Alexander 6, V4.

TGIW. Thank God It's Wednesday! A phrase I missed typing or saying for a long time after changing the weekend system in Kuwait, making the weekend on Friday and Saturday instead; which sucks! We got a holiday here extending until next Monday. Woho! No work on a MONDAY!
I'm planning to go out earlier today, and that's why I'm writing my blog earlier than usual. After finishing 2 verses of transliteration from Alexander VI, I took sometime on writing a short little poem. Something to the memory of Oughterard and Ireland. I named it "The Path of Oughterard."

The images I took the day before yesterday were not so special or anything, without any sparkle or life in them, and also not sharp enough and somewhat blurry. Thus, I decided not to work on the tone-mapping for them and instead, I kept on working stitching some old panorama I made for my work place.


The stitching process takes almost half a day. I made this parnoama before and it is not a quite spherical panorama, because I didn't take pictures for the ceiling in complete sequences, but it was a 360 degrees one made on 2 rows. This is the second time I make a trial with this panorama, as I made it normal the last time. Here, I've made my mind to make it as a "little planet" projection (also called Stereo). The first stitching process stopped after it reached the end almost with some error regarding the creation of the JPEG file (I remember it was related to the damn RAMs), and I thank God that it was a sequence of JPG images only and not HDR! Anyway, choosing the final creation to be saved as a JPG was a mistake as well because I wanted to keep the transperancy as well. Thus, I had to stitch again and this time, the end-product is saved as a PSD (more than 500MB in size but only one layer!). I manipulated the image later on (this morning and in a hurry), making it more sharp and minimized it from its original size (close to 20,000 pixels height and width). For web purposes I decided to save the image in a GIF format to save the transperancy, but unfortunately the picture was sluggish and spotted for the low quality. Thus, I decided to put it up as a PNG, but of course the file size would be a bit larger than the GIF version. The JPG format of course, won't save me the transperancy in the image.
This is said and done, I might try to construct my own softbox in the coming days, as something to do for fun at home and also it would be useful in the future. I have in my mind many sizes to construct currently, and to begin with, I would do a flash-mounted little softbox, to reduce the glare of the flash on objects (since I suffered this sooooo much with my trials on my censer). Also, I intend to make out a light tent, or a light box, in which lights are projected from the outside and the object is in the middle of the box with a white background. I wanted to do some trials with my camera yesterday, but with the stitching process that took almost half a day and took over most of the memory in my PC, I neglected such idea completely!


__________
73. and Alexander was shaken by the speech
74. and could not imagine the age of the man
75. what is going around him and what is the logic
76. nothing seems to bear meaning to him now
77. then he gathered the power to ask the old man
78. "and how shall I get to the lands of Ayvars?"
79. so the old man answered: you shall answer my dear!
80. and with a strange look, Alexander gazed upon his face
81. and then he said: you are the grandson,
82. you don't know how to visit your ancestors?
83. then Náwi answered with sadness apparent in his eyes
84. "my dear friend, your question revives memories,
85. of long lost tribes and nations, wisdom and faith,
86. my ancestors went away with their secrets,
87. and here I am left alone with my sons away from them,
88. and it is mentioned in ancient books that we had,
89. about a the poor and rich man, whose name is Vuqurnún
90. who has light in his face and a spot on his forehead
91. and his red hair go down on his shoulders
92. and his teeth are white with bluish color
93. carrying his sword of the three points
94. and his golden shield of the sun's image
95. he shall know the road to the ancients
96. and by his hands the secret is revealed"

Alexander 6, V3.

Unfortunately, no pictures for today, although I made one experiment with my censer again. I can't say all the results were fine but I didn't try much to tone-map any. I made 2 versions (as far as I remember) and all saved in EXR, but I didn't go on further to tone-map and other stuff. The bad thing here is that I missed the sparkling effect of the flame, and the censer image was somehow... normal. Anyway, I might add them for tomorrow, as for the time being I'm a bit busy in re-making one of the panoramas for one of our labs, and also busy with... playing some games... YES!
__________
49. his heart was relieved and the smile got back
50. and then he asked the old man about his identity
51. who are they and why they asked him to come
52. the old man began his speech slowly
53. and said: I am the mortal son of immortals
53. I am the ancestor of the tribes
54. I am Náwi bir Nowayi Ayvárí
55. a son and grandson of the Ayvars
56. brought to Earth from the unknown
57. and I grew up with the nomads
58. until the Light brightened my soul and heart
59. then I married from the tribes of Earth
60. thus I am from and into the tribes
61. I am a branch of Eruvians and Huberians
62. and the Capallese and the Qalaqach
63. I am the father of Kharkhaz and Urev
64. and the grandfather of the Dulukh and Noahim
65. I am the son of Ayvars who lost his fathers
66. I lost the count of time and age
67. thus count my age as much as you like
68. and these are the chosen of my sons
69. and the chosen of their grandsons
70. and their chosen of their great grandsons
71. we are the root and the branch
72. from the seed that disappeared long time ago

Alexander 6, V2.

