Spleenjected

This morning I searched on the pinternet (again) about how to use a Nikon flash on canon camera / canon flash on nikon camera. I found some adapters on ebay that say they convert PC to hotshoe for Canon 430EX and Nikon SB600, but the shoe is metal, so I would have thought this would short circuit the flashes with their TTL pins. Reading on strobist group discussions on Flickr, someone said they undid their flash (I think it was an SB-26) and removed the TTL pins, then put it back together, making it a 'dumb' flash.

I also saw some good pics taken with a reversed 18-55 lens. I tried mounting the MT-24EX to it, and it seems that with the end cap on the lens, the MT-24EX will mount to the cap, you would then need to drill/cut out the front of the cap for the lens to see through.

I got an email back from istock (last night actually) to say my application had been rejected :(. Though, they said it was because all my images were Silos and they wanted to see a more diverse range of images. Bit funny since most microstock seems to be Silos. Anyway, I can re-submit in 3 days so I took some pics of a backlit leaf at about 2x magnification and then edited that. I'll probably to to re-submit with that backlit leaf macro, a landscape image (maybe the one of bare trees and a cloudy reflection in the canal) and one of the pics I originally submitted.

The weather's been a bit rubbish yesterday and today - cloudy and keeps raining.

I spent the rest of the day going on the pinternet, reading about insects/flies/IDing, taking some more photos and processing them and watching a strtrk episode with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Lime marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 2x Cheese on toasts; red grapes; home-made rock cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Shepherds pie; carrots; broccoli; Tom Ketch. Pudding was strawberry yoghurt. Coffee; Roses.
Supper: Crinkle crunch cream; coffee.

Internetting

Yesterday and this morning I have been mainly catching up on the various websites/fora that I check regularly, since I hadn't checked them for a few days so there was lots to read.

Today I also submitted an application to istockphoto, so we'll see how that goes. If I get rejected I'll probably try applying with stockxpert again.

Food
Breakfast: Honey nut shredded wheat minis; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Mature cheddar cheese with icerberg lettuce sandwich; ½ beetroot sandwich; banana; red grapes; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Ham quiche; peas; potato; butter. Pudding was pancakes with lemon juice and sugar. Coffee.
Supper: Home-made rock cake; cup o' tea.

Photographing in the fog

Went out on a walk with Mac and Rad this morning, it was quite foggy. Initially I put a 0.6ND Split filter on the camera, but found that the edge was clearly visible. So I just shot without any filters and had a blown out sky - there wasn't any detail in the sky anyway.

With Split 0.6ND filter (looked okay through the viewfinder):


Without the filter:

After the walk when we were driving home, the sun came out a bit, I think photos taken in the fog when the sun was shining would have looked a lot better than the photos without the sun. Also I could've used a lower ISO and there would be less probability of camera shake ruining the pictures.

When we got home I had a headache, so I had a ibuprofen and then another one with lunch. By the time we started lunch, the fog and cloud had lifted and the sky was a nice blue.

After lunch I sorted and processed the pics from this morning. Unfortunately a lot of them had to be edited to remove a big dust spot in the sky. I downloaded Capture NX2 to see if it would be possible to remove the dust spot in Capture NX rather than converting from NEF to TIFF in Capture NX and then removing the dust spot in photoshop. Capture NX2 only has a healing brush, which doesn't work as well as the patch tool for big dust spots (like I had). Also, in one of the pictures a dust spot was going across some wires, and NX2 messed up the wires. I didn't seem to be able to do a partial selection on the healing brush either (to remove the healed part where the wires were). So I think I'll stick with Capture NX1.3 and photoshop for the moment.

In the evening we went out to a quiz night at Church, where we had fish and chips from a fish & chips shop for dinner. For the quiz you were given sets of 20 dates and 20 notable events, and you had to match the dates with the events, we got something like 56/160.

Food
Breakfast: Lime marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
After walk snack: Crinkle crunch cream; coffee.
Lunch: Thick slice of still warm bakery bread with edam cheese; slice of still warm bakery bread with honey; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Fish & chip shop fish & chips. For pudding (when we got home) I had a strawberry jam toast sandwich.

Microstocking

Today I tried to take some microstock photos, including touching up one of the leaves I scanned the other day (which took ages). Also in the morning I took some macros of dew covered plants/cobwebs. In the evening I finished watching LOTR: ROTK with Mac and Ben.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Edam cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; satsuma; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: 2x sausages; baked beans; mashed potato; chili relish. Pudding was chocolate flavoured Tapioca pudding. Coffee.

Processing and taking photos

This morning I hooked up my EOS450D to my PC to try and take some photos of my mouth ulcer. Annoyingly to get the liveview to work you have to press the DoF preview button in the software (EOS Utility) and then press DoF preview off, and then the camera will send the lieview feed. But after about 15secs it will stop the feed and you have to switch the DoF preview on then off again again. This means you only get about 15secs to adjust your shot and take the shot, since you'll inevitably move a bit while pressing the DoF preview on then off.

Anyway, I did get a few pics, but the ulcer seems to just be plain white with no texture.

I also did some shots at 2x, but had to remove the diffusers from the flash heads since I can't get near enough to the lens to get the ulcer in focus with the diffusers on. I also found I needed to move the flash heads round to the side otherwise they blocked too much light. It was also quite hard to focus properly since it was reversed, like looking in a mirror.

After that I tried some eye pics. Unfortunately I had to look at the liveview screen on my monitor rather than looking directly into the lens, which meant the plane of focus was at an angle so the right side is OOF.

This was one of the few shots that doesn't have a bright white reflection of the flash heads in it. PP was removing a dust spot and a curves adjustment to increase contrast.


My eye by ~djeyewater on deviantART

It was still interesting seeing close-ups of my eye though. I shot mainly at 2x (like above) and 1x. The flash didn't hurt at all, although I could feel it's warmness. After seeing some photos posted by Fred Vachss at dpreview with the Canon Macro ringflash, it looks very attractive. The highlights in his frog pictures look nice and soft and the reflection of the flash heads is quite small and would be easy to clone out. Also it wouldn't stick out as much as the MT-24EX so you could get higher magnifications (where you have to focus closer closer) much easier.

After processing the images, I edited a couple of the ones of my eye to remove flash reflections, and posted the above one (which I didn't remove flash reflections from) to deviant art.

After lunch I checked my spleenmail and made my bed, then went in the garden and found the same caterpillar as yesterday and took some photos of it with the 450d, MP-E and MT-24EX.

Then I processed those pics and some other pics and uploaded some to wild about britain (WAB).

After dinner me, Ben and Mac watched a bit more of LOTR: ROTK. Then Ben had to do his homework so I went on t'pinternet and checked dpreview, hotukdeals, redbubble, WAB and hotmail. Following dat I tuk sum Fotos of Ben and stuf. Then I sorted and Ben loves Po Cess pitted them. Here's a few random ones:

The weather today was cloudy most of the time, but clear blue sky at the end of the day.

Food
Breakfast: Honey toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: ½ Edam cheese on tiger loaf bread sandwich; 1 slice tiger loaf; ½ honey tiger loaf bread sandwich; banana; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Slice of BBQ Chicken pizza; peas; potato; chips. Pudding was raspberry ripple ice cream with strawberry whip and banana. Coffee.

