Photoshop - I finally took the plunge!

OK, so I have always been intimidated by Photoshop.
The few times I have tried to use it, I have given up after a few minutes cos it all just seemed too overwhelming.

I have now finally managed to get over the hump and am starting to play with it.
Its super powerful, and I am enjoying it (Layers are awesome!!)

Have a look at the photo below. Its a composition of 5 burst-mode shots, taken at Krom River, near St Francis Bay.
These photos were taken with my old Sony DSC V3.

Also check out these photos I have uploaded to Panoramio:
http://www.panoramio.com/user/596154

Panoramio has recently been bought out by Google (Google seems to be taking over the world!!) and as a result my photos should appear in Google Earth within a few weeks, pretty cool huh?
Panoramio is a free service, they give you 2GB of space to upload your photos. You can Geotag your images (this involves pinpointing the location on the Google Earth globe of where the photo was taken), then when they do their scheduled Google Earth updates, your photos magically appear in Google Earth

A Panorama of Port Elizabeth

I have always enjoyed taking photos, but lately my interest has gone to a whole new level with the possibilities my new Sony H9 has opened up.

I have also started looking back at some of my old photos for ways of improving my photography, and I have come across some old ones which I had forgotten about.

This stitched panorama was taken in 2003 with my 2.3 megapixel Sony DSC S50 (great camera for its time).

It was a series of 5 shots taken from the penthouse of a block of flats in Central, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I'll talk you through it quickly:

To the left you can see the Donkin Reserve with the lighthouse and pyramid commemorating Lady Elizabeth Donkin. Interestingly, she never set foot in this great city which now bears her name. Although the name of the city has not been officially changed, many people now refer to Port Elizabeth as Nelson Mandela Bay).
Moving towards the centre you can see the bright lights of the harbour container terminal in the background. The top of the Campanile is just visible sticking out above the building in the distance.
Just right of that and still closer to the camera's vantage point is the PE Town Hall.
The bright blue lights on the horizon, illuminating the clouds, are chokka (squid) fishing boats, they usually come in close to the shore like this when there is a cold front on the way. Algoa Bay provides protection for the boats (and the squid I believe) when the seas get rough.
The road which runs the length of this panorama is called Settlers Way, it is the Eastern entrance to the city. You can see it winding off into the distance where it meets up with the Indian Ocean and becomes Beach Road and later, Marine Drive.
The bright lights on the horizon, to the very right are the floodlights of Telkom Park sports stadium.

 

Check out some of my other favourite photos here:
http://www.panoramio.com/user/596154

IR photography experimentation

I have started playing with the Nightshot mode on my Sony H9 to take Infra Red photos in daylight.

All standard digital cameras have an IR filter which blocks out the infra-red light (which is invisible to the human eye). This infra-red light would cause your photos to have an "unrealistic" colouration if this filter were not there.

On Sony cameras with Nightshot, this IR filter is moved out of the path of the light when Nightshot is activated so that the camera is able to record the infra-red light.

Nightshot mode is intended to allow you to take photos in near total darkness.

The problem is that once you engage Nightshot, you have no control over any of the settings anymore. The camera automatically locks settings like ISO, shutter speed and aperture to values suited to allow the maximum amount of available light to be recorded.
The result is that if you try to use Nightshot in daylight your photos come out way too bright and over-exposed (sunlight contains a lot of infra-red light which overloads the sensor under these circumstances).

I read somewhere about a trick involving setting the Nightshot switch to its halfway position. The switch seems to have a dual purpose, namely it moves the IR filter out of the way so that invisible IR light is no longer filtered out. The second thing it does is to actually engage the Nightshot mode, which "cripples" the camera by locking the settings as I mentioned.

Its quite tricky to actually get the switch to stay in the halfway position, but with a little patience and some practise it gets easier.

Once this "halfway mode" is activated, you get a mixture of all the visible light plus the invisible IR. In this mode you have the ability to control all of the settings manually because the camera doesn't yet "think" it is in Nightshot mode. The next step is to filter out most of the light except IR. I believe this can be done properly with expensive filters. But, seeing as this was just an experiment, and I didn't have any such filters, I found out that you can manufacture a crude IR filter out of an old floppy diskette (I don't know how well this works compared to the real thing, but nevertheless, I like the interesting results I am getting). I have attached a photo of my Floppy diskette IR filter

Check out some of my quick and dirty test photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bradjackson78/ExperimentingWithInfraRedPhotographySonyH9

This is a link to a professional IR photographer's gallery (awesome stuff)
http://jesusv.smugmug.com/gallery/2781583#148188327


Below is a sample of one of my first IR, daytime photos, as well as a pic of my custom, quick and dirty IR filter.

Another photo taken with my new Sony H9

I took this photo of the front of my house tonight.

I thought it turned out OK.

I haven't done any post-processing, so this is exactly how the camera captured it.

I used a 20 second exposure, with the ISO set to 80.

Welcome to my Blog

Hey there

Welcome to my blog
I just signed up, so this is an introductory posting.

I hope to keep this blog up-to-date and as fresh as possible, but can't make any promises.
I'm not generally good at keeping these kinds of things up to date.