Category Archives: Tutorial

Cinemagraph Pro – A Little bit Magic.

Posted on by
GypsyBridge2

Gypsy at the Bridge

by Jack Foster Mancilla
The small LensLord™ gallery on Flickr
The Full LensLord™ Gallery

This is a little quickie animated gif, created with Cinemagraph Pro, available in the App store.

The truth is that it is very easy to use. This is just a small handheld iPhone gif, but it would be a hundred times better with a larger format camera, and a tripod. I just wanted to play with it a little. …

What it does is converts any movie by freezing a chosen frame, and allowing specifically masked portions of the frame to reveal movement in the following frames. It is very easy to just brush in, or out, any portion of the frame by adjusting the mask.

The final product can be exported as a movie, for inclusion in other projects or as stand alone movies. Or, the final product can be exported as an animated gif, with options, like looping, bounce back, numbers of repetitions. …

This particular animated gif is a small part of a larger movie, that I chose the in point, the end point, and the time taken for the movement, I then added a bounce back, so the loop runs forward to the end then runs backwards, to the start, and then keeps that loop up forever….

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

A thing about Panoramas

Posted on by

This is just a little piece of information about why I shoot multi image panoramas. …I could shoot this with a single image using a very wide angle lens, or I could use a longer lens and take multiple images, and then stitch them together.

The secret is in the detail. … I believe everyone who reads this is a great photographer, or is smart enough to know the little things I know already. …

Detail. … The source image is a stitched set of ten images, five images per horizontal row. I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, whose RAW image width is about 5,600 pixels. … This combined RAW image has a width of 20,000 pixels, and a height of about 9,000 pixels. … In little words, “This image is way big.” That is what the image call-out is showing at the bottom of the image. Detail. … A little detail of the center of the combined image. If I had used a single wide angle image, my source would be only 5,600 pixels wide, not near as much detail in 5,600 pixels as 20,000 pixels.

I like stitched multi-image panoramas because they can maintain the beauty of a great space, as seen from a distance, and simultaneously, you can get close and see all kinds of interesting stories in the same image. … 😉 Details.

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

Portraits are not always people. But, light is always light.

Posted on by

This is just a single strobe on a single bird, with the flash bounced off the ceiling for a softer light. We are separated from the background by chance, and on purpose. … By chance, in that the room has four sides, two of which are twice as close as the wall I chose. … On purpose, I chose the far wall so that the light from the flash would fall off appreciably, leaving the subject well lit, and the background about two stops darker than the subject.

Why do I even mention the distance to the back wall? I have the source light on my person, and the inverse square law says that light will fall off from the source like this. … When you double the distance from the source to the subject, you cut the light to one fourth the amount of light. … So I knew how much the light would fall off between the subject bird, and the subject background wall.

This is a link to a gallery of non-furry animals.

This is a link to a gallery of furry animals.
And this is a link to a gallery of people.

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

How to Cover a Cover – Facebook

Posted on by

Hey. … I’ll bet some of you are connected on Facebook! And some of your connections are groups of like minded people for whatever like mindedness ideas you have. … 🙂

Only a Page/group administrator can publish a cover image for the page/group. But, we can all put images up there for the administrator to use for cover art. …

Click on the thumbnail to the rignt, and you will be able to read the directions. ->

This is a little tutorial I put together for a group I am a member of. Now, we are all starting to put up cover images, and we expect the administrator to change the image as our administrator sees fit. But, at least, we have given her/him a choice.

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

Tiny little Moss Heads

Posted on by

I received a very fine complement on one of my flower macros. Actually, the complement used one macro image to refer to the quality of almost all my flower images. Thank you Vern. … Vern’s Link.

Back to today. 😉

After thinking about my response to his complement where I said something like, “Flowers are all over the place. You do not have to drive anywhere, and waste gas, nor are there other hidden costs for keeping your photo practice up-to-date.” … Or something like that.

I thought I might illustrate that statement. So I did. … That little image, of the tiny moss heads, was shot a couple hours ago. … The moss is from a potted plant in the back yard. The little instructional image following, also includes some extra information. … 🙂 Ok, not much extra information, but it does show how I got the background.

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

Small flower in soft light

Posted on by

I love walking around with a Macro lens. Getting up close and personal with the small things I see in my world.

When you look through the viewfinder of any image that you are shooting, you decide some things, like what you want to include in the frame. A Macro, because it is looking at such a small thing has already eliminated 99.9% of the world around you. You have chosen to focus on the tiny bit of the world that has captured your attention. Now what?

One of the very cool things about a Macro lens, that all photographers know, but that many people who take pictures do not know, is that a Macro has an incredibly narrow depth of field. Depth of field is the photographic term for the range of acceptable focus where the images seems to be sharp, or is sharp enough to be called, “in focus.”

Any lens has a specific focus. Period. But, our eyes cannot tell the difference between super sharp focus, and really good focus, or even just good focus. …

Depth of Field Indicators

Sometimes we get a little help from the lens manufacturers. You will notice the difference on these two len’s barrels. …

The top one is an 85 mm portrait lens, and the indicators are, in green feet, and in white meters, and the list at the bottom is the f-stop of acceptable focus. … You can see that in the 85 mm lens, at f16, is about 7 feet to 13 feet from the focal plane of the camera.

While the acceptable range of focus on the 180 mm Macro, focused for a 1to1 macro is so tine as to be indiscernible, just looking at the lens.

So, in any photo you also can limit what is in the frame with acceptable focus. That focus limitation, or strength, depending on your application, is exaggerated when shooting a Macro.

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –

An Answer To – “How do I buy your images?”

Posted on by

Some people were having a little trouble figuring out how to buy images, so I thought I would create this little tutorial. Click on the image, to the right, to see an image large enough to read the directions.

This little tutorial takes you from an album image, on Facebook, to the gallery where the image can be purchased.

Purchased as an image of many sizes and finishes.
Purchased as card in different formats, and with text of your choice.
Purchased as piece of merchandise, like a shirt, or a cup.
Or, Purchased as a downloadable file of various sizes.

For those that asked me a question, “How do I buy your images?” I hope this helps. … If it does not help you, please ask me for help again. 😉

Jack Foster Mancilla – LensLord™ – Home –