Your Canon Photos No. 15: 13th to 19th August 2023

Okay.
'Fess up. Which one of you is the culprit?

“A British farm has urged visitors to stop posing naked for photographs in its field of sunflowers.
www.cnn.com/travel/article/sunflowers-naked-visitors-gbr-scli-intl/index.html

“The owners of Stoke Fruit Farm on Hayling Island, off England’s south coast, issued the unusual request on social media, having noticed a growing number of visitors stripping naked to pose for pictures among the blooms.
In a post on Facebook earlier this month, the farm wrote: “Reminder to all we are a family area and please keep your clothes on in the sunflowers! We are having a increase of reports of naked photography taking place and this must not happen during our public sessions please!”
Sam Wilson and sister Nette Petley run the farm that their grandfather set up. It comprises 350 acres, producing wheat, peas, potatoes, pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn, hay – and sunflowers.
Wilson told CNN Friday that there had been about six incidents of people stripping off among the sunflowers since the field opened to visitors at the end of last month.
“We’ve always had people take risque pictures but this is the first year it’s been a problem, which is why we’ve put signs up,” he said.
Wilson added that he and his team decided to put signs up around the farm after “a couple of children saw what was going on.””
“Wilson said: “We went away on honeymoon and then my sister rang and said ‘people want to pick your flowers,’ so we set up an honesty box for visitors.”
Nothing could have prepared them for just how popular the attraction would become, with people traveling large distances to see the flowers in bloom.
Today, paying visitors are invited to wander around a massive area of about 50 acres, covered by two million sunflowers, said Wilson.”

Steve Thomas

Thanks @Digirame @stevet1 @mocha123.

I was playing around with one of the Scene Modes called HDR Bold. It makes your photo look like an oil painting.
It takes three pictures in succession and blends them into one photo.
But if your subject moves in the process, you wind up with something that looks likes this:

It's Cat Monster!

Ordinarily, she looks like this:

Steve Thomas

Steve,

Often each year in late summer or early autumn I take pictures of the sunflowers as I show below. So far, there's been no issues like that...never heard of anything like that anywhere where I live except for certain clothing optional beaches.

Model - Canon EOS Rebel T7i
ExposureTime - 1/640 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 320
ExposureBiasValue - -0.33
FocalLength - 24 mm
Lens Model - EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

Steve,

Those are nice and interesting high ISO photos of your cat! Does he or she chase squirrels or mice? Or is it strictly an indoor cat for the most part?

It seems she/he is contemplating which remote to attack first!

David

I have been experimenting with panoramic shots, using Autopano Giga (which is available free) to stitch together five shots. The originals were all hand held and done in manual mode using a 50mm lens in portrait orientation. Then you just load them into the program and press the button. The result was a remarkable 20MB jpeg of 111,543 x 5,466 pixels. I have reduced it to 5,000 x 2368 here:

I show it not because of any particular interest in the subject material (notice again the dead leaves on the trees), but on account of my amazement at the ease with which these can now be done. It goes without saying that the resolution of the large file is scary!

David

David, that's a very nicely done pano.

Thanks, Dunlin; but I take no credit for it: it was all automatic. I discover that the version of Photoshop that I have will also do it. Just load the photos and click!

Clearly I am going to have to go back to Kahlenberg on a good day!

David

David

David,

Someone recommended to me a a little while ago, that the best approach to a panorama was to shoot it in portrait orientation like you did using a 4:3 aspect ratio. I tried that a couple of times and liked it.

Dig and the sunflowers: Ahha! I knew it.😀

Steve Thomas

Great looking shot! I was surprised how good Photoshop at stitching together panoramas when I tried it last year. I've only tried stitching landscape oriented shots though, so the method you described would certainly give even more resolution. This one is 13264 × 4863 px but not all that great, because the IQ of that lens doesn't hold up at distance, particularly in the corners:

Home is where the hard is... by simple.joy, on Flickr

If I ever redo this I need to try it with a different lens and not wide open, but stopped down a little bit. This was taken with a varifocal enlarging lens (from a minilab) but despite the optimization of many enlarging/industrial lenses for close-up work some work surprisingly well at distance.

