Be Excellent To Each Other

Just went through my camera. Here's the dawn from the other morning when I went to pick up my mum.

Already put these on Twitter, but the compression ruins them somewhat. I took these while walking through the forest to work this morning after the bus dropped me off. Only my iPhone camera, but I don't think they've come out too badly.

Is that where they're buried?

Jen bought me a Canon EOS 500D today. She really is the best person ever.

What a catch.

She loves ice cream so you better not try to put the moves on her or I'll know.

I'm okay, thanks!

Can't vouch for Rach, though: she really wants a new camera.

I wouldn't worry about Jen running off wi' Malabar, as we both know she loves me*

*Although I can't for the life of me remember where we were going to elope to.

Council have changed the web permissions for everything, meaning that I'm not allowed to access Flickr at work anymore. This is frustrating, as I like showing off pics to staff friends and checking my stats.

And yes, quite a catch Superdupergill! A fine, mighty camera - and this is being said by a Nikonian!

This morning, at too early o'clock:

Have you got photogene app? If not, you should.

No, what does it do? I've got the Photoshop app, but haven't used it yet.

I wouldn't bother.

I want to start shooting more B&W, or to be more accurate take photos of things I think would look good in B&W and then post-processing them tonally, an' all that. I'm eagerly anticipating winter fogs to help with some moody shots.

I took some decent photos of the beach down by Sully, near Barry, at sunset - though my mates dragged me away on our walk before the red clouds appeared. The curs! Anyway, I plan a big processing spree through Gimp and posting some more soon.

Mum and dad bought me a Gorrillapod SLR-Zoom for Christmas, one of those flexi-tripod things. But I'm too scared to use it, being unconvinced that my camera won't just fall off a lamp-post or railing and hi-lariousy destroy itself in expensive fragmentative destruction. Anyone else got one?

Anyway, love the texture of those clouds Grim. I don't mind underexposed foregrounds so much in those scenes either, I think the black works well with the rich tones - though Amateur Photographer seems to go into fits over it in their critiques.

I have one of the smaller ones for smaller cameras. They're okay, if you can find the perfect object to wrap them around. Unfortunately their flexibility and low weight don't allow them to be particularly good tripods, though — mine was quite badly affected by small vibrations and slight breezes. So, erm, they're good if you want something incredibly portable and adaptable, but not for anything particularly serious.

However! The larger model you have may be entirely better. Just go out and have a go

Yup. They are like lumps of rock once you hook them on - try it at home with a pillow underneath if you're worried.
I've attached my camcorder to the bull bars of my Range Rover and gone off-roading with it before now, and it didn't fall off.

I've used a Gorillapod with our SLR quite sucessfully. At first I kept hold of the camera neck strap just in case - but quickly became more confident in it. As long as the legs are wrapped tightly it'll be OK.

It wasn't the SLR-zoom one though, but I was only using the canon kit lens anyway.

Some simple exposure correction facilities, contrast, filters and a few other bits and pieces that help rescue the shots after the mediocre sensor in the iPhone tries to wreck them. Cropping, and some text boxes for adding speech bubbles to images etc

I'll give it a go, but I'm not even an amateur photographer like some people here, let alone a pro like you.

It's quite handy for playing with levels, exposure, contrast, colours, rgb etc - it's all done with sliders and it saves a copy of what you've done. It's just the sensor in the camera is completely automated and routinely picks a homogenised exposure which isn't best suited for the image you're trying to take. You also have pretty comprehensive cropping, rotation and border etc. It's pretty neat, very easy to use and handy for getting better results out of the albeit OK camera on the phone. I think you can also directly post images from it to facebook/twitter or email.

It's an excellent little program, helping clean up the mess the camera makes; it can't polish a turd, but it can certainly help. How much does it cost? I can't remember, but it was worth it.

And, yes, it does allow you to post directly to Twitter et al. I haven't used that feature, mind. I mainly use it for cropping, resizing and adding borders. I love borders.

Outside the front of Malitowers about an hour ago, 6 second exposure.

Uploaded a couple of pictures from my camera.

I want to take some nice pictures in the snow but wasn't really in the mood the other day so hopefully I will be able to get some tomorrow. Arran looks gorgeous right now so I am planning on taking a few pictures of it from the beach which should be better than the second one here which was taken through my living room window! The first picture has a bit of Arran in it but it was taken from the right hand side of the bay so the mountain is out of view.

The mountains look so strange peeping through the houses.

Nicely done.

What camera did you take those with Gill?

It was a Canon EOS 500D.

Did you remember what her Girlfriend got her as a present, or did you look at the exif (is that what it's called?) info on the picture?

Malc

Exif info.

Cyber Sleuth!

Wow there's loads of info brought in... flash didn't fire, shutter speed, iso...

I think some cameras, and the iPhone adds GPS data as well, if it has it. There's an option in iPhoto for "show by location" and to my surprise a load of them were tagged pretty accurately.

Good snow pictures people, keep them coming (not that one Zardoz).

My phone apparently geo tags images, but I don't know how to look at the data. Anyone? It's a Nokia 5800 if that helps?

There doesn't seem to be a way to do it natively in the iPhone, either, quite daftly.

It's in the EXIF data, so any image viewer that shows all the EXIF tags will do it.

You can open it in notepad and look for the bits in English. Flickr will add it to a map for you magically (and I guess Picassa will do the same, but I've never used it).
Or you can put one on here, and we'll tell you.

Ok. First to tell me where this was taken wins a shiny handshake

[edit][edit]Except now I'm thinking not. At all. Nokia seem to store the GPS info in an odd way.

Erm, no. Right country, but a few hundred miles off. What am I looking for in the EXIF data?

From Dimrills pyloric canal. Looking down. While he's sat on a photocopier. Mid pass.

Ooh, I forgot about this one. Ice formations in Liverpool

Here's one I took last week:

First two pics with my new camera, first one testing the bokeh:


And second the ability to capture fast motion and play with post-processing RAW files (this was very underexposed):

£1.61

Took this over the Christmas hols back home on a walk with dad...



Batley Cemetery, Batley W.Yorks.

'In the L S Lowry style'.

Link to the Flickr here for multiple sizes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99176172@N00/4266990929/

More pictures:



Elm Street in the snow, Cardiff



View from The Garth, the big hill outside Cardiff near Taffs Well, yesterday.



Underpass at the foot of the Garth, across from the footbridge from Taffs Well.



Signal Mast near the train tracks in Cardiff, in the mist a week ago.

Usual photostream linky:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99176172@N00/

Some from up in the Lakes the last couple of weeks:










This one isn't, it's Fairhaven Lake just down the road.

I see Hodgsons Leap there Mark, are the others from your walk on Sunday?

The first two are, yeah. Here:

Great photos, the colour in the second one is brilliant.

Cheers. I discovered a macro setting on my Sigma 70-300 (can only be used between 200 and 300mm though) and I was quite amazed at how well it focused when zoomed in that far.

Coupled with the speedlight on the top bouncing the flash off the ceiling, it's made for some cracking shots that I could never have got before with the low indoor light.

Nothing like a good close up pussy shot.