me.
So I know I haven't quite lived up to my word that I was going to catch up with dA. Well... I did partially, I've gone through a bunch of favorites, but I still have 57 odd left to do, and 6781 deviations to look at. Soon.
Life for me is pretty much all the same, eat, sleep, water polo, school. It's likely to continue like that for a while yet. This summer though I get to do a bunch of traveling for training. First I go off to Montreal in the middle of June until the end of July, then I might go back to Eger, Hungary (yet to be determined), then I come back to Calgary until about August 15th, then (if I make the team) I go down to Long Beach, California for Junior Worlds
. So we'll see how that goes.
If any of you are still watching my submissions, you'll notice that I recently submitted a bunch of extremely sharp animal closeups
. This was from my recent excursion with the Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 (rented from
The Camera Store). This is an awesome lens, and I do believe I've fallen in love
... anyone want to buy it for me?
So yes, awesome, awesome lens, and I really wish I could buy it, but for the time being I'll just have to make do with renting it. So this weekend is the Alberta Open Water Polo tournament, so practices are canceled, so I'm renting the lens again, and I'm planning on going to the zoo a bunch more times and maybe I'll even manage to get a bunch of good shots of the tournament. If I get any good ones, I'll post 'em
.
So for anyone who hasn't noticed,
Adobe Lightroom has exited the beta phase and is now shipping. Of course this caused problems for me... as soon as my beta expired, I had a bunch of new pictures to edit. So I've ordered the program, but it'll take a while to ship, so I tried to install the 30 day trial, and boy is it buggered up. The worst thing is I can't seem to fix it. Anyway, I get to wait until my full version before Adobe Support will help me out
.
I think that's it for now, new pictures soon so keep an eye out.
...and someone buy me the Sigma 120-300mm f2.8Cheers all,
Lars
Calibrate Your Monitor
Maybe you browse art every day, maybe you don't, but are you seeing the real art? An improperly calibrated monitor could make it so that you don't see all aspects of the artwork.
There are a few simple procedures to go through to make sure your monitor is calibrated.
First, look at this colour spectrum
You should see a smooth gradient moving from Magenta to Red. If you don't see a smooth transition from one colour to the next, it means that your computer isn't displaying the full colour range that you could see.
Next, look at this white square
This square is pure white, and you should see it as pure white. However, your monitor may be set so that the whitebalance is incorrect. This means that what is supposed to be white is either a slightly blue or slightly orange white. You should be able to enter the monitor menu (using the buttons on the front of your monitor), select the sub-menu labeled "colour" (or "color" for those with american monitors
), this menu will probably have several presets and one or more adjustable "temperature" values. Select the adjustable temperature setting, and increase or decrease the temperature while looking at the white square. You should see it go either orange- or blue-ish white. Fiddle with the adjustment for a minute, soon you should be able to tell when the square is pure white. Congratulations, you've properly set your white balance.
Last, you need to adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor. Look at this grayscale showing 17 separate shades of gray
You should be able to differentiate between each shade easily. If you can't, go into the menu settings for your monitor, and increase the contrast to 100%, then modify the brightness until the the monitor is neither glaring bright or too dim. (You can fiddle with these settings until you find a setting you like, as long as you can differentiate clearly between the shades, these settings are just the ones I use.)
There you go, you can now browse art confidently knowing that you are viewing the true colour of the art.
If you have any questions about this (if it's unclear at all, feel free to send me a note and I'll do my best to help you).