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Mro--First Looks
- pareidoliac
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18 years 4 weeks ago #17738
by rderosa
Replied by rderosa on topic Reply from Richard DeRosa
Can I suggest something else? A little self-demonstration. Go out in your backyard or to a park, and find a place on the side of a structure, or garage that has the shadow of a tree on it. Hopefully, the wind is blowing, and there are alot of white areas between the shadows of the leaves. Keep in mind the distances that Fred mentioned. I just did this recently at a park, with the shadow of a silver maple tree on the barn near a rose garden, and also a redwood tree shadow from a distance.
The leaves were anywhere from 5 to 20 feet or so from the barn, for these first two photos, and they were taken within 10 seconds of each other. The camera was set to "auto", "no flash". There was slight cloud cover, but for all intents and purposes, it was "sunny" at the time the pictures were taken.
Exhibit 1 - unprocessed:
Exhibit 2 - unprocessed:
Exhibit 2b - slight histogram adjustment on (2) above. The same histogram adjustment that I've used a thousand times on Mars images. I would consider this a very minor C&B adjustment.
Points of interest in above photos:
1. The first thing you notice is that the shadows appear to be blurry, but if you look at the lines and grain in the wood, you can see that they are not blurry. I believe there are a couple of factors at work. For one thing, it was sporadically windy, so the leaves may or may not have been moving. But equally as important is the fact that there appear to be some complex effects as the light goes through some spaces between leaves, some leaves overlap making them less transparent, and things of that nature. If you look closely, it's as if we are seeing both "umbra" and "penumbra" shadows of various leaves.
2. The second thing you notice is that it appears that the images are flat, and don't have many grayscales. However, on close inspection of the histogram, I found that there was really quite a broad range. I've seen hundreds of Mars images that had less range.
3. Now, examine Exhibit 2b. With a minor adjustment to the histogram (expand midtones, and stretch slightly toward the black), you notice how much clearer the picture gets. Basically, when we C&B adjust, we're also "sharpening" by making the edge gradients steeper.
When I took these, I wasn't officially "looking for faces", but rather I was just snapping pictures of shadows to look at later. Sort of as a "feasability study". But, notice the hint of two large scale faces in the adjusted image. I think Neil would give his eye-tooth for these if they came from Mars.
Exhibit 3. Redwood tree too far away - unprocessed:
Notice how there's almost no contrast at all, and it's blurred almost to an unrecognizable degree. Part of that is due to the fact that the leaves were too far away, but part is also due to the fact that redwood trees have needle type leaves that the sun is shining both around and through.
The bottom line: I have no trouble at all accepting Fred's work at face value (no pun intended).
rd
The leaves were anywhere from 5 to 20 feet or so from the barn, for these first two photos, and they were taken within 10 seconds of each other. The camera was set to "auto", "no flash". There was slight cloud cover, but for all intents and purposes, it was "sunny" at the time the pictures were taken.
Exhibit 1 - unprocessed:
Exhibit 2 - unprocessed:
Exhibit 2b - slight histogram adjustment on (2) above. The same histogram adjustment that I've used a thousand times on Mars images. I would consider this a very minor C&B adjustment.
Points of interest in above photos:
1. The first thing you notice is that the shadows appear to be blurry, but if you look at the lines and grain in the wood, you can see that they are not blurry. I believe there are a couple of factors at work. For one thing, it was sporadically windy, so the leaves may or may not have been moving. But equally as important is the fact that there appear to be some complex effects as the light goes through some spaces between leaves, some leaves overlap making them less transparent, and things of that nature. If you look closely, it's as if we are seeing both "umbra" and "penumbra" shadows of various leaves.
2. The second thing you notice is that it appears that the images are flat, and don't have many grayscales. However, on close inspection of the histogram, I found that there was really quite a broad range. I've seen hundreds of Mars images that had less range.
3. Now, examine Exhibit 2b. With a minor adjustment to the histogram (expand midtones, and stretch slightly toward the black), you notice how much clearer the picture gets. Basically, when we C&B adjust, we're also "sharpening" by making the edge gradients steeper.
When I took these, I wasn't officially "looking for faces", but rather I was just snapping pictures of shadows to look at later. Sort of as a "feasability study". But, notice the hint of two large scale faces in the adjusted image. I think Neil would give his eye-tooth for these if they came from Mars.
Exhibit 3. Redwood tree too far away - unprocessed:
Notice how there's almost no contrast at all, and it's blurred almost to an unrecognizable degree. Part of that is due to the fact that the leaves were too far away, but part is also due to the fact that redwood trees have needle type leaves that the sun is shining both around and through.
The bottom line: I have no trouble at all accepting Fred's work at face value (no pun intended).
rd
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