Here is a photo of Andrew Hazelden flying model airplanes in -15°C weather.
This morning my brother, Russell, & I decided it would be fun to get out to the flying hill and fly some model airplanes during the winter season. For the last few days the coastal winds around West Dover, Nova Scotia have been calm at sunrise.
This morning the road was a bit icy and the temperature was around -15°C but it didn't stop us from having a great time. We got to the top of the flying hill just as the sun was breaking through a few clouds on the horizon. I snapped a few photos with my Canon Powershot as we were getting set up for flying. We flew a Multiplex EasyStar this morning for half and hour until our fingers and toes started to get a bit numb. The FMA co-pilot flight stabilizer worked well and leveled out the wings from the occasional gust of wind.
Sunrise in the West Dover Barrens
Here is a photo of the barrens with a light covering of snow and ice.
Continue reading 'Flying Model Airplanes in January'»
A short night sky time-lapse GIF-a-mation
Last night the power was out for over four hours in West Dover. After I used up the last of the energy in my UPS unit I had to find something else to do with the evening.
Since the power was off in the village the street lights were off as well. This created an interesting opportunity for some excellent wintertime backyard astronomy.
I used a flashlight to locate my camera gear and tripod. Once I had my tripod set up outside I changed the lens on my Canon DSLR camera to an 8mm Peleng circular fisheye lens. The Peleng lens is a lot of fun because it takes extremely wide angle photos. I set my Canon D60 camera to bulb mode and programmed my Canon TC80-N3 intervalometer to capture 90 second long exposures. In all I ran the camera for 45 minutes in the cold weather and captured 28 long exposure images before the batteries died. I think it is cool that the Peleng lens has such a wide field of view that it also caught the headlights of cars driving by on the highway.
This image is a stack of 20 photos @ 90 seconds each.
For the 26 image composite I used the maximum image stacking mode in Photoshop along with dark frame subtraction.
This image is a single 90 second exposure that shows Orion's Belt low on the horizon.
This is a photo looking out on the West Dover Barrens after a fresh snowfall.
Christmas Eve in West Dover
This October the trees in West Dover have been bright and full of vibrant colours. I went on a short photography walk this evening during "magic hour" to to capture the moment.
Here is an equirectangular panorama of a rainbow after a rain storm.
In this blog post I'm going to demonstrate my technique for processing and retouching a panorama created using a Peleng 8mm circular fisheye lens. This panorama was shot handheld without the use of a tripod. This creates a few issues such as stitching artifacts that can be fixed using Photoshop.
In this tutorial I will be using the free program Hugin to create a 360° by 180°panorama. Fisheye lenses make it a lot easier to create an equirectangular image due to their wide field of view.
Creating a panorama in Hugin starts by clicking the load images button.
Continue reading 'Creating Panoramas With Hugin'»
This is an animated GIF image that shows Adobe Lightroom removing the lens distortion from a CHDK DNG RAW images.
Recently a blog reader sent me a message asking how to create presets for Adobe Lightroom that would correct for the lens distortions visible in CHDK DNG RAW images shot using a Canon Powershot SD780IS / IXUS 100 IS.
This morning I created 7 Adobe Lightroom lens correction presets that cover the complete focal length range of the camera. In this first beta version I have just applied basic lens corrections for the images. I am leaving it up to you to apply light cropping if you want the CHDK DNG Raw image to exactly match the pixels in the original Canon JPEG photo.
You can download the Lightroom SD780IS CHDK DNG Lens Correction Presets here.
How I Created the Presets
I started by creating a simple grid test pattern and shot 7 images that represent the complete zoom range of the Canon Powershot SD780IS. The DNG images used for creating the lens correction presets were shot using CHDK with the "Show Zoom - FL" OSD text displayed. This let me accurately step through each zoom value. I shot images using the 5.9mm, 7.17mm, 8.74mm, 10.55mm, 12.49mm, 14.78mm, and 17.9mm focal lengths. Then I adjusted the Adobe Lightroom lens correction parameters for the RAW DNG images to match the lens distortion present in the original Canon JPEG images. I created 7 presets that you can use on your own photos.
Continue reading 'Fixing lens distortion in CHDK DNG RAW images.'»
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