Although I was trying to take all my shots using my rather flimsy tripod (I won’t name names), this lonesome seagull was too good an opportunity to miss. I had already folded up my tripod’s legs so not to look too ridiculous dragging it about so this shot was taken by hand, with a tripod hanging out the bottom! It came out surprisingly sharp - at least around the rock where I was focusing (f/5 aperture at 75mm zoom). Alas this seagull has flown away now, maybe never to be photographed again. I don’t really care though - I got my photo and that’s all that matters

OK I’ve actually no idea what this ‘thing’ is, hence the title, and I like Harry Potter. I was walking by and it looked photo worthy so I clicked away with my trusty D300, although when I look at the photo and try to think of what the subject might be, the word ‘carousel’ comes to mind. But I’m sure that’s not it.

This photo came out slightly bland so I ran it through GIMP afterwards and fiddled with the curves to give it a little extra UMPH, as you do.

So c’mon, who’s gonna tell me what this thing is? If your site is even remotely in a similar field as mine I’ll stick you on my blogroll as a reward - first come first served! (Update: Gilbert was first with the answer - he doesn’t have a photography website so here’s his Twitter page)!

On my way up from Drogheda to Dublin for some Christmas shopping over the holidays I thought some shots of my local train station would present some interesting photographs - unfortunately it was overcast as hell (and dark) that morning so I missed out on the classic ’sun splitting the clouds’ scene that always makes HDR photos so surreal (I don’t care much for realistic/proper HDR). Anywho, the juxtaposition of the rather depressing sky and the wall light catched my eye than, and maybe yours now?

I find this image very soothing - I was walking over a rock bridge (part of it is the foreground), and the frame that the bridge and trees make around the lake made this shot irresistable to take. I’ve used a low aperture number, F/3.5 I think, to reduce the depth of focus as much as possible and give it a sort of fairy tale look. I hope you like it.

Ugh. I’m tired, hungry and hungover. The New Years celebrations were great but I wish I could skip the next day. Anyway, I caught this photo by chance - I was walking through Stephen’s Green in Dublin and an old lady suddenly starts throwing breadcrumbs all over the place. Within 10 seconds the ground was pigeon shaped. I stood watching, wondering if I should take out my camera and grab a shot before they had their fill. I did of course.

First post of 2009

Technorati Tags: Stephen’s Green, Dublin, pigeon

Well 2008 is almost over and I’m at a wedding this very moment ready to ring in the New Year (wordpress scheduling of posts rocks) so I’ll leave you this rather simple image to reflect the ending of 2008 as it flies away from us all forever. Also I like planes. Happy New Year!

Goodbye 2008

In a previous post I mentioned that I would do a comparison between Photomatix Pro and some new software called HDR Max. Here we go!

Photomatix Pro works great for me under certain lighting conditions - on clear days when the sun is out I am able to get great shots that I am really happy with (such as this one and this one). Unfortuantely I haven’t got the hang of Photomatix under cloudy conditions - my images turn out seriously bland. With that in mind I wanted to compare Photomatix against HDR Max under bad lighting i.e. ugly clouds dominating the sky. I chose a picture of a fountain that you can see in Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

For each software I tweaked the setting until I was satisfied with them - I didn’t apply the same settings to both or anything like that - I just played around until I was happy. (Playing is the best way to getting anything done I think.) The first image below is from HDR Max, the second is Photomatix. You can see I couldn’t get very good results with Photomatix, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post an image like this, but HDR Max worked wonderfully and turned out much much better: more vibrant, smoother tones, fewer halos, and more true to life. (I ran both through GIMP to fiddle with curves also.)

One major problem I had with HDR Max thougth was saving. Regardless of whether I chose jpg or TIFF, the saved image always turned out terrible - mountains of information was being lossed during saving. The image I’ve posted here for HDR Max was actually screen captured and cropped! This is not only annoying as hell but means I can’t save at full 4320×2868 resolution! Does anyone else have this problem? (Actually this may be happening because it’s the trial version I’m using.)

Anyway this has been a long post and it’s time to wrap it up - in my book HDR Max wins hands down, but then again I’ve always sucked at getting good results in bad weather condtions with Photomatix. I’ll do another comparision in the new year with an image taken under some wonderful, sun splitting through the clouds like god’s loving stare, weather conditions.

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 1/500s, 1/250s, 1/125s, 1/60s, 1/30s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

HDR Max: The clear winner!

Photomatix Pro: Grrrr, just wait ’till Round Two!

Weather in Ireland is odd. Similar conditions never occur together. It can’t be just cold and raining, or hot and sunny, conditions you would think go together. Look below. It’s sunny and the sky is clear and yet it was freezing and windy at the same time. I really need to get away from this type of weather, I need to travel more - give my Nikon some new scenery, all I seem to be photographing lately is Irish trees and houses! I’ll be heading to Paris in the new year for a week with friends though - I’m sure my D300 will enjoy that!

