Sonnenaktivität

Here we are; a new year. I won't be talking about resolutions here as, in fact, the new year thing is not widely separated and the concept of New Year's resolutions is just something weird for most of the people here - needless to say that we grow up without really considering it something special that a solar year passed and a new one began.
I can't say my beginnings of this year were good, but I really couldn't care lesser about my bad luck, or the troublesome conflicts with other people around me, specifically at work. This, by now, became like a daily dish for me.
One of my great sorrows for the past week is that I wasn't able to go out at night during the long "weekend" which consisted of 4 days and shoot at night. Mainly because not much scenes were available, and some of the locations that I've used to visit for some solitude and silences, were bugged by annoying people and their trash. Luckily, I did some of my homework the week before and did shoot something at night.

Blaue Nacht

From the early beginning of that night, it was a helpless endeavor trying to find out something to do and not to sleep that early in a such winter night. My first pick was a location that I used to visit years back, and specifically at such time of the year (and even did a panorama there deep in low tide time). This time, however, the situation had changed. People (specifically the annoying type) were still roaming the place. I tried my best to stay away from the rest and do my own business.

Ausstrahl
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/11, HDR.

I have to say that the main reason for visiting old location is some inspiring kick that got to me when I viewed some old images (specially those I've made into 3D anaglyph images) of a broken shade on the beach. Back then, I didn't have the fisheye lenses that I do have now, specially the Rokinon 8mm. Thus, I've decided to re-discover the area and this shade specifically with my Rokinon because, simply, the geometrical patterns were inspiring as they are.
As I settled down in the place, over the soft sand, I was faced with two main problems: a) setting up the tripod on a soft ground, and b) the flare from the harsh lights of the restaurant at my back. In the final image, Ausstrahl you can still see some traces of the flare even after the crop. One of the problems with fisheye lenses like Rokinon, with a large field of view, it is the hardship to use a flag to block other light sources that cause the flare; simply because there is a big chance that the flag would get into the frame, and when moved out of the frame it does not technically block anything!
On the soft sands it took me some time to settle and to take some test shots with ISO12800 to judge my composition. I've decided then to go with long exposure brackets; something that became a favorite activity at night exposures. Can't remember the exact timing but it ranged from about 8 minutes down to around 30 seconds. Almost at the end of the exposures, some guy was peeking from the top of the concrete wall behind me and started to make comments. His comments weren't bad or vulgar, but they were simply nosy. Thus, when I felt the situation being like that, I didn't stay longer and picked my stuff and left the place.

Altar
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 4m, ISO100.

Leaving the first location, I still had the urge to work a bit more, thus I've visited Soog Sharg dock place where I made some shots several times previously. This time, it was relatively quite (as the time was nearing dawn by then). Even though I did take several shots with different times thinking of bracketing and merging into HDR when I finish, but at the end I only picked the first shot that took me 4 minutes. The rest was a play in the RAW editor (DxO in this case) to fix the shadows and highlights as much as possible, along with the distortion but not to the extreme flattened look. That night, however, wasn't the last activity for me in 2013!

Pajero

As I've mentioned before, I've got a new car just before the end of 2013. A Pajero. I really like driving it and it was a great help with the rains that hammered over Kuwait this week. I'm grateful.

Pajero 2014

The day I picked to shoot my new car was cloudy and prior to some light rains back then, but with HDR rendering I was able to show details in the clouds above. For such an elevated car, it was hard to pick up a proper angle to shoot form a lower level, unlike my previous car, Seat.
I've taken several shots as well from various angles. However, no need to put them here as they are just regular ones. The main interest for me now is to do a panorama from inside like I did with Seat. I've managed to check the rear and I've almost settled with my mental process on how to setup the gear inside - but I do need a proper place to work (for some long time) and it should have proper light level. Let's not forget that I must wash the car prior to my work!
There is one old panorama taken from inside of Seat, which I've done in the parking lot of my work place, but now with my sickness of this place, I've neglected the idea of heading there and shoot a panorama.

Sonne

In the past 2 weeks I've picked up a new hobby. Shooting at the sun. Well, it can be classified as astrophotography, but the case with me is that I'm not completely within the reach of astrophotography; but my main interest is the sun, and the moon of course.
This main interest was sparked (again) in fact when I was surfing B&H website to find what was new for me back then, the mirror lenses. With some little research and study, it seems that those lenses are in fact just small telescopes to be attached to the camera (with the help of some adapters too). This even sparked in me the desire to, maybe one day, get my own telescope and try some astrophotography - but we would need REAL good locations for such hobby, and the urban areas where I live and roam are, of course, not suitable for such task.

Sonne I
Red arrows point to noise bits from the system itself.
Blue arrows point to features on the sun itself.

My first trial to shoot at the sun was with my relatively-new Sigma 70-300mm. As I used to do with the moon, with my Tamron back then, I've attached two x2 teleconverters to raise the focal length to 1200mm. Using the two teleconverters can be awkward in normal conditions because the light quality becomes lower, but with the sun, we would still need some filters to block the harsh light, and here comes the welding glass (green) to do the role.
The welding glass provides around 11.7 stops which was enough to look at the sun thru the LiveView LCD at the back. They say, usually, if it is safe for your eyes, then it is safe for your camera when it comes to shooting at the sun, and this is what I've done in fact. Focusing, however, was a bit troublesome; typical for such a long focal length and a shaky system. I think I do need a collar to hold the lenses to the tripod like how it is done with typical large telephoto lenses.

Sonne II

I did another trial few days later but this time the harsh spots from the system itself did vanish, and I'm not sure why! Maybe it has something to do with the focus itself. When focusing at a subject like this I usually zoom the LiveView to the edge of the sun disk and try to make it out as sharp as possible visually (which is not always a good solution). With two teleconverters (and f-number exceeding f/2.8 in multitudes!), the AF function is simply idle. Just to note here that the image were corrected for colors later of course. In Sonne II, the spots (or flare?) are more obvious than in Sonne I. The best has yet to come though...

Sonne III

My third trial with the sun was done differently. I've used the IR filter instead of the welding glass. The thing about the IR filter is that I can't technically measure the number of stops it reduces, because mainly it is intended to block visible spectrum and pass the IR band of the spectrum - this is the main goal for producing it, and using it! Thus, with this uncertainty in my mind, I kept some ND filters at hand just in case I do need to reduce the light even further. Just to notice, my IR filter thread is 58mm and my Sigma's thread is 62mm, thus I had to use a step-down adapter between the two which causes a bit of vignetting at the edges, but here it's not really important.

