Camera's in the shop

Currently, A1 Camera Repair in downtown Louisville has my camera in order to do a full-on cleaning of the lens, mirror, and sensor. $45 and 3-5 day turnaround. I'm sure that's fairly typical for someone to do it right (after my previous attempts at cleaning it myself, I discovered that was not what I was doing), but it seems a little steep after Peace Camera in Raleigh offered to do it for free.

Still, "free" and "have to drive 10 hours to get there" put together actually is not free in the strictest of senses.

I meant to actually show you an image of the dust and particles all over the corner of a photograph, in order to illustrate just how bad things were getting. However, since I was fighting with the lens and taking some rather particular shots in order to avoid getting any residuals, I managed not to capture any that clearly showed the problem. I confess, I was not thinking about the blog when I was taking the shots, or I would have taken a photo of some blank white wall or something. As it was, I succeeded in avoiding having dust obviously speckling the photographs I took, and failed in acquiring any examples for you.

"This was a triumph."

At any rate, some of my current experiments with the automated features of PhotoshopCS4 involve panoramas. Rather than take a really large photograph, I am able to take multiple shots of a scene and then stitch them together in post. I am learning what to do and what not to do, in order to get the results I like. Things to remember: turn off auto focus, don't use a wide-angle lens, definitely do not zoom in and out. These things together will cause the stitching to mis-match and make it very obvious that there were multiple images.

Hopefully the formatting of this post will make sense. I apologize to two groups of people for this: the ones that have me on their RSS feed readers and can't see the image, and the people on dial-up. Because I think it's a rather large image (or was when I uploaded it. I'm still not entirely sure what Blogger/Google/Picassa do to images when I upload them) and will take a while for you to load it.

Click the image to see the photograph bigger and clearer. The dusky lines crossing it at different points are the result of an artistic shutter speed in light that was getting too dark for it. It makes for an appealing vignette in individual images. When stitched together, you get this.

Addendum:
Speaking of RSS Feeds, keep up with me on Twitter for a slightly more up-to-date update on what I'm doing around town. I will sometimes announce trips to various places, and if you'd like a moment in the spotlight you may wind up as the subject of an impromptu photoshoot. I'll also be announcing next month's sale for my website. Just go to Twitter and look up tlamkinjr .

End of Summer

It's been another few months of radio silence, but a lot has changed in the meantime. While one of our party is now gainfully employed, the other has taken a career change and even moved. Though looking for new work, and limited to a laptop after burning up the work-horse desktop computer, I haven't slowed down my graphical pursuits at all. The paint on this palette hasn't dried yet. Speaking of which...

I haven't forgotten about the camera cleaning experiment. In fact, I've come back to you with some results!

Blowing on the lens yourself is always a bad idea, but I have found that many shops will suggest you try gently hitting the lens surface with a shot from the canned air they sell in many shops like Staples and even Wal-Mart. Stores specifically catering to the tech-savvy demographic will have more variety for you to choose from, and probably higher quality compressed air. Something to keep mindful of, no matter which brand you choose, is the law of thermodynamics. No, I'm not going to quote them, but just realize that this is compressed air that is suddenly being un-compressed as it comes out of the can. The can will get cold as you continue holding down the release, and there is the potential that the air will remain liquid if you spray for too long or at an odd angle. Now you may have gotten rid of the dust, but there is spots of chemical spray on your lens.

Those same shops will offer you a chamois ("shammy" for the uninitiated) cloth to brush off the larger dust particles. Be very careful to keep this cloth clean, because any dust or grit on the cloth could mean scratches on your lens the next time you brush it. Better to use a long-bristled (very SOFT) brush. This is still a potential hazard, as anything could be between the bristles just waiting to alight on the lens.

The kits - I confess, I never did trust the kits enough to try them on my camera or lenses.

This should amuse, though, to make up for it. After trying out these different methods to remove a couple of dust spots, I am now going to go with the final, fool-proof solution. I am going to look for a camera repair shop, tomorrow, that offers professional cleaning to both the mirrors and the lens.

How do you think I know the negative sides of those other methods? Yeah, woops. Learn from my mistakes!

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In other news, the photography bug has really grabbed me and I hope to make a career of it. If I cannot, I will do what I can to assist another photographer while I soak up all the knowledge and experience I can possibly garner. This new city is gorgeous and lends itself to countless possibilities for me to experiment and practice various techniques.

Feel free to see some of the pieces I've finished recently on my new gallery.

Long time no see!

No, the government hasn't bought us out in the middle of this economic crisis. Being a free service and a purely academic blog, we don't have anything that our new administration would want. No bailout money for this Palette of Pixels!

The other half of the staff has been wrapped up in new employment responsibilities, keeping her from making her debut post, so my attempt to entice her into saying something to you by going silent for months has failed miserably.

The weather has turned wonderful, and if the thunderstorms would stop bypassing my ridge, I would love to share some of the beautiful images of clouds that are possible. First, though, I'll need to explore how to properly clean a dSLR camera when pine, oak, and maple pollen finally work their way onto one of the lenses. It may be on the mirror, too, which would be even more annoying.

Unlike a regular mirror, I can't just take Windex to it. I'll need to investigate just how dangerous that Canned Air stuff might be to the delicate lenses. The propellent may be fine for cleaning the insides of electronic equipment, but that chemical may leave a residue on my lenses which would be worse than a spot of dust. I can photoshop that single blot out - but a big smear across the screen would be catastrophic. There are lens cleaning kits, too, but I'm dubious. The advertising for them always comes across as though it were written by the same people currently trying to sell you bucketloads of the new acai berries to make you lose weight like magic. Plus, the kits look really cheap like someone just repackaged a makeup kit. I will have to see, and I will let you know.

Since this is the first post in a while, I'll open the floor to any readers that may browse through the area. Do you guys have any questions, or have you discovered anything new from your respective palettes?