Google has just launched it's book search beta, yeah I know yet another beta but let's face it that's all Google will ever do - everything will always be at beta stage.
Anyhow those nice peeps over at Google have give us, the public full access to a range of books which we can download and read at our leisure. Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Lovecraft, you'd be surprised what you might find.
There's a handy tutorial over on the 9 Rules Blog which demonstrates how top designers would create a colour gradient compared to how a Photoshop novice would do it.
Their top tips include:-
Check it out for yourself right here.
Put simply Ambergris is whale vomit. It's been in the news a lot recently due to a batch of it turning up in north Wales, UK.
Ambergris, meaning amber grease or grey amber is a solid substance with a waxy feeling that is a dark grey colour. It's use, other than regurgetation is as a fixative for perfume products.
Ambergris comes from the intestines of a sperm whale (like any good whale vomit would), and is actually formed by the solidification of bile.
It's been regularly discovered with the beaks of giant squid lodged into it, this has suggested to scientists that it may be formed within the whales intestine when particularly "hard to shift" items get trapped in there.
Most commercially collected ambergris came from the region around the Bahamas and it is particularly sought after. Still used in perfume products it can fetch as much as $20 per gram.
The largest most recent find of "floating gold" occurred on a beach in southern Australia where Leon Write discovered a batch worth $295,000.
A Movietube is a piece of equipment that you bolt onto the front of a video camera to make the captured images look more filmic.
I used a Movietube recently when filming the trailer for the upcoming motion picture Circumference and ever since people have been asking me my thoughts on it so here they are for the whole world to leanr from.
The most common question I've been asked is does it actually work? The answer is a resounding yes, however there is a "but..." to go on the end of that statement.
A visit to the Movietube site immediately reveals their slogan - "Making your dreams come true", and I'd just like to add that it brings a few nightmares with it too.
This is an example image from the shoot last week. It's pure, without any post grading or in-camera image adjustments whatsoever. It needs it as the blacks should be deeper and the image should be deinterlaced.
The results were always surprisingly filmic, not in a way that you'd compare them to 35mm or even 16mm rather a whole new format all of it's own.
The problems we had fell into a number of different issues, the first being the final image sharpness. The point of shooting with film lenses projecting onto the equivenlent of a 35mm plate is that you can create a shallower depth of field and when you do that focusin can become more difficult. We always shot wide open with the Movietube to get the most shallow depth of field possible and in fact it's recommended that you shoot with the lens closed no more than f4.0 otherwise you may see the grain on the projection screen ground glass.
Now, shooting with prime lenses meant that you can't zoom in to check focus like you would normally so you have to go back to the old focus pullers film camera method of physically measuring the distance of the subject from the focal plane using a tape measure. This was fine, and very accurate too but unfortunately the image would still look slightly soft which is when you perform the second level of focusing, that of adjusting the docked video camera (in our case a Panasonic HVX200 recording full-on HD-DVCpro images to a hard disk). Now according to the manual this should be as simple as pressing the infinity focus button on the side of the camera to force the focus to infinity but this never worked and was always terrible soft. So we'd end up having to focus the docking camera by eye alone and no matter how much we rocked the focus around the resulting image could never be made 100% sharp. It was weird, like someone had put a slight post production blur filter on top of the image but the was nothing that could be done and after much investigation and experimentation we decided that it must be a "feature" of Movietube and probably something to do with the nature of the ground glass having a similar effect to a promist filter in front of the lens.
Our second problem also affected our first problem somewhat. When you point the camera at a subject with a bright background the Movietube reacts by creating a bloom effect around your subjects which ultimately makes them look even more out of focus. Again this is similar to the effect you'd get with a heavy white promist filter in front of the lens.
Our first day of shooting had us filming subjects against a row of windows which played havok both with the image and our frustrations on set with the uncertainty of the image focus. Even worse our second day of shooting was to be in a studio with a bright white infinity curve behind our subject and the experience we'd had on day one suggested that it was probably going to do the same thing only worse. This wasn't the case however and the Movietube handled the white background much better than the over-exposed windows and the resulting shots were quite impressive.
Thirdly you need a lot of light for Movietube. We hired a set of ND filters as we were going to be shooting half of it in bright sunny conditions, did we need them, did we heck. With our prime lens wide open the docking camera would be operating around f8, and we only flipped the docking cameras ND in twice when we were shooting right into the sun. As for indoors we couldn't afford a decent powered lighting setup and our 3 redheads, 2 blondes and 3 Satchler 300s almost wasn't enough and on many occasions I had to switch the camera gain in to compensate (not a problem in HD due to the resolution and fantastic signal to noise ratio).
Working with Movietube on the whole is fiddly, and even though the build quality is robust and professional it still feels very much like working with a beta build. You need to approach it with a "film shoot" mentality in that it will take just as long to set up, change lenses, check the gate (yes you have to do that too). With a standard video shoot you'd put the camera back in its case and move to the next location, with Movietube taking it all to pieces after a location shoot to move on to the next one would be schedule suicide and the only way we could move around with any speed was to keep the rig all set up and carry it on my lap in the passenger seat.
The results from Movietube are good and I'm pleased we used it for the shoot rather than just shooting HD alone but what I've learnt from it is that when the money is raised for the final shoot we need enough to shoot the whole thing on 35mm film as it still is really the only way to go. Heck I'll tell you what, I'd be a whole load more confident shooting on film than using Movietube even with the knowledge that you can't see if the shot has turned out until the stock is processed.
I do have praise for the Movietube though as it has opened up a world of possibility for people desperate for that film-look without the cost. It's a cool piece of kit, not without its flaws though but I guarantee that if you shoot using it when you watch the rushes back you will be amazed just how filmic it all looks.
Everybody hates video. At worst it's cheap looking, at best it's cheap.
