Small cheat #1

There are some things that may be considered by some to be cardinal sins and in most cases it's how i feel about them as well. However the keyword phrases here are "in moderation" and "when in a pinch".

One of those sins is to use an image of a certain size in a situation requiring a bigger size by resizing it and in the process make the image blurry. However what can you do in a case where you have no other choice than to use said picture? It doesn't matter if it's too small or anything, there is a reason that you just have to use that specific one and you can't get it bigger. Well there is a cheat that you can do to try and hide the blurriness. Again this works if the image is slightly blurry, CSI magic is just that; magic in a TV series. The "cheat" isn't about making the image sharper as there is already a sharpening filter in Photoshop (which sometimes introduces sharpening artifacts). Instead it is to make the image look as if it is sharp enough or more specifically trick the eye into seeing more resolution and details than it really has.

So what is this semi-solution to blurry image sin? Noise filter. No wait, don’t hang me yet, I’m not talking about uncontrollable amounts of noise and yes; it’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t always work nor does it have a standard amount of noise that works. It’s really easy to pull it off in Photoshop though, you set the noise filter in monochrome as you want to add false detail, not color blotches. Then you play around with the noise amount slider to find the value that works for your image, starting from the very left to just add a tiny bit amount of noise making it look more like fine film grain than noise. For my taste it's the point where the noise barely starts to get visible. Oh and btw it works better with photos that are in monochrome. (And that means any colour, not just black and white.)

Faces everywhere #3

Surprised plug adapter is surprised!
 !  !
   O

Putting things into perspective

If you have an SLR or dSLR camera then chances are, you are wondering which lens to buy, which working focal length to invest in. Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the answer is simple (in the sense of choosing your focal length), get what you need for the things you like shooting the most. And please don’t ask about “how X zoom” the lens has, as that is just a marketing trick and means nothing about the lens really. A 70-200mm zoom lens is less useful than a 24mm fixed length if what you like shooting is street scenes, and like wise a 600mm lens is more useful than a 17-85mm zoom lens if you like shooting wild life. If you are still confusing the wide and narrow focal lengths, think of it like this: The higher the mm number, the further away you’ll see. The smaller the number, the closer you’ll be able to see (This is just a way of thinking about it if you are confused, the mm rating means something else in reality!). 200mm is narrower than 24mm because it translates into an angle of view; with a 200mm lens having a narrower view cone than the 24mm.

Another thing that a lens’s focal length changes is the perspective, or how things look. People keep saying that you need a 40-50mm lens. The reason behind it might stem from the fact that it was the lens being given away with cameras most often back when film SLR cameras started popping out or  that lenses in that focal range are closer to the human eye in terms of perspective distortion, or rather the lack of it. What do I mean with that is that lenses outside that range tend to change how things look depending on how much wider or narrower the focal length is when compared to the 40-50 range. Check out the old stone olive press.

The reason is that the wider the lens, the closer you can get your subject. But the closer you get, the closer some elements of your subject get to the lens, while the things further away don’t, or at least not in any significant distance. Remember those scenes in comedies where the teacher points at a pupil and the view from the pupil is distorted with the teacher’s finger almost touching the kid’s nose, an elongated arm like a bridge and the teacher almost in the back of the frame? That is what you get when you use a really wide lens and have a subject that is really really close to it. If you go narrower than the 40-50mm range into let’s say 200+, then you get the exact opposite effect. Things get squashed and they lose their extreme depth.

So, remember that when you want to take some portraits. Don’t put up your ultra wide lens and go close to them or they will start complaining about their nose looking like Rudolf. Use a narrower range, like let’s say 70-80 and just take a few steps back if you are too close. (On the other hand, if you are going to take pics of some kids with a sense of humor, you might want to use that ultra wide to make for some wacky perspective.) 

Faces everywhere #2

omg OMG! Is my hair falling the wrong side?! OMG!

Or at least that is what this upside down mounted outlet made me think. I have this snobby sounding voice in my head when i see it. Even the way the light hits the internal safety mechanism in its "mouth" and the LD letters as its nose.

(click on it for a bigger version)

Seeing faces everywhere

Cyclops! Look at those lovely cheeks...

The awe of the ancients.

I know this post has nothing to do with design or photography, but it is a thought that popped in my mind because of the Olympics and our first Olympic medalist and just wanted to put it somewhere.

Most of us tend to be awestruck when thinking about ancient civilizations and cultures, be it for their beautiful achievements, their culture or simply because of that Indiana esque romanticism. We don't even think about their quirks or things that they did that would be unthinkable today. We may even not give enough credit to us today and instead of saying "we deserve to be better just because" we think more along the lines of "ah those ancients, what a great bunch."

They were the same exact thing as us. Way of thinking, doing business, sense of justice or lack of it. Culture and ways of thinking are things that are evolved (or devolved) over time, they don't just pop up.

How come and this post was inspired by the Olympics? Well as I've said this year we got our first Olympic medalist as the Republic of Cyprus and the whole place couldn't be prouder of course. He was greeted as a hero with a special ceremony and I really think that we should have done more for him. The ceremony was in the same way as the ancient Greeks did for their Olympic winners. They would tear down parts of the city walls for their winners to come in and they would say that they fear no one now because they had their Olympic winners with them. Now this is an era where each city was its own state with their own army.

To me that says that their Olympic athletes were actually their army and the cities competing in the games was more for showing their army to each other, a show off so that the others will think twice before messing with them. Now I'm waiting for those that will start saying "But wars would stop during the games! It was for peace!" Well yeah, after all there were no soldiers left to fight a war, they were at the games competing. If you think about it the events were javelin, boxing, disc throwing, chariot racing... events that showed how strong the participants were. There were no such things as gymnastics or diving.

"And your point is?" I just realized that the games were supposedly conducted for honoring the gods and forging alliances, while it looks as if it had a deeper agenda if you like. So in that sense one could argue that the modern Olympics really are for the games themselves, for the athletes to compete with each other and get a medal to take back home not to say to each other "my army is bigger than yours." I'm not trying to reduce the significance of those games, it's just that this thought I had made the modern games all that more special to me.

I'd love to hear from an actual historian about this. In any case, normal non-pondering program should resume shorty :P It was just a thought that popped in my mind.

TGIF

Who doesn't love Friday. (Well, perhaps Monday might, but who asked him/her/it)

Braking symmetry

Lets pretend that there is some symmetry going on in this photo and that the cliche effect of selective colouring is braking said symmetry :P

(Oh and photos, even though usually taken for evidence, never tell the truth. Room seems empty, but it had lots of things going on behind me when i took the photo)