Ahoy!

One weird week. Sad, terrifying, and weird. A mix of feelings that doesn't taste any better, but bitter. With this week beginning, on Monday specifically, we got the shocking news of the departure of a cousin in a car accident. He was 18. A memory glimpse passed through my mind, of all the times (even though short) when I had this boy in my lap.With all the sadness, there is a feeling of being lucky to be 32 (almost), and sad again to know such time passed, and sad again to know such a young fellow passed away, and terrifying to know death is lurking. Death, has no alarm clock.

I've finally finished what I was waiting for; the visa interview in the US embassy here. Easily done even with sort of a long wait. I just have to wait now to get my passport back (via DHL?). On the other hand, I didn't book anything yet; not a place, nor tickets. I better work little bit on this soon. Also, I need to plan and figure out how I'm going to move my camera and other stuff with me. It will be a heavy load for sure.

I. Cool me down:

Still struggling with long exposures, and realized now that the weather is one big challenge. With this heat (38^oC~43^oC at night), it doesn't matter if you take a Dark-Frame exposure and subtract it from your shot, the noise will remain a big issue still.

For those who don't know, a Dark-Frame exposure is an exposure that can be done by the camera before recording the data of the image and it is simply an exposure taken at the same time period of the original shot with the shutter shut, i.e. doubling the time of taking the exposure. This Dark-Frame exposure can be done separately by the photographer, simply by capping (closing) the lens and running the exposure and it will be saved as an image. In Photoshop, this Dark-Frame image is blended with the original shot in Difference blend to subtract the noise. I prefer this method because I can keep the image file for later uses when needed. One issue though, the Dark-Frame exposure must be taken around the same temperature.

Now, with my latest shot that took 33 minutes, I've realized that the Dark-Frame method won't do here, specially with such hot weather. However, I did some trials on cleaning the noise with a free software called RawTherapee.

33 minutes
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @30mm,
f/22, 33 min, ISO100.

Now, away from the technical talk about what RawTherapee did here, just don't be fooled for the smoothness of the image here. It is just minimized, hence the noise effect is not apparent (click to enlarge and yet it is relatively smooth). The exposure itself was dark, I guess I was fooled by the LCD, and I've totally forgotten to base my judgement on the histogram.
However, there are certain mistakes done here that I have to pay attention to next time. First of all, the rocks that were apparent in the beginning disappeared later because of the overwhelming tide. In such darkness, there would be no trace of them at all except of few dark spots beside the main rock (or crag?). Secondly, I should've counted for the advancing water, as I almost got my camera dipped! The advancing tide could have even shook the tripod slightly (even with its excessive weight). Thus, it is better next time to stay away as much as possible for the line of water and zoom the lens if possible.

RawTherapee played a great deal in reducing the noise after all and frankly I didn't mingle much in it because there is a conflicting interest. As much as I wanted it to reduce the noise in my RAW file, as much as I want to edit my RAW in ACR. RawTherapee has all the controls but they are not as flexible and user-friendly as ACR is.
Anyway, one particular option in RawTherapee that was unique, which is the ability to load the Dark-Frame file into it and it will work out the subtraction (even better than the Difference blend in Photoshop). Thus, I've uploaded the Dark-Frame which I did at 33 minutes as well but at home after coming back from the beach (in the balcony) and RawTherapee used this file to subtract the noise from the shot. Despite the relatively good results, there would be still some noise that were hard to remove with any removal plugin like NeatImage and Noise Ninja.
I've realized and remembered how the noise was a lesser issue (but still an issue) when I did a long exposure at the beach in one winter night. Thus, I've decided to take a different (and a serious) measure to reduce the effect of the heat on the sensor.

The Experiment:

Simply put, all what we need is to put down the temperature. This said, I've just got the light bulb upon my head glowing while wandering in ACE store (don't you love this place?). The idea struck as I wondered in the aisle of camping stuff (well, I was originally looking for bubble wrap, but who cares anyway) and remembered the stuff we used to put in our iceboxes when we used to leave for field trips with my work place staff; cooling gel.
Back home mom got some of those gel pads. made for medical uses, in the freezer and ready to be used. Directly after going back home I've decided to do something with those and see the effect, and I guess I wasn't disappointed. The only one thing left here is to put it into practice and see for real.
My experiment was simply to use those frozen gel pads on my camera to cool it down, and for comparison, I've ran the same long exposure of 33 minutes with the pads on.