Sorting images & scanning leaves

This morning went on wildaboutbritain (WAB) and had got some IDs for some caterpillar pics I posted yesterday, most of them were actually sawfly larave. So I checked and updated those pics, and then re-sorted my other insect pics into the Scientific named Orders, followed with common names of those types of insect in that order in brackets.

After lunch I went in the garden and saw a caterpillar, so I took some photos of that, a fly and a couple of craneflies using the FZ5 and Raynox DCR-250, then posted the caterpillar pic to WAB for ID. Then I sorted all those pics and a couple of the caterpillar pics I merged together and ran noise reduction on in photoshop. The FZ5 & DCR-250 is a lot lighter and easier to use than the 450d + MP-E + MT-24EX, but its shutter lag is very noticable when shooting macro and the image quality leaves a lot to be desired when you're used to 10-12MP DSLR images. It's pretty noisy even at ISO80 and there seems to be quite a bit of fringing, probably lens abberations. However, the image is pretty sharp (probably partly due to in camera sharpening), DoF is large (due to the small sensor size) and the background behind the insect is lit up nicely rather than just being black like it would be with the MP-E. The working distance is also relatively large.

The rest of the afternoon and quite a bit of the evening I spent scanning more leaves. I found that scanning at 1200DPI is probably best - at 2400DPI I have to reduce the image size by 50% to attain reasonable sharpness, and at 4800DPI I have to reduce the image size by 25%. And of course, 2400DPI and 4800DPI file sizes are much larger. So it seems that the maximum resolution of the scanner (Canon N670U) is probably 1200DPI and it interpolates upwards after that. So most of the leaves I scanned today at 1200DPI. After copying the pics to my PC I have to open them in PS, assign a colour profile (wierd how the scanner doesn't do that, AdobeRGB 1998 gives good colours so I presume that's what the profile should be), and then re-save but with LZW compression, which reduces the filesize by loads. If I scanned the file at greater than 1200DPI then I also resize it down and save a copy.

I also went on the pinternet a bit, and read more news on dpreview and Luminous Landscape. The weather was pretty cloudy today, but it didn't rain today (except for a few spots). I hope the weather clears up before all the leaves are blown off the trees and I miss Autumn. I was also hoping to try and take some microstock style photos today, but I was just too busy.

Food
Breakfast: Lime marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: About ½ packet of Flame grilled steak flavour ridged crisps; Edam cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; satuma; flapjack; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken pie; potato; carrots. Pudding was Rice pudding with stewed apple and blackcurrant jam - actually pretty nice. Coffee.

Bug IDs and online galleries

This morning I checked wildaboutbritain.co.uk and had got some IDs on the moths I had posted, so I updated them, then posted some bugs pics for id. Checked my email, dpreview (which again had quite a bit of news), hotukdeals, deviantart and redbubble.

After lunch I checked Flickr and digital photography blog, then wildaboutbritain.co.uk again and all the pics I had posted earlier had been ID'd. So I sorted all those out, then had a look at smugmug and alternatives for image hosting/licensing for my website. I looked at photoshelter archive, which seems quite expensive, and they limit bandwidth/storage space, so if your bandwidth goes over a certain amount you have to pay extra per GB. This would be the same problem if I hosted the images myself on my already paid for webspace. Zenfolio looked good if you want your gallery on their site, but not so good for integrating into your own site. Smugmug looked probably the best, although quite expensive at $150 a year. I would have to give it a trial to see how customisable it is when integrating it with your own site.

Also I'm not sure how useful it would be having the images hosted off my own webspace. The benefits of smugmug and the like are that they have built in handling of licensing your images and selling prints. However for licensing nature/wildlife images I expect there wouldn't be an immediate need to license the image straight away and it could be arranged by just having anyone interested in licensing email you to arrange license terms. With regards to prints of images, I think it is likely that the only people ordering prints would be friends/family or if you cover an event, so not really applicable to me (unless someone wanted to order a print of their scarecrow, unlikely, and I'm sure they would rather just take a photo and print it themselves anyway).

After dinner I watched Tattlestar with mac. Then I uploaded some caterpillar pics to wildaboutbritain for ID. Checked dpreview and John K's blog. I ordered the ID/photography books I wanted off Amazon and won a bid for one on ebay today as well. The only one I didn't get was 'Concise Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland (Concise Guide) by Martin Townsend (Author), et al.', which was available from an Amazon Marketplace seller when I made my list for £6.11 + £2.75 P&P, but when I ordered the books just now the lowest Marketplace seller price was about £8, so I will leave that one until it is listed cheaper on Amazon marketplace or ebay. Most of the books I ordered from Amazon marketplace sellers as they were cheaper (even with the expensive £2.75 per item postage) than Amazon and ebay sellers (who were all shop sellers).

The books I ordered were:

• Insects of Britain and Northern Europe (Collins Field Guide) by Michael Chinery (Author) - £8
• Dipterist's Handbook by Alan Stubbs (Editor), P. Chandler (Editor) - £15.25
• Digital Macro Photography by Ross Hoddinott (Author) - £9.74
• A Key to the Families of British Diptera by David M. Unwin (Author) - £10.24
• Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects: Diptera Lonchopteridae (Handbooks for the identification of British insects) by Kenneth George Valentine Smith (Author) - £2.64
• British Lonchaeidae: Diptera. Cuclorrhapha, Acalyptratae (Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects) by Iain MacGowan (Author), Graham E. Rotheray (Author) - £13.86
• Close-ups in Nature (Practical Photography Books) (Practical Photography Books) by John Shaw (Author) - £8.84
• John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide (Photography for All Levels: Intermediate) (Photography for All Levels: Intermediate) by John Shaw (Author) - £10.54

Total damage about £80. Quite painful, especially considering that doesn't include the moths books, and the ID books (other than the 2 Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects) are probably pretty basic and will likely only allow you to identify an insect down to the family level (maybe not even that far in some cases). Anyway, a good start to increase my knowledge and hopefully teach me basic ID skills.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry crisp cereal; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Mature cheddar cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; satsuma; flapjack; fox's triple; cup o' tea.
Dinner: 2x frankfurter sausages in buns with iceberg lettuce, mature cheddar cheese and chili relish. Pudding was 2x American style chocolate brownies. Coffee.

Scanning leaves

I woke up this morning at 5.30am, tried to get back to sleep but decided to get up so I could go to the Canal basin and take a pano with the orange sky caused by sunrise. However, when the sky started to get light, about 15minutes before sunrise, it was cloudy and also not as misty as the past couple of days. I waited until about 10minutes after sunrise and walked to the bit where the track to Lubenham starts, next to a field of bulls and houses on the edge of Willow Crescent. I thought from there I should be able to see the sun if the clouds were thin enough.

When I got there it was about 7am, so the sun should have risen, it was reasonably light, but you couldn't see the sun and the clouds weren't orange at all. Since the clouds were too thick for the sun to get through, I just walked round the field there, which I've never walked around before. Then I walked down the track a bit more towards Lubenham, I was hoping that I could cross over the fields into the field by the pub and then cross the road there and walk back over the hill.

