Almark

Thank you for your kind comments. This is only my second time as 1st Photographer, but I like to create something different every time, if I can. I am still doing this for free, and hopefully people will see what I can do. updated http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ries/claire.exe

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ries/claire.exe

Mid April 2008, the roads into Yellowstone were only open from the North and West. http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...yellowstone.exe

Thank you very much for that link. There is a lot there to get my head around.

Hi Folks, all interesting stuff. MY camera club have agreed to go for a full HD capable projector and a new PC capable of running it. Now I am happy enough to spec the pc but the projector is giving me trouble. You can get full HD projectors for less than £1,000 http://www.projectors.co.uk/pp/Projectors/...E%5FCINEMA.html So I was wondering if anyone out there has recently bought a 1080p projector at around £1,000.... The BENQ W5000 looks great and by August maybe the price will have come down to my budget of around £1,000 Any advice or suggestions are most welcome. Mark

Well done Igor, great job, thank you.

I think it was 'Papraus' or something like that.

I ahve no idea who Mark Ridout is, I must Google him.

This is a simple (and short) AV of images and music. (15MB) Bryce Canyon: Hoodoos - grotesque, eerie and often whimsical... are on display here, along with ancient trees and scenic views from the rim. Famous for its unique geology of red rock spires and horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters, Bryce offers the visitor a "Far View" from the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah. I live in Belfast,Ireland, and my house is just 355ft above sea level. I found that walking down into Bryce canyon, at 10,000 ft, meant that I had to allow twice the time to walk back up again! It took my breath away in more ways than one! A stunning part of world. I visited it some years ago, without a decent camera and so revisited it this year - simply to enjoy it again - and get some photography. I hope you like it. http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...eries/bryce.exe (15MB)

This was my first wedding as the 'lead photographer'. I naively thought that as I had assisted at ONE wedding - how hard could it be? Well, as I am sure many of you will know, it is much more difficult when you are in charge. Luckily the bride and groom didn't want much formal stuff, I did the usual shots anyway - mainly because on the day the parents asked for it. The groom was up for a bit of nonsense, and bought 40 pairs of very expensive 'Calvin Kinus' ;-) sunglasses. So we did a Reservoir Dogs thing, both guys and galls... It was a pity his rented red Ferrari blew a clutch and was substituted for a black Lamborghini - as the male wedding party's ties were bright red satin, and guess what the bridesmaids dresses were made of? Yes, right first first - bright red satin. But this Av is a quick sampler for the bride and groom to view when they return from their honeymoon. It includes just over 70 of the 1,300 odd images taken. It is the first draft and at this stage uses just jpegs extracted from raw, I am aware that some images need WB correction. Daft, as I am, I am going to give them this for free - for taking the risk of employing a complete unknown, who used his camera club mates to help out! I am more than happy to share the mistakes made - re wedding photography - for anyone going to do this sort of thing for a friend... http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ries/darren.exe

Hi Folks, and thank you for your comments. JEB: bring the wife and a tripod! She will just love the canyon, mine certainly did - even when everyone was ready to go and she had to venture back in search for me (still taking photos!) jfa: I made some mistakes, I had my camera on 'vivid' and when using such a high ISO you tend to get really over saturated images, with blues and purples that were not there at the time. So I did some work on each image to reduce the saturation, as it was OTT in some cases, and also used some noise reduction (DFine2). Finally I darkened some of the corners and removed one hot red pixel from the darkest shots. So in answer to your question, yes I did some work on them but in most cases it was to reduce saturation rather than to boost it. (Images taken with a Nikon D300 in 14bit lossless raw). At one stage I changed from my 18-200VR to a prime 50 f/1.8, I thought it was so dark that the prime lens would help. After a few attempts I realised I could not zoom into the features and it simply wasn't working, so I changed back. Some of the images were taken looking straight up, at quite a distance. LumenLux: These photos were taken on a tour of the 'National Parks and Canyons' organised by a firm called Archers here in the UK. Out of the 40 on the coach at least half were from the US. The USA is so vast that there is so much to see, this was my second time on the same trip! We had 20ft snow drifts in Yellowstone, multiple layers, Gortex jackets and wrapped up warm. We saw Grizzley's, Elk, day old bison, wolves circling the bison to get the afterbirth, Moose, Deer, Antelope and so on... Thank you all for your comments, I will post Bryce Canyon soon.

Hi Folks! After a boat trip up Antelope Valley, the day before, I expected the early morning sun to create great shadows on the walking trip up Antelope Valley. We had been told it was a mile hike and strong strudy shoes were needed. But what I didn't know was this was the 'Slot' canyon and therefore was very, very dark and only really got the sun at midday. Indeed the very experienced guide on seeing I had a DSLR kept pointing (and laughing) out the best place to set up my tripod, (which I clearly did not have with me) and kept telling me I had come at the wrong time, and that to get decent shots a tripod was essential! What could I do but laugh! Once he saw that I was not going to through my teddy bear out of the cot, he smiled and explained that at this time of year the sun will only come through the well known hole at 2.15pm. He went on the outline that he normally sets up his photographers in a semi circle at a certain point, and then throws up hand fulls of sand to create the dust to be caught by the sun. As I didn't have a tripod I was forced to use ISO 1600 to 3200 to get enough light for hand held. Thank goodness for the Nikon VR lens that allowed me to get some images at 1/15 sec. So, some pleasant music and images, I hope you like it. http://www.almark.net/photos/ant.exe

Andrew I enjoyed your show, it had good pace and kept my attention right to the end. I think I would have preferred to have a menu so that I could leave it and come back to it again. The poems would be lovely narrated rather than text. But these are just minor points - great project - well done!

Hi Folks, I want to thank all those that offered me advice and guidance to my first 'narration' PTE 'Norway'. It just goes to show that the sincere and genuine feedback / advice / guidance / tips and suggestions - offered by members of this forum does produce results. The various steps of this process are outlined here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7976 My Norway PTE was awarded 1st place (Novice) in the 2008 Northern Ireland Photographic Association, Audio Visual Festival. I have no doubt that the feedback I received, from this forum, contributed in no small measure to its success in this competition. Again, I thank you. http://www.almark.net/photos/norway.zip

More thanks, I needed this as well.

Thank you Mike I will check this out.

Where do you go to get a licence? I have used a track from a CD I bought, do I have to contact the publishers of that CD? Can camera club, for example, buy a licence that will cover their members? All information is most welcome.

When creating a DVD it gets to 99% and then I get a C runtime error and Videobuilder says the 'operation failed' in the log. Any ideas why?

Interesting, thank you

Hi Folks, I excluded the image resample to 72dpi as a result of the earlier feedback. I anyone wants the action set to include re size to 1400x1050 just let me know and I will update it. Folks looking for a monitor or laptop that will display 1400x1050 will probably have to go for 1920x1200, which also allows for HD playback.

Ok here goes, PTE.atn here http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/PTE.atn Tut on it all works Word 97 http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/actions.doc same in zip http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/actions.zip can someone, preferable someone not too familiar with Photoshop, please have a go at this.

OK Folks, I will go ahead and make some actions. let me think of the best way to do this. Den, re the sharpening, I picked this up from a so-called Photoshop Guru - during a local AV Group Workshop. He referred to it as output sharpening.

If you are interested in reading more: http://www.projectorreviews.com/epson/powe...080ub/index.php

Thanks Ken, that was most useful.

Good point Brian, not just a high end portable, but also ant desktop with a NVIDIA card. It supports about desktop graphics cards and only 10 laptop graphics cards. It just so happens that my desktop has a GPU has is not compatable, but my laptop is. Supported cards and features: http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVi..._Comparison.pdf