Les Jones

More photographers use right eye than left when taking pictures

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | Guns, Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

That’s from an online survey by Digital Photography School. The results were 57% right eye and 37% right eye, with another 7% looking through the viewfinder with both eyes (I assume they meant sometimes one and sometimes the other, but see below).

I know from shooting a gun that I’m right eye dominant. I’m lucky in that I’m also right handed.

When your eye dominance and hand dominance are different you have cross eye dominance, which can create some problems when shooting. For instance, if you mount a rifle so that you can pull the trigger with your right hand you’ll have a hard time craning your neck over far enough to look through the sights with your left eye. If you put the rifle in the other hand you can look through the sights, but may have trouble working the bolt and other controls with your off hand, even if the rifle is set up for a left handed shooter.

Some cross dominance shooters get around that by learning to shoot with both eyes open. For pistol shooting the isosceles stance bypasses the problem by putting the gun in the centerline of the body. Other tricks here.

Here’s a simple test to determine if you are right or left eye dominant. Until I read Wikipedia I didn’t know what it was called.

The Porta test. The observer extends one arm, then with both eyes open aligns the thumb or index finger with a distant object. The observer then alternates closing the eyes or slowly draws the thumb/finger back to the head to determine which eye is viewing the object (i.e. the dominant eye)

Tags: guns and cameras

Picasa 3.5

Friday, September 25th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

It’s available for download now. There are no new editing features, but it has new options for tagging photos and doing geotagging.

Add name tags - Picasa 3.5 scans all the photos in your collection, identifies the ones with faces, and groups photos with similar faces together. It’s easy to add name tags to dozens of photos at once by clicking “Add a name” below a photo and typing the person’s name. Once you’ve tagged some pictures, you can make a face collage with one click, easily find all your pictures with the same two people in them, or upload your name tags to Picasa Web Albums.

Tags: i like free stuff, picasa

Happy Fifth Birthday, Katie

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Happy birthday, sweetie. That’s you and your cousin Tristan in Kentucky.

Your mom and dad love you, kiddo.

Tilt-shift video

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | Dancing Baloney, Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

This is cooler than the other side of the pillow. It’s real, life-sized video that’s shot with a tilt-shift lens to skew the focus and edited to drop some of the frames so it looks like stop-motion animation of miniatures. The monster truck tilt-shift video is even better.

Tilt-shift is fairly uncommon (and expensive) in still photography, and super rare in video. Now that more and more DSLRs support video this sort of thing should get much more accessible.

Bonus! - Make your own tilt-shift lens on the cheap.

Previously

• Oleg’s tilt-shift photography
• Correcting Photographic Perspective

Tags: youtube

Natalie has swine flu

Monday, September 14th, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Melissa just got back from the doctor and tested positive for swine flu. That’s the bad news. The good news is the doctor thinks the worst of it is already over.

Natalie was sick last week with a temp of 104.5, so Melissa took her to the doctor Thursday. At that time they tested her for swine flu and she came back negative, but mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to detect early on and that she had the symptoms. We kept her home from parent’s night out and declined some invitations to make sure she got some rest and that we didn’t spread anything.

I’ve been sick since Saturday with fatigue and flu-like aches, though my fever hasn’t run nearly as high as Natalie’s. I stayed home today and will likely stay home again tomorrow. If this is swine flu it isn’t nearly as bad as the regular flu Melissa and I had two winters ago. Knock on wood.

Anyhoo, here’s looking forward to Natalie feeling better. Here’s another Natalie picture I like.

Natalie has the curliest hair you’ve ever seen. Melissa put some straightener in her hair and took this picture. Within a couple of hours of being out in the humidity her hair curled right back up. Natalie’s three and has  never had a haircut, so it’s sort of amazing when you see how long her hair really is.

When we wash her hair it looks very dark, darker than Katie’s, even. It’s just the ends that are light and make her look very blonde. Looking at old pictures I was blonde in preschool and only became brown haired later.

Tags: swine flu

Taking pictures of the moon

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

I’m bookmarking the great advice found here.

Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››

Morning Zen

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Playing with Neat Image to clean up ISO noise

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

I found Neat Image via Thom Hogan and downloaded their free demo. Here’s a picture I shot at ISO 1600 with lots of noise:

Here’s the same photo processed with NeatImage using the default settings:

Waddya think?

P.S. A while back I was amazed that printouts from Walgreen’s looked so much better than the same pictures onscreen. Alcibiades guessed that Walgreen’s software enhanced the photos. After seeing this I’m sure he’s right.

Crap. A smash and grab robber stole my camera bag

Friday, August 28th, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 5 Comments |

Tomorrow is Melissa’s 20th high school reunion. Tonight we went to South Doyle for a pre-reunion football game. It was a nice night until we left the game and discovered someone had smashed out the Honda’s window and stolen my camera bag.

