It has been one week filled with seven posts. I’m starting to wonder if daily posts for a year is really that impossible. It would be like “Julie & Julia” in the 365-day quest to cook her way through Julia Child’s cookbook, except there won’t be any cooking involved in this blog.
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So today I didn’t go out to take pictures; my excuse is related to the gloomy weather. Instead, I decided to play with the color settings in the camera, something I haven’t touched since I bought it five years ago. I was curious to see whether the available options of image sharpening, tone compensation, color mode, saturation and hue adjustment could save me time in photo-processing. After searching through my surroundings, I found that this orchid, pictured below, was the most colorful object.
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cs0270-0271.PNG;Left: Normal; Right: Custom
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Both images were taken at 55mm, f/5, 0.4s and ISO 100. The left image was taken under “normal” color settings, and the right, under “custom” settings set to the highest contrast and saturation levels. Take a look at the upper-left petal in the comparison. The left image is darker with more detail in the veins while the right image sacrifices this in attempt to produce higher contrast. I wouldn’t consider this a considerable difference, at least compared to the abilities of newer EXPEED or DiG!C processors. Relative to this camera, however, there is a noticeable difference that I should capitalize on. The test images were taken with soft lighting coming through the window from the gloomy evening. Under harsher, brighter light, the difference will be more apparent.
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To end the day, I decided to look back on my black-and-white film days. As I flipped through the contact sheets filled with burnt negatives, I realized that I had once thought these pictures were “good.” I suppose this qualification is subjective, but for me, it was passable. To say the least, I’m glad I figured out the importance of the details such as shutter speed and aperture. I’ll save these images for a later post, when I find the patience to scan some.
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Bye until tomorrow and thanks for reading.