Hektisch II…

I'll try to wrap this quick. Well, happy new year first, and wish you all who read this (ONLY THOSE READING THIS!), ahem, a creative new year. A year that washes whatever pains that were there in 2014.
Currently, I've been celebrating my own triumph against one of the hardest panoramas that ruined my appetite for panoramas for some time, but now the appetite is all back of course! However, there remains the part where I MUST do the fixes for these newly generated panoramas, including the HDR tone-mapping which proved to be tricky - and we end the show with noise cleaning which proved to be an arduous task.

Casadh an tSúgáin
(twisting of the rope)

In fact, Casadh an tSúgáin is an Irish song title which I was listening to as I was doing the processing for this image, and seems it fits exactly the image's geometry! When I explored the variety of projections I've totally forgot about the usual flat panorama as it looked very regular and mundane. Hence, I've continued to explore the other styles. However, in Casadh an tSúgáin tone-mapping was troublesome and consequently it made for a hard time with the noise cleaning later. The leader of the photography group liked the small version of this panorama, and asked me to include it in the next set of images to be sorted out for future uses by the group (a usual procedure); however, I'm not sure how would the large version sustain the critique with such noise and spots that would need another round of cleaning. In this projection, I've noticed how the close pillars (to my left and right on location) could have formed a straight line. Originally this panorama was 90^o counterclockwise but I decided to put it as seen above making the symmetry line horizontal and adjacent to the major pillars - while keeping the corridor up and down to form some sense of ground at least, specially with some of the buildings.

Herculis Cuniculum
(tunnel of Hercules)

Next on the list was the tunnel projection, Herculis Cuniculum. This one had even harder work done to it and yet it is suffering still, in the original large version at least. The main problem here was to cropping and distort to ensure some degree of symmetry. Anyway, it seems I did achieve some degree of symmetry along the central vertical axis but not the horizontal one unfortunately; and this is what you get when you screw things up on location with symmetry and centralizing the tripod in the middle of location! The noise level here was significant but not troublesome as much as it was in the previous projection with Casadh an tSúgáin, which is something I don't understand so far, but probably it is related to the degree of distortion that each projection bears. The main nuisance in this panorama specifically comes from the night sky and the buildings of the city; those are the main sources for the high noise level.

Planeta Laternis
(planet of lanterns)

At the end we have the typical planet projection, Planeta Laternis. Originally, this panorama was 90^o clockwise. However, it did seem to be more balanced with keeping the buildings of the city up, while the corridor would spread left and right. Anyway, the rotation process was done later, after all the fixes and the trials to "gain the symmetry" back with a lot of distorting processes. Since I didn't shoot the nadir, I had to fill the space of that block with a solid color and seems it fits perfectly (after adjusting the hue and saturation to match its surrounding tiles). All of these adjustments of course were in HDR mode and before tone-mapping, but the hardest part was to distort such a large file in HDR mode and make it fit specific proportions and perfectly centered. For this reason I mostly do large stitches because I know I will crop them a lot later on, and the good thing about Planeta Laternis is that the edges (where the roof of the corridor itself lies in this projection) contains not many interesting details beside some stitching errors; Thus, cropping this area out was a big relief and a solution which shortened the processing time significantly.

How my Photoshop looks when working with these panoramas.
Notice the guidelines all over the place to ensure a symmetrical distortion and cropping.
click to enlarge

Finale

One year is over now and a new one coming even though I don't care much about it. After all, generally speaking, I'm not supposed to celebrate it! However, I do wish all readers a happy new year with all the best wishes to be fulfilled within.
My plans for now is to use the winter to my advantage as much as possible and go out at night often. I know when summer comes, it's all but a dead season. I just hope my body would cope a bit further with this, specially with the hectic life style and responsibilities thrown on my way.
As for my plans for the new coming year, all what I want for the time being is, to be more careless actually, and have further fun. Lot of fun…

The Wait For Jonathan's...

Here we go, another week just passes. Not doing much photography, not much thinking of Geltani or other projects. However, I got the chance to update some aspects about my website and uploading new photos that are ready to be printed. I'm thinking seriously of expanding my services out of this country as well; since people here are not to be relied upon when it comes to arts. I'm expanding such ads to instagram as well as twitter.

Glimpse of my website, with the 4 new images added.

It seems like life is so slow when I'm on vacation without traveling. The orders that I've placed online last week are still not complete; not all of them reached my US box at the time of writing this. My car, still not available at the time of writing this post (and I'm supposed to pick it up today and see if it works well). My only leisure in such times was to play some games. Despite the nice weather relatively, yet I didn't stroll outside in the neighborhood much with my camera - but hopefully will do more of this in the near future (as the temperatures are dropping down to 20s^oC at noon time!). Beside gaming, I've doing lot of surfing and research for future photography-related equipments. My mind was struck with some crazy idea of getting one of those rangefinder lenses (expensive!!) and getting a mount to use them with my Canon EOS 7D. This plan, however, is for the far future, as well for the near future, I'm planning on having some wide lens in the range of 10-12mm - but this won't be a fisheye, but a distortion free (virtually) lens. I think such lens would help me with my future panoramas if I got it to work with my Manfrotto 303SPH VR-Head.
In the meantime, I've spent some time with my camera to do some calibration work and preparing profiles for noise reduction in NIK and NoiseNinja plugins. Ive used the MacBeth chart in the beginning (which came with my new ColorMunki device) but then I've decided to use the patch that was provided by NoiseNinja because it contains more colors. I was going to do it all manually by choosing every patch of those to be analyzed but then I've succumbed to the automatic process in both plugins. I'm not sure they would completely help with noise removal without affecting he details of the image much, but at least they can be a starting point. The temperature at which the images of the chart of patches is shot is also critical for the level of the noise in the image at any ISO. This chart, however, is taken at low temperature (room's temperature); in the range of 20^o-25^oC. I might do another one for some high temperature, who knows!

Calibration Chart by NoiseNinja - printed and photographed for profiling.

I've decided to provide a link for downloading these profiles (in ZIP files) just in case it would be useful for readers. The profiles do not cover the whole range of ISOs, but only full stops (100, 200, 400,... 12800 or H) and theoretically are useful only for Canon EOS 7D users.

NIK Noise Profiles (Dfine)

NoiseNinja Profiles

Hope they become useful for other shooters!

