Photography and Graphics Links

How to make a Button Set in the GIMP. Nice.
Solving Color and White Balance Problems: Using Levels – Works equally well in the GIMP too!
Slow Shutter Speeds and Long Exposure Photography – Here’s my tip. Hold the camera steady in your hands, suck in your breath and let it out slowly, hit the shutter. Hard to do, but easier with practise. Rick has a Sony F717 and took “infra red” photos with it in night-shot mode and a 5 1/4″ disk! Must try that!
Two on the iPod – Hacking iPod and iTunes, universal remote control, run Linux on it, put it in your car. Here’s a not very encouraging review of the iPod Photo from playlistmag. All I want is a device to store images while “out in the field” for extended periods so there are better suited products out there IMO.
A Killer Digital Lens – there’s so much happening in the digital camera world, it’s extraordinary!
Ken Rockwell updated with new stuff in the last month, including a review of the Canon 20D (and complains that sync speed is too slow) and an updated digital workflow article. Good thing he uses a Mac, “we just don’t have “computer” problems like that that people blindly using windows consider acceptable.” hehe.

Flooding in Cork

I survived the worst weather in 40 years. Driving through Cork City last night was a challenge. Roads were flooded, traffic was backed up, and while I was stuck on Mc Curtain St. for half an hour I saw that the Everyman Theatre is playing, “Singing in the Rain” right now.
This morning the weather turned again, and the sun is shining, there’s a nice breeze and blue sky is visible through white clouds.
No, I don’t have photos of the floods, I was inside, warm, enjoying dinner and good company!

Some great pictures of the 2009 floods are on Brian Clayton’s post.

IMG_0708

iPod, uPod, we allPod

While Mark is rubbing his hands in glee playing with his new computer, Apple released the new iPod. At $600 the price’s a little steep and makes the iRiver H320’s $299 price tag look a lot more attractive. I can squirt photos on to both, and I doubt I’d be away from a PC long enough to fill the 20GB capacity of that device with images.
Metafilter discussion here, along with some insightful comments and links.
I mentioned the H320 before: 1 2

Bah. That U2 iPod is ugly. I am going to buy some sort of mp3 player soon to take jogging and with me to work, I haven’t decided what to get. I do not think I want to buy an iPod, I do not like the looks of them, I have no interest in iTunes and the damn aac files.

Later… Hehe, User Friendly is funny.

Photographing a Lunar Eclipse

It’s very difficult to photograph the moon, not least of which because it’s so far away! Your eyes deceive you when you look at it – sure, it might look as big as the street light but wih distance there’s a lot less light getting to you. This article on photographing the moon is very good and explains the phenomenon well.
Here’s a picture I took on Monday evening in Monkstown. The moon was rising, and after it re-appeared from behind some black clouds I snapped this photo. Originally, the photo had a lot of noise, but by blurring, and “burning” two layers in the GIMP I think I got a nice background and noise free image! Of course, reducing it in size helps a lot to hide that sort of thing!
Enjoy the picture, it’s all we’ll see in Ireland with the storm building outside!

  • APOD has a diagram showing where and when the eclipse will be visible.
  • Here’s another article on moon photography. Nice, if fake looking photos.
  • Mr Eclipse “The Ultimate Resource For Eclipse Photography”

World's Most Reliable CD-R From Delkin

According to this press release, Delkin make the “most reliable CDR in the world!”
Excuse me while I don’t believe you and make duplicate copies of all my photos. Anyway, CDR is simple too small for my archival needs. DVD-R is what I need and use and I’m due to make my annual copies of my current archive in the next few weeks.
I really should buy a CD box to store all that media..