ADB

Now there's a breath of fresh air :-)

Hello all Further to the original thread on the T.S.S Earnslaw show I have made an alternative show. The alternative show has the same material as the first but have made the change that any standard sized horizontal image is no longer panned or zoomed. Panoramas and vertical standard sized images are still panned so as to maintain full screen viewing for a cinematic effect throughout the presentation. The original version can be downloaded here:- http://www.imagescapes.co.nz/DL/Earnslaw.zip The alternative version can be downloaded here:- http://www.mediafire.com/?fdlmott1ll4 I guess I'm actually doing some market research and I would be grateful for anybody to make any feedback about the shows, in particular I would like to hear from those that thought the original show had too many zooms and pans and was too busy and also from those who liked the original show pretty much as it was. If you can be really honest that would be great. From my own personal view I don't feel any show is bettter than the other but would certainly enjoy watching one more than the other depending on my current state of mind and mood. Thanks in advance. Cheers Andrew

Hi Dave Thanks for posting your show. I'll apply my structure critique system to give you my personal feedback. Here goes:- PHOTOGRAPHY/GRAPHICS There are some really nice images in your show and coming from NZ the landscapes shown are quite different from what we have here so I found them engaging. Some of your images felt like they were taken on the same trip and showed minimal change in lighting/weather conditions and this possibly results in a possibly less dramatic overall presentation, but as has been said many times before on these forums sometimes when doing a show its just about what you had to work with while you were there and in a lot of instances it may be the only time you will be at that location. SOUNDTRACK Fits the subject well and not surprising was used in Dances with Wolves :-) TIMING Its obvious you are timing you transitions to changes in the music and this adds to the flow of the presentation. My only comment would be your front image is on for too long but you could have the same image on for just as long with a long slow outward zoom to reveal the whole scene - now that would be classy and add interest. PTE MASTERY It had to happen but we are now getting on to pans and zooms. Personally I find your "mini" pans break up the flow for two reasons 1) Your pans are very small and in a lateral motion and more often than not there is not a lot of new subject matter being introduced into the view while you pan, I think on zooms a 10% zoom in or out during an image is actually really effective but on pans I personally don't think it works 2) You mentioned in one of your other posts that one of your rules was to pan or zoom then stop then transition to the next image, I find this gives a STOP signal to your presentation which doesn't fit in with the flow of your show or the soundtrack, your adding an intervention that takes focus off the "flow" (This "flow" is gaining a status equal to Austin Powers "Mojo" :-) ) I really like one or two of your long fades and I don't think users use enough long fades, its almost as though we are scared to have two images mixed on the screen at the same time but I find these types of fades give a third dimension to your shows. WATCHABILITY - Couldn't finish / Watched Once / Would watch again / Would watch many times OVERALL COMMENT Overall the show had a nice feel but flow was broken up with short pans which halted before transitioning to the next image. Great use of soundtrack and good timing for transition points. I felt panning and zooming could have been used more effectively to add additonal interest (but I'm gonna say that anyway :-) Interesting subject matter possibly benefiting from a wider range of lighting/weather conditions.

Dave your above comments re the soundtrack ring very true for me too, I think the music is sometimes just as important as the images and sometimes more. Just watching a movie without sound proves that. I think in some cases multiple versions could be a good thing and in particulat with this show I will do another version. I am showing it as part of a bigger presentation at a Photography Society Convention in November so the feeedback received on this thread has been invaluable to tweak the show for a wider audience. Ah Patrick I think you and I are on the opposite ends of the scale in determining what makes an interesting presentation, and of course that is fine :-) When I get a chance (later this month) I will post a more "record" type portrail of this show as opposed to "art" portrail and you (and others) may be good enough to let me know how the two compare. Dave nice to have a solid supporter out there :-) but more importantly your comments show that these presentations are viewed differently by different people and there is no difinitive right or wrong way of presenting a show. Thank goodness we have these variances in the world otherwise it could all be a bit boring really :-) Thank you ALL for your comments and thoughts on what I have found to be fascinating topic. Regards