100% zoom crop of the two slides (warm & cold)
Click to enlarge.

I think the result is astonishing. Just to avoid any wet drops on the camera that might come from the ice on the pad itself, I've wrapped the camera slightly with a plastic bag. Now, that was not the end of the story. As I was trying to make this image above for comparison, I was going to Assign the color space to sRGB (why would I use ProPhoto here?) and by coincidence I've picked Adobe 1998 space and the noise was reduced significantly too! However, sRGB noise profile was much like ProPhoto but with less saturation maybe?

Both slides are on Adobe 1998 space
sRGB slide was converted (not assigned) to keep the visual look as it is in sRGB originally

Anyway, seems this reduction in noise is only apparent or visual, as some pixels do change their color code but not really eliminated as it is the case with Dark-Frame subtraction. Now, why the noise in sRGB and ProPhoto are almost the same, yet Adobe 1998 is lesser apparently, is something beyond me for the time being.

Just to recall the color spaces and understand why it is a surprise for me, the sizes of the spaces are ordered as the following: sRGB < Adobe 1998 < ProPhoto; with ProPhoto giving more flexible adjustments and more vivid colors, as it is more forgiving. Logically, one would expect if ProPhoto is high in noise level, and Adobe space is lesser, then sRGB should be lesser too, but this is not the case apparently!

This experiment is done for now and only a real work is needed to celebrate it! But that means more work to be done in moving my stuff to and from the location. If only there is someone to help, or even cares for what I do...

II. Digging The Past:

Now with DxO Optics at hand, I've discovered new capabilities (far away from the simple Photoshop) and that sparked in me the urge to re-discover the past images, specially those from Ireland. Also, I've been visiting these images again to post them to my Flickr and share them in groups.

Cashel Rock Graveyard
Canon 15mm fisheye, f/2.8, 1/800 sec., ISO 100.
 Corrected with DxO Optics

The joy of working with DxO is to be able to correct those images taken with Canon lenses automatically (and also those taken with Tamron 70-300mm, with many others of course). However, doing all the adjustments in DxO is not that easy still because of some... I don't know what to call it but let's say complexity of design a bit. Reducing the Highlights, for example, is still an issue in DxO and cannot be done in a simple way, while in ACR it can be done simply with the Recovery slider.

Fields and Graves
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @34mm, f/4.5, 1/2000 sec., ISO 100, EV-3
Corrected with DxO Optics

Images like Fields and Graves were re-discovered as well, and despite the fact that they were taken with the simple 18-55mm lens, yet DxO Optics did correct the perspective slightly (and resulting in an image out of the usual aspect ratio a bit). Yet, as usual, not everything can be done in DxO, thus the files are saved into DNG and re-edited in Photoshop for more flexible editing.

Green Mile
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @18mm, f/22, 1 sec., ISO 100.
Corrected with DxO Optics

But shots like Green Mile were completely like new to me. I remember that day though and what I was trying to do, but I've never considered this shot for editing at all. Even though it was a bracketed shot, I've decided to take only one RAW file for editing here with DxO, and then with ACR, typically. I've dug out a lot of old photos (and sometimes I do think how did I dare to make this or that!) and now I also see that I need to clean out some space in those old hard disks!

III. Ahoy!:

I couldn't resist the temptations. I've finally placed some orders online and I'm waiting now for the arrival. Two new books (and yet I didn't finish those from the previous order last month), and some stuff from B&H.

Source: Amazon

As for the books, the first is another book by George Barr, and again, from RockyNook. My first encounter with George Barr was with his book Take Your Photography To The Next Level. A really nice book about aesthetics of photography (away a bit from the technicality of the work with the camera). This book now, seems like a mix between the technical and the aesthetic ventures.
Let's hope it wouldn't take me much time to finish the books that I'm reading still. I'm trying to dedicate more time to those: in the office my flash book (by Syl Arena) and before any nap in bed I'm reading Thomas Kida's book, about skepticism. If, only if, there is any travel outside for a vacation, most probably I would be taking one of those books (present or upcoming). I do believe that when reading a book it is important to keep a chain of thought by reading it till the end without stopping for a significant period of time.

