tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49719315474692154412011-09-22T13:01:10.476-04:00Paul Duncan's blog about photography. And maybe some other stuff.Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-59453918690056577362009-05-17T10:31:00.005-04:002009-05-17T12:33:07.676-04:00

In order to get a bit more familiar with making videos and publishing on YouTube, I put together a short (2 minute) video describing how I made a ground pod and a few ideas on how to use it:YouTube has recently enhanced their service to support High Definition (HD) videos which is a huge step up from the rather shabby little videos they were previously known for.It wasn't obvious what mystical

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-8303034957931777572009-05-08T10:29:00.005-04:002009-05-08T10:40:29.628-04:00

After enduring a little confusion and frustration in correcting some images from my Canon G9 camera, I investigated a little more and found that my process needs to be changed. A while back, in Part 2: Vignette Correction, I described a way to mathematically characterize and correct image vignetting. It was fine theoretically but, in practice, I found a little surprise.To get a better idea of

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-19169653028041752892009-05-05T09:46:00.004-04:002010-04-06T09:55:38.617-04:00

Image metadata is a confusing and obscure topic but, in at least a few respects, it's an important one, even for those who don't have to be meticulous about metadata (like stock photographers). Let's look at the very basics you should know about and manage.First metadata, or data about data, are pieces of information that are embedded in an image file. The major image formats (JPEG, TIFF, etc.)

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-15144585956120118992009-02-26T16:26:00.003-05:002009-02-26T16:31:46.761-05:00

Bear with me for a moment while do a little self-congratulation. A while back I wrote a brief post called Night Sky Shooting which included an image of the Milky Way over Osgood Pond in the Adirondacks. For the heck of it, I submitted this image and a few others to the Adirondack Life magazine's annual photography contest. This image won the grand prize and is published full-page in the April

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-40117234677033708742009-02-10T08:37:00.002-05:002009-02-10T08:42:55.319-05:00

Over the years I've kept tinkering with the gallery portion of my Web site, adding features, streamlining maintenance, improving usability. But I kept putting off the most daunting task of incorporating print ordering. I realized after a while that as I listed my requirements and plotted my development path, I was slowly and tediously inventing Zenfolio. After taking the trial version out for a

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-89983510709290142642008-12-26T19:06:00.001-05:002008-12-26T19:11:28.044-05:00

Every once in awhile I come across images on the Web that look unusually crisp and sharp. But not in a bad way with obvious halos and other over-sharpening artifacts in images almost as common as those that look too soft. After tinkering with a few approaches, I've settled on a method that works well for me.For a long time, I've been a big fan of PixelGenius's PhotoKit Sharpener, a suite of

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-15203471137143905602008-11-02T17:59:00.006-05:002008-11-03T07:42:30.812-05:00

When shooting pictures of waterfalls, here's a way to get that soft milky look to the moving water when you can't get exposures long enough to do it directly. I recently had a pocket camera and pocket tripod in my coat pocket on a nice hike along a series of waterfalls in Ithaca, NY. I didn't have a polarizer or neutral density filter to enable slower exposures and this example was shot in open

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-17182069297411458522008-10-02T15:16:00.006-04:002009-03-11T08:15:34.058-04:00

The current DSLRs are getting better characteristics making night sky photography viable: lower noise at higher ISOs and better long-exposure tolerance. Upon getting a Nikon D700, one of the first things I wanted to do was try out night sky photography like I used to do in the good old film days. You have two choices with long exposures of the night sky: either keep the camera stationary and

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-55267379490365717882008-09-14T13:44:00.004-04:002008-09-14T13:52:19.535-04:00

I was at an arts and music festival helping out Lori with her pottery booth. I had a chance to wander around and shoot a few pictures. I brought the little Canon G9 and a monopod to get something other than the straight-on shots we instinctively go for.One thing you can do is attach the camera to one end of the monopod on the side and then just rest that end on the ground and have the camera

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-42882136254088747232008-09-05T09:28:00.005-04:002008-09-05T09:38:36.864-04:00

To wrap things up on this series of posts, here are some personal observations on images created with point-and-shoot consumer pocket cameras like the Canon G9. This photo is a ground-level view of the Lackawanna Train Station, now a historical museum, in Vestal, NY. It was shot with G9 and processed using the techniques we've been going through. Shot at 7.4 mm and f/4, the processing removed

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-30679665128256160442008-08-25T12:25:00.002-04:002008-08-25T12:37:00.294-04:00

After enduring the math and tedium of developing our own corrections for images with vignetting, geometric distortion, and chromatic aberration, it's worth looking at some alternatives not involving such a high pain level.First, if you're a user of a recent version of Photoshop, you have the Lens Correction filter available. This filter has adjustments for the 3 areas we've been exploring. It

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-57135659826683107382008-08-18T19:18:00.002-04:002008-08-18T19:30:27.306-04:00

In previous posts, we've looked at the Canon G9 point-and-shoot camera's vignetting, geometric distortion, and chromatic aberration. We've also looked at strategies for addressing these issues, primarily using the fulla command from the hugin panorama photo stitcher package.The fulla command doesn't have a nice friendly GUI interface but it does allow us to put together arbitrary corrections to

