MorseBlog

In Part 1 I showed some success in correcting the darkness in my initial prints. The result while seemingly matching the luminance of the image on the screen also was much warmer than the screen version. I have to admit I am at a loss for how this can happen. Increasing contrast increases saturation but that doesn’t seem to be what is happening. I experimented with a few adjustments including saturation, specific color levels and other tools. Nothing was as satisfactory as changing the white balance. At this point I am accepting this warmer tone without explanation and now seeking to attenuate it while trying to stay true to the original photo’s look.  Desired Image Print after gamma (.625) correction. I began this next correction in much the same way as the first part. I added a new layer for white balance correction. I then set the gamma modelling layer on and adjusted the white balance until I got the screen image to match the initial test print. This for me seemed to be +50% s...

I recently made some test prints at my local Walmart. I know Walmart? Really? I read about some happy customer on Reddit who used their local Walmart and liked the prints they got. I decided to give it a try. Welcome to small town America! My earlier work indicated that even proper color labs have lots of variation. So why not?  My prints were printed on ‘FujiFilm Quality Dry Photopaper’ as it says on the back and is printed on an inkjet printer. My first results were quite dark which is typical as a screen version of an image always appears lighter due to the backlighting of the image.  Here is my starting image I used to make the print after I had done some post processing mostly for contrast and brightness. I scaled into fit an 8x10 print and added white borders.  Original Image I have dabbled in compensation of images to get better looking prints. In some cases I raised brightness by about 20%, or increased just the shadows by 20%, or moved the gamma. They each have t...

I went out before my father to the lake house to open the place up. He had some chores for me and would follow shortly.  The whole area is different from two months ago when I left in the heat of early September and smoke from local fires. The first snows of winter had fallen a couple of days before and only now was the temperature edging up a degree or two above freezing.  The highway was clear of ice and snow but with white a rime of salt. The road out to the lake was still snowpacked in the shadows under the trees. The lake is also at its lowest level. After the summer recreational season the lake level is lowered about ten feet. Along this shore it extends a rocky beach ten to 20 yards out to the waters edge. The bay is merely its forlorn bottom. Fisherman’s island can now be walked to from the road.  Out on the water are hundreds of Western Grebes paddling around what must be shallows for feeding. The sky is overcast with low hanging thick cloud though small breaks a...

Here on Lake Pend Oreille the lake is lowered at the end of summer by some ten feet. This being my first winter here I have become fascinated by the exposed shoreline. It also means that due to laws regarding access to waterways and lakes that one is able to walk and fish and hunt these low water margins even if the high water shoreline is private property.  Lower Sand Creek runs into the lake here at Sandpoint and the lake in summer backs up a bay over the traditional last reach of the creek. So now the bottom of the bay is exposed and the original creek meanders over a barren frozen mud bottom smelling still of estuary mud and rotting vegetation.  And so I thought I should explore this mudflat with the creek edge in ice. Here it is bordered by houses and business on one shore and highway 97 on the other side. There are also some bridge crossings as well.  It is busy and distinctly urban but also picturesque.  This afternoon did not seem promising with the thermomet...

In a prior post I discuss the use of ‘old glass’ on the Fuji GFX 50s ii as a means of keeping the cost of the camera system reasonable. Coming from film cameras I find the use of old manual lenses natural to use and not terribly troubling once I got the camera set up properly. In-body image stabilization (IBIS) means I can shoot these lenses at lower shutter speeds without a tripod.  One of my favorite lenses is the Olympus Zuiko 135mm f2.8 lens. It is very sharp and the focal length is ideal for intimate woodland work where a good depth of field helps separate subjects in what us usually a very cluttered environment. One drawback of using a lens made for a 35mm camera is that on the Fuji GFX one tends to get vignetting. So I set up the camera to crop the sensor to 35mm full frame. This works well as even cropped I get 30 Mpix images.  It occurred to me recently that there is a useful’ cheat with 35mm lenses. I have long enjoyed panoramic formats and in my film cameras enjoy ...