OMG! During a test flight of the What the Duck balloon for a parade it broke it’s tether and the wind blew it away! Yikes!
Hehe. Yes, yes. it’s fake. Good video though! Via TOP.
Tag Archives: Photography
How much is your camera worth?
On Saturday I took my Canon 20D into a camera shop here in Cork and asked how much they’d give for it as a trade in against a Canon 40D.
After a few minutes I found out the disappointing answer. €300. Depreciation is a bitch isn’t it? The Canon 40D body is €1200 here. I need to start saving.
In other camera news, the M/AF switch on my wide angle Sigma lens fell off! I noticed it gone this afternoon and can’t find the switch anywhere. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive to replace.
GIMP 2.4 is out
The new release of GIMP 2.4 is finally out! Sven announced it on the Gimp User mailing list this morning. It seems like forever since 2.2 was released but he has promised that 2.6 won’t be as long in the making.
The roadmap for GIMP 2.6 will be discussed over the next weeks on the gimp-developer mailing-list. We can only tell you so much now: It is going to rock and it shouldn’t take as long to get it done as it took to finish GIMP 2.4. If you want to join the effort, your help is much appreciated.
GIMP.org is fairly slow now but the release notes have the low down on changes since 2.2. Some of the biggest user visible changes include red eye removal, healing tool and a better alignment tool. Plugins and scripts now live in the same place, the “Filters” menu. I’m using the rc3 release in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and it’s been rock solid for the past few days. I’m sure Ubuntu will update their .deb package in the next few days.
After you update, get the GIMP Lomo plugin I posted yesterday. It’s 2.4 ready! 🙂
GIMP Lomo Plugin
This is a slighly modified version of an old GIMP Lomo plugin I’ve used for ages that will now work with the new GIMP 2.4 release thanks to some advice I remembered reading on the GIMP User mailing list. The original plugin is by Francois Le Lay but hasn’t been updated since 2005. It’s a basic script but it’s very effective. Just be warned, if you resize your image, make sure you right click on the Vignette layer and click “Layer to image size” before the resize. Otherwise odd things happen!
Download
Download gimplomo.scm.
Install
Installation is easy. Simply copy gimplomo.scm into your .gimp-2.4/scripts/ folder and restart the GIMP. It will appear as Image->Filters->Light and Shadow->Lomo.
Example Images
Below are two before and after examples of what the Lomo plugin does to images. I have also posted fake lomo photos in the past which should give a really good idea of what it’s capable of.
Before and After Lomo images
Why the change to Script-fu?
Script-fu in GIMP 2.4 requires that variables be defined before using them which has broken a lot of Script-fu scripts unfortunately. In theory it’s a great change because it tightens up on sloppy programming but it hurts the end user!
10 minutes left in Halifax & Late Late Show Extra competition
Just in case you have the perfect image to submit to the Halifax & Late Late Show Extra competition the closing date is today, in about 10 minutes. That’s right. 6pm is the deadline. First prize is €10,000. Is that worth 10 minutes of your time? I’m going to enter if I can find a suitable image!
Photoshopped in real life
If you don’t read xkcd you’re missing out 🙂
Carried away with working on photos
I wanted to take it easy tonight. It’s been a long week but here I am still. 16 photos worked on in the GIMP and ready to upload. You’re in for a treat next week with some of my shots from Kerry, even if I do say so myself!
How to build a pop-up flash diffuser
If you use the built-in flash on your camera you’re probably used to the ugly effect direct light has on portraits and scenes: red eye, background shadows and foreground brightness, lost blown out detail. You can avoid all that by buying an external flash and bouncing or you can build a flash diffuser to sit in front of your camera.
Looks like a fun project to try too!
16 images sold in Mallow
I heard last night at the club that 16 images were sold at the Mallow Camera Club exhibition in Mallow Town Library. That will add something like €2,000 to the Niall Mellon Township Trust fund Sean O Riordan is collecting! Well done to everyone, and thanks to everybody who linked and spread the word!
The camera in the Tardis
Darn. I only realised halfway through last week that my camera was still on San Francisco time. 8 hours difference which means early morning photos and evening photos are on the wrong day. Time travelling.
The ultimate Canon EOS camera
Leaked photos of the the as yet unreleased Canon EOS-0 have surfaced on the ‘net and are sure to make their way around all the usual blogs in no time but I got my hands on them early just for you.
Details are sketchy but from the photos it appears to come in different lens mount flavours to support Nikon, Olympus, Sony and Sigma as well as the usual Canon EOS mounts. The inspiration button should come in handy for all those tired hacks who are too bored with their “yet another school fete” assignments.
Coming around to the back of the camera, Canon have filled every square inch with new functionality and a super wide touch screen. I can just hear the Apple iPhone owners gasping with delight. I’m not so sure about running Windows Vista on it. Can I put Ubuntu Linux on it? Is that Photoshop running on it? I would like to see Walter run Pixenate on there if the new camera has wireless support. Tom reports it works on the Apple iPhone and Walter has created a Facebook photo editor out of it so I don’t see why not.
I think Mike Johnston may require breathing space and a respirator when he hears that this new Canon camera is the first to have a built in image stabilizer. In camera image stabilization is one of his pet loves and I’m sure he’ll be signing up to buy one. Exciting times!
Other notable features are the three hard drives, the HDR function and the capability to shoot ISO 12800. Hopefully they’ve solved the noise problems! I’m not sure if I’ll use the TV feature but I’d happily listen to the radio or MP3s while out shooting. Should be plenty of capacity on all those drives.
Were you spammed by Stewart Photo Supplies too?
They guys and gals at Stewart Photo Supplies really want me and lots of other photography related people to know about their photography trade show in Cork on the 17th from 11am to 7pm. Unfortunately they completely ruined their chances of a favourable mention from because of the following.
CCing the info @ mallowcameraclub.com email address along with dozens of other people and organisations. Hello everybody!
BIG BRIGHT COLOURED TEXT WAS NEVER IN FASHION AND DOES NOT LOOK PROFESSIONAL.
Anyway, there’s a photographic trade show on in Cork on the 17th of September in Moran Silver Springs Hotel. I only mention this because there are some interesting companies exhibiting there including Sony, Epson, Canon and JSP Imaging (who they linked to incorrectly, that’s their old site which a domainer now has control of).
Send a text email the next time and don’t CC everyone, please.