3D Hunting II...

Been a slow week somehow. The week began with heavy headaches, starting from Friday. It was not a pleasant beginning for my last weekend at all. It was one of the rare times that I would sleep for 12 hours (not in a row though); from Thursday afternoon, until Friday's morning. Woke up then with a pain in the shoulder and neck (and the back of course), but the most annoying thing was, the headache. This headache reached its "climax" whenever I do some activity that would cause my blood pressure to raise up; my head would feel like blown out and I almost wanted to scream from the pain.
I waited for 2 days, because I thought it is what usually is; the regular pains of long sleep. Unfortunately, the headache did not calm down. The only way to calm it down was to have some pain-killers. I decided then to check with a doctor in case it is something serious. However, with some blood analysis that I just got its results on Wednesday, it turns out that there is nothing serious. I did such analysis back in November or December and this enabled me to make some comparison between the two. My cholesterol level is lower (but still bitty bit high) than the previous time and also my salts level. The doctor didn't add much to the general recommendations; sports, diet, and being away from salts as much as possible. My headache now is gone and I don't get it whenever I do some activity, but I have to keep an eye on my body now. I think I have to change my bed or do something about it.

Been carrying my tripod and camera wherever I go in hope of catching something; just anything. Life had become a bit dull, and with this daily traffic jam from work, the situation is a complete set of misery. I find it hard even to stay awake in the afternoons after coming back from work. I hate to nap at this time in regular week days but my fatigue wouldn't allow me to stay awake, and with my concerns about my blood pressure, I had to reduce my intake of caffeine for now. No redbull in early morning and no coffee at home or in the office, but I keep telling myself that this is just a temporal procedure. I already had a nap in the office twice this week!
Back to the camera. I've started to take my stuff with me almost anywhere I go, trying to find something to catch. I still have images to process from Ireland, but I don't come closer to them anymore. I think I'm exhausted for the time being and might get back later. For the time being I'm looking around the places I go to. In fact, it is indeed your eyes that see what is beautiful and make it, not the place itself. I experienced that when I paid a work-related visit to Anjafa Beach. It is somehow a quiet beach, quieter than the usual beach where I take my photos from, The Corniche or Salmiyah seaside. I intend to take some pictures from there, despite the location is somehow sensitive because of some villas around the place. Villas, for people I don't want to interrupt!
Nevertheless, I've been taking some pictures from the beach. The usual beach. After I left the clinic on Monday, having my blood taken for tests, I headed to Burger King on that beach to break the fast. I noticed some features that I did like to take some pictures of, although the sun elevation in the sky is not quite what I desire, and the weather is not cold any more like it was in those "lovely" winter mornings before...

Beach Shed

Despite the harsh sun here, I've used Fluorescent WB here to reduce (somehow) the sun's flare. Amazingly, it kind of gave out (with HDR tone-mapping of course) some sense of a night scene. I took several shots for this scene from different angles but I guess this one was the most appealing, and also after doing that, I remembered that I need some items into my 3D collection, so I went for it as well. This time I didn't use the fisheye lens, as I wanted to concentrate on the structure of the so-called "shed" here. It is the main subject that interested me in the first place for such 3D play-around. Fisheye also proves problematic for some structures as will be shown later...

 Beach Shed (3D)

It was one of my interests really to make 3D images (anaglyph) with fisheye lenses, and even I'm thinking of expanding this ambition to do it with panoramas, but it's early to talk about that for some reasons. I believe in case of a fisheye 3D image, the aim must be a a landscape or a wide area in the first place and not one specific structure (and I believe this is natural and obvious because of the nature of a fisheye lens). Now, what happens sometimes is that the structure itself, doesn't help at all to be a good 3D under a fisheye lens. This makes me a bit picky with when to use a fisheye lens. In the following example, it's my work place in 3D trial, but the problems occur with the pillars. The nature of the fisheye lens, to bend the scene on the edges, makes the difference between the left and right portions (i.e. the left and right images) at extreme on the edges while minimum in the center (that is if we were focusing on the center like I did here)...

