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Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton
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2009-01-23Friday: My First Cat Photo
I am not sure what appealed to me about the cat, but there is some residual fondness when I look at the photograph. I have similar affection for our oldest Bombay, Askani. I date the picture to around 1954. It was taken with a borrowed Kodak Pony 35 or possibly my original Praktiflex FX. If it was a slide, it was probably on Anscochrome. I thought that the print I had was from a slide, but I can’t find it. This image is recovered from a Kodacolor print that has experienced considerable deterioration. Using an H-P Scanjet, I scanned the print into a full-color 600spi TIFF file with cropping (to 2” by 3”) and preservation of all the range I could find. The final corrections were made with Nikon Capture NX 2 where I could work on brightness, contrast, range, and correction to the neutral points in the image. I should do this with other images where I only have prints before their color deteriorates further. Labels: cats, Golden Geek, photography 2008-12-06Almost Friday Cat Picture: Catnip Camera TooCatnip Camera is a a photo-documentary series created by attaching a camera to the collar of Cooper, a Seattle neighborhood cat. The CAT CAM set is available on Flickr. The Seattle Weekly also covered Cooper’s catumentary.
Athima Chansanchai’s Are You on Catnip Camera? article is the most read and most e-mailed seattlepi.com article at the moment. I can’t find any pictures that have free-to-post distribution or reproduction rights, so here’s the consolation prize from my recent cat photographs:
 Labels: cats, neighborhood and Seattle, photography 2008-11-07Friday Cat Picture: In the Princess Eye (from 2007-10-07)
Usually when I am working close with my 105mm lens, the cats don't give me eye contact long enough for a clean photograph. This one (cropped here) shows my good fortune. I love that the surrounding fur frames the eye of little Princess Psyche.
This shot doesn't qualify as a Strobist submission because the SB-600 is tethered and not far off the camera. It also has an interesting defect, although Vicki thinks it adds something to the image: the photographer, camera, and speedlight are all visibly reflected in the cat's eye. But I do like the result. Yes I do. Reflections: My 1992-purchased Nikon 8008s (pictured) was already smarter than its owner, as was almost the case with the 2020 before that. This year's purchase of a D80 shows me how much smarter it is than the owner: It embarrasses me with the raft of features and settings over which I have no comprehension. Once I obtained the SB-600 speedlight, it was clear that the flash is smarter than me too. I have lots of practice to make up before I can again utter that I once (over 50 years ago) fancied becoming a photographer. Modern photographic equipment: Whether or not the D80 and newer high-end cameras like the D3 are too feature-laden with too many options (sort of the Microsoft Office of its breed), it is clear that the digital era has revolutionized photography and creation of other electronic media. In addition to easy entry levels, the affordability of high-powered equipment for amateurs and enthusiasts is telling. There is another phenomenon. The capabilities and economy of competing high-end Nikon and Canon digital SLR lines is leaving little room for after-market suppliers. I don't think anyone can price-compete with the SB-600, for example, and the loss of functionality for lower-priced alternatives is pronounced. I think this has a giant impact on the market, even in the (vanishing) stores where professionals shop. (The difference for the pro seems to be ruggedness, durability, and extreme optical quality.) OK enough pontification. What's needed from me is more pictures and more experiential mastery of my tools. [update 2008-11-27 [Happy U.S. Thanksgiving Day] In bringing this post over from Orcmid’s Live Hideout I failed to repair one of the links to land here rather than back there. I finally remembered to do that while I was situated to act on it. Labels: cats, photography 2008-10-24Friday Cat Picture: Weez Ur Trickz n Treatz[update 2008-10-27: I couldn’t stand the way the picture worked so I am putting in a different one and discussing how it came to be so different.]
You, as the viewer, have no idea what I have in mind as a proper presentation of the photograph, above, and the alternative that I found unsatisfactory, below (although the difference in cropping should be obvious). You can click on the Calibrize button and find your own balanced monitor adjustment (or use your favorite alternative for non-Windows platforms). That makes this updated post into fodder for my confirmable-experience soapbox and there’ll be more about that in further posts. Meanwhile, it is time to shop for Halloween candies for the Friday night visitors. I have a great cat-picture repost to put up at that time.
