Manfrotto X Benro…

Well, for this week, seems I won't be posting about images specifically, but I remembered that in one of my previous posts I've mentioned that I might put a review and a comparison between two macro rails that I have already, and probably it is time to do this review. So, this post might be short (I don't have the content planned already before typing the post so I can't quite tell the length of the post ahead).

Now before I go ahead with the review, I have to say that this item is discontinued already and I'm sure the web is full of reviews for such item, so this review is mainly about my impression since I did have a rail before this one. Since I've used 2 different types of macro-heads here, I thought I'd write something about it here.

Benro MP80

First of all, I guess I'd need to list my reasons for why did I think of buying a new macro-head since i do have one already. My reasons might be summarized in two main ones:

• The need to play with a new toy (for a change as I didn't get any new gear in a long time).
• The need for a more stable macro-head than my old Manfrotto MA 454.

 

Manfrotto MA 454

Now, the main thing that I didn't quite like in the Manfrotto head is the shaky movement of the rail and sometimes it's hard to judge the movement's distance from the scale on the side. Also, there is not much fine-tuning for the movement so one has to be quite picky when moving these knobs to move small distances in order of millimeters or less than that. I can't remember the price tag for this head really since I got it a long time ago (and ordered from outside). I have to say though, after using Benro MP80, I'm now quite aware that such a simple design for Manfrotto was for a reason, and I appreciate it.

Benro MP80

As for the Benro MP80, the matter was somewhat strange and perplexing even before buying the item. I've purchased this macro-head from a local store specialized in photography gear (and few units were left in the stock). The price tag was almost 20K.D. (around 65 USD). The head was apparently out of stock in many websites, but what I was surprised for is the price tag for such a head in other stores outside the country. Like this one here which offered a used one for almost 200 USD, which is like 3 times the price I had it for from the local store! Or like this store in the UK which offered it for £210, which is just a bit shy from being 4 times the price I got from the local store! There are even a number of websites that offered it for almost 300 USD. I've even found it in Alibaba which offered the price directly converted to K.D. and it was for 92 K.D.! It was such a strange thing to have it for 20 K.D. (and I'm not complaining really but it's just strange!).

Schematics of operating the head

Unlike the Manfrotto head, Benro's head has lot of knobs and it is also advertised as a "panorama" head in some websites. This is because of its circular base with scale for degrees of rotation as it can be seen from the picture above. As a panorama shooter myself, I know this is not enough but it is, let's say, fair. What I was thinking actually is that such rotating base can be used as a turning table of some sort to take pictures of products or to do my favorite "peeling" effect when needed, but I have my doubts about the usability of such feature in such task despite the easiness of rotating this circular base compared to the base of my old cranky and bulky panorama head base. Anyway, that's a story for another time and yet I have to test it.
As can be seen from the schematics, the head is quite flexible when it comes to movement and probably the most useful feature here (which Manfrotto miserably lack) is the lateral movement capability. Yet, things are not all sweet about this head.

Vexing Points:

Despite the lateral movement (which I do like, really) which would be quite beneficial for doing 3D anaglyphs work on macro level (or even in normal settings), yet there are issues that I couldn't digest well and made me think of it as lost money (but hey, still cheap compared to other places and I'm grateful for that). I'll try put things in points here:

1. The circular base is simply bulky and means that to work in macro, I can only place the camera horizontally, unlike the Manfrotto head which I could place on a ball-head or any other head to direct the camera in specific angle. It can be cumbersome indeed with the Manfrotto head, yet it gives a degree of flexibility. I'm aware that most macro rails (specially serious ones) do work that way, and just move the camera on a horizontal plane, but that definitely pushes one to work more on preparing the sample and to angle it in a proper way in front of the camera (and automatically, this means it is suitable only for indoors work only, mostly).
2. Benro's head here is supposed to take a load up to 12 kg (~26.5 lb) according to the websites I've fund, but with such heavy load on the moving plate, it becomes harder and harder to move the knobs (specially #3 in the schematic diagram above, which is responsible for moving the camera back- and frontward). I'm pretty sure when I worked with it, my camera and lens complex was around 1 kg (that is 1/12th of the announced load), give or take. Still, moving the camera frontward and backward was a hard and clunky, specially with such a small knob which comes under the camera body making it harder to hold with the fingers and rotate softly or precisely.
3. Because the plate that carries the camera is serrated at the bottom and moved by gears when rotating the knob, the movement becomes not so smooth specially with more heavy loads, so much that it felt as if the camera is passing over tiny bumps as it goes forward or backward. In Manfrotto's rail, the movement is done by a helical (screw-like) road at the center which pushes the camera forward or pull it backward.

Honestly, as for the second point, Manfrotto suffers from that as well somehow but it is such a big deal with Benro's macro-head here. In Manfrotto's macro rail, the rotating knob has a hexagonal opening which makes it suitable for placing some Allen key and use it to rotate slowly and probably more precisely (a bit), but none of that is available with the knobs on Benro's MP80 macro-head and one has to use the fingers solely to rotate it.

 

So far, I've gave out simple trials to shoot with Benro's head (some leaf as seen above at various magnification levels, using reverse lens and tubes). This leaves me with the rotating base to see how suitable it would be for shooting product (or rather peeling objects). It rotates smoothly, more than that of my old panorama head but maybe I would still need to put it on some kind of tripod to hold the base firmly as I rotate the head, and not put it simply on a table. Working on a table with such an item would be a plus for me specifically to use the light tent that I've received as a gift from a friend last year. The light tent (or box) solves a big deal of problems when it comes to the background for shooting such objects, so it would be a nice addition to work with a smooth rotating head inside that light box.

Finale

So, this is my humble experience with this head and a comparison to the previous macro rail from Manfrotto, which I had for years (and I guess I'll keep using). There are of course more advanced macro rails and heads, and some are even programmable for serious photographers who wish to do serious focus-stacking, but I think this is not for me as of yet. 

 

Meanwhile, I've already started strolling outside, since January, and been shooting around the neighborhood, trying to find new stuff around, mainly using my Sigma 12-24mm lens, and I have to say it is quite a challenge, specially when done with the normal camera and not the modified one, so to increase my chances for a creative juice flowing, I've decided to shoot bracketed most of the time and work with HDR images most of the time (i didn't work in HDR for a long time now). I allowed myself to go crazy a bit with tone-mapping, but that's a story for another time, hopefully as a post in here in the coming weeks, if time permits. 