Dried tuna that turns into a sauce... not a pleasant thing to imagine, really. In fact, I didn't imagine it. I saw it!
I keep trying on snapping my censer, yet the experiments are always going astray from the way I intend to take! This time, I fixed the black background as usual, but I did not do the box just yet. Also, I used the halogen light that I bought some days ago and did not work on it before. The light was so strong and the room's lights were like they were on (in fact you wouldn't notice any differences whether they are on or off). The halogen wasa daylight type, thus it produced a yellowish. And despite the many trials, 2 images must come almost the same in exposure value. More to my agony, the violet hue of the censer's body was not obvious at all and I was not able to retain the color easily (if not impossible) without "painting" the HDR image.

Two-images, manual tone-mapped HDR.

Two-images, Photomatix tone-mapped HDR.

As you can see in the previous examples, the violet hue of the censer (if you saw previous posts) is not visible at all because of the yellowish hue from the halogen light. Another trial I would say, and to avoid the similar-exposure shots, is to use the method of changing the shutter speed (time). I am mainly using the Av (aperture priority) and for this, the maximum time for the shutter speed for some shots (if not all shots) is 30 seconds, and hence, with the static aperture value (f-number), the exposure is calculated to the same value always. It would be useful to do this with a FEB, but thinking about it, you have a changing shutter speed and a change in the Flash value, so if we settled to down on the number of shutter speeds that we are to use, then we will have mainly (number of speeds x 3) images. I would settled for 3 speeds too; 1 sec, 1/100 sec, 1/200 sec, although I'm not sure there would be much difference between the latter two. This said, I would settle with 9 images, and probably, going to merge them all together as one set! That would be with the flash, but another trial is worthy with halogen light as well. I need to find a tripod for this light, or I'm going to burn something in the room!

__________

25. while his supplies were going to finish
26. he decided to walk to the three sisters lake
27. the lake where he used to hunt and drink
28. away from Caqubdarius, his place
29. and on the way to there he passed by the hermits
30. some people who forgot life and its agonies
31. and he wondered could it be the Ayvars
32. he spent some time with them and they fed him
33. they gave him water and food like a guest
34. and after three days of hospitality they asked
35. about his story and his name and his destination
36. with some fear he answered hardly
37. and told them about his real identity
38. and to where he is heading
39. they stood with respect after hearing that
40. and amid the crowds came an old man
41. so old that his eyebrows fell on his eyes
42. and said with weak voice: welcome O Faithful
43. whose name is Alexander, Alexandarús, Vuqurnún
44. you are the bound between this world and the other
45. you are the promised in the book of Burhutiyyá
46. welcome amid your family
47. welcome amid your servants
48. and feel safe for no one shall hurt you

Alexander 6, V1.

Somehow, it was a tiresome and busy weekend. I didn't post anything yesterday (Saturday) as I promised myself but anyway, it was not much of importance I believe, except to put on with the first verse of Alexander VI.
I made some experiments again with my beloved golden turtle, and this time I used the FEB (Flash Exposure Bracketing) as a substitute, since I can't use it in a completely dark room;



The blue background is actually black. But with some fixes and because of the flash light striking it, it turned bright and blue. Combining the three shots was done with Photomatix (and some values of exposures were adjusted since softwares use certain numbers in the EXIF of the image, i.e. data attached to the image). Yet, tone-mapping was done manually with Photoshop (and also fixes) because the Photomatix version was hard to smooth out and equalize the proportions of light. The image you see was actually like split horizontally in the middle, with bright portion being up and the dark shadow being down. Such thing cannot be done with Photomatix, but rather done easily with Photoshop's adjustment layers and brushes. Hue and Saturation were also fixed to some extent and voila! here you go. As for the time being, I've been using Photomatix to merge the images together and save it as EXR, and then edit them (mostly) with Photoshop. Sometimes, I get them back to Photomatix after adjusting them and saving back again in EXR, because my skills with manual tone-mapping are just novice!
This is some of my summary about using Photoshop and Photomatix in HDR making and Tone-mapping; of course people who read some books don't need it, as these are just my thoughts after working a with them, and there are plenty of softwares out there that are good for things and bad for other things maybe and so on:

Photoshop:

 - Good stuff:

• Gives you the ability to adjust the HDR image in various ways with adjustment layers.
• When joining into HDR, a dialogue box appears with calculated exposure values and gives you a choice to tick-out any unwanted images into the sequence.
• Got instant 32-bit slider to view the image in various exposure settings instantly.
• For those who like to use their own hands with baking the HDR, tone-mapping here with Adaptive settings (and others) are fine.
• Plugins capability makes it easier to do noise reduction after tone-mapping directly, if needed.

