I blew it.

I took an interesting photo with the K-5 recently.. but I blew the highlights.  I also used jpeg and so blew the opportunity to make it better with some easy processing.  It wasn't too badly blown though, so I decided to pull it into Elements 9 to see what could be done.

Once I had it in I did a quick crop and a bit of rotation, to eliminate a lot of boring background.  At that point I could use my SmartCcurve plugin and adjust colors to get things looking a bit better.  In this case I decided to use my new ReDynamix plugin, which can do many of those things and offers the opportunity to add some HDR-type effects as well.




I've mentioned in the past that HDR is not my cup of tea, at least not the typical "HDR!!" that I often see online.  That sort makes great images for fantasy-epic novel covers, but for capturing something that I experience on planet Earth I just don't get it.  I found ReDynamix online for cheap (and a free trial) and found that it could be restrained to my less ambitious style, so it now has a bit of space on my hard drive for images like this and days like today to play with them.



In the RyDynamix module I knocked down the gamma to allow for some reduction of the overexposure, then played with the sliders.  I generally turn down saturation and vivid-color choices, then tone down the dynamic-light strength to about half what it chooses as its default.  From there I move things around a bit, and then moved over to curves and color-enhancement modules.  I found the tree beginning to look like a series of peeling brass pipes, and I liked it - so I nailed down the HDR portion, added a pinch of sharpening and came up with the lower image.



I like the result here, as it brought back much of the blown-out areas. It also saturated the colors and adjusted the balance without proclaiming itself an "HDR!!" masterwork. And it took less than ten minutes of processing on a jpeg image. I still prefer the raw option, but it's good to know I can improve on a non-raw image without breaking it. This image was taken with my 'new' SMC-M 40mm pancake lens - I owned this once many years ago, sold it in 2008 when I bought into Sony's system. I missed this lens when I returned to Pentax, and this copy looks like a good one. Gosh it's thin!

p.s. if you don't recognize the tree, I assure you it's not sick and dying - it's a madrone/madrona tree, Arbutus menziesii, and its peeling bark is a giveaway. It should be more red, but when the brassiness came over it in processing I enjoyed it.. so much for realism in my imaging, I suppose!

back to the G1

The F550 suffered a fatal incident.  After taking a few photos I went to put it inside my jacket pocket, but before getting there it escaped both hand and pocket, and hit the concrete. Hard. It never responded properly again.  Oh well, glad I paid about half-price for it.

So what about a replacement? I looked at F505s and newer models, but decided that for now my small camera should be the one I already have - so once more the G1 sees the photons of day. Easier on the budget, and though a bit dated on features it's still a great camera. I really like the flip screen, it's great for odd-angle and flower shots.



Here it is on a fun scene, a brightly-painted house with daphne and bamboo out front.  I tweaked the raw image a bit, but not much.  This is a pretty 'honest' rendering of what I saw, and the camera and its sub-kit 14-42 lens did just fine.  The G1 kit lens was the 14-45 but I let it go to save $100.  This one will do.

Here's a collage of two more close-ups from my sunny-day walk home from work.