The Psychotic Monkey » Photography

Microsoft Photosynth

The Monkey — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:09:05 +0000

Microsoft has launched a technology preview of some pretty impressive photo software. Called Photosynth (here) the software looks for similarities in photos and then builds a 3D scene from them, allowing the user to look at the same scene from a number of different perspectives. And I have to say it’s very impressive. The Grassi Lakes collection is my favourite as it shows off more of what is possible with Photosynth at the moment. As a user you can “fly” through the scene and move from one photograph to the next. Outside the frame of the photo you’re currently looking at, the rest of the scene is laid out as dots to build up the 3D landscape. Whilst it’s still in its infancy, I can see this becoming a solid technology that provides a great new way to store and view your photos.

More lightning

The Monkey — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 07:22:14 +0000

Well 2 of them in fact!! The weekend proved to be a good one. The Lightning in question was XR724/AE (ex 5 squadron), and she ran like a dream. It was the first time in 2 years that the Lightning Association had run the engines in her and there were a few niggles (the first of which stopped the engine starting at all, but a bit of percussive maintenance soon sorted that out!). Unfortunately one of the niggles related to the engine exhaust petals, which weren’t moving as expected, and so the idea of running the engines with afterburner was scrubbed. There are a few things left to do to get her to a position to be able to do this, but all in all I felt the day went very well. It was awesome to see one of these beasts running at all (there are very few places where you can now see this, Bruntingthorpe being the main place in the UK). As for the photographs, well we’ll have to wait and see as I haven’t even looked at them yet!!

The second Lightning was in the garden of the owner of XR724, and was in fact XR725. Again, pictures to follow shortly, but it’s a damned better garden ornament than a bunch of gnomes!!!

Lightning

The Monkey — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 07:07:26 +0000

But not the weather variety. This weekend sees me indulge 2 of my passions. Aviation, and the photography thereof. Ever since I was a wee lad I’ve loved looking at planes. At the age of 14 this turned into a love for flying planes, and at the age of 17 I became one of the 1% of all pilots who get their Private Pilots Licence as early as is legally possible (the CAA won’t issue a licence to anyone under 17, but you can complete the rest of the course before then). Around 5 years ago I discovered that I actually have a keen eye for the photography of planes, and so with my brother we formed PGS Photographic (the site will be rebuilt shortly).

So this weekend sees me off to Binbrook (near Hull) to photograph one of the most beautiful and powerful aircraft the RAF have ever flown. The English Electric Lightning. These things stopped flying just before I can remember going to airshows with my family, and so I’ve never seen one in the air. There’s only one place in the world where this can be seen, and that’s in South Africa (one of the things I have to do someday). So why bother going to Binbrook this weekend to photograph an aircraft on the ground? It’s the sheer power of the thing. As anyone who has ever been near a Lightning when it is running will tell you, it’s incredible. Keith Hartley, who flies the Lightnings (lucky chap) at Thunder City in South Africa describes it as “strapping yourself to a pair of rockets and then lighting them”.

This weekend is the first time in 2 years that this particular lightning has had its engines running, and there is hope that the afterburner on one of the engines will be lit as it has been the painstaking work of a good friend of mine to get everything into working order. Will it light? Who knows? And half of the fun is the anticipation that it might! I’ll get some photos up next week. Suffice to say that tomorrow is a very rare opportunity, and one that I jumped at the chance of taking.