![Portrait with a Clumber horse [10/52]
I actually intended to try and do quite a straight portrait and include the horse at the side of me. I stood with my back to the horse with my camera at ...](http://publicenergy.co.uk/Projects/52-Weeks/20100306-1145-0017-Edit/803460292_nQg6M-Th.jpg "Portrait with a Clumber horse [10/52]
I actually intended to try and do quite a straight portrait and include the horse at the side of me. I stood with my back to the horse with my camera at ...")
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Dave
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Dave
A New Start
It was only a couple of days ago when I posted about the posibility of me using Linux and still being able to easily process my photos. Well, since then I’ve sorted out some niggles and got to the point where I’m actually enjoying using it.
The relevance of the screen photo above is that I switched the order of the boot menu to make OpenSUSE the default instead of the second choice. I’m not running away from Windows because I have problems with it or I have some irrational hatred of Microsoft. Windows Vista has worked just fine for me since I installed it in January 2007. I went for the 64 bit version of Vista so I was initially without a driver for my scanner, but that was about the worst problem I had really and I blame that on Canon rather than Microsoft because Epson had all of theirs ready! Some things weren’t compatible with the 64 bit version, but from what I’d read, the 64 bit version of Vista was intolerant of the liberties that Windows programmers had been taking for years, so I was quite happy to wait for fixed versions of software. Even here, the only thing that really broke for me was a trail version of Nikon’s Capture NX.
So, why am I running Linux and, in all probability, going to eventually ditch Windows? Well, a change is as good as a rest! – I work with Windows every day of my working life – on my own work PC, on the desktops and laptops that my colleagues use, on the multiple servers that I look after and on various customers machines. Windows is everywhere. If I work from home, then I was only using my home Windows PC to connect to a remote session to do my work – so as long as that capability is there in Linux (it is), then I have no work related downsides. The one very big upside though is that my home desktop looks very different to anything I work with so it’s more of an escape from one world and not a direct reminder of work!
I still have the option of going back in to Windows – I’m not making the ultimate sacrifice and getting rid of it completely. I’ll leave that safety blanket there for some time!
My biggest worry was that processing photographs would be a huge pain. It’s not though – I managed to grab a load of photos from my memory card today, file them and edit a few in a fairly simple way and upload them to Flickr. I’m going to take some time to watch some tutorial videos and get up to speed on some of the software. The things I miss most about Windows are two pieces of software – FeedDemon and Lightroom – both are really best of breed in their own fields and I’ve seen nothing that comes anywhere close to either of them yet. Having said that, I don’t think this is entirely terrible and I think with a bit of effort I’ll get over it.
I’m quite impressed with myself (!) that I have managed to:
- Get Flash working in 64 bit linux after navigating lots of user forums with people arguing with each other about it and finally finding the one paragraph where somebody had a workable solution. Flash now works and I can pretty much use any site with Flash on it, with only a few slightly odd occurances!
- Sort out my graphics problems – the latest version of something called CompizFusion stopped my title bars from disappearing if all of the fancy graphics options were enabled. So it now looks nice!
- Installed the last.fm player which works exactly the same way as the Windows version so I can listen to radio.
- Installed SqueezeCenter – this is the software from Slim Devices that makes my Squeezebox work! I needed to install MySQL first to get this going, but it worked fine. The only down side to this was that visiting the Slim Devices web site showed me all of the nice stuff they’re making these days that make my old device look a bit old. It is still lovely though! :)
- Last and by no means least, I managed to catch up with the latest Battlestar Galactica thanks to Pan and VLC.
I’d still like a Linux version of FeedDemon though!
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Dave
Photography and Linux
I use Microsoft Windows every day. Mainly 64 bit versions of Windows Vista because I use the Home Premium variant at home and the Business version at work. I have used Windows on computers for as long as I can remember and it’s so familiar to me and easy to use.
As for photography, in Windows I can pop in a memory card and have Lightroom grab the images and file them all away in the right place, tagged up with metadata templates applied and then happily browse the photos and make RAW or other adjustments, right-click and export to Flickr or do a multitude of other things with them very easily.
Considering how easy this process is, I wondered if it was possible to achieve the same thing using Linux. This is out of curiosity more than need.