I really wanted to keep Teh Amor’s tail in the picture, but it makes the composition really cock-eyed. Looking at it, I think the only solution would be to separate out the two figures and ditch the tail and the framing of them together. The original photograph was taken on Wednesday, October 22, on one of those unexpected and delightful snappy autumn days with bright sunshine. One or both of the twins will usually laze in the sun on the window side of the vertical blinds. I have no idea what has them facing into the room. I was anxious that they not decide to hop down and come closer to see what I was doing. I’m holding the camera vertically, with the on-camera pop-up flash on the right. Teh decided to look right into it, hence the village-of-the-demon-cats effect. No, they’re not dressing up for Halloween and yes, it is a week early. Maybe they’ve over-dosed on the run-up to the US Presidential Election. Could be Princess still yearns for Hilary, or maybe for John Edwards? Labels: cats, confirmable experience, photography 2008-10-17Friday Cat Photo: Princess Psyche (from 2007-09-24)
Princess is showing her age here. The crow wandered outside my office window and she was alerted enough to hop up onto one of my computer towers for a better look. She has learned that diving at the window doesn't accomplish anything and was content to observe. She's still playful and she is also a scold. Every morning I am scolded until I pet her until one of us can't stand it any longer. I don't know why she is scolding me, but petting is what we settle for. I have been practicing capturing their eyes, which I find so intricate and beautiful. The cats are a bit camera shy, so it is difficult to get the view and lighting just right. Sometimes I get close to what I am after. The whiskers are turning white and thick, with a little salt in the pepper of her black coat.
I'm still practicing with my recently-acquired digital camera and struggling with indoor lighting and color balance for these photos. These images have all been tweaked from the raw files using Nikon Capture NX. I think I need to spend some time with test images and the Help system. [update 2008-10-17 This is part of my migratory episodes from Orcmid’s Live HideOut. I have nothing in particular to add to this beyond capturing the material here on Orcmid’s Lair, with my own control over its archiving and preservation.] Labels: cats, photography
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2008-10-08Geek Dinner Collection: 2007-09-12 Hanselman EventTechnorati Tags: orcmid, geek dinner, Scott Hanselman, Redmond, Bellevue Crossroads, bloggers, Microsoft [This 2007-09-13 Orcmid’s Live Hideout Post is being recovered from my Live Spaces blog for improved preservation and consolidation. While it is a way to appear to be blogging more regularly, it is also a serious preservation attempt. I want to move off of Live Spaces anyhow, since I can now accomplish all of the same things in a place where I have complete backup and preservation capability. It also happens that there are some threads that were partly over there that I want to build on over here. I did not know that this was more urgent than I realized. It seems the latest Windows Live Writer (or Live Spaces itself) will not let me retrieve previous posts beyond the latest 20. So I am literally scrapping this one off of the blog page. We’ll see how it goes. Scott Hanselman hosted another of his Bellevue Crossroads Geek Dinners this past Monday, 2008-10-06. It is appropriate to retrieve this message while I stall my preparations for a response to Hanselman on a different topic.]
My snapshots from the casual dinner meet-up called by Scott Hanselman with swag by Charlie Owen. Here I play with the thumbnails that Flickr provides, along with the ease of using photos in posts via Live Writer. I do fancy my Live Writer, yes I do. [update 2008-10-09: Along with movement of this post to Orcmid’s Lair, there is also a confirmable-experience moment concerning these digital photos. They appear much darker than on my previous display. This is a noticeable concern and a complex confirmable experience situation. There’ll be something more coherent about that after I manage to calibrate my new monitor for reliable digital-photography work. Oh, I’m also making use of the categories feature and have abandoned any effort to keep cybersmith posts all in one place. Scary.] [update 2007-09-13: Arun Bhatnagar has put his photo set on Flickr. They provide a great demonstration of how the Crossroads Mall building is unusually inviting for socialization and informal meetings.] Labels: confirmable experience, cybersmith, geek dinner, photography 2008-09-27Suono: Playing with HDR PhotographyTechnorati Tags: orcmid, Nikon D80, HDR, High Dynamic Range, photography, Stuck in Customs, suono, Trey Ratcliff, Dougerino I envy Dougerino’s proficiency with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photographs. On a photo-walk with him at the Seattle Aquarium on Saturday, 2008-09-20, I figured this was my best chance to get some tips and try the technique myself. I also figured that the garish lighting and colors in aquarium displays would grant me license to mess up color saturation and other aspects of HDR that would be unreal for many other subjects. I’m using the subject to cover up my inexperience with the technique.
