This is a large format camera:

Unlike your digital camera (which most likely doesn’t even need you to focus), or an old-school SLR film camera (which only needs focus, shutter speed, and aperture), a large format camera has a lot of controls. Check out how each piece moves in 3 dimensions in the picture below:

2 of the adjustments you can make are called tilt and shift. Without getting TOO technical, what you’re doing is moving different focus planes to interact with each other in a way that you can’t really do with other cameras, thus selecting a certain region of the film to be in focus. There are modern tools that can do this on modern cameras (even digital!) – for example, lensbaby.com offers a lens that can make those adjustments. What will this do for you? You may remember this picture from a previous blog entry:

So, if you don’t have an extra $350 to spend on a lens (ok, let’s face it, you’re going to use it to buy video games and Mt. Dew), you can still acheive this same effect with a Gaussian Blur. It’s a great effect. You take a picture of normal sized people and magically they become miniatures!

Select a round (circular or oval-shaped) selection around the center, in focus, portion of your photo. Invert your selection and feather it by a lot. 100 pixels isn’t too many. Select Gaussian Blur from the filters section and experiment with settings. Can you make a photo look like these?

Email me *your* contributions at justin(at)internaldrive.com (@ symbol left out intentionally to prevent robotic spam crawling!) and I’ll post the best ones in a future entry.

o maybe you’ve heard of Copenhagen. No, I’m not talking about the little can, I’m talking about the UN-sponsored global summit on climate change. If you haven’t heard of it, you must not read very many blogs! October 15th is designated as “Blog Action Day,” and 20000+ different blogs mentioned the big day. One interesting thing to note is that this number, as high as it is, is only one half of 1 percent of all of the blogs that are out there.

iD Tech has been pushing green issues for years. We know that we can help save power by turning off lights, computers, and monitors when we aren’t using our labs, and that reusing cups (by putting our name on them!) helps reduce waste. Did you bring in batteries or ink cartridges last year? Maybe a used cell phone or two?

If you have any more ideas on how to improve efficiency and reduce waste at camp, we want to hear them!

It’s a question people ask me about my photos sometimes:

“How do you get the background to be blurry like that?”  The photographic term for this blur is “bokeh,” which is derived from a Japanese word meaning “blur,” and it specifically means the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus area of an image.

Without going into a complete technical dissertation, it’s time to talk about aperture and depth-of-field (DOF.)  The aperture is the technical name for the opening in your camera lens that lets the light through.  The wider the aperture is open, the more light that is let in.  The depth-of-field (DOF)  is the term for the area of your picture that is in acceptable focus.  Below is what is known as a “shallow” DOF.

This effect, having the background look blurry, is one that is often pointed out as making pictures look more pleasing.

So, how do YOU get a blurry background with your camera?  There are two basic paths to this result: the hardware method and the software method.  If you have a camera that has aperture (aka f-stop) settings and manual focus, we can experiment with change those settings.  If you’re using a fixed-focus camera or a fixed-aperture camera, we can focus on the sotware method.

The Hardware Method:

Get as close to your subject as possible, and use the smallest f-stop number your camera allows.  Experiment!  The closer you can get, the better, so if your camera has a “macro” setting, try using it.  Aperture priority (usually indicated by a letter “A” on the selection wheel) is also a good thing to use, since that’s where you set the f-stop.  The lower the number, the wider the aperture, and the more chance of blurry backgrounds!  For example:

The first image was shot at f/5, the second at f/32.

The Software Method:

Import your photo into Photoshop.  Select the subject and then select inverse.  Use the Gaussian Blur filter to blur your background.  Try feathering your selection first.  Use small amounts of blur!  If you use too much, it can make real photos look fake.  This is called the faux-tilt-shift.  I”ll cover that in an upcoming blog, as well a bit more of the science behind WHY the blur acts how it does between different cameras.

Above:  what could happen if you use too much blur!

I encourage you to read up about aperture, DOF, and f-stops.  If you have access to a film camera, shoot some film.  It’s a completely different experience than digital, and you could learn some things.

Happy snapping!

So camp is in swing right now, and there are so many amazing projects coming into iD Tech Camp’s headquarters. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a camper start out nervous and shy, and by the end of their week at camp, they have friends, skills, and amazing project. If you haven’t been to the basement yet, go check it out – examples of stellar projects are posted there for everyone to see.

A couple of campers, in “serious-face” mode.

–Justin

That’s right, campers – it’s that time again.  Yours truly, along with RM Charlie, were selected to receive the first ones.  Josh got one too!

Training was very successful at Chicago and Philadelphia, and now just our California training is left before camp begins; unless you’re working at or attending CSU, Emory, Vanderbilt, or Miami – they’ll be starting even as that training is in progress.  More training pictures below the fold:

Todays lesson: Make changes globally across multiple files using the sync function of Adobe Lightroom CS4.

Click here to open in new window.

Stay tuned for more blogs and vlogs!

Todays lesson: how to click and drag to change selected parameters in the “adjustments” selection in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Click here to open in new window.

Stay tuned for more blogs and vlogs!

Todays lesson: Using the new “Content-Aware Scaling” feature in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Click here to open in new window.

Stay tuned for more video tutorials!

I’m spending this weekend at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, California, for the final round of qualification in the VEX Robotics “Elevation” tournament.  (For a quick rundown on the rules, keep reading.)

iD Tech Camps gave away a scholarship to the “Excellence” award winning team – Team Spyder from Poway High School!

The winning Alliance consisted of 3 teams, the rest of the matches were 2-on-2.  Check out the pictures – Robotics isn’t just for boys!

The ingenuity and enthusiasm I see at these tournaments is unbelievable.  We use the same kits in our iD Tech Camps RoboContenders class that are used for this tournament, and I can’t wait to see what this summer’s crop of roboticists comes up with!

Here’s a quick rundown on the rules, from the vexrobotics.com website:

• Elevation is played on a 12′x12′ square field. Two alliances – one “red” and one “blue” – composed of two teams each, compete in each match which consists of a twenty-second autonomous period followed by two minutes of driver-controlled play.
• The object of the game is to attain a higher score than your opponent alliance by placing cubes into goals, and by “owning” goals by having the highest cube in a given goal. Points can also be earned by “parking” on the platform or by “controlling” the bonus cube.
• A bonus is awarded to the alliance that has the most total points at the end of the Autonomous Period.

All of us have that friend – the computer wizard. Even among the so-called power users, some people still shine as outstanding. What’s their secret? One secret to super-speed is to know the shortcuts for the programs you’re using. We all hunt through menus to find what we’re looking for, but that’s for newbs. Once you start getting expert, sorting through menus just takes time that could be better spent tweaking details in your images.

Enter the keyboard shortcut. This is how those speedy users get so fast. One key combo, and they’ve zoomed in, or saved, or switched from one image to another. Try it yourself! Here (thanks to Trevor Morris) is an awesome resource; all of the keyboard shortcuts for CS4 – both Mac and PC versions!