So far though, it all seems like going back in time to when graphical user interfaces had just been invented. Everything seems very rudimentary and there are lots of basic things that don’t quite work right that are getting in the way even before I get to looking at a decent photographic workflow.
The issues that I have so far:
- I haven’t found any good way to browse a lot of images quickly
- The image editor (GIMP) doesn’t show me previews when I try and open a file (it just says “Loading Preview…” and sits there (for JPG as well as RAW)
- My mouse doesn’t have enough buttons available! – this one sounds silly, but I have a mouse with five buttons, the usual 3 on top including the clickable mouse wheel but also two buttons where my thumb lives. I’m so used to using these for forwards and backwards when browsing files or web sites.
- Graphical acceleration doesn’t work properly with my graphics card. This I find particularly odd because I’m using probably one of the best known manufacturers of chip sets – Nvidia. You’d have thought if any of them would work properly it’d be them!
- Adobe haven’t released a version of Flash 9 for 64bit Linux so a lot of web sites don’t display correctly.
Despite these problems, which I’m going to look at sorting out, it is quite pleasant to use for browsing, email and general bits and bobs.
And after a bit of mucking about I managed to get a music player to find my music and was able to listen to music and have it register with last.fm again. It’s amazing how much more pleasant using it is when you have access to creature comforts like a nice desktop MP3 player – Banshee is quite nice but it does do odd things sometimes. For instance, I paused a track and later closed the application. I later noticed that it was still running and had a little musical note icon near the date on the task bar – so I moved the mouse over it, it displayed a pop-up window showing my paused track, started playing on it’s own for about a second, then closed the application!
The bit I’ve not mentioned so far is installing. I started off with downloading Ubuntu – mainly because it seems to be flavour of the month and while there is a lot of activity around something, it should in theory be easier to get information and help. However, that turned out to be a right pain. The installation didn’t get very far before I just got a screen full of flashing colours. Another installation attempt and turning on graphical compatibility mode I got further still but then it took exception to my installation CD and bombed out right at the end. Is it honestly too much to ask to check the files on the CD at the start and put them on the hard disk to install from. By this point I was sick of Ubuntu. I thought that if I’m starting off by having to use compatibility modes at the installation point, then it doesn’t bode well for actually using it later.
So, I did some more digging and research and downloaded another installation image. This time OpenSUSE. I just downloaded a 60Mb boot disk that could install over the internet and fetch whatever it needed. I popped that in, told it where to find the files and let it do it’s stuff. It seemed to correctly identify all of my hardware, suggested the right place to put the disk partitions (something Ubuntu didn’t get right). The placement of partitions was especially impressive becuase my set-up is probably a little unusual. I had prepared two partitions for this prior to starting but Ubuntu didn’t think they were a good first suggestion to use – OpenSUSE did.
At the moment then, there is no way I can use it to process my photos so I’ll be booting in to Windows and doing it (and probably staying there most of the time). But I’m going to keep looking at this periodically to see if I can sort these problems out and get something nice working.
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greywulf
Yeh. 64-bit Linux is still a way behind the rest of the Linux crowd. It’s, quite frankly, embarassing – I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s crazy given that Linux has a (well deserved) reputation for working on multiple platforms without any issues. It’s one area where Linux needs a serious kick up the a………
That said, I’m surprised Ubuntu took issue with your machine; the nVidia graphics card should “just work”, though that seems to be the core of your problems. Which release number did you use? 8.04 (the current release candidate) has much better support for 64-bit than before.
You’re right about SUSE’s default desktop style – it’s a horribly retro design. Thankfully though, that’s very easily fixed. There’s no shortage of MUCH better themes at http://www.kde-look.org/ (for KDE) or http://gnome-look.org/ (for GNOME).
Your nVidia card will probably need the correct drivers installed; that’s an easy fix – just search for nvidia in the application list (dunno what it’s called in SUSE, sorry!) and install them. My best guess is it’s using the default VESA drivers right now. Ick. You should be able to configure the mouse to your liking in the preferences somewhere – again, I’m no SUSE expert.
For fast image browsing and organizing I recommend Digikam. That’s a terrific app with much good built-in editing controls that most of the time there’s no need to open up an image editor.
