patrick charles

In 1995 I purchased an Apple Quicktake 100, one of the first consumer market digital cameras. It could store just 8 photos at 640×480 resolution (0.3 megapixels) on an internal 1MB EPROM. It had no LCD preview, no focus, and no zoom controls. Images were transferred via serial cable. What more would you want for $750? At 320×240 resolution, uhhh.. 0.08 megapixels, the device could store 32 photos. Competitive with a roll of film! Sadly, I took quite a few…

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Much has been written lately about the high quality of the latest iPhone’s camera, how megapixels aren’t the only metric, and how it outperforms other cell and consumer cameras. The ability to easily take HDR and panorama shots, with zero postprocessing effort, and instantly share them, gives the iPhone4 some advantages over even the highest-end SLR’s. Even the low-light performance has improved dramatically. With previous generation iPhones, I wouldn’t even bother to reach in my pocket unless there was an…

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Received an EyeClops BioniCam for Christmas. Device records magnified movies/images to a removable USB stick, in FAT16, which is hence, Linux (and Mac OS X) compatible.. Manufacturer warns that “the Eyeclops is a handheld bionic microscope meant to be used as a fun toy – not as an educational aid.” I’m no expert, but a tech gadget, particularly an electronic microscope, which is easy to use, magnifies whatever you point it at to 400x, and captures live video or photographs……

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To coincide with an exhibit during the month of March at the Denver Athletic Club, the new photo site is launched. www.pcharles.com

400mm on 80-400 80mm on 80-400 70mm on 35-70 35mm on 17-35 17mm on 17-35

Indoor Equirectangular Panorama Tools I used a Nikon D200 and Sigma 8mm lense and hugin to assemble the image data. Background In the past, I’d used Arcsoft’s Panoramamaker. Hugin is more difficult to use, but can handle image sets and scenarios that Panoramamaker would never be able to process. Method The first attached image is an equirectangular projection of six circular fish-eye images shot using an 8mm Sigma lense on the Nikon D200. The individual shots are taken facing north, south,…

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My father just picked up a Nikon 8000 slide/negative scanner. The following images were shot in film and scanned with a Nikon 2000. The images are shrunk to 1/16th the size of the originals. If you shoot with large format analog film, it is capable of scanning images at a resolution of 13,176×10,000 pixels with a bit depth of 16 bits per color channel. That’s 791MB uncompressed per image, yet it doesn’t capture as much detail as a professional drum scanner,…

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Here’s a few pics of the event last night, shot with the D100 with 2x tele-extender + 500 mm lense. As the moon falls into the earth’s shadow: As the last bit of direct sunlight disappears from the moon and total eclipse occurs: Illuminated only by ambient light and the glow of light refracted around the edges of the earth:

Climbed Mt. Royal this weekend. This is a small peak at the very end of the 10-mile Range above Frisco. The 10-mile range continues to the south and includes some impressive peaks including some of Colorado’s 14’ers. This particular peak is barely 10,500, but it shoots vertically up from the edge of Main St. in town, providing some nice views of the town and lake Dillon. An extreme telephoto zoom of Jeanya, standing on the side balcony of my parent’s…

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