 - Bad stuff:

• Memory consumer.
• Exposure values cannot be changed manually (only if the file is stripped out of its EXIF data).
• Does not have a tool to view a HDR historgram.
• Aligning, while processing the images to HDR is not, compared to Photomatix, good enough.

 Photomatix:

- Good stuff:

• Does not consume much memory.
• Exposure values can be fixed in case of some problems with calculations (and you get a dialog box even when the brackets of the exposures are not even or normal let's say).
• Got Exposure Fusion capability (which is not an HDR merging but useful at times).
• Can view a HDR histogram (and this is extremely important for me to check that there are no cut-offs in the exposures sequence; at tails mainly).
• Saves the HDR image in major formats as Radiance (.HDR) and OpenEXR (.EXR, ZIP and PIZ).
• Tone-mapping is semi-automatic, with pre-fixed schemes and the ability to adjust the sliders. This is good for none-experienced manual workers like me!
• Has 2 aligning algorithms embedded and can be used in two modes: normal and high (in case your tripod moves much because of the air or something). It is far better than Photoshop's.

- Bad Stuff:

• Once the sequence of the images is made, and when an error pops-up for some problems in the exposure values, you cannot tick-out some images, but only fix the exposure values.
• Generally, it is not an image editing program, thus, you can't do much to your HDR image before baking.
• Personally, I don't trust the "noise reduction" option that is applied to the images before being combined. After all, noise reduction is a must after tone-mapping.
• No plugins capability, thus, you can't work with plugins embedded in it like Photoshop; plugins like NeatImage are deemed useful.
• No instant 32-bit viewer or slider to move and check the various exposures. There is however an option for going up and down with exposure (F11 and F12 keys) which isn't exactly as flexible as in Photoshop.

The term "bake" and "baking" I'm using here, is a term that adapted (and I like it by the way) from Christian Bloch's book, in which he explains how to fix HDR images before tone-mapping, i.e. baking. I think he was hungry when he was writing that section but anyway, it works fine with me... 'cos I'm always hungry.

With points from here and there, it is, at least for me, hard to work with one program alone. I do have to work with both here and there. Yet, my main first step in the workflow, would begin with combining the images in Photomaix first and saving the HDR file. Sometimes, but not often, I do combine the images into HDR in Photoshop but it is rather to check if there is any difference or any enhancement, since the two softwares tend to give me different calculated exposures' values for the same set of images.
I've been trying to do the same FEB trials on my old censer as before, and this time with a black background (from the papers I purchased last week). I did not design a black box yet, but so far I'm putting the paper freely and bend it softly to make a background. In my experiment with the censer (which I did not make up images for it yet), I used the diffuser on the flash head. I did not use it before because, I just thought it is designed mainly for the wide-lens apparatus (as mentioned in the manual) and to avoid vignetting (darkening of edges) when using wide-lens with normal flash. The flash tends to concentrate in one spot then. However, I used it with my 18-55mm lens and it works fine on spreading the flash to a wider area and softening the strike on the body of the censer itself. Why I didn't think of this before? Damn it!
When the diffuser is pulled out, the flash automatically sets the zoom level to that of a wide-lens, and maybe that's why I didn't try to use it in that condition.
Everything was going fine, until it was the time for the third shot which is supposed to have a relative exposure value of +3, when it turned out with a level of "0". This is bad for combining the images later on, even if I fixed the values manually in Photomatix. I made other shots changing from Av (aperture priority) mode to Tv (time priority), but here, the results were not exactly what I want, with the flames of the candle inside were almost turned off and the aperture was set to f5 making a shallow depth and no sparkles (like in the image of the turtle above). It is hard to combine elements from the 2 experiments, but I'm trying still, or I should conduct a new experiment today, completely.
__________
1. thus Alexander decided to leave his people
2. and head to where he never been before
3. alone without any companions
4. weak without any weapons
5. except of his Charnagút
6. and he walked with his torn clothes
7. amid the deserts and mounts and valleys
8. and he stopped at the ruins of Taghlút
9. the capital of the khanate of Ghutan
10. where he crushed some idolaters
11. just like a grain of salt in the wind
12. and he stood upon the ruins of the tower
13. of the mighty castle he wrecked with iron and fire
14. and he meditated and remembered his golden age
15. and the tears could not be kept in his eyes long
16. and he raised his harsh hands up to heaven
17. and praised God and His mercy
18. then he knew for sure deep inside him
19. that nothing in this life remains
20. and like you take, you shall be taken
21. and like you own, you are owned
22. while this life is nothing for sure
23. but like a grain of salt or sand
24. to the wind shall fly away

