Category: Photography

Sensor cleaning warning on D300, Canon

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date December 10, 2007

I don’t have a D300 on my wishlist, as I don’t fully utilize my D200. I’m also thinking of trying Canon for my next major camera purchase.

Regardless of whether you use D300 or Canon, Earthbound Light provides a warning about the type of sensor cleaning fluid you use. I gather the D300 has a ‘sensor shake’ option, but it won’t handle the dust that fuses to your sensor–pesky stuff.

However, the regular Eclipse fluid won’t work on the sensor coating used in newer cameras–including the D300, my D200, the Canons, and others–and we should be using the Eclipse E2 cleaning solution. Since E2 works on all sensors, it makes little sense to buy the original fluid.

Graphics/CSS Photography

Picnik your Flickr

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date December 7, 2007

How many misspellings does it take to make a successful mashup?

Elaine posted a note about Flickr adding edit capability via Picnik. I immediately tried it out, as the following screenshots demonstrate:

[images lost]

Just as with the stand alone version of Picnik, some of the functionality is free, others are part of a premium package: $24.95 per year.

Picnik is one of the few online photo editors I did include in the book, primarily because it’s one of the better organized, and has some of the most interesting effects. One aspect I like most about it is the sliding scale tool, which provides live scaling of the image.

Picnik uses Flash, like all of the online photo editors do. Flash isn’t a requirement, though. Most of the functionality, and then some, that Picnik can do can be done with something that most people already have installed at their linux-based hosting site: ImageMagick.

To use the ImageMagick, you do need to have command line access through SSH. ImageMagick can also be installed on the Mac using Macports, and accessed via the Terminal application. Once installed, the following command:

convert purpledragon_thumb.jpg -bordercolor white \ -background DarkGray -polaroid 5 purplepolaroid.png

Creates the following effect.

Purple dragonfly polaroid

Or, you can use Picnik with the premium package.

outdoors Photography

Fall 2007

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 12, 2007

My fall color photos for the year. From trips to the Botanical Garden and Shaw’s Nature Center.

Shaw Nature Center

Botanical Gardens

Photography

Fall Colors

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 12, 2007

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My fall color photos for the year. From trips to the Botanical Garden and Shaw’s Nature Center.

Photography

Gimp 2.4 released

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 2, 2007

According to O’Reilly GIMP 2.4 has been released.

The new version of GIMP is a cut above previous releases and deserves a closer look. People expect it to look and act like Photoshop, and that’s a mistake, because GIMP is based on its own unique UI. If you accept the uniqueness, you have access to a powerful and free graphics and photo editing tool.

I’ve been using the candidate release on my Mac, installed with Macports. I’m quite impressed with the tool. The Windows and updated Mac versions will probably follow within a couple of month.

Speaking of Macports, does it work with the new Leopard?