 Work Place (3D)

Maybe the only thing, in my eyes, that did really pop-up as a 3D object was the bushes or trees behind the cars (that silver one on the left is mine by the way :) ). There is a lot of "ghosting" in this image specially at the edges (like the top of the pillars or the top of the building on the right side). Ghosting here is not like ghosting in HDR processing. In HDR, usually, we say "ghosting" about some phenomena that causes some blurring in the final HDR slide when combined from original bracketed images because of some moving object in the scene which the software that combines these bracketed images, in order to minimize the differences between the images before merging into HDR, tries to eliminate and replace the pixels, and the end result is some blur or a light shadow of some object. In 3D images, Ghosting means the fact that the red and blue (or Cyan or Green) portions in the image itself are so wide that the eye of the viewer can't combine them anymore to form one image in the spot. Ghosting in 3D images is somehow normal and like there is no really perfect 3D image (to some extent) but there are limits I believe to really settle down with such defections. Sometimes the ghosting effect can overwhelm the whole image making it meaningless! I have to admit though, my HDR tone-mapping for this image might have been a bit "over done".

Anyway I kept using my fisheye lens in the location that day (Wednesday) and focused on one of the trees. At this point I think I'm sort of made a mental point for myself on how to use a fisheye lens to do a 3D image...

Surreal Tree (3D)

I made this one here in Black and White to avoid the noise coming out from the shades of green and blue, and in fact, they say Black and White images make the best anaglyphs because there are no color confusions that might disturb the view. This sample in fact (with a previous one) made me almost sure that to use a fisheye lens for making a 3D image, your focus should be on the edges (left and right in case of landscape orientation or top and bottom in case of portrait orientation). This will leave of course the rest of the image and specially the opposite side of the focus point highly venerable for ghosting effects, but nevertheless, these ghosting are far away (relatively) from your focus point and maybe won't catch a glimpse at all!

3D Infinitum

Focusing on the lower center rock

Seems so much notes to keep in mind right now. However, with working a lot around this matter, it will eventually become like a second nature. More work needed here.

Now, to the matter of panorama in 3D. This is something I've been thinking about for some time but I didn't settle down with an opinion of my own and I just don't know how to achieve something like that! The main problem here is that when doing a proper panorama you actually use VR-heads to rotate the camera around the no-parallax point of the lens+camera combination (to avoid stitching errors resulting from parallax errors of course). Now, isn't 3D processing is generally made by overlapping 2 images with a tiny parallax error in between them? Because this is how our eyes work in the first place! 

Exercise: extend your arm in front of your face with your thumb up. Now, look with one eye for a moment, then close this eye and open the other. How does it feel? Isn't the background, sort of, moving? This is exactly the parallax error that happens in the camera and prevents the PC from stitching!

If I take a panorama in the old way before getting my VR-head, i.e. using a tripod alone, that means stitching errors and a bad stitch (and I already get bad points of stitching even when using VR-heads!), while the parallax error is somehow the main factor for achieving some good 3D image at some point (concentrating on a point and letting the other differ in portions of red and blue). The process here is quite complicated and maybe can be achieved only with using 2 cameras altogether at once and not only one, and these two cameras should be leveled horizontally in a perfect manner while pointing in opposite directions with difference in few degrees. For the time being, the only cheap solution I have in my mind is to overlap 2 layers of the same panorama and shifting one of them a little bit to the left or right and do the process of combining into a 3D. OR, as an option, is to lengthen the process of taking a panorama a bit and take the whole scene in one spot and then do it again after shifting the tripod itself few inches or centimeters (or whatever units).

I'm, myself, still not sure on how to exactly take two images for 3D processing (handheld): should I shift the camera itself to the left or right a bit, or should I rotate the camera some few degrees. Logically, seems rotating is the good solution, and again, this solution won't work with panorama processing because you are in fact rotating your camera already! Unless... you re-take the whole panorama not by shifting the tripod this time, but by starting from a different angle, few degrees away from the first starting point. So many ideas that I need to test!