Everybody loves film. You can't beat that celluloid magic for a feel that not only looks expensive but is expensive.
Film makers for years have spent both time and money trying to shoot their movies cheaply on video whilst attempting to acheive the look of film. They want the best of both worlds.
So here's a question; Why then when we see 'Star Wars' on TV does it still look like a film? After all it's had to be converted to video at some point along the way to actually broadcast it into your tellybox. Why doesn't it look like 'Curb You Enthusiasm' which is shot on video?
Well aside from the obvious stylistic differences the major difference is that 'Curb...' is shot directly into a video camera whereas 'Star Wars' was originally shot on film and then put through a process known as telecine, which is where it's basically projected onto a screen and then re-recorded onto tape. This means that 'Star Wars' retains all the benefits of celluloid (the look), whilst being downgraded to a video format.
The major problem with video is that it just looks too sharp. This is caused mainly by something called "Depth of Field", or rather the lack of it. For the techies you can find a full explanation of "Depth of Field" here. A quick explaination for "Depth of Field" is that it's the amount of area in front and behind a subject that's actually in focus. It's regulated by a number of different things, mostly to do with the lens and the surface area it projects onto. In the case of the average domestic video camera it's a 1/4" chip (6.35mm), and in the case of a standard cinema camera it's 35mm (1.37"). The bigger the surface area the smaller the area in focus, so in this instance the cine camera wins out by almost 6 times.
The size of this surface area affects the focal length necessary for the lens in order to fill the frame and the longer the lens means there will be less of an area in focus (a shallower depth of field). For example a 20mm lens on our video camera would need to be 6 times longer on our 35mm camera resulting in a 120mm to give what is effectively the same shot.
Hence when you go to see a film chances are the subjects being filmed are dramatically sharper than the out of focus background, whereas the same scene shot on video would have everything in focus.
There are ways to make video look more like film, one of which I was using last week called a Movietube. For an explaination and review of Movietube see my next post.
Bob Ross was an artist and TV presenter who developed his own painting techniques to allow non-artists to get quick and easy good results. Some art
critics labelled his style as being devoid of detail and as a fan of Bob I can see where they are coming from, however his paintings are still nothing short of stunning for something that is created in usually less than 30 minutes.
Watching Bob paint a picture is both entertaining and inspirational. Mostly he painted landscapes and would start with a sky and usually finish with a "big old tree" in the foreground.
His show ran for 11 years with the last recording being made in 1993 and is a worldwide hit and still shows even to this day.
Catchphrases to watch out for in nearly ever show include "happy little trees", "we don't make mistakes we just have happy accidents" and when he cleaned his large brush he would always declare that the most enjoyable part of painting was when he got to "beat the devil out of it" by hitting it rapidly against the leg of his easel.
Sadly Bob departed our world in 1995 at just 53 years of age due to lymphoma. It's nice to think he's at peace within his "happy little clouds" though.
The image you see here is what's known as a panography. A panography is a collection of photographs taken of a particular subject or item and then digitally composited together afterwards. It's a bit like putting together a jigsaw really where all the pieces kind of fit together but not quite. It does look rather cool though and the great thing is anybody can do this even with very little knowledge of cameras and image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop.
If you want to know more there's a whole tutorial over at Wikihow and another one over at Photjojo.
A common misconception by tourists in England is that the London Bridge (the one from the popular nursery rhyme in which it is said to be falling down), is actually Tower Bridge. This is incorrect and they are indeed 2 separate bridges located in 3 different places across the world.
3 different places?! I'd better explain myself.
London Bridge crosses the River Thames and creates a link between the city of London and Southwark. It is located between Cannon Street Railway Bridge and Tower Bridge.
A bridge was originally built here on the same site by the Romans in 46 AD. This was a timber construction and as such was probably re-built more than once until finally it was burnt down in 1013 AD by King Ethelred in an attempt to divide the invading army of the Dane Svein Haraldsson.
This is probably where the nursery rhyme originates from.
Re-built once more it was destroyed twice more until in 1136 it was decided that the bridge would be built in stone. This time there were many buildings built atop the bridge. These buildings caused a great many fires over time and traffic (horses, not cars), became such a problem that in 1758 the houses were removed to create a wider road for crossing.
After 600 years the bridge was declared to be in need of an update and was demolished in 1831 alongside the new bridge structure. Again traffic posed a problem for this bridge as the sheer volume of it proved to heavy for the structure and after nearly 100 years it was discovered that the bridge was sinking by an inch every 8 years.
Another new bridge would have to be built. This time though the old one wasn't exactly demolished... and this is where the 3 locations for both London and Tower Bridge come in.
In 1968 old London Bridge was sold to the American entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for the sum of $2,460,000. Apparently or so the story goes, he had mistakenly thought he was buying Tower Bridge, so allegedly even he fell foul of the tourist bridge confusion. He had the bridge shipped over to Lake Havasu City, Arizona and had it reconstructed over a canal that leads from Lake Havasu to Thomson Bay. If the story is true imagine his annoyance when he say the finished construction didn't actually look like Tower Bridge. The bridge is now at the centre of a English-style theme park and has become Arizona's second-biggest tourist attraction, after the Grand Canyon.
The final London Bridge was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973 and it still stands to this day.
London Bridge
Tower Bridge
The rather surprising answer is a resounding "No".
In reality Pepsico earn only 20% of it's revenue from carbonated soft drinks. This is even more surprising when you compare this data with rival company Coca-Cola who makes 80% of their earnings from fizzy liquid sales.
So where does the other 80% of Pepsico's revenue come from? Find out more here.
Here's a little know factoid I learnt today.
Did you know that it's physically impossible for a pig to look up at the sky?
There's a lot more you didn't know about pigs over on Wikipedia.
