Seán Doran uses still images from organizations like NASA and JAXA to create stunning videos. His latest work is ‘MOON in Real Time I,’ which is the first video seen below. Doran denoised, graded, repaired and retimed footage from the JAXA/NHK Kaguya Orbiter archive.
The Kaguya spacecraft, officially known as SELENE, was first launched in September 2007 from the Tanegashima Space Center (TNSC). The Kaguya mission’s primary objective is to collect data to help scientists better understand the moon’s origin and evolutionary history. Kaguya comprises a primary orbiting satellite, which orbits at an altitude of just over 60 mi (100 km), and a pair of smaller satellites, the Relay Satellite and the VRAD Satellite. The smaller satellites are in polar orbit. The orbiters carry various instruments to investigate the moon, including spectrometers, imagers, altimeters and more.
Doran’s retooled and recompiled footage can be seen below. The video is four hours long and is almost hypnotic.
Doran has created a lot of space videos for his YouTube channel. He has hundreds of videos featuring Earth, the Moon, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and more. I’ve selected a few to highlight, but if you’re interested in space, you must visit his YouTube channel.
The 8K video below features music by Phaeleh and follows the International Space Station from Central Africa to Japan in real-time. For this video, Doran converted still images into real-time video.
Sticking with Earth, using the ESRSU image archive, Seán Doran created the ‘Orbit’ trilogy. The first part is seen below. You can view the other parts at the following links: Part 2 and Part 3. Like the previous video, ‘Orbit’ is a journey around Earth using ISS time-lapse photography. Likewise, the video is backed by music from Phaeleh. The 4K video below is simply stunning.
‘Lúnasa^171– One Month of Sun’ is an 8K video that Doran built by repairing and processing 78,846 frames captured by NASA/SDO/AIA/EVE/HMI in August 2014. The video is accompanied by the song ‘Spirit of Fire’ by Jesse Gallagher.
The video below, ‘Mars in Color – Crater in Tyrrhena Terra,’ is compiled using media from NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. The data came from HiRISE, which we wrote about last month.
To view more from Seán Doran, be sure to visit his YouTube channel.
The Canon EOS R6 is the most well-rounded camera in its class, and it’s our top pick if you’re looking to spend around $ 2000. For a budget-friendlier option, the also-excellent Fujifilm X-T4 is our recommendation.
We’ve come across a number of weird lenses and lens accessories over the years, but the Soratama from Zenjix certainly stands out from the crowd, for better or worse.
The lens attachment features a 72mm filter thread and is designed to go in front of nearly any lens you can find step down/up rings for. It uses a single sheet of glass with what is effectively a clear marble to turn the world around you into a little globe of sorts.
These globe-style shots aren’t new, per se, but unlike photos that use larger glass orbs, this attachment is smaller and means your hand won’t be in the image. We can’t attest to image quality, but the above video shows what kind of shots are possible with the Soratama. There are multiple versions of the Soratama being sold on eBay, starting around $ 95 with shipping.
The Image Salon, a Montreal-based photography and post-production service, recently produced a global educational conference called Photographers Unite that hosted 60 photographers from around the world. The live event is over, but photographers who missed it the first time around can register and watch the full replay until June 6.
Photographers Unite was a free event that asked attendees to make a charitable donation, though it wasn’t and still isn’t required to view the conference. Each speaker donated their time to participate in the conference, lending their expertise over the duration of 20 minutes, as well as an additional five minutes spent answering questions from the audience.
The live event took place on May 26 and May 27 from 11am to 7pm EST. The replay is available on the Photographers Unite website starting today, May 29, and will remain available until June 6. Interested viewers must register for access, which simply requires a name and email address, as well as the viewer’s photography specialty.
The conference had speakers who specialized in a wide variety of photography, including Two Mann Studios, 37 Frames, Sam Hurd, Susan Stripling, Lindsey Adler, Brandon Wong, Sara Monika, Tyler Wirken, Jide Alakija, Chris Knight and others. A schedule of the speakers with timestamps for each of their sessions is available on the Photographers Unite website. The Image Salon has also published examples of each speaker’s photography on its Instagram account.
Access to the replay is delivered in the form of a link and password that is sent to the email address provided during registration. The educational opportunity is unique in that it is completely free and includes some of the top photographers in the field. Donations from viewers go to Global Giving’s Coronavirus Global Relief Fund, as well as select regional charitable funds.
The post Take Time to Practice These Three Composition Skills Around Your Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
Now is a good time to practice composition skills. With many people having to self-isolate, it means you may not be able to enjoy regular life. This will include being able to get out and photograph the subjects you typically take pictures of.
Make good use of the time to practice. This is not something photographers do as much as other artists. You can imagine that to play a song on a guitar or the piano, you must first practice it. It’s easy for a photographer to pick up a camera and get a pretty well-exposed photo without the need to practice. This can make you lazy, and not make time to work on aspects of your photography that need improving.
In this article, I want to encourage you to think outside the subject. Consider taking photos only to work on improving one aspect of your craft – composition.
