Alexander 6, V1.

Somehow, it was a tiresome and busy weekend. I didn't post anything yesterday (Saturday) as I promised myself but anyway, it was not much of importance I believe, except to put on with the first verse of Alexander VI.
I made some experiments again with my beloved golden turtle, and this time I used the FEB (Flash Exposure Bracketing) as a substitute, since I can't use it in a completely dark room;



The blue background is actually black. But with some fixes and because of the flash light striking it, it turned bright and blue. Combining the three shots was done with Photomatix (and some values of exposures were adjusted since softwares use certain numbers in the EXIF of the image, i.e. data attached to the image). Yet, tone-mapping was done manually with Photoshop (and also fixes) because the Photomatix version was hard to smooth out and equalize the proportions of light. The image you see was actually like split horizontally in the middle, with bright portion being up and the dark shadow being down. Such thing cannot be done with Photomatix, but rather done easily with Photoshop's adjustment layers and brushes. Hue and Saturation were also fixed to some extent and voila! here you go. As for the time being, I've been using Photomatix to merge the images together and save it as EXR, and then edit them (mostly) with Photoshop. Sometimes, I get them back to Photomatix after adjusting them and saving back again in EXR, because my skills with manual tone-mapping are just novice!
This is some of my summary about using Photoshop and Photomatix in HDR making and Tone-mapping; of course people who read some books don't need it, as these are just my thoughts after working a with them, and there are plenty of softwares out there that are good for things and bad for other things maybe and so on:

Photoshop:

 - Good stuff:

• Gives you the ability to adjust the HDR image in various ways with adjustment layers.
• When joining into HDR, a dialogue box appears with calculated exposure values and gives you a choice to tick-out any unwanted images into the sequence.
• Got instant 32-bit slider to view the image in various exposure settings instantly.
• For those who like to use their own hands with baking the HDR, tone-mapping here with Adaptive settings (and others) are fine.
• Plugins capability makes it easier to do noise reduction after tone-mapping directly, if needed.

 - Bad stuff:

• Memory consumer.
• Exposure values cannot be changed manually (only if the file is stripped out of its EXIF data).
• Does not have a tool to view a HDR historgram.
• Aligning, while processing the images to HDR is not, compared to Photomatix, good enough.

 Photomatix:

- Good stuff:

• Does not consume much memory.
• Exposure values can be fixed in case of some problems with calculations (and you get a dialog box even when the brackets of the exposures are not even or normal let's say).
• Got Exposure Fusion capability (which is not an HDR merging but useful at times).
• Can view a HDR histogram (and this is extremely important for me to check that there are no cut-offs in the exposures sequence; at tails mainly).
• Saves the HDR image in major formats as Radiance (.HDR) and OpenEXR (.EXR, ZIP and PIZ).
• Tone-mapping is semi-automatic, with pre-fixed schemes and the ability to adjust the sliders. This is good for none-experienced manual workers like me!
• Has 2 aligning algorithms embedded and can be used in two modes: normal and high (in case your tripod moves much because of the air or something). It is far better than Photoshop's.

- Bad Stuff:

• Once the sequence of the images is made, and when an error pops-up for some problems in the exposure values, you cannot tick-out some images, but only fix the exposure values.
• Generally, it is not an image editing program, thus, you can't do much to your HDR image before baking.
• Personally, I don't trust the "noise reduction" option that is applied to the images before being combined. After all, noise reduction is a must after tone-mapping.
• No plugins capability, thus, you can't work with plugins embedded in it like Photoshop; plugins like NeatImage are deemed useful.
• No instant 32-bit viewer or slider to move and check the various exposures. There is however an option for going up and down with exposure (F11 and F12 keys) which isn't exactly as flexible as in Photoshop.

The term "bake" and "baking" I'm using here, is a term that adapted (and I like it by the way) from Christian Bloch's book, in which he explains how to fix HDR images before tone-mapping, i.e. baking. I think he was hungry when he was writing that section but anyway, it works fine with me... 'cos I'm always hungry.

