James Stephens

July 25, 2008

Nature Images - Wildlife Photography of the Natural World

Filed under: Technique — James Stephens @ 10:53 am

Please take a look at my new nature photography website, http://www.natureimages.info.

I have always had a fascination with nature as well as a passion for photography; the images in these galleries are the result of the union of those interests. My goal is to create simple and artistically successful images documenting living things in their natural setting, and as much as possible behaving in interesting ways.
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December 26, 2007

The River And The Ocean

Filed under: Poetry — James Stephens @ 5:40 pm

The river flowed inexorably,
Toward a distant indigo sea,
First over rocks the waters gushed,
Cascading down, the torrent rushed.
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December 21, 2007

The Maple

Filed under: Poetry — James Stephens @ 8:37 pm

SPRING

Warmed by the sun of early Spring,
A tender gift a bud did bring,
As bit by bit a leaf unfurled,
And revealed itself to the world
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December 1, 2006

Photographs Of The Institute For Advanced Study

Filed under: Technique — James Stephens @ 4:19 pm

For a little more than a year now I’ve been taking photographs of the Institute For Advanced Study campus as part of a website redesign for the School of Natural Sciences which was launched recently.
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April 4, 2006

A Review Of HDRsoft’s Tone Mapping Plugin For Adobe Photoshop CS2

Filed under: Product Review, Technique — James Stephens @ 2:20 pm

Recently I’ve been experimenting with HDRsoft’s tone mapping plugin v1.0.1 for Adobe Photoshop CS2. The plugin is designed to increase detail in shadows and highlights and from what I can see it does a very good job …
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March 29, 2006

A Look At DxO Optics Pro 3.5

Filed under: Product Review — James Stephens @ 8:07 pm

Recently I’ve been taking a look at DxO Optics Pro. I was attracted by the fact that this software is the only product on the market that offers automated correction for optical vignetting, chromatic aberration (both lateral as well as purple fringing), pincushion and barrel distortion. It also reduces noise, corrects for lens softness and acts as a RAW converter too.
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March 28, 2006

A Look At Some ISO 3200 Images From A Canon 5D

Filed under: Photographs, Technique — James Stephens @ 6:22 pm

I took some high ISO indoor shots at the weekend inside Walnford Grist Mill, near Allentown New Jersey. Light levels inside the mill were very low and although I did have my tripod to hand I made a decision to jack the speed right up to ISO 3200 and take some photographs handheld. You might be wondering why …..


Walnford Grist Mill, New Jersey

Walnford Grist Mill, New Jersey
Canon 5D with 24-105 f/4L IS lens @ ISO 3200
(noise reduction using Neat Image)
(click image to enlarge)

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March 24, 2006

Iptables On A Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL Broadband Router HOWTO

Filed under: Iptables — James Stephens @ 4:24 pm

Following on from the announcement of a renewed commitment to Linux by Linksys-Cisco and the release of the Linux-compatible WRT54GL Wireless-G series broadband router (discussed here), this post details how to run Iptables on a Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL router via firmware from DD-WRT. A fully functional example Iptables script is provided to get you started.
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New Full-Frame Vignetting Test Database

Filed under: News — James Stephens @ 11:59 am

http://www.the-digital-picture.com has recently added full-frame vignetting test results for a large number of lenses. The results show f-stop contour lines as well as a rectangle indicating the x1.6 APS-C frame coverage.
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March 22, 2006

Where And What You Can Photograph - Aspects Of The Law

Filed under: Photography — James Stephens @ 7:59 am

I was forwarded this illuminating article on the legal aspects of where and what you can photograph. The author, having review a number of information sources, offers up something close to the following:
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March 21, 2006

Backup/Restore Scripts For Imaging/Cloning Disks Using Partimage Under Linux

Filed under: Unix Scripts — James Stephens @ 9:57 am

In a recent post some advantages were discussed in using Partimage over g4u and Symantec Ghost. Following on from that, example scripts and a simple methodology are provided below to backup and restore Linux partitions using partimage run from a client system, to a remote server running partimaged.
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March 20, 2006

Problems And Solutions With Imaging/Cloning Disks Under Linux

Filed under: Linux — James Stephens @ 11:10 am

This post talks about some of the problems and solutions myself and other staff have discovered in trying to Ghost/image/clone Linux systems using Symantec Ghost, g4u, and Partimage.
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March 19, 2006

Book Review: Real World Color Management

Filed under: Color Management, Product Review — James Stephens @ 9:32 am

I’d like to recommend the book Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy and Fred Bunting.
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March 17, 2006

Scripting Partition Creation In Linux Using Fdisk

Filed under: Unix Scripts — James Stephens @ 8:19 pm

This post details a way to script partition creation under Linux using fdisk. I was originally trying to use sfdisk to perform this task as it is designed to be scriptable, reading lines of the form

     

where each line fills one partition descripton. The problem for me was that sfdisk only appears to accept partition sizes defined in cylinders; for partitioning similar sized disks with different geometries this is inconvenient.
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March 15, 2006

Some Observations And A Technique To Deal With Optical Vignetting/Light Falloff Using Adobe Camera RAW

Filed under: Technique — James Stephens @ 11:29 pm

Since the introduction of the Canon EOS 5D last year, there’s been a surge in full frame usage and a lot of subsequent discussion about vignetting with various lenses on the 5D in forums, newsgroups etc. Some people are very upset at the vignetting they are seeing. I’ve been doing some thinking on a way to correct the problem …
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