Source: Amazon

The other book, now, is something not related to Photography at all. In fact, it is a book that George Barr (yes, again) advised me to read. Just a note, George Barr is a physician. Since I've been a follower of his blog, he did mention in one of his posts something about ADHD patients, thus I've decided to ask few questions about this case. He replied with some tips, and one of them is to read this book and compare my status to what is mentioned. Frankly, I didn't read the table of contents of the book (it is like I'm surprising myself here), but from the title it seems about giving tips to overcome the ADHD rather than a book of diagnosis. However, this is even better!
I'm not saying that I do have ADHD, however. I'm just not sure. I never did an official diagnosis with any professional in the field. Yet, I can't just deny the traits that I've been witnessing since I was in high school, and were a major abyss for my bad grades (even in college times). The inability to focus, and the (later discovered) daydreaming trend that can't be stopped easily and sweeps through the mind; all of this got to be happening for some reason, and there is something I need to know, and overcome. Yes, there is the Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD) even though it is not yet announced to be an official disorder, but referring to the most known case I believe ADHD comes closer to the symptoms I'm talking about and would be better to work on this for now.

Source: B&H

Now, to the fun part! Far away from books and the boring stuff (pardon me, books I like aren't boring to me anyway). I consider this order, somehow, to be my own birthday gift to myself. Well, it is in August but I can celebrate earlier anyway, can't I? I've placed an order for a set of few simple stuff (wish if they were simple in prices as well).
However, one item is another teleconverter: Bower 2x DGII Teleconverter. Even though I do have one already, it would be nice to have another one and compare and maybe combine the two to work as a quadrupling set! Two were available, a 4-element lens and a 7-element one. I preferred to order the 4-element type (and it is relatively cheaper) even though as it is mentioned in the specs that the 7-element type is sharper. I thought that a lesser number of elements is better (and could even reduce the chromatic aberrations problems). Vivitar's 2x teleconverter did show a strong tendency for chromatic aberrations.

Source: B&H

My second item is the Delkin Devices Fat Gecko Gator Camera Mount, which I was reluctant to order for some time now. With the presence of a gorillapod (I call it spiderpod sometimes) at hand, I've thought this item won't be necessary, but after some trial now, I think it is better to have both. I'm eying some sturdy performance better than the gorillapod, as it failed me in some instances recently. Even though this vice takes up to 1.36kg (3lb), I think it would take up to 2kg (4.4lb) in practice. The camera body, alone with no lenses, is almost 1kg (2.2lb). Just hope I won't be disappointed here. But hey! it can be used for other purposes as well!

Source: B&H

Now with the sweet stuff, my own real gift to myself. A little Canon 430EX II Speedlite to keep company with the big 580EX II Speedlite (well, not that big after the 600EX-RT). After reading Syl Arena's book (and still) my mouth got watering for more experiments and trials with Speedlites. Not aiming at portraiture yet, as it is a field that requires more than simply two Speedlites (plus the interaction with the subject). Yet, it will help in lot of occasions, like the High Speed venture. I'll try to come out with more experiments when I have it at hand. The 430EX II is generally cheaper than 580EX II (around half the price), and has a lesser guide number as well, yet I think it is a suitable choice for now because I'm thinking of using Speedlites in close distances in general and no need much light power. In fact, the opposite might be needed; a minimum power. According to the specs, minimum power (when working in manual mode) for 430EX II is 1/64, while it is 1/128 for the 580EX II - but they might be comparable because of the difference in the guide number after all.

