Creating a Flickr Slide Show on Your Blog

Creating a Flickr Slide Show

(c) Ken Osborn 2013

Yes, you can post a Flickr slideshow on your blog site using a gadget, but what if you want a little more control?  For that I'm trying the slideshow generator called Flickr Slideshow Generator!  You can find it at http://fabiocavassini.com.ar/SlideShowGenerator.html.

You can make a slide show based on tags, like this one from my sets tagged 'Dickens.'

 To start the process you will need an NSID which is a unique number representing you on Flickr.

Entering Information to Access Flickr Images

 To find your id number use idGettr at http://idgettr.com/.

idGettr will Get Your Unique Flickr ID Number

After you get your ID you then enter either a set URL with or without tags or just tags.  If you enter just tags it will grab everything in your Flickr stream with the tag so don't get too crazy because if you are like me you may have a lot of images under some particular tag.  

Generating the Flickr Slideshow creates an HTML code you can cut and paste into your blog website.

HTML Code for Website

Do You Really Need a Zoom Lens?

Do You Really Need a Zoom Lens

Ken Osborn (c) 2013

If you have a camera that can take a 25 MP (mega-pixel) image, you may have asked yourself "why do I need a zoom lens?"  If, like me, you aren't printing posters and mainly show your photos on your website, why not just use a good prime 50 mm lens?  Maybe a 70 mm if you are doing portraiture.   With a zoom you can compose the way you want in the field, but if you are going to resize the image prior to posting, what is the difference between doing that and cropping from a larger image?  After all, you have all those extra pixels does it really matter how you waste them: by reducing resolution or by cropping them away?

I decided the only way to answer that question was to try it.  

I used an 18-55 mm zoom lens on a Pentax K5IIS to take two photos.  The first at a zoom of 18 mm and the second at 55 mm.  

Image 1: 18 mm zoom

Image 2: 55 mm zoom

The 18 mm image was cropped to the focusing chart for an image size of 423 pixels wide.  The 55 mm image was cropped to the focusing chart and then resized to 423 pixels wide.  So now both images have the same target filling the view and are both at the same final resolution.  The results are immediately below with the 55 mm zoom photo on the left and the 18 mm photo on the right.  (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Comparing Resizing (left) vs Cropping (right)

  

I have concluded I will keep my telephoto!

Restoring Old Comics and Memories

Restoring Old Comics and Memories

Ken Osborn © 2012

If you know Photoshop, like old comics, and would like to see what they looked like new, read on.   

I was and still am a big fan of Carl Barks duck stories: Donald Duck; his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie; Uncle Scrooge and a host of relatives.  Trying to refresh my memory on a Scrooge adventure I found an incredible resource, the Duck Comics Revue by Geoff Moses at http://duckcomicsrevue.blogspot.com/. 

Geoff’s blog is filled with all sorts of goodies including panels from some well remembered stories.  But after a few decades the print had faded.  Those old dime comics were printed on a cheaper paper and were not intended to last forever. 

But with Photoshop it’s possible to restore these faded memories to their former glory.   Below are an original scan of a comic panel from the Duck Comics Revue followed by the restored version.

Faded Original

Restored Contrast and Colors

Starting with the scan, open it in Photoshop and take a look at the histogram. 

Histogram Using Photoshop Levels

The histogram is not evenly spread across the full width with a space at the right (highlights) end consistent with the yellow faded appearance.  Mouse click the ‘Auto’ button to improve the contrast. 

Auto Adjust Levels

Notice that the histogram is now spread across the full width and the contrast has improved. But there is still a yellow cast.  To remove the yellow cast select the white ‘eye dropper’ (it’s the one on the right) and then use it to select an area of the panel border that is yellow but originally white.

Eye Dropper for Bright Whites

Maybe too white

  

This is probably a bit harsh and the original was probably somewhere between bright white and faded yellow, so fade the levels about 50%.

Levels Faded 50%

Scanning the comic book will usually leave the print just a little soft, so a bit of sharpening may make the content a little more readable but it’s easy to overdo it so you may need to fade the sharpening.

 Sharpening a Little Harsh with Halos

Sharpening Faded

Before leaving the topic, here is one more example from a classic Donald Duck adventure, Trick or Treat (1952).

Original from Trick or Treat

Restored Version

And that’s it.  If you want to see a restored version of a 1950’s 3D Donald Duck giveaway, check it out at http://duckcomicsrevue.blogspot.com/2013/01/witch-hazel-remastered.html on Geoff Moses’ blog. 

People Behind the Numbers

A guest presentation by Linnea Hoover, Laboratory Supervisor 2012

Ever wonder how the quality of your drinking water is ensured?  A combination of good water sources, regulations that set the standards, water treatment infrastructure, and a testing laboratory.  But it takes people to operate the infrastructure and chemists, microbiologists, and technicians to test the water quality.  Who are these people?

