Links: A Prologue

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This year was a pretty bad year for writing and posting on this site. In a way, it’s good because it means I was to busy working. On the other hand, it is disappointing because this site is as much an archive for myself to be able to look back on and see what I was doing at any given time.

For 2019 I really want to improve that, which means not only posting more from my various jobs and assignments but trying to create some kind of plan for regular posts. Having given some thought to it I’ve decided to try and do a series of posts, which comes out once a week where I collect some of the more interesting stories and bits of news from the week and link to them.

So let’s consider this post a trail run for what that would look like.


Remove backgrounds from photos automatically

I first saw this on Monday but it definitely made the rounds on various websites and social media throughout the week. Remove.bg (brilliant domain name) is a free service where you can upload a picture of a person and it will remove the background from the picture. Leaving you with just your subject and a transparent background. It only works on people/faces and at the moment is limited to pictures with a max width/height of 500 pixels.

I tried it out and uploaded a picture of my daughter and it did what it said it was going to do. Clipping items in Photoshop has gotten substantially easier in recent years, but if you are not comfortable with it then this is a pretty good alternative.


The Great 400mm f/2.8 Teardown Competition

Lensrentals.com is doing a series of posts where they disassemble and tear down 400mm f/2.7 lenses. The honor of being torn down and disassembled first went to Canon’s new 400mm f/2.8 L IS III lens.

The post is incredibly detailed with a lot of pictures to look at. It’s really interesting to see how these lenses are built and how incredibly complicated and complex they are.

Also, if you are not a Canon shooter they plan on tearing down Sony and Nikon telephoto lenses next.


Canon 1D X Mark III may come in 2019

Finally some whispers about Canon’s next 1D X camera. It feels like a new model is overdue at this point. I love my 1D X Mark II and would love to pick up another one, but I am going to wait it out and get two of the 1D X Mark III as soon as that model is released.

Waiting for Q4 2019 (or even later) is going to suck though

Link

The Year In Pictures 2018

The Sunday Review at the New York Times released their annual Year in Pictures post. There are some amazing images in there, this one is definitely worth taking your time with. Sit down with a cup of coffee, relax, and admire the work.


195 Gigapixel image of Shanghai

A Chinese company, aptly called Big Pixel, has created a photo of Shanghai with so much resolution that you can zoom in from thousands of meters away and see people’s facial expression.

The photo is a 195 gigapixel image, there are 1 billion pixels in a gigapixel, which means the photo has 195 billion pixels in it.

Wonder what would happen to the fans on my laptop if I tried to open it in Photoshop. ????

Link

So there you have it, Monday through Friday with links to the more interesting stories from that day.

I figure that saving the URL to one article/story per day and then gathering it all together and posting it on the weekend is something even I should be able to manage.

I’m going to skip this coming week as it is Christmas so look for the next Links post on the 5th or 6th of January.