lost data

No photo today - I have a little story to tell that might be of some use to you one day - but I hope not! You will appreciate the "hope not" when you hear what I have to say.
Yesterday a member of our Visions group rang me in a panic. She and her partner have just returned home from a four month trip and it was all recorded on her little hard drive camcorder. Approximately four hours of video.
What had happened to upset this lass was that the program she used to transfer some of her video to the computer did something unusual and everything disappeared. When the camera was removed from the computer it had a spine chilling message across the screen.
"No files to be reviewed"
It looked as if the camera hard drive had been cleared completely.
Over the phone I gave instructions on how to search for the video files on the computer. No files could be found on any drive and the voice was becoming more and more frantic.
I advised finding out about data retrieval and thirty minutes later I heard back - the cost is astronomical. $150 just to leave the camera and then possibly another $500-$600 to retrieve the files - but no guarantee of success.
I told her to drive down and bring the camera and I would see what I could do. We had a Visions meeting today and if she stayed the night I would be able to give her the camera back in the morning.
While she was on her way I downloaded a couple of freeware programs for data retrieval and tried them out on my son's hard drive camera. They both worked quickly and effectively finding the same deleted files from the camera hard drive. This gave me confidence in being able to help with this problem. The program I had purchased - also from the 'net - was for memory cards and this took forever but failed to find any files. If I hear a request in the comments to this mail I will give the names of the programs I downloaded.

To cut a long story short, I was able to find the files on the camera hard drive without using either of the programs. I have no idea what has happened but I do have an inkling - the files were in a named folder and then in sub folders which seems to indicate that when the movie files were being transferred they were actually being transferred to the drive letter that was the camera and not to the drive letter on the computer.
I was able to copy the folders (one with difficulty as it kept on breaking the connection between the camera and computer) and then copy the folders onto a Passport hard drive.
We now have one very relieved holiday maker who now has video to edit.
I have had an email this evening to advise that the files were transferred without problem from the passport to the main computer. no sleepless night tonight!
AJ

Wot a wet day!

We were awakened through the night with the sound of water running into the swimming pool - this only happens when the rain is heavy enough to run down the guttering and into the bypass that we have set up that allows the rain to top up the pool.

The sound of water falling on to water has a devastating effect on me which meant that sleep was over and I had to "go for a walk"! It rained steadily all night long and bu nine o clock we measured 55mm had fallen. That, by old measurements, is two inches of rain. A good fall of that wet stuff!

But it has continued all day long since then and it has been a good excuse to sit in front of my laptop and type and collate.

This evening we are supposed to get all dressed up and "go out" but it looks like we shall be dressing in practical gear rather than decorative! We are off to see how two of my videos fared in a local Video competition. I am not really a competitive person but I allowed myself to be persuaded to enter this competition! It will be interesting to see the videos that my two are up against. Maybe I don't stand a chance at all - but that truly does not bother me at all. I know that the videos I have made have been received well by the people I have shown them too thus far and that is what matters more.

While there is still enough light to see outside - it has been grey and dismal all day and what light there is will be fading soon - I took a photo from this room across the shade house and looking across the neighbour's land. The water from the creek has crawled onto the lower section - but it has been up and down a few times today so we shall not be having major flooding problems. As long as the water can get away when the rain eases it means that all is well.

f/5.6 1/13 sec 22mm ISO200

The second photo is taken across our own back yard looking from the veranda where I feed the birds.

f/5.5 1/20sec 42mm ISO200

I heard the familiar sound of a bird colliding with a glass window and went to investigate. Byron was at the ready to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. (He tried it once - and the finch drowned!) Fortunately there was no little body stretched out on the tiles so Byron's assistance was not needed. But seeing how the birds had returned to scrape the dish for any seeds that might have been missed this morning I retrieved my camera to keep a record. The lorikeets are not really seed eaters - they will happily eat sunflower seeds until they burst (I only give them a few so they don't do themselves damage) but the small grain is for the finches and thanks to the rain these tiny birds are showing no fear of the much larger lorikeets. I think there are two varieties in the dish - the double bar finches (they have several common names) and the red-brow finches. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

f/5.6 1/15sec 52mm ISO 200

I have a pot plant garden on my veranda too and a pair of lorikeets had made themselves quite at home roosting cosily side by side on the branch of the potted tree nice and dry under the veranda roof!

