Shoot What's In Front Of You
I'm on a high contrast wild color binge. I'm sure it doesn't fit in with the "full-frame"[1] crowd, those toting their 5DMkIIs and D700s around[2]. You know, the "real" photographers. Not the substantive photographers.
I pass these bikes nearly every day that I walk to pick up my luncheon sub. Today I was carrying the E-P2 with the M.Zuiko 14-42mm Mk I, the original kit lens. I'm no big fan of the lens, preferring the 17mm, but I loath leaving any lens sitting in the bag. If it can fit the body it will come out and make itself useful. So I pressed it into service as something of a close-up lens, although it's not a true macro. And when I got back to the house I processed it in Lightroom. I've turned into a real raw junkie. I like what I can do to mold the image. It's fun.
And then I had to stop by the grocery on the way home to pick up something for supper. I parked a few cars up from this interesting vehicle. I couldn't get the E-P2 out of the car fast enough to grab a few photos. I love the colors, inside and out. I love the interior, stripped though it might be. I love the Pabst beer tap on the shifter. Whoever owns this had parts sitting in the back seat. I'm assuming they were restoring the interior. Maybe I'll see it again when it's more complete. The "Automic" was the name on the rear vanity plate.
I'm going all out for weird for the rest of the year. Try to keep up everyone.
[1] "Full Frame (FF)" is the older 24x36mm film frame size. It was called 35mm because that was the width of the film. The 24mm side of the frame was what was left when you subtracted the sprocket holes on both sides. It's difficult to decide what was the first 35mm camera to use a 24x36mm frame. It was either the Furet camera (made and sold in France in 1923) or Oskar Barnak's first experimental production run of ur-Leicas (Serial No. 100 to 130). Back in the day they weren't called full-frame, they were called miniature film cameras. Real Photographers shot with medium format (6x6 or 6x7cm), or larger 4x5" film cameras.
[2] Those two "affordable" [sic] cameras come in around $2,500 body only. The 5DMkII has a 24MP sensor with lots of chroma noise at higher ISO settings, and not too high an ISO range, at least not compared to the crazy levels you can attain with the D700. The D700 has a mere 12MP sensor, but the photosites are huge and the results still spectacular. The only problem is you need digital glass on those bodies to take full advantage of the sensors. I used to blanch at the cost of Olympus lenses until I started to price out equivalent Canon and Nikon glass. I still blanch, but not as much.
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| Shimano |
I pass these bikes nearly every day that I walk to pick up my luncheon sub. Today I was carrying the E-P2 with the M.Zuiko 14-42mm Mk I, the original kit lens. I'm no big fan of the lens, preferring the 17mm, but I loath leaving any lens sitting in the bag. If it can fit the body it will come out and make itself useful. So I pressed it into service as something of a close-up lens, although it's not a true macro. And when I got back to the house I processed it in Lightroom. I've turned into a real raw junkie. I like what I can do to mold the image. It's fun.
 |
| Automic Purple |
And then I had to stop by the grocery on the way home to pick up something for supper. I parked a few cars up from this interesting vehicle. I couldn't get the E-P2 out of the car fast enough to grab a few photos. I love the colors, inside and out. I love the interior, stripped though it might be. I love the Pabst beer tap on the shifter. Whoever owns this had parts sitting in the back seat. I'm assuming they were restoring the interior. Maybe I'll see it again when it's more complete. The "Automic" was the name on the rear vanity plate.
 |
| Automic Interior |
I'm going all out for weird for the rest of the year. Try to keep up everyone.
[1] "Full Frame (FF)" is the older 24x36mm film frame size. It was called 35mm because that was the width of the film. The 24mm side of the frame was what was left when you subtracted the sprocket holes on both sides. It's difficult to decide what was the first 35mm camera to use a 24x36mm frame. It was either the Furet camera (made and sold in France in 1923) or Oskar Barnak's first experimental production run of ur-Leicas (Serial No. 100 to 130). Back in the day they weren't called full-frame, they were called miniature film cameras. Real Photographers shot with medium format (6x6 or 6x7cm), or larger 4x5" film cameras.
[2] Those two "affordable" [sic] cameras come in around $2,500 body only. The 5DMkII has a 24MP sensor with lots of chroma noise at higher ISO settings, and not too high an ISO range, at least not compared to the crazy levels you can attain with the D700. The D700 has a mere 12MP sensor, but the photosites are huge and the results still spectacular. The only problem is you need digital glass on those bodies to take full advantage of the sensors. I used to blanch at the cost of Olympus lenses until I started to price out equivalent Canon and Nikon glass. I still blanch, but not as much.
Great images, Bill - I also played around with saturated colors lately.
ReplyDeleteOne question, if you don't mind: you mention Lightroom here, but I also know that you're using Linux, at least at work.
Well I use Linux (Debian stable, 64 bit) at home, and tho I have a Win7 in a VirtualBox on it, I use it only for OV2, to get the original Olympus colors out of the raw files.
Never came close to these with anything else. I'd love to use RawTherapee, which is at version 3.0 now (and I do, but only after using OV2 for the colors), but can you suggest some settings to get those Olympus red hues?
Thanks,
and best,
Wolfgang
All originals had Preset: B&W Creative - Look 3 applied to them.
ReplyDeleteThen Saturation, which had been set to -100, was set back to 0.
Exposure for the top photo was set to -0.5, for the middle photo to +1, and the last photo left as it was.
The last photo had Highlight Recovery set to 100 to pick up a little more detail in the highlights.
For all three, Clarity was set to +63 and Vibrance set to +49.
But it's the first step of setting the image as a B&W image and then bringing Saturation back up to 0 that does most of the work in Lightroom.
I see - thanks for the explanations Bill.
ReplyDeleteProblem is: I don't have Lightroom, and don't plan buying it. Any experience with RawTherapee or any other software based on dcraw?
cheers,
Wolfgang
The only experience I have had with RawTherapee was with Fedora 14 x86-64. RawTherapee kept crashing with JPEGs produced with the E-P2. I gave up on RT and just uninstalled it after that.
ReplyDelete