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Showing posts with the label digital

Super 8 Wide Home Movie

S ince my last two video experiments created by using only still images captured in a fast burst mode on the camera were successful and actually came out better than I expected, I decided that perhaps I should try to come up with a way to effectively mimic old Super 8 home movies too.   For this new experiment, I chose a short clip of our grandson, Lukey, playing tabletop shuffleboard at Agave Taco & Tequila Casa. ________________________________________________________ I should start with a disclaimer...  This particular video clip was perhaps the most challenging clip I could have chosen for this experiment.  I did this purposely just to see what I could do.  This video clip was a high contrast clip with deep blacks and dark shadows.  Additionally, it was a highly compressed video which minimizes any leeway in editing the file.  In the future, if I want to mimic old 8mm/Super 8 home movies, I'll use a more appropriate clip captured using more appropriate camera settings. ____

Video Samples of Today's Yamahas

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I previously wrote about designing and building my own grand piano using a Yamaha keyboard as the base for the keyboard and sound. In that blog entry, I wrote about designing my own piano around a Yamaha digital piano but I didn't provide any samples to back up my claims. Below, are two short videos which I find to be excellent examples of today's Yamaha digital pianos.  The first is a video of classical pianist, Dominic Piers Smith, performing and providing some of his thoughts about Yamaha's current digital pianos. The second video features a beautiful and moving performance by pop singer Susan Albers. Both videos are impressive and certainly showcase today's Yamaha digital piano.

Programming Model Locomotives

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Bachmann, O scale, narrow gauge, 4-6-0 steam locomotive. I've been trying to get up to speed with Digital Command Control (DCC) for model trains for the past few months. Well... I started trying to educate myself a couple of years ago but have had difficulty grasping how to fully utilize DCC without having a locomotive to program or even a DCC controller. Over the past year or so, I've collected some DCC locomotives and a couple of different control systems. I'm learning more but it is a bit frustrating for a few reasons. First off, if you want to take a fairly easy route, you can just buy a DCC locomotive and use it in its default configuration with just about any DCC controller. This is certainly the easiest and quickest way to get up and running in DCC. That is not me though. I like to perfect things to my own preferences. I'd like to write a blog post about all the difficulties in programming... all the different DCC systems available today... compatibili

Konica Hexanon 40mm Lens

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Konica Hexanon 40mm, f1.8 lens As I wrote in a blog entry a few days ago, I found a beautiful old lens for sale after searching for almost a year. I quickly ordered this old but 'like-new' lens as well as a lens hood and a lens mount adapter to allow this lens to work with my particular camera. In total, this beautiful old lens was dirt cheap. I attempted to head outdoors yesterday morning to get some shots but between some very lousy health and very windy conditions, I captured nothing but blurred photos because of shakey hands and everything blowing violently in the wind. This morning, however, was a completely different story... There was no wind this morning... it was cold and crisp   (still below freezing when I headed outdoors)  with no wind whatsoever... my health had stabilized within the past 24 hours so my hands had steadied up to a normal level (which comes in handy when shooting a manual focus lens)... This was the time to put this new lens to the test.

More Practice with my Digital Pen and Tablet

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I've been trying to hone my skills with my digital pen and graphics tablet over the past couple of days. I have to say, this is not helping me get any rest though! Last night I started on what I thought would be a little test project. It is something I've always wanted to draw and paint... an old rural gas station... some dramatic lighting. By 3am, I knew I bit off more than I could chew for a "little test project". My intention was to just sketch out some ideas. The sketches developed quickly and then I was adding background and foreground (although, for me, the foreground could use something more)... and filling with color. Before long, I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open! The problem with a project like this is that I've learned that once I get my creativity flowing, I really need to allow that flow to continue for as long as possible. Coming back to an art project later rarely works well for me.  The next time I sit down and try to start that

Some Latest Artwork

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I've managed to get out of the house for a few short periods in the past few days... and that was really nice... today, however, I'm back indoors and I'm not so sure I'll be wandering outside today. I'm really worn out today... exhausted... and my spinal injuries are really bothering me. The pain started yesterday after overdoing my physical therapy the previous day. I knew I had overdone it while I was still doing my physical therapy! By nightfall, I was in considerable pain throughout my spine as well as having bone pain in my legs. Yesterday was a bit brutal so the only thing I accomplished was preparing and cooking baked ziti with garlic bread for the kids. Needless to say, sleeping is not going all that well. Last night, my sleeping problems due to spinal and bone pain were compounded by being cold all night long. Although the room probably was slightly chillier last night than usual (I removed the air conditioner from one of two windows in the room so we h

The Importance of Post-Processing Images

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I've been writing a lot about wildlife photography and posting many examples of bird photography in my recent blog posts. I am also in the process of writing a piece with tips for this type of photography. Until I publish that piece, I thought I would write about the importance of one of the tips I offer in that piece... the art of post-processing that needs to go into your images after you capture those images. There is no doubt that today's cameras can produce some beautiful images right out of the camera. Dynamic ranges are getting better with each new generation of digital cameras, tonal qualities continue to improve, sharpness and clarity continue to improve but there are still things which are out of our control which must be tweaked while there may be other things requiring a significant amount of post-processing.  I, myself, will post images right out of the camera especially while we are traveling. That doesn't mean that an image would not benefit from even som