Year In Pictures: 2010/01/13

[plonq]

The way out is through.

When you are creatively bankrupt just convert it to black and white, crank the shit out of the contrast and call it "arty". Ya, that's the ticket.


I am beginning to think that either my eyes are not straight, or the sensor in my camera is not 100% level. I have a horizontal and vertical grid in my viewfinder to help me line up the scene as I am shooting, but almost invariably it is just a bit off vertical (or horizontal, depending on the orientation of the camera) when I look at the picture later.

It's probably not the camera - I have always suspected that my brain is slightly tilted. It would explain a lot about me.

Also I haven't posted any dark, angsty poetry in a long time. For no good reason, here is a dark, angsty poem inspired by today's picture. I call it Meditating On A Bowl of Rotting Cherries.

The path before me starkly lies
a concrete tomb inviting.
And from the depths I hear the cries
of souls, lost and indicting.
O shall I take this lower road
of evil and despairs
or just eschew its siren goad
and take the fucking stairs?

I believe this is the part where I am supposed to cut myself for attention, except that I don't have a knife. All I have is ten thousand spoons. Isn't that ironic?

Comments

[kfops.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are just jostling the camera slightly when you engage the shutter that causes the angle?

I do like what you did with the photo, though (and didn't notice an angle). The adjusting of the contrast makes it a slower read, which is a very good thing.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I also ramped up the detail more than I normally would in a picture.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

I say if you have the inclination you should let it roll!

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Are the grid lines in your viewfinder perfectly straight and rectangular, or do they slope away from the centre in the middle of each edge? I find it remarkably hard to get level pictures with that latter type of "grid" lines.

Lens: 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Another possibility is pincushion/barrel distortion that superzooms tend to have at certain focal lengths. If that's the lens I think it is, then I have experience using it, and I have had this problem too. If you level the frame using a visual reference in one part of the picture, the lines in another part of the picture may not look level.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

The grid lines are, as nearly as I can tell, straight and rectangular. I am pretty sure the problem is with me, and not the camera. I have caught myself a couple of times taking a picture and then realizing right after I shot it that I didn't have the camera quite level. I usually compensate in software, but I don't have the same tools available at work (where I posted this picture) as I do at home.

This lens has quite a pronounced barrel distortion when it is zoomed out all the way, so like you say, that is probably a contributing factor.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

Are you looking through a straight-through glass viewfinder, a SLR "mirrored" glass viewfinder, or the LCD display on the back of a digital cammy?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

It's a digital SLR, with the view finder and mirror. I wish it had the option for framing pictures on the LCD display, but I knew that was something I would be giving up when I bought the camera.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

That's odd. Maybe you should take it to a pro shop to have the mirrors checked, maybe one is sliiightly tilted. That could also be something that's in the warranty, as it affects usage (since this is a pro camera, one expects pro shots, and if said shots are tilted when one takes them, that's bad).

Also, get a simple tripod, make sure it's level, take some shots, and see if they come out tilted. If they do contact the mfr for warranty service. That'd be worth it in my eyes if I paid $300+ for a cam.