It's one of those 'why didn't I think of it' things. I was wondering how people trying to use a tripod to take a self portrait would focus the camera properly. I was considering all kinds of convoluted solutions involving tall things like maybe a broomstick to stand in for me while focusing. Then on the internet it says: take your camera off the tripod, go stand where you want to be and focus on the tripod... Yeah, that is indeed simpler...
I am reminded of the time when a volleyball coach substituted his whole team in one go when they performed abysmally. There are six substitutions allowed per set and six players in a team. The set continued with essentially the b-team without the coach watching on, because he took the main players to the side and used that time to tell them what's what.
I think people can guess what match I'm watching if I say that that was a really great goal. Well aimed, hard, precise, unstoppable for the goal keeper. Shame it was in our own goal.
Edit: Please stop boosting this. It's too late to register.
I moved to the UK in 2010. I lamented to a colleague that the most frustrating thing about being an immigrant was not being able to vote.
My friend put me straight. Commonwealth citizens legally resident in the UK (regardless of how long we've been here) are allowed to vote. You just have to register.
Are you Canadian? Australian? Indian? Nigerian? If you're allowed to live here, you're allowed to vote.
I hope people are enjoying seeing Hotel Cocaine, because when I just checked it is not out yet. I sort of suspected that, that it would be one of those US only things, but the good news is that JustWatch actually has a card for the series saying that it is not available on any streaming service, rather than just denying its existence as normal, so that usually means it's upcoming. #HotelCocaine
My understanding of WordPress must be missing something.
There's this default theme 'twenty twenty four'. When you activate it, it inserts various hardcoded texts into your site. Things like "my book Money Studies is out now" and "I'm Leia Acosta, a passionate photographer". You have to use the site editor to find these and remove them. There are about four.
You have to do this on your live site, you can't customise a theme and preview it before activating, like you used to be able to. If you don't find them all, or ever did "Remove Customisations", you're site will say stuff like "A commitment to innovation and sustainability", without you knowing it.
So what if you're not called "Leia Acosta"? Or you don't have a book out called "Money Studies"? How did they think this was going to work? #WordPress
It’s always been like that to a degree. It starts with an about page and a tagline that are not you. But the new user experience with guiding people through changing it sucks and needs work and is just … not getting it 🙄
@Mika E. But that's the thing I don't get. It used to do that for new empty sites. I've tried this with two (test) sites, both of which already had content. These new default texts just get inserted into a live site which already has content. And I didn't find a way to change it before activating the theme; you used to be able to do that in the preview before activating.
@Jos Velasco In the documentation at wordpress.org/documentation/ar… they list four templates for which you can switch alternative patterns. Especially the blog home and the index templates have patterns with texts you will not want to keep (others are search and archive). I think all these are live before you can change them.
I see what you mean. I will see if there is a discussion with the Theme’s team. In the meantime, it is handy to use the “Edit Site” link from the corresponding template you want to edit to access it quickly.
WordPress 6.3 will make site editing several clicks faster for users who are moving from the frontend to edit the corresponding template. When you click the “Edit Site” link in the admi…
I remember there are plugins to switch themes based on the user, so admins can make changes before switching to a theme for the public, but since the templates are essentially content, they don’t seem to work without affecting the active theme.
I suggest hiding blocks or areas you don’t need or need to be updated, using a plugin like Block Visibility, or setting a Staging site to make changes in a safe environment.
What problem does this address? Site Editor only works with an active block theme. It's not possible to edit non-active block themes with it. E.g., it's not possible to Live Preview non-active bloc...
@Jos Velasco Thanks for looking into it. I think the answer for me is that for my totally unimportant personal site I'm just going to brave it: check on a test site which edits need to be made and what they look like then quickly do them on the real site. Likely nobody will see it in the meantime. For anything even slightly more important organisations are going to need staging sites anyway and mechanisms to deploy changes atomically. Also with Block Visibility I think you're going to have to find the added blocks first to flag them as invisible, which you can only do after switching to the theme.
Or maybe I should just let go of the idea that you can easily switch themes...
Looks like the Wordpress Activitypub plugin doesn't handle video cover images in media attachments. Also, I had forgotten that it is not compatible with page caching in W3 Total Cache (another plugin) so I had turned that on. (Either it doesn't send the Vary header or W3TC doesn't respect it)
Can't you tell mobile Chrome not to reload a tab. E.g. if you are busy filling a form, or some long running process is running. That's the third time I restarted the media sync on WordPress.
