ash hoff

Scanning photos and slides

2011-04-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

Negatives and slides can be returned to a lab and have prints made from them but cropping of negatives and slides is very difficult, even impossible without a professional lab. This includes color photos as prints of the films made in black and white classic thang enlarger can crop and edit. Not as easily as pictures in digital form but without major problems. There is also a problem of old photos (prints), which have been scratched, or other damage. Traditional retouching (ie, brush and pencil) of such images and doing znich copy a job for professionals with adequate equipment and with no artistic talent. Today, this technique probably is not used.

A universal solution to these problems is to scan film or photographs preźrocza, or processing it into a digital file. A picture or a negative in digital form we can freely manipulate, improve, or modify a program for processing image files. For a digital file storzenia need is a scanner and the problem is that the market there are hundreds of models of different companies and have to choose among them one that will be most useful for our needs and the needs are essentially two.

Development of print, or opaque material and for this purpose, we can buy a scanner only to opaque materials. Such scanners are relatively cheap but does not allow you to scan film and slides.

Development of films, or transparent materials, and for this purpose are scanners especially for movies only. Such scanners are much more expensive than those from the point first and they can not scan photos or document opaque.
For the amateur, the best solution is to buy a universal scanner that
in principle, is designed for scanning opaque materials, but is a snap to place video or slides and scan mode transparent materials.

FBcatalog - like a lot!

2011-04-04T04:41:00.000-07:00

If you love Facebook and have some time to spare have a look at the brand new website FBcatalog. They've done a great job to catalog thousands of Facebook pages, so that you can search by category or by language and then you can simply like loads of pages from one place. It's an awesome site and I don't think there is anything similar anywhere on the web. I mean there are Facebook catalogs, but this one is different!

Imitation or inspiration?

2011-03-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Often photographers get the order to portray a person in such a way as to resemble the form of film. Countless women (and many men) world recovered in the role Marilyn Monroe's dress billowing from the Straw widower and Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Even relatively well-known people like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton repeatedly posed for such photos. Pattern is not uncommon for pastiche is photography itself. Perhaps the best example is the work of Charles Ebbets in 1932 under the title Men on Beam at Rockefeller Center, also known as Lunch on the roof of a skyscraper. Theme of the pictures of the workers sitting high on a skeleton wysokościowca was repeatedly used. We had a version of the children, with actors from the show Friends. There were also brand advertising from the automotive industry - with an empty bar and suggesting that everyone just enjoy the discount on the car.

Pastiche in photography

2011-03-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Pastiche is by definition a work of imitation, counterfeiting features nienoszącym however, created more for praise than criticism - so different in this respect the caricature. As a humorous pastiche is colored, the boundaries between it and parody can be very smooth. This form is often used in comedies. Scenes or characters from famous films appear to the delight of the audience. Some images, like Scary Movie, almost entirely based on a bunch of parody quotes. Advertising, which often refers to stereotypes, is another area known posiłkującą the themes, or even specific songs, pictures and characters.

Humor in photography

2011-03-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Photography surrounds us almost everywhere - in newspapers, on billboards, Internet. We live in a world of images. Some of us stop for a moment, the other will pass without a trace of emotion. One of my favorite photos are ones that can me laugh, make my thoughts broke away from the prose of life. And I'm not talking about stupid shots mines, but of those, which pierces the photographer's sense of humor. The authors of these images can in an intelligent way to refer to famous works, themes or play with the conventions and associations. Photographer lets the viewer's eye, showing him a familiar character or situation, but not literally the same - it does not create a copy. Highlights some distinctive features, some rewrites, but that all were easily recognizable. This requires a rich imagination and a lot of skills, often feel and taste. Such work often can be an art in itself.

Cropping

2011-03-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

From a hardware point of view, perfectly fits a comparison of two types of viewfinder: a mirror and lunetkowego. Looking through the viewfinder SLR, the picture we see isolated from reality - as it were immediately placed in a black frame. Already at the entrance looks like a ready photo, a much more attractive than the real world, including because we look through the lens, which adds its own perspective. The riflescope camera's viewfinder shows you almost unchanged dalmierzowego world (only slightly scaled down, though, and since there are exceptions). What will be captured, marked in the viewfinder is a delicate frame of less than the whole viewfinder. Thanks also shows some of what is outside the frame - you can see, for example, a figure that in a moment we enter the frame and either break the scene, or to fulfill them. In addition, because we do not look through the lens, nothing interferes with perspective. Photographer has a greater bond with the reality that a photographer, because it looks at "the pictures"as in the SLR, but taking place before his eyes the scene.

