New Camera
Nov. 28th, 2009 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deguspiceI got a new camera (Sony WX1) and I've been playing with it. One nifty feature of the camera is that it'll make panorama shots. You just press the shutter, and then pan the camera.
A normal shot looks like this (a barn in Vermont).
But if you try to confuse the camera and follow a moving object (Ann riding a horse), you get a picture like this:
A normal shot looks like this (a barn in Vermont).
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But if you try to confuse the camera and follow a moving object (Ann riding a horse), you get a picture like this:
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| From Random |
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Date: 2009-11-29 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-29 04:38 am (UTC)Reminds me of Nude Descending A Staircase
Date: 2009-11-29 04:41 am (UTC)The panoramic feature is indeed neat, but have you seen what happens if you were to take the "VT barn shot" (insert "broad side of a barn" comment here, BTW) on a blustery day? (i.e. with trees swaying, etc.) What about if a bird was passing through?
Can you set the time interval that the camera takes each segment of the panorama?
Is that barn circular, or am I seeing things?
Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase,_No._2
Re: Reminds me of Nude Descending A Staircase
Date: 2009-11-29 05:21 am (UTC)I take lots of pictures of Ann riding indoors, so I wanted a small pocket camera with good, lowlight sensitivity. The WX1 has a new design (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09080602sonydsctx1wx1.asp) for the CMOS sensor grid that increases the sensitivity. The picture above was taken at 4:20pm as the sun was setting, so the sky was getting dark.
"I know you come from having had a Sony camera in the past, but was that the deciding factor?"
I like Sony cameras, so that was an influence. I also looked at the specs for other pocket cameras (http://www.imaging-resource.com is a good site for research), but none of them are as good for low light photography.
"(Also, are they still enamored of their proprietary memory stick, or have they migrated to SD/CF cards?)"
My older and larger Sony (V3) has slots for both Memory Sticks and CF cards. The new camera just has a slot for Memory Sticks. While Sony controls the standards, many companies (SanDisk, Lexar, ...) make Memory Sticks. And Ann's Toshiba laptop came with a Memory Stick slot.
"The panoramic feature is indeed neat, but have you seen what happens if you were to take the "VT barn shot" on a blustery day? (i.e. with trees swaying, etc.) What about if a bird was passing through?"
It tries as best as it can to match up things (it has the smarts to figure out if something moved when it tries to match the image segments). The next time it's windy in the backyard, I should try it. If I have the time and inclination, I prefer using autostitch.exe and take lots of higher resolution pictures. You can see a panorama picture of a dam that uploaded at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/iiW352jHulU9IgBmIDHB8Q?feat=directlink (both pictures have been shrunk to 1600 pixels wides].
"Can you set the time interval that the camera takes each segment of the panorama?"
No, just the direction of the panorama shot (up/down or left/right). I should experiment with turning at different speeds effects the image.
"Is that barn circular, or am I seeing things?"
You're not seeing things. It's called a "round barn", but it's actually has 10-sides (12?). It's built around the central silo.
"Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase,_No._2"
If we could find a nice open staircase, we could try for a photo inspired by the painting (perhaps with a guy in a gorilla suit :)
Re: Reminds me of Nude Descending A Staircase
Date: 2009-11-29 06:04 am (UTC)DP Review is indeed a great resource. When I spec'ed my very first digital camera, it was that site that totally changed my mind on what I thought I was going to get. (I was going back and forth between a Nikon and an Olympus, but after reading DP R's review on the Canon G1, ended up buying into Canon.)
Look also at photo.net, if you haven't already. Their tutorials section is particularly useful.
If we could find a nice open staircase, we could try for a photo inspired by the painting (perhaps with a guy in a gorilla suit :)
*snerk*
Something tells me there has to be one somewhere along the infinite corridor. One could also create a similar image by shooting against a black background, and doing multiple exposures.
Re: Reminds me of Nude Descending A Staircase
Date: 2009-11-29 07:12 am (UTC)There's a menu option to pick the direction. It needs to know what direction you're going to move the camera because it allocates the memory first, and then writes out a portion of the image as you move the camera. It also needs a scene with distinct features that it can grab as reference points as the camera moves. The first panorama I tried failed because a shingled roof doesn't have enough distinct features, turning the camera sides and telling it I was doing an up/down panorama fixed the problem. (sideways, I could include the barn windows in the picture)
"Something tells me there has to be one somewhere along the infinite corridor."
The stairs from building 8 down to building 16 might work.
"One could also create a similar image by shooting against a black background, and doing multiple exposures."
Or a long exposure and a flashing strobe. But I think the serendipity of using the panorama mode be more interesting.
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