Sonne III
Original IR shot.

The light level, however, was easily controlled then by the shutter speed and the aperture (which was kept at maximum) and reducing the ISO too (back to 100!). All that was done as I was watching the LiveView. Not so surprising, focusing using the IR filter was much easier and I could achieve a relatively sharper edge focus. This is understandable since the welding glass is bulky and it technically hangs in front of the lens, while is IR filter is screwed in. What I'm not sure of though, does the IR radiation has any part in any of that? Meaning, does the IR radiation come into focus and NOT the harsh disk of the sun itself? Logic says that I've been focusing with the help of the IR band since I'm using an IR filter - but who knows! However, with Sonne III I was even luckier to find several spots at the center of the sun. Adding to that, the original IR shot did have some "halo" around the disk, unlike the dull image done with the welding glass. Seems to me that it is all a good practice for now before, one day, getting my hand on a mirror lens or even a telescope.

The f-Problem

One of the problems that accompany using a teleconverter is the fact that not all information might be recorded in the EXIF of the image file, or even communicated with the camera itself. In my case, my Bower x2 teleconverter would communicate such information, but the Vivitar x2 teleconverter does not communicate any of such information with the camera. Thus, the camera would show f/22 for example, but in reality the f-number is supposedly larger than f/22; after all, the f-number is a ratio.

When shooting at the sun with my two x2 teleconverters, the recorded f-number was f/64. I thought, if someone would try to track the information of the shot to try and do something similar, the consequences might be not "pleasant". Also, I have to think about the future use if I want to mention such information with my images, like in this blog for example, and definitely such information would be misleading. All in all, there must be some accuracy in the information represented with the images. Sigma's maximum f-number is f/22, and it is recorded as f/64 when using the two x2 teleconverter, and this value comes from the Bower teleconverter alone.

Hitting mathematics, let's see what does that mean. That is, having f/64 with two x2 teleconverters and the lens zoomed to 300mm. First of all, let's get the diameter of the aperture here without teleconverters:

N=f/D;

Where N is the f-number, f is the focal length, and D is the diameter. Simple algebra, and we get the equation of the diameter as:

D=f/N;

Thus, in normal conditions with 300mm focal length and maximum f-number of f/22 (as in the Sigma 70-300mm lens), the diameter should be: 300/22 = 13.636mm. 

Now, the teleconverters are just magnifiers and do not have any aperture control. In return, then, the diameter doesn't change with the addition of teleconverters, but the focal length does. With two x2 converters, the focal length is theoretically expanded to 1200mm! (300 x2 x2). Now, if we supposed that the f-number is indeed f/64, and the diameter of the aperture is not changed, what would the focal length be in that case? Again, simple algebra would give the equation as: f=ND. Meaning, the focal length is: 64x13.636 =872.727mm. A wrong answer of course.

Using the above equations again to find the correct f-number, it would be: 1200/13.636 = 88. It is worthy to note that in the specs of such teleconverters, it is mentioned already that they double the f-number, but the problem here lies a bit in the mathematics involved, because f-numbers are not based on the rule of stops of 2ⁿ, but rather on 2^n/2. I find the method of finding the diameter is more "direct" if I can call it so!

This item of info, though simple, I believe it would play some role in critical times when calculating the required exposure becomes essential and finding the correct f-number would be a must at such times, along with other uses.

Finale

Gaston Bachelard
The Aesthetics of The Image
Ghada Al-Imam, PhD.

Husain Ali, PhD.
The Philosophy of Art
A New Vision

My arsenal of books is about to finish, but that's going slowly for the time being. Two interesting books (somewhat) are on the list for now. The first is a discussion of Gaston Bachelard's (1884-1962) philosophy. In fact, despite the title of the book, I thought it would be a direct impact on the matter of the arts, but it turned out to be a highly deep and sophisticated discussion for various themes, and generally for the relation between science and art. I had to stop when I reached around quarter of the book or even lesser than that because, simply, I could not comprehend a single word from the text. Thus, I've just decided to put it aside for later and start reading the second book on the list. The second book, The Philosophy of Art, is more clear in its aspects about art and the philosophy related to it. I've just began reading it though and I need to see what comes next; at least the talk is clearer and I'm able to follow the ideas so far. I'm not expected though some tips about how to criticize a work of art or the likeness of that, but at least I might develop my own sense and evaluation of art in order to see future work with a philosophical eye, and not simply with the visual attraction.

Aside from the cultural venue, I've been suffering a lot of downs with no ups. Mom's condition is not getting any better (though stable), and in my work place things are getting on my nerves more and more. In fact, my work right now is the last thing I do care about. The mediocre, if not poor, treatment from the administrative people in my work place makes me question the value of my dignity and respect relative to those people. It's not the first time to think of seriously leaving that work place and be on my own doing my own job and the things I like - but it is better to be with moonlighting; that is working with a stable job and a side job until the situation becomes concrete on the side job. I didn't start this yet even and makes me wonder what to do next. What angers me the most is to realize that I've spent 6 years in this college to get a scientific degree, to be controlled then by a bunch of monkeys that barely know how to do algebra and simply got no considerations for our simplest rights.

The situation is vague. I'm simply living each day to its extent and trying hard not to think of tomorrow. It's hard to neglect that because of the hammered mind, an expectation for a new trouble arises with every morning I turn my opened for the daylight. My heart is tired.

Shattered Poltergeist...

The week started with a dust wave and suffocated lungs for some. Many things are keeping my mind occupied at the moment, but trying to push my work forward for now with the new pictures taken from Failaka island. Full panoramas, handheld panoramas, all are on the list and I'm trying to pick some new items to include in my website, but the great burden for now is the expo, which seems from my perspective that I'm enrolled in it alone and not with anyone else (i.e. my sister). I'm writing these words earlier so as to be posted on Thursday as scheduled. I'm nervous somehow for the expo, but I'm hoping for a positive response (but I'm not confident I will get it). I just hope I close my eyes and open them again and everything is just over with. I have to get ready to decorate the booth. I don't know how, but we'll see in time.