With points from here and there, it is, at least for me, hard to work with one program alone. I do have to work with both here and there. Yet, my main first step in the workflow, would begin with combining the images in Photomaix first and saving the HDR file. Sometimes, but not often, I do combine the images into HDR in Photoshop but it is rather to check if there is any difference or any enhancement, since the two softwares tend to give me different calculated exposures' values for the same set of images.
I've been trying to do the same FEB trials on my old censer as before, and this time with a black background (from the papers I purchased last week). I did not design a black box yet, but so far I'm putting the paper freely and bend it softly to make a background. In my experiment with the censer (which I did not make up images for it yet), I used the diffuser on the flash head. I did not use it before because, I just thought it is designed mainly for the wide-lens apparatus (as mentioned in the manual) and to avoid vignetting (darkening of edges) when using wide-lens with normal flash. The flash tends to concentrate in one spot then. However, I used it with my 18-55mm lens and it works fine on spreading the flash to a wider area and softening the strike on the body of the censer itself. Why I didn't think of this before? Damn it!
When the diffuser is pulled out, the flash automatically sets the zoom level to that of a wide-lens, and maybe that's why I didn't try to use it in that condition.
Everything was going fine, until it was the time for the third shot which is supposed to have a relative exposure value of +3, when it turned out with a level of "0". This is bad for combining the images later on, even if I fixed the values manually in Photomatix. I made other shots changing from Av (aperture priority) mode to Tv (time priority), but here, the results were not exactly what I want, with the flames of the candle inside were almost turned off and the aperture was set to f5 making a shallow depth and no sparkles (like in the image of the turtle above). It is hard to combine elements from the 2 experiments, but I'm trying still, or I should conduct a new experiment today, completely.
__________
1. thus Alexander decided to leave his people
2. and head to where he never been before
3. alone without any companions
4. weak without any weapons
5. except of his Charnagút
6. and he walked with his torn clothes
7. amid the deserts and mounts and valleys
8. and he stopped at the ruins of Taghlút
9. the capital of the khanate of Ghutan
10. where he crushed some idolaters
11. just like a grain of salt in the wind
12. and he stood upon the ruins of the tower
13. of the mighty castle he wrecked with iron and fire
14. and he meditated and remembered his golden age
15. and the tears could not be kept in his eyes long
16. and he raised his harsh hands up to heaven
17. and praised God and His mercy
18. then he knew for sure deep inside him
19. that nothing in this life remains
20. and like you take, you shall be taken
21. and like you own, you are owned
22. while this life is nothing for sure
23. but like a grain of salt or sand
24. to the wind shall fly away

Alexander 5, V1.

Spent this week with other experiments again, but this time, with something else other than the censer (as in the previous days). However, there was still some business that I did not finish with that censer yet. I gave out a new trial with two ways; one was with the change in aperture values, and one with changing the ISO. In both cases however, the flash was used but of course aiming in some other direction other than a direct hit.
I will forget talking about the second type, with changing the ISO value and combining the results in HDR. This image was horrific after HDR making, and I didn't dare even to minimize it and put it for view over the net! Too much noise and dark areas and the real colors of the censer were not obvious, but only the flame inside was obvious.
In the first trial however, with the change in aperture, I think the result was not bad, but it needs a little fix later on because with small apertures (high f-numbers) a sparkle is made from light sources, and putting these all together then you would end up with some how a weird looking shape and some abnormal color saturations in the areas of the sparkles.

As you can see, the middle area is occupied with a star with abnormal saturation because of the change in apertures. Anyway, I think this is an easy case to be fixed with cloning in Photoshop or even Spot-Heal tool. The flash was pointing up and bouncing from the ceiling. I couldn't do a good job with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop, thus Photomatix is used to produce more saturation and contrast as much as possible.