They got the 18-55mm kit lens, the 50mm 1.8, the 70-300mm (that one really hurt), plus a really excellent polarizing filter, and some miscellaneous camera junk along with a Carter’s diaper bag I was using as a stealth camera bag.

The good news is I had the camera, the new Nikon AF-S 35mm lens and the external flash around my neck taking pictures at the football game, so I’m not totally dead in the water. They also ignored the radar detector, a Streamlight flashlight in the opposite door, a CB radio under the seat, or a Victorinox SwissTool and other stuff in the glovebox. Melissa didn’t have her pocketbook tonight, so we didn’t lose any money, credit cards, drivers license, etc.

It sucks, but at this point in my life I have insurance and money. In my twenties I had a car broken into once when I had neither. I found out about that break-in when a park ranger hiked into my backcountry campsite the first morning of a three night backpacking trip and asked “Do you own a red Toyota?”

We reported it to the police. I put plastic over the window in case it rains. Saturday I’ll go get three estimates. We’ll get the window fixed, give the police the serial numbers of the lenses, curse the SOB who did this, and move on with our lives. If the police recover the lenses or catch the guy who did this I’ll consider it a miracle.

I want to replace the 70-300mm lens as soon as we get the insurance money. The other lenses I’m not too worried about. Life goes on.

NEXT MORNING: The camera bag was a Carter’s diaper bag. It wasn’t technicool black nylon and wasn’t emblazened with “Nikon” or “Lowe Pro.” It’s what I call a stealth camera bag. However, it might have looked like a big purse, which could have given the thief the idea to steal it. Here’s a picture of it from a trip to the Smokies last winter:

We were trying to remember if we set the car alarm and we’re pretty sure we did. If the alarm is set and you unlock the door with anything but the alarm fob you have five seconds to either put the key in the ignition or press the unlock button on the alarm fob before the alarm sounds. If the alarm didn’t go off when they smashed the window it would have gone off in five seconds after they unlocked the door.

So most likely they just had time to grab the bag. Then the alarm went off and they ran. That would explain why they didn’t take the radar detector or anything else (Melissa realized this morning that her checkbook was in the console between the seats), and why the glove compartment wasn’t even opened. Score one for alarm systems.

Why did Flickr remove the Obama/Joker photos?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

They claim it was due to copyright infringement, but anyone who might have a copyright claim swears they didn’t request the removal. Via Glenn.

Tags: obama

Canon G10 camera upgrade features 32% *fewer* megapixels

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

I’ve mentioned before that extra megapixels on a digital camera are overrated and sometimes counter-productive. Canon seems to be admitting as much by replacing the 14.7 megapixel PowerShot G10 with the 10 megapixel PowerShot G11. I can’t wait for the reviews.

Previously

• Ars Technica declares megapixel wars are over
• Megapixels vs. Print Size
• Pixel Density on Digital Cameras
• The Megapixel Myth (KenRockwell.com)

Scientists discover use for the Internet

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

At a briefing yesterday scientists from MIT announced a major discovery. Now you can go to The Squirrelizer and add Nuts the Squirrel to your photos.

For 15 years I’ve maintained that science would harness the power of the Internet to serve mankind. That day has arrived.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades.

Previously - Scientists Discover Most Kick-ass “Grindhouse” Review in Universe

Book: The Digital Photography Book (Volume 1) by Scott Kelby

Monday, August 17th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Book isn’t a encyclopedic photography book. The approach doesn’t carefully build on a knowledge base or explain all of the particulars of exposure before telling you how to press the shutter release. Instead, it’s a more informal tips book for photographers of all level of experience.

Each chapter is divided into topics that are covered in a single page. Each page is well illustrated and Kelby cracks plenty of jokes and keeps things light. If you’ve got five minutes to spare you can pick up the book and get something out of it. I read the whole thing by keeping it on my nightstand and reading a little every now and then.

Chapters on technique explain how to make better pictures of particular subjects, such as flowers, sports, weddings, people, and landscapes. For an example of how one of Kelby’s straightforward tips improved my photographs, see the Franklin, TN pictures post and the notes at the end.

Other chapters are more oriented towards technical how-to topics like printing and getting sharper pictures. I like the fact that Kelby has tips for using inexpensive and easy to find materials, such as using a hotel shower curtain as an improvised light diffuser.

The Digital Photography Book is camera-agnostic for the most part. You can use this book whether you have a point and shoot or a DSLR, though some techniques will require a DSLR. When he does delve into particulars that require advanced settings on a DSLR he gives directions for Canon and Nikon (but not for Sony, for instance).

