D300 photos in a Audio Visual

[Mark Allen]

I have taken some of what I think are the best D300 photos from a recent trip to Norway. I have made an audio visual in Pictures to Exe - a great program. It's18MB zipped, and 18MB unzipped, I have zipped it as some folk cannot download exe's. The file was checked with my up to date Zone Alarm, but as always when downloading from the Net, you may wish to check it again to be sure to be sure.

http://www.almark.net/photos/norway.zip

Lasts just six minutes, but be warned you may catch the travel bug and want to set off somewhere. I hope you can take the time to download it and I hope you like it. All feedback welcome!

[David Chin]

Mark - these are great! And midnight sledding? Wow - that must have been an experience.

I love the choice of background music too.

You probably knew this, but .exe files cannot be played on Mac computers - I had to run your file through an emulation program in order to view it.

Thanks for sharing!

[Mark Allen]

David, The midnight sledge was taken at ISO 6400, handheld, the only light was from the drivers head tourch! The blue harbour scenes were all at ISO 3200. The low light performance of the D300 is simply superb - but I suspect you all already know this.

I didn't know you could view Pictures to Exe on a Mac - what software did you use to emulate?

[David Chin]

Mark - looks like you made full use of the D300's high ISO capabilities!

I'm running VMware - a trial version is available at http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

VMWare is only an emulator - you'd need to still need to install Windows separately in its environment.

[Bill Bird]

Your pictures are simply devine! I love the whole lot.
Billy

[Mark Allen]

Thank you Bill, I'm glad you liked them

[Lea]

Beautiful presentation.. My hubby has been talking about Norway for years.. What program do you use. I've had great success with ProShow.

[Mark Allen]

I have used ProShow, both Gold and Producer. But recently changed to using 'Pictures to Exe'. http://www.wnsoft.com/

I find PTE produces sharper, more accurately saturated images on screen, especially when projected.

Here is a later version that won 1st Place at the 2008 Northern Ireland Audio Visual Festival.
http://www.almark.net/photos/norway.zip

[Lea]

Thanks Mark, I'll look into it.. do you find the exe format difficult to embed into a website, if you have one? In the past I've had complaints about exe format not booting up for everyone. ~Lea

[Mark Allen]

I used to zip or rar my exe's because some folk cannot download exe's. But then I discovered that they were trying to download them from work and their corporate systems did not allow this for security reasons.

A PTE (Pictures to Exe) file that is 60MB only becomes 58MB on zip. Also these xe files only work with Windows based computers.

I hope this helps

[Nemezote]

Mark,

These are GREAT photographs, I really really liked them and I think that the fact you took the time to put this all together is really remarkable.

BUT, and thats a really big but, I think that the LotR music was completely over the top and definitely unnecesary, not to say that It doesnt feel apropiate for the subject. I have similar thoughts about the narration. Maybe its the fact that im not a native english speaker, Im argentinian, and im not very used to other accents.

Anyway, that doesnt detract from the fact that your photographs are really really good and I enjoyed them start to finish.

Cya!

[Mark Allen]

Nemezota, Thank you for your feedback.

I selected the LOTR music as I thought some folk might pick up the imagery from the film (New Zealand - Fjords - with Norway - Fjords). For me it captures the majesty of the area. This was my first venture into narration, and as I have a 'Northern Ireland accent, I spoke slowly and I thought distinctly. I normally speak at ten times the speed ;-)

[Sandeep]

Hi mark,

Wonderful pictures! Thanks for sharing. I liked the blurred effect in one photo...the one which is taken in an alleyway sort of place with lights lit on one side of the alley. There is another of the same without the blurred effect. How did you get the effect? is it in camera or digital manipulation?

Regards,
Sandeep