The other experiment was to snap a picture of my beloved golden turtle which was a gift from my sister in one of my old birthdays (I really can't remember which one was it but for sure I was younger than 26 I remember).
Anyway, the thing here, it doesn't have a flame inside, and the body is rigid and won't give a very strong reflections of the flash like the censer did. It has a Unique body color almost, thus the contrast bit is a bit resolved to some extent. My aim was just shoot and see what happens really, and while I'm writing this I've just reckoned that I was supposed to put on a small aperture (high f-number) in order to make some sparkling from the surface. Anyway, I guess this would be my aim next time.
The shooting was made in several changes of camera modes and some were bad and some were good relatively:

1. Bracketed shot. The normal procedure that I usually follow; Av mode, the room light was on, and 3 bracketed shots (-2,0,+2). Photomatix was used here as I SUCK with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop.

2. Changing Shutter: With Tv (Time-Value priority) mode on, and working with my flash, I started to take a picture in the darkness with almost one third of the time value each time, starting from 30 seconds. That would be make it like: 30 seconds, 10 seconds, 3 seconds and so on. I got many that way and most of the images exceeding the time of one second were almost similar and dark even with a flash (the limit is 1/200 when the flash is in the work).
The images were combined, but apparently because of the noise coming from the dark images mostly, there was some weird noise and spots that appeared even before the tone-mapping, but in this small version here, it is not so much obvious, but it was apparent in the mouth area mostly, as some pinkish and bluish lines. Tone-mapping was also carried by Photomatix as usual and I kept these settings almost the same for the previous image and the coming images as well.

3. Less of Shutters: After making the previous one and knowing that many dark images can corrupt and add more unpleasant noises, I've picked up 3 shots from the series and combined them, then manually tone-mapped it. Although I don't like this tone-mapping really because it is too bright, some people already said it is better than the one I did in Photomatix.

4. FEB: Flash Exposure Bracketing. I was really not sure that this method would work at all. Of course it was not an option if I was using the camera flash, but here I'm able to do the same thing (almost) with the camera auto-bracketing but in the flash itself and in a range from -3 to 3, in 3 shots. What I really like about it is the saturation (done in Photomatix of course) and the clean background. This thing really can save lives!

 

5. The Dim Light: Here, I didn't use the flash at all, but rather I used my flashlight and pointed it to the white ceiling and that gave out a very dim light over the turtle. I've fixed the camera on Tv mode and set it out for auto-bracketing, and the shot started for 30 seconds for each of the 3 shots. The result was not bad even though with a yellowish hue all over because of the flashlight itself but this all can be fixed with a proper tone-mapping; which I did manually and with Photomatix here.

 

Manually tone-mapped. I'm bad with this though and the shadow of the head looks faint.

 
 

Tone-mapped with Photomatix.

In general, and since I was shooting without an aim at mind, I didn't care much about the angle, which later on sounded not a good one here . I think lowering the tripod a bit would be more pleasant, if I should say. Also, most of these images were taken with a wide aperture (low f-number) and hence, they have a shallow depth of field. Can be an advantage OR a disadvantage, but I would prefer to make a low depth with a more close-up version, probably to the head.

I'm starting to use Photomatix more here not only for the tone-mapping, but also for its superiority in aligning images, and also for its HDR histogram option. It is important to check the HDR historgram to check that you wouldn't have a cut-out in the tails of the histogram, or in other words, a chop in shadows or highlights. It is really weird and strange that Photoshop still does not include such an option. Photoshop is favorable though, sometimes, for editing work in 32-bit mode just before tone-mapping. 

I sent a suggestion to Canstockphoto people, asking them if they are willing to allow people to upload HDR images. The response was positive I can say and who knows, they might be the first website I've ever known that allow upoads for HDR images. So far, I don't know of any website that does this. HDR images (and specially panoramas) are important for cases of Computer Graphics and making up an environment with good lighting.

Today I begin posting the 5th part of Alexander's story. Hope you enjoy reading it, if you will...