Alexander 5, V6. Last

A headache. I made a mess out of the room again (and it is already a mess in fact). My plants are leaking water (from the bottom of the pot of course) but the trays that I used to hang below them are dangling and shaking and causing water to be spitted out here and there. I need to either fill these holes permanently, or find some other way to fix the trays, and the former seems the better solution. Yet, I don't know how am I supposed to do that.
I got myself a little light-stand that uses halogen bulbs in order to test it and experiment with it in a mini-studio of my own... that is, my poor little room. Unfortunately though, I don't have a proper stand or a tripod or even a monopod to fix it, thus I will just use it on the ground or on a table of some sort. I was going to do all of that yesterday actually, but no halogen bulb was at hand, and no power to stand on my feet even after going here and there.
This said, there are no pictures for today, but hopefully soon I will add some more...

__________
121. the bird showed up and Alexander stopped breathing
122. and the men under water held their swords and got ready
123. and the bird saw the body of Alexander on the water surface
124. it was but moments and the bird was attacking Alexander
125. it was ugly, with eight legs and fangs in the cusp with three tails
126. its sound was furious and shakes the heart of the bravest
127. and from the sky he fell down like an eagle on Alexander
128. and when he approached the water, the men stung him
129. while Alexander worked out with his dagger on the bird
130. the fight was fierce and the water tide was not easy
131. until the men gathered again and attacked as one man
132. and all of them planted the swords in the neck of the bird
133. while Alexander moved his dagger all over his stomach
134. and the bird was finally dead and the village is safe
135. then the old people of the village made a celebration
136. and made new garments for Alexander and his men
137. and Nertus invited Alexander to live among them now
138. since no army is left for him and not much weapons
139. but Alexander asked for the opinion of his nobles
140. and his nobles desired to stay in this village
141. to be among their good old people so they may do good
142. but Alexander decided that he should leave them here
143. and go along his journey, to the middle of the Earth
144. in the place where the Ayvars could be living there

Alexander 5, V5

Sadly enough, I could not resist a nap in the afternoon yesterday. Yes. It is a sad thing because I was going to work with my plants but unfortunately, some people were asleep at that time and I didn't want to make a big fuss, thus I just settled down waiting for them to wake up... and slept while doing that! One day gone without doing anything.
I'm continuing my reading about what is called the "Arabic Parts" and digging further to see what can be seen (or foreseen?) in those relations. I got one program to do most of the calculations for many Arabic Parts itself. I had it a long time ago and I didn't know how to use it and at that time back then, I didn't know what are these really. It is a freeware called Astrolog. It was hard to utilize and use things or set up things around in this little software, but I think I did it correctly this time (by comparison with some other sites that give free natal charts). Since the software has a weird way of producing a text file, I decided to make a print-screen of this long list and paste it here as an image instead of a test;

 

 

A very long list with calculated positions of many stuff. I wish I can get some insight into their meaning related to their positions.

After having some tiny pinches and pains on my sides, I decided maybe it is better now to increase my intake of water, since such pains can be (sometimes) related to kidney problems, and the usual thing is, to filter the kidney by drinking water. I finished 1.5 litres today, and that was a great load and a great work, because I had to go to the toilet every 5 minutes!

Some more happy news for today: I washed my car :)... hence, there will be rain soon.

__________

97. Alexander gathered with his nobles and discussed the matter
98. and asked the old Nertus for some help to find wood
99. but old Nertus denied to help with wood because it was sacred
100. because the trees have special memories of their fathers
101. and cannot be cut down by any costs or for any purpose
102. thus Alexander had to think of some other way of help
103. and from afar he noticed some sparkling in the horizon
104. and Alexander asked Nertus about the luster from afar
105. then Nertus answered that this is the great sea of Zús
106. where the world ends to this limit from the south
107. it is where the Tawyátá comes from and where it goes
108. and just then Alexander had an idea to do with his men
109. which required a great sacrifice of souls and courage
110. and he asked Nertus to prepare one hundred great straws
111. and to prepare a skin of a sheep and fill it with air
112. then he asked his men to take the straws and swords
113. while he wore the skin of the sheep and went with them
114. and he dropped himself in the sea of Zús with the skin
115. while his men went under the shallow water with the straws
116. and he poisoned the skin on his body with herbs known to him
117. so if the men did not catch the bird he would poison the bird
118. hours were spent and the men come up and down from the water
119. while Alexander remained on the top of water not moving
120. until the huge bird appeared from above, covering the sun

Alexander 5, V4.

 

This image, tells what kind of camping tools I was carrying with me up to the roof of my own house. Filters case, Camera and its tools, a book (under the filter case) and the chair is put up from the last session, flashlight and all is carried in this handbag (crushed beside the chair!). Ah, I forgot the tripod. It was a heavy load to carry and go up that ladder to the roof, and with my fear of height, it was unbearable.