f/5.6 1/8 sec 78mm ISO 200

AJ

Using the flash gun

This month our Visions group of photographers and video makers have "musical instrument" as one of the topics for the photographers. I had not used the flash gun on my new Nikon D90 up to today so when I realised I had a musical instrument sitting ignored and silent in the hallway this was the trigger for me to fire the flash! (very "punny"!)
To begin with the camera decided it wasn't going to recognise the flash and my spirits sagged.
I removed the flash and replaced it and set the camera to Aperture priority - on f/5.6
I wanted a fairly shallow depth of field - there is no point having a decent camera if what you take looks like a snapshot from a point and shoot! Unfortunately I am slipping into the DSLR "snobbery" of making my shots look "special"! Well, why not! When you have a good camera , you should try to take good photographs!
The first photograph I took was educational. I knew that the flash needed to be bounced but I did not realise just how the angle of the bounce would make such a huge difference to the lighting. It makes sense of course but this is the first shot. The timber at the far end is over bright and has a cloudy appearance. The position of the camera is not good either - the nearest side of the electric organ is an unsightly blur in the foreground and is very distracting. The blur seems to hold the eye rather than the eye be taken to the sharpest part of the photo.

f/5.6 1/30 sec 52mm ISO 200

The second photo is a lot better both with the bounce of the flash and the angle across the keyboard. The flash was tilted to 90% so that the bounce comes from the ceiling - which is quite a low ceiling at 9'. To get the camera down to the level of the top keyboard I went into "live-view" which then allowed me to see my subject without trying to keep my eye at the viewfinder. The bounced light has definitely improved the colours and the definition of the shot.

f5.6 1/30sec 26mm ISO200

Still not really comfortable with the end result I tried for a shot from the opposite end of the Electric Organ, I think that this one is the one for me! The lounge chairs in the background are a bit of a distraction and with a bit of playing around I could diffuse them so that they were not so obvious - but this little exercise was to show the results of the flash not the results of my Photoshop abilities!

f/5.6 1/30sec 24mm ISO200

By the way, I should point out that the day light had gone and I had to turn on the wall light to enable my camera to have enough light for the focus to work! The alcove where this instrument is positioned is not bright and the wall light gives a soft light so has been completely over-riden by the camera flash.
AJ

change of settings

Just sharing the results of changing the Settings in Steve's little Sony hd camcorder,the settings were on standard and everything was quite "woolly" even when viewed in the LCD screen, The camera is now set to High Quality and while it is still only VHS quality when viewed on a TV it is a lot better than when it was on the other setting!

This camera shoots in mpg format which is a compressed format. When any editing is done it is compressed even further. Digital video on tape is a large .avi file and is sharp, movement is smooth and the only thing better is hi-def. When digital video is edited and exported to DVD (which is the accepted format for sharing) it is converted to a compressed format - mpg and quality is lost.
The cameras are improving all the time but the better quality is lost once it is put onto DVD. By the time we can all afford blueray burners and players the shooting quality will once more be higher and the same annoyance will be there!
AJ