 

I say as time permits here as my life had been suddenly busy with some blockade to ideas with the camera. Well, the blockade has been there already but it is more now, specifically with the absence of a maid to take care of many things around the house, which I find myself doing to help around. 

On the other hand, it is also February, the Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month! Which means I have to get busy working on something for the month and to be posted on Instagram as well, and so far my head had been blank and out of ideas. There had been humble trials for brainstorming but nothing was yielded still. I just hope that I get the idea(s) clicking in as soon as possible.

For this reason, I'm thinking of maybe keeping out from blogging for some time, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I will leave it to time and I'll see to it in 2 weeks time for now. I'm also planning to put this review in Arabic for my Arabic blog, since I didn't post for months now (again, breaking my resolution of posting once a month at least). So this might take another toll on my time as well. 

Would all that "keeping busy" be just enough to keep my mind from wandering away and swirl into depression as usual? We'll see…

Slow Dolphin (Review)…

 It's my first blog post after my birthday (or second, if I count the previous one which was posted AFTER my birthday, automatically!), and guess what? I've gone pleasant gift from an online friend (and I'm very thankful for her for such a mindful gift!). In this post, I've decided to give some review of this gift. Not to criticize of course, but it is for any fellow photographer reading this and might find this useful.

I will present here some simple experiments I've done so far with this tool and hopefully anyone reading this would find them useful. 

General View

So, this Slow Dolphin light box is, well, a… light box! (Duh!). Sometimes also we might call such light boxes as "tents". Before I go on and review this product please bear in mind that I didn't go through the products line for Slow Dolphin, so maybe what I will be saying here is already available in other products of theirs, but this is just my impression about this light box alone.

Now, the product comes folded and in a fabric bag for easy carrying, and it spreads up as a cube as shown, and it comes with a number of backgrounds. So far, I've tried 3 of them, and I thought at first that all of them are plastic sheets (or PVC as mentioned in the leaflet) but turned out some of these backgrounds are actually paper-made.

The cube or box is black from the outside, with a circular hole on top which can be opened and closed (and can be used for shooting from the top if needed). The inside is lined with shining silver sheets with bits of velcro on the sides (to attach a diffuser sheet to soften the lights from the ring light at the top). I thought of taking a picture but I think it's not worth it anyway, things will ravel hopefully as I talk with the test shots I've made. Also, inside the box and on the upper edge on the back, there is a rubber band stretching from side to side which is ought to hold the background sheets from the top when placed in.

The box as mentioned already has a ring light on top. Actually, to be precise, 2 ring lights; A large one and a small one, and lighting them is controllable by a switch that is attached to the power cable (just like bedside lamps). One can light both rings or one of them, and also control their luminosity. 

The power cord is somewhat tricky here. I would say it is a double-edged sword. The cord is actually a USB cord, and probably it is common now to use such heads (for saving energy and other flexibility issues) but where I live, such sockets are not quite common yet (they exist but not common). Thus, to solve the problem here, I've used my mobile's charger plug to attach the USB head of the light box and plug it to power outlet.

G-Shock

So, I'm skipping here my initial shots using my mobile phone which I did right away with this product. Controlling things with the mobile phone are kind of tricky for me and I really hate it, but I just needed something to post on Facebook anyway!Thus, my real test was to be done with a "real" camera (yes, old one but still real you know). As a target, I've picked one watch (which ironically was a gift as well from 2 years ago or more, from a friend and I could never wear it!). 

Settings for shooting the G-Shock watch.

The light box was prepared first with the black background placed inside, and it covers the background and the ground or the bottom portion of the box. The bend in the corner of the sheet was highly reflective and I'm not sure really if it intended to be so (later on, this somewhat proved to be problematic). Anyway, for my subject here, the watch, I've wrapped it with a fishing line and pushes the line through the opening on the top of the box and held it firmly to the edge of the box with the help of a paper clip, and thus the watch was hanging in the air. Shaky situation, but with a gentle touch, the watch would be stable enough for a quick shot. The lighting inside the box was bright enough to allow a quick shutter speed which ensured a stable image after all. You can see here also the diffusing sheet attached up in the box held firmly with velcro, and it has a circular opening as well to allow for shooting through the box opening or, like in my case here, pass the fishing line through.

In the set as well, you might notice some pieces of paper at the bottom and a mirror (just outside the box on the left), and these were my extra props to add more control to the light. It took me a while to settle down with these, as I was actually using the mirror to reflect the light at the bottom under the watch, but then I've realized that a simple paper sheet would do the job, and I've used the mirror on the side to cast some light on the face of the watch (even though I should've used a polarizer here to have a clearer face).

G-Shock
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/2.5, 400⁻¹s, ISO100.

Been a while since I've posted an image on this blog with all the shooting parameters! But here you go. Shooting with Canon EF 50m f/1.4 allowed me some freedom here with increasing the shutter speed without having to push the ISO higher a bit. I had to adjust the aperture though to get a proper depth of field as f/1.4, the lowest depth and widest aperture in this lens, can give somewhat a fuzzy look. 

Working with this lens was problematic somewhat despite the flexibility in the aperture, because I had to get far off from the watch and the box. Tried to fix the situation with some extension tubes, but nothing worked, so I had to get back as much as possible. The image seen here, G-Shock, is actually a cropped final shot. 

I've picked a black background on purpose here as I wanted to separate blacks (which is quite a hard process and in fact involves a lot of editing work rather than on-set work). The remnants of the fishing line were removed in Photoshop of course and here we go; a watch hanging in mid-air. I had to use some dodge and burn to lighten some areas of the watch (specially the face and sides). One might ask why not use a slower shutter speed or raise the ISO to get a brighter shot; Well, this is mainly because of the background which is highly reflective despite being black, so I had to keep my exposure value low, and fixing that in Photoshop would be somewhat tedious. Also, my original idea do require some dark sense of the whole thing to add an element of mystery. Such mood would require a low-key shot but here as it can be seen, I'm depending only on lights from the top which reflect from all directions inside the box, and nothing else. So, a low-key here is out of the question.

