Weather: Fail.

Well, I have completely failed to come up with an image for this one. I blame the weather. Also, been a bit snowed under (sorry!) with work the last couple of weeks. 

Here's a very poor attempt. Tried to make it grainy and contrasty to look wett-ish. But I don't like it much. D90, 105mm, f5.6, 1/30s, ISO 800. 

A noisy noise annoys a photographer pt 1

Lacking the budget for a decent travel tripod and the fact the £30 Jessop finest I do have doesn't actually fit into my "three-day-trip" size bag, I ended up experimenting with low light, handheld photography in some dark and dingy Czech breweries illuminated by dark and dingy late-november light.

First example is a massively underexposed 1/60s, f8 at 1600ISO shot, with 100 per cent crop to show just how nasty it is and then, really just as a bit of fun, what slamming Photoshop's noise reduction filter through it at max settings does. Result: some really odd smearing and additional texture, but I'm surprised how much detail gets retained.

Challenge 2 - Cold!

Ok, so this doesn't really come under the theme of "Weather" but it was bloody freezing and I could hardly move my fingers to take photos, so I am going with "Cold", even though it's not obvious from the photos.

The main collection of photos are here:

http://pbase.com/kevinl/bigcats

This is my favorite of an Ocelot. He hid most of the afternoon and only came out when only I was taking photos :) It was a really dull day but the sun peeped through just at the right time to provide interesting lighting for this shot. I really like the shape the cat is making.

Megapixel madness continues

DPReview reports Sony has announced a 12MP camera phone sensor.

Challenge 2 - Tom's first

16-85@16, f8, 20s, ISO 200.

Only bit of weather so far has been a bit of a deluge on the drive home a few nights ago - luckily enough when I was playing around with the camera, the remote, a tripod belted onto the passenger seat and some long exposures at night. Definitely a technique in progress, but thought I'd share anyway! Must do better.

Challenge 2: Weather

Seeing as there seems to be so much of it around! (although sods law is we'll have dry, still, blue sky days for the rest of the monnth) Interpret the theme as you fancy.

Toby's rules seemed very apt, so no reason to change:

* Theme: Weather
* Submit up to 5 pictures.
* Post processing and digital manipulation is allowed.
* A brief line should accompany each photo (e.g. location or subject, camera, exposure details, etc).
* The photo must be taken between 12 November and 30 November 2008.
* Deadline: 30 November 2008.

Excellent stuff from the last challenge, look forward to more of the same...

One I'm quite pleased with

A David Whitehead "commission" i.e. when you're wandering round somewhere with him he waves his hand in the direction of something and says "Can you take a picture of that please, I might need to use it in a book".


Brockhampton Manor House, Herefordshire. 16-85@16, f8, 1/200s, 200-1EV ISO (basically Nikon's weird way of doing 100 ISO)

Sharp practice

Warning: Tom has a blindly obvious realisation moment.

Having spent far too much time fiddling with photos over the last few years and trying to balance reducing noise, with preserving detail, and then trying to sharpen that detail without sharpening the noise and plunging back to square one, I've had a bit of a slapped forehead moment in the last few weeks.

Selective sharpening. In my defence, the reason it's taken so long is because it's staggeringly easy to do in Capture (another point in its favour) while I suspect it's a bit more complex in PS - which is where you come in.

In Capture, I can set the sharpening levels (or anything for that matter, this method works with all the adjustments, including noise reduction, gaussian blur, b/w conversion etc) and then just click on the slection brush and brush the adjustment onto the picture. Sharpening eyes while leaving skin nicely noise reduced is a thing of simplicity.

But what is the easiest way of reproducing this on PS? Layer masks?

I ask because my free trial on Capture NX 2 runs out on Monday, leaving me with my Capture NX on the horrendously slow, old and electrified Dell, or CS 2 on the work Mac (which also involved DNGing my NEF files thanks to Adobe's policy on ACR upgrades)

Here's my latest attempt at autumn colour and wildlife. I like the panoramic composition though the colours are a but muted.

Sure you've both heard this as well - another wedding dilemma

Been asked to be "official" photog at a wedding next year. This won't be the first time I've done this, but this time is different as rather than being for close friends and/or family, is for a couple we went skiing with two years ago and since then have been little more than Facebook friends.

Not sure if this makes it more, or less stressful - and also not sure if I should do it, or find a polite way of backing out.

Currently trying to work out if they're asking me in a "definitely can't afford a pro, so it's you or no pics" type way, in which case I'll be happier doing it, or a "we're cheapskates and think we can get a bargain from you, but we'll be expecting pro quality" in which case, I'm tempted to run a mile!

Any similar experiences/advice/etc?

Finally finished wedding PP

Usual hit and miss, made a bit more miss due to having to hang onto Sammy for the first half of the day. Some shots I'm pleased with though - and thanks to the miracle of Facebook, bride and groom also saying nice things about them, from Vietnam.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175666&l=e2005&id=850030623

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175854&l=f284c&id=850030623