Birds at breakfast

Yesterday I took a little bit of video using my son's little hard drive Sony DCR-SR47 and I was rather disgusted at the quality of the images - especially since I had taken video on a boat cruise last week using the same model camera but belonging to a friend. That video was sharp and well coloured and quite comparable with stuff taken with a tape camera.
Last night I delved into the menu of Steve's camera and found that he had it set on "Standard" quality. Of course I changed it to the high quality setting and immediately the LCD screen showed a marked difference. This camera is "on" when the screen is opened. Of course the screen was open for me to access the menu. Using the menu is by touching the screen.
This morning was warm enough for breakfast on the veranda. There was no wind to give that chill that drives you indoors!
At eight o clock I put out food for the lorikeets and seeds for the finches (all wild birds) so they were all full of excitement as we sat down at the table.
I have not used the Nikon D90 for video very much so I used it today to record this little incident. The video will be added to this post as soon as it has been uploaded to Flickr (it is going to take ages today, for some reason! I suppose it is because the quality is higher than what I had yesterday!)

This seems to have been the mildest winter I can remember. There has been no ground frost this year and although there have been a few days that have been cold - they have not been too difficult to take! One year we had such a severe frost that it killed the leaves on most of the plants in my garden including those on the palm trees. The palms took over 12 months to shed all the brown leaves. I am not sorry that it hasn't happened this year.
Changing the subject!
When I edit my videos I often need to replace sound. Recording the images when the action is interesting does not always coincide with the best sound. For instance, on a recent boat trip my video was taken out on the deck in a strong breeze and the camera microphone picked up that dreadful roar. Even when the wind was not the problem the sound was more of the engine rumble than of the water splashing against the boat. This is why I have always tried to record my own background sounds - this has a strange name "foley". when I edited the video of the boat trip I was able to remove the bad sound from the sound track and replace it with sounds I have recorded and saved. Sometimes this sound was actually recorded with video - my sound recording is done with my video camera - and using "Audition" (in my case - but I think any audio editor will do the same thing) I could locate the file on my computer and click on "extract audio from video" and the sound would appear on the Audition timeline - where I could edit it. When I say "edit" that means I can remove sounds from it that are not wanted, such as shouting, dogs barking, the bang of something being put down heavily, and so forth. Once the sound is edited it can be saved with a new name as either a .wav file or .mp3 file - I usually save as .mp3. Once saved it can be used anywhere, in video or in photo montages.
My bird file is only 6% uploaded after all this time so I will publish this jotting and add the video once it is available.
My Internet connection is so slow, anyone would think that I am on dial up! Anyway, while waiting (and I am still waiting) for the movie to upload to youtube - it is only 45 seconds long!!!! - I have had time to make a batch of marmalade!
I have looked to see if adsl-2 is available but of course it is not for this patch of the Gold Coast! I should move into the country!
The speed of uploading a couple of short clips has put me off trying to put "real" videos in Youtube. The size of the movie I am trying to load is only 105mb on my hd.
AJ

Video of my dogs

I have just taken a few seconds of video of my "family"! Introducing my two boys checking out the swimming pool. It is the middle of July and this is supposed to be winter. The temperature is 21 outside and jumpers are not needed today!

Sunset at last!

I have been hoping that the sky would behave one evening so that I could try my new camera out on a colourful sky. (Nikon D90) Well tonight was my night! Admittedly there was colour but it only covered a fairly small area of the huge expanse of sky that I can see from my back veranda so I did have to use the tele end of my 18-55mm lens.

The camera was put into full manual mode - I did not want the camera to compensate for the darkness. The aperture was set on f/8 and left on f/8 and the shutter speed was varied according to the results I got. (After each shot I get a couple of second's preview of the image).

Composition is always important to me so I had to carefully choose which trees to include and where to position them and still get the sky colours I was after.

The first shot I am sharing was taken in the area of sky where the sun actually goes down - because it is winter time and I live in Australia, that area is in the North West. (In the summer time the sun goes down in the West).

f/8 1/25sec ISO 200 55mm

The next two photos were taken looking North at the colours reflected on the sky over the horizon. This always happens a little after the brightness in the west and is worth waiting for. The colour is softer but beautiful.

f/8 1/10 ISO 200 22mm

I just had to include the palm tree to show this sky as a tropical sky!

f/8 1/20 ISO 200 55mm

The shutter speed was varied to compensate for the darkening sky - I like to keep the darks "dark", this way the colours are richer. I have not "enhanced" the colours, I know this is easy to do but today was not necessary!