Source: B&H

Further more, and to have more fun with my new (expected) toy, I've placed an order for Vello Universal Duo TTL Off-Camera Flash Cord (6.5'). The reason for the cable (for those of you who don't know yet) is that when it comes to E-TTL operations (let's say the automatic mode of the Speedlite) not all operations are transferable via wireless, and also for some aesthetic reasons, you might want to use your Speedlite as a master AND off-camera; something you can't do in wireless (because off the camera operations in wireless requires that your Speedlite must be in slave mode to be controlled). I'm lucky to have the Canon EOS 7D because the pop-flash (in camera flash) can work as a master for wireless operations.
All I have to do now is to sit, and wait. In hope I can get it ASAP. This seems the only joy I can get so far...

Now on the side of conlangs (and remember the main reason for having this blog is Ayvarith conlang itself!), I still didn't plan my next move yet. I'm supposed to work with Geltani though and design the phonetic scheme and maybe a syllabic system to spell out names, but with the occupations of the mind right now I can't be bothered to work with this right now and I'd rather work with my camera for the time being. However, that doesn't mean I'm forgetting about my dear conlangs! After all, I need to get busy as much as my body allows me to. As Edison said once: As a cure for worries, work is better than beer. Yes.

A Struggle...

A week messier than the one before! Frustration, vexation, a heart attack, name it whatever you want. Any term that gives a resemblance to "annoying" would work perfectly here.
I've been trying so hard to do things prior to this post to be able to put some work, but I kind of failed, but hey, I tried! But the thing I'm regretting the most is, not being able to work on a simple task as recording my Ayvarith texts.

To start with a failure, I was trying to take a panorama on a low level. The new tripod gives me new and interesting capabilities (and yes it is made in China), and for this I was trying to work with a panorama in the bathroom, again. The location is chosen for a certain idea that I wanted to imply, however, there was one difficult task to come over (and I couldn't); The tripod legs. Simply, impossible to clone out, unless of course I would decide to work for one full week on cloning them out. Despite my trials to rotate the set from above and take the panorama again with the legs of the tripod out of their former place (and then overlap the 2 results), yet, that didn't work quite well and PTGui didn't help (nor Autodesk Stitcher which I don't know how to use still!).

The setting in the bathroom!
The floor is clean don't worry! :)

Another work had to be done in my work place. Now it's Ramadhan and the working hours are shifted and shortened generally but however, I'm still on my same routine. Not affected and hope to remain like that till the end of the month. Anyway, I try to finish whatever I have to do in the lab by the early hours of the morning just to do whatever I like the rest of the day. If only I can bring my PC to work to do something about these images and panoramas!
Last week I did take a small vertical panorama for the corridor but when I got back home, the process was hard to be done and to stitch, hence, I decided to go on and do it again last Monday but this time, a full spherical panorama. I think I got my lesson now from all of this. Always go for the full and then part whatever you want.

Branches
Despite the fact that it's not a full spherical panorama, this vertical panorama taken from under an arch of bushes and then cropped. I realized that I almost done a full panorama here minus some few angles.

- Struggling With Failure:
Back to the main headache of this week for me. A panorama from my work place, and specifically from the corridor of labs. As stated before, I took a limited panorama from there before but I was mistaken not to make it a full spherical one. Also, this time I decided to take the whole panorama with (M)anual mode instead of the (Av) mode as I usually do. In brief, the process is about metering the highlight and shades in (Av) mode to check the shutter speeds, and then choose an average shutter speed in (M)anual mode, and that way you will make the exposure time to the camera more constant time-wise, making for a smoother transition, as it seems, as you move your camera while taking the panorama, from highlights to shadow areas. On the other hand, the WB was set manually to about 3300K, instead of relying on the presets of WB that already exist in the camera.
This time I tried hard to take a shot of the Nadir point but things later on were not that easy either. I've been struggling hard to achieve a suitable blend but seems I need more work with my tripod. I went through much fluctuating between Photoshop and PTGui trying to fit the Nadir point in its place.

Nadir shot taken after moving the tripod away from its original place. Not a good shot!

The idea in fact is simple, and I've read a lot of documentations online and from the PTGui help so that I might fit the Nadir point perfectly. The idea is simply to stretch the Nadir shot which I took from an angle (after changing the tripod position) into its place on the completed panorama. This simple idea, was not simple to do at all!

Asylum
Vertical panorama.