But the river divides the fields in two, so I couldn't get across to the field by the pub so instead I had to walk all around the field until I got to Lubenham, then cross over the small bridge there and walked back home down the road. The field I walked through was full of black plastic wrapped haybales, and it may be possible to get some good sunset photos from there looking towards Lubenham, and good sunrise photos looking back towards Harborough. When I got to the entrance to the field on the hill across the road from the pub, the field had been ploughed, and looked a bit hard to cross in my trainers, so I didn't go over the hill and just carried on walking along the pavement to get home.

Originally I was hoping to walk to Foxton from the Canal Basin, and see if many trees were in Autumn colours, if the weather improves I may do that walk later today. When I got back home I sorted a few macro photos that I've taken over the last few days, and uploaded some moth photos to wildaboutbritain for ID.

It's now 9.25am, the wind's picked up a bit, although still relatively light, some of the cloud has lifted and it's a bit sunny. The hills in the distance are still misty and there's rain forecast for this afternoon, so I don't think I'll go out to Foxton today.

Finshed sorting the macros I'd taken recently, then checked my email, hotukdeals and dpreview news page, which had quite a lot of news on it.

After lunch I went on the pinternet a bit more and backed up my pictures. I started scanning in the leaves I picked up yesterday on Maccy's comp. They were nicely flattened by being squashed in the books I put them in yesterday, so good for scanning. I will have to try and get some photos of unsquashed ones as well though, because some of them have fold marks since they're 3d and not flat.

It did rain quite a bit in the afternoon, and also most of the morning was pretty overcast, so I was glad I decided not to go out today.

After dinner I finished copying the leaf scans I did today from Mac's comp (which has the scanner attached) to my comp, and re-saved them with LZW compression and also saved re-sized versions sized down 50% or 25%, it seems if you increase the DPI on the scanner above 1200DPI you don't get any extra info, and the scans were at 2400DPI or 4800DPI. Then watched some more of LOTR: ROTK with Mac and Ben, then watched an episode of Galactica with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Blackberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Mature cheddar cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; cherry tomatoes; packet of Beef crisps; satsuma; flapjack; fox's triple; cup o' tea; Roses.
Dinner: Ham quiche; peas; potato; butter. Pudding was home-made apple pie with spleenvap. Coffee.
Supper: Choc chip cookie; hobnob; cup o' tea.

Macroing and Autumn Leaves pressing

In the morning it was quite misty and the rising sun gave it a really nice orange glow again. After breakfast I went in the back garden and took some macros of the dew covered plants.

Went to church, and on the way back I picked up quite a few nice Autumn coloured leaves. After dinner me and Mac watched an episode of Galactica. Then I went through my books and put the leaves I'd collected in them for pressing. I found the leaves I'd put in them last year and they had all gone dull and brown or green, so it seems that the leaves don't press well.

The rest of the evening I processed a pano from Welland Park that I took quite a while ago. I went on the pinternet a bit as well. I read a post on dpreview by John K saying that windy days are good for macro, which is the opposite of what I think, since the wind blows everything about so much it's hard to get anything in focus. He said that windy days are good because insects don't want to move around so much, and you can hold on to whatever they're on with one hand and balance the lens on that same hand. I'll have to bear that advice in mind next time it's windy.

In the spleenvening I went on the pinternet a bit more, then watched the first bit of LOTR ROTK Extended Edition with Mac and Ben.

Food
Breakfast: Blackberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Nasi Goreng with extra stir fry; chicken nuggets. Pudding was 2x mini bakewell tarts with custard. Coffee.
Tea: Mature cheddar cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; apple; flapjack; Fox's triple.

Macroing and sorting

This morning the light was very nice, bit misty lit up by orange sunlight. Looking out my window it looked like it might be good for photography behind the houses by the fields, so I walked over there before breakfast, but it wasn't very photogenic really.

In the morning I took some more macros in the garden and sorted/processed some macros from the other day on my comp. I also read a pdf leaflet on entomology/insects and it had a page about making your garden insect/wildlife friendly, so I printed that off and gave it to Clare.

In the afternoon I finished off processing the pics and got lots of compost out of the compost bin for Clare. Also searched for some 'Donk'/'Scouse House' music after seeing the 'Put a Donk on it' video on youtube:


I checked wildaboutbritain.co.uk and I had been given some IDs, so sorted that out.

After dinner I went on the pinternet, checked hotukdeals and dpreview and uploaded some more Twycross Zoo pics to deviantart, digitalphotographyblog, redbubble and flickr.

Amur Leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis)
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

Monkey mates by ~djeyewater on deviantART

Food
Breakfast: Thick slice of tiger loaf; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Mature cheddar cheese sandwich with tiger loaf bread; red grapes; apple; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea; Roses.
Dinner: Pasta with tomato sauce; Baked Potato; baked beans; peas; chili relish; sausages. Pudding was raspberry ripple ice cream with meringue and tinned fruit cocktail.

Stopping socks falling down and luminance blend mode in CNX

This morning went on a walk with Rad near WHERE. The weather was cloudy over where the sun was, and blue skies with parts of light cloud cover. Because the cloud cover was quite light with a lot of sun getting through, and there were blue skies I decided to use a Hitech ND0.3 split ND filter, but this turned out not to be such a great idea - when processing the images back at home, a lot of my images needed exposure blending because they sky was much brighter than the ground, and those that didn't could still have done with the sky looking darker. So I guess whenever it's cloudy, even if the cloud cover is very light, I should use the ND0.6 split filter.

The weather was nice and warm and sunny on the walk. After a bit I found one of my socks kept falling down. After pulling it up and then it falling down again quite a few times I looked at my shoes, and the shoe on the foot where the sock kept falling down didn't have the laces done up properly. So I did the laces up properly so the shoe was tighter, and then the sock didn't fall down anymore.

After the walk we went to Oadby Asda, which is on the edge of Leicester, and they have quite a bit of Asian stuff there, like big bags of chapati flour. When we came home we had lunch.

After lunch I set about sorting/processing the pics from the walk. Sometimes I want to apply a tone curve to an image to increase contrast, but I don't want to affect the colour saturation, so normally I open the image in Photoshop and set the tone curve blend mode to Luminance. But today I saw that one of the opacity modes in Capture NX for a tone curve layer is luminance/chrominance, which allows you to set the opacity for luminance and chrominance seperately, which is actually better than what Photoshop allows. (Well actually in PS you would need to have 2 tone curve layers - one set to Luminosity and the other set to Color). So you can have a tone curve with say 90% luminance opacity and 50% chrominance opacity, so saturation is increased but not too much.

After dinner I finished off processing the pics from the walk. Po Chess! They are playing 'She's so high' by Kurt Nielsen on HFM!!! Did a backup of my pictures, checked deviantart and most of my email, then went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Lime marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
After walk snack: Choc chip cookie; pink wafer; coffee.
Lunch: 2x slices tiger loaf bread; 1 x Mature cheddar cheese on slice of tiger loaf; honey and butter sandwich with tiger loaf bread; banana; choc chip shortbread; 2x jaffa cakes; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Breaded Plaice with cheese and spinach; Potatoes; Peas. Pudding was chocolate cheesecake. Coffee.

Need a good ID book(s) for diptera

In the morning it was a bit misty, which meant that the spiders' webs in the back garden were a bit dewey, so I tried taking some photos of them. I used the MP-E65 with the MT-24EX without diffusers since the diffusers stick out too much so you can't get as close to the web (and so can't shoot at as high magnification, which I needed to as the dew drops were only small). I found the results weren't as good as last time I shot dewey spiders webs, when I did have diffusers on the MT-24EX. The problem is the undiffused flash heads reflections look uglier in the dew drops than the diffused flash heads reflections.