Linnea Hoover, A former colleague who supervises a chemistry section at the East Bay Municipal Utility District's Laboratory, has combined her interests in science, photography, and art to show the human side of the laboratory.  In a gallery of photographs that display the many faceted personalities in the laboratory, Linnea has matched her staff with icons of art and history in a creative collection you can view at:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0ByxHzIqC4EIYVEpPR0VyeUQ4UDA

While the photographic display shows that humor and science can coexist, it is important to remember that the people you saw in the gallery take their jobs seriously and understand the need to maintain and calibrate their instrumentation; perform tests to ensure the results are reproducible and correct; and that when the numbers say a substance is not analytically present its analytical absence is confirmed.  When coworkers understand their profession,  work as a team, and can even express joy in their work the product will show it.  

The Photography Challenge - A Progression in Time

(c) Ken Osborn 2012

I recently  joined a photography Meetup that convenes every two weeks to critique a photography challenge (http://www.meetup.com/Tinkering-Toms-and-Tammys-Photography-Group/).  The challenge for our second meetup was to capture a progression or stages of time, like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, frying an egg, or changes of the seasons.

I decided to assemble a progression in time with two photos I already had and were separated by several decades.  In fact I was not the photographer.  A few years ago I assembled a rather large collection of family photographs dating to 1889.  Some were still in excellent condition, but many showed the toll of time.  Months of work were required to restore many badly faded, mildewed, and otherwise noticeably aged prints.  There were two photographs that stood out: a great aunt-in-law, Anna Elizabeth Bell Graham, as a young woman and again in her late years showing a remarkable conformity.  While she had obviously aged, the shape and structure of her face was relatively unchanged and her presentation to the camera was the same in both photographs.  

I had some prior experience merging photographs of relatives to show the similarities and differences to others in the family, but had not previously seen such a judicious combination.  So I decided these photographs of Anna Bell would be assembled into a progression of time for the Meetup photography challenge. 

Anna Bell was born Jan 30, 1884 Anna Elizabeth Bell in West Shokan, NY.  The photograph below shows her at the age of five with her younger brother Charles.  Fortunately it was the practice of past generations to write information, in pencil, on the back of family photos.  That practice is seldom practiced today.  

When Anna's family moved to Illinois, she grew up in a rural setting surrounded by farmland.  

A photograph of Anna as a young woman in her late teens.

A photograph of Anna in her late years.

Using these two photographs and Photoshop, I created a sequence of five images showing how she might have looked over the intervening years.  

Mouse Click for Larger View

I did not know Anna Bell, but I leave one other photograph that has no information on the back and none of my in-laws know exactly when the photograph was made, but it is visibly neither when she was in her youth nor old age.  You can judge for yourself whether the sequence above has recaptured Anna Bell in the intervening years.  

Histogram Basics

Histogram Basics for Photographers

© Ken Osborn 2012

kozborn@sbcglobal.net

Light meter?  Isn’t that something like a sliderule?  A few photographers still use light meters but most of us depend on the histogram to tell us if an image is over or under exposed.  And some know about histograms but don’t use them because they rely on the camera to make all of the photographic decisions.  Nothing wrong with that if you have no desire or need for creative control, but if you’d like to go the next step and not let the camera make all the decisions, then this little tutorial is for you.

A histogram plots light received by the camera’s sensor with light value the horizontal axis and number of pixels on the vertical axis as in the plot below.

Light values for 8 bit pixels range from 0 (no light) to 255 (blown out highlight).  The next chart shows light value assignments and the relationship to the Adams Zone System numbers.  This makes for a total of 256X256X256 color shades when the Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) channels are combined for full color.  Our eyes can see more shades of color than that but it’s close enough and many color printers can’t do any better.

So how do you use a histogram for proper exposure?

Below is a properly exposed photo shot at sunset.  There are no blown out highlights or blocked up shadows.

Abandoned Building at Sunset

Now compare to the badly overexposed image below.

Here is the same photo with the histogram superimposed.

Note that the histogram is pushed to the right with no space on the right side: the highlights are blown.

An underexposed version of the same scene.

Perhaps you want that nighttime look.  That’s good and exactly why you want control over your shot.  Before you look at the histogram below, what will the curve look like?

Of course you knew the curve would be pushed to the left with the shadows blocked, yes?

So what does a ‘proper’ histogram look like?  If you don’t want blocked shadows or blown highlights, then you will want a histogram that has nothing extending to the edges, as in the next image.  

So that’s it. Properly exposed, a photograph should have neither blocked shadows nor blown highlights.  Shadow areas that are too dark have no detail and generally lack interest.  Highlights that are blown also have no detail and are usually distracting to the central features of the image.

And now you know what happens to the histogram if the shadows are too dark or the highlights are too bright.  Of course that is not to say that the artist’s intention was not have shadows without detail or highlights that dazzled the eyes.  After all, photography is an art.  

Recapturing Your Pre-digital Memories

Remember Hi8 video?  If you are like me you will have several 20+ year old pre-digital analogue video recordings you may wonder what to do with.  You could just forget about them for several more years and let someone else worry about what to do with them or you could convert them to a digital format, put them on a hard drive, and even edit them for the memorable segments like your daughter's first steps, your visit to Paris in 1990, or the historic footage you shot and is now no longer possible because the old factory has been replaced with condominiums.

