Project 365 Day 45 - 30/9/13

Yesterday morning I got up pretty early with my brother to go up St Catherine's Hill in Winchester to try and get some shots of the dawn light. We were both bracketing our shots to do some HDR in post. I decided tonight to see if there was an HDR app for ipad and have been pleasantly surprised with the results I've gotten.

I used TrueHDR which cost £1.49 which is worth it for the quality of the results but it would be a better deal at 69p as there are some minor issues.

Here are some of the results :)

Out shooting I was bracketing 3 exposures but TrueHDR only uses 2 for each composite so I picked my darkest and lightest shots to merge. There is a brightness slider which works well and the above shot could have used a bit more. For these images I have only used the natural mode but there is a Vivid mode that offers more extreme settings.

After using TrueHDR I used PhotoPal to do a bit of sharpening and in the above shot I did need it to pull out the shadows on the tree. TrueHDR would feel more like a complete package if it had effective shadow and highlight control but considering it takes about 20 seconds to process and get results as pleasing as these I'll save using photoshop for when I really need the added control.

In this last composite the branch on the right is ghosting where TrueHDR didn't line up the shots properly, this is probably due to wind but there is no way in app to correct or adjust this. The last little thing that I think would improve the app is being able to use it in landscape orientation.

Here are some in app views...

4 adjustment sliders are available to you for adjusting your HDR composite...

Instagram style effects can be applied but other than the black and white setting they are very harsh and be done more effectively in other apps.

Overall I was amazed an ipad app could do HDR composites this well and it feels to me like an ipad could be all a photographer needs in the near future, it would be great to put all the editing feature you'd ever need into one app but it would take a really good developer to make a solid app that could rival photoshop.

Some bonus shots from up the hill...

Project 365 Day 44 - 28/9/13

Found this on my phone, think it was in Gatwick airport...

Project 365 Day 43 - 26/09/13

After work today I went for a walk with my camera, no tripod or extra kit. I was trying to 'get the shot' in camera, aiming to get as balanced an exposure without bracketing and photoshop.

I tried using PhotoPal on my ipad to pull out the shadows but even with RAW files it didn't cope as well I hoped...

Project 365 Day 42 - 22/9/13

Been a dry week for photography opportunities, this made me chuckle though...

Project 365 Day 41 - 17/9/13

This morning while I was getting ready for work I saw how red the sky was out the back of my house, poked my camera out the window and boom...

It was a shame I was getting ready for work and not off for a landscape shoot...

Project 365 Day 40 - 15/9/13

Surprise surprise, today's picture is of... a cat...

I saw Chewie sat on the windowsill looking outside as if he was waiting for the rain to stop and grabbed my camera. Initially I tried using flash as the room was dark but the results weren't great. I switched to manual, turned the flash off and set my shutter speed to 1/30 to keep things sharp in the dim light, which would under expose the shot but it worked out looking nicer and balancing the light from outside with that in the room, a touch of editing on my iPad added...

and just for lols here's one of Chewie yawning...

Rawrrr....

Project 365 Day 39 - 14/9/13

I've decided to stop worrying if I miss a day here or there, it's not the end of the world. Next week I want to try and make one of my photos really push my abilities technically and creatively as a photographer but until that day comes here's a picture of a cat :)

Project 365 Day 38 - 12/9/13

Last night I was experimenting with a micro studio style set up, the first thing I figured out is that I really need a proper flash as the pop up flash on the camera is a) rubbish and b) when shooting stuff this close up casts a massive shadow. Some off camera flash would really help me fill in the shadows.

This was my set up...

So I used a piece of white paper for my backdrop taped to my ipad to hold it up. I positioned a desk lamp to light the subject best I could but I couldn't eliminate shadows without another light source (eg. off camera flash, note to self, buy a flash). Mounted my camera on a small manoeuvrable tripod so I could get close to the subject, but maintain stability as I would be using a small aperture to keep everything in focus which reduced my shutter speed, so I couldn't shoot handheld without blur.

And this was the result, it needed a bit of white balance correction but still looks a bit blue, and I cropped the final image as my lens focuses close but the magnification doesn't reproduce 1:1 scale. Just need some more lighting to get rid of the shadow...

Project 365 Day 37 - 11/9/13

Where I work is directly under the flight path of a nearby airport so I often find myself walking below low flying planes and usually end up glancing at them. Today I noticed the clouds looked particularly strange and got a quick snap walking back to my office...

Project 365 Day 36 - 10/9/13

Today's photo is an old instagram post, it's one of the few photos I've taken with my phone that I look at and think it could have been taken on a proper camera...

Food Photography

Taking pictures of food is something I've always done but at the same time why do you take a picture of it in the first place? Maybe it looks too good to eat, or the picture helps you remember how good it tastes... Well I took this picture because I felt like I could give the guys at Wagamamas a run for their money...

Mmm... Katsu chicken :)

Videography

I've been doing some freelance videography for a client this summer and have been inspired to get into it a bit more. I've been working with borrowed gear and thinking how I could get a professional set up at a low cost as my budget for any gear is tight (or should I say non existent). To be able to achieve the results I've been getting with my borrowed kit I was thinking along the lines of (in an ideal world) a Nikon D7000, which would also be a nice upgrade to my D80 but more likely a D3200 of D5200. Preferably a cine lens that could autofocus (until I can get good results manually) and a hand held stabiliser...

This looks really cool but I would be looking for a much cheaper alternative, not so much £10,000, more like £10...

Project 365 Day 35 - 9/9/13

I like the look of lights photographed out of focus, it's been done to death but I rarely see it in black and white. To get the effect set your camera to manual focus and focus as close as possible with the aperture wide open (this gives you the circular shapes where there are lights, if you stop your aperture down the lights are smaller and take on a polygon shape).

Project 365 Day 34 - 7/9/13

I went to some aquatic shops today to help my father in law decide on some marine aquarium gear and snapped these lizards while I was in there...

Project 365 Day 33 - 6/9/13

Today I was messing around with a fish eye app on my phone which has some pretty authentic distortions, keeping it on my dock so I can experiment a bit more...

Lol cats

While I have a minute I had this crazy idea of injecting some humour into my blog. Despite my interest in good photography and constantly trying to improve how I take pictures there is always a place for things that are just plain funny. My Facebook feed happens to be full of hilarious captioned pictures of cats and their crazy antics as well nerdy photography stuff. So inspired by this I've decided to upload some funny cat pics of my own... captions welcome :)

There not all going to be photos of Chewbacca in the sink... here he is in the washing machine...

Project 365 Day 32 - 4/9/13

Still struggling to post everyday so my new them for the foreseeable future is post a photo of anything...

This is an old hipstamatic dual exposure shot featuring the London eye...

Project 365 Day 30 - 2/9/13

So I've missed a day again and today, which has been my first day back at work, I haven't got round to picking up a camera so I've decided to upload a couple of photos from the first roll of film I put through my Olympus OM20. For anyone interested it's Ilford Delta 400 Black and White film :)

This was an attempt at an arty shot, came out how I pictured in my head so I'm pleased with it. I used an 80-200mm zoom (which I paid 99p for) on a tripod, think the shutter speed was about 1/8.

And an obligatory cat shot, I have a 50mm Zuiko lens for my OM20 which stops down to f1.8 making the focus really selective, I wanted to retrofit it to my Nikon but adapters aren't cheap, for the same money I could buy a similar Nikon 50mm lens.

Really want to put a colour film through it for some landscapes, using a film SLR is a really different experience to digital.