I also tried some with a background behind them, and in the dew drops you can see the background, of course you have to zoom in to like 100% to see the bg in the drops, so not really a problem. Sometime I need to try the trick of getting smiley faces or sumat similar as a bg for dew drops so the face fills the drops.

I also found a waterlily leaf beetle with dew drops on it, the first time I've actually seen an insect in real-life with dew drops on. There were some downy feathers in the grass covered in dew drops, so I took some photos of those, I thought they looked really good through the viewfinder at 3x, the little water drops like loads of crystals.

Then I tried taking photos of some dew drops on the variegated grass leaves, after taking a few shots I thought it might look good backlit, so I took the MT-24EX flashes off the 450d and held them under the leaf, unfortunately the cords from the flash controller to the flash heads on the MT-24 are quite short, and I couldn't get the flash heads far away enough to not blow out the leaf.

So I went inside and got my Wimberley macro flash bracket and Nikon SB-800 flash unit, and after quite a while of fiddling (and getting granny breakfast) I went back in the garden to try and get some backlit pics with the SB800 being in remote (SU800) mode and triggered by the MT-24EX on the MP-E.Unfortunately it had taken so long for me to put the setup together that most of the dew drops had dried up. I did find a bit of leaf with dew drops still on it, but all the pics were OOF/blury. I'm not sure if this is due to me being rubbish, or if the time delay between the MT-24EX firing and the SB-800 firing is long enough so the subject is no longer in focus (as the setup is constantly moving about since I shot it handheld).

After that I took some photos of leaves of other plants with the setup, and I thought they came out quite nicely.

I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon sorting/processing the pics.

The rest of the afternoon I checked wildaboutbritain.co.uk and had got some IDs, so updated them and also spent quite a while researching ID guides for British flies, especially Chloropidae, but didn't have much luck. I did find a couple guides (none for Chloropidae or Anthomyiidae) though, which I added to my amazon watchlist, but they were very old (and so probably out of date) and expensive.

In the evening I added some more pics to wildaboutbritain for ID and also checked my email/hotukdeals/dpreview/deviantart/redbubble. Watched Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac as well.

Food
Breakfast: Blackberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 2x cheese on toast; banana; breakaway; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Pasta with tomato sauce and bacon bits. Pudding was a creamy yoghurt. Coffee; Roses.

Getting liveview to work with the EOS450d and MP-E65

This morning I went on the pinternet mostly, reading more about photoshelter collection closing. Then I watched some more photoshop tutorial videos. After lunch I finished watching that set of photoshop tutorial videos, went on dpreview and read that the EOS5d MkII had finally been announced, and read some comments on the forums there and dpreview's preview of it.

In their preview they mentioned liveview, which made me remember that one of the reasons I got the 450d was because it had liveview, which should be useful in macro work. So I switched the camera on, and put it in liveview mode, but was greeted by just a black screen. I thought that maybe the flash connections were bad and that's why liveview wasn't working, so I disconnected the MT-24EX but it still wouldn't work. So I checked all the menu settings, and couldn't see anything that should be affecting it. Next I did some searching on the internet, but couldn't see anything apart from people saying it was great. I tried the camera again, and noticed there was an icon on the screen that said 'Exp Sim', went through all the camera settings again but couldn't see anything related to this. I thought that the screen must be so dark because Exposure Simulation mode is on, and the MP-E has quite a small effective aperture, and since I shoot at f/8 (effective aperture is actually much smaller than that) and 1/200s the camera must be making the screen black as that's how it thinks the exposure will look.

So I searched the pinternet for '450d turn off exposure simulation' to see if there was a way to turn it off, but couldn't find anything. I had a look in the 450d manual as well, but couldn't see anything there. So I switched the camera on again, and tried turning the mode dial to Aperture Priority mode, and Program Exposure mode the image brightened up nicely so you could see it, but would be nearly black in shutter priority mode and totally black in Manual mode. Well, this was better as it meant I could focus in A mode, then turn the dial to M mode to shoot, but it's likely that turning the dial would throw focus off a bit, so still not that great.

Next I tried re-attaching the flash, and setting it to E-TTL mode, in case with the camera in M mode it wanted to fire a pre-flash to check the exposure and would then simulate the exposure correctly and brighten up the screen. When I half pressed the shutter button the screen brightened up, yay! So I put the flash back in M mode, in a few seconds the screen went black again, so I half pressed the shutter again and the screen went bright again. So it seems all you have to do to get liveview working correctly with the 450d in manual mode is just press the shutter half way.

Still on the subject of macro shooting, yesterday I was shooting a bug on grass, the grass was waving about a bit, so I used the Wimberley Plamp on a tent peg to hold it steady. The first problem I had was the coloured background wouldn't fit behind the subject (a green lacewing) without bashing into the plamp or otherwise the bit of card coming off the camera holding the background would bash into the grass. What I needed was another plamp on a tent peg that could hold the background behind the grass. So that's something to add on my long list of extra photographic equipment to buy.

I also found the flash heads with mini-softboxes on were too large when shooting at high magnifications, so I took them off and shot without diffusion. I also lowered the f-stop to f/5.6 to avoid diffraction. The preview below looks quite rubbish and mushy for some reason, but you can see the highlight on the face to the right of the eye. So highlights are a problem without diffusion, but shooting at high magnification (this is at 5:1) they are a much smaller problem than they would be shooting at say 1:1 without diffusion. Shooting without diffusion also keeps the flash power low (and so faster), to minimise motion blur, which is important at high magnifications.
I was also dissapointed with how the eye has 2 bright points (the flash heads) while the rest is quite dark. This looks a bit weird to me.

The rest of the afternoon I went on the pinternet a bit (checked hotukdeals and my email) and then uploaded some pics to wildaboutbritain.co.uk, which actually takes quite a bit of time since I try and ID the pics myself first and have to try and get their size and resize them for the web, then upload them, and then add them to a forum post.

After dinner, finished uploading the pics to wildaboutbritain, checked my email and hotukdeals again, and then watched Battlestar Galactica and The Soviet Story with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Golden Balls; cup o' tea.
Tenses: Pink wafer biscuit; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cob with peppered ham; 2x Hovis crackers with mature cheddar cheese; red grapes; breakaway; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken and bacon pie; broccoli; peas; ½ baked potato. Pudding was tangerine/satsuma/similar orangey thing cheesecake. Coffee.

Didn't rain again!

This morning finished sorting my pics from yesterday, backed them up and went on the pinternet. I took a few more photos before and after lunch, then sorted those and went on the pinternet a bit more.

In the evening I went on the pinternet a bit more, then watched a couple of episodes of Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac then went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Golden Balls; Cup o' tea.
Lunch: Sliced chicken with mayo, sliced cherry tomatoes and iceberg lettuce sandwich; red grapes; Fairtrade chocolate wafer bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Beef Burger with chili relish & iceberg lettuce in a cheese topped bun; vegetable 'soup in a mug' or similarly named fake cupasoup that I actually had in a bowl. For pudding I had mini bakewell tart with custard and Mascarpone cheese. Coffee; Natural Confectionary company jelly bear sweet.

