The other night I went out toward sunset – checked the electronic almanac called my phone – taking a beautiful old lens, the Vivitar Series 1 24-48mm, and the Df. Â I set everything up manually and shot a number of pictures to make a panorama of the crescent moon and oak tree silhouetted against the remaining daylight. Â I was in the golden hour, moving into the blue hour. Â The first image below is the pano, uncropped but reduced in size, and the following are variations in cropping and post processing. Click on the pictures to see them full size. This lens is beautifully sharp.
The beaches along the Olympic Peninsula are nothing short of amazing. No camera can catch the mood perfectly, but software can help!
While we were there, the sky moved from a foggy opacity, to blue and cloudy, and back. I wanted to capture that in-between time when the sun was breaking through as the fog lightened.
Sometimes a moment – or several moments – of frustration and dissatisfaction lead to new ground, hopefully for the better. On a personal basis, I always find when I have finally had enough, I take action to make change. Choosing what to change, though, requires some thought. I decided to work toward better mastery of the software I use.
There are times when I will spend a fair amount of time working on a photo in post production, and a lot of time when I am trying to do something new. My previous post of that rather disastrous background removal around the rose was one of those times. Some software is better than others, but the good stuff is usually more complex and has a higher learning curve.
I don’t like reading ebooks, and unless a book folds really flat and is pretty much the same edition of the software I am using, it gets pretty frustrating. Videos are great, and if a company provides good videos, they are definitely ones I want to continue to use, and recommend.
Like many photographers, I use Lightroom for my core, branching in and out of it to use different programs. I have all sorts, some registered, some trial ware. The ones I go to most are Photoshop CS6 and, now, Perfect Photo Suite 8 (and probably 9 in the future) by OnOne Software. In terms of complexity, I am not at all good in Photoshop, despite the myriad videos available: there are so many, I am overwhelmed.
OnOne Software provides a lot of videos and webinars, ones which are quite informative, and range in time from short tips to considerably longer. Videos are nice because, with two monitors, I can switch back and forth from video and my own work, pausing or retracking to view a point. OnOne does not have a bazillion, so I am much happier, and their webpage with all their videos is quite easy to find, like right here!
So what does this all mean? Â It means I am putting effort into mastery of software rather than bitching about it and guessing. Â And spending only a given amount of time in front of the computer – I hate spending hours sitting when I could be considerably more active (and I have become more cranky in the last month since I tore a calf muscle about six weeks ago and am still healing – wah!) – has helped me to focus.
Well, then: Â the picture at the top of this diatribe / monologue / harangue / discussion is the SOOC image, and the one below is done using a few simple steps. Â I used LR5 to make some adjustments, then moved it into Perfect Effects, using different filters, such as contrast adjustment, adjustable gradient, and vignetting. Â The video above goes through the same steps I did, but I also chose some different filters because of what I wanted to do.
What I liked about Kloskowski’s presentation was he showed lots of ways to do things . . . one piece of advice, though, if you are newbie to Perfect Suite, take the time to try some of the elementary videos which focus on only one element of the software before moving on to this video – here, you are assumed to know a bit about the software and how to do things.  Even so, you can learn a few new tricks, and not just in Perfect Effects, but also in LR!  Below is my final result.
I went to a local park after work today, just to play with a lens I haven’t used in awhile: Tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 Di. The purpose of the walk was to use the Df and the lens, handheld, to see how well the vibration reduction worked. To begin with, I shot at iso 100, just to see how well the vibration reduction worked – it’s okay, but the lens would benefit from stable subjects at this iso. At 400 iso, detail was lost, but longish exposures were not too horrible handheld. This shot was taken at iso 400, 140mm, f5.6, 1/30 sec. Overall, the combo of the lens and camera leaves sharpness a bit to be desired, but under the right circumstances, I rather like this lens.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 