Phew. Hope that all helps! :)
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publicenergy
Thanks for all that.
I did have the official Nvidia driver but to no avail. But after trawling the forums I discovered people recommending getting a newer version of CompizFusion. I installed that and things look nice and the Gimp previews work which is nice.
The initial install I tried was the 8.04 release candidate – the live CD version of which worked in graphics compatibility mode but whenever I tried to use the normal mode, I either got flashing colours or my monitor telling me it’s not playing!
No luck with the mouse yet, but I’ve not really looked for a solution yet. I did have a look at a mouse configuration screen that showed me a picture of a three button mouse and let me know that I had clicked button 4 and 5 – so it knows they’re there – I just need to find a way to map them to functions.
I’ll have a look at this Digikam software – it looks promising from what I’ve seen on it’s web site.
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publicenergy / A New Start
[...] was only a couple of days ago when I posted about the posibility of me using Linux and still being able to easily process my photos. Well, [...]
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DJK
Hi there. I use Vista (32-bit, Business flavour) and Ubuntu (older – 6.06) on this laptop, and find that my workflow is actually marginally quicker with Ubuntu as the OS due to RAM considerations: 2.5GB is just about enough with Vista, and is more than ample with Ubuntu.
I use the File Manager (or whatever it’s called) to view my files – up to 400% on preview compared to Vista.
However, I use GIMP on both platforms, and ipernity as my internet photo displayer (used to use Flickr). And Open Office for many other things I hobby about. The fact that Ubuntu installs with GIMP and Open Office out of the box saves oodles of time, and my entire re-installs have taken less than an hour, complete: the longest thing is downloading the latest flavour off ‘tinernet, and creating an iso disc that has to be checked to make sure it works (did you do a checksum on yours ?).
Oh, and I have a very old laptop which still manages to work, albeit slowly, with an older version of GIMP and xubuntu (6) – and 184MB of RAM :-D
I’ve tried OPENSuse, too, but that requires several CDs, not just one.
Partitioning has been a breeze, and is highly customisable: but I tend to perform clean installs, with fresh, formatted hard drives – I can imagine that a well-used and consequently fragmented hard drive would be a nightmare to sort out, with the risk of data loss.
So, I would say it depends what you use as to which works better: I’m no uber-techy, and only stick with Windows ‘cos I need it for work (or, rather, haven’t converted work to Ubuntu / Linux). But my workflow is actually a little quicker in Linux, and more pleasant for its customisability – and the fact that it is not Microsoft :-D
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Dave
Big UK Flickr Meet #3 – Nottingham
Flickr Meet #3 – Nottingham, originally uploaded by CraigMarston.
This event turned out very well. The weather looked like it would rain, but it just remained overcast. Everyone I spoke to during the day said they were really enjoying themselves, and indeed, there were a large number of poeple left when we arrived at the final pub around 5:30pm.
We met at 10AM, and went straight in to the Council House on the Old Market Square in Nottingham. That was fascinating. I had no idea that place was so extensive. 58 people signed in to look around which gives us some idea of final numbers for the event – some people turned up later as well.
We had a rather long lunchtime break in the Pitcher & Piano pub which used to be a church and after everyone going off exploring in little groups met up at the Castle to do some group shots and have a look around.
From the Castle, we had a ride on an old Routemaster bus around the city and then on to another pub. That bus ride was fun with everyone still in high sprits.
It just goes to show that despite not being warm and sunny, these things can be great days out.
There are already a few hundred photos on Flickr from the event and I expect there to be hundreds more. All of them can be seen here.
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Roger B.
Sorry I missed it – I was working.
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Hitesh Sawlani
I had a great time! That ostrich burger in the market was really something..
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Dave
Aysgarth
I’ve only been to Aysgarth twice. On each occaision, the weather hasn’t been brilliant – this time was better than the first time though when I get well and truly drenched and then a few minutes later the sun was out and it got that warm I had to dispense with my coat and was walking around in a t-shirt. Then a hail storm hit! This time there was a bit of drizzle and that was about it.