I made out a square black card (from the large hard papers I bought yesterday) by the same size of my filters to be fixed within the filter holder to block the light when unneeded. Anyway, my trials were not successful at all to get a glance of the sun. I ran in buLb mode and minimized the aperture as much as possible (f22), and for all over the 30 minutes, the black card was covering the lens and I moved it for ONE second only and put it back and continued the counter above 30 minutes even. Yet, the image was so bright and features cannot be recognized at all, although I even fixed my ND8 and ND4 filters as well. One second of sun in its height made a fuss for the image. At the end when the sun was gone and I had nothing much to do up the roof, I decided not to leave it just like that, so I made this shot. After gazing for some time into the sun (not directly of course but almost), I did have problems concentrating on whatever I have in front of me. Thus, I was trying hard to focus the lens manually but I couldn't, and fortunately, the auto-focus capability worked just fine even though it was dark already.

The image above is Pseudo-HDR by the way and not a real HDR. Despite the fact that I took 3 images already but I was so careless about the settings of my camera that evening that I did't fix anything, but shot the image directly, and hence, I had to make up some effect with one of the RAW files (i.e. one image only). Some manipulations and noise removal were used as well, but the original image was way worse than it appears here in this small version.

I've really started to like to sit there on the roof. Quiet (despite some children noises from neighboring houses), and fresh, although it is tiresome already to climb to there; specially carrying all these tools. I spend the time there reading my ghost book that I got from Ireland. I'm just afraid that some of the neighbors would reckon my position there and ignite some problems, claiming that I've been spying on other homes. I know the mentalities of my surroundings, trust me.

In some weird spark of thought, I find myself (again) attracted to astrology and the calculations involved. I realy can't say whether I'm fascinated with its history, concepts or its calculations and usage for the human beings, but in general, I'm just chasing after it. Specifically for the time being, I'm running after what is called the "Arabic Parts (Lots)". I found some calculator for these parts (as they are not heavenly objects) but, the main part is, what do they mean when found in some place? The calculator can be found here.

Despite the name, Arabic Parts, these aspects of astrology were actually much older than the raise of civlization in Arabia, dating back to Egyptians, Greeks and Babylonians as well. They are mainly named like that now because Arabs made an extensive use of them and because of the Arabian scientist back then, Al-Biruni, who derived many parts of those. I'm not a keen lover of prediction, but as an Arab, the topic attracted me as well to see for myself where and what is that. I used to read a lot of astrology and palmistry book before for my interests in occults, but now, seems my scientific brain occupied the most part of my life because of my studies. However, I go back to these for fun from time to time... there are certain degree of occuracy within such things and within some limits that would make you surprised sometimes...

__________

73. Alexander's hair stood up like pikes when he heard of Zimúrá
74. because he tried it wityehnot h his men and he knew the pains
75. and he told the old man his story from Caqobia
76. up to until he reached this strange village of the old people
77. the old man then shouted: you are the promised then!
78. Alexander was surprised for the answer and opened his eyes
79. and asked the old man about the other stories of the village
80. the old man continued the stories of this strange village
81. and he told him that this village is called Hoshea
82. and his name was Nertus, the elder of this village
83. no one rules them and all of them are equal
84. they plant together and eat together and trust each other
85. their graves in the homes to remember death always
86. and no doors to their houses because no thief exists
87. and one day their prophet long time ago foretold them
88. a yellowish warrior will come and save the village
89. from the beast of Tawyátá, the bird that eats humans
90. and in every year the bird eats a young man or woman
91. or eats what they plant for food or drink their waters
92. and only when one man and his faithful nobles come
93. they will save the village from the claws of this bird
94. and their names and numbers are mentioned in the books
95. the old books of the village of Hoshea
96. and the talk of Nertus the old was over

Alexander 5, V3.

Nothing like having some fresh air on the roof of your house. Try it out! It was a bit tiresome just go be there, but it's fun. Of course this is nothing for people who climb mountains just for fun, isn't it?
The idea occured to me at the last minute and like 45 minutes before the actual sunset and that gave not much time to do much and it was a blind shot. Hopefully I can take some more images today (if I have the strength to climb up again with my fear of heights!).
However, the photos were taken every like 5 minutes or less, and I was aiming to get it all later on stacked. Later on I find out that this idea is not a good one and not a good substitute for a good long-exposure practice; which I'm thinking of performing today. I bought some black hard papers (maybe A2 size) in order to do some stuff with each one of them. Mainly, I think I'm going to make a black box which I can use to cover the lens sometimes in cases of long exposures.
Back to the photos taken, I've set the white balance mainly to Tungsten to give some coolish effect on the hot colors in the sky. I took bracketed exposures (3/2), i.e. 3 shots between -2 and +2. Most of the images are best by themselves. However, I tried and merged "some" images (in EXR) and blended them as a stack in Photoshop. The result was kind of nice but unfortunately, I could not fix the banding in the image;

 

Combined of several Photos, the banding around the sun was hard to remove.

