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...

A Vacation?

What a little vacation I was looking for. Since Sunday there had been winds and dust that canceled the trip to Failaka island on Sunday and Monday, while Tuesday is off. The good thing though is I can sleep as much as I want, and also I kind of had time to clean my room! (Yes, clean my room). Also, I've been taking some simple pictures in this weather for the beach and doing a time-lapse (since the tripod was there preparing to shoot a video on Failaka from the car). By coincidence, I blocked the camera rear when the camera is on the tripod inside the car, and that's by putting my handbag which contains my old tripod and the VR-head on an extra shelf in my trunk. I always wanted to do that before because when I shoot a video, the LCD of the camera will be obvious and people can see (from the back) that I'm running the camera, specially when I raise the tripod's neck a bit.

Vivid Dreams

With the turbulent weather in the early morning and before the arrival of dust in the air, there was a moment when the clouds (and not the dust) blocked the sun on the beach, after having my breakfast there. With the sun, it was naturally my first choice to go on with HDR to show the details in the clouds later. Maybe not much details are shown here but originally, the images didn't show much details for them at all (except of the darkest one at -2EV). Maybe I should have adjusted the interval of the exposures. Nevertheless, some shots were indeed processed directly from the RAW files and not into HDR. The only problem here is, I like to process those in ProPhoto space which Photobucket and MostPhotos websites don't recognize!

Vivid Dreams II
from single RAW

Of course the colors you see here are a bit desaturated and not as vivid and wild as they should be in ProPhoto. However, some people liked it "soft" like that already, which is something good, for now.
On Wednesday, I decided to go to the Scientific Center and try my luck with photography if I was allowed. Well, the beginning was scary a bit and the security was hesitant to let me in, but at the reception I've discussed the matter with the receptionist, while the hall looked so busy with lot of students as it seems! Great; another strike from my luck. However, the receptionist made me sign a paper which had some legal terms of how to use the pictures and I'm supposed to give them the pictures on a CD or something after I finish. My shoot was in RAW and I completely used my 16GB CF, then my 1GB then my last resort, the 8GB CF (which was in the old Canon 350D and I didn't want to remove it till I really needed it). Quite a load! I'm not sure if I can use these pictures online though but I did submit some of them already!
For me, it was only an experience to take pictures in the darkness. Thus all the shots were in high ISO (meaning more noise). I've tried to process some snaps but the results were not really to my liking, and I had hard time as well because of the "mess" around with all these kids! UGH!

Random Theory

Lynx1
وشق

Zebra fish

The rest is still waiting to be processed of course. The noise level is high and the pictures are better viewed in small size and not in the original 18MP size, obviously! This trial made me think of other trials in the future since it is kind of easy to just "sign a paper" and "get on"! The other bad point is that I didn't have my tripod or monopod; with my fear already I didn't want to take a risk, and the result was a lot of shaky images.

The Turntable:

Now, I've been thinking of some concrete way of making this turntable and I think I've found the solution in a cork mat and a Velcro sticker. After some trials I think this will do (as I didn't try it for real yet). Of course I had to add a white cover for the cork mat to make it more proper in white instead of the brown shade!

The cork mat with Velcro patch on the soft face, and 4 small patches stuck on the slider on the right of the cork mat. The slider is a piece provided as an extra with my VR-head (Manfrotto SPH303) as an accessory to use small cameras with this VR-head. And yes, those are my slippers on the ground.

The cork mat with a white soft sheet stuck on its top (or on the harsh part).

Now, all what is left is to put this cork mat on the slider and then fix them on the top of the rotating part of the VR-head. Voila! A turn table. The point is stabilizing the disk itself and not rotating it by itself, as the rotation will be done by the base, hence, I guess a hard type of Velcro to make it stable while rotating is enough. Maybe extra stuff needed to stabilize the object on the top when at work, and currently I'm using some playing clay (play-duh or whatever brand that is) to stick my objects. It's not always a good option though, as I did with this simple macro shot...

Black Beauty

In this shot, the yellow clay was all around the shell in the background, which was stuck to a white board, however, Photoshop did the job and I managed to remove it. The problem is, maybe a small amount won't be enough to stick some objects. This shouldn't be a big deal on a flat turning table, but just in case. I still need to try it out. The next step now is to work seriously hard on my "flattening objects" project.

Well, all in all, it wasn't that bad in this short vacation, although lot of things I wanted to do, I didn't; like my trip to Failaka which was disturbed by the weather, and also my own recordings for the Ayvarith text which I completely forgot about, but at least was able to sleep and wake up without any stress for one week, but all of this will be back the coming week...

Silent Observer