The top shot was taken with the Ricoh GX100 and was an 8 second exposure with an infrared filter attached. I didn’t have my tripod with me so I balanced the camera on some rocks and used the timer. The second shot isn’t infrared. I found those roots fascinating though. I wandered around a few times before I saw an arrangement I liked the look of. It’s funny that moving a few centimetres in any direction seemed to alter the view so much. I could have spent hours taking differently composed photos of this one tree! – I didn’t though, so this is the only photo I’ve got! :)
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Diana L-S
Beautiful photos! I really like the top one with the flowing water. In black and white they both have so much character.
I’m taking a photography class and Dark Room class shooting B&W film for a while. It’s been really interesting shifting back into that mode of photography, and of course not reviewing my photos instantly on the back of my camera :)
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Dave
Dales Dairy – Hawes
The video above was shot in Hawes, North Yorkshire. The shops there seem to have a lot of cow and sheep related merchandise for sale. My day up there turned out to be dairy related. After a non-dairy related photo exhibition at the Dales Countryside Museum, we had a look around the Wensleydale Creamery. It’s a good job that was cheap to get in to because it was quite underwhelming as a tour. The cheese shop and the cafe were worth the visit though. Each of us had a meal where cheese featured quite heavily – imagine the Monty Python Spam sketch but with cheese!
There were no cows in sight at the cheese factory or anywhere near it really. They seem to ship everything in. On the way home later though we stopped at Braymor Dairy at High Jervaulx and as well as selling fantastically fresh and tasty icecream, you can wander in to the cow sheds and see the cows if they’re in – which they were – and seemingly in a playful mood as well:
Some of them had more decorum though!
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Dave
The People of Flickr
“Fisheye Heaven Wild Style” by donna di mondo
“i love books from my flickr friends” by emdotIt was a really lovely surprise when I found these two photos on Flickr today. The two people who posted them were the driving force behind me creating that book in the first place so I’m especially glad that they like it. Both of these people also seem to have a knack for homing in on the photos that I actually have the most fun taking as well.
When I think about it, it’s amazing how you get an impression of people just through their photos and comments left on photos. Quite often I know when I post a photo of a particular type, which of my contacts are likely to home in on it, each having their own tastes and preferences.
Prior to discovering Flickr I hardly took any photos. That web site was the major influence in me getting so interested in photography. The web site in itself wouldn’t be enough though. I have tried other photo web sites that on the face of it offer the same facilities, but there is always something missing. That something is the people. It’s the one thing that other web sites can’t copy and it’s the main reason why I will continue to use Flickr.
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Dave
Flickr Vs Whining Bastards
My word, every time anything changes on Flickr a huge amount of people come out of the woodwork and have a right good moan about it. As far as I can tell my contacts are continuing to upload photographs and I’ve not seen pages full of happy slapping videos yet. I haven’t seen any evidence of the end of civilization as I know it, just a load of moaning gits saying how crap it is and that Flickr is ruined, despite the fact that it kind of looks the same as it always has done.
Already, millions of photos are uploaded every day and most of them are probably going to be crap – I don’t get offended that people are uploading badly composed photos for their friends to look at, or exploits from a drunken night out. Everyone is entitled to do their own thing. I don’t look at all of these photos and I only see a very tiny proportion of the photos on Flickr. As time goes by, you get in to habits of places to look, adding people as contacts who’s photos you know you like a lot of the time and you end up being part of a smaller community within Flickr with quite a lot of overlap in terms of taste and attitude.
The addition of video is just another type of file that people can add, the vast majority of them I will never see. I’ll probably only see videos taken by my contacts and a few others from groups that I take part in. So, all in all, video is no different to a photo in terms of how I find and view them on the Flickr web site.
Some people really do seem mortified that you can now post videos. Fair enough, if in 3 months time, Flickr looks like YouTube and the Explore pages are full of happy slapping videos and teenage girls miming to records, then Flickr will have failed in controlling it and making it a useful feature. I can’t see that happening.
I really can’t see this making a big difference to how I use Flickr though. Already my contacts have only uploaded a handful of videos between their usual photographs. Of these videos, none of them look like joke email attachments or people miming to their favourite song. In fact the only one I could find in my contacts pages that contained anything musical at all was the one above from Big Al Davies. Finding that actually makes me glad that you can put video on Flickr.
