D 75 - Tinkering in the bathroom

I just recalled that I had still some options to improve the quality of photos made at high ISO setting in my DSLR. So I tinkered around with them looking for optimal adjustment.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 3.5.
Channel mix, levels and sharpness in Lightroom.

What I learned

Modern DSLR is a little computer with lens. So there is always something new to find within the extended menus.

This time I recalled that even before I bought my E-510 I knew that it gives best results when noise reduction is off and sharpness is reduced from the default settings. I changed this a year ago and forgot about it.

I set ISO to 1600 (max for E-510), pushed sharpness up from -1 to 0 and turned on the noise reduction to "normal" level.

The decrease in noise is clearly visible, yet I still need some luck and overexposure to avoid noise distracting even at low resolutions. However I still don't see any possibility of using ISO 1600 shots for larger prints.

D 74 - Crude oil went up again

I keep the Samsung compact camera with me all the time. I just have this pesky lock on my bag in which I carry the camera, so usually before I get it out and running it is too late.

The automatic gas distributor didn't run away.

Equipment

Samsung S630, slow sync flash, +0,7EV exposure bias.
Channel mix, levels and crop correction in Lightroom.

What I learned

I must keep the compact camera in my pocket.
Even on my way to work by car opportunities fly in front of my nose.

D 73 - Make ends meet

The last due photo because of weekend slacks. Another take on the candle lit clock.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Maybe I can skip posting on weekend but I'll try to take photos to post on Monday. Catching up for half of the week is not very inspiring.

D 72 - Already dreaming

Shooting late at night as usual. But cutting sleeping hours to just make this 'one more shot' from another angle seems like a noble sacrifice.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Discarding out of camera JPGs as a rule is not always a necessary thing. When you have little time left to make, edit and post a photo they are sometimes just good enough. It's not like I'm doing large prints here, where every little difference counts.

D 71 - Ouf of the corridor

Scarce light and high contrast.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

Some tripods are better and some cost a fiver. Mine is the top of the line Chinese crap but it doesn't fall over or collapse under the weight of a DSLR. So it is useful. I wish it had a ball-head for easier framing and an option for mounting the head on the under side of the shaft for frog perspective shots.

D 70 - Father to daughter talk

When the daughter is away on her birthday.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Sharpening, levels, crop and color mix in Lightroom.

What I learned

Such candid shots call for a lot of quick thinking and you still need luck to get the composition right. And it never feels completely right.

D 69 - Lightpainting

Light painting was another technique that I don't really care for much. Some works with it are stunningly beautiful but they need a level of planning and directing on the set which is just as intimidating.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

I hoped to achieve a 3D effect with a short focal length. But it either needs wider lens than 28mm or some additional treatment of the light source to make itself more 3D.

D 68 - Contrast, Cord and Candle

HDR is for the people.
It's a tool to master, just as I thought. Can be used to benefit a fitting scene.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442. Tripod.
RAW files edited it Lightroom and merged to HDR in Qtpfsgui.

What I learned

I don't have a comfort of having a vacant room for a photo studio. So any arrangement including a backdrop and an arranged lighting takes a few minutes to set up. I have scarce time for photography with a 2-year old child running around and this extra time feels almost like wasted. The results of taking time to set up are evident but it arranging objects in space isn't what I love in photography. It's a necessary burden.

As long as photography is my hobby, not my job, I'll tend to do only the most fun part of it.

D 67 - Yatta Elefante

As I said, I will fool around with HDR some more. This is single light source photo.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442. RAW files edited in Lightroom and merged to HDR in Qtpfsgui.

What I learned

I think that at least one of the photos has to un-clip even the deepest shadows. Because with the brightest photo in a series having black areas I get this blue noise in the HDR again.

It is either that or the result of some noise which my Olympus does tend to make.

D 66 - What the Hell?

I never liked HDR. It was just another gismo filter to me. So I decided to give it a try. You never know, maybe some day I'd need it and it'd be good to have some practice.

Aw...

I sat for an hour trying to get rid of some ridiculous blue noise in the shadows of my photo sequence. And I couldn't tell why they finally disappeared.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on tripod. Qtpfsgui open-source program for HDR.
Yes, that's the name of a software, not demon.

What I learned

I may be wrong.
I might have done something wrong while I shot the photos for HDR.
Maybe the contrast was too high or something.

But as far as I see it today, results of HDR making are random. You just toss your photos into this giant pot of sliders and parameters and options and see what you get. Than you stir the mixture and look at the new result.
Trying to understand the meaning of all those parameters seems like a science of it's own.

It was a nightmare.

I'll try again tomorrow!

D 65 - Neuroplant

Those hairs on twigs of this plant were intriguing me for few days. They are bright red and make a nice contrast against green body of the plant. The moment I changed it into black and white photo and manipulated the color mix in Lightroom a bit I found it to take alien, electron microscope look.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on a gorilla tripod.
I manipulated color mix and contrast and cropped the photo by about 50% in Lightroom. I added some yellow/green hue by split toning.