As a brief discussion for the colors; here I tried to add a dirty look resembling asylums and places of maniacs that we usually see on movies and such stories related to psychos. My main interest, in general from the very beginning, is the linear shape of the corridor and that is what drove me to do the panorama (twice). Yet, when it came to the tone-mapping and fixing colors, the philosophy in the mind begins. Seems I do have a certain pattern of thinking when it comes to such workflow: Notice, Shoot, Add philosophy with colors.
Back to the nadir, here, you can see the middle block in the vertical panorama is totally covered. Not perfectly covered though but compared to my other trials, this is considered superb, I guess.
It turns out that my VR-head, Manfrotto 303SPH, is not one of the best VR-heads available. Not because of its weight, but probably because of its size. By coincidence and as I was surfing the net to find a solution to my nadir problem, I've discovered that MY common problem of having parts of the VR-head into my shooting process is in fact, normal. Other people who used this very same VR-head did suffer from the same problem, and if you are not going to make a QTVR, then this should not be a big problem; a simple crop would do the job.
Yet, my main problem is, I insist on doing this and I wanted to add a nadir point to make a suitable QTVR. There is always, however, an open option for me to create my own nadir which is something common as well: a title block.
In the processes that I've been through, which were so complicated and so memory-exhaustive, I've learned many things for now, but that does not compensate for a good nadir shot. There are methods mentioned on the net for such way to shoot the nadir, but lot of them are impractical. I've learned some new options in PTGui that are said to be helpful for nadir stitching (like Blending priority) but they were useful for other ideas in my head. After all, I've managed to stick a fixed and isolated nadir (from an original angled shot) which did not fit perfectly, but yet, to me it is a glance of hope...

Asylum II
The isolated and fixed nadir was way larger than the piece I wanted to cover.

One of the problems that occurred here while stitching (or after actually) is the weird splashes of colors that are not originally there. There had been some odd blue bands, and you might see them as well even after cloning (never been good with cloning!). I'm not sure what causes such weird colored occurrences, but it might be the process by which I took the panorama or the effect of the original WB? Thinking about it now I really can't decide how to research this topic! And to add to the drama, Photomatix is still acting weird for adding white spaces to perfectly aligned images!
Finally, there was this simple QTVR (I didn't do QTVRs in some time now), in which I've forgot to turn on the option that says "360 panorama" when tone-mapping in Photomatix. For this reason you might notice a sudden change in shades as you rotate in the QTVR. You need the latest QuickTime plugin to see the QTVRs on web. If you downloaded QuickTime and installed it already, the plugin is supposedly installed already...







The final twist to the epic of such panorama is, a tunnel view. I was going to make a little planet projection of the scene but it turns out that it does not make much difference to the vertical panorama that I did before. Thus, a tunnel view projection is more interesting I'd say!

Asylum (Tunnel View)

It was a struggle indeed. Made some advancement and got some failures as well, but let's hope I did learn my lessons here. Originally, the images were stitched on relatively larger sizes (not relative to what you see here but to what have been submitted to stock sites), but after all I had to compromise and give up some space to have mercy on my PCs memory.
All of this work got me back to a spark of memory in my head, when I used to be an active member somehow in the Wild Minds network; a network dedicated to Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD). The vertical panorama specifically, which was the first in this series, got me back to myself to realize that I didn't do much against my MD habits. The ups and downs in my life got me even deeper into this. Getting closer to 31 in few days does not make it any better as well, as socializing is already harder for me to do. Maybe I should get back to the network, to people who are, to some extent, like me... just wondering where to this is going...

Salute, to such a hectic week, with a little dedication inspired from the essence of the strokes of bad luck during this week...

Busy Life
Long exposures (25") layered  with "soft light" blend.

Dear Camera, See You Later...

ayħav húþ ğašar mí e-harrá yaw e-dum yi hú báy

lávin anná húþ baZú daynúr majŧún?

šá ąél kil mší yixwan gavvá liQiliváy?

mat hú zmén e-ranáħah, liZú ąayun?

