Thursday 25 June 2009

It's a "dog meet dog" world

Out for a walk a couple of mornings ago, Amber and I bumped into one of the local foxes. Until Amber spotted it (Labradors can be pretty blind when they want to be!) the fox simply kept a good eye on us. Amazingly, it also seemed to mirror Amber's movements, as can be seen here.



The pictures were taken on the LX3, which has a very short reach (60mm in old money), so these are 100% crops. I've been experimenting with a new application: Focus Fixer, which was reviewed in the RPS Digital Imaging Group magazine. It's an astonishing piece of software, working rather differently to the more normal sharpening functions. Rather than trying to find edges and then emphasize them, it models the behaviour of the camera and the lens, including the aperture used. By calculating the circle of confusion which would normally result from the chosen settings, it subtracts this "blurred" version from the original - the result is extra clarity, and sharpening apparently without artifacts. For comparison, I've included the originals taken straight from the RAW files below.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

Long time, no bee...

The last couple of weeks have been horrendously busy, and I've managed to take very few pictures. This was one I took this lunchtime on Coldham's Common, just across the road from where I work. It was taken with the Lumix LX3, which is proving to be an excellent performer when it comes to close-up work.