Had a trip down to the river at the weekend, took some photos and thought to tweet them. Six times in various ways and they would not go through. Bang all went through this morning. So wither a glitch at their end; or a glitch at mine. I'll try again later in similar circumstances and see what happens this time.
Meanwhile:
I've covered this briefly before, but having finally managed to watch the Horizon show regarding colours and having to explain the concept to my godparents I think it's worth looking at again.
One of the main problems with digital photography is taking a shot, looking at it and then stating "But why is it so orange/blue/red when it clearly isn't like that when I look at the scene in front of me?" The short answer is - because that really is what the scene looks like and the camera is correctly reproducing it.
Once again we see the misconceptions over taking photos being applied. This time to the Braehead shopping centre in Glasgow. Sadly like so much it's a case of 'he said, they said' so the exact terms being bandied about cannot be verified, but the context is clear.
Firstly the obvious statement that I Am Not A Lawyer, but the statements I make echo and combine statements made by those who are.
Last year I made mention of the single white arrow that had appeared in York Street which I found odd given that York Street is two lanes. I'd been fed up of the lack of action here so enough was enough and I called the Worcestershire Hub. The conversation at the time went like this:
"My understanding is that it's a filter"
"Which means it's two lanes"
"Well they filter"
"So who has priority Lion Hill or Lichfield Street/Mart Lane? If it's one lane you need a priority, if it's two lanes it needs to be marked as such.
"My understanding is there's limited parking on the left"
"Yes but for the majority of the road it's wide enough for two lanes as it's always been except at the entrance and that's only because a parking bay was moved from the created entrance to the new blocks of flats and moves, incorrectly in my opinion, nearer to the entrances."
This went on until I asked
"In the same case who has priority in High Street?"
"There's an island there"
"No. Bridge Street traffic goes straight over the island, but York Street traffic turns right by-passing the island. Is High Street two lanes or one?"
An engineer was going to get back to me. Fast forward to the present and I've contacted them again and amazingly got pretty much exactly the same response namely "It's a filter". However something new was added. I pointed out that York Street once had a lane divider marking that was worn out and never repainted; likewise a cross-hatching at the Lion Hill splitter. The response was "I have no evidence of that"
So that's what I want. Does anyone reading this have any photographs of York Street or of this splitter with markings. My guess we're looking at late 90's early 00's.
[Update - my father's stated there's a load on the I/We Love Stourport Facebook page so I'll check that out when I get the chance]
Well my PS3 recognises the USB card reader I plugged into it so I could easily browse and then upload what I consider to be the better photos of my excursions into icy Stourport. Please excuse the bare titles, a little difficult to type using a stick :-)
Here's the link to the first photo The Rough and the last A frosty start so start where you like and head in the relevant direction through them if you wish to.
On a technical note I switched between using the pre-set Snow setting and the Program setting with a custom white-balance; the result of the latter is a little more yellow/gold as the blue cast was removed. Then again the sun was low as can be seen in at least one photo so the result was closer to what I saw.
The photos I took of the Stourport Carnival are making their way up to Flickr; as previously mentioned I didn't stay for the walkers, but I did get the floats.
Of the ones uploaded so far my favourite has to be this one, just an accident of composition.
Attracted to the title of this channel Five programme I recorded it last night and managed to catch the first half this morning. Hmm.
We get a quick introduction from host Suzi Perry about how we've gone digital and almost all of us now have a camera to hand. We get a cluster of 'famous' photographers with the promise that they'll be showing us techniques to get the best shots, a montage of future footage, and then a more in-depth look at the photographer of the day who'll be showing us how to take portrait shots.
A foreign company creates an ecological disaster in a country, the company's host country responds, the country's government responds, orders are made to the company to clean things up, answer to possible charges and set aside a fund to compensate victims. Am I talking about BP in 2010, yes; but I could just as well as be talking about Union Carbide in 1984. Let's plot the similarites.
In 2010 an oil drilling operation off the coast of the USA and nominally in the hands of BP went wrong and oil started flooding out into the surrounding waters. The oil failed to be contained and spread onto the American coastline.
In 1984 a pesticide factory in Bhopal India, owned by a subsidiary of United Carbide went wrong and leaked an amount of a cyanate into the surrounding area.
Google Earth is a cracking bit of free software, but as expected by default it only shows pictures loaded up with its own Panoramio photo database. As I and so many use Flickr how to get those photos onto Google Earth.
Step forward Metal Toad Media and their KML feed, this use the geotag information in Flickr and loads them in as you scroll about. It works 'nuff said.
Okay this should be my final word on the matter and be warned this contains some mathematics, but nothing that advanced.
Right I've dealt with the hyperfocal distance (HFD) to recap this is the point of focus whereby everything is nominally sharp from infinity to a point halfway between the camera and that point. It's calculated, using full terms, as focal length x focal length then divide by aperture and divide again by circle of confusion then finally add the focal length. (f^2/Ac)+f
By default the measurements are in millimetres so divide again by 1000 to get a result in metres. The focal length is the actual distance between the sensor and lens, not necessarily the 35mm equivalent this should be recorded (though only to an accuracy of the nearest millimetre) in the EXIF data of the photo. Any decent photo package will allow you to see this as will XP and Vista from the file properties.
The only hang-up is finding your circle of confusion measurement, Google is your friend.
First consideration now you have the HFD is that focussing at or beyond that point will mean everything from that point will be sharp; however the 'fuzzy' point before it will move closer to the hyperfocal distance but it will never go beyond it.
That's if you focus at or after the HFD what if you focus in front of it? That's where more mathematics comes into play.
To determine the closest point of sharpness you do the following - multiply the HFD by the distance you're focusing at then divide by the HFD plus the distance minus the focal length Hd/(H+(d-f))
For the farthest point you change one sign so that the equation reads Hd/(H-(d-f)); for those of that bent the full equation obviously being Hd/(H±(d-f)).
Is there an easier way of estimating these two points? Well DSLR's lenses can feature a DoF gauge otherwise there's a few things that you can keep in mind.
Finally got around to adding some more photos to Flickr, mostly because my father borrowed the camera for a Severn Valley Railway day and thus took some shots of the Oliver Cromwell.
The others are basically the snow we had.
I didn't have a chance to use my 'proper' computer so threw them on using the basic windows tools which happily renames them in numerical order if anyone had noticed.
Photos from Sunday uploading as I type. We've got our nice newly laid Dunley Road complete with ridges; the bollards on Betty Dawes Hill; the new shop front at Buftons; the newly laid island; the re-vamped Outback; and the one fresh lane in Vale Road and the one patchy lane in Vale Road.
Finally got all the Carnival pictures up including the night-time river parade and the fireworks, which came out okay. Mike Warren's posted a great shot of trees in the mist; by one of those coincidences he was in Wyre Forest taking shots while I was in Hartlebury Common doing similar. Suzie's been having fun with nature close-ups and Kwerfeldein has uploaded more of his masterpieces of light