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greywulf
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here Dave. Some people moan just for the sake of hearing their own voice. Maybe it’s just icing, or maybe it’s a part of Yahoo’s long-term strategy. We’ll see.
Flickr adding video doesn’t change a thing if you choose not to use it.
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Jon
Well said.
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Primed Minister
Ditto that. Well said mate.
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Big Al Davies
Thanks Dave, I was searching your name to see if you a book out, thanks for the plug.
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Colin H
You may have to put me in the “moaners” camp, I’m afraid.
I’m in the horrible position of not being able to very lucidly explain exactly WHY I’m so miffed but let me try …I just think it dilutes what Flickr IS on a fairly fundamental level. Its own front page and blurb used to make it very clear the site was about photos. Other still images (art, illustration, screenshots) were barely tolerated and then only because it was impossible to hold back the tide.
It was a very simple proposition which did what it said on the tin and had grown into something rather lovely.
It also constantly inspired me.Moving images to me (and bear in mind I work with them most days) are a completely different art form (many of the same considerations and variables but completely different nontheless).
That said, I can see plenty of reasons for using video myself: on my groups dedicated to my children or to view instructional and scene setting videos about photography. So I’m not against it per se. I’d just, perhaps, have liked it to arrive as a semi-detached part of Flickr. A separate line on the Homepage, if you like: “Photos from you”, “Photos from your contacts”, “Video from you and your contacts”.
To me, having Video and Photos mingling in a stream goes against Flickr as I’ve enjoyed experiencing it so far. I see plenty of moving pictures (both rubbish and brilliant). Flickr to me is a chance to enjoy something still and done with care.
Just my 2p …
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Colin H
PS. Some of the best stuff on YouTube was people miming to their favourite song! ;-)
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Dave
A best seller at Blurb
When I announced that I had a book for sale just over a week ago, I thought that I’d get a copy for myself and two or three other people would be interested. Judging by the comments on the Flickr photo of the book and the comments on the post here, it looked like some extra people were going to buy a copy too – so that was all very heart warming.What I didn’t expect was to find the book listed on the best sellers page at Blurb when I was browsing this evening.
Well I never! – Chuff me!
Thanks to all of you who bought it – I hope you enjoy it.
I got my copy yesterday and I’m really impressed with how it’s constructed and printed. I’d have no qualms about using Blurb again.
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Dave
Infrared FAQ
Most of what I know about infrared photography I found out after trying things. I had read some tips on various web sites and a lot of that was useful, but when it came down to it, it was only the practical experience of taking the photos, playing with camera settings and different methods of editing that eventually led me to a way of doing things.
Everyone has their own way and will no doubt vary slightly or a lot from what I’ll describe below – I don’t consistently follow a set of rules or instructions, I eventually end up editing each photo in it’s own way, but generally speaking, this is what happens.
I’ve been sent so many messages through this web site or via Flickr asking questions about infrared. Every time I end up writing quite long replies and then thinking I really ought to write this down somewhere for when the next person asks – and up until now I never did.
Normally, the advice comes down to two things. If you want that blue sky look, get a filter that cuts of at 720nm like a Hoya R72, and regardless, setting white balance in camera makes the world of difference.
Can I take infrared photos with my digital camera?The easiest way of testing if your digital camera can see infrared or not, is to pick up a remote control device and take a photo of the transmitter end as you’re pressing one of the buttons down. If you can see the infrared transmitter light up, then you’re in business.
What kind of filter do I need?
Since 2005 I’ve used a Hoya R72 filter. I got that particular filter because it was easy to get hold of and was mentioned as being a good one on various web sites I read at the time. This filter works for me, but there are other filters out there and the results you get will very along with them. The infrared filter actually filters out normal visible light. When you hold one up to look at, it seems to be jet black and you can’t see through it. The R72 allows wavelengths of 720nm and up through it. Infrared has wavelengths between 750nm and 1mm. That means that you’re letting in some red light as well as the infrared light. Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends. If you want to make false colour infrared images with what look like blue skies, then no. If you’re only interested in making black and white images, then a filter that cuts of above the visible range may be better for you. I’m intending to get another filter with different characteristics this year so that I can do proper comparisons. Using infrared you can see a lot more on hazy days and I suspect that a filter that cuts out more visible light will be better at cutting through that haze.