Macroing

This morning I did a few more tests with diffusion materials, and eventually settled on the Yong Nuo flash diffuser, so I cut it up and stuck it over the mini softbox heads I'd made for the MT-24EX. I can always buy a new one (Yong Nuo flash diffuser) for a couple of quid if I want one for one of my external flashes.

After sorting that out, I was going to test the camera with some real-life subjects, but found the camera battery was just about run out, so I put the battery on to charge and tidied up my room a bit and hoovered it.

I made a bit on the larger mini-softbox for a background thing to come off, then went on the pinternet / checked my spleenmail.

Macro setup 15-09-08
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

After lunch I finished checking me spleenmail and then went in the garden to test the new macro setup. First of all I opened up the green bin and there was about 3 bugs (haven't checked what type yet, probably a Hawthorn shieldbug or a Forest bug or sumat like that) there, a large green caterpillar and a smaller green caterpillar, which I think is an older version of the one that I've seen eating Montbretia seed buds previously. Also lots of smaller bugs/beetles. So I got the smaller green caterpillar on a leaf and put it over by the pond where there's lots of greenery for it to eat and took some photos of it. Despite all the work I've done recently on diffusion I was rather disappointed to see the caterpillar had bad blown out reflections on it.

Clare got the big green caterpillar on a piece of cut plant from the bin, which she put down by the Buddleia growing on the pond side of the fence between the pond and the greenhouse. I tried taking some photos of that, and was getting nasty blown out highlights on that as well. Next I got one of the big bugs on a leaf, and brought them over to the same area, WOW, highlights were really bad on it. I thought "Have I cut up my Yong Nuo external flash diffuser and done all this work in vain? Was my old setup actually better?" So I went and got my old mini-softbox and Puffer diffuser and stuck them on the MT24. I decided to just shoot with the old mini softbox since I know it's better at diffusing highlights than the puffer. I took a couple of shots of the bug, which had now run off and was making its way through the grass, and the highlights were quite a bit worse than my new setup, which was reassuring (and of course the old setup requires more power for the same exposure). I would really like to get some of the diffusion material John K uses to see how well it would work for me.

I took some more macros of various other insects, and after a bit tested out the background thing, I found that with just the green crêpe paper the background looked too fake and cyan coloured. So I coloured in bits of it with a couple of Rad's green marker pens, which looked a bit better. After taking quite a lot of shots with this background, I decided that the background still didn't look very good, and still looked fake due to the colour of the crêpe paper showing through in parts. So I cut up a plastic pocket, and taped this over the background. Then I got a sheet of white(ish) coloured paper and coloured it in using the more yellowy green marker, cut the paper to the right size and put it in the plastic pocket on the background. I shot some pics with this setup and they look loads better, quite natural I'd say. Occasionally there'd be a bit of a white highlight in the background (probably the flash reflecting off the shiny plastic pocket) but it still looked natural to me.

I found a couple of subjects where I couldn't use the background, so I tried using a green gardening glove - looked fake, same sort of colour as the crêpe paper, and the bag for my ghillie suit - colour was okay, but the threads are visible as distracting and un-natural lines in the image. Both also gave quite dark backgrounds, despite being nearer to the camera/flash than the other background normally is. I need to experiment with different materials/gloves to solve this.

I also got a metal tent peg - Rad said we didn't have any wooden ones, stuck a piece of card over the top hook, and then clamped the Wimberley Plamp onto the card bit. I only tried it once to hold a piece of grass, but it seemed to work okay. I also used the plamp on my tripod (subject too high for plamp to reach it when attached to peg in the ground) to hold the camo bag for one of the backgrounds as per above.

A couple of times I had trouble with the flash heads hitting into things, and trying to focus on a worm there was no way as the softboxes extend further than the focus distance. I also found that I needed more flash power than I had in tests - generally at 1x I needed both heads at 1/64 or A at 1/64 and B at 1/32 - quite a bit more than the 1 head at 1/64 I needed in testing, but still a bit less than what was needed with the old setup.

Eventually my 4GB SD card got full up, so I copied the pics to my PC and started converting the CR2s to JPEGs. While that was working I went on the pinternet, then it was dinner time.

After dinner I watched TrashelTrash TrashTrashtica with Mac while eating my 2 Happy Hippos that were for pudding. Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum!

Then I went on my comp de la spomp and sorted/edited some of the pics from today. I didn't get all of them sorted, so I'll have to finish that off tomorrow.

Food
Breakfast: Golden Balls (fake golden nuggets); cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard and iceberg lettuce sandwich; pear; banana; pink 'n' white; breakaway; cup o' tea.
Dinner: 2 x medium sized (not small) Sausage rolls; Carrots; green spleens (green beans); corn on da cob; chili sauce (didnae go well with the dinner); brown sauce; potatoes. Pudding was 2 Happy Hippos that were for pudding. Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum!

Not raining again - 2 days in a row now!

This morning I tidied up my room a bit, filed some stuff. When I went to East Norton with Rad the other day, the batteries ran out during the walk, I put some new batteries in, but when I got home and tried to upload the tracklog to my PC there wasn't one and tracklogging and been disabled. So today, I searched the pinternet to see if anyone else had this problem, but I couldn't find anything apart from some unrelated advice to make sure the unit has the latest firmware. So I went to Garmin's website and after a bit of searching downloaded their update program, which worked very nicely and updated the GPS to the latest firmware.

After church I checked wildaboutbritain.co.uk and saw the giant fungus ball I saw in a field in East Norton had been ID'd for me as a giant puffball, so I read about giant puffballs and then bedbugs for a bit.

After lunch I uploaded some fly pics to Wildaboutbritain.co.uk for ID, then watched a couple of episodes of Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac. Then I tested some more diffusion methods for my MT-24EX flash, it looked like a toss-up between the YongNuo softbox material and a mosquito net for which worked best. I was rather disconcerted to see that the hot-shoe connection on the MT-24EX seems to have a big crack in it, the flash still seems to be secured okay but you would have thought there'd be better build quality for a £700 flash.

I checked my emails and then caught up on hotukdeals, which took ages to go through about 4 days of deals.

After tea went on the pinternet a bit, then watched Lethal Weapon with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken Stir Fry with noodles. For pudding I had cherry madeira cake with custard. Coffee; ½ banana; Roses.
Tea: West Country Mature Cheddar Cheese sandwich; West Country Mature Cheddar Cheese Hovis crackers sandwich; grapes; pink 'n' white; Fairtrade chocolate wafer bar; cup o' tea; Roses.

Scarecrow Festival

Today was Lubenham Scarecrow Festival and Market Harborough Arts Fresco, so in the morning I set off towards Lubenham to see the scarecrows, since last year I missed the scarecrows and went to Arts Fresco instead. I left the house probably about 8.30am, but after I had walked part of the way the Lubenham, the weather had got much better, and there was now quite a lot of blue sky compared to totally grey sky when I left home. So I decided to go back home and get my tripod so I could take some 360° panos.

By the time I had got my tripod and got to Lubenham it was about 9.30am. Unfortunately, I found that I had forgotten the QR plate for my camera to mount it to the Nodal Ninja. So the first pano, I just held the camera on the Nodal Ninja where I thought it should be.

