Thursday, April 10, 2014

Auf Arabisch... بالعربية

It seems like it doesn't matter how many hours I do sleep, there is always a need for more! One of the awkward things about having a vacation in the homeland! Anyway, I'm trying to catch on with time and I've already booked a ticket in advance for the ferry to go to Failaka island on Wednesday, for this reason, I'm typing this blog post on Tuesday - and hopefully as you read this on Thursday, I will be waiting for the ferry to pick me up from the island and get back home, with hope that I will have a load of new images (and panoramas!). Thus, I may not have done much with my camera in the past few days, but I will post about them anyway for the time being in hope that you will like them.

Auf Arabisch (بالعربية)

I've been thinking lately of starting to post in Arabic in this blog as well as I do in English. Some people liked the idea. For the time being, the posts are supposedly to be about basic photography stuff, and mainly dedicated to arabize the many terms used in the world of photography, which, unfortunately, I didn't find any current translations or contemporary language advancements. The reason for such thought is the desire to raise the linguistic awareness as much as possible for the technological terms that started to flood the arena and mainly being in English, leaving people with not much linguistic abilities almost paralyzed when it comes to learning new techniques or sciences.
Probably, the future posts would act as of some sort of dictionaries, but I do hope that it will help people who want to start at the beginner's level in photography, and yet can't get hold on the English language specifically, or any other languages.
The dilemma now is, whether to post it here, in this very same blog, or I'm supposed to create another blog for this purpose solely. My main thoughts now are, to post here, in the very same blog in which I post in English, to keep things concise and gathered in one place. This is what I think for the time being. Besides, I didn't specify a day in the week to post the Arabic article yet, but hopefully the decision will come soon. Probably, this step would be a first step in making a book even, as most books about photography in Arabic are in fact just translations of English books (and they do include a lot of English jargon inside as well). What I'm afraid of for the time being is the awkward and sluggish arrangement and format when typing such documents in Arabic. Arabic goes from right to left, unlike many other languages worldwide. This leaves much to be desired in the field of Arabic typing and writing in the digital world; Photoshop itself up to CS5, still issues a special version, entitled ME (Middle East), for those who would use the typing tools excessively in Arabic (and other ME languages like Hebrew). Not sure if newer versions after CS5 do combine the whole technology in just one pack and one version, but I'm hoping to see this any time!

Trust Me!

One of the humble trials to do something with my camera (and flashes) was an idea that had been cooking in my mind. Of course, since it is some sort of a portrait, the main subject is me myself, which increases the difficulty.

Trust Me
Canon EF 100mm, f/22, 250-1sec, ISO100.

The shot was edited later on with Photoshop to add final touches that can't be done on camera of course - like the teeth. The idea is to look after everything that looks nice in its appearance, but the core might be corrupted; e.g. the excessive freedom that might destroy the community with its unlimited boundaries.
Technically, I've planned the image to be in black and white with a tint or split tones, but probably the noise level that appeared later made me change my mind and stick to pure black and white. One of the mistakes I've done here is to hold the rose with my fingers covering the petals. Some people, after viewing the image, didn't realize it is really a rose, and some of them even thought it's some sort of food! The problem here, technically, was to use the Fill option in ACR excessively, which lightened the shadows, as well as the noise. Such noise, beside the original noise in the image itself without processing it, are one of the hardest things to smooth and work around.

Macranglyph

OK. I think I do sound ridiculous for inventing such words again and again, but this is really just for a title here. I'm not intending to coin it! The Macronglyph I'm talking about here is to make a 3D anaglyph image on macro level. Even though I've been working on some concepts yet in the panoramic anaglyph field, I thought how would such technique work in the macro field? The main concept is, of course, to take two shots resembling the two eyes. But the distance here is critical. On the macro level, a slight movement can prove to be a big leap!

3D Bad Teeth
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/22, 250-1sec, ISO100.

As a first trial, I tried my "bad" teeth here with my 100mm macro lens. Despite the fact that this is a macro lens, it is actually limited to x1.00 magnification power, or 1:1. This is, however, fair for most of macro purposes. Unless you want to go deeper, then a change of technique is due.
Anyway, in 3D Bad Teeth, I had to nudge my head a bit to the left and shoot again (using remote cable). The bad point here is that I've discovered when viewing the images that my lips muscles got lose in between the shots and thus deforming the stability of the shape (of the lips). However, when viewed with 3D red-cyan glasses it does look fair enough and pops out considerably.
Now, I'm not sure how much I did really nudge my head to the left (my left) when this shot has been made, but I doubt it would count as much as 7cm or even 5cm. And here comes the point that I need to do more research about...

3D 100 Fils (reverse)
Canon EF 50mm + 68mm ET, f/22, 30sec, ISO200.

To explain the point, in another shot made for the reverse side of a Kuwaiti 100 Fils coin, I've taken a shot for the masts of the ship (which filled the frame in fact), and the magnification factor here (using 68mm of extension tubes) counts as much as x1.36. In this shot, the difference between the right and left shots are just few millimeters in fact, but since it is a macro shot, the difference between the two shots was huge. If the engraving on the coin surface was deeper, probably the ghosting would have been more grave and more apparent.
Two thing for sure, but I can't still hold on to the mathematical concepts behind these facts:
  • Degree and value of magnification has a role in the distance that to be applied. More zoom, lesser displacement.
  • The distance of the subject from the image plane also plays a role. I'm not sure though if this is really significant to a great deal in macro shooting because, by virtue, in macro shots the subjects will always so close to the lens front and (relatively) to the image plane.
Note that the scales on lenses for focusing distances are actually measured from the image plane (sensor placement) and not from the front element of the lens.

Finale

This is for now. I'm looking forward to my Failaka trip tomorrow (Wednesday) - thus as you read this, I would be probably on the ferry coming back home, or still roaming till the scheduled time comes!
I have to get packing my stuff now and out this post on automatic "pilot" mode (i.e. to be posted automatically on time), and needless to say, get more and more sleep before I head over to the ferry! See ya...


2 comments:

  1. Danke für den Artikel.
    Bitte helfen Sie, den Satz zu übersetzen "Es ist interessant, wird es Gewitter geben?".
    Bevorzugte Übersetzer http://deutsch.opentran.net/arabisch, aber nicht sicher, das ist richtig.

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    Replies
    1. Hallo.
      Brauchen Sie die Übersetzung für (Es ist interessant, wird es Gewitter geben?)?
      Ich habe die Seite versucht, und die Übersetzung is nicht sehr Klar. Jedenfalls, es ist besser wenn die Übersetzung zum Englisch gemacht ist erster, und dann darauf zum Arabisch. Ich fühle dass es eine Redewendung gibt, die muss nicht wort-für-wort übersetzt sein.

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