Madly Red

My next test was to be done with my favorite coffee mug (I think I've had it for more than 20 years now). In this test, I didn't take a shot for the setting unfortunately, but hopefully I will explain what I did here by comparing two shots put together.

Mug Shot
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/2.5m, 25⁻¹s, ISO100.

As can be seen here, I've picked a red background for this shoot, since the mug is also red, just as was the case with G-Shock. In this shoot, I can't quite recall if I've used the diffusing sheet on the top or not, but it wouldn't make any big difference since the red background here is actually a matte paper sheet and not plastic. It did "diffuse" the light coming from the top still though and at large a band of light can be seen behind the mug. This is even after reduction and post-processing in Photoshop. I think the problem here lies with the depth of the box itself as the distance should be greater to hide the bend in the background from the shot. Since the ring light is at the center of box at the top, I'm assuming it is designed so that the product should also be lying at the center at the bottom, and thus I don't think putting the product further more forward is the way to go here.

The two shots in Mug Shot here are for comparison between adding a "contour" to the subject (left) and without anything (right). The contour here is usually a black body added on the sides (or if the background is black, it can be white sides) and it is usually done with glass objects or any polished surface. Here though, I do have a red surface so not quite the ideal surface to show the contour clearly, but nevertheless, it is clear that it makes a difference compared to the right shot, and it made the mug more defined. The problem here though was in adding the black sides, as I used the black sheet that came with the product and placed it under the red sheet after a struggle. It was still shaky and some part of it was protruding into the shot, so I had to put it down by placing some objects (and cropping the image after all). 

During this shoot I've also tried to use a speedlite in some way but the space was quite small and in fact placing the speedlite on the top didn't make much difference except for the fact that my shutter speed had been faster, but not much change in the quality of the light (or should I say the mood of the light); so using a speedlite or the LED ring light within the box kind of yielded the same result. Out of fun, I've also shot bracketed shots to merge as HDR and tone-map. I felt like doing some crazy HDR stuff as I didn't do something like that in a long time. I call it "creativity venting".

Royal

My third test came about with another black object, and a black background. Having learned about some of the difficulties already with the past 2 tests, I've tried to fix or go around these issues with my third test with this black perfume bottle (which I think was a gift as well!). 

The (final) shooting set for "Royal"

Here, as can be seen above, I've tried to place 2 thin foam pieces on the sides to add contour to this black body. The right one specifically was quite essential to light the face of the bottle (the bottle was turned a bit facing right as can be seen). Meanwhile, I've tried to go around the bend in the background sheet but pulling it a bit forward and placing the bottle even off-center and closer to the front of the box. Alas, that didn't do much to hide the reflections at the back. However, I've taken several shots with such reflections that might add to the mood after all. Also, I came about with the idea of combining several shots since such a thing is actually a usual and practical thing to do in product photography as I've seen in some YouTube videos before (no arguments here about the ethics because we are just combining images of different lighting, and this is not cheating!).

Royal (1)
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/1.4, 60⁻¹s, ISO100.

I've made a mistake here when I didn't care much about putting the foam pieces straight vertically and closer to the bottle (in some way). The side of the bottle as can be seen in Royal (1) is not lighted completely to the bottom, but the reflections of the foam boards look fair on the cap. Here in Royal (1) you can see the "halos" in the background caused by the reflections of the light from the ring light. Diffusing the light with the diffusing sheet didn't change a whole lot really. Here also, I was using a polarizer which I hoped that it would enhance the reflection of the bottle on the black sheet but it didn't do much here, but it was quite remarkable in blocking other areas of light as I rotated the filter, and from there I got the other idea of combining several shots (not in HDR, but manually combining several shots of different lights). 

Royal (2)
Canon EF 50m f/1.4 USM @f/1.4, 60⁻¹s, ISO100.

Thus, after taking 3 or 4 different shots of different polarized light component, I went on merging them (with other enhancements of course). Personally, I do like Royal (2) more but some people do prefer Royal (1) looks; For this reason, as I was saying, these reflections in the background off the black sheet might be a desirable thing. But what if they are not? I guess here, there is no escaping doing a composite while editing the shots. I think I've missed illuminating the right side of the bottle in Royal (2) so this is something to bear in mind as well when doing such a work of composing. Yet though, in all conditions, i couldn't get the reflections of the bottle off the sheet to appear, however I rotated the polarizer.

The Peel

So, at this point, many ideas had been crossing my mind on how to expand my usage for this light box (despite its relative small size). Like one idea came to my mind is using it as a set for high-speed photography, but seeing how it worked out with speedlites in Madly Red above, I've omitted this idea from my head completely. So, I had to think of something milder, somehow. The idea came about while I was looking at my "collection" of walnut shells! Why not make a peel effect out of one; I didn't do such project in a long time now. Before I go on with this test or shoot, there was one essential "hurdle" to tackle first. The rotation. 

The rotating part
of SPH-303

For starters, I've figured maybe I could use the rotating base of my panoramic head (Manfrotto SPH-303); After all, this usage was actually proposed in the original instruction manual of the head. However, the base proved to be hard to move as it required a grip on the lower part of the base while rotating the top part. I tried oiling the base, but yet it was quite firm and could not be easily rotated. Even though I did such "peeling effect" before for various objects, and using this base, but the base was always placed on a tripod, and I was thinking that I would use the 5° interval to be very precise; Such short intervals are used when composing Object Panorama which are typically used for viewing products in 3D almost on some websites. However, my aim here was different as I'm doing peeling. I thought maybe my usual stitching program(s) would somewhat have it easy with such short interval of shots to align and stitch the images together. i tried that before and failed, and well, proved to be a fail now too when I've done this test!