What I learned

I need a macro lens with a 1:1 magnification for my Olympus E-510 DSLR. I used to scorn macro-photography as a strange hobby for insect hunters but it does open new spaces for abstract works.

D 64 - By accident

Not much to explain there. A play of words.
I was looking for a shot with some pattern, a rhythm.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I have reconciled with my standard zoom kit lens.
It has no less than two very good alternatives in Olympus E-system, but I'm on a tight budget and this is a decent piece of optical equipment to say the least. It was unfair to hold against it the fact that it is made of plastic and has more adequate brothers in the family.

D 63 - Nothern

I love to be reminded about how far North and East Poland lies compared to the rest of EU. I helps me to remember about this other part of me that cares about solstices and thunderstorms more than about career and bills.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Recently I read on... pardon my memory but I can't recall. Anyway I read that landscape photography is not about the objects but the light.
Confirmed.

D 62 - Washed away

This time I went for one of my all time favorites - soft photo with pastel colors.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 lens.

What I learned

More like 'what I'd like to learn' this time. I can't catch the conditions required for such pastel-color effect. I know it when I see it but I can't make it happen when I need it.

D 61 - Through the looking glass

It looks like I get into a habit of running late with posts on the weekend. I think that it may become a regular thing since I try to devote my weekends to myself and my family. Photography is included in this package but editing and posting is not.

I should post those weekend photos en masse somewhere between Sunday and Monday evenings.

This one shows my use of ad hoc filters.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015 lens made through a foggy window.

What I learned

I just noticed that "family", "kids" and "portrait" tags usually come together. Don't I have any more family than my son?

D 60 - This ugly meltdown

The mercury bar jumped above the melting point for the first time this year. Some winter it has been.

As everything in life this boon also has its downside. With this much snow changing to water, we are bound to get mud. Loads of mud.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on manual settings.

I did some tonal curve adjustment and faded out the buildings (by local adjustment of contrast and clarity) in Lightroom.

What I learned

I tried to separate a single bush sticking out from the snow cover, then I tried to catch those heaps of snow as mountains striking against the sky but none of those photos came out well. So I went for this one with buildings oddly contrasting with the mountain-like snow formations.
If at first you don't succeed try again.

D 59 - Hide behind

Ah! The beauties of my city. Major chimneys can be easily used for orienteering in the industrial areas.
This one is the same one that I can see from my window. "Blink, blink!" my son calls them, for the red lights they flash against the night sky.
Here it is seen from a platform in front of my office.

Equipment

Samsung S630.

I didn't like the way it looked on the camera LCD and with a 3Mpix I shot it with (for the sake of saving memory card space) I didn't think it would be any good.

In Lightroom I cropped it by around 20% and pushed up saturation a little. The clouds merged with sky too much, so I had to adjust levels and increase clarity. I also used a gradual filter at the bottom which increased contrast but took off some saturation and clarity for the smog look.

What I learned

I must admit that I'm a bit confused by what to think and what to say about if my photographs have been "photoshopped" or not. I don't ever use Photoshop, when I need to work on layers I go for GIMP, which would be the same thing actually. The thing is I don't use it on more than 1% of my photos.

It would seem that I don't edit my pictures, right? But I do. Not a single photo on this blog can be called straight-out-of-camera. I adjust levels, sharpness, white balance and quite often I re-crop in Lightroom (usually by less than 10% of the frame size). This was why I started to shoot RAW in the first place.

So what is the real photo and what is "photoshop" work? Not that is matters to me, but people ask and I always hesitate what to say.

D 58 - Not productive

One of those moments at work, when you would give anything to just be somewhere else, doing something more like... more like you, really.

Equipment

Sony-Ericsson W810i.

What I learned

I'm not quite satisfied with this one. Even casual photos made with your mobile phone (the best camera, as in 'the best camera is the one you have with you') should be somewhat planned and redone if not good enough at first.

D 57 - Winter boots

Still sharing stuff from the weekend. Hope you find it's worth it as much as I do.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Only few posts ago I found out that I can change the contents of http code with link so that click on the photo shows it in the full browser window instead of redirecting to Picasa album.
Now you can easily access higher resolution view of my following photos.

D 56 - And when you see a tunnel, don't follow the light.

A passage out of Jurassic/Fairy Tale theme park. Yes, that means dinosaurs and Cinderella standing shoulder to shoulder.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

The aperture...
I left it at 1/3.5.
And it shows.

I usually worship the rule of thirds. The only repetitive exception I notice in my work are photographs of alleys and portals of various kinds, when I see the central composition to be the only fitting.
I should try this conviction one day and put such object in a golden mean composition for example.