Halloween at Jonathan's

As I said before, I've been spending my time playing lot of games currently in this corrupted vacation. This is the only joy for me in such vacation. Lately, I've got the news about a new spooky game from the author of TLC, The Lost Crown game, Jonathan Boakes. It is, supposedly, a mini-game under a Halloween theme. If there is a wish to visit the southern region of the British Isles that still persists in me (along with my desire to visit Ireland, again and again), it would be all attributed to Jonathan's games and his depiction of the seaside on the Cornish side of the world. The Lost Crown game sucked me into the magic of the seaside and the sea life in those simple villages that made me almost living there. I'm waiting for The Last Crown which is a sequel for the Lost Crown. I leave you here with the ad for the Halloween mini-game:

Click to Enlarge

Jonathan made a blog post as well about this game with little description. You can read it here. Jonathan Boakes is also the author of other games under the same category of the Supernatural and mystique genre, like Dark Fall I, II, III sequel and The Lost Crown, and he collaborated in other games as well under the same genre. You can't skip his games if you like the mysterious and magical, the simple and occult. They just blend in naturally...

For the time being now, I'll be surfing through some of the old images until I get some inspiration and power to create new photos and with my project. Seems like getting back to work and routine would be beneficial in my case after all!!

The Longest Long...

Caution! A long and a boring post ahead! Read (or try to read) at your own risk!

OK. Been off away from the blog for a week but that doesn't mean I was not working on it behind the curtains. There had been so much work to be done and, accordingly, so many troubles to overcome. I've (almost) dedicated one full week for my photographic experimentation, and I think I've came up with some results after all. I should thank Alexa Phillips for filling in!
Anyway, this is going to be some long post I suppose, so I'm typing this as early as possible; in other words, I'm still working with the same schedule but probably with more material at hand! Let's go!

I. Viva Al Beach - Again

Still coping with the heat and combing the beach for long exposures. It is an endless struggle as it seems, but this time I got my weapons out. I've brought some cooling pads to wrap the camera with and work on reducing the noise caused by the heat to the sensor. There was a major disappointment though to find out that the cool gel pads, even though were coming out of the freezer, they didn't keep their coolness long - 30 minutes of working on the camera and 5 minutes reaching the location in the first place - all of that was enough to leave the pads slightly cold instead of freezing cold. However, to some extent, there was some noticeable reduction, specially that the weather that night was cooler (that doesn't mean it's not hot!).

Cosmos
Rokinon 8mm f/11 8min ISO 100.
Corrected with DxO

The first trial took place after spending around 30 minutes (if not more) trying to fix the composition as much as possible in the pitched dark place. I had to point my flashlight (UK: torch) toward some stones in order to see and compose and focus as well. The exposure took 8 minutes here, mainly because I didn't go dramatic with my aperture as I usually do (with f/22). However, prior to that there were many test shots and histogram examination to see if I'm on the right track as well.
In that awkward position, and because the cooling pads were sort of hard to settle on the camera tightly (some breeze there was and I was afraid they'd fall down), it was (again) not a good time to use my portable monitor. The situation could have been more critical if I was to use my 18-55mm lens (used it later), which somehow has a shaky focusing ring and it could move easily. I've picked the time specifically for a regressing water tide instead of transgressing one; not only to keep it safe, but also to show more rocks in the foreground.
In the processing phase, regular distortion fixation took place (and I somehow started to like this elongated format as well; I wonder if it has a name). Later on though, I was reluctant whether should I crop the lower portion to keep the horizon line perfectly in the middle or not, but I've decided to leave it like that since some rocks at the bottom would be cut in not-so-nice way. The noise now were less, but that doesn't mean they are much lesser, but on the bright side, it means something is working here (but maybe also because the exposure time was not as long as 33 minutes like before!). We'll come to that later.

Traum
Canon Ef-S 18-55mm @34mm f/11 21min.
ISO 100

Coming to the beach at around 3:30 a.m. and just spending 8 minutes to take one picture was something, well, annoying. I didn't come all that way just to take one picture in such short time! So, I've decided to work as fast as I can and see for other perspectives to the location by changing lenses. I had my lenses in my vest pockets ready for the action: Rokinon 8mm, and EF-S 18-55mm.
Now, one thing I've totally forgot here and that was the time I've came in into the beach area. The sunrise was getting closer and I just didn't count for that in my long exposure planning. Initially, and according to my calculations, after framing and zooming properly for Traum, the exposure should take as much as 43 minutes! However, as I started the exposure and settled down by the beach reading a book under the flashlight light, I've recognized that the atmosphere is becoming brighter and I could almost see my way around with no need for a flashlight. Seeing that, I've ran to my camera and stopped the exposure directly at 21 minutes, and it was excessively bright already.
Back home, the processing became a bit funny because of using the Fluorescent WB. After trying to reduce the loss in the highlights (which was not completely successful as you can see), and after using some shadow enhancements like Fill Light, I've arrived at something that looks more like a radioactive material. The green line in the horizon provided some connection to the rest of the image as if making a note that "there is something in here!". With such surreal effect, I've found myself calling it Traum, a dream.

Lunatic Sea
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @18mm f/22 ISO 100.
HDR

After finishing with Traum the twilight already began and the atmosphere was lighted enough to see my way with no flashlights. I yet hated to leave just like that and kept on trying my best to form some composition in the middle of the rocks; and let's not talk about what happened to my feet. Yes, I was barefoot.
Working with Fluorescent WB is fun indeed. It adds magic. I think I will call it the Magical Blue WB. Unlike Cosmos I didn't want to add a heavy blue tint to the whole scene but a light one to emphasize the blue sky. After taking several shots and deciding to leave, I've noticed the clouds in the horizon; something I do rarely notice in summer here. Nope, not the time to leave yet.
It gives me melancholy though to know and remember that back then I didn't take my ND filters with me. I wanted to be as light as possible. With the light becoming abundant, NDs are required for long exposures, even those for 1 or 2 minutes! Anyway, I've just settled down and decided to bracket-shoot, and I thought let's see what the HDR hides for us then.
The irony here is that, instead of making dramatic light with the HDR capabilities, I've decided to smooth out the light giving in for a soft and smooth feeling. The color is adjusted while tone-mapping too by changing the Temperature slide in Photomatix. My strolling on the beach is not over, yet.

Hinter der Schatten
Rokinon 8mm f/11 15min.
ISO 100.