Technorati Tags: irish weather, projectVISUAL

Ariea are promoting their new HDR photo software, HDR Max, by offering HDR enthusiasts the chance of winning a spanking new 15” MacBook Pro, or a free copy of the HDR software (it’s usually $149). All you have to do is submit up to three photos processed with HDR Max to Airea before January 31st 2009. Taken verbatim from Ariea, the prizes and guidelines are:

PRIZES

• 1st prize is a new 15″ MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.
• 2nd and 3rd prize is a free copy of HDR MAX.

CONTEST GUIDLINES

• All entries should be sent to submissions@ariea.com.
• Entries should be submitted in the JPEG format.
• Each image should be named using the yourname_filename.jpg
• format. All entries must contain orginal work.
• The deadline for submissions is January 31st, 2009 at 11:59pm PST.

I’ve given the trial version a go, which you can download for free at the site, and it looks promising. I havn’t created any HDR’s with it yet as I literally just got it working a few minutes ago, and thought I’d quickly bang out this post. You see there was a problem with a previous version of HDR Max in that it wouldn’t process Nikon NEF files, at least ones from a D300 anyway! The problem has been resolved however with the latest version (1.3.2).

I’ll likely post up a comparison between Photomatix Pro and HDR Max tomorrow to ring off 2008 - in the meatime look out for a new HDR photo post later today!

So I was twittering away on Twitter, bored with my background - I wanted something personal. A collage of some of my images had been in my head for a time but I only managed to motivate myself today to do something about it. The best way I found to do it was by creating thumbnails of all the images I wanted to use (36 of them), open them in Photoshops photomerge option, arrange them in whatever way I saw fit, and let Photoshop do it’s magic. I didnt do much research on whether there is a better way but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out as a first attempt. As a plan for the future, once I have 100 images that are worthy I’m going to make a huge 10×10 collage! That’s a couple of months aways still though, for the moment enjoy this one! Oh you can also check out how it looks on my Twitter page.

Technorati Tags: collage, projectVISUAL

They’re not really endless tress but I couldnt think of any other title. Actually I wonder how anyone comes up with post titles. Are they an arbitrary decision or is an abundance of time put into each post name. Mmmm I better name some hot keywords before I go: I used my Nikon D300 and five exposures at f-stops of ±2, ±1, and metered, to make this high dynamic range (hdr) photo. I used Photomatix Pro and Gimp to postprocess the images. There, that’s enough I think.

• Aperture: f/10
• Shutter Speed: 1/400s, 1/200s, 1/100s, 1/50s, 1/25s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

Technorati Tags: Nikon, D300, high dynamic range, hdr, Photomatix, Gimp, glenomena, ucd, university college dublin

Humans appear to put themselves under a massive amount of stress, all the time - some dash from point A to point B for something they think is very important, but in fact isn’t very important at all. Equally, others dash from point B to point A for something they think is as equally important, but is in fact as equally unimportant. Often they worry about getting stuck at point C while dashing from point A to point B, or point B to point A. Point C is any point in between points A and B.

My point is people should just relax more, like these ducks, which I present here. They are in the background at the side of the pond and don’t really feature heavily at all. I’m not sure what this post was even about.

• Aperture: f/13
• Shutter Speed: 1/400s, 1/200s, 1/100s, 1/50s, 1/25s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

Three cheers goes to whomever knows where the inspiration for the first paragraph comes from.

Technorati Tags: ucd lake, ucd, university college dublin

Merry Christmas everyone! - I hope everyone is enjoying their festive holidays as I am (if you are celebrating somethig else, well then Merry ‘insert holiday here’!). Todays picture was going to be a christmas tree (but I think Stuck In Customs has that one covered) so instead I’ve opted for some simple bell action - it’s not often I zoom into anything and focus on the fine details. See the guy in the middle of the centre bell leaning against the pillar? That’s me! but I’ll say no more - I’ve got more turkey and ham to devour.

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 1/50s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@200mm

Well it’s Christmas Eve and I’m all ready for some turkey dinner tomorrow. It is time however to start posting some pictures with a Christmass feel to them. My main shopping centre in Dublin has adourned itself with a multitude of
decorations - looking at them all at the same time is a real brain scrambler! I really like the Santa Claus to the left - it’s mechanical and climbs up and down all day long! I’ve noticed from my little experience that HDR doesnt work so well indoors as outdoors where there is natural light - does anyone else feel the same way?

• Aperture: f/3.5
• Shutter Speed: 1/80s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

I travelled to Dublin to do some late Christmas shopping but got side tracked when I walked under this building. I think it was the unusual shape from my perspective that drew me in and fortunately I had my D300 with me. I took five exposures, shutter speeds below, and then ran them through Photomatix as usual. I dropped the light smoothing slider to medium in order to bump up the colors a little. Now all I have to do is get back to my Christmas shopping!

• Aperture: f/6.3
• Shutter Speed: 1/2500s, 1/1250s, 1/640s, 1/320s, 1/160s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@22mm

Technorati Tags: Photomatix

No picture today, just some good old fashioned advice. You’ve already seen what happens when you don’t use a tripod when trying to take sharp photographs, but if you just don’t have a tripod with you, what can you do to minimise shake? Personally, I have about seven ritualistic practices that I follow; their success rates vary from sure fire success to last ditch effort! So in no particular order…

1. Sit the camera on a rigid surface.

Possibly the most obvious practise but often the easiest and most reliable approach is to simply sit your camera on a wall, chair, table or anything rigid. The only problem with this approach is that you are limited in how you can orientate your camera; placing it on a chair will mean you can only shoot straight ahead - no substitute for a tripod with a ball and socket head.

