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Author: wotantx

More Photography Updates

Posted on by wotantx
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With the realization that I’ve been doing it wrong, I’ve completely revamped my approach.

First, now that I truly understand how Dynamic Range in a Fujifilm camera works, I am shooting in DR-Auto again. As a practical matter, that means my images will be DR-100 or DR-200; I’ve never seen the camera select DR-400 on its own. Note that, when shooting night scenes with bright subjects (fireworks), it may still be necessary to shoot DR-400; I’d rather underexpose the shadows than overexpose the subject.

Additionally, my current generation of recipes and the two of the prior generation I kept have a few fundamental changes. First, I am setting my highlights and shadows explicitly, versus setting them to 0 or even -2. Second, I am no longer using Auto WB. Six of my current recipes are using either Daylight or Shade. One, that is still somewhat experimental, is using temperature.

The net effect of these changes is that I am seeing a more “filmic” look in my pictures. That’s one of the reasons I chose the Fujifilm ecosystem, and this is therefore perfectly fine with me.

And now for something else that I’ve recently discovered.

Exposure vs “Brightness”

I’ve been approaching exposure in the wrong way. I have no idea if this terminology is correct or not, but for lack of a better word, I’ve been confusing exposure and “brightness.”

Exposure is the amount of light allowed to hit the sensor and is a factor of a few things, including aperture and shutter speed. What I am calling “brightness” is a combination of exposure, highlights, and shadows. Because of this confusion, I have been adjusting exposure compensation to account for the amount of highlights and shadows, and this is contributing to over- or underexposed images.

I discovered this by observing the relationship between exposure compensation in the raw image and the Push/Pull setting in Raw Studio. I found that, by backing out my exposure compensation by adjusting the Push/Pull by an equal amount in the opposite direction, I can generally produce properly expose images without having to change my highlight and shadow settings. That is to say, if I shot the picture with an EC of +1.3, changing the Push/Pull to -1.3 restores a proper exposure.

Careful use of the EC feature in the camera is important in order to avoid irreparably over- or underexposing the pic.

To be sure, certain high contrast settings might require adjustments, or even force me to edit the raw in darktable. However, the effect of all these changes and careful attention to exposure has allowed me to start shooting raw+jpeg again, and I am rediscovering the fun of photography.

I still need to update the settings for Cleancros and actually write the settings for Eternaty. I also have five new recipes to document, all developed around the highlight, shadow, dynamic range, and WB changes I described above.

A Disenchanted American’s Reflections on Independence Day

Posted on by wotantx
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I was the kind who never missed parades or fireworks. Well, it’s been a few years since my last parade. Any fireworks I see this year will likely be from my balcony.

Why?

Well.

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

Read our founding documents. The ideals of our founding are the most noble ever espoused. Freedom is the natural state of humans, not subservience. Government exists to protect freedom.

The same country shamefully kept the despicable institution of slavery. This country also denied half its adult “free” population (women) the vote.

Some 800,000 Americans killed each other over the issue of slavery. Despicable people, such as Woodrow Wilson, helped perpetuate the myth that the Confederacy had some noble reason for existing when, in their own words, their reason for existing was to perpetuate slavery.

I grew up with this myth. It took most of my life to correct my misperceptions.

Far too many of my fellow Americans still believe the myth, despite evidence of its untruth being more easily obtainable than any time in history.

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

The thirteenth through fifteenth amendments should have made up for some of the wrongs of slavery. Due to the cravenness of our politicians, however, it took another century to accomplish what those amendments set out to do. We are a free people, indeed.

And on the subject of the 14th amendment. Some of our truly despicable politicians believe they can overturn it with the stroke of a pen. That amendment exists to ensure that former slaves are citizens. Don’t like that birthright citizenship is still a thing? Fine. Amend the Constitution. But we are a nation of (written) laws. People born within this country are citizens until then.

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

For a supposedly free people, we have a ridiculous number of victimless crimes. How many people are in prison in this country for nonviolent crimes? How much violence is committed that wouldn’t exist if victimless crimes weren’t a thing? If we were truly free, we could live our lives as we choose, so long as we aren’t harming others. Unfortunately, far too many of my fellow Americans think they should be able to regulate what others do.

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

The last six or seven years have been devastating. From electing an absolutely vile human to be president to the extreme idiocy of so many people in the face of COVID, it’s hard to take pride in this country.

A lot of people in the “party of family values” fly “F— Joe Biden” flags with their kids in their cars, and probably when they go to church. Do they kiss their moms with that mouth, too?

“Let’s go Brandon,” was never clever.

Someone once said, “facts don’t care about your feelings.” Well, COVID was, and is, real. It kills people. The vaccines, like all, are safe for most people. But this country places a huge premium on pseudoscience, and it seems like most of its people are willfully ignorant of how science works, while at the same time living with a world that only exists because of science, including vaccines. George Washington understood this, shouldn’t you? Isn’t the “Father of our Country” good enough for you?

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

It’s hard to have a positive opinion about the reality of this country. We’ve done good. We’ve done evil. The ones who squawk the most about the former don’t want to acknowledge the latter. Some, of course, don’t want to acknowledge the former. But I’m not writing for them. The ones who won’t acknowledge our evils talk the most about our goods, as if that absolves of us our evils. However, you have to acknowledge our evils in order to appreciate our good. That’s patriotism. Ignoring the evils, that’s nationalism. Nationalism is, itself, an evil. It places the State above the Country. It places the State above the people. Nationalism is a cancer growing in this country. Nationalism doesn’t embrace our ideals. Nationalism exists despite our ideals, and too many Americans are nationalists, not patriots.