Then again, there was a time to head to the beach for another trial in another day. This time, instead of taking mom's cooling pads, I've got myself one of those cooling pads that are usually kept in iceboxes to keep it cool for longer time.
I was exhausted that night, thus I didn't stroll deep into the beach; you need a will power to cross the soft sands! However, I've found me a spot in front of the Pizza Hut, which is not ideal because of the strong backlight, which explains my long shadows in Hinter der Schatten, Behind The Shadows. Another reason was that the timing of the tide, which was advancing, and I was not in mood to get wet here; it is better to play it safe here, until I get more will power (and time) to work as I want.
In the beginning, I didn't find myself working easily here, mainly because there were some people having a picnic or simply fishing (yes, fishing), but I tried to shut my mind's window and act like if they were not there. One of the points of being far off on the sand on the beach is that you get that calm and peaceful solitude.
Some shots with ISO 12,800 (called ISO H on the 7D) to fix the framing as best as I could, knowing that my shadow along with the tripod's will do a cast in the final image, but heck, what I'm supposed to do? Pointing away you might say, but unfortunately, the city lights were around me and in portrait position this is the narrowest band of the sky and the sea I could have without lights in the background. On the right there was this family doing a picnic, and I'm sure they would get annoyed (in fact they left few minutes after my arrival).
However, beside the test shots in ISO H, I had to check the histogram carefully and not depend on the LCD for judging the brightness. I was metering the sky; one good thing about working with live-view, is the easiness to meter any zone in the view by moving a simple square across the scene and check the meter. I've realized that a good histogram (somehow) was not at 0EV, but at +3EV. From there, all the calculations began. Initially, the aperture was at f/8, but I've added one more stop and made it f/11 just to lengthen the time. Finally, it all yielded around 15 minutes.

100% crop of the original RAW,
at initial settings.
Click to enlarge.

We come to the noise now. The noise profile at 100% was much lesser than the usual. However, this exposure was for 15 minutes only and not as before, for 33 minutes. The weather was warm, but not as hot as it was 2 weeks ago when I did a 33 minutes exposure. I've attached the cooling pads to the back of the camera (by means of a rubber band), but I'm not sure yet that this has any real effect. I might as well study the camera's design to see if the sensor is really close to the back of the camera where the LCD lies, hence we can argue that the coldness of the pads would reach there eventually.
I'm happy with the result after all. I didn't dream of such low noise profile after all! But I better get concrete results in order to work efficiently, and with confidence as well.
The majority of the editing was done in DxO optics of course. I think I'm establishing a style already with these elongated images. They give more depth and a nice surreal effect. I've been filtering the noise in DxO and then in ACR, and sharpening even more with Noise Ninja; I was trying to pronounce the faint lines more. I picked this image for a contest within my group, and I did minimize it and sharpen it with NIK, and man, even the static stars got pronounced making a majestic look - but not to be posted here for now! It is a promising trial, and man I just can't wait for the winter to come!

II. Strobo-tique

Source: Amazon

After reading Syl Arena's book and getting my new 430EX II I thought it might be the time to start playing around. This time, I wanted to do the hard stuff first - Stroboscopic lighting. As Syl put it, there is no way around it, except by trial and error. For two days, I was trying to record my hand's movement across a piece of paper, writing some phrase in Arabic.
Working out with two Speedlite units proved to be not an easy task after all. Good thing that you just have to set one to master and the other to slave, and everything to be controlled from the LCD - specially if you are working in E-TTL.  My first trial didn't work out, as I was literally trying to write down on the paper while the strobe is working on for a 20 second exposure in a completely dark room. You can see that it wasn't the great atmosphere to work. I gave up the first night. Then I thought, why the fuss?

Love Drunkards
Canon EF 100mm macro f/22 ISO 200

I thought then, if the whole thing is to record my hand movement, why should I write?! (Duh!). Thus, the next night, I've prepared the set again in my room with the phrase written and ready on paper, and within 10 seconds exposure, all I had to do is move my hands all over the phrase. As Syl put it "imagine you are doing a time-lapse photography in a single frame," this is all what the stroboscopic is about. In order to break the dullness of the white paper, I've set the WB to Flash, and gelled the two Speedlites with 1/2-CTO on the master, and 1/4-CTO on the slave. Some adjustments to the WB later was done when RAW file was edited. Probably one Speedlite was enough to add some drama lighting to the scene from one direction, but I thought it is better to lighten the shadows a bit with some light on the opposite end.
Just a final note about the phrase, it is a line from an old song (from 40s or 50s) sung by Um Kalthoom, a famous Egyptian singer. It translates as: Did the Love see drunkards, like us?

III. Save Me A Disaster!

Source: B&H

Over the course of two days, I had some hard time trying to achieve one idea that I've been thinking of for sometime, and for which I've ordered the Delkin vice.
If there is a definition for the word disaster, then it would be such a device. The best of it was the clutching hands where it did stick to my window glass firmly without breaking it (because of the rubber covering), and also the coldshoe that comes with it to attach a flash unit; I can use this shoe on various stands (with 1/4" thread). The knob controlling the ball head was hard to move and literally I was moving it with pliers just to ease it down or locking it up. I've decided to leave it locked and move the ballhead by force if possible just to adjust the camera orientation. Everything in the head was sort of loose!
I was trying to do this experiment in daytime in my work place, where I would attach my camera over the vice to the rear window and point it at the side mirror, and with an exposure of seconds I would move my car slowly. First day, after spending about an hour in the sun, I realized that to capture the side mirror I have to attach the camera on the opposite side of that side mirror (i.e. to take a picture of the right side mirror, I have to attach the camera on the left rear window), otherwise I would only see the body of the car at all times (however I move the side mirror). To achieve a longer exposure, I made use of the welding glass piece which provides me easily with 11.7 stops, and this time using big paper claps; easier and less shaky for the focus.

My camera after the disaster.
Ironically taken with my phone camera.
Click to enlarge

Second day, for my good luck (please note the sarcasm), some car parked in the space so I had to move my car a bit further away to be able to move freely for the experiment. However, the sun hit directly on the LCD, and it was hotter than the day before and to adjust the camera, I had to move the whole ballhead with force since it was tightened the day before by pliers. Finally since the camera was swinging easily with any slight shake, I've tightened it to the head firmly; and that's when troubles began.
As you can see in the picture on the right, when this experiment didn't work out, I've decided to take everything off. In the office when I started to remove everything, the screw from the ballhead got stuck in the camera, and no pliers would take it off. I even got some of the iron filings planted in my hand. After trying for more than one hour, I've finally took off to the nearest garage and used a vice to press hard on the screw while rotating my camera body and take it off easily. After coming back to the office, I've screwed the bolt to the ballhead back again tightly in hope it won't take off again!

Reflected Move
Canon EF 100mm macro f/2.8 20sec., ISO 200.