2. Hold Your Breath.

Breathing is necessary but sometimes it gets in the way of a sharp photo - if you are trying to be the tripod then you must make yourself as steady as possible. Taking a deep breath and holding it will reduce your natural tendency to sway (very slightly, but enough to ruin a long exposure shot) as the air enters and leaves your lungs.

3. Lean against something.

Often you can put your arms around a pole, if one is available, and lean one shoulder into it, giving you an anchor to steady yourself with. Kneeling is also a simple and effective way to reduce shake - by lowering your centre of gravity you are less prone to wobble.

4. Don’t use the LCD screen, use the view finder instead.

Although there are arguments for and against using the LCD screen on a camera, for long exposure shots I would say it is definitely a no no. When using the viewfinder you tend to hold your camera away from your body, as much as arms length perhaps. This will simply lead to increased blurring as holding outstretched arms still, even without a camera, is a difficult task. It is better to use the viewfinder and keep the camera in tight to your body - it is much easier to lock your arms steady against your chest.

5. Wrap the strap around your elbows.

What this does is introduce tension in your camera’s strap so the strap is taut, constraining it from moving in at least one direction, relative to your own body. I’ll explain the setup as best I can (I’m assuming you’re right handed and are using a DSLR yes?):

• Hold your camera in front of you, letting the strap hang down.
• Put your right arm through the strap, past the elbow, and bring your hand back out around the outside of the left part of the strap.
• Hold the camera as normal and dig your elbow into the strap.
• Depending on the length of the strap you should be able to increase its tension by tilting your right arm accordingly.

6. Open aperture.

We’re approaching last ditch effort time. Bigger aperture = more light entering your lens but also decreases your depth of field. Make your choice.

7. Increase the ISO

Last ditch effort time (my personal opinion), increasing the ISO will increase your sensor’s sensitivity to light, but also to noise. I hate increasing the ISO on my camera out of some irrational fear that the image will explode in graininess - the D300 is supposed to handle very well at higher ISOs so maybe I should experiment with it a little.

Those are just some of the many possible ways to minimise shake that I use. Are there any more you can think of? Do you stabilize your camera in other ways?

Technorati Tags: tripod, camera, sharp photo, long exposure, viewfinder

I’m not going to list of some words of wisdom - a picture is worth a thousand words and I’ve got three here! On the 12th November 2008 the moon was especially close to the Earth - closer than it had been in 15 years, and purely by chance I looked out one of my many windows to see it gleaming in the clear night sky. Immediately I grabbed my Nikon (sans tripod as it was in college at the time) and tried my luck leaning against objects, tightening the strap around my elbows, holding my breath etc. Naturally I had no such luck. The exposure times I needed were just too long, making it impossible to get a sharp image. Also zooming didn’t help! What could have been some really great shots were completely wasted, just look below to convince yourself - I’ve not included larger version since these are merely illustrative. The moral of this lecture is use your tripod whenever possible.

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 2s
• ISO: 800
• Lens: 18-200@130mm

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 2s
• ISO: 800
• Lens: 18-200@170mm

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 0.5s
• ISO: 1600
• Lens: 18-200@200mm

Technorati Tags: Nikon, tripod

Usually King’s Street in Dublin is one of the more busy streets to walk through, but on this particular night is was eerily empty. The final image would have come out better had I taken a number of under- and over-exposed shots and applied a bit of HDR to them in Photomatix; some areas are seriously over-exposed! The only people I talked to was a professional homeless guy and his junkie pregnant girlfriend, who were both eyeing my D300 and looking for money - I obliged with whatever came out of my pocket (€4). Better that than my Nikon I guess!

• Aperture: f/25
• Shutter Speed: 15s
• ISO: 400
• Lens: 18-200@27mm

Click for larger resolution image.

Here’s a quick shot of the river Liffey in Dublin as seen from the overhanging walkway on its northside. One big problem I had was the vibrations coming from anyone on the walkway while the camera sensor was being exposed! So many shots resulted in meaningless blurs but a couple, including this one, were taken when no one was nearby so it came out pretty sharp. I especially like the river reflections

• Aperture: f/22
• Shutter Speed: 15s
• ISO: 400
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

Click for larger resolution image.

Technorati Tags: Liffey, Dublin, river reflections

I’ve wanted to do some long exposure shots for a long time now with my D300 but was always too lazy to venture out in the wintery Irish cold, brrrrrr, until last night of course. I brought along my gorrillapod tripod aswwell for stability and braced said camera and tripod onto a railing overlooking the carraigeway below. I did get a number of stares from passersby who might have though I was going to jump as I peered over the railing’s edge - no one bothered to ask if I needed help though - where’s the Christmass spirit in everyone?!

• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter Speed: 13s
• ISO: 200
• Lens: 18-200@18mm

Click for larger resolution image.