This said now, I've spent my days in the past week mainly on doing photos from Failaka taken recently in my last visit last week. I've started to name some of them with Greek names already, relating to the Greek past of the island. In fact, the history of the island and its surroundings of other islands and the main land of Kuwait do extend further back in history before the Sumerian civilization in the same area, in what is known as the Ubaid culture. Known as Culture because it is not yet in the level of an organization as a civilization, but something below that with tribes living under certain common shared thoughts and ideologies.
However, beside Latin, Greek seems a promising and interesting point of change in naming some of my pictures. I wonder though if I will put the name on my pictures, and whether, in case I put them there, would or should I put the original Greek text or a transliteration of the name? I'm not sure yet, but seems the original text in Greek is quite attractive to the eyes (and people are not used to it). I'm still looking through the collection I've made so far and I'm not sure I still got quite the image to add to my website. All of this talk about the Greek and Hellenic past of this island, makes me wonder, is there a Greek blood in this nation? Was the island just deserted by the Hellenic soldiers and other settlers came in? Or, life continued in a continued spectrum of living through the ages; Hellenic, Christian, Abbasid, to the time of modern Kuwait? I suppose some DNA tests can do some work here!

Processing Story

I. New Planet:

Until the time of writing these, I'm having some hard time with some panoramas, specially the one I made for the hotel itself from the inside. I'm not sure why but enough to say the panorama is full of straight lines with less features specially on the upper part of the panorama.
However, there were some successes on small fronts I'd say. Like the Planet Herba, made from some location near by the old bank location (and posted previously last week).

Planeta Herba

Probably should have named it in Greek! But the idea back then didn't occur to me in fact. This is one of the images under consideration for a simple QTVR (without zenith and nadir originally) and also, of course, a flat panorama of some projection (e.g. mercator, spherical) or even a tunnel view. It is under consideration as well to be added to my website for printing.

II. Megalou:

One of the largest panoramas done so far (and only in flat format so far) is the one I took from the ramp few moments before complete sunset...

Before The Storm

There was no real storm in fact, it is just a title! Anyway, I challenged myself (and my computer) here to do this panorama at 20,000 pixels wide (20K, 20 thousand). The maximum I've been doing so far was 10,000; meaning this is the double. Things went OK with the tone-mapping later on and hopefully I will produce more projections of this panorama alone too. A little planet is already waiting to be processed.
I've changed the watermark here into my new website, as a form of advertising, though I know it is hard to read anyway! I've been embedding the website also in the file's info (IPTC).

III. Poltergeist:

Then comes one of the most beloved shots to my heart, but unfortunately, something I can't put on my website and offer as a print because, simply, it is not in the taste of regular people! However, it is one of these images that offer you many chances of changes in colors, specially when done in HDR...

Poltergeist

Poltergeist - BW

Poltergeist; in Arabic this name is translated into something close to "Noisy Ghost" [الشبح الضاج] but Google Translation machine was not good enough and simply yielded [evil spirit] in Arabic.
The place is the main power plant, with many turbines like these three spreading all over the place, and those were the last ones in the plant, with some space allowing me to stand and erect a tripod. There is a third version of the same image, done in low saturation style, but not shown here. A friend said it is more mysterious that way (low saturated), even more than the Black and White version, while some did like the colored version, maybe for the looks themselves without much feelings put into it. I like both versions, but I'm not sure it will be a lovely subject for printing, thus I'm reluctant to add it to my website so far.
Cleaning the noise from the colored version needed a bit of a lengthy work and layer masks added to control the effect (again, the Median trick). The Black and White version on the other hand was dealt with with a trick of "glamor" addition; an effect that adds a bit of fog to the highlights with some blur, to give a ghostly look.

IV. Golden Days:

An image that I was considering for adding up to my website, despite the comments I've received from some friends about its background.

Golden Days

Golden Days - BW

The image might be a bit unclear in this size with the water mark, however, the comments were pointing about the background of the dark trees. It can be a problematic view, with dark spots catching the eyes of the observer before the golden stems. I'm not sure Iwill add it, or maybe the black and white version is a bit less in distraction? I'm not sure yet...

V. Tranquility:

I've mentioned earlier that I've managed to do some handheld panoramas on the island; well, not completely handheld in this case here, but the main point here is that the VR-head was not used for such a simple panorama. Maybe it is one of these instances where a tilt-shift lenses can be useful for a simple job like this.

Tranquil Door

The stitching of course was not out of problems, and some cloning was used later on to fix some points. Unfortunately, my aim from the very beginning when I captured this panorama (with regular pan head on tripod with 6 angles; 3 top, 3 low) is to have a flat image with horizontal line being flat and straight; not curved.
Fixing the image was hard to be done, and even more hardships arrived with DxO as problems occurred with edited TIFF files. The files cannot be loaded into the program to be fixed for distortion and other things; and once loaded, it was hard to fix without losing key features in the image (by the cropping). I've decided to leave it like that after all.
The main purpose of the image, as the title endorses, is the simplicity of life and the tranquility provided in the island, with some depth. I'm not sure though, but seems there is a weak connection between the style of the old homes on the island with the Hellenistic style. I even remember that some old houses (deserted by now) were decorated in white and blue, just like the typical homes and houses that the Greek islands are famous for!

VI. Elliniki Glossa:

It was in fact the previous image, Tranquil Door, that inspired me to start to name some of my images from the island in Greek; as to show the Hellenistic connection with the island and its history. It was a bit hard in the beginning (technically) but I guess with CharMap provided by the Windows system itself, it is possible to type down simple names with ease (but I do have a Greek keyboard layout installed).

Ερείπια (Ereípia)
Ruins

One of the funny things that I've faced when trying to type in Greek, is to discover that when typing in caps, the accent marks on a vowel are not placed on top like the regular Latin-based alphabets (e.g. É, Í) but instead, on the side! I thought in beginning there is a problem with my keyboard system until I've checked it out on some dictionaries online. Thus, if I was to write down the name of the image above all in caps that would be: Ε Ρ Ε Ί Π Ι Α. A bit awkward to my eyes if you ask me! Anyway, because the Greek alphabet is shorter than most of the Latin-based alphabets, I had some hard time finding the accent key on the keyboard; but the good news is that still most of the letters of the Greek alphabet coincide on keyboard with their Latin counterpart.

