identede

Listening Rig…

FLACvest — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:51:00 +0000

Here’s My Fave Listening Rig…

Victor HP-FX500 Wood Dome & Housing IEM…

FLACvest — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:47:07 +0000

got wood?

Here’s a bit of Audio Finery for ya!

16 Oz.

FLACvest — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:43:43 +0000

Here’s a nice example of backlighting…

The shot is titled “16 Oz.”

Avalokiteshvara…

FLACvest — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:25:24 +0000

This is the Boddhisatva of Greatest Compassion… I have a Breathtakingly Hand Painted Bronze Statue of this vision of the Buddha… Here is a nice shot taken with the 3.1 megapixel autofocus G-1 android phone and an accessory Fisheye lens with a magnetic mount… Edited in LightZone.

Before:

HDR iPhone image…

FLACvest — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:12:25 +0000

Hello All,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything worth mentioning, though I have been thinking of my creative process, and lately I’ve been reading and researching a bunch about High Dynamic Range Imagery, HDRI, or HDR for short.

Here’s an example of an HDR image as rendered by the autobrite sensor in the iPhone 3G camera sensor, which was then imported into LightZone for treatment (by Light Crafts, an application which has HDR processing capabilities for JPEG, TIFF, RAW, and DNG format images) and also has the ability to process images according to the rules of the Zone System (which was made famous by Ansel Adams, as you may be aware) of photographic tone and light manipulation.

The image was taken on a rather bright and cloudy day, and I was shocked at how well the camera captured the clouds’ details even un-manipulated, though they were brought out quite well by the processing. I’ll include a before and after so you can compare as well.

Original Capture from iPhone 3G Camera Sensor

HDR image as processed via LightZone

Hope you’ve enjoyed looking!

While I’m Out…

FLACvest — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:00:26 +0000

Being Consternatious and Contemplative with my ‘Folio of ‘Works I’m hoping to move for the Summer and get SERIOUS about producing a greater body of publishable work in that time frame, so hang in there.

Apparently March Just Happens…

FLACvest — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:23:06 +0000

Time fly’s by when you’re busy, but rest assured I have _NOT_ dropped off the face of the earth despite a stale blog and gallery. Heck I even managed to have my artist page at http://flacvest.deviantart.com go stale. February, despite being short is sort of a tumultuous one traditionally in my family, and this year it lived up to it’s lore, including a trip to the hospital for yours truly for vomiting blood. Not to worry though, for after the X-Ray’s cleared me of any signs of internal bleeds, and the “nose-ride” as they are called (a tube stuck down into your stomach via a nostril to wash your stomach and see if there is blood in the return water) was clear of any signs of a stomach ulcer, I was released with the diagnosis that I simply vomited with such violence that I ruptured a nasal capillary. So that’s all well and good then. Exciting. Gross. Scary. Frigtening. But in the end, Resoved. My health, otherwise, is great.

I am however waiting on a refund check to clear, and some additional funds to accrue so I can get on with it and make the purchase and acquaintance of an EPSON Stylus Pro 3800 Print Engine and get printing again. I have secured a volume of Breathing Color’s Sterling Rag in the weight and size I was interested in, and some difficulties with the Returns & Refunds process for my former printer vendor caused me much headache and delay.

However, in the interim I have rebuilt my primary workstation, .:{empathy}:. 1.0 based on the AMD Dragon Platform, and it’s ready to chew through those Photographic bits, bytes, and assorted digits… I’ve also acquired an EPSON Perfection V750-M Dual-Lens Scanner with Transparency/Negative Scanning capability, and that piece of precision equipment is absolutely a stellar bit of kit!

I just wanted to give y’all a quick update. And mention that I’m not busy being dead yet. And no I haven’t changed jobs.

VueScan 8.5.01 hits the Wild!!!

FLACvest — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:53:14 +0000

VueScan from http://www.hamrick.com./vsm.html is in version 8.5.01, which comes across as “very mature” and is used by MANY photographers, graphic artist, hobbyist, and ametueurs alike.

I ran into a snag early on with it, but that was easily rectified by going to `File > Default Options`.

I was then able to tweak the necessities again: namely the viewer (showFoto) editor (showFoto, though heavy editing will of course be done in LightZone). Firefox for the help browser… TIFF! output. You can set TIFF DNG, but I haven’t been able to get this to work with Bibble 4.x, I’m hoping the support landscape will improve for Bibble 5! I’d LOVE to be able to manipulate RAW scans!!!

That said, I’ll get back to the point. VueScan. It has its *NIX-ey pro “OPTIONS” which are quite fiddliscious. There’s also a “Guide Me” mode. WHAT a _Life_ _Saver_ that is. Not only does it make sure you don’t have to be a PHD in scan imaging. It makes it relatively easy for you to follow along and choose which options to manipulate, and teaches you what affects which at what point in the scanning game. Very nicely done. I’m HAPPY I bought my Pro License today. I consider it an investment.

Just so ya know VueScan is available in the following formats:

You can download versions of VueScan for:

* Mac OS X 10.5, 10.4, 10.3
* Mac OS X 10.2
* Mac OS 9
* Windows Vista, x64, XP, 2000, NT
* Windows 95, 98, ME
* Linux (built with Ubuntu 8.10)
* Linux (built with Red Hat 9)
And if you search at bugs.gentoo.org you will find unofficial ebuilds for it on Gentoo.

Added a new Image to the GoodGuys 15th Lonestar Nationals Gallery Tonight!

FLACvest — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:50:08 +0000

You Detail hounds should appreciate the rendering of this particular image. Every single droplet seems to stand out and be immensely wet. Enjoy!!

Doth Perfection Cometh…?

FLACvest — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:56:06 +0000

We’ll see how well the Epson Perfection V-750M behaves with X-SANE and VueScan when it arrives tomorrow…

Why Epson for a scanner when, despite the minor issues I’ve been die-hard HP???

Scanning and Printing are different areas of expertise one may tell you. Besides, while I’m sure there are plenty of good HP scanners out there, I’ve been more familiar with the specs on the Artixscans which have Dual-Lens units and dedicated film/transparency trays. So does the Epson.

Also there’s the 48-bit color. Digital-ICE aka Infrared Correction of Errors, and 6400 dpi optical resolution in a US-Letter format Scanning Bed. Tasty.

Why? Because it allows for decent quality scans of negatives and transparencies of medium format work without paying $85 and up/per FRAME, and when making scanografs, it allows the images to be very high res indeed.

In addition with this scanner, in VueScan, I should be able to create TIFF-RAW-DNG Images which works with my intendant workflow as the camera I have in mind, that nifty Exilim Pro EX-F1 shoots DNG format images… which would give me a totally DNG-ey & TIFF-er-iffic workflow: LightZone, VueScan, Bibble, DigiKam, Krita. all in RAW or 16-bit TIFF… My Linux Workflow is finally glueing itself together and beginning to Harmonize.

As I learn these new tools and shake out the kinks from my system, my artistic workflow, and whatnot, there will be a smoother, happier experience for myself as an artistic venturesome fellow, my associates, clients, and partners.

I hope the Epson Perfection lives up to it’s reputation for being an awesome scanning tool.

Back to that question of why Epson for scanning on Linux… It’s almost hands down reccomended as the vendor of choice. And I did my fair share of Googling. Make sure you do yours before making any hefty investments as this piece is a cool 3/4 K…