Bluescreen or greenscreen lighting problems

Earlier this year I tried my first greenscreen superimposing on video - except it was a blue screen!

...and it went fairly OK, as you can see. It was a good try, for a first try!  But look on the left, and you can see the shadow I was casting on the blue screen. The idea of chroma key is that we select everything that's blue, reverse the selection so that we've got everything that isn't blue, and then paste it onto the main video. That's what the software will do, anyway.

Trouble with shadow is that that isn't blue either... it's a sort of murky blue-gray. So you have to increase your tolerance (threshhold) as to how you define blue, so that it grabs the blue-gray as well. And then the selection starts eating into areas you don't want - such as my gloved arm.

Compare my upraised arm in the original bluescreen view with how it is on the video. It's been nibbled at, basically because there isn't a lot of difference between dark blue-gray, and shiny black.

The professional way of avoiding that problem is to have a bigger blue screen, and stand around 10 feet away from it, and have angled lighting that illuminates all of the screen equally. You want to avoid hotspots and avoid shadow.

Huh. Easier said than done, when you aren't living in a Hollywood studio.

I don't trust the Google Machine anymore.

Funny thing is, this blogger site is owned by Google, so they're probably reading every word that I type.

That bunch want to make all the connections that they can, and figure out who is who, so that they can target their advertising and suss who's doing what. Where will it end, though? Do they care about an individual's privacy anymore?

Once, the Google motto was "Don't be Evil." Nowadays, they seem to have crossed out the first word.

Their attitude, now, seems to be what Microsoft's was about ten years ago - do what the hell you like and sod the users.

Right now, I would trust Microsoft much more than Google.

My fav site, NBN (newbudnudes), has finally got the site upgrades that its sister site, NN (newbienudes) has had for over a year!

I don't know why it's taken so long, but I'm pleased that it's happened.

Preps for the Summer

Now there's been some nice UK weather in March and again in April, it's got me thinking about some of my plans for the summer. Main one is, I want to get "out there" and take some photos. Out in the countryside, I mean.

I remember thinking exactly the same thing back in spring 2010, but this time it's for real :)

MSO issues again?

I like the idea that lies behind MSO, but the way it's presented to us is horrendous.

The site's really a goddamn nightmare.