I don't think so, no. I used to have that problem a lot but not since switching to firefox so it might just specifically be that particular browser, maybe try others?
This is the press junket interview about Hotel Cocaine with Corina Bradley. She says her character Valeria doesn't put up with lies, and from what I've seen in the trailer, Valeria is going to have an interesting time with that... (Uploaded to WordPress because Friendica doesn't do video) gidikroon.eu/2024/06/16/corina… #CorinaBradley #HotelCocaine
Was testing a new lens, the wide angle Canon RF 28mm f/2.8 STM. I like it. It's very flat. And I'm starting to learn that if you pay attention there doesn't need to be (much) distortion even for a wide angle lens. I.e. look at and not ignore the level meter on the display...
Photos below are unprocessed, except crop and downscale on my phone for posting. Taken on a Canon EOS R10, so there's a 1.6 crop factor (28mm has the equivalent field of view of 45mm).
Taken at the WW2 memorial at Kruispark in Best. #Photography
In 1850, a farmer found a secret village. It was later determined to be older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Archeologists estimated that 100 people lived in this village named Skara Brae, the "Scottish Pompeii." The houses were connected to each other by tunnels, and each house could be closed off with a stone door.
@Archaeo-Histories I remember from a documentary I once saw about this site (with caveats for a faulty memory) that at a time when people were mostly nomadic, only two (known) places existed in Britain where people lived permanently: near Stonehenge(*) and in Skara Brae and other people may have travelled north and south between them.
What I thought was the most interesting detail is that when you enter one of these stone houses, the wall opposite the door has shelves inset in the stone wall, clearly intended to show off prized possessions to visitors. We have not changed...
(*) edit: near where Stonehenge would later be built.
@gidi If I lived in one of those houses, the shelves would be partly for show and tell, and party for dumping whatever was in my pockets from the day, especially stuff I'd need the next day. I guess they didn't carry around house keys, though.
And if you go there in the evening, just as the sun is turning golden and nearing the horizon, you’ll find the grassy dunes just outside the village absolutely covered with rabbits. Very bouncy rabbits, which leap away as you get near, so that suddenly the whole ground in front of you suddenly becomes a brown furry carpet, undulating and rushing to one side, as they make their escape.
_This_ is what they based "The Bard's Tale" on? I mean, that was a city with dungeons under it, not an entire underground city, but it was definitely called "Skara Brae".
Skara Brae was the name of the town in the original commodore 64 Bard's Tale game - my absolute favorite game growing up. I never had any idea the name wasn't invented until this moment.
Two 'Whoa!'s: first that I apparently forgot to mention here that Siena Agudong will lead the upcoming film for tubi called Sidelined: The QB and me, playing Dallas (the cheerleader, not the city).
Second 'Whoa!' today is that Mia Shanks is joining her in that film as Emily. Mia is a singer and actress who may be known as the daughter of Lexa Doig (Andromeda in Andromeda) but she is now making her own mark. #SienaAgudong #MiaShanks #SidelinedTheQBAndMe #TheQBBadBoyAndMe
My first talk at H.O.P.E. "Inspiring the next next generation of hackers" Presented with my friend Corbin, it was really fun! I've been able to meet many influential friends at H.O.P.E. and can't wait for the next one this July!
So when I went from 2GB of RAM for postgresql to 1GB and at that same time Pleroma search went from responding fine to not functioning at all, this was not a coincidence? I'm in that majority...
But still, why is loading a remote user to follow even implemented as a search action. Mastodon anti-pattern...
Also vast majority of admins not having enough RAM to store the search index, and not knowing they need it because they've never dealt with actual database load before.
I was checking because I received a package containing 1 of the quantity 2 I ordered; I was not expecting the quantity of 2 to come in separate packages and assumed something had gone wrong.
Just back from walking around in Venlo and taking some photos, just because I hadn't been there before. The city centre is nice enough and there are some historic buildings to see, but it's very small and since there was no guide online or available locally, you can only find the major sites.