Back to the image.I rarely do take sunset images in fact since my work is typically at sunrise moments, when the beach area, on the mainland that is, is usually not so stuffed with people (but some annoying moments persist still). Anyway, this one image was one of the rarest moments. I've decided to make a silhouette here (by metering the highlights and putting down EV to one stop or so). In fact, right now I regret that I didn't experiment with my flash unit to make some interesting foreground and background. I did take some shots in a series of the same scene changing the value of the EV, but after all no HDR was intended, but only a single RAW file editing.

The morning started with a staggering wind and a low tide on the shores in front of the hotel. Although I was planning to wake up late since the ferry won't be leaving the island until 2 p.m., but anyway seems the freshening air there would keep you active all the time. I went hunting for snapshots along the beach, and it did feel like something... mediterranean, even though I've never been to any county across the Mediterranean.

Παραλία του Ίκαρου (Paralía tou Íkarou)
Beach of Ikaros

It is one of the images that I might consider adding to my website collection for printing despite the fact that in a close up view, there are some out of focus region as it seems. However, my experience so far with the prints somehow tell me that such out of focus regions are not a big deal, specially for large prints that are designed specifically to be viewed from afar and not in a close encounter. Also, with extra sharpening and canvas printing, such problems tend to be "covered up".
It was a hard time doing this image out of a single RAW. Although taken in brackets for HDR, but I thought some HDR here is really unnecessary, and vibrant colors can be achieved with simple adjustment from the RAW. Done previously with DxO to straighten the horizon line and elongate the image a bit, but the original file without any distortion fix was fine enough I believe, thus I've neglected the idea. The image was taken with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens but with Vivitar 2x teleconverter attached (thus supposedly pushing the focal length to 16mm). Maybe not much a difference from the Canon 15mm fisheye which I posses already.

The last of the Greek "icons," for the time being that is, is the staircase in the hotel itself. A view I liked, but I was somehow careless about it when I processed it! Don't ask me why, it is just one of those mood turn-abouts.

Έλιξ (Éliks)
Helix

It is a handheld panorama, and as expected, problems occurred, but not in stitching this time, but mainly in fixing the perspective and the tilt and having the perfect crop. So far, I don't see any of that is achieved so far in this image, and maybe this is what attempted me to tone-map the final image in a reckless way making hard contrast and hard highlights and shadows. Some people though did like the image like that already, but definitely it is not something to add to my website collection; unless I fix it somehow!

VII. Failed:

I've mentioned probably in my previous post that I've tried to do some long exposures on the island when the darkness hovered on, but I've failed. However, I did go on and tried to work on the only "real" long exposure left in the camera (other shots of the same scene were test shots made on ISO12800) with a time of 20 minutes.

Star Race

The high noise level made it necessary to an excessive effort with noise filters, and that, naturally, dispersed lot of details. However, the game kept on by trying to achieve a good contrast to enhance the thin lines of the star trails. I might as well summarize the problems in work here:

• Generally, not a good location. The horizon contains light sources (from the mainland) making metering a bit harder and achieving a longer time for the exposure even harder. That made me use a smaller aperture (high f-number) and in return, that caused some flare as you see on the right side of the image (hexagonal rays).
• Another problem with the location; on the top of the ramp with not a suitable orientation of the camera made of some excessive cropping in order to straighten the horizon, and that minimized the image size severely.
• The noise level was so hard to clean at once. Cleaning with several plugins made the image in general without much details and only good for small size viewing. Probably I should check back again with "passive" noise cleaning - where I have to take an exposure of the same length under same settings of ISO and F-number, but with the led closed on lens, then take the picture and layer it on the original image and blend it in to subtract the noise. This method, even though I didn't try it much, but it is hard to deal with at the time I'm planning for more processing to the colors and other aspects of the image. This method requires that the image is not processed at all to subtract the noise correctly, supposedly.
• Finally, in such dark environments, I proved to myself that I'm hopeless. I need some assistance with my tools and moving from one place to another and being alone in such atmosphere is not good, specially with my well-known clumsy movement.

Now, it is time to schedule this post to automatically be on the web by Thursday! I'm not sure how much I'm going to process but I'm sure there is so much stress awaiting for me in the coming week, and I might even not post anything by next week. As I write these words I'm still thinking of the decorations that I'm "supposed" to do to the booth. I do wish if I went through this all alone. I do hope though that I'm up to the level and won't disappoint others with the show. Maybe that's all about why I'm a loner person. Simply, cause I can't be around people for too long...
ta ta!

Drifted...

Well, it was a busy and a quiet week in the same time. Quiet for my camera work (as I tried to stay away a bit from my camera for the sake of working with my Ayvarith project), but it has been busy for driving here and there doing some chores. With chores, comes responsibility, as I received my shipment finally from DHL after being held for around 5 days in customs! Well, might be 4 days...
The final result is that, I had to work with my camera in order to test my new Vivitar x2 teleconverter (2XMC7), which doubles the focal length of your lens. Hence, I worked less with my Ayvarith project, and to top it all, my daydreaming addiction is drifting me away...

Vivitar Teleconverter for Canon EOS series (2XMC7)

As a test for this new tool, I directly had in mind a shot for the moon, because it is something I did before and I know the capabilities of my lenses with this object. The best image I've created for the moon was done with my Tamron 70-300mm lens. I was lucky now to have the full moon at this time, although I was a bit unlucky on Tuesday when it was exactly a full moon time, because we had some rains and I was not able to go on the roof to shoot. Thus, I had to wait for the next day, Wednesday, to do this.
I was lucky here once again, to have a full moon, that by 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., was not directly above me as it is usually whenever I want to try my luck with it! But instead the moon was above the horizon a bit (and that made me think of another shot for it). As a comparison now, I've combined 2 shots, one with Tamron lens alone at maximum  length (@300mm) and one with Vivitar's teleconverter and Tamron @300mm as well.

Two images taken for the moon at same focal lengths; one without teleconverter (left) and one with it (right). The two images were overlapped and cropped, then size reduced to 16.7% of the original. I had to focus manually here, thus the right image might be a little bit blurred. Blame it on my eyes!