Dave Thanks for your comments, and I actually agree with most of them (but not all). Something has dawned on me with a clarity similar to having a bright light switched on in a totally dark room with regards to this show. I have rewatched it time and time again but can honestly not see why other people don't enjoy the show like I do, infact if I just do stationery fades with no panning or zooming I honestly think the show is inferior from my perspective. Now I'm not ignorant and certainly can't ignore the fact that several viewers have said they don't like the pans and zooms because they can't clearly see the full image, or the pans too quick etc etc. So what's going on here? This is my theory... I know each and every one of these images intimitely I obviously took the original images but more importantly have looked at these images many many times in the past (they span over 8 years!) I think what is happening is that I know these images so well that if I just run a straight show with limited pans and full images with tonnes of time to watch them in their entireity that I am just, well, bored! By presenting in the way I have I have completely changed the original feel and emphasis of the images, in some cases I'm only revealling bits of images and this all seems quite natural as I "know" from countless prior viewings what the whole image is like. So this brings me to a point Maureen Albright made when she said something along the lines of "Make your show for yourself not everybody else" I kinda of like doing that but in this case if I'm honest I was actually making this show for others enjoyment or at least trying to make a show that would have general appeal. If you are in business its probably VERY important you have general appeal. So what have I learnt? Well if this show is going to play quietly away in my living room as an almost background artpeice I wouldn't change a thing because it feels "right" to me and puts a bit of mystery back into something that is "old hat" for ME , however if I want to show this to a viewer that has never seen these images as "whole" images before I need to tweak the show and understand that the viewer will want time to absorb the totally new images they are viewing not doing so is a little like having subtitles in a movie displayed far too quickly so that viewers don't get a chance to read them. Dave I don't think its a good idea to apply all those rules you mentioned to all your shows or you could end up with the "all your photographs are taken using the rule of thirds type syndrome". Watch any motion picture and you will see some of those rules are broken regularly and successfully. Dave thanks again for your post has really answered some questions for me and maybe others who haven't considered how familiar you can become with your images and the effect that can have on your intended audiance. Cheers Andrew

John - Thanks for your comments and do look us up when you come back to see the Earnslaw just ask for me at the National Bank in Queenstown. I think I'll do a second version of the show with some of the pans, zooms taken out or reduced and maybe post to see what others think. Ken - EPA - Environmental Protection Agency? We call it something different here, there has actually been some murmurs in the past about the smoke but I think its accepted its not the Earnslaw we need to worry about causing Global Warming, the fires actually burn quit clean normally but I think they choke it with coal to get that effect on purpose. Patrick - I don't think its generally possible to be too harsh when talking about a show as viewers are only stating how it felt to them and if authors don't want to know they should possibly say so when posting shows here. The great thing is that I guess we all appreciate different things from these productions and as an author you become very biased about your work. As a result of your's and others comments I plan to tweak some pans and zooms and re post in the neare future to see how the show sat with viewers with the "flow" reduced but longer focus on the images themselves. Cheers Andrew

Peter & Patrick Thank you for your comments, nice to be on the receiving end of the critique system certainly puts into a very clear perspective for me! :-) There are two areas of your comments that do cause me some concern and they are... PANNING I appreciate that not everybody is into the whole panning and zooming thing but when you have a presentation that incorporates a lot of panoramas as soon as you pan or zoom some but just have others as stills you do start to get a stop/start or jerky feel to the presentation, its almost as though you break up that ever important flow. Patrick in particular you mentioned that some pans were "jerky" this is of real concern as on my PC they are velvet smooth. This possibly highlights that some viewers will struggle to see your presentation as the author intended if their hardware doesn't at least match the authors. I try to give my presentations "cinematic" quality and when you display a panorama as a thin strip across the middle of the screen this can break that feeling. SOUNDTRACK I'm a little saddened by Patrick's comments about the soundtrack. I'm being totally honest when I say I have spent more time in choosing the soundtrack for this presentation than any other, I was hoping the initial steam whistle type sound of the first track would mimick the whistle of the steam boat, with the second peice suggesting the swepping magestic landscape the Earnslaw operates in and the third peice sounds just like the chugging of a steam engine, the fourth peice then brings in a sadness to mark the time when the Earnslaw is hauled out of the water and put up on a dry dock for maintenance. Did any of that register with you or did I fail in my mission miserably? :-) Thanks again both for your comments. has really got me thinking. P.S. Peter, this is where I live so yes I do go back time and time again and do have that chance of capturing that special moment. Cheers

