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Re: [OM] ( OM ) New photos - non-film, sorry

Subject: Re: [OM] ( OM ) New photos - non-film, sorry
From: "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:46:57 +1300
Moose wrote

> Just a personal opinion, at which I hope you don't take offense, but I
> think using FastStone as an image editor is a bit like using a wrench to
> drive a nail. It can be done, but the experience and results will both
> generally leave much to be desired.
> 
> > From memory, the two internal shots of the clock-tower, and the tulips,
> more than others. Re the tulips, the camera chose to take the exposure
> reading from the (very late afternoon) sky at a rainy moment. This
> defeated the composition I wanted. >   
> 
> I think it's unfair to blame the camera. You set the exposure method and
> compensation. If you are going to let the camera set excposure without
> your intervention, at least use its smarter metering mode, ESP, I think,
> for this camera. Center weighted averaging without exercising some thought
> is just asking for trouble.
> 
> And then, you've got instant feedback on the LCD, both histogram and
> image. If the exposure is off, it's on you.
> 
> BUT, but, it looks to me like the exposure is right on the money. 
> Perhaps by mistake, you've properly exposed to the right. Compare the
> tulips to the vineyard. At least as presented, the sky in the vineyard is
> quite unsightly, with large areas of undifferentiated pure white where our
> eyes know there was tonal detail.
> 
> The tulip sky is nicely captured, giving a good tonal rendition of a
> cloudy day. The web version has a bit of clipped highlight, but very
> little and it may be from processing.

My apologies; in my mind I had uploaded a shot of the tulip fields taken after 
the sun had set. In fact it was the modified version of that which had a lot of 
digital noise, and I discarded that modified shot as being unworthy.
Got to the top (new) image at
http://www.brianswale.com/zuikoholics/
and you can see one of the images made in the drizzling rain as the sun 
was vanishing. Have a play with it; I can't rescue the flowers.

It is at 1500 px wide reduced in two steps from original > 3000 > 1500; then I 
used Faststone to cut the file size down from just under 1MB to 218 KB.

I think I did also take a print film shot on my "new" OM4T with 35~105.

In fact I never look at the on-camera histogram when I'm shooting, and also 
quite seldom look at the rear screen version of the shot either.

Fast stone is convenient and fast for me (and it still takes me a few hours to 
process and upload 15 files); I do have Photoshop 7 on my computer - it 
was on it when I bought the computer 2nd hand, but it seems cumbersome 
and I've never seen the advantage for me. I also have downloaded and 
installed Gimp; it seems worse in this regard and is a lot slower.

I stopped using the ESP metering mode as it seemed to be causing me all 
sorts of trouble, and loosing shots I should have nailed.  I still haven't 
figured 
out what the 510 did one day when out of the blue it made all the shots 
VERY dark and unusable -  all those shots were lost and I felt like firing the 
thing into the dustbin. 

I've gone back and looked at the full-size image of the vineyard. That sky 
was pretty awful as far as cloud and sky detail go. The property in its favour 
however, is that it was bright overcast, hence there were no dark shadows 
anywhere to mess things up with lots of contrast for the digital sensor. The 
interest in that shot, as far as I am concerned, is not in the sky but in the 
things attached to the ground. The sun was also behind me for that shot.

It was a hand-held shot as far as I remember; I didn't bring the tripod that 
day as the prime purpose was to deliver somebody to the airport. I don't 
know if I was able to lean against support, but I did have IS turned on.

Brian Swale. 
-- 
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