My first non-trial effort is the photograph of sea anemones in captivity, above. The HDR image is produced from three separate digital exposures using my Nikon D80. It took a while to learn how to set the D80 to automatically take three successive pictures at –2ev (2 full stops under), +0ev (normal metered exposure), and +2ev (two stops over), but I finally got it working. The downside of this arrangement is that it takes a while for the camera to grab the three separate shots, I can’t see what is happening (the SLR mirror being raised) while the images are being taken, and the +2ev exposure is noticeably slow under low light conditions. Keeping the camera stable is important. I was hand-holding my camera, with my back against a wall. That, combined with using a Vibration Reduction (VR) lens had the images be more stable than I deserved. While I and the camera were still enough, the anemones were not motionless as sea water circulated in the tank. Look closely at the full-size Flickr version and you will see what looks like multiple-exposure effects in the tubes of the center anemone. The tops of the tall anemones are also fuzzed because of movement there. Now that HDR images, not to mention saturated color and extreme Photoshop effects, are becoming popular on Flickr and photography web sites, it is easy to suspect HDR where it is not present. Sometimes, the clues are pretty subtle. Beside the hands-on tips from Dougerino, I found Trey Ratcliff’s Stuck in Customs web site with great examples and tutorial information. Because Ratcliff offers many HDR images, I thought that was before me in his “Some of my favorite shots of children.” Ratcliff’s HDR tutorial illustrates the use of PhotoShop layering techniques to eliminate blurred images in the combined separate exposures. I thought I was seeing that in the image of the girl in this detail:
 No. That is not an HDR image. My suspicions were groundless. Some photographs are richly hued and at the right moment without requiring doctoring, at least not of the HDR kind. The following image from the same set is an HDR image.
If you look at the largest image on Flickr, you can see that there are indications of skater motion in comparison with the clarity of the ice surface. I also suspect there was not a 4-stop range. The D2X might have been working in a faster range of shutter speeds, too. That’s all guesswork. It is valuable to be able to discern how a photographic subject was lighted, an unaccustomed test that I seldom pass. Now I must also train my photographer eye to discern how HDR was used, if at all, along with other digital-processing effects. Meanwhile, I am able to enjoy and learn from the wonderful images that appear in daily Stuck in Customs posts. You can too. Suonare is the Italian verb for “to play” in the sense that a pianist plays a keyboard. With the advent of computer-based music and photographic-image processing, I extent the notion to similar play via my computer keyboard, not just my MIDI controller. Suono is “I play.” Labels: photography
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2007-10-112007-09-25 Geek Dinner: Ed Bott in Kirkland CenterTechnorati Tags: orcmid, Ed Bott, Charlie Owen, Geek Dinner, Vista Inside Out, Media Center, Vista DRM, Future of Media, photography [update 2008-11-29: This is another rescue from Orcmid’s Live Hideout. I’m posting it at the original date, so it won’t show up noticeably here. It will, however be prominent in the categories that I have added here. I really need to merge geek dinners and meetups, but I will figure that out some other time. Right now I am interested in collecting the musical material (which Ed Bott figures in too) up to the point where I can make a new post that links to earlier material on the subject.] I was thrilled to learn that writer Ed Bott would be in the Redmond gravity well, having a Geek Dinner in nearby Kirkland Center. Not living near the epicenter, I have to plan cometary approaches from my West Seattle Oort zone via clever public-transit routings. In this case, it was great to arrive in the center of suburban Kirkland with its delightful town center, reminiscent of the pedestrian centers that are common in parts of California. Having been a fan of the books and blogs that Bott publishes regularly, I had a little list of questions and topics for this greet-and-meet opportunity. I was also delighted that this was the second recent Geek Dinner that Media Center guru Charlie Owen organized. Unpredictedly, this turned out to be a small, casual pizza dinner that extended past closing to the Starbucks at the corner. Beside myself and Charlie Owen (not pictured), there were BjarneD, bringing a server-side performance slant to the conversations, and Intel's Alan Cheslow, with long experience in digital media. Ed Bott was still decompressing from the strenuous fact-checking series that he's concluded on how DRM actually works in Vista. The conversation naturally revolved around digital media, its protection, and the different business models that do or do not work now and may work less in the future. One interesting question was whether music (e.g., radio and MP3s) and video (e.g. television and movies) are comparable in terms of how listeners and viewers rely on the different forms. This was the same day that Amazon MP3 was announced, so we had little information yet. There was discussion of Media Center, Media Extenders, the soon-to-arrive Windows Home Server, and Vista, always Vista on my mind. Afterwards, I had a difficult time with my few photos. I had some setting problems with my camera and flash that led to extreme ruddiness of the kind that only medical journals might prefer. I struggled to clean up the images but the result is still unsatisfying. It is clear that the Nikon D80 "vivid" setting doesn't work so well under artificial lighting and high ISO setting. It looks like a kitchen science project for Mr. Wizard to figure out how to avoid this. I'm pleased to have my Windows Vista Inside Out autographed now. I have difficulty finding material in the tome, and I need to actually read it. In addition, it didn't dawn on me until this dinner that the obvious thing to do is put the PDF from the CD-ROM on my hard drive and let Windows Desktop Search provide full-text search into it. That along with PDF search should be very handy. Duhh. Labels: computers and internet, geek dinner, meetup, photography |
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