Author Archives: Donncha
Leaf in Water
Holding on against the tide..
PictPress – WordPress Gallery Plugin
Oooh, PictPress looks nice but I’ll have to put some restrictions on usage here as convert is such a dog on any system! Hmm, it’ll need some sort of upload facility in the backend too as it’s impossible to create directories in the images folder right now.
Yes, this is showing off..
Yes, this desktop screenshot is just showing off! Who wants a transparent movie? 🙂
Loose F717 Lens Barrel – How to fix!
I noticed for a while that the lens on my Sony F717 was getting just a little loose. It didn’t have the same firm feel to it that it had when I bought it a year ago. I didn’t think much of it except to presume that it was normal wear-and-tear.
Then 2 weeks ago I dropped my camera bag from my hand and it hit the floor lens first. It survived but the lens was even looser! That’d be fine with loose wemen around but not for taking photos which is how I stumbled across instructions for ripping a F717 apart! Thankfully it wasn’t necessary as all I had to do was tighten up a few small screws in the camera body and it’s back to it’s old self!
Hopefully this’ll fix it’s habit of shooting photos just a little off the horizontal. No matter how hard I tried there was always a pronounced off-horizontal lean in my photos. Yeah, it could be me too. heh.
Removing Haze from Photos
The Gimp Guru continues his series of tutorials with an excellent one on removing haze from photographs. (He copied the technique from Luminous Landscape but the more GIMP material out there the better!)
I really like his explanation of Unsharp Mask, it’s the first one I’ve understood!
UTV – Cheap Call Challenger
UTV very recently started an ad campaign to publicize their unbeatable local and national call tariffs – FREE!
Unfortunately, their mobile tariffs don’t compare well to Tele2 or Vartec who I looked at earlier. The same goes for international calls (outside of the UK which is free evenings and weekends too) which are only 10% less than Eircom’s.
So, who provides the cheapest calls in Ireland? It depends. A mixture of providers will benefit users if that’s possible.
Photography Mag Updates
Mark reports that both Range Finder and Nature Photographers have updated their magazines. Some light reading later perhaps?
Last of the Summer Colours
Last Monday I noticed for the first time this season, the Autumn colours creeping into the hedge-rows and trees. Hopefully we’ll have as spectacular a display as we had last year! This year I’ll attempt to record it as best I can! I went out with my camera yesterday to capture some of those changes.
The Digital Journalist – September
The September issue of The Digital Journalist is out and it’s packed with great stuff. I just had a quick look over the Olympics article but there’s lots more there too..
Underwater cameras with remote control could be used for the swimming contests, diving and synchronized swimming – a first for Olympic Games. After some back and forth, the IOPP …. had their cameras installed at the bottom of the pools. Scuba-diving AP photographer Mark Terrill was brought in from Los Angeles with the technology he knows well and, after some trial and error, flash pictures of swimming star Michael Phelps and others moved on the “wires.” At first the disks had to be removed from the camera after races; later, wireless transmission worked off and on.