[Klahanie]

There is no Dana. Only Zool!

What a lovely singing voice you must have.

But Hellraiser also works. As would a lesbian spider demon orgy.

That said, I think we all need to step back and pat ourselves on the collective back for one of the most versatile threads the forum has ever seen.

I think we’re on the same page.

That reminds me of this awesome poem we read in a college class. The poet herself came to our class to speak about her work. 10 years later, I still remember the first line of the poem:
“187 Barbie dolls burn…”

A whole house full of Barbies goes up in a blaze of glory. Awesome…

That really does sound awesome. Smell be damned.

[Klahanie]

oooh, ethereal. Thanks Veruca! I rarely get to use that word.

[Klahanie]

My younger brother took the only Barbie I ever had and stuck it in a space heater. I can still smell it 35 years later. 😥

[Klahanie]

oh, would that geiger was a photographer…

Ooh, that’s very cool too! It immediately made me think of Hellraiser. That’s probably not what you were going for, but it’s one of my favorite movies of that genre.

[Klahanie]

I was going for a David LaChapelle look without paying fof models. If my kid knew what I do with her Barbies at night she would faint.

That is fantastic! 😀

As for Butt Pirate Ken? If Ken has a GalleyWench, can it be Skipper? Barbie’s a stupid whore. Math is hard indeed.

[Klahanie]

It doesn’t start until 8 p.m. eastern time in total fark. No telling when it will hit the mainpage. 🙂

[Klahanie]

OMG I thought you already had a DSLR!

Me, too. I almost never was able to get great color and texture from my point-and-shoot, due to the quality of the lens and size of the sensor being, well, less than stellar. 🙄 I now know that you’re really good at post-processing or use a great point and shoot of your own (which one?).

Also, which lenses are you getting? Have you decided yet? Any ones you’re mulling over?

Thanks you guys. 😀 I almost always adjust contrast (increase) and lighting(decrease) in Picasa, but that’s about it other than cropping. And sometimes sharpening. I have Photoshop Elements, but have mostly used it to restore old photos with the healing brush. There is so much to learn with it and I’m just too impatient. A faster computer would be nice too. 😉

My current camera is a Minolta Dimage z2 that I’ve had for over 2 years now. It has pretty good macro capabilities which I like, but damn it’s a slow camera. My new camera should be here tomorrow! I’m getting it with the 18-135mm kit lens. That should keep me busy for a while, but I’ll eventually spring for an ultra wide angle and a macro. I’m really looking forward to a faster focus/shutter response. 3 fps, unfathomable!

[Klahanie]

Now see, the fact that you catch the softness suggests you aren’t ready for glasses *quite* yet 😉 The first shot is absolutely crisper, and I prefer that myself for sure. This was one raw image developed at different exposures, so they are aligned, but they are also soft. The reason for the softness is the layer blender plugin does some sort of blur when it combines the layers. You can adjust the blur level, but when I ran it on the above shots, I just ran the whole thing at default levels to see what would happen. I don’t know if the blur feature is to cut down on combined noise from frames or if it’s to blend the highlights and shadows better or not, but it doesn’t make much sense to me otherwise to blur like that. Normally I’d run an unsharp mask (or just turn the blurring off or way down) but I just wanted to see what the 2 plugins did on their own, so I didn’t bother with that.

But omg, now I owe you a beer (or other tasty beverage of your choice) for finding the GUI based pfstools! I’ve downloaded it and will have hubby check tonight to be sure we have all the libraries and whatnot we need to run it. Looks like I still need to get Cinepaint/Film GIMP working to get an actual HDR file to use with it, but it’s obviously possible to do HDR under Linux. Thanks so much!

Ah, RAW. That’s another thing I know nothing about, but I’m finally getting a dslr (Nikon d80, thanks perm fund!) so I’ll have to learn. Said dslr is on it’s way, but I just checked shipping status and it went from California to Seattle, and now it’s back in California today. wtf?

Anyhoo, you’re welcome! I hope it works for you.