The color in photography

2011-03-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Appropriately selected color tone photographs can perfectly the mood the scene, while not having anything to do with the actual colors. Anyway, really for us there is no such thing as "true color" because all the visual information reaching the end of the brain and are processed by him, the human perception of color has nothing to do with the wavelength, which is the actual color of the reflected light. We know that snow is white, so that we see it - regardless of whether we look at it in full sun or at night under streetlights. We are equipped with the most perfect and fastest automatic white balance system. At a time when fotografowało solely on light-sensitive membrane, the possibility of manipulating color images were quite small - you could choose a film to daylight, incandescent or fluorescent (the latter two were expensive and difficult to get.) Then the differences between the color images obtained were quite substantial. If we wanted to subtle changes (and we did not do color prints in his own darkroom), you can choose different types of emulsions were specific products (both in terms of slides and negatives.) But that's nothing compared with the possibilities offered by the figure. Even the simplest cameras today allows the user to choose from multiple settings (Daylight, Incandescent, several types of fluorescent light, shadow, etc.), in the case of advanced models (some CDs and all SLR cameras), the choice is even bigger and even gives you a stunning selection of color temperature accuracy in Kelvin with high accuracy. Customers photographers in RAW mode may choose after the shooting, while working on the computer.

The flatness of the world in photography

2011-03-11T01:26:00.000-08:00

Aside from all aspects of the metaphysical, the world has for us the three dimensions: height, width and depth. Meanwhile photography is flat - the image has only height and width. How does it compare to the "faithful" representation of reality? How is that looking at a flat picture, we see three-dimensional world? Of course, no one doubts that looks at the photograph, for example, and not through the window, but very easy for us to find a flat image on the known dependence of the real world. As always, for any type of fraud that corresponds to the human brain. He combines and processes the image respectively of the two eyes, allowing you eg to easily assess the distance that separates us from some object - nota bene acting on the basis of rangefinders, like the camera dalmierzowym. Besides the ability to convert two-dimensional image in three-dimensional feel is useful not only when viewing photos, but even when looking in the mirror.

Is photography most faithful of all arts?

2011-03-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

Almost always, common understanding of the photographs associated with the belief that it is a faithful reflection of reality. In the end not enough that the world looks in the pictures much more realistic than the images, it's still photographs were the result of chemical and physical processes, or simply had to tell the truth. The past decade has drastically changed our perception of photography - image editing software, allowing almost unlimited interference with the appearance of pictures and niezostawiające behind almost no trace, meant that we have become distrustful. However, thethe question of of truth in photography is still a key issue for the way in which we receive or create this art.

Converting RAW files for HDR

2011-02-20T05:58:00.000-08:00

Important thing we can not allow any software used to do the RAW conversion on any uncontrolled interference in our file conversion parameters. In the case of Photoshop, this means avoiding the "auto" in the fields: Exposure, Shadows, Brightness and Contrast, and to prevent the white balance settings, "Auto " and "As Shot" white balance if it was set to "Auto" for shooting.

How many exporures for HDR?

2011-02-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

Amount of radiation needed obviously depends on the scene, but before that in many cases insufficient 3 exposure in increments of 1.66 or 2 EV Minor strokes do not recommend, it makes no sense to play in an EV. In theory, would make a measurement point in the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, the quantity needed to calculate radiation, etc. In practice, the usual (using, D-SLR) doing an irradiation, roughly in line with the measurement matrix, and then check the histogram if it points to the clear shift towards overexposure / underexposure change parameters and perform another trial. If it is correct as far as erasing pictures, run bracketing, attach the hose and doing a series. If possible, you may want to change the way the camera's way of making a series of bracketingowych so as to begin from underexposure, and the middle performed exposures, and ended with an X-ray (-, 0, +). The Canon's default is different (0;-;+) and then hinders orientation. The pictures of a strong light source in the scene usually requires more of the radiation, I am often in such cases, the fifth.