You might ask why do I want to combine several images together here. Well, after some time in working in the process of the sunset, the street lights went on automatically (as they work with photo- or light-sensors). When the lights turned on the sun was already gone, and I thought it would be somehow a nice effect to make them on, while making the sun still in heaven. Anyway, I think 2 images for this are enough or maximum 3 images stacked and blended are enough, rather than the 5 or 6 images blended here, which increases the banding.

  

Sun in heaven still. Photomatix tone-mapping.

 
 

Sun almost below horizon and lights still not ON! Photomatix tone-mapping.

The last image was actually tone-mapped and been processed in many adjustment layers to add or remove some hues and colors. I missed the old days when I used to do this to my normal JPG images (specially before I get my tripod and being able to shoot for HDR with a stable camera in RAW!).

I had some pretty load of work today in the labs, with FISHes. I guess you can imagine how stinking it was. I was gridning a complete mass of frozen sardines and putting powdered samples in bottles and sealing the bottles with some special wraps and tapes, and with all of this and that, I'm certain now that I've been watched already. I don't like this at all, but let's see where it leads...

__________

49. the gate opened as it was by itself without anyone
50. and no one showed up behind the gate but only dust
51. Alexander and his one hundred men got in slowly
52. and wandered around between old houses without doors
53. so old they were like if time forgot about them long ago
54. until they reached a hill where a plain extended behind it
55. and from above the hill and they looked upon the plain
56. they saw lot of people work in their green fields
57. men and women with ancient clothes were working together
58. all of them were old, as old as the village they live in it
59. then Alexander decided to go down to them and talk to them
60. and so all men and women stopped working in the field
61. and they stared at him with his men in a strange way
62. then one old man with red garments approached to them
63. and after greeting them with peace, he asked them a question
64. about their identity and their origins and their story
65. Alexander agreed to tell him everything if he tell their story
66. and the old man started to tell about his people and the village
67. and he said: we are the branches of goodness of ancient times
68. we lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years before
69. we are the followers of a prophet whose people sinned
70. and we were protected by the walls of this ancient village
71. while the remaining of our people were turned into mutants
72. and we banished them there to a land called Zimúrá

Alexander 5, V2.

I'm almost sure now that a Sunday, must be a bad day regarding anything related to driving. I had to pick up my brother from a garage and yet, I was going to make an accident as I was going to pick him up! What is left for Monday as a typical bad day? I don't know!
This said, and beside some tiny lab work, made me exhausted somehow to complete the usual translation of 2 verses. I made one so far only.
I spent a big portion of the first hours at work trying to organize and figure out a way to send over the pictures from Ireland to many contacts. The HTML work and the copy-paste routine was exhausted and yet, I had to flip from one program to another trying to figure out the best fit and how to copy contacts. After all, I settled this down in FrontPage and sent it over from my Hotmail account. An option that I don't like so much, but most of my contacts are saved there.
However, since I did not do much of experiments yesterday with my camera and not new stuff are to be put in here, and since I don't make this post plain, I decided to put the images here. This is packet 4 (IV), and I don't think it would be the last yet. Some folders are waiting to be processed yet!

Click any thumbnail to view a larger version of the image, and to read a comment or description for the image.

__________
25. in the morning he was still thinking
26. how to come down to people like this?
27. and who are they and where do they live?
28. he remembered then the word Ayvar
29. some where it was in the middle of Earth
30. should he turn back or head to the south
31. when suddenly a light arrived from heaven
32. and stroke down the earth and made glass
33. and when Alexander wanted to take the glass
34. the glass moved further away from him
35. and he kept moving after it with his men
36. until it disappeared before an old village
37. it was so old that like time forgot about it
38. and the fence barely stood up in face of winds
39. and the hero thought that God drove him here
40. amid the adversities he did not lose his faith
41. he went to the wooden great gate of the village
42. so huge that it counted the length of thirty men
43. and its width was the count of fifteen men
44. then he kocked on the gate by the knocker
45. so heavy was the knocker that it needed ten men
46. and they knocked several times but no answer
47. and they almost gave up hope for a living there
48. and when they moved away, the gate was opened

Alexander 5, V1.

Spent this week with other experiments again, but this time, with something else other than the censer (as in the previous days). However, there was still some business that I did not finish with that censer yet. I gave out a new trial with two ways; one was with the change in aperture values, and one with changing the ISO. In both cases however, the flash was used but of course aiming in some other direction other than a direct hit.
I will forget talking about the second type, with changing the ISO value and combining the results in HDR. This image was horrific after HDR making, and I didn't dare even to minimize it and put it for view over the net! Too much noise and dark areas and the real colors of the censer were not obvious, but only the flame inside was obvious.
In the first trial however, with the change in aperture, I think the result was not bad, but it needs a little fix later on because with small apertures (high f-numbers) a sparkle is made from light sources, and putting these all together then you would end up with some how a weird looking shape and some abnormal color saturations in the areas of the sparkles.