I can definitely recommend the book. Anyone who owns a digital camera will discover useful techniques and ideas for creating better photographs.

More from Scott Kelby

Kelby has a blog, Photoshop Insider, though it’s very different from the book and is aimed at a professional audience. He has an interesting piece today about the Kelly Clarkson photo retouching dustup. His take? Of course it was retouched - all celebrity magazine cover photos are retouched - but the original photo probably looked better than the other photos people are using for comparison. That’s because good portrait photographers make their subjects look good in the first place. Read the whole thing.

Kelby is also the driving force behind the Worldwide Photowalk, which organizes photographers in cities around the world to get together and take pictures. Photographers submit their best pictures and there are prizes for the winners. The winners will be announced today at ScottKelby.com. LATER: the winners.

Twisting Falls in Carter County, TN

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Dang. That looks cool. Cooler even than Abrams Falls in the Smokies or Wildcat Falls in Joyce Kilmer, both of which are nice places to take a swim. (Be careful at Abrams - there’s a drowning there every year or two when someone jumps off the rocks into the water.)

From Mark Peacock, who has a bigger version of that pic and another one where someone is using the right side of the falls as a waterslide. Amazing. If you like that you’ll probably enjoy Mark’s Google Map of waterfalls in northeastern Tennessee. Each dot on the map has a link back to his Web site with directions and photos.

If waterfalls are your thing I’d also recommend Rich Stevenson’s transcendent Tennessee Waterfall Photos. That’s his photo below of Burgess Falls near Sparta.

Some neat portrait tips from Digital-Photography-School.com

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Shooting Portraits like a Pro On a Budget

I like the background stuff. We used a red background for last year’s Christmas cards.

Now I’ve gotta try the black background. Annie Leibovitz did a Rolling Stone cover where she shot the The Who from above with a black floor and the members of the band in black turtlenecks with their head tilted back, so that only their heads showed. Scott Kelby explains a similar technique in the first volume of The Digital Photography Book. He uses black turtleneck t-shirts from Target. Easy squeezy.

10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

Melissa used #10 (a series of shots of a child) for Katie’s beach pictures. I liked it so much I used it for these pictures of Natalie in her walker. This works great for kids because they’re always in motion and the series captures that energy.

Via Nikon D40 Photographer.

New Nikon cameras and lenses

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

D3000, D300s, and updates to the 18-200mm and 70-200mm/F2.8. Amazon already has them up.

DP Review has a brief D3000 hands on with full specs. Hit the next and prev buttons for other new Nikon gear. Somewhere on DP Review there’s a side-by-side chart comparing the D60, D3000 and D5000, but I can’t find it again.

What I wanted was a camera the size of a D40/D60 with the 12MP high ISO sensor of the D90/D5000. The size is right, and the D3000 has the improved autofocus system of the D5000, along with a larger LCD (but with the same 230,000 pixels).

The big disappointment is that the D3000 has the D60’s 10.7MP sensor. I don’t care about the 1.3 extra megapixels, but what I lusted after was the amazing high ISO performance of the 12MP sensor and this camera doesn’t have it. That pretty much does it for me, but just to pile on, the D3000 lacks the built-in chromatic aberration correction and distortion correction of the D5000 and D90. Also missing from the D5000: LiveView, movie mode, and exposure bracketing.

None of this makes the D3000 a bad camera, but it does make it a half-hearted upgrade from the D40 and a pointless upgrade from the D60. If you’re starting from scratch this looks like a decent camera at a fair price, but be aware the feature set here is getting a bit out of date. (Almost every new DSLR these days has LiveView, for instance.) It definitely ain’t the swingin’ deal the D40 was three years ago. Me, I’ll keep plugging away with the D40 until there’s something clearly better at a price I’m willing to pay.

P.S. It’s still a few days until August 4th, but compare today’s introduction to the (supposedly) leaked Nikon roadmap.

Tags: d40, d5000, d60, d90, nikon

Scott Kelby: don’t let WordPress resize your photos

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | Blogging, Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Scott Kelby discovers that WordPress’s automated preview generator is noticeably less sharp than what he gets from Adobe Photoshop. WordPress also strips out the EXIF data in the preview. I use it anyway for the convenience, but YMMV.

Tags: wordpress

Water tower and telegraph pole at sunset, Louisville, TN

Monday, July 27th, 2009 | A&E, Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

I remembered this shot after following Jason Kottke’s link to the work of Brend and Hilla Becher. The couple photographed industrial equipment as art, devoting entire books to a single subject, such as water towers or grain elevators. The Bechers used black and white film because of the era in which they did most of their work, but these sorts of pictures cry out for black and white even when color is available.

