More Lomo Photos

We found and developed four rolls of film the other day. Here are some of my favorites from the batch. Fisheye shots are Darcy’s, the others should all be mine (some of these are few years old though, so no promises on that).

Automated Road and Pavement Condition Survey Vehicle

I saw this on my way to work today. It’s got lots of stuff hanging off of it, pretty cool looking.

I couldn’t get a better shot (stupid stick shift) but there was more hardware on the front too. I definitely saw some laser warning stickers on the bottom and the side read “Automated Road and Pavement Condition Survey”, or something equivalent to that, and it had blue on white government plates.

Couldn’t find much on the web, and nothing really in the US even. Cool though. Anyone in the know, fill me in!

• http://www.dor.state.ne.us/mat-n-tests/pdfs-docs/npms.pdf
• http://www.roadware.com/products_services/aran/
• http://www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/ete/highways/maintenance/index.cfm?override=subtopic&infoid=6586
• http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/PR/2005/September/248-05.htm

ImageMagick Thumbnails and Contact Sheets

Wow, long time no post. Darcy and I got a digital camera about a week ago, a Nikon D90. We haven’t really had a chance to put it through it’s paces, but we’ve taken a few pictures around the house to play with it.

At about 3mb each (JPEG’s) the images are really slow to preview in Konqueror. I decided it would be better to be able to download all the photos from the card, then run a script to make my thumbnails. That way I wouldn’t have to wait around while I was viewing photos, instead I could just wait once at the beginning of the process.

My resulting script may have some holes, but it works well for me on Sidux. It takes all of the images in the current directory and makes 600×600 base thumbnails into a directory called “thumb” then uses those to make 12 image contact sheets into a directory called “contact”.

Your results will vary, but I ran it with three different scaling types (resize, scale, sample). I’m fine with the output from the fastest one (sample) but you can do as you please. I didn’t add command line options because I wanted to have consistent sizes and qualities every time I use it.

Side By Side Resize Method Comparison Click For Fullsize

Sample Contact Sheet Click For Full Size

It keeps you updated so you know it hasn’t stalled, here is a sample run.

jmhobb[email protected]:~/Desktop/D90/dcim/example$ digiCamProc.sh
Processing 16 Images

Creating Thumbnails
100%

Creating Contact Sheets
1 of 2
2 of 2
[email protected]:~/Desktop/D90/dcim/example$

And here it is. Feel free to comment your changes!

#!/bin/bash

# Digital camera thumbnail/contact sheet tool.
# http://www.velvetcache.org/2009/03/30/imagemagick-thumbnails-and-contact-sheets
# http://github.com/jmhobbs/helper-scripts
#
# Copyright (c) 2009-2010 John Hobbs
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
# files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
# copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
# conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
# OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
# FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

# CHANGELOG
# 2010-06-14 - Fixed contact sheet problem, thanks to Glenn Turnbull. (John Hobbs)
# 2009-03-30 - Created script. (John Hobbs)

### SETTINGS ###

# Scaling Methods:
# resize (Best/Slow)
# scale (Middle/Middle)
# sample (Worst/Fast)
METHOD="sample"

# Thumbnail Size
THUMBSIZE="600x600"
# Thumbnail Directory
THUMBDIR="thumb"
# Thumbnail Quality
THUMBQUALITY="80"

# Contact Item Size
CONTACTSIZE="200x200"
# Contact Sheet Max Width
CONTACTWIDTH="3"
# Contact Sheet Max Height
CONTACTHEIGHT="4"
# Horizontal Spacing
CONTACTSPACINGH="3"
# Vertical Spacing
CONTACTSPACINGV="3"
# Contact Sheet Directory
CONTACTDIR="contact"
# Contact Sheet Quality
CONTACTQUALITY="100"

################


CONTACTCOUNT=$(($CONTACTWIDTH * $CONTACTHEIGHT))
PIX=$(ls -l *.jpg | wc -l)

echo "Processing $PIX Images"
echo
echo "Creating Thumbnails"

mkdir -p $THUMBDIR
CTR=0
echo -n "0%"
for i in *.jpg; do
    echo -ne "\r"
    echo -n "$((100 * $CTR / $PIX))%"
    convert -strip -quality ${THUMBQUALITY} -${METHOD} ${THUMBSIZE} "$i" "${THUMBDIR}/${i}"
    CTR=$(($CTR + 1))
done

echo -ne "\r"
echo "100%"

echo
echo "Creating Contact Sheets"

mkdir -p $CONTACTDIR
CTR=0
PAGES=$(($PIX / $CONTACTCOUNT))
if [ $(($PIX % $CONTACTCOUNT)) -ne 0 ]; then
    PAGES=$(($PAGES + 1))
fi

PAGE=1
LIST=""
for i in ${THUMBDIR}/*.jpg; do
    if [ $(($CTR % $CONTACTCOUNT)) -eq 0 ] && [ $CTR -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "$PAGE of $PAGES"
        montage -label %f -quality $CONTACTQUALITY -frame 5 -tile ${CONTACTWIDTH}x${CONTACTHEIGHT} -geometry ${CONTACTSIZE}+${CONTACTSPACINGH}+${CONTACTSPACINGV} $LIST jpg:- > ${CONTACTDIR}/${PAGE}.jpg
        LIST=""
        PAGE=$(($PAGE + 1))
    fi
    LIST="$LIST $i"
    CTR=$(($CTR + 1))
done

if [ "" != "$LIST" ]; then
    echo "$PAGE of $PAGES"
    montage -label %f -quality $CONTACTQUALITY -frame 5 -tile ${CONTACTWIDTH}x${CONTACTHEIGHT} -geometry ${CONTACTSIZE}+${CONTACTSPACINGH}+${CONTACTSPACINGV} $LIST jpg:- > ${CONTACTDIR}/${PAGE}.jpg
fi

Holga Camera

I liked Darcy’s Diana medium format camera so much that when I went to buy her a fisheye camera (with waterproof housing!) from the lomography site, I fell for a Holga. Very nice looking camera, and fun to take pictures with. Anyway, I got back my first two rolls yesterday, one square and one rectangle. Turns out that the included film was all slide film except one roll, so the squares are normal film and the rectangles are not. Here’s the ones that didn’t come out as black squares :-) Click through for a huge version.

I’m particularly fond of the double exposure of Darcy with the red and blue flash, the clouds and the blue flash mustang.

Class Photoshop Project

I’m taking a GUI design class right now and for slightly odd reasons he is having us do mini-projects in Photoshop and Flash. For the last bit of the Photoshop one we were supposed to cut Lance Armstrong out of a picture and put him in any background we wanted. I choose the gates to Mordor and I’m quite proud of the results.

Click through for the full size, it’s worth it I think.