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-19434943392322004202008-08-17T14:50:00.014-04:002008-08-18T08:58:58.096-04:00

There are many reasons why an image may contain chromatic aberrations, the unexpected color casts or fringes in certain parts of the image. Lenses, particularly inexpensive ones such as found in point-and-shoot cameras, can contribute two main types of chromatic aberration: longitudinal (or axial) and transverse (or lateral).Longitudinal chromatic aberration is caused by the lens system's

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-71254264552860891272008-07-28T16:59:00.016-04:002008-07-29T07:41:45.466-04:00

All lenses, particularly cheaper mass-produced lenses have some amount of geometric distortion. Some primary lenses, particularly expensive ones, can be highly corrected. Others, particularly with large zoom ranges, are characterized by mixes of barrel or pincushion distortion (or both). The result is images where straight lines appear curved, particularly noticeable in the outer portions of the

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-84697770300621771902008-07-06T19:38:00.011-04:002008-09-05T09:44:56.168-04:00

All camera/lens systems vignette the produced images, some much more than others. Vignetting (or more-correctly light falloff as we're discussing here), the darkening of the created image toward the edges, is caused by a number of factors. We are so used to seeing vignetting in images, we usually don't notice it; in fact many think that vignetting can add to the appeal of an image and will add

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-71546028831890543512008-06-26T16:09:00.018-04:002008-08-04T09:25:50.512-04:00

This is the first of several posts where we'll look at the characteristics and problems with compact consumer digital camera images and work out ways to deal with them. I recently decided to dust off my panoramic tripod head and try it out with the Canon G9 compact consumer camera. Setting up the panorama head to get the entrance pupil of the lens centered on the horizontal and vertical axes

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-51819424054910793812008-06-07T17:46:00.004-04:002008-06-07T17:59:39.557-04:00

There are three controls commonly used to select what is in focus in an image: selecting what the lens is focused on (obviously); varying the aperture to control the depth of field; and tilting the plane of focus (via tilt/shift controls on a view camera or a PC lens on a SLR). Using these, even combined, sometimes won't create what you want. Suppose you want a fairly deep zone in focus and

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-7311573983501045352008-03-15T15:52:00.007-04:002008-06-08T19:58:54.002-04:00

Here's a do-it-yourself contraption you can build that combines the characteristics of a snoot and a softbox. It consists of 2 nested tubes. In my prototype I made the inner tube from a length of scrap mat board about 4 inches wide bent into a cylinder and taped in place. On both open ends I taped some white tissue paper to serve as double diffusion. This diffusion drum was then rolled into

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-66080396181179132832008-03-04T12:34:00.004-05:002008-03-04T12:48:44.407-05:00

Almost every hotel or motel room you stay in will have a freebie shower cap among the amenities in the bathroom. Take it and toss it in your camera bag.These things are great to have in a pinch when the rain starts coming down and you can't stop shooting. (Or, better yet, you want to shoot because you know rainy days offer great light.)They're just the right size to put over your flash and

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-7768124132645693812008-03-01T17:28:00.012-05:002008-03-01T18:03:07.267-05:00

Here's a tip for dealing with noise in shadow areas of images. This technique assumes you're satisfied with midtone and highlight quality but have unacceptable noise levels (luminance, chrominance, or both) in shadows. This description presumes raw shooting and the use of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) for image development, but can be adapted for other environments.In a nutshell, you layer two

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-84160533094139868112008-02-25T07:48:00.008-05:002008-02-28T15:48:10.442-05:00

A snoot, as you may know, is a tube or cone used to restrict the light from a flash or other light source to a narrower beam. I wanted a snoot that, instead of throwing a fuzzy blob of light, created more of a spotlight effect. I designed and built one for this purpose.Usually when a snoot is used, the gentle transition from light to dark that is cast is considered desirable. When you want a

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-44176232768855506752008-02-23T11:42:00.006-05:002008-02-23T14:40:22.101-05:00

For photographers living under a rock: David Hobby over at strobist.blogspot.com has created quite a popular sensation with his advocacy and education for strobist photography, his term for the use of smarts and off-camera small-flash photography to elevate images to the next level. If you are one of the few photographers left who haven't seen it, you really need to at least browse through the

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-3124556561268299602008-02-22T12:06:00.004-05:002008-02-22T14:05:38.328-05:00

Tripod leg wraps provide welcome insulation for hands on cold days, padding for over-the-shoulder lugging, and protection for your expensive tripod's finish. You can pay big bucks for a set or you can do it yourself for a fraction of the cost.Head to your home center and get some ordinary foam pipe insulation for a couple dollars. Get the size for pipes slightly smaller than the diameter of

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4971931547469215441.post-17230139512764771152008-02-22T11:44:00.004-05:002008-02-26T07:38:10.052-05:00

This blog exists for three reasons:I want to do my share of the heavy lifting on the Web: we're apparently not close to filling up the Internet yet.I want to try blogging just to see how it all works and add to my growing résumé of what will become obsolete skills.This will be the place where I toss things related mostly to photography that I find interesting. I'll try to keep content original:

Paul Duncanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17238376219240618994noreply@blogger.com0