Some "Ayvaric" thoughts has been around, trying to change or edit the literature that I've been inventing for some time now. This time, it occurred to me that usually in English, the word "between" is used usually in combination of two objects, while "among" is for objects more than two. Thinking about it, there is the same thing almost in Arabic and Hebrew (I guess), but it's not a number-related. There is "bayn" [بين] and "ma bayna" [ما بين], but I'm not sure of their exact classical use. To me, I seem to say them fluently according to the speech but without knowing the grammatical reasons for this! In Ayvarith, there is a similar situation even though I've made up some explanations for this without really noticing them myself: (bayun) and (mabyun); clearly close to the Arabic version, but as far as I remember the Hebrew and Aramaic versions are not far from this either. I'm thinking of upgrading the meaning to make (bayun) used for two objects while (mabyun) for further numbers above two. Just a thought.
I've renewed my account on Writing.com for another year. Doing that sort of gave me the pinch to keep up with my other projects. A very bad habit of mine: starting things and never finish them up. I'm looking forward for more tiresome days specially during the summer and the heat here, with the expected renewal of my duties into field trips. Field trips, games, photos, daydreaming, a conlang and poetry (specially poetry. I didn't write in some long time now with all the gush in emotions in my mind). My life truly is a mess that went out of control. Trying hard to keep up and organize my time and even exercise to enhance my physical vitality to cope with my own requirements and my own projects, but even that require time, and to screw things completely, sometimes I'm ready to screw up the world and sleep. Just sleep, like I always wanted (but that never really happened).
I think I do need a vacation from my camera. I don't know why I feel the need to take pictures so often. It's becoming like an addiction, and every addiction is simply bad, be it drugs, drinks or even a hobby like photography. But what you know, once I'm dropping down the camera I'm going to head to that Ayvarith project and web page that I didn't work on for some months now.
I'm back now with my own research about myself, my brain, my skills, and how everything works together. Most of such research is done at work actually not back home, because simply back home I don't have time now to sleep, and if I did, I'm going to screw up the day and just do nothing at all (probably only play those games I want to). With this said, I'm back to some of those free tests online (yep, another addiction), and along with that a belief of some thread of ADHD in my (neurological) blood. While reading The Playful Brain, I'm paying more attention to my simple actions and notifications and trying to analyze them under the light of what I've understood lately. I've noticed what is said to be an "easy puzzle" can take me a longer time to solve more than what is supposed to be a "hard puzzle" of the same type or rank. Also, I've been fluctuating my attention from one object to another (looking at a book to pick it up, and an agenda lies in the way between me and the book, thus I remembered something suddenly for that agenda and picked it up totally forgetting what I wanted to do with the book). Looking at some videos on Youtube about ADHD cases makes me feel superior though. It's not like that with me and yes, I don't think I do have ADHD at all now, but why do I lose my focus that easily? Why I keep flipping channels in my mind? Is it the damned Maladaptive Daydreaming again? I know that I've not been the hard fighter lately against this habit, mainly because I'm exhausted and in fatigue.

Decision is made now. A break from the camera for some time.

I should add to that a break from chocolate and coffee as well. Speaking of my mental status as well, in fact, I don't care much anymore about what people think of it now, but I like to explore my mind little bit further. I'm doing some EIQ (Emotional IQ) tests but I don't count on such results as the questions tend to be highly relative to the culture I guess, but anyway, my score was low. Not surprised though. I'm a loner after all.
On the other hand, I'm back to my senseless sketches as the attacks of boredom do visit me at work from time to time and makes me unable to read the book at hand...

The Devil's Automobile
The idea was to create a head with some brain popping out of it, but with such epileptic art form, expect the unexpected.

Sensory Man
This sketch was done horizontally (90 degrees to the left or CCW), and my mind didn't make sense of it as usual except later when I changed the angle of view and rotated it 90 clock-wise to realize it looks like a man's face.

Now back to my camera before I leave it alone for some time. I did my experiment now for catching a flowing water with the help of ND filters, and hence I couldn't use my Tamron, but instead I've used my old Canon 55-200mm, because I do have an adapter ring for the diameter of this lens (Ø52mm). The result was not exactly what I wanted, specially when it comes to the angle of view, but it was some trial that I hope I've learned something from...