Shooting for HDR

2011-02-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

The basic condition for obtaining an image in HDR technology is to have several versions of an image of the same scene made with different irradiation parameters (possibly several TIFF files, or JPG also obtained from the various call one RAW file.) The best solution is to implement a number of irradiations of the same scene camera mounted on a tripod. Mounting must be as stable, so that the images did not differ from each other the frame, even minimally.
The individual exposure should be made as soon as possible because of the changing landscape elements during such as clouds, waves, moving in the wind, branches or podrygująca boat on the waves. Forgive me, I had to mention it even though it probably did this kind of situation does not meet. Know that I am "łódkofilem" And nothing will change.

Bracketing

2011-02-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

Bracketing, an option available on most SLRs involving the execution of a series of shots of the same scene at a fixed aperture and the changing times, with the specified increments. This stroke and the number of shots depends on the type of camera, for example, in Canon EOS 5D is 3 frames with a maximum 2 EV increments, the Nikon D200 to 9 shots with maximum increments of 1 EV. This feature originally had another use but has proved very helpful in the performance of individual radiation needed to complete the picture in the HDR.

Dynamic Range Increase

2011-02-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Range Increase (DRI), increase the tonal range, the method consisting in the appropriate application to each other and contain several layers of masking the same scene exposed in different ways. The most important difference, in a simplification, of course, is that DRI is a lot in practice, replacing one image with different stretches, these parts are relatively large, sometimes it can be an inch piece of heaven, while the HDR changes are occurring in each pixel image.

High Dynamic Rang

2011-02-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

High Dynamic Range (HDR) - method of obtaining images of a much wider tonal range than recorded by the camera in a single frame consists of creating a file, usually about 32-bit color depth, formed by the combination of several images of the same scene in different ways irradiated So that the individual frames correctly register all ranges, from light to shadow. Creating such a file requires several input files, their number depends on the tonal range of the recorded scene, from my experience that 90% of cases, sufficient 3 files recorded in increments of about 2 EV, in practice, we highlight three of the same time changing the aperture relations x0.25, x1, x4.

Dynamic Range

2011-02-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

Dynamic Range (DR), Tonal Range, the ratio of the image brightness of the party's brightest to the darkest, he is limited on the one hand by the possibility of recording equipment (eg digital camera sensor) and secondly by the possibility of an image display device (monitor, printer). This ratio for the average matrix is 500:1 (~ 8 EV), for the printer 250:1 (~ 7 EV), and a monitor 500:1 (~ 8 EV) The approximate course, have to illustrate the concept. The values found in the real world date back to 100 000:1 (~ 17 EV) and our eye sees 10 000:1 (~ 14 EV).

How much can one earn from microstcok photography?

2011-01-28T03:02:00.000-08:00

So we start from scratch. Assume that at the beginning we can add 20 images per month. So we have 20 pictures published and accepted in our protfolio. Everything now depends on how they like the community, photos, and more specifically the buyer.

Defines a very simple parameter, namely the number of downloads pictures in a month. (Abbreviated to DL`s / M - Downloads Per Month) This ratio determines the success or the flap of our newly added photographs. I think that for someone who starts his adventure with photography photos score above 10 DL`s / M is a success.

Okay, but how does it compare to earnings? From my current experience has shown that averaging a sold image translates into a 0.8 earned $. So, sold 100 photographs give us $ 80. On www.istockphoto.com is a lot of pictures which DL`s / M exceeds the value 100

Lenses from Nikon

2011-01-27T01:57:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been researching Nikon lenses. I'm a Canon user, but some of my friends always try to persuade me to check out Nikon. I don't think I will, but must admit they do have some good stuff. I mean once you're chosen your brand it's rather hard to change (not that I really want to!). But say I did want to chnage to Nikon, I'd have to sell all of my Canon gear and buy everything from a scratch. That's why it's so important for those companies to attract beginner photographers and automatically make them loyal customers.

Pinhole Camera Basics

2011-01-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

Camera obscura, also known as pinhole camera, is nothing more than a cubic box with a hole on one side and the other screens available. The walls are painted from the inside in black. This reduces reflections. In this box, on the one hand, it is a small hole through which light enters. On the opposite side is a dull fast, which shows scaled down and inverted image.