CamRanger MP-360
Motorized pan head

After the fail with the rotating base, I thought of using an item that I purchased long time ago and almost NEVER used it; The CamRanger MP-360 Motorized Pan Head. I've purchased this item in hope to do some astrophotography of some sort with it but turned out that the head could be tilted only 15° up and down and it was just impractical for my own good. Anyway, I thought of giving it a try and see if it can help with the situation here.
It is a bulky item and occupied a considerable space inside the Slow Dolphin light box, but I thought it could be worthy because it has a remote and could be rotated for 360 degrees. Moreover, it has a scale to gauge the rotation angle. However, all of that disappeared into thin air; Turned out that it needs a tripod as well to stabilize the base and be able to rotate properly, as the surface of the light box was too smooth. Moreover, the cable of the remote and the scale that shows the angle would rotate along, making the situation cumbersome further. Thus, I had to put it aside and improvise something else. 

The final setting for shooting
the walnut peel.

To shorten the story, the idea was to place the walnut on my phone while running the compass app on the phone (and keeping the phone on of course, never putting the screen on sleep). By looking from the top through the circular hole, I was able to check the amount of degrees to rotate the phone 5° for each shot. Not a precise method, but the best I could do in this situation. I've placed the diffusing sheet here as well to help me look better at the screen from the top as the LED ring light was too bright and my eyes couldn't figure out the readings. As for the walnut, it was another hurdle to deal with as I didn't know how or what to fix it upon. Finally, I've picked some metallic container (purchased this as a prop years ago) and glued the walnut with wax (candle wax, yes). I think wax here is the best solution ever for quick and light work; Glue was messy and took considerable time to dry. So, the whole thing was placed on top of the phone and started the shoot, using my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, at f/16. 

The shooting was such an exhaustive process as everything was done manually; Looking through the top, rotating carefully, and shooting (using the camera wireless remote). I think the whole process (and the breaks in between for every 90°) lasted for more than 1 hour. During the shoot, it was apparent that the walnut would drift to the right side so I would have to pull it back to the center and I just hoped for the best when it is time to stitch the images together. Also, because of the size of the phone, and because the rotation was not precisely around the center, the phone would nudge against the bend of the sheet (which I needed to add to keep the background white instead of silver here).

Walnut Peel (1)

After the shoot, the first step was to edit all of the RAW files and make minor adjustments to the contrast and exposure or brightness, and then covert all files to JPEG. I was almost sure of the failure of automatic stitching but I gave it a try anyway, and well, it failed! So, it was time to do the manual work and to stitch about 72+ images manually in Photoshop, using layer masks. As I've stated before, I've done such projects before but not for that number of shots. The work was exhaustive and took more than a day (actually more than 2 days) and proved at some point to problematic (specially memory-wise). As for the final result, Walnut Peel (1), I've cropped the final outcome from the top and bottom to remove some parts that were not capable of being aligned. This lengthy process actually convinced me that working with such a high number of images was not really a good idea, at all!

Walnut Peel (2)

Thus, I had another go with the blending but this time I picked a fewer number of shots from the set, almost for every 30°, and tried to blend them together. Still, I've faced some problems, but relatively, it was much faster and better than the first trial with more than 72 images to work with. Here, in Walnut Peel (2), I've kept the topmost part of the shell and tried to blend it with the rest of the image. I think from now on, it would be wise to work with fewer images in such projects. Worth noting here that I usually do "peeling" shooting using a tripod and some platform and the rotating head sometimes, using either speedlite(s) or ambient light to do the shooting, but never done it in a closed space (semi-closed actually) like this light box before.

In the process of reviewing the images, as I've stated before, the walnut started to drift away from the center and even though I've used f/16 to ensure a proper depth of field, but yet this drift caused some images to have some out-of-focus parts. It is true that macro lenses are quite sensitive to distances but I think the distance of the drift here was not quite problematic, and using f/16 (I thought) should have been sufficient to ensure a good depth of field all across the shoot. I'm starting to doubt this lens really, specially with few images having over-exposure and needed to be fixed before converting to JPEG. I'm not sure what caused such over-exposure while working in completely manual mood, with fixed f-number and fixed shutter speed, but this is not the first time that this lens specifically caused such anomalies. Which makes me think of having another macro lens or maybe next time I better be working with my 50mm lens and extension tubes to avoid such anomalies. Anyway, I'm not a heavy macro shooter so such matter can wait for now. 

Conclusions

So, before I head to write down my own points about Slow Dolphin's light box, I would like to note, again, that I'm not sure about the line of products the Slow Dolphin provides. Maybe some of the points that I will mention here have been already dealt with in another line of products from Slow Dolphin.

So, firstly, we have the issue of the bent sheets here which can some times provide unwanted reflections (yet they can be desirable as I witnessed). Thus, in between the two opinions, there might be something out there to compromise. Adding to that, since the reflections are mostly produced at the bend of the sheet, so maybe the depth of the box has to be increase to allow for a more gentle curve for the sheet. 

In relation to the first point mentioned already, some props could be useful with such box, like some platform to raise the product for example (to avoid having the bend of the background in the shot), or something to provide reflections of the product since the provided sheets don't quite give strong reflection (as seen in Royal above). It is true that such items might be (most of the time) provided by third-party, but it would be nice to have a wholesome package here with essentials and basics for product photography. I would add to the list of props here as well, some capabilities or tools to enable hanging of jewelry and other items; Those can definitely be handy. As for a rotation prop, well, I've seen such products online somewhere but I'm not sure if these would quite essential for product photography but I think it would be wholesome in some way to complete the set, probably.

The box is designed to be self-sufficient, with its own LED ring light and it's opaque. However, usually tents or light box like that do have translucent sides to allow for external light uses. The ring light does a nice job, yet though some flexibility issues might arise here if the photographer has other ideas (e.g. shooting with lights from the side for more low-key feel). Having one source of light in one direction is somewhat limiting for the creative endeavor in general. I believe with velcro, things can be managed in switching between opaque and translucent sides (maybe?). Or, on the other hand, more LED lights can be provided for directional light when needed, with a control for switching them on and off.

I believe that Slow Dolphin do provide variety of sizes of such light box, but one thing that a photographer has to bear in mind here is that the product to be photographed should be in proper proportion to the size of the light box. Here for example, as seen above in Madly Red, the mug was somewhat bulky and the diffusing sheet over the ring light wouldn't do much to soften the shadows of the mug at the bottom, mainly because of the distance between the light source and the object. To properly apply diffusing, there should be some distance between the light source and the diffusing material, as well as between the outlet and the object in general; That way we can have soft diffused shadows of the object. Actually, this is one of the reasons also that makes translucent sides and using outside light sources a good idea. I guess though using a white or a black background would reduce such problems after all (if desired).