Didn't bring my old 350D,
so I had to shoot using my phone.
Click to enlarge

I've realized already in the two days course that a daytime for such an experiment won't do. I would need interesting lights and a darker atmosphere. A darker atmosphere would give me a longer exposure freely with no need for any filters. In the same day when my disaster with the camera happened, at night time, I've headed after dusk to some open space I've known for a long time in order to be free to move my car. After settling down and around 30 to 45 minutes of fixing the camera and checking the focus, I've finally managed to take Reflected Move. You can see the settings on the left, and pardon me for the quality as it is a phone camera.
Unfortunately, the text on the mirror and the frame of the mirror did shake little bit. In theory, since the engine shakes the car's body, and the camera is attached to the body, then the side mirror and the camera would shake at the same rate making the image relatively stable, and this was proved by testing shots prior to the final shot. Anyway, as I took the 20 seconds exposure and moving my car in a circle slowly, seems that the car's body shake as a whole (as it was moving on sand and not paved road) caused this little shake after all. Some sharpening took place to compensate a bit for this shake.

Stadt von Licht
Rokinon 8mm f/8 + teleconverter
HDR

After finishing from this experiment I couldn't resist the urge to shoot the surrounding buildings. Their lights (which were changing in color and going on and off) made a spectacular view, in a place that I don't recall any beauty in it.
Stadt von Licht, or City of Lights, was taken in a haste and I wasn't really careful for the composition. I made some few shots that showed my shadows with Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, then it occurred to me: why not trying HDR but with a relatively longer exposure instead of automatic bracketing?
I've connected my teleconverter to the Rokinon 8mm, which means technically, the focal length right now is 16mm. I could've used Canon's 15mm here, but I didn't want to touch this for now since my mind was set to manual all the way. After doing some metering to the sky and the ground, I've taken 3 shots with the intervalometer at 13, 25 and 100 seconds. Apparently, each had a different luminance.
Merging the HDR and tone-mapping was done as usual; no magic. But the magic appeared later when I started to correct the image in DxO Optics. Away from the distortion corrections, I've re-discovered that color options in the software and my eye,directly, spotted the Fuji Velvia. Now, I didn't work with films ever and I didn't develop any at all, but from the books I've read, Velvia is known to be the choice for saturated colors. And this is exactly what I did get! The composition and the distortion fix is not something I do like, but I'm happy for the result here for two things: a) I did HDR using longer exposures; an experience I might need for later, and b) expanding my color horizons in DxO which will give me more options to render the colors.

IV. Get Me Outta Here!

Again, another one of those crazy moments just sparked as I was going in and out from my work place and been noticing something that I was completely blind to. The parking lot (or parking garage). After taking a note of it, I've planned my shoot carefully so that I won't be distracted by the security guys. Thank God that it is Ramadhan and people are mostly dizzy and got no mood to hassle with some photographer at 6:30 a.m.! Well, one of the benefits of fasting before Ramadhan for a month or more, everything looks so easy during Ramadhan itself!

Exit at Infinity
Canon EF 100mm Macro f/32 8 sec.
ISO 100.

Now, prior to the shoot, I've decided to work without a timer. This is just to silent the beeping to make less distraction, even though my location was relatively far away from the security stand post. I think I paid for this dearly.
I took several stands raising my tripod to about 2 meters off the ground (~6 ft) and getting it low, and using my 100mm and my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lenses. I was shooting with brackets for HDR merging later on, but in my mind I've already decided to convert it to B&W. This is mainly due to the composition, as the colors were not so important, nor they were pretty anyway (unless for a horror movie).

Infinitarium
Rokinon 8mm fisheye f/22 4 sec.
ISO 100
Corrected with DxO

The great disappointment was to find later that some of the images were shaken. Another disappointment is that, seems that there is a curse following me for being a left handed. However I fix my point of view and everything would seem alright, yet I would discover that I didn't center my tripod correctly. Unfortunately, such off-center orientation is delicate that only when editing the image it would be noticeable. This problem had been chasing me for a long while now, and I just don't know how to fix it. My eyes seem to be, simply, left-eyed!
Infinitarium, for example, was skewed after correcting many aspects of the image itself. The skew was to force the horizontal lines into place after correcting the horizon, and forcing the vertical lines to be parallel. It was hard to do the perspective correction, however, for Exit at Infinity but merely a tilt to fix some lines. Also, I ended up editing singular shots instead of doing HDRs. After doing on HDR slide, I've realized that there is no need for it and doing B&W from a single chosen shot is faster, and the HDR won't add much in fact. Some dodge and burn were required too.

Gerade

Anyway, I couldn't resist the colored version so I just prepared one just in case, for the Likes.
In the colored version there were many adjustment layers for fixing the colors, and strangely for some reason there was a green cast, so I just tried to reduce that if not eliminate it. Here also, I tried to frame the image properly, so I cropped (with respect to aspect ratio) stopping at the end of the black pipe on the right, and the red post on the left. I think framing was lousy a bit in the previous B&W versions.
I'm trying few of the tricks that I've encountered so far in George Barr's book that I'm reading currently (more about that below). One of his tricks was to reduce the noise (specially in the shadow areas after dodging) by doing a gentle Gaussian Blur. I did that trick as well to the colored version to around 1.2, and then followed with Noise Ninja filter, using the sharpening and the contrast sliders there to pronounce the edges. Not bad I would say. Print-wise though, I don't know how it would look!

Park Here!

A friend of mine as well suggested that I do a color splash; converting everything to B&W and keeping the blue only. I thought it is a good idea so here you go. I've just saved the file directly (from JPEG) without any dodging or burning. I like the light quality on the right and wish if the light would expand further to the left.
Notice how the lines in the middle on the signs, that separates EXIT and P do not coincide exactly; and that what pisses me off!

 V. Dark Hours

Same day I did the garage shots, I've decided to break the silence in the office with some work using my Speedlites. The target was my watch. It is not a new idea anyway; I've done it before, but in this instance, I was trying to put on some Speedlite touch just as a training.

Dark Hours
Canon EF 100mm Macro f/2.8 1/160 sec.
Series

After about one hour of trying different positions for the Speedlites and controlling the ambient light by increasing the shutter speed, I've realized that all what I need is only one Speedlite, and a reflective white surface (a piece of opaque white (glossy) paper; a calendar). I did produce some interesting patterns though with two Speedlites but I couldn't control the zones of lighting precisely. Finally, I've settled down with placing 580EX II behind the watch and connected via cord and bouncing the light off a white piece of paper placed in front of the watch.
It was a job for the Intervalometer again, as I configured it to take a shot every 5 minutes and 10 seconds. Around 15 shots were taken but in the final composition I had to give up some shots in the layers stack just to avoid congestion in the image. The layers were blended with Darken. Of course, after flattening the final image, some adjustments were done for the contrast and the glow, and also cleaning some spots. Should have cleaned my watch prior to this shoot! If you are wondering about the format - yes, the image was cropped from the sides and made into semi-square shape.