__________
1. and the hero moved out of the forest
2. with sadness filling his heart to the fullest
3. and he left some of his men to manage the forest
4. but now he has no power to fight or to war
5. for only one hundred men are left with him
6. and he wondered about his next direction
7. is it south or to the land of day and night
8. for he knew he will be back there one day
9. he decided to go south and pass on the middle land
10. and see what wonders might come or commands
11. while his one hundred men were his faithful and closest
12. then at night they camped in the wilderness like nomads
13. tired from all the troubles they tried and saw before
14. and the heaviness of metals broke their backs
15. at night time they slept and Alexander had a dream
16. weird it was and Alexander could not explain
17. he saw people like monks covering their heads
18. they were telling him to come down to them
19. because life is such an agony and wild
20. where no love remains and no soul
21. they asked him to come and see
22. the wonders of God that none did see
23. he then woke up with a fast heart beating
24. and spent the night awaken by the shock

Alexander 4, V1.

Still struggling. I seem can't fill the interior circle for my new work of "Caisleán Achadh na nIubhar - Little planet". The projection makes a hole in the middle which will be filled with white in case I saved as a JPG, unfortunately. I'm trying to work around this problem for a week now! And as always, my RAMs are always a pain.

Early Friday, that is, after midnight and the beginning of Friday, I went on a little semi-adventure after dropping my friend back home, alive. While driving here and there that night I noticed that beautiful building that I insisted on snapping it, and since my friend was a chicken I had to drop him back home and then get to work. I wonder if he was afraid of ghosts at that time or just afraid of cops. However, I went on roaming around that building here and there trying to catch a good spot to snap it, and in the same, an isolated one somehow. I went into some weird alleys, full of dust and bumps and my car almost turned into a bicycle, but the angle there was not so good. After all, I roamed around again and found out a nice spot although it was not so isolated but yet it was somehow a quiet place; the parking lot in front of the Khalijiya complex, where the DHL facility lies. There far away in the parking lot, I used my telephoto lens in a speedy manner in that cold weather that I didn't check even some settings for mirror-lock-up before shooting, and snapped the image;

The images were hard to compose though into HDR. I took 6 images (2 series of 3 shots, with focus changing from f5.6 to f16). The problem is, the wind played a role and shook the tripod a bit. Photomatix played a nice role in aligning the displacement somehow but Photoshop did not. The technique of aligning images is described in the HDR book made by Christian bloch, and seems the Photomatix algorithm is more complex than its counterpart in Photoshop. However, some work was needed later on to cool down the colors (the original image was yellowish) and to crop the image to remove the objects at the bottom that were blocking the way of my lens. I'm not completely satisfied about it but at least, I tried. The moon at the top is a later addition, beside, there was a crane on the top of the building that I had to clone-out.

It's not the first time I take a picture of this building by the way, but that night was special. The blue lights in the building were magnificent.

__________

1. thirty days and thirty nights the hero spent
2. in the lands of the bulughmans, the nomads
3. he taught them arts and crafts
4. he taught them how to speak in manners
5. he taught them how to write and read their own words
6. their letters were called the Bogol
7. and their tribes as the bulughmans
8. and then he taught them how to build houses
9. how to plant trees and how to find water
10. then he prayed to God to bless the lands
11. and clean the hearts from envy and mischief
12. as much as He desires so to be for them
13. then the rumbling started among the men
14. some are tired and some want the homelands
15. while some asked for more lands to takeover
16. and now Alexander had half of what he had
17. he stood in the middle of his camp
18. one point from his hand and everyone was silent
19. and after praising God and His favors
20. and after he reminded them about his vow
21. he announced firmly to them
22. that he will not move or get back
23. until the commands of God reveal themselves
24. or until his soul is taken away from his body

Alexander 3, V1.

Not much of photography for this weekend or experiments, as I'm out of ideas. But rather, I spent some time trying my new flash against the faces of the family just to make some sense on how to use it and how to adjust the light to my needs. In fact, my main interest in the flash is to give enough light when I use high shutter speeds, and I use high shutter speeds to compensate for my shake of hands when I'm on the go without a tripod (or more precisely, not in mood to put up a tripod!).
For the time being I'm checking for shots here and there from Ireland and this time I've reached the folder which I call, the "Damned." The folder contains some panoramas that really made a headache for me in the past and I might as well go again with it. It's entitled (2009-10-04). Two folders prior to that contain some images that I've done before and already inspected, thus I didn't spend much time with them and moved directly to the next folder. But one of the images in the folders before was something that I think I didn't make up before (or I made in some small size);

My window's view in The Waterfront, Co. Galway, Ireland.