I've took the chance to take some pictures for the moon, or what they called the "super moon" as it is the closest distance for the moon to Earth in the past 18 years! So they say, anyway. However, my main goal was actually some time-lapse movie for the moon moving along. Anyway, I did take the chance to do some bracketing for HDR slides and I think I did learn a lesson or two from this experiment...

The shoot was done by Tamron 70-300mm with its full zoom at 300mm. The short time lapse was done on the roof of my house with some breeze, and as it is well-known, with great zooming a little shake in the tripod is noticeable, and hence some images were a bit shaky but with minimizing the size of the frame they are barely visible. The shoot almost took around 30 to 45 minutes with a shot every 5 seconds, and the little clip was combined with 10 fps. Now, for the HDR trial. HDR here proved to be hard to be tone-mapped because of the noise level that occurs in the black areas around the moon. The idea I had in my mind was that to show more details of the moon's surface, then HDR is a normal choice, but I think it didn't really matter in this situation...

Normal (WB: fluorescent)

Tone-mapped HDR (with some artifacts)

I used the fluorescent White Balance here to reduce some of the white bright areas in this glowing moon and to help on pronouncing more of its details a bit. Lot of people like the normal version more than the HDR version and I don't blame them for that. I myself don't like the HDR moon very much, but yet, I do feel the need of more power in my zoom, and for this reason I'm thinking of getting one of those "focal length extenders" (probably one made by Vivitar) to extend the zooming power behind the current limits.

Right now I've began recording videos while driving (2 days now) in the early morning. Just trying to catch a nice moment or so, and that makes me stabilize the tripod in the car most of the time and remove it only when really need it. This thing now kind of keep scattering my tools, in the car and at home! Oh well... isn't it worthy?

Alexander 2, V5.

One heck of a night and a day, that was yesterday. A headache and a high blood pressure that accompanied me all the way to my bed time. I slept earlier (or let's say tried), but yet kept on waking up. I took one Cataflam pill at the end just to knock me off and sleep for 3 hrs before raising up again to go to work.

Had a chance yesterday to snap a a picture from some junk thrown beside my work place. The image reflects my feelings about those people who glue their butts to their thrones. Despite all what they do, they remain stupid in the eyes of others and behated.



As you see, I called it the King of Chairs. The hard part was to fix the blue chair on top and make it remain there. When I did so (hardly) with some broken metal pieces from other chairs, the wind started to rotate the base. Usually I like such chairs but not in this condition!
The shooting was mainly to experience my ND filters that I've just received. I fixed the ND4 Grey filter and started to shoot, and then removed it and shot again, then I changed the angle and shot again then fixed the filter and shot back. Of course each session was for 3 shots to combine as HDR. At the end, I joined 6 RAW files for the HDR make up. This gives me an idea in fact about studying the relation between the exposure value, time and the ND filter type. I might do this soon to study how the long exposures (bulb mode) photography work with ND filter and what do I need exactly to eliminate the excessive exposures as much as possible in day time photography.
In photoshop,  I opened my HDR and started on fixing some coloring. Personally, I like the first version of the image (which was combined into HDR in Photoshop itself) because of the high contrast between the blue chair and the yellow wall, and also the darkened purple floor. All of these were fixed by adjustment layers in Photoshop before tone-mapping. Unfortunately, after saving the file, and for some reason I don't know, the original EXR file got grey spots all over the image (and seems I've pressed some wrong key with all that headache in my head!). However, I combined the images again and worked on the second version with Photomatix. Of course, the second version of the image MUST go to photoshop for some tiny adjustment with the contrast and sharpening and then small-sizing to hide some artifacts.
That's it for now and I'm still waiting for the reply of Bigstockphotos!
__________

