Another problem that almost all lenses produce is chromatic aberration. Again van Walree has one of the better explanations. Whereas radial (barrel) distortion will interfere with panorama production because the images diverge very quickly from one another – thus making it necessary to have a sharp transition from one photograph to the next or risk having highly divergent control points, chromatic aberration will interfere with the identity of control points in highly contrasting areas. Consider the transition from white to black to white on the left hand side of an image: Continue reading
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Kiwi II, 2009
The second journey in the late summer of 2009 started with my arrival in Auckland on Sunday, February 1. After picking up a small camper, a Toyota Lucinda, which was named “Juicy Lucy”, I visited my school friend Tom and his family, then it was by way of Kawhia to New Plymouth where I made my first attempt at climbing Egmont. A couple of nights at the old motorcamp in Stratford to discover the Forgotten World and make a second – still unsuccessful – attempt at Egmont from the south and then on to Wanganui and Waikanae to visit Don and Sally Matheson who were giving me their holiday house for a couple of days in March. Continue reading
Battle of the Bulge
A common form of photographic distortion is barrel distortion and its counterpart pincushion. Straight lines such as architectural features become curved and this is distracting, not only for viewing buildings, but also in portraiture, where the barrel distortion will easily make you 5 or so kgs overweight. Photographers will compensate for this by using the zoom to reduce the amount of distortion (and this, as it turns out, is true, although not the whole story). Continue reading
Panoramas and an Unsuspected Solution
Canon provides its cameras with software that is intended to cause baldness. ZoomBrowser EX is an insidious piece of software that plays around with the EXIF data on the camera, and PhotoStitch will join up your panoramic images like magic. Yeah, right. And then another 19 (nineteen) programs (!) install themselves on your machine, none of which have any use whatsoever. Continue reading
Bracketing
A major drawback of digital photography, and one that I have been aware of all along, is the lack of dynamic range, the difference between how dark is going to finish up as black, and how light will result in pure white. The closer these two values are, the greater the contrast, but there will be no detail visible in light or dark sections. The eye and its brain have an extraordinary dynamic range which allows us to see details both in the very dark and the very bright at the same time. Continue reading
Choose your weapon, er, camera
If there’s one area where you would be spoiled for choice, it would be choosing a camera. I made my choice, and it turns out that I made a good one, but it is many a snapshot and many a line of programming later that I would be able to say that. But, rather than go into all that, I can give a couple of tips about choosing a camera, any camera, in any case. Have a look for: Continue reading
Kiwi I, 1974-75
The first trip to New Zealand was my first trip overseas at all, and my first flight. In those days passports were not necessary for travelling across the ditch (even if it meant it was a little tricky getting through the international airport that Tullamarine surely already was). From Tuesday, December 10, 1974 to Friday, January 31, 1975, starting in Christchurch we completed an almost figure-of-eight of the two islands. Continue reading
Playing with Food
Long distance tramping is always challenging when it comes to balancing taking everything that you need with taking only what you need. I have a couple of formulas that I use to calculate how much food I need to take, but there is a more pressing question when most of the food you take is dehydrated in nature: How much fuel do you need to carry to cook it. My favourites of rice, instant noodles and surprise peas still need to be softened for their nutritional value to become available. Continue reading