Having 30 Hi8 tapes representing over 50 hours of video, I decided it was time to recover some of the past and to perform the remastering from analogue to digital myself.  My setup for the process includes an iMac computer, a Sony TR700 video camera (the one originally used to shoot the Hi8 videos), a Elgato Video Capture converter, and cabling to connect camera to Elgato.  The Elgato takes both S-Video and Composite Video inputs and provides a USB output.  It records in the H.264 mp4 format, which maxes out at 640x480.  Seems low rez by today's standards, but Hi8 is not today's standard.  Elgato is simple to use but lacks on-the-fly controls although you can batch control brightness, contrast, etc through the Preferences settings.  More info on Elgato at http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Video-Capture/product1.en.html.

So far I've remastered some 20 hours of video and am mostly satisfied with the quality.  Some actually looks a bit nicer than the original when played directly from the camcorder to TV monitor.  Some of the converted footage exhibits 'jitters' which are generally not overly noticeable.

Once a tape has been converted to digital video (DV), it's possible to edit selections.  I used iMovie for that purpose.  I selected a 30 min segment from a 2 hour tape then edited it to a 7 min video, The Scotia Sawmill - 1993.  Scotia was a company town dominated by the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO).  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Lumber_Company for more information.

You may need to convert the video format and/or compress it for posting on your blog (Blogger limits file size to 100MB).  MPEG Streamclip, free software that will convert formats and compress video files is available for both Mac in PC at http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html. 

OMG! I Just Lost All My iPhoto Photos!!!

So you've been storing all your photos using iPhoto and you didn't make a backup.  Not a good idea, but some folks still do that and even if you haven't and iPhoto says it's broken how do you get to your photos?

This happened to a friend and while some of her photos were backed up, there were problems with the backup.  Problems with backups are not always apparent until you decide you need to restore some files then find out what you thought was backed up isn't.  If this happens because something else went snapfoo your options rapidly dwindle.

So how do you access images stored in the iPhoto application when the application malfunctions?  iPhoto stores the images in folders under the Pictures master folder. The iPhoto application resides within the Pictures folder and acts to retrieve images in the Pictures subfolders.  However, it is possible to locate the hidden subfolders.  Let me explain how I did this on my MAC.  A similar process should work on a PC.

Even if you store your photos using iPhoto, you probably have one or more images stored elsewhere on  one of your hard drives, maybe even the computer's internal hard drive.    Enter the file name in the Finder search window and it will display the folders path of the file for each instance of the image.  You may have may but probably only one in the Pictures folder.  If several, check each one until you find a file path that includes iPhoto Library.  In this example, I have searched for a file named "0444 Alignments" and found four instances on my hard drives.  Only one of the files with this file name is located in the iPhoto Library.

While I cannot open the iPhoto Library if it is not working, I can open the 'Originals' folder.  In it are a series of subfolders by year with all of my photos uploaded to iPhoto.

Once you have come to this point, you are on your own.  Happy recovery!!

A Personal Photo Challenge - Seeing the Unseen

While making some chicken soup and thinking I should take a photograph, I looked around and saw there were other objects in the kitchen and nearby that did not look very photogenic.  What if I could see in the infrared?  What if I only saw shadows and highlights and nothing in between?  Could I make these dull and mundane items look interesting and still retain enough of their original features to be recognizable?

My personal challenge was to photograph these otherwise dull, mundane, and not so photogenic objects then process the images in-camera with the Pentax K5 filters to bring out features otherwise hidden and see if they could be seen differently.

Glad wrap never seemed 'glad' to me, so what if it were brighter, the colors more saturated, and made the box stand out against a black background.  Abstracted to unreality but definitely gladder looking!

You don't remember Easy Money?  Well you are younger than I.  Of course in real life we know there is no 'easy money' or 'free lunch' but there are those who would make us think so by claiming they can make us rich if only .... [fill in the blanks].   These charlatans must think their victims see things with a distorted view, so I used the distortion filter to make the Money look even easier.  But you should take a 'clue' and see that there is a 'risk.'  

Chinese Checkers!  When I was six I thought this was the greatest game there was and probably because of the bright colors and the sound of marbles thumping distinctly against the metal surface of the board.  That sound made it unlike any other board game.  That sound is still brought to mind when I look at the distinctive appearance of this Chinese Checkers board.

This is what the coffee pot looks like in the morning before consuming the first cup!

Not in the kitchen, but seen from the kitchen window, the view of the boulder has recently been slightly obscured by an Elderberry limb that fell in last winter's storm.  The boulder has a blue cast and the limb is a collection of linear features.  I processed one image to bring out the blue in the boulder and the other to bring out the Elderberry limb.  

Oh yes, what started all of this - the Kitchen Sink Chicken Soup!  I call it that because I toss in whatever veggies I can find in the kitchen, though I did not include the sink.

Recipe for Kitchen Sink Chicken Soup: sear 3 chicken breasts in a bit of coconut oil; add enough water to 2/3 of pot capacity; add veggies (sliced red potato, celery, mushrooms, carrots, etc); add spices (curry mix, turmeric, coriander, dash of vinegar, fresh ginger chopped fine, salt to taste). Bring to a light boil without cover for about 40-50 min (add water as necessary).