After that, I realised that actually I could take the QR Clamp off the Nodal Ninja, and screw the camera directly on to the Nodal Ninja. So I took the QR Clamp off, and had to move the vertical arm in a bit to compensate for extra width of the QR Clamp that was now no longer there. Then I had to move the screw on the upper arm to try and hold the camera in the same place as it would normally be held by the QR plate. Unfortunately, this means that when I re-attach the QR Clamp I will have to re-do all the testing to find the No Parallax Point.

After fitting the camera to the Nodal Ninja I found that I also had forgotten the Remote Shutter Release cable for the camera, so I had to manually press the shutter in, which is likely to mean that the bracketed images don't align perfectly, and so a HDR/enfused stitch will be impossible/difficult. I did a couple of panos, then decided there wasn't much point doing any more since they probably won't stitch very well as I had to just guess the No Parallax Point.

I walked all the way down the main road to the other side of the village, then walked back through the village going down all the different roads, taking photos of all the different scarecrows. There was quite a few political ones, like about the proposed windfarm nearby, the recession and the Government loosing people's personal data. Unfortunately, a lot of the scarecrows seemed to be half in bright light and half in shadow, so on the photos one side would be blown out and the other side would be quite dark.

By the time I got home it was about 1.20pm, and my feet were worn out. I had lunch and then copied the pics across to my PC. I spent all afternoon sorting/processing the pics, they didn't look as bad as they looked on the camera LCD when I took them, although quite a lot of them did need a highlights/shadows adjustment (or 'Active D-Lighting' as Nikon calls it, I processed all the non pano pics in Capture NX).

After Dinner I watched an episode of Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac (we're on about episode 3 of season 3 now) then finished editing the 1st of the scarecrow panos.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: West Country Mature Cheddar Cheese sandwich; plum; grapes; mince pie; Pink 'n' White; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Breaded fish portion; baked beans; mashed potato. Pudding was a creamy straeberry yoghurt. Coffee; White chocolate buttons covered in hundreds and thousands; Roses.

East Norton

Today went on a walk to East Norton with Rad. We went on a walk there a few weeks ago in July, when it was cloudy, hot, the fields were full of nearly ripe wheat and there were loads of tiny midges everywhere that kept going on you all the time. This time it was cloudy, reasonably cool (t-shirt weather after you've walked for a bit), the fields of wheat were either harvested or ploughed, there were loads of fields of beans and there were no midges thankfully.

Obviously, we did a different walk to last time, although we still set off from and arrived back at the same place. When we were having our coffee after the walk, there were a couple of business men walking down the left side of the road (in the actual road, the pavement was on the right side of the road). It was weird because they were just walking down a country road towards the village, and there wasn't anywhere further up the road they could have come from (unless they arrived on a bus, there was a bus stop a few hundred metres away). Weird as well how they walking in the road rather than on the pavement. Also weird for them to be visiting the village.

We had lunch when we got home, and then I spent the afternoon and part of the evening organising/processing the pics that I took. Since the weather wasn't good for photography, I just used my Panasonic FZ5 for the photos, not worth the effort to use the heavy D200 if the photos aren't going to be up to much anyway. The FZ5 also works well in low light weather like today where its large DoF even at wide apertures (due to the crop factor) and Image Stabilization come in useful compared to the D200.

Later in the evening I checked my spleenmail and got an email from Photoshelter saying that they have closed the Photoshelter Collection, and won't be selling stock anymore. It's funny because just a couple of weeks ago they were saying how they could challenge Getty, and now they say they are giving up partly because Getty has the market sown up

1. Stock photography is a slow growing market dominated by a single player
There was a single moment for a company to capitalize in stock photography, and Getty took it. The use of stock imagery isn't growing fast enough to create a displacement opportunity, and Getty is far too aggressive (and smart) to allow secondary players to displace them in any fashion.

Apparently the main reason they gave up is that they needed some more funding and were unable to raise it. Anyway, I spent quite a while saving all their 'School of stock' articles to my PC, and then after that I read their FAQ about closing and it said they would actually keep all the 'School of stock' articles live on the Photoshelter archive website. Oh well, at least I've got them in case they change their mind and get rid of them in the future.

Also on the FAQ, it said that the forum will be removed on Fri 12th September (today), so if you want to get other members contact details etc. then you can message them through the forum today (11th September). It does seem that they sent the email on 11th September, but I only received it today, when the forums had already closed! I didn't want to get anyone's contact details but would have liked to see if there was any good info on there that was worth saving.

After that, I checked Alamy who Photoshelter recommended as the nearest alternative. They say they require files that would be 48MB when uncompressed, and should have pixel level sharpness. I loaded up a file from my 450d (12MB) and it was about 37MB uncompressed. So I uprezzed it to 48MB, and it doesn't look too bad, although obviously not as sharp as the original. Anyway, if a 12MP is bordering on acceptable, images from my D200 or cropped images wouldn't be, they'd be too soft when uprezzed so much. I had a look at jupiterimages.com as well, but couldn't see how to upload to them. I think probably you just upload to a stock site they own (like stockxpert) and then they add the best ones to their collection. Anyway, I don't want to submit my nature images to a microstock site since my images are probably quite niche, so selling maybe 1 pic for $1 a year, of which I would probably get 10¢. I think I would probably be best just uploading them to sites like Flickr and deviantart, then have a portfolio website for myself that they can link back to so people can contact me if they are interested (unlikely).

Anyway, I have been meaning for a while to upload some more pics to photoshelter for a while, but never got round to it, so I am glad I didn't since the whole process is quite lengthy.

After watching Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac I went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
After walk snack: 2x choc chip cookies; coffee.
Lunch: West Country Mature Cheddar cheese sandwich; grapes; mince pie; slice of cherry madeira cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Slice of Pepperoni Pizza; Slice of Cheese & Tomato Pizza; chips; peas. Pudding was strawberry crumble with custard and cream. Coffee; Roses.

Bit rainy

Today went on the internet quite a bit, sorted some more photos and backed them up, and made/tested some more diffusers for the MT-24EX. I found the tissue paper I was using on the mini-softbox robs about 1 stop of light, and the puffers use 2 stops.
Today I tested the following materials on the front of my new homemade mini softbox:

• Bubblewrap
• Tissue paper
• Clear 3mm polycarbonate sheet
• ½ sheet tissue
• Bare
• Puffer

I need to do some more testing tomorrow, and will be testing

• YongNuo softbox
• Clear plastic bag
• Bubble wrap
• Mosquito net

Also today John K revealed the secret diffusion material he has been using - the plastic used for making the screens that go in front of your monitor to cut down glare and reflections.

I remember about the good rap version of a 'classic' song I heard on HFM a week or so ago. I thought it was by Wiley, so I searched for Wiley and went on his myspace. The song I heard before wasn't on there, but he did have a good song called 'Summertime', which samples 'Aerodynamic' by daft punk. I searched around to see if I could download 'Summertime' from somewhere, but despite its name it doesn't come out until 29th September or some time like that.

So I tried to see if there was some way of ripping the stream since I don't want to have to go to Wiley's myspace every time I want to listen to the song. I did quite a bit of searching/reading, and downloaded some software, but couldn't rip it, so I just recorded it manually. It's not very good quality though, which gives even more of an incentive to buy the album when it comes out.

