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Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Event, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Software Perspective Correction

Final software corrected image

Post Processing

Thanks to feedback from my photographer friend, Jae, I decided to try editing the photo from yesterday’s post in software. In that case, I compared two images from a Nikon PC (perspective correction) or tilt-shift lens. Overall you can use this special lens to straighten angles of buildings that you photograph. Concurrently, the images will not have that “falling away” look. This is usually what you get when the camera is pointed up towards the top. With this in mind, here is a repost of the two images – the one on the left uncorrected, and the one on the right straightened.

Tilt Shift comparison - ©TimeLine Media
Tilt Shift comparison – ©TimeLine Media

Today, I attempted to do the same correction on the left photos, but in Photoshop CC to see how close you can get in post. In Photoshop, I selected the Perspective Warp tool by selecting it under the Edit menu. This is the dialog box that pops up:

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 1
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 1

It tells you to draw a box around the areas that you would like to straighten. I go for the top half of the house as this is where I saw the biggest change in the photo.

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 2
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 2

Next, I moved the corner dots to the edges of that section of the house that I wanted to line up:

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 3
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 3

Turning on the Grid lines, it makes it easier to adjust the dots to be straight to each other, and the rest of the photo adjusts along with them:

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 4
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 4

Clicking the check mark gives you this image:

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 5
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 5

This is very close to the corrected image! Unfortunately, you can see how much of the photo needs to be cropped out, which means that I will lose some of the structure in order to fill in the black background.

Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp - 6
Adobe Photoshop Perspective Warp – 6

This is the real power of the tilt shift lens. In this case, the background is just made of lawn and driveway. You may need to have that area for indoor photos, or other larger projects. This also shows that this is a very specialized lens that will really show its magic in specific circumstances. It was fun trying this tool in Photoshop, and am happy that I could use this in a pinch! I would just need to set the camera back a little farther if I want to get more in the frame.

Final software corrected image
Final software corrected image

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
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Event, Photography, Portrait, Technology | 0 comment

Caricaturist and the Tablet

Caricaturist at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media

What does a caricaturist and photographer have in common with cutting edge technology? This blog has shown my growth in practicing digital photography in both professional and personal projects. The tech behind these new cameras has really advanced passed analog/film technology. Not long ago, this was not the case. There is a place still for film photography as an artistic choice in fine art and other personal work.

For me and most photographers, it is digital for client work. At ballroom dance events, we are able to send digital files to iPads for dancers to flip through themselves. They are not completely finished files, but they are good enough to show content. Also, it gives them a good preview of the images. We also have a running slideshow of our best images right out of the camera that can be viewed by many from afar. This has helped our business immensely! The immediacy of the photos means that dancers are excited to come back to the proofing website to view their images after the event has passed.

Tysons Corner Center

Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media

In a similar fashion, I photographed a caricaturist at Tysons Corner Center that was making drawings of people in the mall using a new Microsoft Surface Pro. The tablet is compatible with more than just your finger, you can also control with a stylus. This allowed him to draw directly onto the tablet making it a very similar action to drawing on a pad of paper. With the tablet, Microsoft directly connected the tablet to a very large TV monitor. The monitor was a mirror of the tablet which allowed people walking by to see how the drawings were made in real time!

Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media
Caricaturist at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Caricaturist at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media

This made for a much larger projection of the drawings – and it drew quite a crowd. Just this little change allowed the artist to reach a much larger audience. There is only a few that can see him working on a traditional pad and easel, the large TV brought in more eyes, and thus, more portrait subjects! After the drawings were completed, the subjects could just enter their email address into the same tablet, and they were sent their drawing in a few seconds. Amazing! For these artists, though, I think there is still much more value in analog tools than with photography. I wonder what my architect father could have done if he had access to a tablet!

Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media
Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Microsoft Surface display at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Photography, Technology | 0 comment

New Nikon D4S Announcement – Tech Thursday

Nikon D3 - ©TimeLine Media

Upgrading Tech

Has it been 2 years already? Nikon releases new camera bodies less frequently for their top end professional line (thank goodness). For them to take such a long time in between the release of a new body, they try to make improvements making it worthwhile for users. You can find rumor and review sites to read the specs. However here are my impressions on the new developments for their flagship Nikon D4S that was just recently announced.

  1. 16.2 megapixel sensor – This is a redesigned sensor from the Nikon D4. Additionally it does have some better improvements with the link EXPEED 4 image processor. I like that they did not up the megapixel count! The 36 megapixels in the D800 are a bit of a chore to work with. They take up so much hard drive space, and they take a big chunk of memory to process on workstations.
  2. Group area Autofocus – This is a feature that Canon digital cameras have had. Consequently, I was waiting to see it in a Nikon. Something has changed in the way that Nikon has designed their auto focus systems that has made me have a little less faith in how accurate they are in locking focus. Both the D4 and D800 have had more misses due to backfocus, or other missing focus compared to older models. Considering they have not changed the options and setup of auto focus in the camera menus, I am having more trouble with them. I am hopeful that grouping together a bunch of focus points to cover an area to track focus will improve the performance.
  3. XQD and Compact Flash card slots – Disappointing! Till now, I have not seen any other still camera manufacturer support the XQD card format. I do like that it handles like a more robust SD card with super quick transfer speeds, but having to carry around two different formats of cards neither of which have built in readers for laptops is a pain. I would have preferred 2 XQD cards, or even two of the new UHS-II SDXC cards – they can transfer at up to 280MB/s, with readers that are readily available on almost any laptop.

In any case, it is nice to see that Nikon is still trying to improve on image quality. Images that I shot with the top end Nikons from 4 years ago are holding up nicely especially compared to any image made on a smartphone, and many modern DSLRs. But it still depends mostly on what is in front of the lens to make the photo. It is just fun to geek out once in a while.

Nikon D3 - ©TimeLine Media
Nikon D3 – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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