As I wrote in a post a couple of days ago, I recently bought myself a Canon 450D, and have been experimenting with snapping HDR pictures.
For those of you that don’t know what HDR is: HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range”, and in plain English, it is simply put a picture with more color and luminance than can fit into a normal picture (like jpeg). This is easily seen in many pictures where details in the shadow simply becomes black, and the clouds and sky becomes all white. That is because the range for the color values in the image couldn’t fir the higher or lower range that the shadows and sky had. To overcome this, there is on some cameras a special progra, that allowes you to snap three or more pictures in a row and with different exposure times. Then by using a specialized software on a computer, the pictures can be merged together and the information from the different exposures can be calculated into one single image containing a much larger range than any of the single images.
So, I have been playing around with HDR pictures, and tonight I was out trying to photograph the nearby trainyard. I thought it would be interesting to see how a dark trainyard lit by electric light would be in HDR.
So after the sun had set, I went down to the trainyard. And I got there, mounted the camera on the tripod… Took two pictures… And then the guards arrived…
Apparently, I was trespassing… Like I didn’t know… And the guards politely told me, that they had the rights to arrest me, but that they thought that it would be easier if I just left instead.
So I left, and was happy enough that I got two pictures before the guards discovered me. (I can always go back another day)
Here are the two images I snapped:
I think I will start a Flickr account soon, where I can put my fullsize images…
I bought a Canon 450D a couple of days ago, and have done some experimenting with HDR photos. Below is two pictures, the top one is a normal shot, and the one below is a tonemapped HDR representation of three merged shots with different exposures.
I didn’t use a tripod, which would have made the shot better, but you can see the difference in quality anyways.
I am really worthless at blogging… So many things going on all the time that I simply haven’t got any time to blog about them.
I am actually writing this while doing some laundry.
The main reason for writing this post, is to declare for those who want to know, that in the near future, a new forum will open at www.leetdev.com, and it will most likely be an invite only forum for professional multimedia developers.
I am configuring the forum right now, and will keep doing so for some time. But I will post the opening of it here.
If you feel that you are a professional multimedia developer and want to have access to such a forum, then please mail me at micael@hildenborg.com
With multimedia developer, I mean everyone that is in some way involved in making any kind of entertainment media or the software involved making that media.
Coders, graphic artists, managers etc. etc. Everyone is welcome as long as you have actually made something.
In other words: wannabees can go to another forum, I aim to have the topics on a higher level.
Well, I intended to post more often, and I still intend to do so… Just bare with me, so I can get up to speed again.
Last week was a pain! Lots of work, and then the kids demanded a lot of time from me. I really felt the nerves beginning to pop out to the wrong side of the skin before the week ended… And busy has pretty much been the default situation for me the last couple of weeks. To give you an idea of what kind of busy I’m talking about: I have not been able to do the dishes for two weeks. At the moment, the kitchen is full of dirty plates and glasses, and I have been eating junk food the last week as I havn’t had time to clean the pots and pans needed to make food… The apartment looks like some serious disaster happened there…
And this week, I realized that I had some time availible to either clean up the apartment, or to fix my car (yes, it’s a Volvo) that has been broken for two months. Well, as I really needed the car for this weekend, I simply had to get my hands dirty and fix the car… Thank god the problem was easy to fix, I just needed to pull out the generator and take it apart and clean it up. There was simply some dirt and oxidation that needed to be removed, and now everything works perfect again.
So this means that I can spend my day cleaning up my apartment tomorrow.
And maybe, just maybe I will get some time left to go to the sea and try to catch some trout…
And if I am really lucky, I will even get some time to spend on my ClipFX project. It is a general FX library that makes it possible to quickly make nice looking smooth flowing UI for games. It will work on Mac, Windows, PPC and iPhone. It could probably quite easily be ported to the popular games consoles as well. But that’s not my main market.
I haven’t been blogging for almost a year now, due to a lot of reasons. The main reason being that I was so busy doing other things, that to simply get some spare time, I had to stop blogging…
So, have I got more time now?… No, but I miss blogging, and the way it gave my family and close friends a way of following everything I was doing. So I will start blogging again just to keep them updated with my life.
First up, I changed job a few weeks back, so I now work for HiQ Interactive in Gothenburg. I had a really good job at Autodesk before, working on Autodesk Showcase. But then Autodesk needed to downsize 10 percent of the workforce due to the economic crisis, and I found myself needing another job. So I called a friend, and the very same day I signed off from Autodesk, I signed on for HiQ.
As it normally is in my line of work, I can never tell anyone outside of the company about what I am working on. And that makes it a bit harder for me when blogging about my life. So I will have to invent fake names for the projects, so I can refer to them in the blog without reveal anything involved the projects.
For instance, I started at HiQ working on Project “A” (yes, it is a fake name). Project “A” had a very tight deadline, and I had to get going pretty fast on that project. The programming language used was C++, which I am quite good at (not an expert, but above your standard coder). I was told that the project would demand two weeks from me, as the company really needed me for another project after that. Well, we (a few other developers was involved too) managed the deadline by spending several evenings working overtime. And in the end HiQ even sent me to Estonia to meet the customer and talk about the continuous work on the project. That came as a surprise to me as I am already booked for Project “B”, and most likely Project “C” and “D” too… It will be interesting to find out how we will manage this…
The working companions at HiQ have been very nice and friendly. My initial view of the company is that it is a very open minded company, wanting the developers to keep on learning and never ever settle down with what they already know. Knowledge, talent and quality is the main driving force. And that is something I can agree with.
One of my working companions had a party this Friday, and I went there and had a really good time. I will post a video on youtube later, showing some dedicated karaoke singer… Well, I met some interesting persons, like Johan who was a guitar player in a death metal band (we had a surprisingly common understanding of the inner workings of the world). I also got way more drunk than I planned for, and actually forgot to say goodbye to the host when I ran for the last bus home (sorry Marlene).
The bus trip was an adventure itself… I said that I drank too much, but it wasn’t that much… Not puke much to spell it out. But still… I just barely got of the bus before making a fool of myself puking into the neighbor’s hedge. Surprised by that, I walked home and fell asleep. Thats where it could have ended, but the story continued the next day when I discovered the bad way that I had gotten some kind of food poisoning… And just let me tell you: a combination of hangover and food poisoning is not recommended for everyone, it is just us professionals that can handle that! Barely… The good part is that I lost two kilos in just a day.