The fierce eyes met with the frowned faces
while Chinchán exchanged the show of power
There was Kákhbár, standing there beside the king
a valour general, mercy has no landing into his heart
His drink was the blood, and his food was the flesh
and his jokes were made of spears cut into the throat
Then with a loud voice from the horizon did it appear
Chinchán shouted from afar at the so called Kákhbár
"We heard of a mass of muscles, and a heart of stone
a man called Kákhbár the hero, and I doubt if it is so"
The glorious Geltán had his blood violently out from him
and shouted back with words that no one understood
He walked alone to the field and everyone was watching
while Chinchán was there waiting for him with pride
Two heavy things were meeting at that time of old age
if not men, then it is free for others to imagine the beyond
Copper and Iron, no difference in color they have now
but similarities they hold in the sound they do when beaten
Strike by strike, they exchanged the power so fiercely
everyone saw the fire coming out from swords and eyes
If it was not for a mistake in the steps of Chinchán
his head wouldn't be a target to be splitted into two
Just then the Geltáns released the shout of ego
and the knees of Caqobians shivered of fear

Alexander 2, V2.

A day that begins with a headache is not a day, it's a hell. This is my first day of the week and its start. Beside that, I did wake up a bit later than my usual time, so I had to go in a hurry to my work place.
I had to grease little bit and do some work with the now-working freeze-drying machine and check if the samples were already dry or not... for my luck they were;


The headache did not give me much chances to do anything but at least I started my transliteration with Alexander's story, part 6, doing the usual 2 verses as before. Two verses with such a headache is a miracle, I tell you. As for the time being, I go around wherever I walk and try to concentrate as much as possible for new ideas of photography. Maybe this is what is causing me the headache? Nah, I don't think so. I might need to nap in the office. I'm expecting a way to go to DHL today, as one shipment arrived and the other had just departed from Bahrain. Hope I can manage...
__________

Days passed and the journey was to the west
they marched into different lands and villages
Some joined them and some resisted them
and some hosted them as friends and brothers
And the march continued amid day and night
between the plains and the forests so dark
Until the limits of the western horizon glanced
where the sun sets in the cold sea of Échalán
And there lie the lands of the pagans so fierce
idolators, and for the stone they bow and heed
Worshippers of nature, and forgot Who made it
thus cruelty got planted in their hearts and eyes
Their children they gave for nothing but mere myths
and their own earnings for the bless of the unknown
Geltáns they were called and named in records
the guardians of the western paths to the sun
Thus, the command from the Almighty came down
O Alexander, teach them who Am I, The Lord
and let them praise Me and worship Me as well
If they insisted with cruelty then your sword shall work
and you are a faithful man, thus punish or have mercy
My grace endowed you with the sense of justice and mercy
Then, the news of the hero approached the borders of might
and the hordes of Geltáns were made ready for the new comer

A visit to Failaka

2 days ago I had been to Failaka island, finally. Although I didn't visit much of it in fact but I had the chance at least. The island is deserted. We heard of some places there but we didn't see anything, actually we need more time next time to visit everything we can there. I started my photography there with making out a panoramic view. Panoramic photos are usually taken with wide lens, but in most cases we can take several photos and then stick them up together to make one complete wide photo. The panoramic image I made had a real size of 6.5 meters in width (that is around 18ft maybe).











I really don't know what are these buildings behind but they seem governmental from the looks. The building at the far left behind the bush is drilled with bullet holes. I had the chance as well to test my HDR capabilities (with a software help).















We went insid this building and of course it was nothing but ruins. The good thing is, you can hear sounds of some birds that sounded like, exotic if I should say. They had this place for nesting.
I took some other photos but I didn't prepare them yet to be published on the net. Some clearing for the images must be done because the weather was dusty and not clear as you can see it in the photos.
During the trip to the island I had to cope with seasickness, and thank God I didn't have anything for breakfast but still my stomach played tricks and I felt sluggish and couldn't move out of my car. As for coming back from there, I had lil bit dizziness but I was mostly struck down by the headache.

Because of this trip and being busy with the photos I had, I didn't have the time to record (again) something from the text, nor write something down in the story of Alexander. But today, Saturday, I already starting to write the story. But I think I will leave that for tomorrow or some other time... I think I have to concentrate more on recording since I have lot of problems with the sound quality and playback.

Yesterday it was my niece's birthday! Happy Birthday to Noor!