Saturday, November 03, 2007

Aye, and Sepia

Well, well, well. This is an interesting one. They all are, really, but this Round Robin Photo Challenge is a little different from most, because it focuses on photographic equipment rather than the subject matter or presentation. My buddy Becky of Where Life Takes You came up with the idea that we should stretch our photographic skills a bit, by trying out camera settings we've never used before. So that's exactly what we're going to do!

Multiburst

This first one I took the evening of the "big wheels" Monday Photo Shoot. It's the power plant, and the setting I was trying out was called "Multiburst." I thought it would be a series of regular size photos taken in rapid succession, but instead it was a block of tiny images. If something were moving we could see whether or not they're all the same shot. Hmm. Oh, Tuffy...!


Black and White, Natural, Vivid, Sepia

This is not a multiburst shot. I've ganged up four photos of the same scene from early this evening. These are all from the "Program Auto" setting on the dial, "Auto exposure with adjustable settings." Hitting the menu button from here gives the Color Mode options B&W, Sepia, Natural, Vivid and Normal. (I just discovered by accident that there's a series of icons at the bottom, for other sets of options.) Natural, Vivid and Normal don't seem all that different from each other. For these settings, I didn't edit for tone or saturation, since the point is to show what the camera did. But I did do a second edit of the B&W shot (not shown), boosting the contrast.

Programmed Color Mode: Sepia

Here's another sepia shot. I thought it might be interesting to give an old-timey look to the gas tanks and Mount Lemmon as seen from Alvernon Way near Irvington. Somehow it mostly ends up looking like a dust storm.

Soft Snap

This Tuffy shot is on the "Soft Snap" setting, described as "Shoot subject with soft background."

Twilight Portrait, edited

Somewhere in my Tuffy series I lost track of which settings I used in which shots, but I think this was on the Twilight Portrait dial setting, "Shoot portraits in low light with flash." Tuffy just heard a noise, probably John pulling into the driveway. I've cheated this one a bit, brightening it up and doing a "sharpen lightly."

Twilight Portrait, differently edited

I cheated on this one, too, using the autoenhance editing feature in PhotoStudio. This was probably Twilight Portrait also, but the extended info on these files isn't terribly helpful with such details.

Twilight Portrait, as is

This one is just as it came out of the camera, except for cropping and resizing.

Tuffy news: I finally spoke with Tuffy's regular vet, and brought her up to date on her condition and the options we were given. Dr. L. leans toward the palliative radiation, on the grounds that it's easier on Tuffy than removing more of her tongue at her age, and the couple of years this less expensive version of radiation therapy buys her should bring her close to her life expectancy anyway. John and I were both horrified with the whole learning-to-eat-again thing, and this does seem better for Tuffy's quality of life, especially in combination with the pills that help to slow the disease. I just hope we will be sensitive to when the time comes to let her go; I think we waited too long with Noodle. But that time for Tuffy is not yet.

Thanks, Becky, for making me explore my camera a little. Now I want to cycle through the rest of the icons on the P for Program setting.

Be sure to visit all our brave experimenters! And yes, you're invited to join in yourself! See the Round Robin blog for details.

Karen


Linking List

Becky - Posted!
Where Life Takes You
http://ryanagi.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Janet
fond of photography
http://fondofphotography.blogspot.com

Nancy - Posted!
Nancy Luvs Pix
http://journals.aol.com/nhd106/Nancyluvspix

Vicki - Posted!
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com/

Suzanne R - Posted!
New Suzanne R's Life
http://newsuzannerslife.blogspot.com

Steven - Posted!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com


P.S. Because I promised to keep up a daily posting of my fictional progress:

Kate was gone when I got up this morning. Ariel apparently came for her. Ariel left behind a note, something about partying with Molière and losing track of the time. Either Ariel got into my email and is teasing me, or she visited the world of Jace and Sandy, or both. I'll have to ask her sometime. Meanwhile, I hope to have a new fiction entry up on Messages before the weekend is out. I just don't know what it will be yet! - KFB

7 comments:

Carly said...

Hi Karen :)

A wonderful grouping of photos. I loved the four together, you did so well with that. And as for Tuffy, well your photos make me want to reach through the computer and give that pup a big hug. She is delightful. I will continue to keep warm thoughts for all of you.

Always, Carly

Steven said...

Tuffy is grand subject! I know exactly what you mean by losing track of what setting you have worked through. Cool effects and somewhere buried in my camera is something similar! Sepia is interesting.

Suzanne R said...

You have some very interesting settings on your camera, and I like what you've done with them. My best wishes go to you and John and Tuffy in her health situation.

Nancy said...

Karen,
You did SO WELL! I'm very impressed. (I also think your subject is adorable, and the colors of that room are great too).

Can you tell me how to do the 4 pics in that one square?

Also...I'm so sorry to hear of Tuffy's ailment. I can't even imagine...

Hugs,
Nancy

Karen Funk Blocher said...

Nancy - It was very easy. I started with four photos, and resized them to the usual size I upload, which in my case is 15% of the original size, 490 pixels wide by I-forget-what height. After a Save as, I did a "select all" on one picture, copied it and hit "New." By default, PhotoStudio gave me a new blank image (except for a Layer 0 background color) the same size as the photo.

Then, rather than paste in the image (actually I pasted but then deleted it), I went back to each of the four images and resized them at 50% (245 pixels wide). Then it was just a matter of pasting in each one and fussing to line them up. Then I merged the layers into one, and closed the four images without saving the last resizing. Voila!

Becky said...

I love multiburst! I wish my camera had that option. John took a long series of photos of Tyler in his car seat when he was a baby (making all sorts of goofy faces) and I took them all and did what you did for the 4-shot series. I made a montage - 3x3 - for a total of 9 shots in one frame. It came out so cool. I still get comments on it when people see the framed series hanging on the wall. :-)

MyMaracas said...

Hmmm. Multiburst. I think I may have that ... have to check that out. The set of four is great, too. I definitely need some kind of editing software. (Helloooo Santa?)

Sending hugs for you and Tuffy!

Vicki