Central Coast Imagery

Links, update, disclaimer... what more can I say?

2021-10-14T10:19:00.002+11:00

I exist. I am real. Well, real enough to cause myself some damage.

Apologies for not staying up to date and posting more often, but, well... Life.

No excuses. I'll be back.

General disclaimer: thoughts and musings are my own. Opinion is opinion, and if unattributed, it's likely mine. If I quote, I link. Please use your discretion. I am not giving medical or legal advice, either!

Specific warning: if I post to a link which references a product or service, it may be something that I am selling (a service, product, advice, or photography) or something provided via Amazon's provisioning and delivery enterprise. Which is a reminder that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Did I mention photography? I use Nikon gear mostly, and they pay me nothing for mentioning that. I use Skylum's Luminar editing software, and they may give me something in return (could be a commission) if you follow a link here back to their site.

I may also be found on Quora, and some content there earns me a few cents. I may be on other sites, like Medium, too. And Flickr. And Instagram.

I may be found also on Patreon. If you want to patronise me, go right ahead.

And finally, I have a tip jar via PayPal. If you find my musings useful, consider a contribution. I'd appreciate it.

All the best, and take care.

Reminder: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Still clicking, and posting... just.

2021-07-23T07:33:00.001+10:00

Sorry about the ongoing failure to post, but I have plans to get back to something more consistent... soon.

In the meantime, you may like to follow me on Quora. I do post there (almost daily) on many topics, including finance, business, economics, society, and science. Plus images as well.

Stay well, keep safe.

Some random images that appeal.. to me, anyway

2018-04-06T11:18:00.001+10:00

An autumn storm.

An Eastern Rosella.

The morning mist.

And a troublesome cockatoo.

Random macro shots of a fly feasting on a snake skin

2017-03-03T13:46:00.000+11:00

Running a WiFi network off my Nikon dSLR as host

2017-03-03T13:42:00.000+11:00

It's a bit techy, but it works. Running a WiFi dongle off my Nikon D5200 dSLR and installing Live View controlling apps on both a Windows 10 tablet and a Samsung Galaxy Note has been very successful for me, so far.

It gives me an intervalometer function that the 5200 doesn't natively have and allows both Live View and full camera control on both of the tablets (or even a smartphone for that matter, if I could be bothered), which can be handy for timer shots, animation and macro work. If you work in tight spaces or at ground level, this setup saves some bending.

You can mount on a tripod and walk away, too.

Studio photographers who want to show their work to a client as they shoot it would also have a need for something like this setup, although they may have a bigger budget to play with!

I've gone for something low-end but workable. I'm using a WiFi Wireless Live View Remote Nikon D810 Df D610 D600 D800 D7100 D7000 D4 D3x with dslrdashboard bundled in at no extra cost.

The dslrdashboard would work with other WiFi devices, including Nikon's own WU-1a and the like, but I can only vouch for what I have. (It also suits Canon and some Sony cameras, apparently.) You can buy the dashboard alone via the Play Store for a small fee. I'm using Android, of course (and Win 10) rather than that less open and more expensive 'fruity alternative'.

The dongle I've bought needs the standard Nikon cable which comes with the camera, by the way, and just hangs loose on that cable, sadly. Whereas the WU-1a plugs straight into the connector on the camera with no dangling. Other designs are even more convenient, mounting on the flash hot-shoe; but then you have to relocate your flash of course.

So far every function works with my combination of hardware, but it won't fully work with Nikon's 3XXX series and perhaps other models. The Nikon D5200, FWIW, is both a bargain and a very good DX or APS-C format dSLR. It works for me, anyway!

A random bug and some mating-on-the-fly flies

2017-01-04T14:32:00.000+11:00

Really short image stacking sampler - 369

2015-04-29T16:53:00.001+10:00

Slideshow of chaos - using CombineZP - 366

2015-04-27T12:35:00.001+10:00

Slideshow of chaos: me using PSE3

2015-04-13T11:41:00.001+10:00

Slightly rough and out of kilter checkers and halftones. Not sure why but this just appeals to me...