Steve Chastain on making money with your camera

Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Photos, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera.”
– Steve Chastain

Edgar Martins, photographer and bullshit artist

Friday, July 10th, 2009 | Media Behaving Badly, Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Compare these two statements. First, le artiste:

Though my images are minimal in tone, they do not pare down my experience of place. In my work there is scope for so much more. What seem like highly controlled and manipulated photographs are but a product of illusion. The illusion of the photographic process. This is especially evident in “The Accidental Theorist” series. Most people assume that these image are manipulated. Or perhaps even staged. In reality, there is no post-production work, no darkroom or computer manipulation.
– Edgar Martins

And then the guy who doesn’t believe him:

I call bullshit on this not being photoshopped. Check it out. I’ll eat my hat if this is not fakery.
– unixrat

unixrat was right, his animated GIF proved it, and the New York Times has pulled Martins’ photos.You can still find them on the photographer’s Web site.

Now people are reviewing his other work. Despite his claims, Martins repeatedly mirrored and Photoshopped his images, both in the New York Times piece that led to his downfall and throughout his career.

Read the whole interview quoted above to see just how drunk on his artistic pretensions Martins is.

My work has an apparent formalism and aesthetic rigor that some define as being precise. However, the process by which the images are created is everything but precise. I photograph in often “unphotographable” conditions, whether in burning forest fires or the icy winters of Iceland. I also make use of long exposures. When you work in this way even the most natural of occurrences become difficult to quantify: light, time, focus, etc. For so long photography has been about control; I like to relinquish some of that control. This apparent contradiction, this dualism really interests me. I have always found photography to be a highly inadequate medium for communicating ideas—a subject and object of lack, if you like. However, it is this dissatisfaction with the medium that spurs me on to find a new visual language to work with, and, I suppose, a new vocabulary from which to derive my glossary of life.

Thing is, he has some good images. I wouldn’t care if they were Photoshopped if he hadn’t sworn up and down they weren’t, and if he weren’t so incredibly pretentious. You get the impression half of the guy’s cred was based on his patter rather than his portfolio.

Previously - YouTube, Meet Bullshit Artist. Bullshit Artist, Meet YouTube.

Tags: bullshit artists

Nikon 2009-10 roadmap leaked

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

This is unconfirmed, but looks plausible. Here’s the 2009 roadmap:

August 4 introduction: (Apparently the end of July presentation is for compact cameras)

• Nikon D3000
• Nikon D300s with Full-HD movie 24 fps, improved AF, self timer + mirror-up, cf + sd-slot
• AF-S DX 17-65/3.2-4 G VR with 72(!) mm filter

October 15 presentation:

• Nikon D700x with 24.5 MP, Full-HD movie 24 fps, improved AF and self timer + mirror-up
• AF-S Nikkor 24-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (The FX-dream-walk-around-lens?)
• AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II (What everybody waited for! 82 mm filter, 1530 g)
• AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G
• AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G (No VR?)

Tags: nikon

Ripley’s Aquarium in the Smokies

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Holidays, Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

On our last day in Gatlinburg we visited Ripley’s Aquarium in the Smokies. I prefer the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, but the glass tunnel underneath the Ripley’s aquarium is really cool.

In the next picture we’re on an upper level shooting down through the water and into the tunnel. You know how there are catfish and dogfish? Katie said these were peoplefish.

I didn’t get many good photos due to the lighting challenges. It was pretty dark in most areas, and the flash tended to bounce off the glass. I like this out of focus shot with the ceiling lights dancing off the ripples in the water.

Waiting for ballet lessons

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Photographing inside gun barrels

Monday, June 29th, 2009 | Guns, Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Vote for David has the how.

Tags: guns and cameras

LensRental.com’s lens repair results

Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Via Nikon D40 Photographer comes LensRental.com’s annual lens repair survey. The Nikon they have the most problems with is the 18-200mm superzoom. That’s consistent with other reports I’ve read that it’s Nikon’s most-repaired lens, with lots of motor problems.

I noticed there’s not a single Nikon prime lens on the list. Now maybe Lensrental.com just doesn’t rent them (or rent enough to make their “9 or more” cutoff), but somehow I doubt that. I think they just don’t need repairs very often (in contrast, there are a number of Canon primes on the list). Meanwhile it’s disappointing that the expensive Nikon 70-200mm 2.8 VR and 17-55mm 2.8 are on the list.

The two most-repaired lenses are the Sigma 120-300 f2.8 and 18-200 OS. And there’s this: “The Sigma 120-400 and 150-500 are no longer on the list because we no longer carry them. Both had failure rates of about 45% while we had them. New batches may be better (ours were all bought early), we don’t know.” That’s too bad - the Sigma 150-500mm was one of the cheapest paths to 500mm reach.

Tags: nikon