Closing down shop

Since it is painfully obvious that Google doesn't care about Blogger as much as they used to, I don't see the point in running a blog here when everyone that reads my content is already reading it off Google Plus. Effective immediately I am going to put to sleep all of my blogs except for PedroJavier.Org. If you are one of the rare few that actually checks my content here instead of Google Plus, please circle me.

Share test

Testing automated sharing from Blogger to Google Plus. Pic unrelated.

For #floralfriday

Rokinon 8/2.8 Fisheye and geometry corrections

Here's a very informal sample of the kinds of things that can be done with the Rokinon 8/2.8 Fisheye. The first shot is as-is, the APS-C equivalent is 12mm which is wide enough to show some fisheye effect. The middle shot was manually corrected in DxO Optics 8 with intensity=82 and respecting the aspect ratio, and the vertical edges were re-aligned in DxO ViewPoint. The last shot is the same as the middle shot but cropped to the maximum rectangular area available. 

It is obvious that with some careful composition this lens is going to be very handy for architectural shots. I shot this on purpose off the side to exaggerate the distortion. 

Rokinon (Samyang /Bower ) 8mm f/2.8 for Sony e-mount

Here's a little cameraporn : Rokinon (Samyang /Bower ) 8mm f/2.8 for Sony e-mount. This is a lens that had been selling for a while for $400 or so, then grabbed my attention when I started to see it on sale for around $300. And then it came up on Amazon's Gold Box for $239, but only the silver model (it also comes in black). I didn't care about the color, but I was worried about the quality of the finish. I am actually impressed, the finish is really damn nice, it is a really cool-looking lens. The focus ring is still a bit stiff, but the depth of field is so gigantic that you can just pre-focus and forget about it. The hood is not removable, the lens arrived with both caps and a storage pouch. Somehow Sigma and Rokinon manage to sell some of their NEX lenses with pouches or cases, yet the three Sony lenses I have bought stand-alone (16mm pancake, 30mm macro, 55-210mm) only arrived with caps.
The lens is tiny, it seems to be about the same size as the 30mm Sigma 2.8. As for weight, it feels about the same as other manual lenses I have, but better balanced since it doesn't need an adapter.

Fun with geometry adjustments

There's a funny back story on today's #fmsphotoaday  / #project365 photo. I am holding the phone with my left hand, and I am a lefty, and I am shooting with my right hand, and I have had a lot of coffee today. 

One way to mitigate would be to put the camera on a tripod, use the remote and concentrate on getting the tripod aimed properly, then it is a matter of keeping a consistent position for my hand until I got the shot right. Add to that I was feeling too lazy to add a circular polarizer filter, so the hand had to angle the phone just right to avoid reflections from the lights above. 

That of course is too much work. It was easier to just get the focus effect right and adjust for geometry later, which is more or less what I did.

The left shot is as-is, notice that the phone looks distorted because I couldn't get it perfectly parallel to the focal plane of the camera. The middle shot is the result of adding keystone distortion adjustments to the left image, I did this with DxO ViewPoint. The way this works is you pick four corners of  an object that represents a diamond shape with 90 degree corners. The photo is rotated because the program assumes that you are aligning yourself to a horizon.

The right crop is the maximum rectangle that you can crop from the second photo (plus some extra processing that doesn't involve geometry) automatically. You can constraint the crop rectangle to the original aspect ratio, but it would had cut some of the phone, the way you fix this (something I screwed up) is that if you know you will be doing keystone adjustments, you should try to give yourself as much room around the object as it is possible. Had I shot this a bit farther and had as much as one inch of extra room, I could have kept the original aspect ratio.

Crappy weather + flash + wrong shooting mode = happy accident.