One of the problems here though, is the connection. Vivitar's teleconverter do support AF (autofocus function) but, with Tamron being already slow in AF, expect to have more slow action. Well, with time now with my lenses, I've become sort of less reliant on AF functions, but it is essential after all of course.
After finishing from this shot, some scene captured my eyes specially that the moon is above the horizon and not on zenith (above my head), making a good catch for some composition there. I have to admit though, that the structures in front of me did not really impress me. The houses in a countryside or villages would be more fit for such a scene (to my eyes) rather than the houses of the urban areas here. In case we talk about cities, yes, the moon fits there as well I think to be pictures above NY or LA for example with all these big stuff covering the horizon. However, I was not going to miss this chance anyway and went on trying to "HDR" the scene. But that was not as easy as I thought...

Nox (A Night)

In the beginning, I tested my simple Canon lens of 18-55mm, but I didn't like the portions and ratios even @55mm. The moon was so distant and it won't be easy to show its details here. Thus, I changed to my other Canon lens, 55-200mm. I think I've found the perfect view I want @90mm. But problems are yet to come.
Before attending to this scene and while shooting the moon in its single form in the beginning (for comparison) I was already trying to get a bracketed sequence of (-2,0,2 EV), but that was not easy because the moon moves so fast. The further you zoom away from the moon, the more it looks like a stable object, but in a close up as @600mm or even @300mm, you will notice that an exposure of 30 seconds is enough to blur your shot. I usually shoot for HDR on Av mode (Aperture value priority), where you fix the aperture and the camera takes the rest for the shutter speed fixing. Thus, I had to put the aperture at maximum (i.e. small f-number) to increase the shutter speed reasonably.
Even @90mm though, the moon tends to move faster for the lens. The first bracketed shot at -2,0, and 2, was not enough because they seem to put the moon so bright without any details. Because of this I thought I might combine up to 6 shots for this HDR, and pulled down my EV scale to take another bracketed shot at -62/3, -42/3, -22/3. In case you are asking why I did fix the interval with (2/3) additions, this is mainly to avoid having 2 images with -2 EV, because Photomatix (or any other HDR merging software) will give you a message about this overlap, and probably won't merge (Photomatix gives you the chance to assign the values of EV manually for each image, which is also not an easy task if you ask me). Having some dark images here, I thought I'm ready, but this wasn't the case. Probably the problem could have been resolved with proper training with metering, but with my lack of training about this matter, I really didn't know where it is most proper to meter for the light for such a scene. I think metering for the moon (the brightest object in the scene) would make the rest of the scene dark. However, HDR is there to resolve such problems, presumably.
On PC now. As I started to work with these images to merge them into HDR slide, I figured out that the images are hard to be merged because the moon did indeed change its position significantly even @90mm zooming. I tried the manual ghosting removal provided with Photomatix, but no use as it proved to be worse (giving black spots around the ghosting place). For a moment, I gave up the HDR idea and tried to do something similar to what I did with several tone-mapped images for the sun one day...

Sunset
Several tone-mapped images for the sunset at fixed intervals were combined and blended together automatically by Photoshop, resulting in completely eliminating the sun disk and keeping vivid colors for the sky.

I was hoping for something similar to the image above in the beginning, but no, that did not happen. Finally, I had to resort to one final trick that I didn't want to use really but I had no choice. After merging the first 3 brackets, the result was fine but only the moon disk was so bright with no details. After that I simply layered one of the dark images (with some details of the moon) on top of my tone-mapped slide, and erasing everything, but keeping the moon disk (and blending it with Overlay). The result is what you see above (after some polishing of course) for the intensity of colors. The original image was intense in the reds and yellow, and I had to put it down a bit. One final thing I have to say here about this image and this process, is that the blue-to-red gradient in the sky is not a result of the HDR processing. This gradient was there INDEED in the sky, but the HDR only put on some saturation to it. I had to crop a little bit from the left side with aspect ratio just to remove a shed on the roof of the other house.

Now, beside my Vivitar teleconverter, I got also 3 books that I'm starting to read now (can't wait to post this and head to read one of them now), and a sound trigger from Hiviz. This tool is essential for high speed photography, but unfortunately I couldn't try it so far because I need something called a PC-terminal head to connect it to this circuit and hook it to my flash unit.

PC terminal in Canon EX580 II (the lower circular port).
Source.

Thus, until I find a head to fit this port in the flash, I don't think I'll be able to use it! I have to roam the hardware shops again (did search one already).
A little break to my vow for giving the camera a break (yeah, just a little), I've decided to go on and do some photo shots of myself, but this time with the help of my brother. Some people wanted to see me after the hair cut. Yeah, TJ had a hair cut, can you believe it? The change of the world as we know it. What to expect next? ... TJ is a human being? hmm...
Anyway, with several shots (which my brother screwed up with focusing), I've started to do him several shots, and finally I got to test my Tamron 70-300mm macro lens on his eye.

Stare

First of all, I had to do some of my favorite adjustments to his eye here; like adding pupil lines and brightening the eye little bit and whitening the eyeball (his eye had some hard red lines or veins). After all of that, I've finally converted the whole thing to black and white. Most of the images I've taken for him were converted to black and white in fact because, I find them more expressive that way and put more emphasis on the expressions or the drama that I desire to add to the scene or the look. Here though, despite adding a black and white adjustment layer, I didn't want to leave it like that. I think mainly because the light direction in the first place didn't add much drama to it. To go around it, I thought of adding a "tonality" or a "tint". The tint here was a bluish hue. To my eye, the color fluctuates between silver, gray and light blue. Now depending on your monitor and how you look at it, the pupil can be brighter or darker. Finally, and to give some sharp look, I've used the Liquify tool in Photoshop to pulls the sides of the eye a bit. To my simply experience with the eyes, some eyes give a strong stare when they are sort of half closed and when they are so, usually their sides are pulled little bit, specially the inner side of the eye (closer to the nose). I have to mention at the end that before doing all of these adjustments, there was already a work done to the RAW file originally, specially with Clarity option, to soften the skin and hide some of unwanted features!

With this little tour with my camera, and with me neglecting more of my duties toward my beloved conlang, Ayvarith, I'm trying to force myself to believe I have a beautiful life. Such optimistic trends were never my thing, but trying hard to adjust something, and along with that comes a lot of daydreaming. Hard to resist the temptation here, and hard to settle down. I have what I need, or so I convince myself, I just try to be happy with what I have at hand. As for what I don't have yet.......... ?