2015-03-10T10:28:00.001+11:00

Making them is half the fun, of course. And then use them as overlays in videos or comic-style art or for other effects.

Pixel count! Does Nikon's numerical advantage really matter?

2015-01-28T12:12:00.000+11:00

Yes - and no. Not just a Nikon, any digital camera with a higher dot count will give you both an advantage and a problem. The advantage is more dots or pixels to play with in post-processing. That's to say if your digital camera sensor is a fixed size, a standard like full frame or APS-C, and you have one camera offering more real, hard-wired (not software-approximating) pixels in that space than another, you have an advantage. Often that's Nikon (big on pixels) vs Canon (big but not that big).

Offsetting that is lens quality. No amount of pixels will overcome an optical shortcoming. So there's an upper limit in this game, set by the quality of your lens. If you pay top-dollar, of course, you maximise your chances. A kit-lens is often not quite up to the job, although it does offer value for money. So the bigger pixel count is "maybe" not such a bother, as long as you are in the same ballpark.

The disadvantage is storage space. The more pixels are defined, the bigger the space needed. Still, space is pretty cheap.

Personally I prefer more pixels. It's akin to grain. Whilst grain can be lovely, it's also a loss of resolution at higher magnifications. And I tend to blow things up, big. Always have. I pushed analog SLRs in the same way.

Here's a grainy, highly pushed analog sample (ie a real image, real SLR, using film!). It may have charm and character (if you like DC9 noses) but loses detail in the grain.

Still, not bad! With finer-grained (slower) film you'd get an even better result. And that was a conscious decision we'd take in "the old days" of film. What film offers the best compromise between speed and grain? Hmmm. I'd better take a spare SLR body just in case.

And here's a shot taken recently with my Nikon D5200, a mid-range plastic fantastic prosumer DSLR with a big pixel count.

And here below (just to demonstrate what a big pixel count can do) is a tiny segment (from the walkway, top right) of that same image, enlarged in software, made crisper with a contrast adjustment but not sharpened.

Now with my old D50 this would be a pixellated wash-out - not enough pixels to play with. I'd have to resort to a longer lens to get a similar result. All other things being equal (like lenses), with a lesser pixel count you get less scope for enlargement.

Bear in mind the D5200 was using a 10 year old kit-lens, too. So big pixels demonstrably allow bigger enlargements with more detail, without resorting to bigger lenses. But a bigger, better - even just a newer - lens would be a great idea, too!

Of course I've oversimplified everything. To get really technical, maybe start here.

Water jet pack lift-off

2015-01-28T11:31:00.001+11:00

Action shot of a water jet pack taken with a Nikon D5200 and cropped and manipulated a tad.

My Flickr photostream .

Random images

2014-08-12T09:47:00.001+10:00

Whilst I do like twiddling the dials on an SLR and getting everything "right" it's also fun to 'randomize' a few variables once in a while...

Basically the camera was a cheap pinhole affair, I was riding my bike and just set the camera to fire constantly. I then post-processed it in BatchPhoto (by Boxoft).

Testing Flickr's email2blog facility with some HTML Art!

2014-02-12T17:15:00.001+11:00

Testing Flickr's email2blog facility with some HTML Art!, a photo by gtveloce on Flickr.

Well I had to give it a go, didn't I?

Variations in 10 layers - a short animation

2014-01-25T09:41:00.001+11:00

Quick look at Painting With Light

2013-11-11T13:32:00.001+11:00

Not painting with light using torches or flash guns, no this is an application that maps images or videos to real objects like buildings...

If the video is not visible try this direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk9l9avQ0nE

Coordinated, in a polar way

2013-01-20T15:37:00.001+11:00

Image532
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Or manipulated using the polar coordinates effect in Andy (Pop Art Studio) anyway. Easy to do but can be quite effective with the right image and a bit of trial and error.

Another one...

