Best way to upscale low resolution photos • 04 Jul 2020
I’ve been doing some remote shoots recently, as the photographer obviously, and I’ve mainly used FaceTime ‘Live photos’ for captures. The result of such a shoot is a series of .HEIC files (it’s an Apple thing). Each file is a combination of a low-res 3-second movie with a mid-res image file. The image file, which is the one that interests me, is a 716×1280 pixels heavily compressed one. This is not a lot of pixels to start with in Lightroom/Photoshop. I found that it is possible to upscale such an image to 400% (2864×5120), and use this new big image...
Ten tips to take better low-light photos (dance/event/concert) • 22 Nov 2019
One of my most popular posts is Five tips for taking tango pictures in low light. That information is now more than 10 years old. Technology has evolved a lot since then, as have my photography skills. That’s why there is now the update: Ten tips to take better low-light photos without flash! These are equally valid for tango photography, as well as event, dance and concert photography.
Shooting portraits of strangers • 13 Jan 2011
This was quite a discovery: Danny Santos has been shooting portraits of complete strangers on Orchard Road, Singapore. The story was featured on JPG Magazine with some beautiful examples and that post pointed to his Facebook album, which pointed to his blog post about it. This phrase he wrote made me think: “Suddenly, strangers were no longer unwitting victims subjects, they were now willing participants … and that gave different life to the photograph, and a new awareness and dimension to my idea of shooting in the streets.” Touches a weak point of mine: asking strangers for permission to photograph them....
A JPEG picture doesn’t care about no DPI • 21 Apr 2008
Every now and then I get a request to use pictures of mine for a poster, a flyer, a book. People usually find the pictures they want in my Flickr sets, where they are available in a max resolution of 1200 pixels for the longest side (so e.g. 1200 x 800 for photos in 3:2 aspect ratio). When this is not enough, people ask me for higher resolution versions. And that question comes in two versions:
Photography workflow with Picasa & Flickr • 04 Mar 2008
I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while, but I always thought everyone would probably work in the same way. But then I got introduced to iPhoto, which I consider a sh*tty piece of software, so apparently not everyone is as spoilt as us PC users. So here it goes: how do I process all the pictures I take, easily a thousand per month?
New lens for my Canon camera • 02 Feb 2008
My current favourite lens for my Canon 350D is the Canon EF 50mm F 1.8 II ø 52 mm. I really like the wide aperture (f/1.8) that allows me to take pictures without flash in dark environments like tango events, and the small depth-of-field that brings out the subject really nice. Plus, it was only 100€ when I bought it, and now it’s even at 84€.
What is HD-JPEG? • 08 Oct 2007
While reading the specs of the PackardBell Store & Play, I fall upon “Foto formaten: JPEG, HD JPEG” As I am working with several aspects of HD (High Definition) video all the time, I am of course intrigued. There is a standard for HD JPEG? Wow, tell me more!
My first picture in the papers • 23 Aug 2007
An Baccaert wrote an article in De Morgen about Nathalie and Andrés, who are representing the Benelux in the ‘Mundial de Tango‘ in Buenos Aires. She wanted a nice picture to include with the article and came across one I made at the Tango Marathon in June.
“Living photographs” by Andrew Mole • 03 Jul 2007
I just discovered a really neat online publication: Cabinet Magazine. Here follows one of their articles, on Andrew Mole, a American photographer of the early 20th century. Kind of a Spencer Tunick, with a patriotic message and way more clothes (uniforms, actually).
100.000 Flickr views • 22 Mar 2007
Yesterday I reached 100.000 views on my Flickr account. Using the numbers above, that translates in almost 32 views on average for each picture. But of course, my Flickr photo collection has power law (big head/long tail) distribution. Let’s dive into the head.
To upsize a picture, use the B-spline algorithm • 26 Jan 2007
If you take a low-res picture, and you want to blow it up to a higher size, there are different algorithms to do the calculation of all those new pixels. I talked about this earlier in “How to upsize an image“. I went a bit further now and took a 100×100 pixels detail of a Roos Van Acker picture by Filip Naudts and enlarged it five times: to 500×500. The tool I use, Irfanview, has 6 algorithms to do resize:
Lots of New Year’s pictures • 03 Jan 2007
Lots of people have been taking pictures on New Year and this clearly shows in the stats of incoming pictures at two major photo hosting sites: Flickr and Smugmug.
Flickr reached a peak of nearly 100.000 pictures/hour (97.1 k#/h) and Smugmug a quarter of that (22.7 k#/h). That is 50% to 100% more than regular days.
Megapixel myth nuances • 08 Dec 2006
What’s the value of more megapixels? Is 10 megapixels better than 5? Here are some articles stating the opposite:
Rule of thirds for Powerpoint • 16 Aug 2006
Just a thought I had:
if the “rule of thirds” is so effective for photo composition, could it also be used to create more pleasing Powerpoint presentation designs?
An example of the layout dimensions could be like this (don’t focus on the boring picture/font, just the relative placement):
Beyond the megapixel • 11 May 2006
Wired just released an article on digital camera technology: why megapixels alone are not a good indicator of camera and photograph quality.
Adobe authors Digital Negative (DNG) standard • 03 Oct 2004
Adobe has developed a new format for ‘raw’ camera files, called Digital Negative.
The DNG specifications (PDF) uses the following arguments for its existence:
Paris is burning
I’ve been doing some remote shoots recently, as the photographer obviously, and I’ve mainly used FaceTime ‘Live photos’ for captures. The result of such a shoot is a series of .HEIC files (it’s an Apple thing). Each file is a combination of a low-res 3-second movie with a mid-res image file. The image file, which is the one that interests me, is a 716×1280 pixels heavily compressed one. This is not a lot of pixels to start with in Lightroom/Photoshop. I found that it is possible to upscale such an image to 400% (2864×5120), and use this new big image...
One of my most popular posts is Five tips for taking tango pictures in low light. That information is now more than 10 years old. Technology has evolved a lot since then, as have my photography skills. That’s why there is now the update: Ten tips to take better low-light photos without flash! These are equally valid for tango photography, as well as event, dance and concert photography.
GDPR for (tango) event photographers
This was quite a discovery: Danny Santos has been shooting portraits of complete strangers on Orchard Road, Singapore. The story was featured on JPG Magazine with some beautiful examples and that post pointed to his Facebook album, which pointed to his blog post about it. This phrase he wrote made me think: “Suddenly, strangers were no longer unwitting victims subjects, they were now willing participants … and that gave different life to the photograph, and a new awareness and dimension to my idea of shooting in the streets.” Touches a weak point of mine: asking strangers for permission to photograph them....
This post is old! – check out the more recent version: 10 tips to take better photos in low light!
