[Shawn Miller]

[Alex Sporanox] “How I have to set the lights?
Softbox boom for subject and the other softbox (left and right) for the screen…..or

Softbox boom for screen and and the other softbox (left and right) for the subject??”

Ideally, you would have a five light setup, two for the backdrop and three for your subject. If you only have three lights to work with, you might consider using two for the backdrop and reserving the softbox for your subject. If you have a reflector, you could use that for fill.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Alex Sporanox] “Simon, thanks a lot!
Next weekend I’ll try to put into practice your advise.”

Simon has given a lot of good guidance on the post side, and he’s completely right about your exposure. To add on to his comments, It’s best practice to light the backdrop and the subject separately; light the green screen, then put your subject on their mark, they should be completely silhouetted against the backdrop. Take care to ensure that there is as little spill on the subject as possible. Turn the lights off, then light your subject, the backdrop should be VERY dark with as little illumination from the main lights as possible. If you’ve done your job correctly, you should be able to turn all the lights on and shoot without having to re-adjust exposure. You should also try to get rid of the wrinkles on you green screen. ☺ BTW, which camera are you shooting with, and which codec are you capturing to?

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Walter Soyka] ”
In reality, Microsoft has a world-class research division, but they have done a dreadful job of commercializing their research. Microsoft has recently reorganized Microsoft Research to help bring their concepts to market more smoothly.”

Absolutely! Microsoft has always poured a ton of money, time and effort into research – and they have the patents to prove it. To your point though, a lot of that research was more or less academic and without a lot of focus on market viability… they seem to be getting better about that.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “Microsoft is essentially a software company – they began moving into the hardware realm around 2011, and have not seen great success in that side of the business. According to their 10-K annual report, required by the SEC for all publicly traded companies in the US, they imply that there are too many “risk factors” inherent in the hardware side of things, and it would reduce their operating margins:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-radical-new-business-plan-is-hidden...

Seems to be almost the inverse of Apple’s approach to things, but it certainly works for Microsoft.”

No doubt that MS is first and foremost a software company, but they’ve actually been in the hardware business in a serious way since the early 2000’s with internet connected entertainment appliances like the x-box and then multi-touch devices like the original Surface, which shipped around 05′ or 06′. I don’t think I’m allowed to say when I first saw the roadmap which included Surface Pro… but I would be really, really surprised if Apple was working on anything like it years ahead of it’s release. ☺

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Craig Seeman] “Although Apple had been working on a lot of these projects years ahead of Microsoft, as far as Joe-public is concerned, it’s Microsoft who is bringing new things to market before Apple. It’s Microsoft that is now an innovator in hardware. And as they say, perception is 99% reality.

Perhaps Apple will have a rethink on the secrecy game. It really doesn’t work when people have to make business decisions.”

I didn’t see who made the original comment, but I wonder which projects Apple had been working on years ahead of Microsoft.. I’m not exactly “Joe-public”, so I’d like to know why Microsoft isn’t an innovator in hardware, someone will have to explain that one to me.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Mark Suszko] ”

Wouldn’t it be cool if the next Apple workstation used a modular, plug-together, Lego-like architecture, where you could stack RAIDS, cooling systems, Graphics and memory in multiple combinations? Would make user customization easier while keeping the individual components relatively proprietary.”

Isn’t a flexible, user configurable machine the exact opposite of Apple’s design philosophy though? It seems like soldered-in GPUs and a nonstandard CPU case makes the ultimate statement about what Apple thinks a workstation should be.

EDIT: I should have added that I’m not saying that the nMP isn’t a great machine… it just looks like Apple’s vision of a powerful desktop isn’t built around the idea of user configuration or flexibility.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Gabe Strong] “I will say, I use a Mac computer so I obviously will pay money for some things ☺
When I bought it, in 2009, I’m sure it was more expensive than a PC. Course I’m still using
it so maybe the ‘Apple Tax’ was worth it after all.”

I think it depends on who you buy your PCs from… they’re not all the same. ☺ I have two SuperMicro kits assembled by an integrator 8 years ago and they’re still chugging right along after years of doing 10+ hour 3D renders.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Bill Davis] “[Scott Witthaus] “Death to tyranny!”

I think that becomes more hiply ironic if you translate into a language your oppressors don’t speak…

Just sayin'”

Hegh tyranny!! ☺

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Walter Soyka] “As a sidebar… I don’t know enough about the internals of Apple’s stabilizer to know for certain, but it seems to me that Apple’s controls scale the output of the stabilizer, while Adobe’s controls are inputs to the stabilizer.”

Just out of curiosity Walter – I agree that Adobe seems to give you control over the input of the WS (a lot like Syntheyes and Mocha), but why do you say that Apple seems to give you control of the result of the stabilizer? I’ve obviously never used it, so I’m curious to know what you think the difference is.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Ah, now you see, that is what I was hoping for.

For Walter to come swinging by and not only see everything that I see, but plenty else besides, and to articulate it with such sublime clarity.

I can but salute you, sir.”

Ha ha – me too. I was actually hoping Walter would say something yesterday. These were the forehead slappers for me:

[Walter Soyka] ”
– I’d call out the difference in precision on percentages.
– I’d call out the knob being bizarrely right-aligned to the sliders, the knob have a 3 o’clock origin for unity, and the fact that a knob cannot show more than single revolution while revolution can continue beyond 360 degrees.
-I think literally everything in the position/anchor layout is wrong. The X control is closer to Y label than it is to X label. The X and Y parameter labels themselves are colored like parameters instead of the Position/Anchor labels. The numeric X control floats out where the visual elements for the other controls are, while the Y control is aligned with the rest of the numeric controls (giving it undue primacy).”

Thanks for bringing this up Simon, you and Walter made this a really fun thread. ☺

Shawn