2013-01-20T14:19:00.001+11:00

Image0641
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Another relentlessly over-cooked, overwrought and somewhat dark image, processed in a variety of tools including Andy (Pop Art Studio) and Studio Artist. From an original digital image using a Nikon D50.

Dark and spidery - Image0666

2013-01-20T14:15:00.001+11:00

Image0666
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

A relentlessly over-cooked, overwrought and somewhat dark image, processed in a variety of tools including Andy (Pop Art Studio) and Studio Artist. From an original digital image using a Nikon D50.

Fancy a Crested Pigeon on steroids?

2013-01-09T16:42:00.001+11:00

Baza cools off in backyard_0732cr
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

It was hot yesterday - over 40 degrees C - and this Pacific Baza, AKA Crested Hawk, felt like a dip in our birdbath.... just like the regular ordinary crested pigeons and noisy minors do. First hawk I've seen do it though.

It seemed to spy me with the water as I topped up the birdbirth and watched me, keenly but cautiously. It followed me for a bit and then waited, gathered courage and took its dip... I took this shot when it was checking out my intentions before making a move on the water.

Last gasp of steam

2012-11-05T10:31:00.001+11:00

Last gasp of steam_0420
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

This overly-contrasty and super-saturated image isn't perfect but it still tells me something... I'm just not sure what that 'something' is!!

Sculpting in HTML and Studio Artist

2012-09-07T09:45:00.001+10:00

This is what happens if I take a few images, convert them to HTML tables, make them 3D in Firefox and Tilt and then process them in Studio Artist...

What is HTML Art?

2012-08-27T11:48:00.001+10:00

HTMLART-(80)
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

HTML is "web code", the tags or markup that generate the page format you see as a rendered web page in a browser. So basically it follows that HTML Art is a web page and its underlying code that is designed, purely and simply, as art. Strictly speaking it is just HTML, including no pre-created images, just what you get when you format a page in HTML markup alone. Whilst that's interesting, the result is naive and blocky. So why stop there?

Instead I have taken the idea and run with it. Perhaps a bit too far. Anyway, my process involves creating an initial image by any means possible - photo, art work, Photoshop, whatever - and rendering it into thousands of individually coloured table cells in HTML. So it's no longer an image "format" as such, rather it's HTML code.

But I don't stop there, either. I load the HTML page into Firefox and use a web developer tool called Tilt 3D (a DOM inspector) to create a 3D version of that page. Then I take a screenshot or 2. That's now HTML art in 3D, basically.

Of course I then get carried away and run many iterations and edits, reprocessing it several times in several editors and post-processors. So it's no longer the blocky, standard HTML look, it's another thing again.

Whilst it's under my overall control and I always provide initial input and selection, I also let the computer decide, too. So different image values are rendered differently and automagically in the batch conversion to HTML, for example. And again I batch process in other software to get the feel I want. But once the values are set I let the computer run with it - so in a sense some of these steps result in an art not of my making - they are generative.

Which is to say that some are rubblish, some better than that. And occasionally something serendipitous happens.

Studio Artist-ry

2012-08-27T11:26:00.001+10:00

HTMLart-01-(16)
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Studio Artist is really, really great vectorising and general image and video processing and rotoscoping software. If I could keep just one piece of image editing software this would be it.

And generally my image processing proceeds in steps from initial creation by ink, pencil or oil paint, in camera or in Photoshop or Andy (PAS); and then I variously give up control in following steps where images are batched to the size and contrast I want. Some are then automagically batched or sorted by image values into HTML tables, then reshot as HTML art in Firefox.

Studio Artist is the predominant 'artistic' determinant, but in some ways it is a generative, hands-off process too.

Use Stellarium for Little Planet projects

2012-08-10T15:55:00.001+10:00

Do you know the "little Planet" effect? Well if you don't it's basically a linear panorama that's been twisted into a new projection, effectively making it a circle. So you get a distorted image, one that reminds you of a little planet. It's easy to do, and I show you how...