Hi Peter Thanks for the spike info makes a lot of sense to me now :-) I truly understand about the whole having to make the best of what the weather throws at you when only being in a location for a certain limited period of time, its for this reason I believe some of the best shows are those based on areas not too far from where one lives and taken over a long period of time. Some of those postcard photographers must just spend days waiting to get that perfect shot (then apply a heavy polarizer and crank up the saturation in photoshop big time :-) Cheers Andrew

Hello all I have just submitted a new show to Beechbrook, not online there yet but can be downloaded here:- http://www.imagescapes.co.nz/DL/Earnslaw.zip Show features the iconic T.S.S. Earnslaw coal powered steamboat against a variety of backdrops and in various weather conditions. The Earnslaw has been plying the shores of Lake Wakatipu for almost 100 years. Hope you enjoy. Cheers Andrew

Hi Peter The title of your show caught my eye. I had the pleasure of visiting Holy Island for half a day (restricted by the tides) back in 2005. It was definitely a place I could have lingered in if I had have had more time. Great to see it in a different moody light. Definitely thought the images at the start of your show were the strongest. By the way, do you know what those huge Spikes are on the coast? we saw them on the drive in but never got round to asking the locals what their purpose was. Cheers Andrew

Hi all Its really interesting reading the different approaches to workflow. I guess the challenge for Igor is to build an integration into PTE that caters for many types of workflow I guess the easiest way to do that is have universal intuitive access to any PTE function from anywhere in PTE. In terms of my own workflow I always nail my soundtrack first and use it for my "map" and timing guide for all my transitions. Once I have my transitions looked into the timeline and "Hold Time Points" selected its really easy to shuffle images around. I always struggle if I try and build a soundtrack to match my layout and timings. I also find I'm constantly amazed at the "third" image two separate images can give you during a long fade and I sometimes stumble across these good matches which result in images being shuffled around to achieve the desired effect, the sorting table is great for that.

Igor This is really good news thank YOU! Cheers

Barry Don't know if this is the problem but did you run the show from the DVD's or Hard Drive? I'm picking off CD or DVD the laptop may not be able to keep up whereas if launched from the hard drive may be a different story. Cheers

The latest PTE 5.0 is fantastic and lets you create amazing shows with almost infinite effects reasonably easily. However being Human once you get what you wanted you then want something better! My personal view now is that WNSOFT need to devote a good chunk of time considering the optimum workflow. We have all the excellent features but execution of them is not as efficient or intuitive as they could be. The workflow should be that a new user should rarely have to refer to the manual (though it is a damn fine manual :-) I find myself spending a lot of time going out of the time line and into the "Slide Sorting Table" or "Slide List View" and of course when you do this you lose your place in the time line and have to find your position to start editing again. It feels that these editing areas need to be more closely integrated and have a very intuitive flow. For example when in Timeline Mode you should be able to "flick" quickly to the Slide Sort View shuffle some slides around and flick back to where you were in the Timeline, or Vice versa. This is probably my biggest frustration (not that using PTE is frustrating) when using PTE. Of course hot on the heals of this is the fact that you spend so much time in the timeline yet the preview in the Timeline Window does not actually preview the final show as it doesn't incorporate O&E effects. How do other users find PTE 5.0 from an intuitive workflow point of view? Cheers

Dom As always your eclipse trailer is stunning and extremely professional. And a very good example of what PTE 5.0 is capable of. Very inspirational! Regards

Igor Great to hear you have had a relaxing vacation, very important to get that work/home balance right :-) Hope you took lots of photographs on your vacation and maybe we will see a PTE show sometime? Couldn't agree more with Al's comments, PTE 5 is very stable indeed. Kind regards

Lin Yes the DOF certain makes this task harder for closer quarters but your Helicon Focus is a brilliant solution, great technique to keep in the back of my find for those future "impossible" shots. Wouldn't it be great to be able to lug around 300-800mm, I was thinking of going the other way with the infinity zoom sequence and use my 17-35mm but I'm pretty sure the distortion at the lower end might make it tricky to match up smoothly. I wonder how long before someone uses this technique to have a Flawless Google Earth zoom in at the start of their show? I guess though lenses will have nothing to do with it and it will just be about screen dumps. Cheers Andrew