After that I searched UK websites in the last week for 'rap version', then 'grime version' to see if I could find the song I was wanting since it probably wasn't by Wiley (not on his myspace playlist or album tracklist (unless he gave the song a really obscure name not relating to the original track at all)). I didn't find the track, but did find a good website http://www.getdarker.com/gotdarker/ where you can download/stream free mixes and tracks.

Oh, yes it was Mac Pad's birthday today and he got a Birthday hat.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard and garden style salad sandwich; grapes; mince pie; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Toad in t' hole; mixed veg; potatoes. Pudding was homemade Tiramisu which Ben and Clare made using Cooking guide - it didn't have any alcohol in it, but was still delee. Coffee.

mp3 organizing

This morning in my bathroom there was a little moth on a tub of vaseline, so when I'd finished having my shower etc. I got my camera and took some photos of it. It didn't move much, apart from waving it's antennae about every so often.

After breakfast I switched my comp on this morning with the intent of sorting/editing the moth photos, but I saw my C: partition was nearly full up, so I did some investigating to find where all the space was being used. I deleted quite a lot of temporary/cache files and also found that the Shared folder had quite a lot of stuff in it, music and a few videos from Mac's comp and some scans. So I moved the music across to 'My music' folder on HD2 partition, but when moving I had to check the files were properly named and tagged and that I didn't already have the album in the 'My Music' folder before I copied it across. So doing all that, took all morning and part of the afternoon.

In the afternoon I did a back up, and deleted the 'My Music' backup since so many files had been changed (I re-named /deleted misc files of many of the files/folders already in 'My Music' as well as copying Mac's ones). The Music backup took 5 hours, so while that was going on I went on the pinternet a bit, played around with the 450d macro setup, and tried taking some photos of a wooden donkey for the panachallenge contest 'Craftsmanship'.

Playing with the 450d macro setup, I tried hanging a piece of card off the end of the flash to act as a background and avoid black backgrounds. Also, hopefully it should reflect some light back towards the subject.
I found that the brown card doesn't give a very good colour. At 1x the card was too near the subject and could hit the flower or whatever the insect was sitting on. At 5x the card was too far away and the background was still black (or nearly black). If you want to shoot something at an angle downwards, where you can't slide the card behind the subject, e.g. insect on the lawn rather than on a long piece of grass, the the card gets in the way and you can't move the camera close enough to the subject to focus. So what it seems is needed is a long piece of card across the top, as above, but it needs to be adjustable in length and removable. Also, the backround card should probably be green coloured.

I also messed around trying to snoot one of the flash heads to increase the amount of flash hitting the subject and also get the flash coming out a round hole rather than oblong. However, this didn't work and if anything the flash amount was less.

In the evening I went on the pinternet more and watched some Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; ½ packet BBQ Beef flavoured crisps; plum; grapes; slice of Iced madeira layer cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chili burger with cheese, chili sauce and salad in a bun. Pudding was Raspberry ripple icecream with banana, hot strawberry jam and homemade banana brownie. Coffee.

Rain is back

It rained off and on today (much more on than off), so I didn't take any new photos. I posted some pics on wildaboutbritain.co.uk for ID and also some more zoo pics on deviantart, digital photography blog, flickr and redbubble. Spent quite a bit of the day on the pinternet as well. Sony announced their 24MP full frame DSLR, which is set to cost $3,000, extremely cheap. The sample pics posted look rubbish quality, but apparently there is likely to be a firmware update which greatly improves things, and of course the pics' quality may be due to shooting JPEG and using DRO, which underexposes the image then pulls up the shadows to increase Dynamic Range. Sony also announced a Zeiss 16-35/2.8 lens and a Sony G 70-400/4-5.6 lens. Providing the lenses are good quality, they sound like they would make an awesome kit with the camera.

Photoshop CS4 was previewed at Photoshop World as well, and apparently Creative Suite 4 will be announced on 23rd September, will be interesting to see what it can do that CS3 can't.

In the evening me and Mac watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica and a film about Bob Dylan 'I'm not there'. I didn't think the film was that good really, too weird and arty for me. I liked the music though. I gave it 6/10.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Honeyroast Ham with mustard and salad sandwich; 2x plums; slice of iced madeira layer cake; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Spaghetti bolognese (where the bolognese was actually bacon, garlic powder, herbs and tomato soup); black pepper; tomato ketchup; parmesan cheese. Pudding was swiss roll with custard. Coffee; Fairtrade double choc chip cookie; Roses.

Not rainy!?!?!!

Today it didn't rain at all, totally wierd. Anyway, this morning I took some macros in the garden, but then my 4gb card got filled up so I had to stop. I copied all the pics to my comp and started sorting them because I didn't want to format the card until I'd backed all the pics up, and I didn't want to back them up until I'd sorted them.

Sorting the pics took the rest of the morning, and part of the afternoon. In the afternoon I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica with Mac and then finished watching Lost Horizon with him.

After Jin the Pinner I went in the garden and took some more macros. After that I just sorted/processed those pictures and went on the pinternet a bit. I now have 36 pics to upload to wildaboutbritain.co.uk for ID!

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry crisp cereal; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with Al Fresco style salad sandwich; cherry tomato; plum; jam doughnut; Fairtrade double choc chip cookie; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Chicken and bacon pie; fried mushroom slices; carrots; potatoes; gravy. Pudding was homemade banana brownie with custard.

Rainy

It rained nearly all day again today, so I just went on the internet a bit and watched loads of photoshop videos. They were mainly about touching up portraits and special effects, but were still quite interesting. I hope I don't forget all the techniques though.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: ½ bag Beef flavour crisps; Beef with mustard, sliced cherry tomatoes and Al Fresco style salad sandwich; Banana; slice of homemade fruit cake; chocolate and caramel wafer bar; cup o' tea.
Dinner: 2 x Fishcakes; new potatoes; baked beans; mushrooms. Pudding was a shortbread finger, I could've had plums as well but didn't. Coffee; Roses.

Editing zoo photos

I sorted/edited the photos I took yesterday today, it took nearly all day. It also rained nearly all day, maybe stopped for about an hour around tea time. I went on the pinternet a bit as well - checked dpreview which said canon have a mystery camera on their website - possibly the long awaited 5DII or whatever it'll be called, and checked my email.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Beef with sliced cherry tomatoes, mustard and Al Fresco style salad sandwich; Banana; slice of malt loaf with butter; coconut macaroon; Fairtrade double choc chip cookie; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Delee sausages; baked beans; green beans; mashed potato. Pudding was a vanilla and cherry yoghurt. Coffee; Roses.

Twycross Zoo

Went to Twycross Zoo today with 'Holiday at home' (Holiday club for the over 60s). Rad said I could come since there was plenty of extra space on the bus, and it only cost £3.50!

Unfortunately it rained all the time we were there, although it stopped raining when we got back on the bus, and by the time we got back home the sun had come out!