AJ

Fingal dolphins

When Colin and I took out Sunday car trip to Fingal Head we were hoping to see whales. It was a clear day and the sea was quite gentle. Hearing shouts and seeing a few people pointing in one direction our eyes were directed to a patch of water where there were dozens of fins breaking the surface. I estimate there would have been twenty or more dolphins swimming towards us.

This was taken with the Nikon P90 which requires the user to activate the live-view (big screen on the back) and then press the OK button to start the recording. Since I had been using the camera as a telescope previously the focus was already set to the right distance.

This is nothing spectacular but just a bit of fun - if you are observant you will see what I didn't see at the time - a whale in the distance just breaks the surface as the clip ends!

AJ

Using a texture to give mood

I walked through between a stand of trees to reach a lighthouse today. The trees looked mysterious and foreboding and I thought I would try and capture that dark mood. When I brought the image in to Photoshop it looked interesting but still not as atmospheric as when I aimed the camera at it. The photo is just a photo of a few trees. Yes, you can see that it is dark enough under the trees for no grass or small plants to grow but there is very little about the picture that holds the attention. I added a small amount of vignette to the edges and corners which helped keep the eye inside the picture but still it did nothing for me!

Click to see a larger picture

That's when I decided to have a play with one of the texture images I have taken. I selected a shot of the bark of a gnarled and woody Eucalypt that is growing my my own backyard. The vertical patterning would suit the upright nature of my trees, I felt.
I have not used textures to any extent so this was an experiment to see what would happen.
The texture was pasted over the worked picture of the trees and I scrolled through the various blending modes to see what blend worked the best. Up and down through the different blends I went two or three times and the one that suited this picture the best was Overlay. At full strength it was rather too heavy so I reduced the opacity a bit.
Then I felt that the tree trunks were lost in all the pattern and what would they look like if I revealed them a bit more? I applied a mask and used a soft brush at 70% to paint over the major trunks and branches.
Liking this effect I did no more! It is a temptation to keep on doing more and more to a picture! So the layers were flattened and this is the end result.

Click to see a larger picture

Now this image has loads of mood! Much better than the original shot!

AJ

ten minutes in the garden

I have a new camera and not enough hours in the day! Snatching a few minutes between hanging out washing and mopping the floor I managed to give my camera digit a little exercise! The sun was out and the red berries on the palm tree looked so beautiful.

When the camera first arrived I did take a long distant shot of the palm tree from the veranda but I thought it might look rather special taken from directly underneath it. Today I used the 18-55mm lens. I was lucky to get some blue in the sky and the sunlight on the berries because the wind was strong and only seconds later the sky was grey and sprinkling rain.

f/8 1/125 ISO 200 55mm

The next two shots - taken only a couple of minutes later - were taken when the sun was filtered by cloud. The Poinsettia grows freely in this part of the world and is a striking garden shrub. I have two varieties, the more common single red that is used as a decoration at Christmas time and this double - which I think is even more beautiful than its better known cousin.

f/5.6 1/50 sec ISO 125 55mm

The sun peeked out briefly as I crouched under the prickly leaves of the Cycad to take this shot of the flowers. This is the male plant and the female plant is in the back yard - it has a crown of a flower that will produce hundreds of chestnut sized seeds.

f/5.6 1/125 sec ISO 125 32mm

Although the cycad is an eye catching decorative plant it is one to be careful of - every frond on each leaf carries a vicious spine at the end and if it pierces the skin caused the wound to really ache painfully. The spines are about a centimetre long and wicked!

