360 - A walk in the park?

So, I bought a 360 camera. Not top of the range but good enough to produce more than acceptable results at an affordable price. The “MiSphere” arrived a couple of weeks ago and, with fifty plus years of conventional photography behind me, I hadn’t realised how steep the learning curve was going to be. Old dogs and new tricks is a phrase that immediately came to mind.

It’s not so much the age of the dog (though that’s undeniable) but the number of new tricks involved. Starting from the most basic - how do you hold a camera that can see ‘everything’? Without taking evasive action, every shot can be a ‘selfie’ (I’ve always hated selfies). If the sun is out, it’s in your picture - with all the attendant issues that sun-strike produces - especially for fisheye lenses.

And those things are just for starters, wait until you get your photos into the digital darkroom; that’s when the fun really begins. If you thought that Lightroom and Photoshop were more than enough, then think again - you’ll need to master spherical stitching, tools heavily reliant on the JPG format and EXIF injection so that your 360s show up properly on the web.

And don’t get me started on 360 video …

For an old photographer, 360 photography is fun; if only because it’s like starting out on the photographic journey all over again. Yes, you still need the old photography knowledge but applied in ways that hadn’t previously been relevant. Going digital (back in the 2000s) was a big change, but going 360 is a much larger conceptual leap.

A lot of published 360 photography focuses on the weird and wacky, like ‘tiny planet’ shots (above) that can include a complete environment or table of dinner guests. But 360 photography opens up other possibilities, like the selection of multiple pictures from one 360 photo - almost an ‘after the fact’ composition tool. All three pictures on this page, for example, come from a single 360 photo. (An art filter was applied to the third image.)

If you had ever felt that your photographs were getting old and staid, 360 photography could well be the jolt that gets you thinking afresh about taking pictures.

Hospital and back

The walk to the hospital takes me through Christchurch's Botanic Gardens which were looking wonderful in the autumn sunshine today.

OK. I’ll make this medical missive a ‘one off’ (the health stories of those of us who are past our ‘use by’ date hardly make interesting reading). But, as matter of record, today was my annual check up at the hospital.

PKD is one continuous down-hill ride to kidney failure - at least that’s what the doctors believe. But, for the third year in a row, my kidney function has remained steady at 40% (low, but not dangerous).

“You seem to be atypical” the doctor says. “Coupled with the fact that neither of your parents have PKD, and your diagnosis was fairly late in life, I am wondering whether what you have is really PKD.”

“Well, if it’s not PKD what is it?” I ask.

“Haven’t a clue. In all other respects it looks just like PKD. Your kidneys are hugely enlarged and you even have some cysts on your liver, typical PKD. So it must be PKD. But it should be getting worse and it’s not. Anyway, it doesn’t change how we need to treat it. Controlling blood pressure is the most important thing. Let’s see how that is doing … 120/76. That’s pretty impressive for someone your age."

“So, it looks like PKD, but might be something else. It should be getting worse but it isn’t, and my blood pressure is the best it’s been for years. Sounds like reasonably good news to me.”

“Yes. Looks like we don’t need to see you again until next year.”

So, that was my day at the hospital. The PKD (maybe) is not getting any better but, most importantly, isn’t getting worse. What was a short fuse, seems to have stopped burning - at least for a while. That’s something to feel very thankful about. I guess my cameras will have more work to do yet.

Tillie at the Botanic Gardens

Yesterday, Annette, myself and Tillie went to the Botanic Gardens. It was good to see the conservatory open again (it was closed after the earthquakes in 2011) and to see the new Visitor Centre. This was Tillie’s first real world outing and I was very impressed as to how she handled herself.

The 24mm wide end provides a satisfyingly wide field of view in tight situations allowing this shot of the two-story interior of the main conservatory. While the ambient light shot in a dimly lit exhibit below was no problem, with Tillie deciding that 1/30sec, f2.2 and ISO 125 was the way to go.

Inside the cafeteria Tillie demonstrated her high dynamic range chops by including everything from the brightly lit exterior through to the goodies in the cabinet in a single RAW file, with no fancy post-processing (just Lightroom). Love the ceiling shades and the dappled light they produce - like being under a tree.

On another shot I got Tillie to take 5 bracketed shots for an HDR, which I later merged in Photoshop. However, the results were not as tonally pleasing as the single RAW shot that I also took of the same scene. It would seem that, like the D600, Tillie can manage most high dynamic range shots without any external help.

One of the things I am beginning to appreciate, is Tillie’s ability to get the shot right, it leaves me free to make a grab shot or to concentrate on the aesthetics of the picture and not get distracted by constantly having to worry about camera settings. Of course, if I want a special effect or Tillie isn’t reading the scene correctly then I can intervene with my own settings but why reinvent the wheel every shot?

Why Tillie? Well, there was an English adaptation of “The Little Engine That Could” in which the engine was called Tillie. I think the Sony RX100iii is the ‘little camera that could’, so that’s what I called her.