So, this is my humble review and experimentation with this marvelous (and dear) gift which I've received for my birthday! I hope this review is out there to help someone about going about shooting some products. The flexibility of this item is surely admired and I think I will do more experimentation with some products to shoot, hopefully. Thanks galore to the sender :) ; it is something that surely put a smile on my face more than anything else around me :)

Review: StereoPhoto Maker…

Well, I'm back, after a short vacation for myself. Ramadhan is over now and the total curfew or lock-down, but we are back to the partial lock-down. However, I might have given myself a little vacation from posting in this blog for a week or but I was still busy preparing a blog post about infrared photography (sort of a second part for an old post) for my Arabic blog.
Meanwhile, in this post, I decided not to talk about my photos but rather do a simple review for some amazing freeware (so far) which I've tried lately for making Anaglyphs and other options. I'm not paid to do this review or anything, but I will mention why I like it and what I think it needs further adjustments, but I still don't get many aspects about it yet. We'll come to that in few, but first I need to make an announcement here, though I'm not sure if anyone cares about it anyway:

As time progressed since my return to Instagram around November 2019, after stopping for one whole year, I've decided to stop it again and probably for good this time, as I realized that working with such platform is just a vain and useless (or maybe requires more of my time than what I'm willing to give). I did indeed disable my account (@tj_q8), however, I do have my other account which was dedicated to my conlang (@Ayvarith) and which logged me out suddenly and stopped me from going in. Sent many emails to Instagram to get back this secondary account but they didn't help much and I'm totally locked out. I tried to get it back by logging back to @tj_q8 and adding it from there but that was not useful. Anyway, I left a message there on my last post on @Ayvarith, using my first account @tj_q8, to note that I've been locked out and probably got hacked) and I have no plan to make a substitute account to post for the Ayvarith Conlang. Thus, I can't disable @tj_q8 now because if I do, the message I've posted there would be automatically deleted. Hence, even though the account is re-activated, I'm not going to use it or post in it, and I think this time for good (i.e. never again). One of the ironic thing about people in this platform is they are willing to check the "story" more than they do check and like the images in the basic account; Why? That's beyond me for now. And I don't want to understand it even. So, this is it for now.

StereoPhoto Maker

Again, before I proceed with this review, I want to announce that I'm not paid for this and I'm merely sharing my opinion here according to my own (simple) usage of this program/app, and out of love for this kind of art. I have to say that this program made making anaglyphs much easier for me for some reasons I will mention, but also there are some points that would make me in need to work further on images in Photoshop.

StereoPhoto Maker window and work space with two of my images open.
Click to enlarge.

First of all, the program is (so far) a freeware with a quite simple facade (as can be seen above) and can be downloaded here. Also, on the same context, there are related-programs that I really want to try at some point here and plenty of galleries that I want to inspect as well! In the About section, you can find the credit for the creators of this marvel: Masuji Suto and David Sykes, so all gratitude goes to their effort to create this wonderful program (or app). Personally, I've encountered the program by an announcement on Twitter and proceeded to try it out and see how it works. My aim was mainly to see how it works with anaglyphs, as I'm used to do anaglyphs manually in Photoshop. However, this little program (which requires no installation, it is a single executable file), proved to be higher in potential than what I would've expected.
I have to admit though there are some terms or names that I didn't understand but the overall usage is quite simple and straight forward. So, what I want to do here first is to go through some of these buttons and go about what they do as briefly as possible. Lot of these buttons do make anaglyph-making such an easy task compared to what I used to do manually in Photoshop.

Third Section

So, if you look at the big picture above you might notice how the buttons are divided into sections. The first and second sections are "self-explanatory"; Just hover the mouse over the button and you will get an explanation for what the button does and these first 2 sections are all about the usual operations (saving, cropping, etc). So, fast forward to the third section which you see its screenshot above. Here too, the buttons are quite straight forward, but I'm interested in the first (1) button, which swaps the left and right images. In Photoshop, I used to do that manually (changing the color channels to flip the right and left images and to test which one was better illusion of depth). All this process of flipping and testing the depth of the anaglyph is done with a click of a button here on StereoPhoto Maker!
The rest of the buttons in this section are about zooming in and out but button (5) here somehow perplexed me. The guide (when hovering the cursor over the button) says "Resampling ON/OFF," so it seems to be a button that controls the resolution a bit or the compression of the photo, so I'm not quite sure (I didn't read the help files or anything, I'm brutally attacking the program and experimenting here!).

Fourth section

Then we arrive at the fourth section where the bulk of the juice is located! This is the place where you want to play around and experiment, a LOT.

Interlaced Mode
Click to enlarge.

1. Here, this button puts the 2 images in "interlaced" mode. The look of the resulting image here is like ones prepared for usage with lenticular lenses! Which makes me wonder if this is really the purpose of this process here, and if not, would it help to be used in the process of making lenticular images?
2. This button would make the typical anaglyph for you, but it will convert the image to B&W or grayscale for better perception of depth (in fact it is recommended that anaglyphs be in grayscale to avoid color distractions). Here you can also see a little arrow for more options for the make of the anaglyph: red/cyan, red/green, and some more; But probably the newest option for me here is the Rainbow anaglyph! I've never seen such an anaglyph so I'm not sure if it just for artistic purposes or there is indeed a theory behind it, but nevertheless the red/cyan tints are given to the image with the general rainbow coloring.
3. This button is the conventional anaglyph making button; An anaglyph in colors. Again, you can click the arrow here to see more options for various ways to merge the anaglyph. There are some new names for me here, like Dubois, Suto (the creator?), and some more options. To my own observation it seems that these options control the degree of the red/cyan, because (in case you didn't know) anaglyph glasses vary in types and they are not of a single type of red/cyan. The Dubois option specifically gives that typical yellowish tint to the whole anaglyph which I typically see on anaglyphs on the internet and always wondered why it is like that! There are other coloring options like Yellow/Blue. Also, in this button you can control the anaglyph by choosing Ghost-Reduced anaglyph, where you can control the Levels and Saturation to reduce the ghosting in the image (ghosting is when your eye would be unable to merge the left and right images together for various technical problems). Finally, there is an option to optimize the anaglyph (make it better) either automatically or manually. All that in this simple button here!
4. This button is to spread the images on the left and right, as to be viewed as a stereogram (or stereograph?) and in fact once you open the left and right images in StereoPhoto Maker the images will be initially in this position.
5. Like No.4, but the images are placed vertically; Top and below.