The city seems ideal for shopping and drinking at an outdoor cafe, but is not really suited for someone walking around alone like me. The only place you can have a sit down for a bit is next to the river, which is a nice enough spot.
I don't know how street photographers do it, but in my experience people become hyper aware when they see a photo camera, so nice shots of what streets full of people look like are difficult. Buildings it is then.
"Stadhuis", the historic City Hall of Venlo, is really just a block in the middle of the city... Here exaggerated by a wide angle lens. First photo is the back, the second is the front with the cafe's, shoppers and the grand entrance. Weirdly the tower on the right front corner is indeed taller, that's not distortion of the photo.
Where the river Maas meets the city Venlo, a figure stands tall to protect the city from the water. On the inland side of the embankment, people relax in the sun. I think this area is called Maaspoort.
Testing my new ultra wide angle lens. This is at 10mm (field of view equivalent to 16mm), the view is so much wider than by eye.
I wasn't paying much attention to the exposure, was also getting a bit late in the evening since I had to cycle around the forest to get to another entrance. #Photography
I notice that as long as there aren't many shapes for which your brain has much reference (like rectangular buildings) an ultra wide angle lens can compose nice pictures, else the distortion can be obvious and sometimes distracting. Something to keep in mind.
Found my excuse why I haven't been running lately: the forest is flooded! This is the path where I normally run, many others were completely blocked too.
Absolutely great to see Hayley Squires in this week's Inside No. 9 "Curse of the Ninth". She was brilliant and stealing the show as always as Devonshire. themoviedb.org/tv/61746-inside…
I was checking out photo camera lenses since Canon has extended their range of RF lenses. I thought it would be interesting to get a macro lens, which was followed by me looking up 'what actually is a macro lens', which seems to include a minimum focusing distance of under 30cm. Turns out the two lenses I do have, which are not marked as macro lenses, are as good or better at macro than lenses especially marked as macro (30cm for the 50mm one, 17cm 12cm for the 18-150mm RF-S one). So I'm getting an ultra wide angle instead (10-18mm RF-S), because that is something I'm missing with buildings and stuff being too big or the streets next to them too narrow. A lens which btw will also out-macro the macros, focusing at 12cm I think 8cm in MF. #Photography
The film X with Jenna Ortega is going to be in cinemas again for one day only in a nationwide fan event on the 18th of June. They don't specify which nation, but I can guess. See their insta post. You're also going to get a sneak peak at the third film in the trilogy, MaXXXine. #JennaOrtega #X instagram.com/reel/C7y28UVsUkF…
Kiran Sonia Sawar is an actress who let's you feel the emotion of the character and the situation so deeply. She's been underrated for so long, it's good to see her in TrueLove doing a major character for a change. Just saw the final episode. #KiranSoniaSawar #TrueLove
As an urban landscape photographer concerned with architecture, I make a extensive use of what are called "shift movements", which are supported by certain cameras/and or lenses. Shift movements are used to avoid introducing geometric distortions (particularly of rectangular objects) that would otherwise be caused by the camera's position with respect to the subject
Suppose we want to make a photograph of a building. We set up our tripod on the sidewalk across the street (which is as far back as we can go) and select a lens for a composition that fills the frame with the building's facade.
We find we have to tilt the camera up in order to get the subject fully in the frame.
In this example, I'm using a 40mm lens (on a 645 format sensor, so that's about like a 26mm lens in 35mm terms).
The subject is the Russian News Agency office near DC's Dupont Circle, a mansion built in 1912. It's not a particularly interesting building, and there's a car annoyingly parked in front, but it will do for our purposes here.
You'll notice the building seems to be falling backwards. The two sides of the building, which are parallel in real life, are converging toward the top. 3/
What happened here? Why doesn't the front of the building look rectangular, the way it does to our eye (and is in reality)?
The problem is we had to tilt the camera up, so it's not parallel to the building. That means the lens projected a distorted image of the building onto the sensor. The top of the building is effectively farther away from the (tilted) camera than the bottom is, and the image correctly reflects that. But it's almost certainly not what we want.
So what can we do to make a photo that correctly reflects the true geometry of the building? We have four options:
- Correct the image in post-processing.
- Move. In particular, move UP, so we can point the camera straight at the building, centering it fully within the frame. This may require being improbably tall, and using a gigantic tripod. Probably not practical.