I think I have cracked this infinite zoom thing. Have a look at the following file on media fire:- http://www.mediafire.com/?b1i0j1g4wvz Method: 1. 6 images taken with range of zooms from 400mm down to to about 28mm 2. Each image on separate slide. 20 secs display time and 2 second fade transition set for each. 3. On slide 1 go into O&E 4. Add a key point at very start and select perspective correction and zoom in as far you want to 5. Add a key point at very end and zoom out to full slide 6. Temporarily add image 2 to the O&E window as an independant object. 7. Towards the end of the slide where the 2 sec fade transition starts add a keypoint for image 2, set to perspective correction and opacity to 50%. This will now allow you to line up image 2 to image 1 using pan & zoom 8. On image 2 (still on slide 1) add a keypoint at the end of the slide set to perspective correction and opacity to 50% and align to image 1. 9. Right click image 2 in the O&A and copy then delete the image 2 object. 10. Move to slide 2 11. Delete image 2 12. Right click and paste image 2 you previously copied from slide 1 13. Delete the very first keypoint 14. Slide the second to last keypoint to the start of the slide and change opacity to 100% 15. Slide the last keypoint to the end of the opening transition and set opacity to 100% 16. Now go back to item 5 on this list and do it all over again for subsequent slides. Looks a lot but pretty quick to do. Cheers Andrew

Hi Dave Why don't you try uploading to mediafire? Cheers Andrew

Hi Lin Thanks for posting your latest effort, was quite impressed but agree still not 100% perfect. As you say with unlimited DOF should be closer to perfect. I have been trying to make a similar affect but all on the one slide but to be honest if you have 5 or 6 images it starts to do your head in :-) Separate slides does seem the way to go. Also completely forgot about playing with Perspective Option. Cheers Andrew

I have been experimenting with the endless zoom concept and something that is becoming apparant is that its probably not the lining up of the images that is the biggest problem as I can seem to do this quite easily in O&A but more the lining up of the zoom perspectives that is going to be difficult. With the custom zoom options that are available there doesn't seem to be any way to have an end zoom speed that's anything other than FULL SPEED or TOTAL STOP and this is shown clearly in the graphs of the various zooming options. It's easiest to explain using those graphs, I think to be able to line up percieved zoom speed from slide to slide or object to object those graphs would need to allow you to start or end at a point other than STOP or FULL SPEED - Maybe if this is possible we should have a new topic in the "improvements" section? A work around is to play around and switch to the next object/image well before you have gotten to the end of your zoom (or well after the start of the zoom) but this of course means you will have to take more photos to make up your total infinite zoom affect. Does anyone have any other way of achieving a smooth zoom transition?

D-Photo - New Zealand http://www.parksidemedia.co.nz/dphoto_profile.html Photographers Mail - New Zealand http://www.parksidemedia.co.nz/pmail_profile.html Cheers Andrew

Hi Lin Why do you need a grid? Can you just not temporarily change the opacity of the first and second images to say 50% and line them up visually then correct them to their correct opacity to achieve the conitinual zoom affect? If I get time I might have a go at a sequence. Cheers Andrew

Steve you are a magician!! Thank you! Cheers Andrew

Lin Thanks for the info. Used to use PTAssembler but now on to PTGUI simply because of the Graphical Interface. You hinted on the endless zoom using several images at different zooms but aligning carefully in O&A, I think this could stand some further experimentation. One thing that amazes me with Max Lyons and taking 196 images, by the time you have taken them surely something must have moved? clouds, shadows, wind affected trees/grass etc... Would love to hear about your results for workable limits on stitched images and PTE. Al Thanks for posting the 57 image pano, was impressive and smooth - did noticed the intial shimmering too. In regards to my comments above did you have any stitching issues in terms of the time taken to make 57 exposures and having clouds etc move on you? I bet if you used PTGUI or PTASSEMBLER you stitch would be very sharp! Have you been in a camera shop lately? Its like a big deal if they sell a 35mm Film Camera and a top quality second hand Canon E0S 5 sells for about $100 USD!! Absolutely crazy! Many of the C41 and E6 processing places have centralized to the big city centres and I hear sadly many people in the "film" processing/manufacturing industry are being laid off. On my recent photography road trip one of my companions was using Velvia Slide Film and shot about 14 rolls. This cost him about $450 USD in film costs and processing without any prints. It equated to around 504 images. I was using Digital shot around 2000 images and the cost was ...Nil! I know its not about how many images you make but when its costing around $1 a shot you aren't going to be quite as trigger happy or try quite as many alternate shots and certainly aren't going to capture big panoramas. He has today ordered a Canon 30D Body and is very excited about it. Cheers Andrew