The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.

Friday Morning Thoughts on My Photography Skills and Lessons Learned

Posted on by wotantx
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I have to learn to stop trying to be a perfectionist. The boat and car are clipped in the raw, so there’s not really much I can do about it. But, they aren’t the subject. Unless you’re going to pixel peep, that “flaw” isn’t noticeable.


I’ve known a degree of shadow clipping can be acceptable; sometimes, things really are dark, and if there’s no detail in the shadow, it’s no harm, no foul. I’ve been treating highlight clipping as much more of a sin. Indeed, sometimes it is. Clipping the blue of a sky can cause a very unnatural color that can be hard or impossible to fix, depending on how bad it is. Clipping a tiny rock in a gravel road? Not so much.

As I’ve been teaching myself darktable, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been using my camera to hide my lack of skill, and then blaming the camera for it. It’s time to up my game and manage light properly.

My Take on RTO

Posted on by wotantx
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This is something I posted to my Linkedin profile.

Some jobs can’t be done remotely, and some do require a hybrid schedule. But for jobs that can effectively be done fully remotely, there is no justification for returning to the office.

RTO is about one thing, and one thing only: control.

Newsflash: This isn’t the nineteenth century. This isn’t even the 20th century. Outdated notions of how work works need to change. But too many bosses want to control their employees and not empower them (*cough* Elon Musk *cough*).

They are not leaders. They are managers who are stuck in the past. And they embody the worst quality of managers: micromanaging.

Trust your employees and they will deliver. We proved it.

I’ve Been Doing it Wrong

Posted on by wotantx
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No details in this one. That will come later.

I’ve been re-evaluating photo editing software, and spending a lot of time on darktable. I’ve been seeing issues with recent photographs. I’ve learned a whole lot in the last hour.

I’ve long known the Dynamic Range setting on Fujifilm cameras affects the raw, but I’ve never appreciated just how much they do. I do now—hat tip to Mark Adams for pointing it out.

A lot of my issues are because of how much the camera underexposes the image as you increase the dynamic range (and I think even more so with Dynamic Range Priority, which I have been using exclusively for close to a year now). After taking a series of test shots at DR 100, 200, and 400, I see the problems now. I may post those later.

I don’t think I can use DR 100. I think I will need to shoot in DR 200. I can usually work with DR 200 in my camera, and it doesn’t underexpose the image too much.

We shall see.

Versatile Color

Posted on by wotantx
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Introducing my new custom recipe Versatile Color.

Changing Philosophy Again

Posted on by wotantx
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The more experience I get with photography, the more I change my approach. Perhaps I am starting to overthink things. I’ve already changed how I approach my recipes, no longer emphasizing the highlights and shadows. My recipes are now much more about the color profile; after all, I’m not trying to emulate specific film stocks. For instance, were I attempting to re-create Kodachrome 64, I would need to get the contrast right.

I still find myself spending too much time trying to “fix” the histogram when I’m framing a shot. This leads me to second-guess myself. Instead, I need to be more concerned with getting the look I’m going for and using Raw Studio or Lightroom (depending on what the scene requires) to get the contrast right.

If I only shot jpegs, I would still have to figure all this out; jpegs are lossy, and it is much more difficult to “fix” them.

I think I will address this problem by switching all my recipes to use the DR-P Strong setting. Basically, I will start shooting everything flat. At the very least, this method will give me the most versatility in how I create the jpeg; sometimes, the DR-P Weak setting produces perfectly fine jpegs.

Some Early Morning Photos

Posted on by wotantx
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These three images, taken during my trip to Big Bend for New Year 2021-2022, have been some of my most challenging to work with. Some of that was technical errors on my part: I decided to trust my camera to pick the dynamic range, which it didn’t do a good job of; some of it was I likely had one or more filters, other than a UV filter, on my lens; and I think I chose the wrong lens for this. I was using my then-new Viltrox AF 33mm, which doesn’t appear to be great for landscapes with such great distance. The other issue I had on this entire trip was the type of cloud cover. The stratus deck I dealt with for much of the trip only served to scatter the rather feeble sunlight, leading to blown highlights and ground that was far too dark.

The camera-generated jpegs are pretty much useless.

I’ve tried editing these in LR and other software with mixed results. However, my recent work from the Texas Renaissance Festival (see Favorite Edits for examples) made me decide to work on them again. I think of previous attempts I had overused masking. My approach here was much more simple. I made general lighting and color adjustments (S-curve, pulled the highlights and whites down all the way, reduced the contrast), added a little dehaze, and softened the blues. I then used a linear gradient mast to add light, highlights, shadows, contrast, whites (where I could get away with it), and blacks (where I could get away with it).

The result of this approach was to remove almost all of the clipped highlights in the skies and most of the clipped shadows. While certainly not among my favorites, I think they turned out reasonably well.

All three of these were taken along FM-170 (the River Road), which runs along the Rio Grande, sometimes hugging it tightly. The particular location is known as the Big Hill, a very steep hill where the road climbs the flanks of a laccolith.

DSCF9197 DSCF9189 DSCF9193-2

New Favorite Edits Page

Posted on by wotantx
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Just a quick post to announce my new Favorite Edits page.

I Did It!

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I graduated!

Graduation announcement