Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

Monday 28 March 2005

Panorama creation

I have been playing with hugin to create panorama.

Here is a sketch of what I can do:

A view of Montreal from the City Hall, Monday March 21st 2005. It took 10 minutes to render.

Tuesday 22 March 2005

Wide angle lens

The thing I'm seriously lacking with my EOS 20D is a real wide angle lens as the 24mm ends up being rougly 38mm. Then several options comes:

  • the EF-S 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM. Pro: only CDN$1000 or USD$750, and really wide. Cons: cannot use it on my film camera because it is an EF-S, not that fast.
  • the EF 20mm f/2.8 USM. Pro: only USD$390, and work with my film camera. Cons: not that wide: almost 32mm on digital.
  • the EF 14mm f/2.8 USM. Pro: prime, wide and rectilinear, even wider on film camera. Cons: too expensive: USD$1725
  • the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM (see about the 17-85mm which the previous generation). Pro: L zoom, film compatible. Cons: too expensive: USD$1330, not that wide on digital.
  • the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM. Pro: L zoom, film compatible, USD$670. Cons: Not that wide on digital: 27mm
  • the EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 USM IS. Pro: IS, only CDN$820 or USD$600, quite a replacement for the 24-85 I use often. Cons: Digital only, not that fast, not that wide.

Sample image how I like wide angle, with my EF 24-85mm f3.5/4.5 USM:

In Jerez, Spain, April 2nd 2002. Slide film, probably Provia 100F, taken with my EOS Elan 7 / EOS 33.

Wednesday 16 March 2005

Tiling picture

jwz has hacked a script to tile images in Perl using PerlMagick. Looks nice.

But as he said, he has hardtime generating a multi-layered image to be able to reposition pictures individual as the union of the set of file format the support this and the set if file formats that ImageMagick and the GIMP both work with seems to ne empty. ImageMagick does not write GIMP .xcf files, and GIMP poorly support .psd, Photoshop native file format. And GIMP Perl scripting seems to be... unusable (last I tried it, I didn't find proper documentation to understand how it works).

Maybe SVG compositing would help ?

I'll look at this, I like the idea.

Camera repair

I need to have my Canon 20D repaired, after a bad fall. The window of the top LCD is broken badly. Last time, for a repair covered by the Canon warranty, it took 7 week to fix a battery door. I want to avoid the 7 weeks without camera, because it is just unacceptable (I forgot to complain to Canon about that). If anyone knows a repair shop in Montreal that can do that quickly for a decent price, I'd be much obliged.