Why do my exposures need to be so long?
Digital cameras normally block some infrared because it tends to make normal light images look a bit crap. When you did your test to see if your camera could see infrared, what you’re actually seeing is the infrared that is left after your camera has tried to filter it out. In practice, with a black filter on the front of your camera, you’re exposure is likely to be around 1 second on a sunny day. This varies from camera to camera though so the best way is to experiment with what you’ve got until you get images you’re happy with. I’ve tried infrared photography on 3 different Canon Ixus cameras, my Nikon D50, a modified Fuji S5600 and a Ricoh GX100 – all of them behave differently.
So, given that exposures will be long, using things like monopods, tripods or Gorillapods is a must. Using the timer so that you’ve not moving the camera is a good move too.
Why do you use that silly looking compact camera when you could use your DSLR?
The short answer: laziness. There are pros and cons for using each. This first image was taken with a compact:
Taken on a different day but more or less in the same place with a DSLR:
Plus points for the DSLR: Image quality
Minus points for the DSLR: Really fussy and hard to use. You can’t see what you’re doing through the viewfinder because it’s blacked out by the filter. So I had to compose the shot without the filter in place, focus, put the filter on and then take the shot. In theory I should have adjusted the focus manually after the filter went on as well. This is time consuming.
Plus points for compacts: You can see what you’re composing with the LCD screen
Minus points: Images not as good as DSLR.
I think if I’m honest, that given the quality increase in the DLSR images, it’s worth the effort if you’ve got the patience. I do wonder if newer DSLR’s with live preview make this easier.
Having compared these two options I use a third option though…
Converted camera?
Above was a section explaining why the exposures need to be so long. That isn’t so much of a problem if you want to take static photos, but try and get photos of people moving and you end up with a blurred mess.
The reason for that long exposure is the built in infrared blocking. A converted camera simply has that blocking screen removed or replaced with something that doesn’t block infrared. The end result of that is exposure times that are almost back to using a normal colour digital camera. This is great for people shots.
I use a converted camera myself but I still use my other cameras sometimes. Those long exposures are great when you actually want that blur – like moving clouds on a windy day.
I’ve taken some pictures and they look red or purple
In all probability, your camera will be set to auto-white balance. Because you’ve got a black filter on the front of it, it’s interpretation of what is white isn’t going to be much good. There are two ways around this: 1. Using RAW files and altering it when you process your image 2. Set a custom white balance in camera before taking your shots.
Whichever way you choose to do it, it came make quite a lot of difference to the image you end up with. The red image below is one of mine from a few years ago. The white balance was set to ‘Tungsten’. That seems stupid on the face of it, but at the time I thought that rather than having auto white balance, if I had a fixed one then at least I’d know it was the same in all of the images I took and make correcting the images easier. Well, that was true, but it’s not as good as just making sure it’s right in the first place.
How do I get that blue sky effect?
You use your editing software to swap the red and blue channels. You usually have a channel mixer somewhere, and in
that you can say make red
blue and make blue red.You can see in the screen shot that I’m changing the red channel and setting red to 0% and blue to 100%.
I’d then open the blue channel and set that to 100% red and 0% blue.
At that point your image probably won’t look how you’d like, but then you’re down to personal choice and how you tweak it to make it look nice. Typically I might have to use a curves adjustment layer to alter the white point if something that I think should look white isn’t white. This is required less if you set custom white balances when shooting though.
What about Black and White infrared images?
By far the easiest way it to just desaturate the image. I normally have to boost the contrast a little and auto-contrast normally works fine.
This post will be updated and corrected as needed
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Trying To Find The Road Not Ta
[...] dialog there are several presets you can choose from, one is Infrared. I’ve always admired, Dave’s infrared photography, which he does with an attachment for his camera. I haven’t broken down yet and gotten an [...]
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DJK, 
Colin H, 
brenda 9:20 pm on June 8, 2008 Permalink |
Crikey, something went funny there with my RSS feed – there was one of those “author has deleted this blog” messages. Same for your Tumblr account. Glad it was wrong!
publicenergy 8:15 pm on June 9, 2008 Permalink |
Yeah, just experimenting a little. I’m in the mood for change – but not deletion or destruction!