- Use a wider lens, so we can point the camera square to the building and still show all of it.
Post processing to fix the distortion seems like an attractive option. Modern image software like Capture One and Lightroom have the ability to do geometric transformations on the frame that can correct this kind of distortion.
I used the Capture One "keystone" tool here. It effectively squeezed in the sides of the frame from the bottom, leaving the top as it was.
It's pretty close to the geometry of the actual building.
There are two problems, however. The geometry isn't quite perfect, because the original camera position wasn't actually parallel to the building. The transform can't fix that. It's very close, however, and probably not something someone would notice.
The bigger issue is the transform discarded over 30% of the pixels in the original frame. We have a smaller image than what we started with. Notice how the image looks cropped compared with the original.
Our next option is to move the camera up, so that we can aim the camera parallel to the building (avoiding distortion), but still keep the whole building in the frame.
This would be great if we could do it. Maybe put the camera on a drone. Or hire a bucket lift. Or just be really tall.
this would also provide a dramatically different perspective on the ground level, showing more of the (top of the) car, the sidewalk, etc. But that might actually make it easier to crop out the car from the shot.
Our next option is to use a wider angle lens, so we can keep the camera aimed straight at the building (again, avoiding distortion) and capture the whole subject.
Here, I replaced our original 40mm lens with a 23mm lens.
The building looks good, but what a crappy composition. The big street in front is really distracting.
Since the wide angle image (with the crappy composition) includes a perfectly good undistorted view of the building, we can simply crop it to create a better composition.
Unfortunately, this is less than 40% the size of the original frame. We got a much smaller, lower-resolution image this way.
Our final option (saving the best for last here) is to use our original 40mm lens, but keep the camera parallel to the building and compose the frame by "shifting" the sensor away from the center.
Shift movements require a special camera (or lens mount) as well as a lens that projects a larger "image circle" than required to fill the sensor. For example, 645 (medium format) sensors need about a 66mm diameter image to cover the frame. Lenses for shift project a larger circle than that. 11/
View cameras (the kind with a bellows that make the photographer look like they're from 1890) and "technical" cameras (like the Phase One XT that I use) have shift movements built in. Most other cameras don't, but a few DSLR/mirrorless lenses from Canon, Nikon and others have shift controls built in.
Here, I used the original 40mm lens, but I shifted the sensor down from center by 12mm. This had the effect of moving the frame up, centering the now undistorted building.
There are two disadvantages to using shift. The first is that lenses tend to be sharpest near the center, and so by shifting the sensor you may be recording a less sharp image. Very good lenses designed for shift have to meet very stringent performance requirements.
Which brings us to the second potential disadvantage. Cameras and lenses that support shift cost a ton compared with those that don't. They also weigh a ton and take up a lot of space, and are designed to be used on a tripod.
Whether it's worth using a system with camera movements, as opposed to correcting in postprocessing, is a balance of tradeoffs. These photos took about an hour to make, requiring careful setup (and I could have done better with more care). The equipment is expensive, heavy, and cumbersome.
It's only worth using this kind of gear if you need the particular qualities that camera movements provide. For most photography, it's likely to just get in the way.
Thank you for the thread. In theory I understand the technical side, but in practice it always feels a little bit like magic that moving a lens by relatively little physically (eg, 12mm in your photo) has much of the same image effect as moving the camera much more to be high up on a giant tripod.
(And I guess that a higher camera position would make it so that the photograph was looking down on the parked car, instead of being relatively level with it.)
Production notes: I didn't aim the 23mm image (that got cropped) quite as carefully as I might have; the camera was vertical, but slightly off-axis with respect to the building.
Because we're only concerned with geometry here, I didn't spend much time fiddling with the contrast or exposure. I'd probably make them a hair brighter if I were actually making a serious photo here. And also wait for that damn car parked in front to move.
The building, at 1706 18th St NW in Washington, DC, is an annex to the Embassy of the Russian Federation (and so it's a diplomatic property). The building was originally a private residence, but was sold to the Soviet government in the 1950's. It's currently mostly unoccupied as far as I can tell, but has been used to house state media offices (such as Soviet Life magazine, back in the day).
Addendum: If you're interested in "formal" photo composition, especially for architecture, it's EXTREMELY useful to understand the concepts of zero, one, two, and three point perspective used in drawing and painting.