Find subject material in your environment. Things you would not normally consider taking pictures of. Aim to make interesting and varied compositions by exploring and experimenting.
Practice composition skills
When you practice anything at all, you will get better at it. When was the last time you engaged in improving your composition skills through practice? Have you ever picked up your camera with the sole aim of getting better at using the rule of thirds or any other aspect of composition?
Focus on using negative space for a day, or a week, and you’ll find you incorporate more of it into your photographs.
By repeating what you are doing, you can learn a skill so well that you don’t have to consciously think about it. It will take time and practice to reach this level, but it is quite natural. Whatever you set yourself to practice, in time, you will be able to use that skill without having to think much about it. This is one great way to build your intuition.
Pick two or three composition rules to work on. I’m writing about the rule of thirds, negative space and filling the frame. But you can work on any you like. The key is to not be so concerned about your subject or creating masterpiece photos, it is to practice and learn.
Consider yourself doing this to be like a musician practicing scales. Their aim is not to go out on stage and play scales, but they know that practicing them will help them play better when they do perform.
Let’s start with the most well-known rule of composition in photography, the rule of thirds. This is one many people know and use. To put into practice composition skills, you need to concentrate on the rule, not the subject so much.
Don’t worry if you are not producing great photos. This exercise is designed to help you better understand when to use the rule of thirds.
You might like to use a single subject or various things around you to practice composition skills. For this exercise, I walked around my garden and in my house to create compositions using the rule of thirds.
Experiment with each subject you photograph. Compose it in different ways, but make sure to have it somewhere on one of the ‘thirds’. Don’t only take the first composition you think of. If you place your subject on the left for your first picture, place it on the right hand third for the second one. Then rotate your camera 90 degrees and place your subject on a lower third intersection.
The Rule of Thirds grid
Push yourself to try out compositions you normally wouldn’t. Don’t think about your results as right or wrong. Or even good or bad. The point of practice is to improve, so if you’re taking photos you don’t particularly like, think about them. Why don’t you like them? What can you do to improve?
Practice using the rule of thirds until you feel you’ve made some good progress with it. Do you have a better understanding of how to use it well?
Using negative space to practice composition skills
Negative space is not a bad thing – at least not when it’s included in compositions intentionally. Negative space is the area of a photograph that is not the main center of attention.
Often there will be nothing at all in these areas – no shapes, lines, or texture.
At other times there will be some detail, but it will not draw attention away from the main subject at all.
During our photography workshops, one of the most common mistakes I see people make is to leave too much empty space above a person’s head. This is not usually well-composed negative space. It’s there because the photographer was not paying enough attention to what surrounded their subject.
Practice composition skills by creating photos with strong negative space. Use blank areas to help your main subject stand out. Use a blank wall, a shallow depth of field, or a light subject with a dark background.
There are many ways you can include negative space positively in your pictures.
Again, don’t aim to make masterpieces. Making ‘mistakes’ is healthy when you are practicing.
Experiment and try out various compositions, both horizontal and vertical. Leave space on the left, right, below and above the same subject. Study them together on your computer. Which one do you like the most?
Filling the frame is something I aim to do every time I take a photo. Sometimes this can mean much of my frame is filled with negative space. So long as it’s intentional and adds to the photo, that’s fine.
To fill the frame well it’s as much about what you leave out as to what you include. Most important is to be aware of what’s within the four edges of your composition and make sure that it’s relevant to the photo you’re taking.
Sometimes filling the frame can mean coming in ultra-close to your subject so you don’t include all of it. Other times you may choose to move back or zoom out to include some of the surroundings because they are relevant.
Always look around the edges of your frame. What’s in the corners? Are the background elements supporting your main subject? If not, move it, move yourself, or use another technique to eliminate the unwanted element.
Moving even a little can alter the perspective of how elements within your frame relate to each other. As an example of this, I photographed the same objects on my table. The plastic bottle behind my main setting is distracting.
To eliminate it from my composition, I moved lower and to the right a little. In this situation, I could have also moved the bottle.
Taking time to practice composition skills may sound a bit boring – just as someone learning the piano might get bored practicing scales.
Try it and see. You may find you enjoy it after a while. Like anything, it takes time for the practice to pay off, so don’t give up easily.
Do you have any other tips you’d like to add? Please share them with us in the comments.
The post Take Time to Practice These Three Composition Skills Around Your Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
GoPro introduced its first—and only—drone in September 2016 to much fanfare. Unfortunately, the Karma, as the action camera company named it, was plagued with issues from the very beginning. Besides poor reviews that pointed out its lack of standard safety features, reports of Karma drones losing power, mid-flight, and falling from the sky became rampant to the point where GoPro recalled it on the same night as the U.S. Presidential election in November 2016.
While the number of sales is undisclosed, the Karma was purchased by drone enthusiasts even after it was discontinued in January 2018. The users that held onto their Karma discovered that it wouldn’t take off at the beginning of this year due to a glitch in the GPS and GLONASS systems of the drone. User complaints surfaced in dozens of forum posts and tweets as first pointed out by The Verge.