   

   Sharp 3D LCD Mode
   Click to enlarge.

6. This button merges the image for Sharp 3D LCD display. In looks, this one here looks like the image in No.1 but instead of horizontal strips, vertical ones are used. Or so it seems to me. In fact, I do think that such option might enable people with the polarizing 3D glasses (those from IMAX) to be to view the image in 3D (without losing the color) just like in No.1.
7. This button displays the two images in Page-Flip for 3D shutter glasses. Personally, I didn't try such glasses before but I know they are "electronic" and depend on turning on and off images (according to Wikipedia). Anyway, I don't think this is of any concern to me (for the time being).

Fifth Section

Now, in the fifth section, we do have some simple, but beautiful, tools that made my job easier to some extent:

1. This button, called Easy Adjustments, is to adjust some aspects of the two images, left and right. Honestly, I didn't delve deep into this section yet, but a quick glance here shows a typical set of tools, like enhancing the shades of red and cyan for the two images, as well as rotating and fixing the perspective for any of the images composing the anaglyph.
2. This button is my favorite. It is the Auto Alignment where the program does mostly everything you need and so far so good for me; It just does it perfectly in a way that enhances the depth of the anaglyph. A quick comparison between this auto alignment and Photoshop's alignment shows a clear difference in algorithm; The two alignments do not match. Also, when doing the alignment, the alignment data are saved in a folder to be called later in case you need to use it later. 
3. This button is called the Alignment Mode, and actually it is just a manual alignment mode where the program allows you to pick a point from the left image and match it to a point on the right image and voila! The two images are aligned accordingly. However, only ONE point is picked. It reminds me of the manual control points in problematic panoramas when stitching them in PTGui.
4. This button is for adjusting the colors automatically, as simple as that.
5. In case you don't like the alignment work that you've done, just click this button to reset.

The rest 2 buttons are something, well, out of my usage and expertise. Anyway, as can be seen, the fifth section is specifically dedicated for aligning the two images.
Here also, I didn't go through the menus, which really are direct and right forward mostly. However, there are a number of commands and options in the File menu that I do need to experiment with. Some of these commands are dedicated to save the stereo-image (not an anaglyph) in a specific manner with a specific border. Anyway, my main interest here was anaglyphs, and to be more specific, the red/cyan anaglyphs. So, this is for the general options available, now I'm going to move to list the Pros, and Cons.

Pros and Cons

Well, as I've mentioned earlier, I do like this little program, but I can't isolate it from my workflow with Photoshop just yet. After all, Photoshop might be needed at least to do the sharpening if necessary, right? However, there is more to this. To organize things, I'll make a list here of Pros and Cons. First let's see the Pros:

• The program supports a variety of basic file formats: JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PNG, JP2, JPT. I've tried to work with TIF 16-bit format myself and it works.
• Obviously, the easiness of use and being direct. If you don't know what a term means, just try it!
• The alignment of the two images might (just might, not sure about this yet) fix the problem of perspective change when you have the object in one shot larger than in the other. This is something that Photoshop (ahem CS5 for me) still not doing quite well. In fact, I see in this parameter here the seed of fixing my problem with Anaglyph panoramas.
• Gives a wide range of choices to adjust the anaglyph in terms of colors (original colors of the image as well as the shades of the anaglyph).
• The ability to flip right and left images easily to test which version has a better depth.
• Simple, very light program. No installation required or anything. Simply, unzip, and run.

Now for what I think this program needs, or didn't quite work well for me. These are just my thought of course and I don't think they would fit other people needs of course:

• Support for RAW files in some way or at least DNG format beside the basic formats mentioned above. It's hard, I know, but maybe there would be some way around it?
• The support for color spaces in such a way that the final image can be "converted" to that specific place. So far, and because I often needed opening the file in Photoshop for further adjustments, the best way to work with anaglyphs saved in StereoPhoto Maker was to "assign" (not "convert") the color space down to sRGB which might be fine for an anaglyph for a grayscale image, but for a colored image it would pull down so much vibrancy. So, if you are like me, like to work in ProPhoto or Adobe1998 color spaces, there will be a big hassle to tone down the Red and Cyan tones to fit the tones of the 3D Glasses.
• The support of more than one matching (control) point for aligning the two images (in the fifth section mentioned above). I feel one point, sometimes, is not enough. Of course, the aim of having one matching point here is originally to focus the depth of the anaglyph around one specific feature in the image, but also multi-points would help with some stretching or resizing the two images if needed, I guess?
• Adding an option to "Replace" one image for another while making the anaglyph to test and compare maybe (or simply in case of an error by using the wrong couple of images, it would be easier to replace one and keep the other).

At this level I wouldn't go far as to imagine such a little program working with HDR or 32-bit images, but who knows! It might happen one day. So far, creating anaglyphs from HDR images requires me to tone-map the two images (usually via Photomatix) using the same settings for both images. Might be fine for images snapped quickly, but could be problematic for panoramic images.

Anaglyph panorama done by StereoPhoto Maker (top) and manually by me (bottom). Personally, I do feel and see greater depth in the anaglyph created by StereoPhoto Maker. Check it out for yourself.
The tones in the two images are different for some long story, but both are tone-mapped from HDR panoramas.
Click to enlarge.

