Visualization

Lets hope one of the Dragons, or some venture capatalist has seen this, I certainly hope this makes it to market. Pure Genius

A new website has just been launched by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. The new website, NikonDTown will be featuring weekly video tips and tutorials for users of Nikon DSLRs. Episode #1 is already up and running on the site! And if you are going to be watching off-line, they have it available as an mp4 download. .

The show is produced in association with KelbyTraining and Nikon itself.

Check out the announcement by Scott Kelby

Premiere Episode « DTOWN#more-48

Nikon Wipes the Board at the Amateur Photographer Awards

London | United Kingdom

Nikon UK picked up five awards at the Amateur Photographer awards ceremony held last month, with the D700 taking the coveted ‘Product of the Year’ title.
The competition was tough but the D700 fought off other models

Nikon UK - Home - News and Information - New - Nikon Wipes the Board at the Amateur Photographer Awards

I have not blogged for a while but these pictures of a Kingfisher deserve a post

See more at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1133589/Dinner-It-8217-s-fast-food-deep-freeze.html

Geotagging seems to be the buzz word these days

What is Geotagging...."it is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude, bearing, and place names."

How to tag your images

There are several ways to geotag photographs. I just started using the Expressions Media 2 to do this via software. There is a great tutorial on how to do this, just click on the link below to find out how.

Cameras
Newer cameras have global positioning system (GPS) units built into them. When a photo is taken, it is automatically stamped with the camera's location. This method produces the most accurate results.

Handheld GPS units
Many handheld GPS units will record a route which can be uploaded to your computer. Special software can interpret these routes and compute your location at any given time. The software can then use the date and time on the photos to update the photo's GPS information.

Hardware devices
There are a small number of dedicated GPS units made specifically for still cameras. The Sony GPSCS1KA and GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr are examples. These units do not need to be attached to the camera—they can be kept in a bag or somewhere more convenient. They record their location periodically. When you have finished shooting, the GPS information is attributed to the images using the provided software.

Software only
Several applications allow you to add GPS information to photographs without using a GPS device. These tools allow the user to search on a map for a location and then apply the GPS coordinates to the photographs.

Many asset managers, including Expression Media, allow users to geocode their assets by entering city, state, and country information.

Microsoft Professional Photography: Geotagging

Although Windows Live Photo Gallery offers panoramic stitching today, it does have its limitations for producing the high resolution images for the new technologies like Silverlight Deep Zoom. So Microsoft Research have released Microsoft Image Composite Editor an advanced panoramic image stitcher. The application takes a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location and creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all the source images at full resolution. The stitched panorama can be saved in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF

Click on the following link for the full story Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE)

Held annually, the competition aims to find the most stunning and original wildlife pictures taken by photographers worldwide of all ages.

Just seen the preview in this months BBC Wildlife Magazine and the competition has not failed in delivering some stunning images

This year exhibition runs from 31 October 2008 - 26 April 2009

Tickets for the 2008 exhibition are now on sale.
Book your tickets online

Wildlife Photographer of the Year homepage

Microsoft Research presents AutoCollage, an advanced computer vision and image processing program which automatically create collages of your pictures.
Researchers from all disciplines and the Cambridge Incubation team worked together, building Digital Tapestry and AutoCollage research into a new product. Face detection, saliency filters, and other Microsoft research identifies interesting parts of pictures. Advanced object selection and blending technologies seamlessly combine these pieces into a beautiful new AutoCollage.
The animation below shows how a collage is made up of many images which are blended together.

Microsoft Research AutoCollage

Microsoft and Nikon Enter Into Patent Cross-Licensing Agreement

Agreement furthers Microsoft and Nikon collaboration on new products and features in digital imaging.

REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO — Aug. 27, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. and Nikon Corp. have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement to further the development of each company’s current and future product lines.

The agreement covers digital cameras made by Nikon as well as a broad range of other consumer products each company manufactures and sells. The agreement was signed by representatives from both companies at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by Nikon.

Microsoft and Nikon have a long history of collaborating to bring high-quality, cutting-edge consumer products to the market, including wireless cameras and RAW processing technologies. The companies believe that this patent cross-licensing agreement will substantially benefit customers of consumer products including digital cameras. Both parties will be able to innovate openly with each other’s technologies, enabling new features and products to come to market.

“This agreement will extend and enhance our already successful, long-standing collaboration with Nikon, and will allow us to provide even better products to our customers,” said Josh Weisberg, director of the Rich Media Group at Microsoft.

“This agreement is another great example of how industry leaders are coming together to collaborate through intellectual property licensing, and by doing so enabling innovation that will ultimately benefit the consumer,” said Horacio Gutierrez, vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft. “We are proud of the quality of our broad, global patent portfolio, and we are pleased to be working with an industry leader such as Nikon.”

“At Nikon, we want to continue to lead the industry in pioneering photography solutions and give our customers access to innovative technology,” said Naoki Tomino, director, member of the board and General Manager of Intellectual Property Headquarters at Nikon. “This agreement is a natural extension of our long-standing relationship with Microsoft, and we look forward to collaborating and bringing exciting new products to the market.”

Microsoft and Nikon Enter Into Patent Cross-Licensing Agreement: Agreement furthers Microsoft and Nikon collaboration on new products and features in digital imaging.

Tthe first full release of Photosynth, is available now at photosynth.com. 

What is Photosynth? Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.    

Start by checking out a few examples ..

• National Geographic did an a great synth of Stonehenge.  Normally you are not allowed inside the center ring of Stonehenge, but their photographers got special permission so you can experience it here.  Can you find the rabbit living at the base of one of the stones?
• Ever wanted to check out a Ferrari 575 Superamerica up close?  We snuck into the local dealership and shot a synth just for you.
• You don’t need to go to all the way to London to see the London skyline—you can see it right here at Legoland
• Imagine stumbling across a guy proposing to his girlfriend right in the middle of Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Now imagine making a synth of it.

Want to create you own synths  check out the photography guide for some tips.  Or just watch our short how to synth video which gives you a quick overview of the best way to take pictures that will make a good synth.

For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you can experience synths that we made in the lab or Explore great synths from others then you can create a few of your own.  

Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup.  So if you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, please let us know.  We’ll do our best to address them.

And be sure to keep watching this space, where we’ll share what we’ve learned about making great synths, talk with some members of the Photosynth team, provide synthing suggestions for advanced users and point you to some of the cooler synths that people are building.