‘I recently got a karma and am having an issue with compass calibration. For some reason this doesn’t work: as soon as I select compass calibration in the controller, within half a second (not enough time to pick up the drone and start calibrating), I get the message ” calibration failed, try again”. It also gives a message about not being able to calibrate the compass without a GPS signal. I am trying this in a field and had the drone there for at least 10 minutes…’ lamented one user in GoPro’s forum. The Karma’s firmware has not been updated since September 26, 2018.
@GoPro we have an issue and it’s world wide.#GoPro #goprokarma #goprokarmagps #goprogrounded #nogps #karmanogps #goprokarmagpsissue pic.twitter.com/USYoMKkJSR
— Rev. Chris Hall (@RevChrisHall) January 5, 2020
Most tech companies update their software consistently to avoid the same issues the Karma experienced as the new year rolled in. GoPro’s dilemma is likely the result of the GPS clock “rollover” phenomenon, which happens once every 1,024 weeks, or every 19.7 years. If a company’s software is not updated, it may automatically reset the date which can corrupt navigation data and throw off location estimates. GPS needs these precise figures to properly function.
After receiving enough media attention, a GoPro spokesperson has announced that the company’s engineering team is “actively troubleshooting” the issue.
Sony is working around the clock to keep up with the demand for its image sensors, Bloomberg reported on Monday, but it’s still not enough. According to the report, Sony is running its image sensor manufacturing business 24/7 straight through the holidays in an effort to keep on top of demand. As well, Sony is building a new facility in Nagasaki to expand its production capacity.
The Nagasaki manufacturing plant won’t go live until April 2021, meaning Sony’s current operations will remain strained for the foreseeable future. Sony Semiconductor head Terushi Shimizu recently said in an interview that the company is having to apologize to customers for its inability to keep up with image sensor demand.
As well, Shimizu said during the interview, the company has seen such huge growth in demand for its image sensors that the new Nagasaki facility may not be adequate enough once it goes online in 2021.
The rise of double- and triple-camera modules on flagship smartphones is driving this demand, the report claims. Whereas smartphone manufacturers previously needed one image sensor per handset, these same companies are now ordering two or more sensors for each unit (of select models), meaning that Sony has seen demand for its sensors increase even as the overall smartphone market’s growth begins to falter.
Falling only behind the PlayStation, Sony’s semiconductor business has become its most profitable business with image sensors accounting for the majority of the revenue. The company is investing in the semiconductor business to expand capacity, also eyeing new generations of image sensors for budding technologies, including ones involving AR and 3D sensing.
Sony remains in competition with Samsung, which has seen demand for its own image sensors likewise increase. In 2018, Korean publication ETnews reported that Samsung Electronics had announced a plan to increase its image sensor production capacity with the goal of overtaking Sony in this market. Whether it will be able to do that remains to be seen.
The previous winner of our ‘Best cameras under $ 500’ buying guide was the Canon EOS M100, and the recently announced M200 – which offers an improved AF system and 4K video capture – is the obvious choice to take over first place.
MyGnar Inc. has announced worldwide availability of the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD. Originally funded on Kickstarter, the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD is now available to purchase from retailers around the globe and brings with it a few new features.
As detailed in our original coverage, Gnarbox 2.0 SSD is a rugged storage solution that works hand-in-hand with a collection of apps to make it easy to import, sort, edit and export multimedia content while on the go.
The Gnarbox 2.0 SSD offers a 2.4 Ghz Quad-Core processor, 4GB of RAM and up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage. Photos and videos can be imported to the device using the onboard SD card slot (up to 75MB/s) or one of the two onboard USB-C ports (up to 350MB/s) and Micro HDMI port is onboard to show photos off on any HDMI comparable display. The battery inside is charged via USB-C and is rated for three to six hours of use.
Gnarbox has also announced two new features the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD supports. First, MyGnar has partnered with Camera Bits, Inc. to power its Gnarbox Selects App using Photo Mechanic’s image processing technology, Raw file support and metadata tagging tools. Additionally, the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD can now be connected to iPad Pro devices via USB-C if you prefer a tethered connection.
Although the specs themselves are impressive, it’s the connectivity that makes the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD shine. When used with iOS devices, the Gnarbox 2.0 SSD works seamlessly with Lightroom CC and video editing application LumaFusion, making it easy to edit media when out and about.
The Gnarbox 2.0 SSD is available in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities for $ 499, $ 599 and $ 899, respectively. In addition to Gnarbox’s website, it’s also available at Amazon and B&H Photo.
Facebook and its accompanying platform of applications — including Instagram — have been and continue to be down for a number of users around the globe today.
Both Facebook and Instagram load normally for users, but neither platform appears to be updating feeds properly and also won’t allow users to post. DPReview tested its accounts and can confirm both Facebook and Instagram were having issues at the time of writing and posting this article.
Facebook has addressed the issue, ironically enough, on Twitter, saying:
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019
While there have been rumors the attack is due to a DDoS attack, Facebook has said that isn’t the case.
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