Finale

Well, this is the post for this week folks. I hope you find this review useful, even though I didn't explore the full potential of this little program yet, as there are a number of sub-menus and commands, specially those dedicated to fix and correct the anaglyph. However, this little review, as I believe, does not do any justice to the creators really. I'm already looking for any donations venue to support their work. In the pages I've mentioned above around the beginning of this review, there are a number other solutions for the anaglyph-making process and some of them are related to videos; Something I tried to do long ago but didn't succeed, so maybe these little solutions would help me further when I do get the time to work again on anaglyph-videos. Give it a try and give them some support if you will! Till next week…

YouPic: A Review…

Well, I can call this week to be a failure somewhat because I was not able to work with my camera, but I really have my excuses here; Eye appointment, fixes around the house, sleeping problems and lack of power and ideas (well, ideas are there but I'm procrastinating). And despite having 2 days of sick leave after my appointment, I didn't really invest much time into my camera. Hopefully I will do so soon and post whatever I can do here.
For this occasion and just not to keep this week without a blog post, I've decided to write a review, or more like a chain of thoughts about the website that I've recently "re-joined": YouPic. If you are reading this, bear in mind that this is just my thoughts and my observations and I'm not really aiming on pushing people into or away from the website, but it is simply my experience around it for the past 3 weeks or so since I've re-joined.

YouPic: A Review

I remember some years back when I joined YouPic, I've deleted my account after some weeks and I think the reason was, back then, that I didn't want myself to get involved so much into social media and waste time there instead of putting time and effort into my camera and real photography and away from "socializing." Now, however, I've re-joined because I've simply left Flickr and Instagram for good and this website did sound like a good substitution, for the time being. Anyway, now after some weeks of uploading photos there, I think I have to say that not everything I've encountered was positive. From my own perspective at least. To be fair, let me put that in a form of points to organize my thoughts, and classify them into Positives and Negatives.

Positives:

• Going around the website and reading the About section, the website is apparently established by a group of youth with great ambition (I think most of them are Swedes). Frankly, to deal with a website of that kind which is NOT based in the US like the bulk of the other "infamous" websites - that, for me, is a nice experiment that I'm willing to take away from the major stream.
• With paid membership (which I don't have still) one can establish a business through the website. I'm not sure yet how it works but seems there is a way to sell photos just like in stock websites, or maybe selling prints as well. Again, I didn't go through this experience because I don't have a paid membership, but the options are available and visible.
• The website has a system of "gaming" as I like to call it; Some sort of interactive awards (e.g. Award for traveling to 5 countries). I think it is dedicated who do like to achieve through challenges, and it is sort of fun to see the daily progress and the upgrade of levels and such.
• The website provides statistics for various aspects about your profile to track your progress and that is WITHOUT even having a paid membership (like the case with Flickr for example).
• Providing contemporary trending hashtags (as well as the typical aspects of social media, like messaging, commenting and sharing).
• The chance to "see" real photography with high resolution images as much as possible (unlike Instagram) and also providing categorization method for these photos (assigned by the uploader).
• It has an "Explore" section to find all about newly uploaded images or trending images and so on.
• Surfing through the website, I don't see much (if any) ads - Even though they advertise that with a paid membership, you will not see ads (with other benefits).

I think those are most of the points that occur to my mind right now about the positive side of YouPic. However, the negative, to me, is a bit of a killer on some sides, specially after encountering some incidents, which I will try to explain after listing the negatives.

Negatives:

• One major killer here is the pricing of memberships. The lowest membership type does actually cost, annually, more than Flickr's annual membership after their recent change in policies. Flickr's new policy caused some photographers (including me) to leave the platform for good as the annual membership is almost the double of what it was before. YouPic's annual membership does cost even more than that amount at about $60 for the Enthusiast membership; The lowest of the two options available.
• I'm not a fan of nudity but the website provides the users with the capability of tagging their images as "Adult Content" which does not view the image wherever you encounter it until you click few buttons. However, some people for some reason do not tag their nudity images and it shows clearly and directly making the website not suitable for some specific range of ages. Moreover, the admins of the website does not seem to track down these incidents efficiently as I can see it is such a common occurrence.
• Blocking a user is an available option (which I need to use actually). However, when blocking someone, you just block them from interacting with you only; You can still see their profile. I'm not sure if this is what most people want but for me, when I block someone, it means a block for good, in two directions.
• Starting first with the website, when I first started to upload, my images would get instant Likes and exposure. In time, the exposure did look quite limited and hard to get any and I'm not sure if this is related to the timing of upload.
• I started uploading my photos on some sort of a regular basis, twice or thrice a day, but then and out of sudden, I was shocked for the limitation of 12 hours time period between uploads because my account was Free type; Nothing was mentioned about the time limitation before in the process of registering.

I've mentioned above that there was some incidents which I might as well add to the negative side of things on YouPic, and maybe I'm starting to get a feeling that the website is trying to push me hard to get a membership in some hidden ways. Imaginations? Maybe, but this is how it feels right now.
When I started surfing the Explore section on YouPic (a nice leisure time activity actually that somewhat helps on inspiring me), I've noticed that some users that did upload ads as if it was Instagram. I did take it seriously and did report these posts and I got message from the admins thanking me for the help on keeping the community of YouPic clean. However, and strangely, after some time, I was not able to upload my photos. I've discovered later that I was able to upload through my laptop at work but not at home using my PC, and that meant that my IP address was on some kind of block list. I've contacted the admins over the course of some days to resolve the matter but nothing happened and the problem was not resolved. Finally, I'm now using a VPN service (free) just to upload my photos from home using my PC. In the course of this problem, I've received some messages from the admins offering me the membership and even with some discount using a special code as a promotion (estimating that, it was still higher than the annual fee for Flickr). This incident, now, pushed and pushes me to think that probably the problem with the sudden drop in exposure, and probably the uploading problem and maybe other downside matters might all be a "drive" to let new comers get involved with the website with paid memberships.

Please, don't get me wrong here with my suspicions. After all, they are just suspicions, but they felt and feel like true. The fact that I'm still unable to upload in a regular manner like before from home despite chatting with the admins and providing all the information they required is something that annoys me greatly despite the easiness of using a VPN, and for free.
The quite common posts of nudity (which I don't like to name as an art in the first place), which sometimes even gets down to the limit of being simply pornographic in nature and not quite related to the art of photography, and the incapability of tracking these photos effectively, makes the website not suitable for all ages (and for some people, not suitable for workplaces as well).
I think the website needs some rigid and effective push forward by changing some policies and methods used to manage the website BEFORE asking the users to purchase a membership with such prices. Thinking about it, Instagram would sound quite a suitable solution for photographers to spread and expose their images for free (despite its negatives) and with some good skills, any user on Instagram can turn his or her account into a base to start a business. For this reason, I don't think the prices of YouPic are justified still.