[Klahanie]

Thanks, GalleyWench–the house isn’t mine, though. It was a cabin my sister-in-law rented for her wedding in August. Beautiful cabin, though, for sure, and literally perched on the side of a mountain.

You thought the very first one straight out of camera was the hdr? That’s funny! I’m loving your dahlia shots there–the colors are gorgeous! I don’t think that’s anything I could do with these little plugins from GIMP, because it still lacks the ability to do any tone mapping, which is where your shots shine.

I’ve played around with another shot of mine with these plugins, and they didn’t work as well, so I’m guessing for them to work best it’s going to have to be certain shots with deep shadows. Also need to try them out on true exposure bracketed shots…

Beautiful place for a wedding!

Take what I say with a grain of salt. I know it’s time for my first pair of glasses, but I’m having a hard time admitting it. I did take a better look at your pics and can now see the difference. I think I just like the first one better because it is so crisp. Are you using a tripod for your shots, and/or does your hdr program align the images? It just looks a little soft to me, but then again, the ole eyes ain’t what they used to be. 😉

Thanks, I absolutely love dalias.

I found this link through flickr. Is it something you can use?

http://theplaceofdeadroads.blogspot.com/2006/07/qpfstmo-hdr-tone-mapping-gui-for-linux_04.html

Almost everything you were saying about your system went over my head, but I did catch “Linux” in there somewhere. So…

[Klahanie]

Thanks for the tips Galleywench. An old factory I photographed came out pretty similar to yours. I will try closeups, yours look pretty terrific.

You’re welcome. I hope to see your factory shot either here or in the thread in a few weeks. And thank you. 🙂

Elsinore, beautiful house! I actually like the first shot the best and at first thought it was the hdr.

[Klahanie]

the ones I have done with photomatix are almost too much like paintings, maybe thats because ofthe subject I am using. or, maybe thats how they are supposed to be. they don’t look real.

Hi Morningbreath. You can make them more natural looking by increasing (light) smoothing and decreasing strength. Here are a few examples of what I’ve done. The photo of the old cannery is obviously severe, but the dalias look pretty realistic. The cannery photo is one of the first ones I’ve done and needs a lot of work.

[Klahanie]

Somebody sure got busy with those stickys. You go girl. Didja ever notice that the icon for the sticky is a big blob rather than, say, a sticky?

[Klahanie]

It seems that the Photomatix 2.3 beta 14 has an undocumented feature that lets you make HDR photos without the watermark on them

O’rly? I downloaded that last night to my laptop, but didn’t get that far. Thanks for the heads-up.

[Klahanie]

😳 That last comment of mine sounds about a thousand times snottier than it is intended. I just think there is room for all of it. Variety is the spice and all of that.

Then you need 1000 whacks with a wet noodle. 😆 😆 😆

Thank you sir, may I have another?:shock:

I think we’ve got enough people now to not have to worry about risking losing some, and I think the longer you’re at it the more you think on your own anyway. I mean, with all you darn talented folks running about us bums have to work harder. I think the main thing to worry about now is making it fun. Fark being fark, any non-serious thinking should be hilarious. So, in a way, I’m with you on the forks idea. I’m convinced that the staplers contest was the best contest we’ve ever had because so many people thought up the funniest stuff and the subject was loose enough to allow for all sorts of diversity. I’m not crazy about contests where people don’t feel like scrolling down to where the liters post because they’ve just seen 50 pictures of ________.

This cute kids one is killing me. I had to cold call a cousin I haven’t spoken to in years and ask if she wouldn’t mind having her kids pose with staplers.
How the heck are the the rest of you childless doing it?

Good point. The stapler theme turned out much better than I thought it would. Kudos for that. Good luck with the kids with staplers. I don’t have kids either and the only photos of kids I have are of my niece, and they are a few years old. hmmm, goats…

[Klahanie]

I should probably mention that it is worth the 100 bucks and I will be buying it, just not until I get a new camera. 🙂

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