The project is complete! I took one photo every day in 2009 and the above mosaic is the result. Definitely a worthwhile experience and it’s very satisfying to complete such a long running project.
Tags: flickr, Photos, project 365
Photos taken with the lens detached from the camera but held in place and moved around to focus. This also lets extra light in sometimes causing light leaks and giving a vintage look and feel.
Freelensing can also:
If you just want the tilt-shift effect, you can detach the lens, but hold it in place against the camera. Slightly move the lens left, right, up or down.
It’s easier if your camera has a “live view” so you can see what it looks like, but it’s not too much harder with the view finder.
You only need to move the lens a few millimetres (fractions of an inch), and doing it this way, there’s not much risk of dust getting in to the sensor.
If you want lightleaks or the super-macro kind of effect, you will need to hold the lens a little bit further away (probably no more than a finger width, though). This is a bit more risky if you’re worried about dust, so try not to hold the lens away from the camera for too long and only do it in a dust-free environment.
For light leaks, I’ve found it’s best to be in a fairly dark room, with a big window in front of you. This lets the outside light get in to the camera (i.e. not through the lens, but just going straight in to the gap between the lens and the camera) but limits the ambient light getting in (which makes the photos less defined).
Canon – Yes
Nikon – Yes – You have to put the camera into manual mode (thanks Eddie Barksdale)
Sony – Yes – In your camera’s menus, look for the “Release w/o Lens” option, and make sure it is enabled. You might also need to make something that will hold the aperture lever on the back of the lens in the open position (thanks ted @ndes)
If you’ve had success with your camera and it’s not on the list, let us know in the comments here or on the freelensing forum on Flickr.
See more on the Flickr Freelensing pool.
Tags: flickr, freelensing, Photos
Edit: Oops – there’s actually a much simpler way. Right click on the tab area > Customize > Enable thumbnails in tabs
The Opera 10 beta has introduced a new tab feature that lets you resize tabs and expand them to show a full thumbnail. You can either click and drag it down, or middle click on it to expand the thumbnails.
While it’s an attractive feature and some people might find it useful, I’m not one of them. Since I use the middle mouse button click to open and close tabs, it actually gets in the way. I’ve been accidentally middle clicking a bit to low and opening the tab view quite often.
Follow these settings
Luckily, there’s an easy way to disable it. Just type “opera:config” into the address bar. Then type Tab into the search box. You should see “Use Thumbnails Inside Tabs” – untick this, click save, then restart Opera. Fixed.
I love the layers of colour in this poster for 'Motoring in Germany'
If you’re looking for some inspiration, the Bostom Public Library has a fantastic Flickr account with lots of classic posters. They’re all licensed under Creative Commons and for available at a reasonable size (unlike many similar resources).
I really love the style of these old travel posters. The colours they’ve used and the hand-painted texture gives them a lot of character that is often difficult to reproduce digitally. The scans, with their subtle paper texture, creases and folds, only add to that. I particularly like the layers of colour in the poster for ‘Motoring in Germany‘.
As well as the travel posters, there are WWI and WWII propaganda posters, old manuscripts, postcards and photos. The whole account is a great resource for colour, texture and general design inspiration.
Tags: Boston Public Library, flickr, inspiration, poster, resource
If you’re anything like me, you can often communicate better visually with images, rather than text. When chatting on MSN with my trusty Wacom tablet, often half the conversation is in drawings, especially when the other person enjoys drawing as much as I do.
MSN Live Messenger drawn-conversation in progress
The problem with these drawn-conversations is that it can be difficult to keep a record of what has been drawn. Sometimes whole comics or detailed pictures are drawn with no way to save the images… unless you have Adobe Illustrator. Here’s how.
Next time you have a drawing in MSN that you want to save, open up Illustrator and simply drag and drop the drawing into the Illustrator workspace.
Drag and drop the drawing into Illustrator
The beauty of using Illustrator (rather than just taking a screen shot) is that it saves the drawing in full vector detail.
So whether it’s a comic that you’ve been able to get just the right expression on or just a funny picture you want to save, you’ll be able to retain all the detail and enlarge or refine the image further in Illustrator. Or even export it to Flash and animate it, or print it out and give it to the friend you were talking to (things seem funnier in print).
Right: Vector outlines in Illustrator. Left: A custom brush applied to the strokes.
Illustrator is the only program that seems to be able to capture the vector data properly. If you know of any other programs that work, let me know!
Tags: Illustrator, messenger, msn