 

Mind = Chaos.

Maybe for the lack of people who push me up or encourage me, or simply say something nice (I say lack, I'm not saying there is none), or maybe because my... ego... is too much to bear with, I've been fluctuating over some tests here and there; partially to know myself better, and partially to feel better about myself. This time, I was in fact looking after something called the Raven test. I was informed in the beginning that it is some test related to autistic features, but later with little googling, I've found out it is also another IQ test depending majorly on shapes and patterns (no numbers, no calculations, only drawings). I had to pay a little to get this result! Typical...

Result

---

TJ
Your IQ is: 131Your age adjusted IQ score is 131 and the average score for all test takers is 98.4.
Your Grade ** Gifted **
Anyone with a general IQ this high is considered to be gifted. You have the ability to think critically, conceptualize ideas and form your own conclusions. Your ability to think in patterns and to produce order out of chaos enables you to handle complexities and see logic in everything. Needless to say you are self-aware of your abilities and have the brains for all known occupations. If you think of intelligence as the ability to adapt easily to new situations then you are at the top of the charts.






IQ Chart

IQ Range	Classification
Above 145	Genius or near genius
130-145	Very superior
115-130	Superior
100-115	Above average
85-100	Below average
70-85	Dullness
Below 70	Borderline deficiency

The question is, am I supposed to be happy for the result or concerned? Am I really gifted or my mental power is not what it should be? I hate to draw myself back to this circle after some friends (who know what they are doing) told me already that it's impossible for me to be having Asperger's. In the meantime, my daydreaming doesn't make it any brighter. Frequently switching between dreams and reality makes my brain trip and lose connection; needless to say the feeling of disappointment.... My mind is so scattered that on Tuesday, and after finishing my work, I've left my work place forgetting my camera's battery on its charger in the office and my wallet. I couldn't retrieve them back of course until the next day. I don't think this is a memory loss, but it is simply an effect of a busy mind I'd say. I'm hoping...

Been surfing through some websites trying to figure out what I need for the next phase with my camera here. Books, lens, tools; all on the list, scattered in my mind. One of the "tools" that I'm planning to get is a teleconverter. It is an attachment that expands the focal length for more zooming power supposedly. Combining this with my 70-300mm Tamron, I can probably increase the focal length to 600mm (as the specs say).

Vivitar Teleconverter for Canon EOS
x2 (Source: B&H)

I wonder though if I can connect two of those together to give me a x4 power! I'm sure that such tools won't be a match to the REAL zooming lenses, but for someone like me, who takes pictures for far objects occasionally (like birds), this solution seems fine. Also, I'm trying to find out some suitable "sound trigger", which is a tool widely used in the field of High Speed photography. The idea is to trigger the flash unit and make it work for a very short period of time (lesser than a second) just by a pulse of sound. Still searching through the net, because there are some news that such sound triggering systems don't work with my flash unit (Canon EX580 II). Makes me think of some other ways to achieve the same effect, but no results so far!

On the books list there might be around 3 books that I'd love to read as soon as I can, providing that I finish the book I'm reading now, the playful brain. One difference though is, the playful brain book is majorly read when I'm in the office, at work, while for photography books, I tend to read them whenever possible even at home. This is mainly because I feel they are instant and a must to develop myself with my camera. Yet, I have to make sure that I finish those games on my queue list first!

3 books that I think I must have by now...

Camera, games, books... you can tell what a mess I'm living, but not necessarily enjoying it all the way! All of this mess and I'm rarely looking at my Ayvarith project and creating a website for it. Not only that, but also, out of boredom, and because I didn't try to take any panoramas for some time now (full spherical panoramas that is) I've went on doing a little experimenting with my 3-legged monopod, and done a panorama for my own bathroom! Yes, my bathroom. Why? Don't ask me please. There are shaky images, as the monopod was extended to a higher level than my head and thus, it was hard to keep it stable (it is shaky already even on shorter heights). Total weight of the camera and the VR-head is around 3kg (~6.6 lb). It was an experiment and I'm already having problems with the panorama as I'm typing these words. I've deleted the images already because of the wrong way I did take these images and many HDR merging problems! I might take it again at another time. One of the challenges, however, in this bathroom panorama is, I couldn't decide what White Balance (WB) should I choose. For the time being, I shot it with Tungsten to balance the great yellowish glow from the 2 bulbs in the bathroom, but that made the pinkish walls go yellowish in a dull way, removing all the heat (or should I say, action) from the walls. However, this hopefully can be adjusted later when I tone-map the HDR finalized version (if the stitching problems are resolved). Another challenge was the height, which I had problems with when trying to adjust the tilt of the camera upward or downward, and going for 30 degrees up and down was not a good bet I'd say. Must have done it with 45 degrees up and down or 30 degrees twice in each direction.

I've been shopping now and buying "flood lights" in various colors. Right now I do have a neutral (yellowish), blue, green and red. I like these lights because of their "flowing". I can imagine them as water of light pouring down on the subject. One of the features I like about these lights also is, they don't appear to be intense when ambient light (in my room) is on, but when the room is dark they show bright. Now having the basic RGB colors of flood lights, this inspires me for few more experiments. 

Philips 80W red flood light
(Source)

Beside those lights there are some tools on the side, like light bulb bases and some other things to store these tools because my stuff are scattered all over the floor. I need double my room size (which is already a couple's room) to store everything I need I suppose. Thinking about that even gives me a shiver for the cleaning I'd be needing to do for such a room!
However, one of the tools or kits I got was storage pockets that can be hung on the wall or the door. I'll be using these to store the light bulbs and (some of the) lighting kit. These pockets were wrapped up around some hard paper, almost like a wood in fact, thus I decided to use this in some way. There are two of them, thus I picked one and drilled in the middle of it to make it as a stand for future use when I need to use the light-holders whose bases are in the form of a clip.

The board mounted on my monopod

Close up for the drilled hole with the monopod's bolt going through it

I've had some ideas to take some pictures in the bathroom (nope not a panorama), but this time for a flowing water. Unfortunately, it didn't work alright to post it in this blog still. Hopefully I will work on that in the future. Caution(s) needed here, since I was trying to bring my light (simple) equipment and a wire extension to the bathroom near the basin to light the flowing water. One drop and everything can be bye-bye...