AJ

A character of the Australian Bush

I takes me a while to find my way around my new toys! I thought it was rather strange that I had no manual control over the 70-300mm lens on my new Nikon D90 - well, I found out that all I have to do is switch a lever on the front of the camera near the lens and I have isolated the lens from the auto controls! I am happy now!

With my previous camera I selected an option from the camera menu for manual control - not with this one!

While looking through my pictures - I do that occasionally! I came across this character study I took when I visited Jondaryan for the heavy horse work day. This man was marching across from one place to another when I stopped him and asked if he minded if I took a photo of him.

f/10 1/500 sec ISO 400 28mm

He was a little embarrassed but I chatted to him once I had fired my shot. Fortunately the Olympus camera was still working this day and the first shot was a good one because this fellow was not going to stand still for any longer than he had to! I asked him if he was exhibiting his horses today and he opened up about his training methods and his aspirations. I married a country fellow so I know that the way to get a "bushy" to open up is to talk about his main interest. Since we were at a heavy horse demonstration day it was a safe bet that this man was also interested in heavy horses.

AJ

An addition to the Selective Color tutorial

When I wrote advising on how to change the colour of various parts of your images by using Selective Color I didn't give you the full instructions but a few people have had a try and have run into a few problems - the color is in places where it is not needed. How do you get rid of that?

Again I will demonstrate with the changing of the colour of the sky and show you the extra steps that I take. I must rush in here to remind you that there are many different ways of doing any task in Photoshop and I am not telling you the only way, just my way.

For this tutorial I am making no tweaks or sharpening at all. I do not wish to confuse by giving too many tutorials in one mail!

Step 1. Do any corrections such as cropping, transforming (correcting badly aligned verticals)and straightening the horizon etc.

Step 2. Click on the round symbol half black, half white that gives you the drop-down box for Selective Color.

Step 3. Chose the colour you wish to change - for this sky I selected white - and move the sliders to give the hue and shade you feel is best. Click OK.

Step 4. Click on the white square besides the image in the Layers Palette and from the tools panel click on the gradient tool. Change the opacity (at the top of the screen) to about 55%.

Step 5. Click in the gradient box (top left of the screen) and make sure that the gradient pattern is foreground (black) to transparent and a straight gradient - not a circular gradient or any other shape!

Step 6. On the picture drag the gradient from blow the horizon up to about halfway into the sky. The idea is to have a slightly lighter horizon - if the light and dark areas have an obvious line where they change, undo and make the drag over a larger area. Start a bit lower and finish a bit higher in the picture.

Step 7. This is a definite improvement but the highlights on the lean-to roof have also been turned blue, as have the window frames of the window on the left. From the tools palette chose the brush tool and select a hard edge. With the Opacity set to 100% paint over the buildings and foreground features (white cars) that might have been tinted.

You can see where I have painted with the brush tool and black onto the mask in the circled areas. It does not hurt to increase the brush size and paint over the entire area that is not sky.

Step 8. Flatten the image and save with a new name.

Here is a composite picture to show the before and after of this Selective Color change.

Once I have changed one colour I sometimes flatten the image and then do a Selective Color change on something else - such as greens that look rather yellow (Selecting Yellow as the colour to change) - again I will use the brush tool to paint out the yellow items that I do not wish to colour change - such as clothing, signs, vehicles and so on.

Flatten the image once the colour change has been done and then (and only after all other tweaks have been done) apply Sharpening.

AJ

Trying the 300mm lens

This is so exciting!

we are having visitors at lunch time today so I have been slogging away at housework but coffee time gave me that window for picking up the camera and trying out the BIG lens!

First thing I noticed was that although I have chosen AF-S (autofocus single as against AF-C which is autofocus continuous - for moving subjects) this 300mm lens does not allow manual focus! There is a switch on the smaller 18-55mm lens that allows me to switch from AF to M but not this one. I thought this would be a problem but I went into the menu to set the focus to "spot" and take a look at this photo of the finches on the wire. When I zoom right in you can see how accurate the spot focus is.