Students of painting and drawing have to work hard to master using more points of perspective convergence in their compositions. Students of photography, on the other hand, have to work hard to master using fewer.
I’m reminded that there was a time (my time, but who’s counting) when it was routine, for boys, anyway, to be taught mechanical drawing in high school, including isometric and perspective views. My sense is that this is no longer the case, except perhaps tech-specialized schools. And even then, there’s something about working it out yourself with T-square and triangles…
A couple people have asked about my camera setup and how I travel with it. Warning: Long equipment-centric thread follows.
I mostly use the Phase One system, which is built around a very flexible medium format (54x40mm) interchangeable-back sensor mount. This allows me to use a variety of different cameras (DSLRs, technical field cameras, or full view cameras) and lenses. I usually shoot with the “XT”, which is a small (as these things go) field camera with horizontal and vertical movements.
For a while I considered getting the Canon EF-mount tilt/shift lens, but my vision is really not good enough to focus manually and I realized I wouldn't use it enough to be worth the expense, since most of the photography I was doing at the time was either radio towers or the cramped interiors of transmitter buildings. There are only a few transmitter sites that are architecturally interesting, and fewer every year.
i do like your phrasing "shifting" the sensor, in comparison to the normal lens shift. You're selecting where within the lens's image circle the sensor sits.
is there also the risk of inadvertent distortions elsewhere? The car looks ok, but I wondered if it would end up looking stubby, if the bottom portion of being pulled in.
Obviously use shift. Post looks odd, moving upward would be fine if you had a helicopter, a wider lens includes the photographer's toes, while shift just moves the image circle. This is assuming of course the circle of "good" quality is big enough. imho
“the way it does to our eye (and is in reality)” bothers me. The top of the building is after all farther away, and *should* look narrower, no? (how much narrower depending on how far away we’re standing). A fully shift-corrected image from very close feels a bit wrong to me, the building looming in a way that it does not IRL (again, this is highly dependent on distance from subject). (Huh, digression: interesting ambiguity of “subject” here.)
I think in order to get the effect, you would need to take several pictures. If you move the camera above the ground to take the picture, different depths shift different amounts in the image as compared to the ground image. You can take several images laterally at a fixed range to determine how much each part of the image shifts to identify its depth, and then shift each part the appropriate amount depending on its depth to achieve the desired perspective.
If you move sideways, objects at a longer range shift less. To compose a picture from an artificial perspective, you identify the range of each part of the image and then shift each part an amount dependent on range. The image can be tilted using the Scheimpflug principle but few cameras support this. Or you can it be done by processing together several images.
@profdc9 The Scheimpflug principle has nothing to do with shift. It's used to calculate angles for tilt and swing to keep things in focus on planes that aren't parallel to the sensor.
The image of each 3D point in the 3D space of the object defined by the lens law with the projective coordinates origins at the entrance/exit pupil positions. You can move the sensor to coincide with the building face, you can tilt the sensor to try to compensate for perspective projection, but you can not move the entrance pupil up above the ground. An image can be synthesized for a different entrance pupil from a true 3D estimate of the object (barring obscured surfaces).
@mdwray Swing and tilt movements, also found on view cameras, are used to solve a different problem (maintaining focus on across a different plane) from shift movements. Shifts are used to allow you to maintain the geometry of the subject. That's what the thread discusses.
@brooklyn11211 The reason shifting lenses are so expensive (compared with an equivalent non-shifting version) isn't so much the shift mechanism, which is fairly simple, but demands on the lens itself. A lens designed for shift has to project a larger "image circle", so that the sensor can be moved around the projected image. A regular lens only has to project a circle that covers the sensor from the center.
A shift adapter will only work with lenses that already have a large image circle.
@brooklyn11211 You'll notice that most of those shift adapters take medium format lenses (Hasselblad, etc) and allow them to be mounted on 35mm format cameras. Medium format lenses have a large image circle compared with 35mm format, so this allows room for shifting.
Dafne was on The One Show (BBC) promoting The Acolyte. I caught only the last minutes of it (and the on demand viewing is geoblocked), but the show posted these pictures to prove it. I did learn that Dafne got an especially small light saber because she's short and kept hitting the ground with the normal sized one. #DafneKeen #TheAcolyte
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