Aqua Viridis (Green Water)

The whole problem is about doing the right exposure under the green flood light. One of the techniques that I've came up with is to use the (M)anual mode completely to achieve this. The (M)anual mode gives you the ability to change the shutter speed and the aperture (f-number) as desired and with a half-press to the shutter button the camera would give out an estimation of the light level in EVs. Everything was fine, except of 2 points that I was puzzled with:

1. Where to focus? to the furthest edge or to the nearer one? Here, I tried to focus in between (I focused without the water flow in the beginning thus it was an approximation).
2. What aperture size should I use? I used maximum f-number (narrowest aperture size) but probably I should have applied the principle of Hyperfocal distance? Though I think this concept is mainly used in landscape photography and not in close-up photography.

The main important thing is that I've fixed the shutter speed. Few seconds were enough to make the water flow in a blurry way like a dream effect (in fact it looks like milk to me!). After setting the shutter speed to 3 seconds, and the aperture to f/29, I did simple half-press, checked the EV and then put on some filters corresponding to the mount of EV I want to reduce. The EV reading without putting the filters on was close to +3, thus I've fixed three ND filters: ND2, ND4, ND8. They correspond to a reduction of -1, -2, and -3 EVs respectively, and thus totaling -6 EV putting the scale down from +3 to -3 (3+(-6)=-3, simple calculus). However, even though the picture was fine to some extent, I had to edit the RAW file as well and adjust some sliders and finally, with the help of adjustment layers in Photoshop, I've removed the green color from the background and kept the water and the mug in green only. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness of the water flow itself.

And still dwelling in the bathroom trying to catch up a panorama for this narrow place. I think it's around 2x2 meters (~ 6.6x6.6 ft). It is indeed a challenge to do a panorama in such space. The only panorama, probably, that I did in such a narrow place (and without the VR-head back then) was for the inside of the little tower back in Aughnanure castle in 2009...

The inside of the little tower in Aughnanure castle field, Co. Galway, Ireland.

But, this panorama, taken without the VR-head and definitely a narrower place than my bathroom, but after all I minimized it to 360 panorama (horizontal line only). The hardships of the bathroom were different, specially that I wanted to take the panorama from a level higher than my head, and this time I used my new tripod and not my monopod.

1. With a tripod, the base was stable, but the tripod's head itself was shaky a bit making a small tilt for the VR-head on top of it.
2. The narrow space of the bathroom made the lower angles, where the tripod's legs show usually, a serious issue.
3. Tried shooting with flood lights and not my usual bathroom lights, but the ceiling's plugging point was narrow and the flood light could not be fixed there. In order to solve this problem I had to think of some way to lengthen or extend the plugging point further. Luckily, I got some converting heads (for light bulbs) in the family shop near by and connected two of them to extend the plugging point. I had to work on smoothing the edges a bit because they didn't fit in the first place so I had to widen one converter and narrow the other. I have to say I was working for more than one hour taking the panorama and afraid of this bulb to be falling down on my head at any moment!
4. The usual problems with the stitch in PTGui, but this time accompanied with a glitch from Photomatix when merging all in HDR format. Seems that the new Photomatix has a glitch in batch processing bracketed images. Usually I see such errors and broken lines when different images are merged by mistake, but this time I double checked my images' sequences and there was no mistake. Simply, this one particular slide which showed a strong error had to be done again alone separately. Only then, the HDR slide for that angle appeared perfect.

The flood light with extension made of converting heads (or plugs). The arrow points to where drilling was used (with a special head to soften the area and not drill through it)

The right side of this HDR (tone-mapped here) slide became partially white with broken lines even though the bracketed sequence is correct! It wasn't the only slide, but it was the worst...

