Playing with curves, part 2

One thing I knew but forgot to mention was that the sinusoidal curve I created has one bad side effect. You will lose a fair amount of colour definition. Never save on top of the original image! Always work on a copy. :)

Bringing the colour curve back for an image you have manipulated this way, this is what you would now see:

Here is a crop of the swan photo below. This crop is from the original. I sharpened the crop a little and applied a similar colour curve as before.

Whats ya look'n at? Playing with curves

Here is a change I like to make to a photo. I suppose the end result might satisfy my own eyes but not necessarily yours.

Anyways, this is the photo I started with. I think the swan was just coming out of the water, but it looks like a 'whats ya look'n at' photo. :) The feathers are pure white, hard to see the beauty of the plumage.



The photo negative I posted a few days ago really accentuate those features our eyes cannot discern because there is too much white. That is all the photo negative really does for me though. You see the details but not the beauty of the swan.

So here is a different approach. I played with the colour curve in The Gimp, an excellent graphics manipulation software for Linux and Windows. I changed the straight line to a sinusoidal curve (see screen capture below) to accentuate the yellow hue in the feather -- the sun was low on the horizon. Click on the image to see the difference. I think the plumage looks spectacular!

This is a continuation of the Toronto shots that Do Anh started in the previous post. But this time using my Canon.
Settings: ISO 400, time 1/1600s, Aperture 6.3 at 200mm.

Settings: ISO 100, time 10s, Aperture 10 at 24mm.

Settings: ISO 200, time 5s, Aperture 14 at 18mm.

Settings: ISO 400, time 1/2500s, Aperture 5.6 at 31mm.

Photo Negative

How do we read an image? Does a photo negative help in bringing out the details that our minds struggle to seek?

Toronto Cityscape, part 2

Another shot of Toronto. I like the tree skeleton on the peninsula sticking into the frame on the left. There is a little natural life to an otherwise man-made landscape. This photo was taken at f/5.6 ISO100 for 1 sec. WB was on Auto. I sharpened and increased the contrast of the final photo.

Toronto Cityscape

The photo was shot at ISO100 f/14 exposed for 20 secs so the reflection off the water was very clear. I increased the contrast a little. The CN Tower photo below was shot at a ISO640. The darker areas of the CN Tower photo are obviously grainier at higher ISO. I will have to retake the CN Tower shot the next time I hop on the ferry, and hopefully, a greenish colour will light up Rogers Centre then.

CN Tower

Biathlon, a story

Some of the best angles of Toronto are viewed from the Toronto Islands.

So yesterday, Cesar and I lugged our camera and tripod out. We were going to just do some photography but Cesar threw the 'bike' idea into the mix. It was an excellent idea. Not only do we need to train for the Becel Ride for Heart but with a bike, we could also easily explore the islands for the best shooting location. So, yesterday, Cesar and I rode our mountain bike from the Sunnyside Pavillion to the Toronto Islands to take pictures of Toronto at sunset. We got to Ward's Island around 5:30pm.

After a ten minute ride, we know we were hungry and it did not appear we were going to find food there. Nothing. Not even a hot dog stand. Nothing. Food town was dead, and the only restaurant that was open closed at 5pm. How nice. We hung around and checked for the best shooting angle. We found that Centre Island has the best shooting spots, so we waited around for the sun to set at 8pmish to start shooting, nibbling on some cookies Cesar brought. The energy kick was good and it revitalized our starving minds.

There was plenty of time. We were fiddling around with our speedometer. My speedometer was a CCM. They make all kinds of sports equipment, most notably hockey equipment. Cesar has a Cat Eye speedometer. (Cat Eye makes really good biking accessories. ) I just so happened to have a Cat Eye headlight mounted on my bike handle but that I have never ever used since I bought it 6 years ago. I have some batteries but evidently not enough to power the Cat Eye. It then dawned on us we needed some light to ride around at night. So was born Cesar's makeshift helmet light.

7:40pm came. We set up our tripods and started our work. We were shooting into the dark when perchance I checked my watch. 8:55pm. Fumbling around my pockets, I pulled out the Centre Island ferry schedule -- ferry leaves at 9pm. Could we make it? It was not far but (as we soon found out) it was going to depart exactly at 9pm. After a moment of hesitation, we packed up and wheezed our way back to the ferry dock in the darkness, following the blue beam ray from Cesar's helmet. We reached the dock. The sound of a horn filled the air. We looked on as it pulled away. Exactly my kind of adventure.

Determined to get on a ferry, we checked the schedule for the next ferry over at Hanlan Point. Ferry leaves at 9:10pm. So we turned up a notch and took a run to Hanlan only to miss the darn ferry again by just 30 seconds! Exhausted and fuming mad, we rode leisurely back to Centre Island for the 10pm ferry -- the last Hanlan Point ferry was going to leave at 10:15pm. We boarded the Centre Island ferry at 10pm. It would seem though, at night, the ferry visits Centre Island first, and then Hanlan Point ... hhmph.

I got back home at 12am.

Little monsters

Tiny little monster crawling on a slab of rock. My macro apparatus is hard to use outside. The depth of field is so small as you can see in this 4mm long insect. To get a really good shot of anything, you need a still subject and mount the camera on a tripod.

Signs of Spring

This was taken with my macro apparatus again.

Macro outside

I took my macro apparatus outside today. Can you guess what these are?

The useless battery

So, the useless battery story continues.

I have been looking around for my multimeter to measure the voltage output of the battery. Over the last little while, the multimeter had been hiding from me in an obscure place on my computer desk, behind a few leisure reading books.

Well, the battery was dead. No voltage output. Zippo. Nada. Dead. 0.0V. That was why it did not work when I was hoping or wishing it did last Saturday.

The strange thing is, my charger was not blinking when I tried to recharge the battery. (It blinks when it is charging the battery and stops when the battery is fully recharged.) Today, it is blinking, so I know the charging process is actually happening. In the middle of the charge, I took the battery out for another voltage test and it registered about 8V. Excellent.

I just need to make sure the battery actually holds a charge before carrying it around with me.