Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[kinboshi]

Talking of flying things - these are brilliant, but at the same time a little sinister:

These are seriously cool.
This may be a stupid question but who is flying these things?  Will it be individual people or are the controlled by a computer program? 

Computer.  Or aliens.

[kinboshi]

Seismic activity in Japan in 2011. Don't think the date of the big one will need pointing out:

[Laxie]

Taken from that other place....

Hell hath no fury......

Just saw the news report and thought exactly the same thing.

Sigh...

This was on my diary two days ago.

It's old news. stagnant. (Some might even say moribund).

Liar, Liar pants on fire. 

I've just gone back through 16 pages to January 26th and still not found reference to the above in your diary. 

Had to re-live Tikay's cement tales though and shall be looking for compensation.

[RED-DOG]

That picture is pretty good Tom. How happy are you with it?

Which setting was that on?

Not entirely happy Dave. I had to crop it too much for a start.

1/100s
f/4.0
ISO 80
Manual focus
12 x optical zoom. (Which is apparently about 432mm in grown up camera terms?)

1/100s is  a bit slow for the subject, I reckon you could push the ISO up to 160 or even 200 here then you'd get 1/200 or even 1/250 given the same lighting and there should only be a marginal drop in the clarity of the image.

I can't picture how you manually focus a compact? Are you still viewing your intended shot on the lcd on the back?

12 x zoom hand held is pretty tricky and there's no horrible camera shake going on there, did you have the image stabilisation on? If you can get away without it then you have more scope to push the ISO higher and still keep the same quality of image.

I'm assuming that the picture was taken at the highest level of detail possible on your camera?

Right Dave.  On it's highest setting, my camera records at 6 million pixels. But, (And I don't understand this) The manual says that if I set it to 2 million, the OPTICAL (Note: Optical, not didgital) zoom is increased from 12X to 16.5X.

How can it possibly increase the optical zoom? It doesn't make sense to me.

See excerpt from user manual below.

• The number of pixels that can be selected
differs depending on the aspect ratio. If
you change the aspect ratio, set the
picture size.
• “EZ” is an abbreviation of
[Extended optical Zoom]. This is a
function which further extends the optical
zoom ratio. If you select a picture size with
EZ displayed, the zoom ratio is extended
to a maximum of 16.5 when the digital
zoom is set to [OFF].


While we're on the subject of picture size, I have a question.

If I have say, 500 exposures available to record in JPG mode at say, million pixels, and I change to TIFF mode, it reduces my number of available exposures by about 80%.

Now I understand that is because a TIFF file contains much more information, but in what form? Are there more pixels? Does it mean I can crop a TIFF file more without as much loss of detail?

 

[RED-DOG]

Taken from that other place....

Hell hath no fury......

Just saw the news report and thought exactly the same thing.

Sigh...

This was on my diary two days ago.

It's old news. stagnant. (Some might even say moribund).

Liar, Liar pants on fire. 

I've just gone back through 16 pages to January 26th and still not found reference to the above in your diary. 

Had to re-live Tikay's cement tales though and shall be looking for compensation.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=30601.msg1501612#msg1501612

[Laxie]

Well darn!  Dunno how I missed it, but you have my sincere apologies.

Maybe include pictures next time?  Even the cement was more interesting with a picture...kind of.

I'll go sit in the corner now for an hour or summat. 

[RED-DOG]

I can't picture how you manually focus a compact? Are you still viewing your intended shot on the lcd on the back?

When I say manually focusing, what I'm actually doing is controlling the mechanism that works the auto focus manually via a little toggle provided for that purpose. In essence, that means that auto-focus is disabled and the focus stays fixed to where I set it.

Useful if you know where your subject is going to be, but too cumbersome for on-the-go shots.


BTW - I was focusing through the viewfinder.

[RED-DOG]

12 x zoom hand held is pretty tricky and there's no horrible camera shake going on there, did you have the image stabilisation on? If you can get away without it then you have more scope to push the ISO higher and still keep the same quality of image.

Yes. hand held with stabilisation on. Didn't realise that I could increase ISO without it. Why is that?

[RED-DOG]

Your gonna need a big lens if your serious about taking good bird pics, that is the only way to get good clear, crisp pics of them. If your always having to crop you are going to get digital noise (stops the pic looking crisp) unless you have a very good camera. To give you an example, this pic was taken with a 300mm lens on full zoom and I was only sat about 12-15 feet away.

You can have all the skill in the world in this game, but at amateur level there is a direct correlation between money spent on gear and quality of pics unfortunately.

Click to see full-size image.

That's a cracking pic Andrew.

I don't entirely agree with your money spent statement, especially when your subjects are anything other than birds / shy wildlife. Even then patience and a good understanding of your subject can increase your chances of a good picture.



Anyway, it's fun trying to get the best out of what you've got. It's nice to have the best equipment, but it's easy to fall into the trap of becoming obsessed with getting better gear rather than trying to take better photographs.

[RED-DOG]

Talking of flying things - these are brilliant, but at the same time a little sinister:

I'm just baffled by this Kin.

Do you have any more information?

[AndrewT]

You kept this quiet.

[RED-DOG]

You kept this quiet.

I used a body double for the nude scenes.

[AndrewT]

Just as well.

[RED-DOG]

Enjoying Fergusson immensely Geo. It's slow going though, I have to keep referring to the translator.

[RED-DOG]

Click to see full-size image.