månadsarkiv: augusti 2008

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Flickr Scripts

Here are some of my favourite GreaseMonkey scripts for Flickr that I use almost daily:

Flickr Refer Comment
This script allows you to put a small signature when commenting pictures that tells the people where you found the picture. It is a very nice feature and tells people where you are finding their pictures when you comment them – which group, if you are reading through RSS aggregator, in your friends and family collections and so on.
Flickr Buddy Icon Reply
This script allows you to reply with a buddy icon and / or name so that people know who you are responding to when making a follow up comment. Lovely script!
Flickr – Multi Group Sender
This script allows you to pick from a list all the groups you wish to send a photo to. Normally you have to pick one group at a time and from the organiser you can only send a nuber of photos to one group at a time but with this you can send one photo to several groups at the same time.

In order to use any of them you must first install Greasmonkey, a scripting add-on for Firefox that also can be gotten to work with Internet Explorer.

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Spectral Difference

This picture shows the same scene taken in infrared and then natural light. It is a dramatic difference for example how foliage reflects light in the infrared spectrum compared to the visible light spectrum but there are also other, more subtle but at least as important differences.

Black and White
Left hand side photographed with IR filter on camera, right hand side normal photograph.

Check the concrete plate out in the bottom of the picture, or the differences in the clouds. The difference in the water is mainly due to the longer exposure time on the water.

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Left or Right

Left or Right

Sometimes we get to crossroad in life and need to chose the path to go. Take the high speed train to the right and leave on a journey that is called out before every stop. Or take the left hand road at your own pace, walk down the road, ride a bike, drive a car, stop when you want without anyone calling the shots and do what you want.

Which road would you walk?

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AE-L/AF-L button has 2 hidden functions

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Nikon cameras (and most certainly others as well) has a button on the back side of the camera called AE-L / AF-L. The normal function of this button is to lock exposure and auto-focus so that you may recompose the shot and then press the shutter release without the camera attempting a new focus or metering and changing the exposure parameters.

This article will start off on the D70s camera that I have, but should work very similar on most Nikon digital bodies. It may also be the same for Canon and other brands although I have not verified it. If you know, please leave a comment to this effect!

Most people are probably aware that in the camera CSM menu item #15 you can control what this button actually does. The obvious choices here are the following:

  • Lock exposure and auto-focus at the same time (AF/AE mode)
  • Lock only auto-focus (AF mode)
  • Lock only exposure (AE mode)

What people generally do not know is that there are two more modes that are very useful in certain situations. These modes are:

  • Auto focus ON mode (AF-ON mode)
  • Flash metering off mode (FV mode)

They are not so well described in the manual and so you may want to practice a bit with using them! The rest of this article is to describe some situations where they are quite useful:
Fortsätt läsa AE-L/AF-L button has 2 hidden functions →

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Sunday Walk with Camera

I set off on a sunday walk and brought the camera along. On purpose I only took my 50mm lens because I really like to find more and more ways of using it.

Before the Rain
This is a panoramal. I shot seven pictures handheld with the 50mm in portrait orientation, then stitched them togehter in photoshop and added transformations to perspective correct it and then saved it as JPEG. Here is the result. You really should view it large...

Fortsätt läsa Sunday Walk with Camera →

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Europride 2008 – Stockholm

More pictures here!

Rainbow Flag
The rainbow flag, the symbol for the pride movement globally.

We sat out pretty early anticipating a lont of people in town for the big pride parade. This year bigger than anything seen before and although the weather was not so nice it was already people on Hornsgatan, one of the major spots where people gather to see the parade, at eleven in the morning, two hours before the start and three hours before they were expected to arrive at this location.

After a brief breakfast at Café Puck we staked out a good position slightly above the street the parade was going to come through. The weater then quickly turned to worse and a light drizzle started. And then it turned into showers and then quite heavy rain. Did not matter, people were gathering by the thousands anywat.

A 152 groups were marching today and countless of other people, supporting and cheering. Notable events from the parade were the Gay Police community, proud parents to LGBT children and nothing could hold back the lovely mood, not even the pouring rain!

I think the best moment that I had from the whole parade was the proud parents when they walked in, the cheer that rose from the crowd was ear-deafening and the appaluds never seems to cease! It was heart warming to say the least.