Thanks David. It's nice to hear about what you can do with free software to make a pano.

simplejoy,

That's a wonderful shot and well worth hanging on a wall.

Steve Thomas

Dig,

I really enjoyed your photos of Fannette Island. Thank you for sharing them.

You called the structure on the top of the island a "tea house". Any idea of who built it and what it was used for?

Steve Thomas

Steve,

Thanks.

Yes, I know who built the tea house. You can read more about it on the internet. It was constructed by the person that owned the Vikingsholm home that is nearby in Emerald Bay. Unfortunately vandals destroyed parts of the tea house, so it was abandoned leaving the stone shell that we see today.

The tea house was used to serve tea to the Vikingsholm guests. There was a fireplace, a large oak table and four chairs.

I find it difficult to locate threads here, but I found the weekly thread! I've just posted two Canon 5DS + 70-200mm f/4 IS photos on my flickr photostream and Canon album. I shot them in July but just processed today.
2O6A1394 Canon 5DS Lotus DPP fine detail mode CROP by Sandy Fleischmann, on Flickr

2O6A1386 Canon 5DS Lotus Green Spring Gardens VA by Sandy Fleischmann, on Flickr

If anyone is interested in some ulra wide-angle Canon 5DS photo with a Rokinon 14mm lens, compared to a Canon 16-35mm look at the page 3 end of my Canon album here www.flickr.com/photos/sandyfleischmann/albums/72177720302188071/page3 My intention is to try some night sky photos with the Rokinon 14mm next month at Mesa Verde.

I'm excited by the possibilities offered by a tift-shift lens and I've just ordered a used Canon TS-E 24mm lens which I intend to use at Natural Bridge in Virginia and on the Blue Ridge Parkway this autumn.

Taken in a Miniature Scene Mode.

Steve Thomas

At the beginning of this week, Mocha showed a varied and excellent selection of close-ups, which reminds me that I am not too good with such subjects.

Photobygms showed us more rural shots of The Netherlands, which continue to confirm for me that paintings by Old Masters captured the unique look there, as he has done. Also a butterfly, of which I have only ever seen one here.

Lovely ducks and other water fowl from Fotoworld!

Meanwhile, Digirame is still working through his holiday photos from Lake Tahoe and making us all jealous. I have not been out much this week on account of the heat: I find it just too much to bear.

Dunlin's sunsets were spectacular!

Steve T was playing with fascinating transforming software. I did something similar in experimenting with panorama stitching. I did this years ago, when it all had to be done by hand and am amazed at the ease with which the stitching can be done now automatically. If you look carefully at my panorama you can see that one person managed to get into it twice, which is one of the well-known problems when photographing in cities! I shall definitely develop this dimension of my photography.

Steve also got in under the wire with a "miniature". How did you make this, Steve?

Simplejoy's mountain panorama is excellent: no need to apologise for any imaginary deficiencies at all.

Sandy F managed to find our new location and showed us some lovely compositions from Virginia. Good to see you here again, Sandy. How do you get your photos so sharp?

But I am preaching to the choir, as you have all been vocal in your comments! Thanks for being such a coherent and generous group.

The responses to my concern about being swamped in the section where we are placed at present indicate that we would be better off in the Canon section of the equipment area, which is not visited much at all. Accordingly, on 26 Aug I hope to start the following week's thread there. In the meantime, I will ask AlanSh to move the current threads there during the following week. I will keep you well informed.

The new weekly thread is open here. Please start using it now.

David,

The Miniature is one of the "Scene" Modes on the main mode dial (Marked SCN}.

You can move the focus point and the frame around to isolate a subject. I once saw a photo of a crowd of people, and the photographer isolated one person in the crowd and made him stand out while all the other people in the crowd were blurred. It blew me away.

Steve Thomas