Dandelion near Oughterard's Golf Field 

As for now, I'm surfing Amazon to see more books related to some fields of photography and other stuff and tools.  I put them all on my wish list to refer back whenever I want to. I also made an order from Astrodiesnt, for a "psychological astrology profile," and the introduction was interesting enough that it seems almost like 100% accurate, but I have to continue reading it (I stopped reading to write this post first!).

As for now, here you go, with Alexander 3, Verse 1.

__________

1. Alexander camped 7 days and 7 nights
2. he organized the west, spread the goodness
3. he banished the evil from the hearts
4. and the message of Heavens arrived
5. "Alexander, catch the sun from its roots"
6. on the 8th day he got ready with his soldiers
7. and along the long path he should go
8. amid deserts and forests, amid waters and fires
9. people come and go, tribes settle and move
10. wars and victories, along with friendships
11. some joined him by their well and some by force
12. until he reached the line of the day
13. where night falls just after the other side
14. he made a decision to settle with the hordes
15. amid the noise of hatred among the men
16. amid the fear that spread among their hearts
17. but the hero had a heart of a man and man shall be
18. and a gaze to the generals he made and they settled down
19. while he wandered between the two lands
20. he praised God for His wonders in that spot
21. while angels came down greeting him with a smile
22. they told him he will be back here one day
23. to see wonders beyond the wonders
24. in some land they called Ayvar

Alexander 2, V1

It is not an usual thing to post in this blog in weekend days, to me at least, but here I am after finishing the stitching for the Dome's picture. It was not an easy task anyway!
Coming to some calculations and after downloading the RAW images from my camera, the shots run over 21 angles (20 continuous in a circle and the last one was a zenith), and in each angle I had to shoot 3 times with exposure bracketing, thus 3 x 21 = 63! Ta da!

The composition was not easy and I had to try many times in the past 2 days because of my damned memory limitations! All of that happened when my stitching program did not work wonders as usual and there was some mis-alignment in the layers, and working in OpenEXR in 32 bits is not an easy task for my memory. I wanted to resolve the matter with Photoshop but yet, the results were even worse because nothing could be accomplished with such memory. At the end, with some tweaking in the software itself I was able to produce some decent image with less errors and the output was saved of course in EXR format as well;



The above images (when enlarged) can look a bit of cumbersome with some spots in colors, well this is mainly because I saved it as a GIF to keep the transparent background and keep the image circular completely without any white background. Of course I couldn't be able to submit a GIF to stock sites so they are saved as JPG as well. However, there are 2 versions here because I worked with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop (the bright one) while had a trial with Photomatix (the darker one). I've submitted the two currently to stock sites, you wouldn't know what people want. In tone-mapping (specially the manual one) you can produce many different aspect from a single image. I might go over with a third trial as well with a different method.
As I prmised before, here is the second part of Alexander's story. To make it a bit longer, I shall put only a verse at a time. Today it's Part 2, verse 1.
__________

It is the morning and its glory that began
and Alexander viewed his armies from the balcony
The sun's heat was heavy on the heads and metal
and the brave hearts were looking to the balcony
Whispers became obvious, and then into shouts
the hero raised one hand high into the heaven
With a glance of sun's ray over his fingers
the crowds kept silent like preying wolves
The Alexander started the speech with praises
for the Lord of earth and Lord of heavens
Then announced the beginning of the journey
of hardships and agony, under the Eyes of God
And by the commandments of the Almighty
the crowd of armies headed to the west
Into some lands they have never seen
into some lands they have never heard of
And the time had come now to go ahead
and all shall be heading towards the west
And although the graceful mother of the hero
wept and wept until her eyes became white
By the grace of God he calmed her down
and she understood no one here shall be left
For the Earth is nothing but a revolving wheel
of happiness and agony, of life and death as well