First the uncropped photo showing the way the shot has isolated the birds from the trees behind.

f6.3 1/800 sec ISO 200 180 mm

Now severely cropped to show the accuracy of the spot focus.

Isn't that great!

At the end of our driveway is a palm tree that is sporting a colourful hula skirt of fruits at the moment. From my shooting position on the veranda there is a wire that crosses the lens - you can see the vague shadow of it in the top left corner - the tree must be forty metres from where I was standing.

First the uncropped picture showing the brilliant red berries and some green ones.

f/5.3 1/800 ISO 200 190mm

The second picture is a crop from it and you can see a few of the green berries so that you can work out where the crop was taken.

I have done no further sharpening so I am stoked that I will be able to rely on the camera to get the focus right. The color is spot on too. This was one of the main reasons I chose Nikon over the other cameras I have handled, the color and the sharpness of the images.

AJ

New camera, new experiences

Yesterday my new camera arrived! I have at last got the camera of my dreams - I never thought I would ever be able to afford such a beauty but when my Olympus 500E made life so difficult (playing up in a way that was too frustrating for words) I was given a push by my ever supportive husband and I ordered a Nikon D90 with two lenses, 18 -55mm VR and 70-300mm.

I only had time for a few test shots yesterday - enough to get me really excited!

The quality of the images is out of this world! The colours are so accurate and the sharpness with the auto-focus absolutely brilliant. The composition is up to me, so between us, this camera and I should have a wonderful future!

Once the family had left us after a fun time at the local park, Colin and I piled into the car so that I could exercise my trigger finger. The sky was blue and the sun deliciously warm for a winter's day so this was my opportunity to take more photos and leave the housework for another time!

We live on the coast but there is some beautiful countryside all around us so we headed south and slightly inland stopping first to buy some tree ripened bananas from a local grower before driving through the cane fields to a small town of 7000 residents.

Just before we reached the town we came across a cycle race and since the road was quite narrow and the pack of cyclists quite numerous, I pulled the car over and took a couple of shots of the sugar cane. (only one of the shots is included here.)

f/10 1/125 sec ISO 200 55mm

The photo stop gave enough time for the cyclists to turn off the road we were on and we drove into the town with no hold-ups. I spotted an unusual church spire so that had to be investigated. A woman was cleaning inside the church and noticed me peering through the open door and invited me in to the church to look around. The stain glass windows were superb - but at this stage I was using only the 18-55mm lens which was not suitable for the height of these gorgeous windows. So I just looked! The church interior looks to be an ideal place for artistic photography. I may try that another day!

Colin and I motored up to the lookout beside the water tower and I took this shot of Mount Warning, an imposing but small mountain that was once a mighty volcano that actually was responsible for creating the landscape in this area of New South Wales. The "Scenic Rim" is a wonderful drive through rainforest and mountains and is the outer rim of the ancient volcano we now call Mount Warning.

f/16 1/125 sec ISO 200 55mm

Leaving Murwillumbah for home we approached a sugar mill from the south and the light through the steam rising from the tall chimney was inspiration for yet another photo session!

The steam looked the best from the main road but the better angle for photos of the sugar mill were from a little to the west of it. This meant that the steam did not have that same glow. It is difficult to get everything perfect!

I like this shot taken over the top of the sugar cane.

f/20 1/125sec ISO 200 52mm

By walking on to a very busy bridge over the Tweed River I was able to take a shot to show the mill's location on this wide meandering waterway.

f/14 1/125 sec ISO 200 18mm

This is the first time I have been able to use a camera by setting the shutter speed and allowing the camera to set the aperture. With the Olympus 500E I was only able to use it in full manual mode and of course I had to take several shots before I would get the settings exactly as I wanted them. With this camera the first shot I took looked so good I didn't need to take it again with a new setting! I am going to love this camera!

Now I need to have an opportunity to try out the long lens!

AJ