Pinhole Camera in Wedding Photography

2011-01-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

The pinhole photography technique has has some interesting features, which can be used in wedding photography.

1. Focus from zero to infinity, eg wedding photos, the photographer can be in the foreground sharp, huge rings and many more equally sharp.

2. Spy character: the camera can be made of boxes of matches, beer cans, or almost anything and placed anywhere.

3. Very wide angle and lack of distortion, as in the fish eye.

4. Long time exposure pictures of wedding photography can be used as an advantage. For example in a busy and crowded urban landscape. With only the newlyweds and the buildings not moving.

5. Sooft images perfect for wedding photography.

6. Fashionable and abused in wedding photography image vignetting comes free with a pinhole camera.

Here are another posts of mine about pinhole photography and on how turn a room into a camera obscura.

Internet Stalking

2010-12-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

So for the last few days, I've been sitting at home, eating the Christmas food, watching episode after an episode of Dexter and browsing the Internet. Found a cool website and sorry it doesn't have much to do with photography, but as I said due to the lack of light, I've not been doing much of it.. So the Website is called StalkInfo. It tells if someone was looking for you on the Internet and from what location. It can be as well about Internet stalking as about relatives looking for distant family memebers or employers checking out prospective employees. Anyway, thought I'd share this website as I found it quite amuzing.

Take a look: list of profiles for people (just an example) called "Martin"

Fog

2010-12-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

Still no luck with the light. There may be some sunny spells tomorrow, but for the the last couple of days it has been totally overcast. Also the snow is mentling. So the landscape looks rather dull. the only good thing is that it's very foggy today, so maybe I'll be able to capture the atmosphere.

In the meantime - hope you guys had a great Christmas and wishing you all the best for the New Year!

Where is the light?

2010-12-26T03:17:00.000-08:00

So, here I am in the winter photography wondelralnd. It's all amazing, loads of snow, beautiful countryside. The only thing that is missing is the light! I had some good light on the first day and a little yesterday morning. Today it's pretty cloudy and I checked the weather forecast which is not looking much better. Oh well, I'm just going to relax and if the right moment comes I'll be ready to shoot.

Winter photography wonderland

2010-12-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

Today I'm travelling to a real winter photography wonderland. I'll be spending Christmas in the countryside in the North which is currenlty covered in snow. I'll have to make sure to set up my White Balance correctly - there is nothing worse than a grey or blue snow!

I'm planning to take a lot of nature photographs, mainly landscape and close-ups. I'm hoping for some great frozen flowers and other plants. I'm also taking my analog camera with me with a black and white film, which should be justperfect for the winter shots.

Pinhole photography

2010-12-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

Pinhole photography is a technique of taking pictures with a camera obscura.

How does a pinhole camera work?

Light passes through a small diameter hole (pinhole sized, thus the name) formed on the opposite wall of an image. The brightness will be proportional to the brightness outside. If the hole is not sufficiently small, light on the matte screen creates a circle of size proportional to the size of a pinhole. Therefore, increasing the diameter of the pinhole reduces the sharpness of the image. Reducing the diameter of the pinhole improves the sharpness, but reduces it's brightness.

By selection the hole size will let enough light inside the camera to illuminate the photosensitive material (for exmaple fim or photographic paper). Resulting image is different from the image produced by modern cameras as it's more blurry (soft).

Depth of field in pinhole photography: Angular magnification is constant for subjects located in any distance from the camera, so the depth of field ranges from zero to infinity.

Photography Pages on Facebook

2010-11-26T04:29:00.000-08:00

The are so many photography pages on Facebook, I find it had to get my head round them. I'm especially interested in all sort of photography contests. The difficulty is that many of them come in different languages. Let's say a a photography magazine from Finland is organising a Facebook photo competition. Their page is in Finnish and I'll never get to know about this contest. But recently I found a page that makes it easier for me to find photography pages in different languages. It's called FanPageRanking.com and gives you a ranking of Facebook pages for many European countries, so if I wanted to check out the Finnish pages, I'd go to fi.fanpageranking.com

Quick RAW photo conversion

2010-11-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

As a Canon user, I use Canon's free software Digital Photo Professional for quick RAW photo convertion.

