Today’s New York Times has an article “This Year’s Model: Me” which is all about taking impromptu images for online and personal use. The shots are all off, but that doesn’t matter in the least. They’re supposed to be that way! Take a look.
Me, The Model
A groundbreaking film to photography when it was introduced, Kodachrome has finally been culled from the market by Kodak.
Most surprising of which is that it took so long.
While there still are people shooting this medium, it is for novelty only, as opposed to it offering any tangible benefit towards the image. Resolution, ISO-sensitivity, color and image quality have long been surpassed by digital.
Apparently, there is only one lab in the US still processing the film! And, according to Yahoo news, “unlike any other color film, Kodachrome is purely black and white when exposed. The three primary colors that mix to form the spectrum are added in three development steps rather than built into its layers.
I was floored when I saw gigabyte images for the first time in Digg. Wow, pretty cool, although I couldn’t quite think of an application in my field of photography. This is a screen thing and since I mainly work with albums, images in the range of 10-20 Megapixels are more than enough resolution for me.
A gadget, no less.
They’re produced kind of automatically with this machine:
Just plunk in one of their approved compact cameras, press a few buttons and wait for the shooting to end. Download all the images to the computer and run the image-stitching software.
Voila!
Squarely in gagapixel-nirvana, you can now zoom to your heart’s content.
The website of Gigapan.
Holy smoke: Look at these images from the new Lavazza calendar shot by Annie Leibovitz. You can download the images with a calendar app from the link after answering some demographic questions thinly veiled as a “quiz”. You don’t get the images in a higher resolution though, so it’s a waste. Wow, Lavazza sure splurged on this PR stunt and has easily surpassed Pirelli’s yearly calendar offering.
The cover:
January/February:
March/April:
May / June:
July / August (ha, we’re on home turf here. Although a nice image, the guy’s pose is awkward with his legs apart and his hips so far away from the woman. His jeans are completely out of place! Although the cool color balance enhances the blue of her dress, the image would be noticeably improved with more warmth like the image below it. Annie should have hired my wedding photography consulting services :-))
September / October:
Novermber / December:
Also the interesting “Making-Of” videos. Part 1:
Part 2:
I took these today in the shop with a Nikon D700 and 24-70/2.8 lens, mixed tungsten/daylight, camera on Manual, ISO 200, 6400 and 25600, White Balance on Manual, JPEG Normal/Large. These are Straight out of the Camera images, each is about 3MB. All the EXIF Info is intact.
The shutter *IS* louder on the D700 than the D300, but subjectively quieter than the D3. Do something about this, Nikon.
This looked pretty damn impressive when I saw it today. A set of wedding photographer David Beckstead’s killer images had been transformed by a video company into a “3D Ken-Burns” effect. You know the panning effect which made Show-It Web so popular.
At first I was dumbfounded and said “damn, how is that done?”.
I read a bit about the making of these shows and it seems they are painstakingly made by hand, one image at a time.
OK.
Looking a little closer, the following seems to be happening:
* the original image is separated into separate 2D layers, the fireground, some mid area, background, etc.
* an intelligent “Ken Burns” is then applied which pans the image but each layer is panned at a different speed simulating their distance from the viewpoint, thus creating the stunning 3D effect.
* Some goodies are put into a few of the images, like a real cloud movie instead of a static sky and dynamic flare effects for some of the backlighted images.
Now I just have to find the software which allows this and it should be possible to roll my own 
Any ideas?
Update: here’s a great tutorial on how it’s done!
