jrista Ah good to know it's not voodoo and that was marketing

@Eruditass Partly. Some of it was real...its just that the road thing was a bit extreme. :P

I can almost swear that the road thing started out as a photo without the road. They put the road in, then "content-aware filled" it by removing the road again.

I hope we don't see too much of that last video I linked, people moving shit around to get the perfect composition a posteriori

That last vid looks more realistic

Anyway, timezone is against me, so I'll see you guys later in the week :)

Ah yes, that last one is much more realistic.

Later rowland!

I am going to head out and do some errands.

Catch ya later Eruditass

Adios

time for me to do hw as well

see ya rowland