The Home of Tom & Morven

Today James Field borrowed Morven and myself to practise his photography skills for a couple weddings coming up that he’s the photographer for. Morv and I had already been thinking about getting some professional photos done because the only photos we really have of the two of us together are taken at night in less than desirable conditions, are blurred, don’t seem to be framed correctly, or I just look ridiculous as per usual due to some random awkward stance. It was mutually beneficial for both James, Morv and I, although once we actually saw the photos he took of us there was no way I wasn’t going to reward him for his services.

The layout for the day was he took photos up at Mt Osmond overlooking Adelaide, and a couple locations in the city. All up he took 150 photos, 43 of which he decided were acceptable. From those 43, we picked our favourite 15, and he then spent time adjusting the light, contrast, etc. He even fixed up my double chin! I highly recommend James as your professional photographer for any occasion, but just make sure you pay him well because he deserves it! I’m sure he’ll smack the pants off the sort of prices other professional photographers would charge, and when you see the quality of work he’s done with Morv and I you’ll totally agree.

Click on the thumbnail below to go to a gallery of our favourite 15 photos he took on the day. In case family are reading this and want to print one of these photos, just let us know which one you’d like to print so I can send a much higher resolution file.

Having seen what can be done with a good digital camera (Canon 20D) that he uses, I’m inspired to sell my little slimline camera and upgrade to a digital SLR. I like the idea of being able to shoot in RAW, where the camera saves all the pixel and sensor data, and then using Adobe Photoshop to do the actual processing of the image rather than the little processor of the camera. If you have a powerful computer, and sophisticated software with much more advanced processing features, you’re only cheating yourself out of image quality if you don’t used it (other than the time it takes to learn the software, and actually perform it). At the end of the day, the way I see it is that I might as well shoot in RAW, use up some hard drive space, and not lock myself into a reduced quality of photo from that occasion for the rest of my life as eventually one day technology will be so much better, that processing of photos will only get better and easier. The only drawback is the fact that it’s more data to have to store.

GIMP software is an open source version of Adobe Photoshop. Not quite as good, but good enough for most of us

Followed on from my last post the connector I got made the colour work like magic, although due to not having the software anymore for the card, I had to record the video and the audio seperately, and then put them together after using Windows Movie Maker (which was REALLY REALLY annoying, and it kept crashing very frequently). So it’s all under control now, but I still think that the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 multimedia card is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Last night I connected our VCR to my computer with my analog multimedia PCI card, and the video came through black and white. Since our VCR is really old, chews up various tapes, and doesn’t record anymore, I thought it was the VCR’s fault. I borrowed our neighbours spare VCR, plugged that up and was extremely scared when I couldn’t remove the already in there VHS tape. After ten minutes of freaking out thinking I broke it, I discovered this was their ’spare’ because it was broken.

I then borrowed their working VCR, and discover I still had the black and white problem. This means it is my computers fault. Not having used this PCI card for over a year and having installed a myriad of windows updates, and all that crap I thought I best update the drivers for the card. This means massive downloading, multiple reboots, yadda yadda yadda. Worth doing, since the software looks to be a lot nicer this year. Unfortunately, this did not fix my problem of black and white issues.

Eventually after poking around on the net for half an hour I discovered the connector plug I was using has some extra transistor or some crap like that put in it to make it black and white, and that there is actually two connectors that came with the card, and I seem to have lost the other one. I’m really hoping I did loose the other one, because then it means all I have to do is buy another one which I have, and tonight I shall test it out.