It's really easy and efficient, here is my workflow:

- Select your pictures in DPP
- Click Batch convert
- Choose the folder you want the pictures to land in
- Always select TIFF 16bit - this is way better than 8bit and any jpeg!
- Select Output Resolution (here is a quick tip: choose 72dpi if your picture is for the web, 300dpi, if it's for print and 400dpi if you're printing in a photo lab)
- Choose the file name

I use Digital Photo Professional for the corrections in White Balance and the exposition of +/-2 f-stops. For everything else I use Photoshop.

Grey Card Camera Calibration

2010-11-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered how to calibrate your camera with a Grey Card? Here is an easy way.

Remeber that there is no "standard white", that's why it's always better to calibrate using a grey card which reflects exactly 18% of the light.

1. Select your ISO - changing the ISO will ruin the calibration, so rember to calibrate each time you change the ISO!

2. Switch to Manual exposure.

3. Set the correct exposition as metered from the grey card. Make sure that the frame is fully filled by the grey card. Use spot metering.

4. Place the card at a 45 degree angle to both the light and your camera.

5. You may have to switch to Manual focus, Autofocus will not work as there are no contrasts to "catch on". Take the picture as slight out-of-focus.

6. The histogram should be a narrow stripe in the middle of the scale.

7. Set custom white balance.

8. After setting the custom white balance as the grey card take another picture of the card - see the difference?

Bubu, a wonderful store in Warsaw

2010-11-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

On my recent trip t Warsaw I discovered a real hidden gem - a store with hand made jewellery called bubu. It's located in an old district of Warsaw - Powisle, on Solec Street.

The store is really charecterful with dark green walls and picture frames full of original hand-made jewellery. Each piece is unique, so you can be sure noone else will wear the same thing as you!

The owner of the store told me that very soon (probably before Christmas) bubu will have an Internet store, which I'm really looking forward to! I will stay tuned for that and will let you know once the store is live.

I'm really looking forward to wearing some of the pieces, I can already hear my friends asking "wow, where did you get those earings?". Really bubu's jewellery is something special!

Their website address is: http://2xbu.com/ and you can also find them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bubu.store

Turn a Room into a Camera Obscura

2010-11-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we decided to turn one of our rooms into a Camera Obscura. Who would have thought - it actually worked and it was not just an optical illusion!

The room was completely dark and we put some black material to cover all holes such as those under the door. We covered the window with black tape in which we made a small hole. At the beginning a tiny one and the we enlarged it to the size of a small coin.

The effect was quite surprising - we could really see the reflection of the reality outside on the floor of the room. Upside-down, of course!

We then took some pictures with a digital camera, tripod, long exposure. We were putting diffrent items on the floor so that we could see the reflection on them. Its was quite a creative process and definately more fun than making a camera obscura from a shoe box!

Halloween party

2010-11-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

Well done to everyone for organising some fantastic Halloween events here on Sunday! Around 280 people followed a special family trail round some of the park’s supposed haunted spots and the evening, over 100 people joined mini ghost-hunts! What a great day! Next year we'll join the event again for sure and bring more friends with us:)

Help for pets

2010-10-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

Coming into Christmas this year I want to do something for pets in rescue/foster care etc and was wondering would any of you like to come on board with this idea.

What can be done for poor animals in shelters? I've seen great stuff people do on Facebook with posting pictures of animals waiting to be adopted. This way everyone can help. Even if you can't adopt a dog or a cat yourself. Maybe one of your friends will?

I've also seen people collecting not money but cat/dog food on the streets, or outside supermarkets. Just think how much our home pets eat and how little is needed to help a homeless animal. Food for thought:)

Social Work

2010-10-25T14:16:00.001-07:00

Social work is a professional and academic discipline committed to the pursuit of social welfare and social change. The field works towards research and practice to improve the quality of life and to the development of the potential of each individual, group and community of a society. Social workers perform interventions through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice and teaching. Research is often focused on areas such as human development, social policy, public administration, program evaluation and international and community development. Social workers are organized into local, national, continental and international professional bodies. Social work, an interdisciplinary field, includes theories from economics, education, sociology, medicine, philosophy, politics, psychology, and as well as anti-oppressive and anti-racist discourse.