Nerdy photo things for a wet weekend

Have been getting more and more interested in different forms of photography recently

Started out with High Dimensional Range (HDR) which is based on the concept that the dimensional range of a photo is much less than your eye, so that in any single photo a few bits are optimally exposed while while most of it is either too dark or too light. With HDR you take several photos of the same view, bracketed around the optimal exposure and then sample the best exposure from the set. This can be done manually but is best left to a piece of software. I use photmatix pro - details here and the results are awesome. There are lots of examples of the results at my flickr site such as these from Utah.

Then I got interested in timelapse - my first efforts were with a web cam pointing out the window. I captured a winter week outside the lair. The result can be seen here. The movie was made with a photo taken every 10 minutes and then combined into a movie using some free software at 15 frames per second. It was ok but the quality is pretty shitty.

Next stage was to try and get better quality, so I dug out an old Nikon D70 and started experimenting with that. To get the time lapse it needs to be linked to a laptop and have some controlling software. First I tried to use Nikon capture control which is apparently very good but is also rip-off expensive. When you have spent 2000 quid on a camera the least they could do is give you the software to run it! Anyway I tried to use the trail version but it kept bombing and I wasn't about to spend 120 quid on software that may not work, so back to the interweb.

Then I found DIYphotobits from here which does everything I wanted and is FREE - yes you tight arsed bastards at Nikon - take note! Its a great piece of software and I can't understand why it is not more widely known about.

So then I set up the D70 and experimented. The camera battery only lasts a couple of hours which is a major bummer because it means you need an external power source (another £85 from rip-off Nikon). That is on order.

Apart from that it works really well and it is possible to do time lapse and bracket as well, opening up possibilities for timelapse HDR. So yesterday morning (saturday) I set it all up on the window sill , to take 1 shot every two minutes, bracketed +/- 1 stop. So that is 30 shots per hour (with 90 exposures). This ran for a couple of hours before the battery ran out at lunch time.

Photomatix has an excellent batch process mode which combined the three exposures in to 1 shot, I then stacked them up into a movie at 10 frames per second. The result is here.

I am not super happy with the results. First of all the view was pretty crappy. It was a dull overcast day and not much happening. Secondly the software that has stacked the images into the AVI didn't do a particularly good job this time, it's jerky. I need to have another go at compiling it. When I was loading it up to youtube I realised, as with many great ideas, someone else had beaten me to it and done a better job. Check this and this out.

Finally photo-nerd of the decade must go to this guy who put an old canon into a box, wrapped it up in duct tape and sent it into space on a weather balloon. Awesome! Total respect and great results. Check out his website.

Now time lapse, HDR from space... pass the gaffer tape

Friday Joke - The wisdom of the ancient Greeks

In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.

One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied, "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
'Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.
"That's right," Socrates continued, "Before you talk to me about Diogenes let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say.
The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it.
"All right," said Socrates, "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you're not certain it's true?"
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?"
The man was bewildered and ashamed and he decided not to tell his story.

This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was shagging his wife.

Thursday Fashion

This is the first of a new, weekly post on Fashion, including tips, advice and comments from yours truly. There is of course a mild degree of irony assocaited with a geologist providing fashion tips.

This week - "Head bands"

What would possibly possess an adult woman to wear a thin plaited strip of leather around her head. A latent desire to play and being a Squaw? A vague attempt to recycle the 70s and get in touch with your inner hippy? Well it looks ridiculous, especially when you wear it to work. In fact the only thing that looks more ridiculous than a grown woman playing at cowboys and indians is the bloke I saw wearing one in a restaurant last week. Utter Wanker

Wednesday Movie - Not quite AC/DC

Two unrelated movies this week.

The first from Roy Fitz - its not quite AC/DC but its pretty damned good...

The second is related to a NASA study of the impact of various drugs on spiders and the webs they spin. This was a real study and its worth looking at this website before you watch the movie here.

Friday Joke

This really made me laugh...

The Cove

I just watched “The Cove” and it is a brilliant documentary. After it was over, I felt predictably depressed. Ignorant arseholes using culture as an excuse to practice outdated, barbaric practices on beautiful, intelligent, sentient marine mammals and then blatantly lying about what they are doing before feeding toxic meat to school children. Not really too much to be happy about there. But the more I thought about it the more I realized there is reason to celebrate...

The tide is turning, the global success of this movie, culminating at the Oscars, has led to a huge audience, all informed and outraged. The butchers find themselves more isolated and more marginalised on a daily basis – That is a result!

Meanwhile in the Southern Ocean, Sea Shepherd have just concluded their most successful season ever. They shut down the Japanese whaling fleet for over half of it’s season, cutting their kill quote drastically and costing the Japanese tax payer millions of dollars in subsidies. The success of Whale Wars on Discovery Channel has brought extra awareness and with that extra funding for the campaign, increase the number of boats and the chance of success. That awareness has also, finally, forced vote hungry Australian politicians to stand by election pledges and complain openly about the poachers in their waters. Meanwhile the whalers are forced in to more and more desperate measures like, secruity ships, acosutic weapons and running over small boats as the World watches, intrigued, bemused and appalled – That is a result!

Last year the EU banned the import of Canadian seal products so that the butchers of Newfoundland have one less market for their grizzly kill – That is a result!

Today in the UK a hunt observer was cleared of wrong doing in association with the death of a thug who was threatening him and trying to stop his gyrocopter taking off to observe a fox hunt. I don’t celebrate the death of a member of the pro-hunt lobby, frankly I don’t care if he lives or dies, but what was interesting was that a high proportion of comments in the Times Online supported the verdict. I was surprised at that, I thought the right wing readers would be outraged. This perhaps illustrates that the debate has moved on. People are no longer able to hide behind the veil of calling it a class struggle and are seeing it for what it actually is. A law to stop barbaric ritual slaughter for entertainment - That is a result

The world is slowly changing. These changes are made possible by the availability of information, through TV, movies and the internet. The majority of people are intelligent, compassionate and caring. They don’t support this pointless, outdated barbarism and will take a stand. Society is becoming progressively more aware of its power to control nature and th efact that with intelligence and power comes responsibility. Just as slavery was abolished, just as child labour was outlawed so these unnecessary, barbaric acts will eventually be stopped by collective World opinion. Culture is a piss-poor excuse for brutality and slowly but surely we are winning this fight - That is a result!

Sheep and Goats

So very odd goats here
and some quality sheep here