VI. Bingo, The Flamingo!

Out of boredom, and just two hours before the fast breaking, I've carried my camera and headed to The Free Zone. The Free Zone is a commercial zone, with a port, and usually so busy in regular days, and it is situated on, seemingly, an artificial island named Akkaz (عكاظ). It is a famous sports for flamingos. They say flamingos were immigrating birds and used to pass Kuwait on seasons, but now they are a permanent component in certain coastal lines here. I had no specific goal in my mind, just the idea that it will be the sunset soon, and the light quality is should be good for shooting, but I had no idea what to shoot in the first place!

Fly, Forrest! Fly!
1200mm f/13 1/500 sec, ISO 400.

I did take a lot of shoots (in hundreds) but I'm going to post 4 main images here as they are the ones that attracted me. I would still need to work more on the other at some time. The bulk of the images were not good in fact, and a lot were out of focus (specially for the flamingos) but it was, after all, a good trial for my teleconverters at work.
In the beginning I headed where I used to spot flamingos long time ago, behind the Mövenpick hotel in some narrow water intrusion into the land. I didn't find any flamingos, but some pigeons. It was a good practice anyway using my Tamron 70-300mm + Bower Teleconverter + Vivitar Teleconverter. I've discovered prior to this shoot on same day that Bower teleconverter records the focal length data in the EXIT but Vivitar does not - Vivitar's mainly handles the communication between the lens and the camera but does not record much information in the EXIF (that's why I thought that Vivitar teleconverter doesn't shift the f/2.8 for the Canon 100mm Macro. It does, but it doesn't record or communicate that).
It is indeed a hard task to stabilize the camera in that way; not a professional tele-lens and no screws at the bottom to make it stand on a monopod, and to make things even worse, the autofocus is stopped (but this is something I do know already). I had to work all the way by hands and focusing manually too.

One To The Last
280mm f/11 1/100 sec., ISO400.

We come to the flamingos now, after moving away from my previous spot. I had many shoots on these calm flamingos from the top of the cliff but the situation was shaky still. I've used a tripod then with my pan-head, which did stabilize a bit, but still with the dark viewfinder and the sun's beams falling on the LCD it was hard to judge the focus there. One of the tricks I've used was to take several fast shots while rotating the focusing ring in hope that one shoot will be sharp. I can't say it is a promising method though!

Π
280mm f/16 1/30 sec., ISO400.

And wherever I go there would be always abstract of course. Now, I don't know what is that; a pipe, or knot or whatever, it just did pronounce itself from the ground of the sabkha (swampy land) saying Here I am!. There were several abstract shots taken later from a nearby ground for some of those large shipping containers with various colors, but I have lot of focus issues to sort out, and probably I wouldn't be able to pick a good one after all. I was afraid to be spotted and chased out - who knows what lies in these containers!

Zwischen die Räuche
200mm f/5.6 1/160 sec., ISO100.

Why I named it in German? I Don't know. It just sounded to me it is better be in German. The shot was taken in my car using Canon EF 100mm Macro, attached to Bower teleconverter. It was hard to focus of course and keep the camera still, so I've rested the lens combination on the steering wheel first, when that didn't work out, I had to use some muscles and shoot dangling myself out of the window. After the heat and the sweat, I really didn't feel like stepping out of the car! Well, this post is long enough already as it is so I better save pictures from this session for later use!

VII. The Bookies

Source: Amazon

Well, I don't mean any races here, but simply the books I've been reading lately. Don't Believe Everything You Think, that was the title of the book, and I say, don't believe what they tell you about this book. It was such a boring book about skepticism and being a skeptic that I really regret having it now. In the beginning I thought it is a motivational book, or something that raises hopes inside you to cope with life and make you see life differently. However, it sounded later like if I was doing a practical joke to myself. I got bored before reaching the half. I do realize most of the aspects, and I don't believe everything in the media (which the book attacks), so frankly I don't find much benefit here.

Source: Amazon

On the other hand, I've started to read my newly acquired book: Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. Now, this book is giving me the shivers. I have to say that I'm indeed scared to do a real profiling to see if I have ADHD, but lot of the contents of the book do make sense and reflects much of my personality aspect (or should I say, my behavioral aspect). This said, I still need to do a professional check-up or profiling. I might have to look for a clinic, or a psychiatric that is, to do all of that - with affordable prices of course!

Source: Amazon

After finishing Syl Arena's book about Speedlites, I've started with George Barr's book about editing photos. So far, there are lot of tricks and workflow procedures that I do differently but might have yielded the same result after all. There are also some reflections and comments about images that the author worked on, and about the framing and composition. George Barr is mainly an abstract shooter as I can tell, and this is something I do like because this is what I've been doing mostly now. Might think of heading the other way and do portraits? I'm not sure. I still don't have the appetite of shooting people, except, when it is candid without subjects knowing that. Product photography can be a goal as well and I do consider it more than I do consider Portraiture.

Well, now, I doubt you've reached this point at the end of this blog post but in case you are reading these words, I do thank you indeed for your patience. You deserve a reward!
Right now, my mind is occupied with traveling and the procedures and bookings. Everything is almost ready - the place, the tickets, all what is needed so far is packing in time and signing up for a leave before that of course. I thought about it for a while and I thought it is better to delay the flight further, and instead of making it on September 30^th, I would be, hopefully, flying on October 10^th. Until that time comes in, I have many things to look after. Not a cheap vacation I have to say, even though I'm trying to make it so, but hey, why do we save?
... say, isn't it my birthday already!?

A Bulughman In A Lonely Night!

Officially 31. Not much to do about it really, except of having a casual day to myself and sleep as much as I wanted. Well, that won't exceed 5 hours in best conditions. This week was slowly passing really, but I didn't have much to do with my camera, so maybe this is the reason why I felt it as slowly going. Anyway, I was pushing myself forward with my Ayvarith recording and finally recorded and finished Chapter 3 of Alexander's story. I could hardly stop laughing at myself while recording, so please don't mind the quality and the awkward presentation!
Ayvarith: here.
English: here.
Memorizing now these moments and all that work I had to do with this story makes me smile a bit. I've totally forgot about the other conlangs that I've initiated but totally forgot about them, specially the one named Bulughman.

Beside this recording, which took on several days actually and not a single one day, I took the chance to use the full moon for my benefit and have a panorama made from the roof top. Almost a complete panorama and not only a 360 panorama. Not so satisfied about it but it was an experience that I liked indeed.

