Lost soles

Before and after. Boot on the right after 3400 km.

Before and after. Boot on the right after 3400 km.

Ah, boots! Can’t do anything without ’em, can’t do anything with ’em.

A long time ago I had an old pair of hiking boots that were well past their prime and I seemed to have gained a couple of blisters from them and lost a couple of toenails in return on their last journey. A mate of mine, Chris Thompson, on hearing of my mishap, had bought a pair of boots that were too small for him, but he reckoned they might be OK for me, so in the style of we’re all one big family, he made me a present of them, when it turned out that they were a good fit. Continue reading

Kiwi III, 2010

Sunset at Sunset Beach, 2010 (bracket of 47 exposures)

Sunset at Sunset Beach, 2010 (bracket of 47 exposures)

On the success of Kiwi II, I decided that a trip in early spring (August – October) might be the next goal, at least to explore the North Island more fully. I wanted to go to White Island, Cape Reinga, and do the remaining NI Great Walks. Auckland never seems to be cold, and while it was a little wet… It also very much brought back the Augusts and Septembers of fallen-in-love. Continue reading

Purple Picture Processor

Dersch’s A and B vs. Zoom

It seems like we’ll be waiting some time for the camera that takes the view you saw and makes it into a picture on its own. On the way to this goal a number of problems turned up that were solved on the computer. Low dynamic range (high contrast) was improved by bracketing and enfusing; barrelling (radial distortion) by determining the Dersch coefficients (left) and applying a counter-distortion; and chromatic aberration by measuring sets of aberrations (below right) and remapping the colour channels so that they now matched each other. What we might also like to do is process RAW images, save copies of the originals, both as JPG and in a sturdier format such as PNG. And while we’re moving the formats around, taking care that the EXIF data gets transferred too, perhaps a little extra data could be included. Then some postprocessing like Advanced Tone Mapping. And finally, thumbnailing and sharpening so that the images can be experimented with. Oh dear, it seems like Christmas is rather early this year. Continue reading