If you are reading this, I would advise you NOT to take my words for granted but to go out there and try the website yourself and make your own judgement about the website.

Bad and Happy...

Thursday. TGIT. Not only that, but a long holiday is coming for the national day here. Weekend (Friday, Saturday) then 2 extra days (Sunday, Monday). Thus I won't be working until next Tuesday. Some long time I needed, at least so that I can sleep as much as I want. Last night I slept as early as 9 or 10 o'clock, but stil it was hard to raise up around 5 in the morning.

I got some news this morning, which I don't really know whether should I be happy or worried about it! I was promoted to a senior level. I don't know how much extra is paid for this promotion, but it surely means more responsibilities. The other bad news here is... I've been buying chocolate and candies to people I know for these news! Who's the beneficiary here?

I've finally wrote reviews for the items I've ordered recently from B&H. The hardest ones to write were those for the small items. There is nothing to write and I didn't like to just skip it! Like the adapter ring for Cokin filters. What I'm supposed to write about it? After thinking for like 15 minutes, I ended up with "it fits my 55-200mm lens perfectly"! I just don't know what else could be mentioned about such items! There is no operating or anything!

Been hit lately with some waves of disapproval for HDR photography, either personally, or simply by going over some articles. Some people hate it because it doesn't reflect reality properly, and some people told me already that HDR doesn't make you a photographer, while some people simply said this is NOT even photography. The amazing thing about these arguments is, all of them discuss the nature of HDR, and not the beauty of the product or the artistic touch in the final product. I admit that I still can't control the exposure metering and I'm not a master in that field, but I developed somehow a vision to imagine things in HDR prior to my work behind the camera. I think this is called a "skill" I'd say. I'm trying though to expand my horizon with exposure metering. I think I will plan for my next book in photography. The portrait photography book...

 

I'm thinking as well of getting an "intervalometer". I got myself an "intervalometer" from the local Canon shop here, and I have to say it is of course a bit more expensive than the one on B&H website, but if you bear in mind the costs of shipping and duty,  I guess I will be paying the same amount of money (or maybe more!). Intervalometer is a device that would allow you to take several shots on a fixed interval of time, remotely. It's the tool I would need to make a "lapse-time" photography (or cinematography). I'm pretty sure you, as you read this, know these motion pictures where everything moves so fast (sunset, sunrise, plant growing up, ...etc).  Several pictures are taken on some long interval of time (relatively) and then combined in a sequence to form a movie. I've tried it already (manually) but I still can't fit it into a movie form. I was shooting on the roof all afternoon for around one hour and a half, and because I didn't have this device, I had to rely on my own timer, taking a picture (bracketed) every 5 minutes.

Start of the sequence after tone-mapping the HDR slide

Now, this intervalometer from Canon is like a Swiss army knife. It has many purposes concerning timings for taking your pictures, even controlling how long the Long Exposure (bulb) mode should last, or simply, it can work as a shutter controller instead of the IR remote (which can be annoying at times). The bad news is, you can't take bracketed shot in a single moment. When you set the option for the bracketed shot, then the program of the intervalometer will take a single shot of the sequence only each time the time comes as programmed. I made a review for this device already on B&H and mentioned that point.

Along with the intervalometer, I also got me a new tripod. I think the time has come to give up the old tripod which belonged to my father before (and majorly it was for those old large VCR cameras). I got it from the same shop and I tried to write a review about it but strangely, all the websites I've found were n Hebrew!

Cosmo LN-28

my new tripod

The tripod is good so far. Its value is reasonable (13 KD, that's around 46 USD). Might be somehow much for some people but to my expenses, this is reasonable. Since I didn't find a place to write my review about it, I think I will review it here and maybe someone will be reading this.

The body generally is made of aluminum and I believe it can take a heavy load. Despite the fact that it is larger and somehow bulkier than my previous tripod, but its weight is reasonable. It has a handle on the side to carry it (and comes with a special case to carry it around as well). It uses the click system, where you screw your camera to the base and the base is clicked into the tripod and can be removed easily in case you want to use the camera with hands.

The legs can be easily expanded vertically and horizontally, and in fact, the central support has a lock, enabling you to close the legs a bit and lock it that way to give more height for your tripod. The bottom of the legs (hooves) are also flexible. Very useful in case of setting the tripod on some rigid ground like rocks on the beach for example.

The neck is expandable. The total height of the tripod with the neck expanded to it's max point, and the legs are totally spread vertically and horizontally, is around my height (173cm, ~5'8), despite the fact on the package itself, the height is mentioned to be 163cm only. Maybe the meant without the neck expanded to the max. The height is very useful for my case when I try to take pictures for the sky and I have to bend my back just to look into the viewfinder. 

It has a hook at the bottom of the central support. Good for storing I guess, but I'm thinking of other uses for this hook as well (like hanging the tripod with the camera upside down. A bit shaky situation!). It also has spirit level to ensure that your setting is not inclined to any direction rather than the other.

The bad points now. As a left-handed person, this tripod can be hard to use, as the main level for leveling up and down is on the right side. I'm not sure I can flip it around though. Also, they didn't provide a screw converter (to fit in my VR-head). But I think I can manage with that one.

The thing that I still can't understand, why 99% of pages I've found when I googled this product, were in Hebrew! The product is marked as "made in China" though!

Ayvarith-wise now. I've mostly finished the main part of the Ayvarith text of Alexander's story, along with the preface in which I give a description and a guide of pronunciation. I think in this weekend, and since we are not going out because of the fiesta in this country and the jams, I will be working on the audio files a bit. Also, it is a good time to spend the night on the roof, even though it sounds a bit spooky. My photography progress is so slow in the current time and I barely have something to submit online. Also, because of my work with the Ayvarith text, I didn't have the time to write a new poem, even though some words are there floating in my mind. I think I will submit this now and go ahead and try to figure out to write something! Instead of writing some new I've taken the time to submit what I did already in the past few weeks and put them in some contests just to receive some exposure. There are good comments about them, specially The Beggar of Nothingville. I leave you now with a clip that I just can't stop laughing at... be careful, it has some "adult" contents!