I. Outtake #1!
I can say it is my first night-time panorama for the time being. I had to use the full moon to my advantage before it disappears from the skies so I was willing to work whatever the temperature would be. Anyway, the temperature was not as bad as before (gone down to 30s C as told by forecasts, while it was in 40s last week!). It wasn't all perfect of course and the noise played a major factor in this, but well, it's a lesson. But the most significant thing about this panorama is the lengthened workflow, which probably was not a good thing to do after all...

A Lonely Night

The Workflow (The Drama):

1. In the beginning and after settling with my tools on the roof top, I went on doing some metering just to estimate the time I would need. The necessity to work as fast as possible (the moon moves across the sky) made me trade off with raising the ISO to 1600. Since I'm going to take a bracketed exposure for HDR (-2EV,0EV,+2EV) it was essential to ensure that when I go on with auto-bracketing that the exposure time won't exceed 30 seconds. 30 seconds is the limit in Av mode. I've metered some spots across the sky and the building fixing the EV to +2 and raising the ISO to 1600 which was the minimum ISO I could have an exposure time lesser than 30 seconds (15 seconds it was). However, the camera also had other plans of itself! I tried to choose an ISO following the stops starting from ISO100, but not the ranges in between, that is: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, ...etc. Although there are some ISOs in between as 160, 250 and so on, but according to some articles that these would be more noisy because of the circuitry involved in increasing and amplifying the signal, and it is better to have an ISO within the range of full stops.
2. To be on the safe side, I've used the hyperfocal principle again, and fixed the aperture to f/8. This aperture, however, did change by itself as the automated process was going on. There are some spots across the panorama that, apparently, required more than 30 seconds to achieve the +2EV exposure and I've noticed at some points that the f-number did change by itself within the camera to f/7.1 (i.e. larger aperture than f/8) to allow for more light in.
3. The white balance is fixed according to effect and not in desire to achieve a true balance of colors. My previous work with the moon on the roof a week or two back gave me an impression that the blueness of the sky is better and more attractive than a normal regular one. The whole thing was set by using the LCD display (which is not a good judge after all but a good estimate let's say) and from there I've fixed the WB to the minimum value of 2500K. Blue.
4. The work on the roof continued normally and my eyes adapted slowly to the darkness there but I needed my small LED light to check the scale on the rotating disk of the VR-head to make sure it reached a 0 degree after a full cycle. I didn't bother about a nadir but I did take 2 shots for zenith, which later proved unnecessary, specially that I have no intent for a QTVR.
5. Now moving to the lab, i.e. my PC. I think my first mistake was made up here. In order to reduce the noise level which I was almost sure of to be unaccepted because of using ISO1600, I've directly converted all RAW files into TIFF 16-bit format (using Photoshop this time and not DPP). I made this move to run NeatImage on the TIFF files and clean the noise accordingly (and put little sharpness as well) but seems it was a wrong step. Reasons will come later.
6. After running NeatImage and batch processing all the TIFF files for noise reduction, I ran Photomatix for batch HDR processing. I have now 41 OpenEXR files created from the "cleaned" TIFF files.
7. In PTGui now and because of the nature of the HDR files and the night scene on the roof, and because so much sky was involved in some slides, there were many slides that PTGui could not identify any points for, hence the slides were astray and "orphaned", meaning not connected to any image at all. There I decided to go on with "model" method.
8. The model method, as I call it, is simply to batch process the individual HDR files into JPGs or TIFFs and plugging them into PTGui. This way, usually, PTGui is able to find more control points more easily. We save the file, which contains all data about control points and other parameters and positions of the slides and apply this template to the HDR panorama we are working with. A lengthy procedure but at times, it is a must. I went on tone-mapping the HDR files in a batch process in Photomatix, but first I picked one of the darkest slides (and it was one of those that didn't connect to any other images) and tone-mapped it to make it brighter and clear in most of its regions. The settings used in this tone-mapping is saved to be used for the rest of the slides.
9. To my ill luck, after tone-mapping all slides, PTGui still didn't identify some of these tone-mapped images and could not connect them to each other although many features in the scene are obvious. Seems however, and after a close check up, that the difference in the noise level between two adjacent slides makes it difficult for PTGui to put on control points between the two despite the "visual" apparent common features. Here, and at this point, I realized it was wrong to clean all the TIFFs from the early beginning, and later on, more confirmation to this thought appeared.
10. I had to put my own control points here although it is a process that is tiresome and I really don't like it because, let's face it, a human being won't be as precise as a computer and needless to say someone like me who can barely concentrate for a long time. I'm not sure even how I'm typing this! Anyway, the addition was done and the file was saved, and the template or model was applied to the original HDR panorama in PTGui. Everything was organized almost with some few broken lines that I directly decided to fix in Photoshop instead of wasting time doing a game with blending priority.
11. The HDR panorama is now stitched and time for the fixes and cuts in Photoshop. Beside the regular fixes, I had to make an adjustment to the exposure (putting some areas down and raising up some) but before doing all the "local" adjustment, a major (global) fix for the exposure was due by using the white dropper on the brightest possible area in the scene. This is to bring some balance and brightness to the scene (which later on resulted in a good HDR histogram relatively).
12. Tone-mapping the adjusted HDR file proved more that cleaning the noise in the early beginning was a wrong thing to do. It became more obvious that there were batches of noises while some areas were relatively clean. Seems that I have to keep the noise reduction procedure at the every end of the workflow to make sure that I don't get such patches of noisy areas and clear ones. To over come this problem, and back in Photoshop after tone-mapping, I went doing my usual Median trick that I do usually on skin to eliminate rigid features. This though made me lose some interesting dots in the sky with the rest (stars do appear sometimes with a long exposure. Orion belt was even obvious in the images though it wasn't visible to the naked eye).

The histogram of the panorama in gaussian-like shape. Might not be always a good sign to have most of your exposure around 0EV, but it's good that there is no sudden cut in the graph itself.

II. Outtake #2!

Although the previous panorama was uploaded to stock sites (only one actually), I couldn't say I'm satisfied yet. For all the points and the drama I've mentioned above, this time I did make up my mind to make HDR files out of the RAW files directly, without any filtration and noise reduction. As expected, the matter of the noise became lot easier and lot "unique". This time and just for the sake of a change, I've made up a little planet projection, which proved quite interesting more than just a plain flat panorama!