I took the following gear:

• Nikon D200 camera
• Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6 VR lens
• Nikon 18-70/3.5-5.6 DX lens
• Tokina 10-17/3.5-4.5 fisheye lens
• Panasonic FZ5 camera
• B+W “Käsemann” Polarizing Filter 77mm
• Olympus MCon-35 B-Macro
• Raynox DCR-250
• 67-77mm stepping ring
• 67mm – 77mm step up ring
• 67mm – 62mm step down ring
• 55mm – 67mm step up ring
• 4GB Sandisk Extreme III CF
• 8GB Datawrite CF
• 1GB Bytestor SD
• 512MB Viking SD
• Spare EN-EL3e battery
• Lenspen mini
• Microfibre cloth
• Manfrotto 676B DIGI Monopod
• Manfrotto shoulder brace
• FLM CB18 Ball Head
• Nodal Ninja 3 II
• My lunch
  

all packed in my Lidl Essential PX Pack. As it turned out, I only used the D200 with the 70-300/4.5-5.6 lens, both the CF cards and both the batteries. Due to the rain I didn't want to be switching lenses outside and neither inside due to the muddy wet floors and also there was often quite a few people around inside that I would probably be getting in the way of if I put my bag down and got my lenses out to change them round. Having said that, there did seem to be a lot less people round from about 2pm onwards. Maybe they just got fed up of the rain.

My camera got quite and I was a bit concerned about the 70-300 lens as when I zoomed in, the lens would extend and rain would get on the extended barrel. Then when you zoom back in, the extended barrel goes back inside the main barrel, taking the raindrops on it with it. The lens seems to be okay, I just hope I don't get problems with water/mist/fungus inside it in the future. I'm quite sleepy now, so I'll probably have a better look at it tomorrow.

Being very cloudy and rainy, the conditions weren't exactly great for photography, and for the inside exhibits, the conditions were even worse due to the low light. I set the camera on Aperture Priority, with the lens wide open, and ISO at 1600. Even so, I found I was getting shutter speeds like 1/10s inside. Rain on the filter in front of the lens, rain, wire fences, Smudgy glass, reflections, low light, creatures moving about quickly and a minimum focus distance of the lens of 1.5m all conspired against me to try and stop me getting any decent photos. I think I got a few okay ones, but I haven't looked through any on the PC yet and images often look very different on the PC to how they do on the on camera screen.

We left the zoo at 3pm, and by the time we got back home it was about 4.20pm. I copied all the pics from the Compact Flash cards to the PC, and then after that processed JPEGs for them all. I couldn't batch process them all in one go due to the differing white balance between pictures taken outside and those inside with artificial light.

The zoo had quite a few different animals, elephants, giraffes, alpacas, a few others and lots of primates. Due to the rain most of the animals that normally live outside were hiding, sheltering from the rain, which was a shame. The small monkeys, which were inside, were what I thought was best. Some of them had sort of feathery fur around their faces, and interesting patterns on their backs.

After dinner I watched 2 episodes of Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac.

Food
Breakfast: Lemon marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese sandwich; Chargrilled steak (or sumat similar) ridged crisps; chocolate digestive bar; coffee.
Dinner: Spag bol. Pudding was a slice of posh lemon swiss roll with lots of creamy stuff in it. Coffee; Roses.

Rainee

This morning woke up quite late, about 8.15am, which was weird since I went to bed about 10.30pm yesterday and had quite a gokos night's sleep.

After breakfast etc. I went in the garden to see if I could get some insect photos, but there wasn't much around really, and those insects I did see flew off when I tried to get their photos. I copied the pics to my and sorted them, and went on the pinternet for a bit. The rest of the morning and quite a bit of the afternoon I checked on some replies to requests for ID I've had on wildaboutbritain.co.uk.

I also received my Torx screwdriver from ebay, which I used to undo the star shaped screws on my Freecom 500GB USB2 harddrive which keeps switching itself off. After undoing it all, I pushed in/down all the connectors, then tested it, but it still switched off. I had a look at the case circuit board, but couldn't see any loose connections. I guess I will have to plug the actual drive into my PC to see if it works by itself.

The rest of the afternoon I mainly went on the internet and the weather kept being rainy and sunny (sometimes both at the same time).

After Jin the Pinner watched something where I spoke in a Jamaican style and told a thing that you hit a cricket ball with to say to a female massive luminous ball of plasma to perform in an automobile (Bat tell star gal act i' car) with Mac. Then I plugged the hard drive from my freecom USB2 drive directly into my PC to see if the drive worked okay. After windows had done a chkdsk on it, I loaded up windows and the drive still hasn't shut down yet, so I'm pretty sure the problem must have been with the electronics in the drive casing. I stuck the rubber feet from the drive case into screw holes on the bottom of the hard drive, and placed it on top of the metal case. The metal innards of the case have gone in scrap metal box for recycling, the screws have gone into a bag which I gave to Rad, the electronics bits have gone in a box with other odd electronics bits and PC stuff, and the plastic front and back have gone in the bin. So now whenever I want to backup to that drive I'll just need to switch off the PC, take the side off and connect the drive, then switch the PC on again. Sounds a bit of a do, but should be easier than having to keep an eye on it and continuously switch it off and on again when it brakes, which is what was happening with it before. Also should be a lot faster using SATA rather than USB2.

For the rest of the evening I took a few photos in the garden, went on the pinternet, backed up some stuff and watched another episode of a flying mammal that hangs upside down in caves version of the first active communications satellite that I told in a jamaican style that there was a female portraying a Magdalenic Chibchan language related to Ijca spoken in Colombia, South America (Bat Telstar, Gal Act Tica).

Food
Breakfast: Lemon Marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard and crunchy salad sandwich; slice of marble cake; Clementine; dark chocolate twin break (fake kitkat); cup o' tea.
Dinner: Ham, mushroom and pepper quiche; mashed potato; green beans; baked beans. Pudding was fruit cake that Clare made in the Miguel Wave with custard. Coffee; Roses.

Rainy again

Got up about 6.15am today, it was quite a cold night and when I went in the garden this morning about 7am it was still quite cold. I looked in the usual places for insects, but there didn't seem to be any apart from a grasshopper, which was warmed up well enough to hop away.

After breakfast I went on the pinternet for a bit, then when Clare came back from her lollipop lady job I went out to the park. I've been wanting to take some panos of the nice flower displays there for a few weeks now, but it's been cloudy the last few weeks. This morning there were a few clouds around, but the sky was mostly blue, so I wanted to make sure I got the panos done before the rain forecast for today blew in. As I went around the park doing the panos, gradually more and more clouds blew in. By the time I left it was quite cloudy again.

When I got back home I processed the pics and went on the internet. After lunch I processed one of the panos, I used PTGUI with exposure fusion, 3 bracketed images -1ev 0ev +1ev. Despite the wind blowing everything about I thought the processed pano came out quite well. Some of the highlights were still blown though, which I was surprised at since I thought exposure fusion would be like HDR. So I used the -1ev blend plane with a layer mask to reduce the blown highlights on the flowers.

When I was finished, I didn't think the pano actually looked that good, probably low contrast. So I spent the rest of the afternoon watching some more videos on working with Photoshop, although the videos I'm watching at the moment are still the basic ones which I'm not really learning much from (although there are a few points made that I didn't know about).

After dinner I went on the pinternet, then watched an episode of Star Trek (Original series) with Mac, Shaz and Ben.

Food
Breakfast: Chocolate crunch oat cereal; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard and crunchy salad sandwich; banana; slice of marble cake; chocolate digestive bar; cup o' tea; Roses.
Dinner: Chicken pie; potatoes; green beans; carrots. Pudding was a chocolate eclair. Coffee.
Supper: Coffee; chocolate brownie Shaz made the other day.