David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Creepy Crawler on the Ceiling — Or Why I Can’t Sleep at Night. I saw this above my bed tonight (or is it this morning?). Out of focus image taken with a Leica D-Lux 5 (with flash). Raw image processed and converted to B&W with Capture One Pro.
Why Are You Pointing That Big Black Lens At ME??? As usual there were several deer in my back yard this afternoon. I took this image hand held with a Nikon D3x and 200-400 mm f/4 VR lens (ISO 200, 400 mm, f/4, 1/250 sec). Image processed with Capture One Pro, Focus Magic, and converted to jpg with Photoshop CS5. It was 85°F (unusual for this early in the Spring) and I am sure that the deer wanted to stay in the shade. They obviously have forgotten the one they lost in my garden last winter.
I often use Focus Magic to sharpen images. I prefer using this program since it uses a deconvolution algorithm to sharpen the image, rather than unsharp mask (USM). Here is an example where I used Focus Magic to remove motion blur. On the down side, Focus Magic has not been updated for some time and only runs as a 32-bit application. I can only use it as a plugin in Photoshop CS5 when running the 32-bit version of CS5. For this example I am using an image of a Turkey Vulture in flight (from four-years ago). I tried to improve the sharpness of the head, eye, and beak. The 2nd and 3rd image are 1:1 zooms of the head — first without removing the motion blur, and the second with the motion blur removed (350°, 9 pixels). The results are not perfect, but better than the original image. One of the reasons I do not delete images — new software can sometimes be used to recover and image that previously would have been rejected.
We had a light covering of fresh snow this morning. Based on the new trails several deer and a lone rabbit must have passed through my front yard.
We stopped for a few minutes at the entrance to Torres del Paines National Park while our guide paid the entrance fee. There were a number of Guanaco (South American Camels) milling around. All of a sudden two males started chasing each other. I caught this one as it ran right through our group.