The Lonely Planet

As long the panorama contains big portions of the sky with relatively interesting atmosphere in it, then I guess a little planet projection should always be considered. The moon here looks like a sun, making me wonder if all the "suns" we see in photographs are really, a sun!
The procedure here was the same as above with exception that the HDR files were composed directly of RAW files (in Photomatix v3.0). 
I've used the previously made model file to arrange the points and the stitching errors were the same in fact; the same broken lines, but at least the noise was relatively easier to handle here. When stitching the panorama, in PTGui you are given the option to choose an "interpolation" method and usually I don't change this and keep it by default to Lanczos. The interpolation is concerned with the pixels of the image as a way to predict locations and values of pixels on the image when your image is stretched or squeezed and so on, which is something normal in case we are talking about panoramas made out of several images to be stitched (and the images are distorted originally because they are taken with fisheye lens of course). I believe there is some relation between the weird color spots that I used to see in my previous panoramas and this point of the workflow. For the time being I think I will use the Bilinear or the Nearest Neighbor methods to stitch my future panoramas as these two are more regular in Photoshop itself, as Lanczos method is not an option in Photoshop.
Photoshop editing was essential as well to balance the exposure little bit (but the histogram this time was different and not balanced around 0EV like before), and after tone-mapping (which gave me a headache for memory problems and again, Photomatix v3.0 was better to solve this problem and not the new v4.0. Sometimes I wonder why did they make a new version!!) it was time then to plug it again into Photoshop.
NeatImage was run to clear the noise in general (specially the chromatic noise related to the high ISO of 1600). Yet, there are some portions of noise that were hard to remove by NeatImage and I had to sort it out with the Median trick, again. This type of noise apparently is related to the temperature of the atmosphere and they were more apparent and so obvious to note in the sky area, while in the occupied areas in the middle where the ground and the bricks rule, this type of noise needs a bit of concentration to notice. I've lost some stars in the sky, again, when I did the median trick but well, I smoothed the sky. The lower portions of the image specifically were hardly struck by such noise more than the upper portions.

I think the main reason for such stitching errors is the movement of the moon, which caused the shadows to move as well and with such movements in the scene it is natural to have stitching errors. Beside the moon, my own shadow as well would be a cause for such errors. In fact, despite the fact that I've cloned out most of my shadows with the camera and the tripod combination, I've discovered that are still some traces of my shadow somewhere. Go figure!

This is it for now, and I'm thinking now if there is a way to reduce this amount of noise caused by the heat. Seems next time I'm going to bring a hand-fan with me to cool down my camera while I work! Ah well... just kidding really. I need to look up new things to photograph hmm...

Fortunati...

Had been a weird week sort of. Flew away so fast and, weird weather too. Just on Wednesday you would see the world in a yellowish cover from the dust and the visibility, I presume, was lesser than 500 meters (~1500 ft) if not lesser than 100 meters  (~300 ft) even! I had to go to work anyway but later on I've been told that the employees and admins left the place already! But I stayed until 1:00 p.m. (I finish at 2) and wow, wish if the streets are like that everyday, minus the dust of course.

Taken from my mobile that day, this short video just to show the dusty weather we had on Wednesday. 

Notice that the meteorology department says "we have fresh air"  (???)

Just when you don't take your camera with you and take videos or pictures wherever you go, all the opportunities seem to be showing up in your face wherever you go and you feel paralyzed. However, after this weather we had a "nice" weather back. Literally nice weather with 17°C (62.6F), like some sweet morning in November here. Our weather does not need a meteorologist, but a fortuneteller.

At home, I haven't been doing much, but only taking pictures of the seashells I've collected in the past few weeks, and working on my own project of "peeling" objects (those are shells from the time being). However, I've worked with some pictures from my visit to the Scientific Center a bit and worked on singular shots for my seashells as well.

Leopard Whipray

Unfortunately, those images from the Scientific Center that were taken at maximum ISO (12800) were so hard to clean and somehow were not so appealing. Even the dedicated profiles for Canon EOS 7D that were made ready for NeatImage at this ISO, were not enough to clean the noise. Mostly, they would clean the luminance grain noise, yet there is a hard-to-remove chrominance noise (color spots) that were desaturated a bit, but not removed completely. Beside, the image looks so soft with lot of details lost.

To over come the chrominance noise in this shark shot, which strangely were mostly concentrated on the outside of the shark's body, I've decided to turn everything into Black and White and keep and shark in color. ProPhoto space seem to push such noise type further and cause a problem for any filtration effort!

Nevertheless, there are some points even with ISO12800 where I worked out some HDR images just for fun. They are bad enough with all the noise, thus I didn't care much about how I tone-map them, so I worked less on giving a realistic look for such an image...

The Aquarium of the Scientific Center
People didn't like this image because of the effect or the high noise level, yet what I believe, noise level should not stop you from using your image in any way possible.

 On the shells side now, I've began using my new self-made turntable mounted on the base of the Manfrotto SPH303. Giving some trials still on how to achieve the peeling look for my shells; trying various shells for now. Unfortunately, the process is tiresome. My first trial was with a shell of highly irregular conical shape (unfortunately I don't have a picture at hand at the moment) that comes with spikes. The first trial was set on 20 degrees for each shot (and the lighting provided was on onside). Because of the spiral conical shape, seems that the peeling process (adding layers with layer masks; eliminating the unneeded parts) was going in a wrong way. Probably for such shapes the peeling must go in circles around the center and not sideways! However, I stopped working with this project and moved to taking pictures of single shells:

My current settings after moving from one side of the room (to my right here) to this position where I stuck Velcro on the wall and on the white board to ease putting on and removing. The desk lamp is used to eliminate the object from the top giving some hard shadow on the turntable but at this point it's not so important. With a macro lens and flash unit, and setting WB: tungsten or fluorescent to balance the hot yellow color of the flood light from the desk lamp, the background looks blue rather than white. Probably, I should stick the turntable to the white board next time.

Ringed shell. I wonder if these rings tell the age of the shell itself?

As you can see, I've been using the turntable itself as a stand post for such shots without using the softbox that I've made at home. The softbox makes soft shadows for your objects and you can surround it majorly with 4 light sources (sides, top and front) and it would give a nice white background. I don't mind the hard shadow here though since it's at the bottom of the object. I fix my objects standing like that with a little piece of children playing clay (maybe you can see a bit of it in the image above at the bottom right side under the shell).

One problem here as well, is the center of the circle which I have to appoint precisely. Common problem I've been facing now while rotating my object is having the object at offset from the center relative to the camera's lens. In macro shots, everything becomes so so sensitive! Too many things to take care for, and shots are better be taken with Live-View on (to avoid the mirror flipping and shaking the camera) and of course, a remote (wireless) is a must. 