Nevertheless, I've been working on other days on some catches from seashells. Flood lights here played a crucial rule in "pouring" on the color of the shel. Originally, the shell was greenish, and I've fixed it under a neutral flood light (which gives out a yellow beam). The shot was intended for HDR (i.e. bracketed shot, from -2 to 2) and the WB was Tungsten (to neutralize the heat of the color of the light beam). However, with tone-mapping, and even with Tungsten WB, the heat persisted, thus I had two choices here, to keep up the warm look, or to adjust the temperature slider in Photomatix to the maximum left to cool the colors down. I decided to go on both ways (and change some other settings as well to achieve certain look).

Spiral Shell
with Temperature down

Drama Shell
with Temperature slider slightly above zero point
Someone commented on it saying it's like a rolled up chameleon!

These two shots, however, was an aim to perform a focus-stacking, where several shots are taken on different depth of field (DOF) and then combined by layering the shots and blending them together to get a sharp macro shot. I tried it on these shots but the change in DOF was not to be mentioned here. I think this is because the subject here is not elongated along the camera's view, but more like a flat disk (in some way) and lies almost in one plane of view with respect to the camera.
Also this week, I went on trying the peeling effect again, this time on my censer. Actually, the shots were taken around two weeks ago, but I didn't go on doing this until last week.

Peeled Censer

Take it from me: the more regular and geometric the shape is, the harder it is to do the peeling effect. Why? This is mainly related to the eyes and how sharp your viewer is. In an irregular shape, like the seashell done before (below), the irregularity helps on tricking the eye and you won't have much hard time blending (manually) the different layers together, because the mind already perceives such shape as irregular. In more regular shapes like the censer above, things tend to be harder, and more harder with a light source concentrated in some unique direction. You have to blend carefully trying the best you can to eliminate any "errors" that can be obvious to the naked eyes. In the censer here I wasn't so good at blending and I had to do lot of cloning out, and still the image is not so good, to me.

Peeled Shell

I think I will stop playing around with this trend of tricks and try to work more on some expressional photography, where I would make something out of my mind completely to express some thought or emotion, or simply try to be innovative with my lights here. I still have problems though with those light holders!

Video-wise now, well, I'm not a videographer, but always had and still have fun recording from inside my car, and I still have this idea to record a video in Failaka island. However, I'm in the process of converting all those .MOV files into .MPG (NTSC) and delete the original MOV. This also would help me to cut out some portions of the files easily, as I discovered that lot of programs I have do not deal with MOV or got problems reading such files, and of course helps me to save some space. This conversion almost reduces the file size by 50%.

This is my life now; a total chaos. I need someone to organize my time for me, and I don't stop stuffing my mind up with stuff I think I need to do, and still they push more on my time. I'm trying to get back to exercising little bit, not for a diet or anything (I'm still having bad eating habits) but just to train my body on enduring some aggressive conditions, and maybe, just maybe, I would just feel refreshed and out of my mind's troubles. If only I can get rid of the damn traffic jam...

3D Hunting II...

Been a slow week somehow. The week began with heavy headaches, starting from Friday. It was not a pleasant beginning for my last weekend at all. It was one of the rare times that I would sleep for 12 hours (not in a row though); from Thursday afternoon, until Friday's morning. Woke up then with a pain in the shoulder and neck (and the back of course), but the most annoying thing was, the headache. This headache reached its "climax" whenever I do some activity that would cause my blood pressure to raise up; my head would feel like blown out and I almost wanted to scream from the pain.
I waited for 2 days, because I thought it is what usually is; the regular pains of long sleep. Unfortunately, the headache did not calm down. The only way to calm it down was to have some pain-killers. I decided then to check with a doctor in case it is something serious. However, with some blood analysis that I just got its results on Wednesday, it turns out that there is nothing serious. I did such analysis back in November or December and this enabled me to make some comparison between the two. My cholesterol level is lower (but still bitty bit high) than the previous time and also my salts level. The doctor didn't add much to the general recommendations; sports, diet, and being away from salts as much as possible. My headache now is gone and I don't get it whenever I do some activity, but I have to keep an eye on my body now. I think I have to change my bed or do something about it.

Been carrying my tripod and camera wherever I go in hope of catching something; just anything. Life had become a bit dull, and with this daily traffic jam from work, the situation is a complete set of misery. I find it hard even to stay awake in the afternoons after coming back from work. I hate to nap at this time in regular week days but my fatigue wouldn't allow me to stay awake, and with my concerns about my blood pressure, I had to reduce my intake of caffeine for now. No redbull in early morning and no coffee at home or in the office, but I keep telling myself that this is just a temporal procedure. I already had a nap in the office twice this week!
Back to the camera. I've started to take my stuff with me almost anywhere I go, trying to find something to catch. I still have images to process from Ireland, but I don't come closer to them anymore. I think I'm exhausted for the time being and might get back later. For the time being I'm looking around the places I go to. In fact, it is indeed your eyes that see what is beautiful and make it, not the place itself. I experienced that when I paid a work-related visit to Anjafa Beach. It is somehow a quiet beach, quieter than the usual beach where I take my photos from, The Corniche or Salmiyah seaside. I intend to take some pictures from there, despite the location is somehow sensitive because of some villas around the place. Villas, for people I don't want to interrupt!
Nevertheless, I've been taking some pictures from the beach. The usual beach. After I left the clinic on Monday, having my blood taken for tests, I headed to Burger King on that beach to break the fast. I noticed some features that I did like to take some pictures of, although the sun elevation in the sky is not quite what I desire, and the weather is not cold any more like it was in those "lovely" winter mornings before...

Beach Shed

Despite the harsh sun here, I've used Fluorescent WB here to reduce (somehow) the sun's flare. Amazingly, it kind of gave out (with HDR tone-mapping of course) some sense of a night scene. I took several shots for this scene from different angles but I guess this one was the most appealing, and also after doing that, I remembered that I need some items into my 3D collection, so I went for it as well. This time I didn't use the fisheye lens, as I wanted to concentrate on the structure of the so-called "shed" here. It is the main subject that interested me in the first place for such 3D play-around. Fisheye also proves problematic for some structures as will be shown later...