As you can see, the middle area is occupied with a star with abnormal saturation because of the change in apertures. Anyway, I think this is an easy case to be fixed with cloning in Photoshop or even Spot-Heal tool. The flash was pointing up and bouncing from the ceiling. I couldn't do a good job with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop, thus Photomatix is used to produce more saturation and contrast as much as possible.

The other experiment was to snap a picture of my beloved golden turtle which was a gift from my sister in one of my old birthdays (I really can't remember which one was it but for sure I was younger than 26 I remember).
Anyway, the thing here, it doesn't have a flame inside, and the body is rigid and won't give a very strong reflections of the flash like the censer did. It has a Unique body color almost, thus the contrast bit is a bit resolved to some extent. My aim was just shoot and see what happens really, and while I'm writing this I've just reckoned that I was supposed to put on a small aperture (high f-number) in order to make some sparkling from the surface. Anyway, I guess this would be my aim next time.
The shooting was made in several changes of camera modes and some were bad and some were good relatively:

1. Bracketed shot. The normal procedure that I usually follow; Av mode, the room light was on, and 3 bracketed shots (-2,0,+2). Photomatix was used here as I SUCK with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop.

2. Changing Shutter: With Tv (Time-Value priority) mode on, and working with my flash, I started to take a picture in the darkness with almost one third of the time value each time, starting from 30 seconds. That would be make it like: 30 seconds, 10 seconds, 3 seconds and so on. I got many that way and most of the images exceeding the time of one second were almost similar and dark even with a flash (the limit is 1/200 when the flash is in the work).
The images were combined, but apparently because of the noise coming from the dark images mostly, there was some weird noise and spots that appeared even before the tone-mapping, but in this small version here, it is not so much obvious, but it was apparent in the mouth area mostly, as some pinkish and bluish lines. Tone-mapping was also carried by Photomatix as usual and I kept these settings almost the same for the previous image and the coming images as well.

3. Less of Shutters: After making the previous one and knowing that many dark images can corrupt and add more unpleasant noises, I've picked up 3 shots from the series and combined them, then manually tone-mapped it. Although I don't like this tone-mapping really because it is too bright, some people already said it is better than the one I did in Photomatix.

4. FEB: Flash Exposure Bracketing. I was really not sure that this method would work at all. Of course it was not an option if I was using the camera flash, but here I'm able to do the same thing (almost) with the camera auto-bracketing but in the flash itself and in a range from -3 to 3, in 3 shots. What I really like about it is the saturation (done in Photomatix of course) and the clean background. This thing really can save lives!

 

5. The Dim Light: Here, I didn't use the flash at all, but rather I used my flashlight and pointed it to the white ceiling and that gave out a very dim light over the turtle. I've fixed the camera on Tv mode and set it out for auto-bracketing, and the shot started for 30 seconds for each of the 3 shots. The result was not bad even though with a yellowish hue all over because of the flashlight itself but this all can be fixed with a proper tone-mapping; which I did manually and with Photomatix here.

 

Manually tone-mapped. I'm bad with this though and the shadow of the head looks faint.

 
 

Tone-mapped with Photomatix.

In general, and since I was shooting without an aim at mind, I didn't care much about the angle, which later on sounded not a good one here . I think lowering the tripod a bit would be more pleasant, if I should say. Also, most of these images were taken with a wide aperture (low f-number) and hence, they have a shallow depth of field. Can be an advantage OR a disadvantage, but I would prefer to make a low depth with a more close-up version, probably to the head.

I'm starting to use Photomatix more here not only for the tone-mapping, but also for its superiority in aligning images, and also for its HDR histogram option. It is important to check the HDR historgram to check that you wouldn't have a cut-out in the tails of the histogram, or in other words, a chop in shadows or highlights. It is really weird and strange that Photoshop still does not include such an option. Photoshop is favorable though, sometimes, for editing work in 32-bit mode just before tone-mapping. 

I sent a suggestion to Canstockphoto people, asking them if they are willing to allow people to upload HDR images. The response was positive I can say and who knows, they might be the first website I've ever known that allow upoads for HDR images. So far, I don't know of any website that does this. HDR images (and specially panoramas) are important for cases of Computer Graphics and making up an environment with good lighting.

Today I begin posting the 5th part of Alexander's story. Hope you enjoy reading it, if you will...