The whole point of using flood lights here and not the regular light bulbs that were already there is that I wanted to avoid the WB (White Balance) problems that I had before in my first experiment in this bathroom. If you read my post last week you'll find an explanation of the problem and how it was hard, somehow, to choose a particular WB with such lights. Here, after fixing the flood lights, I've simply shot the panorama with Daylight WB.
As for the glitch in Photomatix, I thought it might be because I was setting the options for reducing the "ghosting" artifacts to "high" while the camera didn't shake so much and there were no moving objects to eliminate, thus I processed the package again in a batch process but turning of the "ghosting" correction off. Yet, the weird artifacts kept on coming.
It is always hard to set control points for the make of a HDR panorama, probably because of the exposure data embedded in such files that makes PTGui unable to set the control points properly. However, I've tried the old trick which seems to be working fine for now (but that didn't spare me the troubles): tone-map the HDR slides under certain settings, then stitch them and save the file as a model. Then, open the HDR panorama file and apply that model. That way, all the control points that were applied perfectly for the tone-mapped images will be applied to the HDR panorama in the same systematic way (providing the control points are perfectly situated in the tone-mapped model). I've stitched the HDR panorama then without even optimizing. All the errors that occurred while trying to align the HDR images disappeared simply depending on the tone-mapped counterpart. Why not simply tone-map and then stitch? Here you go:

• HDR panorama will have exposure information rather than a tone-mapped version (even in 16-bit TIFF). This option gives you more control over the light effects.
• There are occasions when you think it is better to manually edited the HDR file for some reason (changing hue before tone-mapping, changing exposure of certain areas only before tone-mapping, ...etc).
• If you are thinking of making a QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) file, it is important to match the exposure of the left and right sides of your panorama, otherwise in the QTVR file you will notice a strange straight line while rotating your QTVR. This option, to match the two sides in exposure, is available when you tone-map in Photomatix (and other programs), while stitching already tone-mapped images won't give you such an option and you might have to find other ways to solve the problem.
• PTGui got an option to fix the exposures for the whole HDR panorama before stitching. Useful sometimes to make an average of all the slides' exposures.

After stitching the HDR panorama, there was a heavy load of work with Photoshop to clone out lot of the undesired objects to make the panorama normal as much as possible. Parts of the VR-head did appear so much in this panorama specifically, and it is hard to simply remove by cropping; I have to clone out instead. I think it is time to re-consider the way I work with vertical angles, as it seems a 45 degrees up and down is causing me problems! Beside these parts, some weird artifacts in red appeared as well, and still I can't explain what are these as there is simply no reason for them to occur!

Lavatrinum
My bathroom, and still you can see some red artifacts in a larger view. I had to cut out the roof because the green light was subjected to "poster" effect, or banding artifacts.

And one of  my biggest mistakes, again, is using a large f-number (narrow aperture) causing a lot of sparkles caused by the lights. If I remember correctly, it was f/20.
After this panorama, I think I will get back to the sweet old Photomatix instead of the new one because there are many issues now that I've noticed that are caused for no specific reasons. Such glitches didn't appear in the old Photomatix (version 3). The only problem with the old Photomatix was the weird squares that appear on the viewing window (I think related to the insufficient memory as my PC runs for long times). So just to be systematic:

• The new Photomatic (version 4), has a problem in tone-mapping window. As you work according to what you see while you tone-map, once you hit the "Process" button, the final image would come different to what you have seen in the tone-mapping window.
• The new Photomatix has a problem with batch processing RAW files. As it turned out, some HDR slides were merged with strange white bands or broken lines (like what happens when two different or so much shaky images are merged), while when these specific slides done as a single process, this problem doesn't occur. Talk about time-consuming!
• Related to the problem mentioned in the beginning, some weird artifacts, in form of colors or shapes, appear after tone-mapping (e.g. in my example above, red areas appeared and had to be cloned out, and banding of some colors making gradual change appear as blocks of pixels).

I don't think, however, I'm going to do it all over again with the old Photomatix, but I learned my lesson I'd say. I have to check further with my VR-head and the best way to deal with low angles to avoid including the body of the VR-head itself into my panorama. It's not completely evadable, but at least the effect can be reduced somehow.

Finally, my order(s) had been processed and I'm waiting for their arrivals. I'm doing it slowly so that I'd have more time reading The Playful Brain. Three photography books, one teleconverter, and a sound trigger. Did I say I need a break from my camera? hmmm......