 Beach Shed (3D)

It was one of my interests really to make 3D images (anaglyph) with fisheye lenses, and even I'm thinking of expanding this ambition to do it with panoramas, but it's early to talk about that for some reasons. I believe in case of a fisheye 3D image, the aim must be a a landscape or a wide area in the first place and not one specific structure (and I believe this is natural and obvious because of the nature of a fisheye lens). Now, what happens sometimes is that the structure itself, doesn't help at all to be a good 3D under a fisheye lens. This makes me a bit picky with when to use a fisheye lens. In the following example, it's my work place in 3D trial, but the problems occur with the pillars. The nature of the fisheye lens, to bend the scene on the edges, makes the difference between the left and right portions (i.e. the left and right images) at extreme on the edges while minimum in the center (that is if we were focusing on the center like I did here)...

 Work Place (3D)

Maybe the only thing, in my eyes, that did really pop-up as a 3D object was the bushes or trees behind the cars (that silver one on the left is mine by the way :) ). There is a lot of "ghosting" in this image specially at the edges (like the top of the pillars or the top of the building on the right side). Ghosting here is not like ghosting in HDR processing. In HDR, usually, we say "ghosting" about some phenomena that causes some blurring in the final HDR slide when combined from original bracketed images because of some moving object in the scene which the software that combines these bracketed images, in order to minimize the differences between the images before merging into HDR, tries to eliminate and replace the pixels, and the end result is some blur or a light shadow of some object. In 3D images, Ghosting means the fact that the red and blue (or Cyan or Green) portions in the image itself are so wide that the eye of the viewer can't combine them anymore to form one image in the spot. Ghosting in 3D images is somehow normal and like there is no really perfect 3D image (to some extent) but there are limits I believe to really settle down with such defections. Sometimes the ghosting effect can overwhelm the whole image making it meaningless! I have to admit though, my HDR tone-mapping for this image might have been a bit "over done".

Anyway I kept using my fisheye lens in the location that day (Wednesday) and focused on one of the trees. At this point I think I'm sort of made a mental point for myself on how to use a fisheye lens to do a 3D image...

Surreal Tree (3D)

I made this one here in Black and White to avoid the noise coming out from the shades of green and blue, and in fact, they say Black and White images make the best anaglyphs because there are no color confusions that might disturb the view. This sample in fact (with a previous one) made me almost sure that to use a fisheye lens for making a 3D image, your focus should be on the edges (left and right in case of landscape orientation or top and bottom in case of portrait orientation). This will leave of course the rest of the image and specially the opposite side of the focus point highly venerable for ghosting effects, but nevertheless, these ghosting are far away (relatively) from your focus point and maybe won't catch a glimpse at all!

3D Infinitum

Focusing on the lower center rock

Seems so much notes to keep in mind right now. However, with working a lot around this matter, it will eventually become like a second nature. More work needed here.

Now, to the matter of panorama in 3D. This is something I've been thinking about for some time but I didn't settle down with an opinion of my own and I just don't know how to achieve something like that! The main problem here is that when doing a proper panorama you actually use VR-heads to rotate the camera around the no-parallax point of the lens+camera combination (to avoid stitching errors resulting from parallax errors of course). Now, isn't 3D processing is generally made by overlapping 2 images with a tiny parallax error in between them? Because this is how our eyes work in the first place! 

Exercise: extend your arm in front of your face with your thumb up. Now, look with one eye for a moment, then close this eye and open the other. How does it feel? Isn't the background, sort of, moving? This is exactly the parallax error that happens in the camera and prevents the PC from stitching!

If I take a panorama in the old way before getting my VR-head, i.e. using a tripod alone, that means stitching errors and a bad stitch (and I already get bad points of stitching even when using VR-heads!), while the parallax error is somehow the main factor for achieving some good 3D image at some point (concentrating on a point and letting the other differ in portions of red and blue). The process here is quite complicated and maybe can be achieved only with using 2 cameras altogether at once and not only one, and these two cameras should be leveled horizontally in a perfect manner while pointing in opposite directions with difference in few degrees. For the time being, the only cheap solution I have in my mind is to overlap 2 layers of the same panorama and shifting one of them a little bit to the left or right and do the process of combining into a 3D. OR, as an option, is to lengthen the process of taking a panorama a bit and take the whole scene in one spot and then do it again after shifting the tripod itself few inches or centimeters (or whatever units).

I'm, myself, still not sure on how to exactly take two images for 3D processing (handheld): should I shift the camera itself to the left or right a bit, or should I rotate the camera some few degrees. Logically, seems rotating is the good solution, and again, this solution won't work with panorama processing because you are in fact rotating your camera already! Unless... you re-take the whole panorama not by shifting the tripod this time, but by starting from a different angle, few degrees away from the first starting point. So many ideas that I need to test!

I've took the chance to take some pictures for the moon, or what they called the "super moon" as it is the closest distance for the moon to Earth in the past 18 years! So they say, anyway. However, my main goal was actually some time-lapse movie for the moon moving along. Anyway, I did take the chance to do some bracketing for HDR slides and I think I did learn a lesson or two from this experiment...

The shoot was done by Tamron 70-300mm with its full zoom at 300mm. The short time lapse was done on the roof of my house with some breeze, and as it is well-known, with great zooming a little shake in the tripod is noticeable, and hence some images were a bit shaky but with minimizing the size of the frame they are barely visible. The shoot almost took around 30 to 45 minutes with a shot every 5 seconds, and the little clip was combined with 10 fps. Now, for the HDR trial. HDR here proved to be hard to be tone-mapped because of the noise level that occurs in the black areas around the moon. The idea I had in my mind was that to show more details of the moon's surface, then HDR is a normal choice, but I think it didn't really matter in this situation...

Normal (WB: fluorescent)

Tone-mapped HDR (with some artifacts)

I used the fluorescent White Balance here to reduce some of the white bright areas in this glowing moon and to help on pronouncing more of its details a bit. Lot of people like the normal version more than the HDR version and I don't blame them for that. I myself don't like the HDR moon very much, but yet, I do feel the need of more power in my zoom, and for this reason I'm thinking of getting one of those "focal length extenders" (probably one made by Vivitar) to extend the zooming power behind the current limits.

Right now I've began recording videos while driving (2 days now) in the early morning. Just trying to catch a nice moment or so, and that makes me stabilize the tripod in the car most of the time and remove it only when really need it. This thing now kind of keep scattering my tools, in the car and at home! Oh well... isn't it worthy?