__________
1. and the hero moved out of the forest
2. with sadness filling his heart to the fullest
3. and he left some of his men to manage the forest
4. but now he has no power to fight or to war
5. for only one hundred men are left with him
6. and he wondered about his next direction
7. is it south or to the land of day and night
8. for he knew he will be back there one day
9. he decided to go south and pass on the middle land
10. and see what wonders might come or commands
11. while his one hundred men were his faithful and closest
12. then at night they camped in the wilderness like nomads
13. tired from all the troubles they tried and saw before
14. and the heaviness of metals broke their backs
15. at night time they slept and Alexander had a dream
16. weird it was and Alexander could not explain
17. he saw people like monks covering their heads
18. they were telling him to come down to them
19. because life is such an agony and wild
20. where no love remains and no soul
21. they asked him to come and see
22. the wonders of God that none did see
23. he then woke up with a fast heart beating
24. and spent the night awaken by the shock

Alexander 4, V6. Last.

Ugh! Another failure!
Doing the experiment with filters and fixing aperture and time was not a good choice, despite the fact that I got some nice images with differences in exposures and lighting. The main problem is that, I never though of the consequences of the EXIF data that would be attached to the images, and which are used primaily as a source to calculate the exposures relations. Hence, both softwares, Photoshop and Photomatix, had a problem with setting the exposure values to the images even though the images are clearly different in the light level.
In photoshop it was even harder to set up the values manually (even though it gives you the option to do so), but Photomatix, was a bit more flexible in changing the values.
The other problem was that changing the filters is not a practical mean at all, specially when the lens are on manual mode (auto-focus mode is hard to work with in such darkness if not impossible at all!). When moving the filter in and out of the filter holder,  there is a great chance to change the focus of the lens a bit after fixing it (and for someone clumsy as me, it was one hell of thing to fix the camera in the first place!).
There were two methods of shooting that I followed, and hence I made 2 series of shots related to each other (but when combining I felt somehow free to combine some elements from this series with others from the other series). The methods were like (of course with a flash pointing somewhere):

1. Stacking the filters altogether and start the shoot. Then, remove one filter and shoot again, and doing so until all filters are removed.
2. Shooting each filter alone without stacking them altogether.

However, with putting and removing, I tend to move the lens lil bit and that made the focus get corrupted and the image was little bit blurry. Tone-mapping, was another disaster.

One of the series, tone-mapped with Photomatix

One of the series, tone-mapped with Photoshop

As you can see from the previous examples, the image was blurred and not sharp enough, and as for the second tone-mapping with photoshop, it is a complete disaster! You might say "I have the choice to not tone-map it to that level," but actually it was hard. This is the most reasonable curve I could get. By the way, it was one file saved in Photomatix as OpenEXR (PIZ compression), then tone-mapped in both programs.

The reflection of the flash is still annoying despite the fact that it was pointing downwards toward the ceramic floor (but in some shots I made it point to my back and up and to the other direction away from the censer).

I'm not sure I will do other experimenting today, as I am out of ideas really, but I might work a bit on some photos from Ireland, as I stopped for some time for the time being now.

I finished yesterday one of the hardest images that I encountered so far (because of my memory problems). It is the Aughnanure Castle Field again (360 panorama) but, in another projection;

The colors are not so accurate since I saved it as a GIF to preserve the transperancy. Anyway, the ring shape is not what I was intending to have really, and I was aiming more at a perfect sphere, and that's why this type of projection is called commonly as "The Little Planet Projection." However, because of the large size of the image and the hardships for making such a texture to fill up the middle area, made me neglect this idea. The image was originally around 20,000 pixels (height and width almost like a square). Yes, twenty thousand. I've reduced the size after tone-mapping to ~9000 pixels, but that was not enough still for my sick memory, so I settled down to ~6000 pixels. Of course the final output was also converted to 8-bit to work on some other adjustments, as it was also hard to work in 16-bit with such memory. I'm thinking seriously of changing the whole system, but after the difficulties I had yesterday with my connection and setting up my router back again, I was thinking "no man thank you not now."

It's TGIT time!

__________

121. and when the events calmed down
122. and Alexander was back again to normal
123. the prisoners of Zimúrá were taken away
124. to stand in before Alexander, the hero
125. and there they told him their secrets
126. their tongue and their strings of writing
127. and how are they born and buried
128. some of them are burned when they die
129. and some others are buried in trees trunks
130. and Alexander commanded the wisemen
131. to record everything they see and learn
132. and when all documents were recorded
133. he ordered the beasts to be cleared out
134. and their bodies shall be hung on the trees
135. for they are children of sinners and beasts
136. and no use of them in this life and this world
137. and thus Alexander wanted to make them a lesson
138. for the other beasts and cruel hearts in the place
139. and then he ordered what had remained of his men
140. to dig up graves for what is left over of the bodies
141. and the mourning for three days started
142. and he cried with a saddened heart
143. for the lost of his beloved, and the lost of loyalty
144. while injuries were handled and supplies were taken