Later, I've picked another small conical shell but not spiral this time, and more regular in shape (horizontal-wise at least), and this time I've set the base to rotate at 10 degrees instead of 20, which means 36 shots for a complete circle. Done this already (in RAW format) with flash unit and flood light on top, and it was a tiresome process as it is. The flash unit (580EX II) got tired of me and needed a change of battery (but I didn't change the battery as I preferred to wait longer for the recharge than change anything in the configuration). The process now is on the go and started it already, but as I said, it is a long process and a tiresome one, and the picture is not ready as I'm typing this. My panorama programs didn't help much in identifying the type of movement here so I have to do everything manually. With 36 shots for the whole body, minus the top and bottom), the transition of rotating shell was smoother (you can see that by moving through the images quickly and you will see the shell as if it is rotating), and also I've dedicated 18 shots to be "welded" on the right of the basic starting image, and 17 on its left, making the starting point in the center. Although the shots are in RAW (18MP) but I preferred to reduce the resolution and work with TIFF-16bit instead. It is slow already like that, so imagine working with 36 RAW files stacked as layers, as they are 18MP!!!

Ayvarith-wise now. I have to admit I was lazy and awkward toward this project but it was for the sake of working with my camera! Anyway, I've removed the "private" status from the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story in WDC. I was planning to remove this status when I add the vocal sample for a narration in Ayvarith for the whole set, but I think this can be done later, as the transliteration is almost ready and the preface is ready with vocal samples to show how some letters are pronounced. You can check it for yourself here. The Ayvarith transliteration is dedicated as a folder by itself. I'm trying to find some time to record the narration, but with this weather and these jams, my body has a swing of moods...

I'm going to post this now and get back to my Italian music session. It's nice to get away from the English a bit now and then...

Alexander 6, V84.

 I've determined to break the spell of Mondays this Monday, but I'm not sure I'm succeeding with this or not! So far, not much annoyances!
I've finally signed for my leave, for 33 days (including holidays and weekends, which will be added back to my leave's account later on). It shall start from September 26th till October 28th. I will be back to Kuwait, hopefully after spending the vacation in Ireland then, by the 16th, and hence I would have 12 free days to spend around here before starting to work by November. Just like the last year. It was a real mess to ask for this leave because of the stupidity hovering over this place; some people do it by paper and some people (like me) must do it electronically in this damned system. Last year, when I signed for such leave from work, they dropped down the salaries of 3 months in advance into my account, and that made me some troubles in some aspects. All the fuss was to make sure that I get my salary regularly as it should be. I really don't know who makes such stupid laws!!! Be sure if I knew him or her, I'm going to assassin them.

Spent my day yesterday downloading the pictures of the panoramas taken from the labs and my office. Also, I took several free images from the outside of my building which is now like a battle field with all the reconstruction work going on and all the bricks been thrown away and made into piles and hills in front of my work place! The total number of images exceeded 300!
Coming to measure it:

• Each row needs 12 angular shots.
• Usually, 3 vertical angles needed.
• Not always but count it in, one zenith and one nadir shot, total 2 (and can be 4).
• We have here 3 rooms.
• Going to shoot into HDR, means we need exposure bracketing, and that means 3 shots in each angle.
• Total: 12x3x3(HDR) + (2x3) = 114 shots. For one room. All 3 rooms then are 114 x 3 = 342 shots.

Adding also those tiny shots I took from the outside which I can't remember how many, then I would say it easily exceeded 350 shots. All in RAW format (to allow me for more manipulations before merging into HDR, specially when it comes to the White Balance factor). Because of this, a 8GB CF memory card is essential!

The process of stitching was fair and went smoothly, even for the narrow lab or what we call here the "anti-compton" lab, after a device of this time. The main work now is to enhance the zenith and the nadir, which are naturally, almost always hard to stitch. In fact in the 2 labs panoramas, I've taken the nadir but I decided not to put it on the stitching process. The best thing to do probably is to clean the nadir BEFORE the stitch. I find cleaning AFTER the stitching process is over is a bit hard to do because of the wide are and the stretching that occurs naturally for the bottom of the image (because of the spherical projection of course). Usually what you see in QTVRs is that the artists put or fix some sort of a label including the name of the artist and the location and/or the date of creation. Maybe I should do this and spare myself the headache, even though I don't know how, still.
So far though, I got 2 tiny problems. The first was that in shots taken at a lower angle (pointing the camera downward that is), parts of the tripod shown up and hence, we have to do some cleaning and cloning job here. The second one is some weird artifacts occured in the Gamma Lab panorama, and they looked very much like parallax errors, but some inspection into that revealed to me that for some reason (and maybe it is even my own mistake when the shoot was on), some slices of the panorama were having a lower range of exposure (i.e. darker) from the other slices surrounding it, thus when the computer blends in together all the slices and trying to find a suitable blend, you get smudges that would look like more like breaks or like some ink plots. To fix this problem I opened those slices individually, and opened some adjacent slices for comparison, I then raised the exposure value for these dark slices to match the adjacent slice, as much as possible. The process was "fine" but issued some noise that I need to smooth out later on, after tone-mapping.
There were also some weird noise not related to the problem above, appeared as some pink spots on some various areas. This problem occured mainly after tone-mapping, but hopefully it is easy to eliminate.

Can't wait to leave this office and get back to work on these panoramas. The real challenge now is the office panorama, in which I included myself in. A moving object in a panorama shoot is not a sweet topic, at all!
__________
1993. Alexander felt a headache and looked around hime
1994. he recognized that he is in a small house made of wood
1995. then he looked at Kaliván and said: where am I?
1996. Kaliván replied: in my humble house O hero!
1997. then Alexander asked: what happened?
1998. Kaliván then went on telling the story
1999. "you made the Mikanazzar fly away from the tree,
2000. and when it got angry it attacked you with rage,
2001. thus it passed through your heart and body,
2002. and took some of your power and made you weak,
2003. and you fell down and fainted with no power to move,
2004. thus Aramramátáníth chased after Mikanazzar,
2005. and she banished him out of the valley for now,
2006. then she endowed you with some power to heal,
2007. you will need some time to rest for now,
2008. she ordered me to take you home and care for you,
2009. until you become sound again, she shall talk to you,
2010. Oh! what a great honor is that to have her talk to you!
2011. you must be someone special O good king!"
2012. with a little headache Alexander asked Kaliván
2013. "you brought me to your home? how that is possible?"
2014. and Kaliván answered him with a laughter
2015. "thank your Cadid, he is a loyal servant for you,
2016. I released his chains and he helped me"