Of web browsers... good and bad
Sun, Jun 14 2009 10:18
| Photo Tech
| Permalink
One of the things I've learned, by adding web-design skills to my photography and graphics, is that not all web browsers are created equal. While the technology of the internet is taking off, some browsers are just not keeping up. One of these lagging browsers is Microsoft Internet Explorer. During the building of this website, I used different browsers on different platforms (Mac and Windows) to test my site. Only one browser was consistently bad: Internet Explorer. When Internet Explorer 8 was officially released, I had high hopes that Microsoft would adhere to new web standards for the internet. It didn't happen. IE 8 is, in some ways, worse than IE 7. Why? Because Microsoft should have known better, and tested better. IE 8 still does not render well, or play well, with Javascript, a known web standard. If you're using IE 7 or IE 8, here's a link for you to test how well your browser works with new web standards. It's called the Acid3 test. Try it. Then try Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, or Opera with this same link. In my tests, IE 8 got a total score of 20/100 and couldn't even complete the test. Absolutely inexcusable. On the other hand, the new version of Safari, version 4.0, ran the same test quickly with a perfect score of 100/100, the first non-beta browser to accomplish this. Firefox 3 received a score of 92/100 in my tests, and couldn't complete the final rendering. Google Chrome reached 93/100 with an error. So, in conclusion, not all browsers are created equal. And some, like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 or 8, shouldn't be used at all.
Click this link to test your current browser.
Click this link to test your current browser.
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Moab trip photos now available
Thu, Dec 11 2008 05:15
| Photo Shoots
| Permalink
Some (but not all) Moab, Utah trip photos have been uploaded to the website. There are still dozens more to add, but at least there's a few up now. New categories for Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park have been added in the Utah section of this site. Be sure to check out the 87-megapixel, 76.5-inch-across (at 300 dpi) Delicate Arch panorama in the Panoramas section. Below is a small section showing the fine detail of the entire panorama.
What is HDR?
Wed, Oct 8 2008 04:42
| Photo Tech
| Permalink
HDR, or High Dynamic Range imaging, is a technique of taking multiple photographs of the same scene (with a tripod) using different exposures (also known as bracketing), then post-processing these exposures with special software to create one image that encompasses the greatest dynamic range of light that your eye originally perceived. While today’s top digital cameras have sensors that display a higher range of highlight and shadow detail than film cameras, they still fall short in high-contrast scenes. If, for example, you’re taking a photo of a beautiful sunset where the sky is particularly bright, if you let the camera expose for the sky, the foreground can come out too dark or underexposed. And likewise, if exposing for the foreground, the sky can be overexposed and washed out. But with using HDR, you could take one picture that exposes for the sky, another picture that takes a "normal" exposure, and then a third picture that exposes just for the foreground. Once the three images are loaded onto a computer, the software will then take the best exposed parts of each photo, and composite them into one image that has pretty much the same dynamic range as what your eye originally perceived. With the photo examples below, the photo on the left is just about the "normal" exposure that the camera's sensor recorded while the image on the right is resulting composite of three different exposures. As you can easily see, the sky is normally exposed and not washed out. Although some purists might consider this cheating, the photo on the right is more accurate to the way the scene was actually viewed by the human eye. Photos on this site that were created with HDR will have a [HDR] tag at the end of the caption.
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If I've thoroughly confused you, take a look at Wikipedia's definition of HDR. Wikipedia also explains a little bit about the history of HDR.
XIf I've thoroughly confused you, take a look at Wikipedia's definition of HDR. Wikipedia also explains a little bit about the history of HDR.