I had good use for the towel that I have on my list to bring always for excursions, but of course this time I forgot it and was saved by Jeanette who brought one! (She does that a lot. Saves me, that is.)

The light conditions were far from ideal, it was raining and it was difficult to get the shutter times required to freeze motion, therefore you will see some motion blurring in the pictures, and I needed to use the 18-200 lens this time to be able to capture both wide angles and zoom in on single faces. Wit an aperture from f/3,5-5,6 it was sometimes difficult to get good exposures. But some of the pictures came out pretty good in my own opinion.

Rollerblades
This effect is not post-processed but created byt zooming and shooting at low shutter speed at the same time.

Fortsätt läsa Europride 2008 – Stockholm →

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Action shots in Iceland

I had the great fortune to go to Iceland in my line of work and on top of it being able to negotiate a stay over the weekend thus cutting the cost for the flight in half and being able to do some sight-seeing in this fabulous country.

We set off by bus and went to many interesting places – but one of my absolute favourites were the hot spring area with the geysirs. It was fantastic! Even in the chilly Icelandic winter (the cold is not so bad, being Swedish I expected even colder weather but the Atlantic moderates the temperature) with not a dry cold but a rather humid damp cutting through bone and marrow coldness that was unexpected and hard to describe.

Anyway, coming to the Geysir fields was a real experience. The geysir ”Strokkur” erupted every 8-12 minutes or so and I waited in the biting wind, bare hands with red knuckles holding my camera tight looking for the sign of eruption.

Just before it blows the water rises and looks like it is about to overflow, then it settles back again and just seconds after there is a rather strange gurgling-splashing noise as the whole thing blows water and steam about 30 meters (100 ft) straight into the air. It’s spectacular, and if you really want to shoot some interesting phenomenon I think Iceland would be lovely.

There are of course many other interesting places in Iceland as well certainly, more about them in coming posts.

Here some pictures of Strokkur:

Strokkur

Strokkur

Strokkur

DSCN6669

DSCN6675

Shooting these photos was not too difficult, I used a ”point and shoot” camera called The E8700 one of Nikons finest PaS and although it is not an SLR it takes some rather nice pictures. It was the camera I used before getting the D70. I actually stepped down in megapixels but the quality of a proper SLR is worth it.

I was using the camera in serial-take mode taking about 5 photos per second. Not all photos were used and I had to get pictures from about three eruptions before I had all the pictures I wanted. It did take some experimenting. The whole thing, from when it starts to look like it is time to blow to the eruption has finished takes around 5-10 seconds. Make sure you can maintain the high speed shooting for all this time.

In some cameras this means you have to reduce the image size  or quality, for example in RAW+JPEG mode I can only shoot up to 4 consecutive images before the camera lose speed. If I select BASIC JPEG as format then I can shoot a hundre pictures easily and not hit the restrictions in the camera. Sacrificing quality for speed is sometimes necessary.

More modern cameras such as the Nikon D300 can do much better than this. Even up to 8 pictures a second with the battery grip and pack! That would be excellent to use.

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Worldwide Photo Walk – Stockholm

Redigerad 080811: Det är nu femtio personer anmälda till WPW-Stockholm och det är fullt hus! Jag hoppas att vi ses nu den 23:e!
Edit 080811: There are now fifty people signed up for the WPW-Stockholm event, which is the limit! Hope to see you on the 23rd!

Link: Worldwide Photo Walk – Stockholm, Sweden | Worldwide Photo Walk.

[Svenska]

Den 23 augusti kommer det att anordnas en ”Photo Walk” i flera städer över hela världen. Vi har tur att ha fått en värd för detta event i Stockholm, läs mer om detta på länken ovan och anmäl er.

Antalet platser är begränsat till 50 personer så anmäl er nu om ni vill vara med. Se sajten ovan för mer information om denna Photo Walk.

[English]

On the 23rd of August there is a huge event world wide with prices to win for those who take the coolest or nicest picture. We are lucky here in Stockholm that we have got a host for this event.

The number of places are limited to 50 people, so sign up now if you wish to join in! Read more about it on the link above!

Stockholm City