Archive for the 'Photos' Category

Sweeter As The Years Go By

Published
by
Zz85
on January 4, 2010
in Church, Design, Family and Photos
. 0 Comments

Here’s something that has kept me a little occupied over the past weeks.

Howmean.com Main Page

To find out, head over to http://howmean.com. This site belongs to the couple to be, Caleb and How Mean. And no, rather than its perceived adjective “how mean!”, I hope one experience some sweetness visiting the site.

There are several talented people behind the making of this site. Graphics and concept were designed by Grace Wong, and the web design was done by Meng Lung of Gold Coast Web Design. My little contributions would be some subjective augmentations to the site and one might make intelligent guesses to what I did by spotting non-traditional elements on the site. For those who aren’t guessing, here’s a list

+ Mouse over the dandelions near the footer, and one may see little particles floating away. On most modern browsers except IE, these particles are drawn with html 5 canvas elements. In unsupported browsers, 1 pixel rendering with css are used instead.
+ Meant to be an easter egg, rolling the mouse wheel renders lighter dandelions particles around the screen.
+ Ajax calls are used for navigation when possible to prevent disruption of the background music
+ To support browsers not running flash (the iPhones and Androids mainly!), flash objects degrade gracefully
+ To degrade the photo gallery for non flash clients, the xml used by the flash slideshow player is parsed and rendered with jquery.
Howmean.com on the android
+ A small widget (which dates back to my legendary ORD count down wallpaper) is used to display the time till or from the wedding date in the credit page.

Of course all these would not be present if not for the weds-to-be.

So this’s my 1st post of the new year, and its a great reminder to reflect whether each passing day gets sweeter. A blessed new year for you readers!

Making of Focus

Published
by
Zz85
on April 9, 2009
in About Me, Interesting Stuff and Photos
. 0 Comments

Watching “behind the scenes”, or perhaps directors notes on dvds, makes appreciating a film more fun (although some think reading spoilers more so). The reasons for me writing about the making serves 2 purposes, one to document some of the technicalities used, and second to reflect what went wrong and could be improved. Or perhaps bring more depth to the story.

One of the questions most asked about this video is whether I did the blurring in post production. The answer is no and a reason is that it would create too much work. The video with a wide aperture (f/4), which means the lens is allowing more light in, creating “circle of confusion”, blurring objects not in focus. In general that’s called a shallow depth of field, and helps create the “bokeh effect”.

Frame of Focus
Framing.

In this still from the MJPEG, the focus is on the mirror frame, making the mirror image like a painting. Another question asked is whether someone shot the video. If you watch the last few seconds of the video, you would have an idea but this motion still tells the story.

Behind the scenes of Focus
Crew and equipment

Lastly, the usb cable connects the canon camera 40D to the PC, and recorded via EOS Camera Movie Record.

EOS Camera Movie Record
The software/hack which make the video possible.

What could have done better? The plot, being plain boring but it is the feeling when I got watching arts film in the past. The jerkiness, which leads me to find out about but not use the hardware solutions (eg. steadicam) and software approaches (eg. deshaker).

And without saying, one might question while watching, whether I’m in focus.

Video Filming with Canon 40D

Published
by
Zz85
on April 4, 2009
in Photos
. 2 Comments


Focus - My “1st Self Documentary Film” from Joshua Koo on Vimeo.

You can watch it the high resolution version here or at the bottom of this post by clicking more.

This motion video was filmed in with my Canon 40D captured through the computer with a brilliant software called the “EOS Camera Movie Record“.

This really cool hack was created by a Russian to record videos from canon cameras which support live view (40d,50d, 450d, 5d2, perhaps 500d and 1000d too).

If you understand Russian, check out the forums and the homepage. If you understand code, check out the source from the subversion.

I used to think that the “Live View” function was much gimmicks, even trying to imitate compact cameras, in ways they excel over the dSLRs. It is true of the limitations of Live View at least in the 40D, focusing limitations, battery draining and such, but I’ve started to find uses for Live View, and capturing video is one of the extra added benefit.

I would also love it when the CHDK project gets video recording in 40D camera too, and if I wish contrast AF, live histograms etc, would be even cooler.

There are potential and possibilities with the EOS Camera Movie Record project, but even right now in its infancy, I think its pretty cool to have fun trying.

More about making of this video in a future post.
Continue reading ‘Video Filming with Canon 40D’

Blending Panoramas to HDRs to Vertoramas

Published
by
Zz85
on April 1, 2009
in Photos
. 0 Comments

Its 8 months since I first used a dSLR, wandered in the world of photography, and this perhaps marks my first post on photography. Part of digital photography work flow is to “process” photos, something which requires equally or more skill, effort and work than the shooting itself.


360 degrees panorama of my neighborhood.

One of 1st photoshop techniques was blending, and I learned through doing back then when I knew little about photography. The task was to stitch a series of photography to create a panorama. (If anyone remembered seeing that panorama, it was the 360 degrees panorama of our YF youths standing around the camera in a full circle at Cameron Highlands). Then I had only access to Photoshop 7 and doing a panorama stitch meant a digital hand stitching using layers, masks and maybe lots of brushing.

These days at present, whole wide variety does panoramic stitching for us at ease. Photoshop CS especially the latest versions have simple but powerful stitching features. The free, open source Hugin Tools has all the advance feature that meets the extreme panoramic needs. The latest Windows Live Photo Gallery (free with windows) makes panoramas easy. Most software shipped with camera have panoramic stitchers and some point and shoot cameras even does panoramic stitching in camera.

Speaking of in camera processing and computation, the new compact Ricoh CX1 does High Dynamic Range (or HDR for capturing a wider range of shadows and highlights) in the camera.

With all the technology, we sometimes forget that a simple way of creating a panorama years back was just overlapping photos one on top of another. The way I see it, technology can be enabling but crippling. We might create better drawings with a computer, but not draw better if we only trust technology to do drawings for us.


My first “fake” HDR 360 degrees panorama and stereographic/planetary projection.

Not recommending ignorance to technology, I think what is important is striking a balance with technology and creativity. These days I find HDR much the hype and hassle, but constantly trying new creative ways to see and design like creating Vertorama (maybe just a buzz term now but) brings the fun to photography and learning.

My 1st Vertorama

Published
by
Zz85
on March 31, 2009
in Photos and Technology
. 1 Comment

Vertorama of Sunset at Shoreline Park while Jogging

Not a HDR, neither shot with a dSLR, but a hand stitched/blended Vertorama. (rhythms!)

I first saw the term “vertorama” in one of Daniel Cheong’s flickr photos then read more about it from Panorama_Paul Vertorama tutorial , there’s also an interesting read here. Basically Vertorama are taken by taking at least 2 landscape shots, one above another, and combined to become a “vertical panorama”. The reason I like the vertoramas is that they are more pleasant looking than HDR done badly, requires less shots, replicate what the graduated filter does, works even with the simplest auto settings, and looks great like a medium format photo with amazing lighting contrast especially taking sunset photos.

During the evening run at Shoreline park towards Adobe creek, I thought the sunset shouldn’t be gone to again and took this sequence of photos which wouldn’t stich a panorama well with my Lumix FX500. The 3 rightmost photos were used for the vertorama.
Photos that didn't stitch well for a panorama

As the photos didn’t overlap well, I did the blending by hand. The images were added as separate layers, positioned them manually to align, applied masks, blending and contrast adjustments. Applied highlights and shadows and curve adjustments but the microcontrast is too strong.

Please comment if you think the post process could be done better or differently.