The Butterfly Pavilion

I found The Denver Digital Photography Meetup Group and went to the meetup at the Butterfly Pavilion and it was a nice trip. If there was any organized group stuff during or after (besides heading to the Rock Bottom Brewery after for lunch, but I don’t care for their food), I must have missed it. It would be nice to talk with other photographers and exchange tips and get some feedback on my techniques, etc. Maybe next meetup.

I was experimenting with a circular polarizer, but the side effect is I can’t see very well through the lens, so a lot of my shots were out of focus. I’ve also found that the autofocus doesn’t always catch what I want it to, so I tried manual mode … still not so great.

So, out of the 238 shots (that made it home), I have 15 below that were decent enough to look at again. More than I expected, actually, considering I was doing a *lot* of multiple shots and making minor tweaks between each shot (trying to get better with managing my exposure stops with the polarizer, etc).

Hopefully some of these look OK … feedback is always welcome.

752×500 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm (flash)	752×500 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm (flash)
752×500 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm (flash)	752×500 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm (flash)
752×500 (1/15) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm	752×500 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=142mm (flash)
752×500 (1/125) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm	752×500 (1/125) f/5.6 f(35)=157mm
752×500 (1/320) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm	752×500 (1/80) f/5.6 f(35)=300mm
752×500 (1/80) f/5.6 f(35)=142mm
500×752 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=187mm	500×752 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=142mm (flash)
500×752 (1/125) f/5.6 f(35)=187mm	500×752 (1/60) f/5.6 f(35)=142mm (flash)

These are all re-sized down from JPG-Basic (and then re-sized again for the thumbnails), and are untouched from the camera. I’ve not post-processed anything yet. I do have RAW (Nikon) versions of each of these as well.

Remove Tourists From Your Pictures … Legally!

Yep, it’s no longer necessary to pack your .45 to get rid of those pesky tourists when trying to take pictures while sightseeing. “Tourist Remover” by snapmania.com is a free tool that claims to allow you to take multiple shots from the same perspective (sounds easier with a tripod), and the “stuff” that is not-common across at least 2 shots will be removed from the composite image.

This really interests me, so I’m going to sign up — it’s a web access only tool. I shoot a lot of multiple images, so I’m hoping I can find a couple of images of the same framing that I can get some shots uploaded and test. It looks like you get 100MB free storage and the web application has all of the expected refinement and effect/enhancement tools, too.

In the meantime, they have 4 sample images to test the function with. You have to login to the the site and select the “Demo: Tourist Remover” folder, highlight all of the images, and hit the “Remove Tourists” function button (on the far right … on my window, I had to shift to the right to get to the button). Don’t forget to enable the site for a pop-up window! This brings you to a new page where you are recommended to order the images from most clear to least clear of your desired subject matter (left to right). Finally, hit the “Create” button to get your job submitted — my job was #333 in line.

It ran pretty quick and my notification e-mail was in my inbox right away.

The resulting image is placed back in your webspace on snapmania.com in a folder called “TouristRemover” (who wudda thunk?). Checking out the sample image, and it did indeed remove the people in it, but neither the source or final image is very sharp upon zoomed inspection.

Final answer is that I really need to upload some higher quality images to see what it will do.

Trying To Capture The Holiday Lights

After my meeting last night, I drove around downtown for a bit in search of the building they have lit up for the holidays (shown on the news and stuff as filler video). I finally found it, and after circling a few times in the dark, I found parking.

Even with a tripod, I’m still moving too much (I think) for clear shots, but I did get a few that are tolerable. Here’s one:

(Focal length: 38mm, 1/1.3 sec @ F/5, 0 EV, ISO 200)

And a fun one out of focus (intentionally)

(Focal length: 200mm, 1/2.5 sec @ F5.6, 0 EV, ISO 720)

It seems my Nikon D70 won’t let me use the timer in Manual mode, so I’m sure I contributed a bit of shake from handling and button pushing. Does this *really* make me want a new 18-200mm VR Nikor lens? YES! And I really need to get around to getting a remote control “clicker”, too.

Also, a new body would be cool, with a larger LCD screen. The D70 is a great camera, but the tiny LCD screen is hard for me to see how I’m doing and do course corrections in the field (when you need to do it).