RSS feedWhy I’m starting to shoot RAW.
By Silver Blue
RAW? You mean like…naked? No, gentle readers. With most cameras these days you can shoot one of two ways: JPG or RAW. With JPG, the camera applies the White Balance, any exposure compensation you may have selected, picture styles, etc. and then compresses the file into JPG format and records it to the storage medium.
RAW, on the other hand, takes the data as recorded by the image sensor and records that to the storage medium without applying compression or any sort of modification to the photograph (some cameras store your settings in a “sidecar” file that goes along with the RAW file).
The difference? Well, using my Canon T3i (18 megapixel), my JPGs are about 5 or 6 megabytes per photo (may be more, or less, depending on the complexity of the photo – more complex means less compression, ergo, larger file sizes). RAW files are in the range of 18-20 megabytes per photo, because every pixel gets recorded. Also, a JPG is ready to be viewed, uploaded, emailed, resized, etc. from the memory card where a RAW file needs to be processed and refined.
So why bother with RAW, you might ask, given that the files are larger and there’s more manipulation that is required in order to turn out usable images?
Since the Canon T3i allows me a way of shooting RAW + JPG at the same time, I thought I’d play with it and see if RAW served any purpose other than my High Dynamic Range (HDR) that I’m learning to do. I’ll let you decide.
The JPG:
Now, the same photo, taken from RAW, and processed out:
RAW format allows you to retrieve detail and texture from areas that have been plunged into almost complete darkness in the JPG compression. The lower photo matches what my eye saw, visually.
(In order to be honest, you CAN retrieve SOME detail from a JPG, but what’s lost is lost. This was probably the best that could have been pulled back out of the shadows of the JPG, but if you look, the colours are slightly off, and there’s more digital “noise” in the photo.)
I could have possibly tweaked colour sliders and brought back the yellow cast of the approaching storm, but… it’s more work, and every time I make an edit to a JPG file, it’s considered a “destructive” edit (unless I go through making multiple adjustment layers in Photoshop), whereas the original RAW file is never altered. All the adjustments are kept in a sidecar file and are editable at any time. Now, next week, or 10 years from now. (Provided, of course, that the Mayans were wrong and the world doesn’t end on December 21, 2012.)
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/tfsw.mp3]Silver Blue, who wonders if I’m getting into the intricacies of photography a TAD too much. LOL.
I used to be confused, now I just don’t know…
By Silver Blue
…since you’ve left I’ve been watching blue skies come and go…
Somewhere around Elizabeth City, NC, 2006.
Nags Head, NC, 2006.
Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel, 2009.
Harris Teeter Parking Lot, Suffolk, VA 2009.
Regardless… we’ll always have…
Paris, France, 1982.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/bsa.mp3]Silver Blue, who does watch those blue skies come and go…
Look Closer…it’s the pattern of my life.
By Silver Blue
A bear in a boat…
…and a bear with a spyglass (and gull).
A plush pink poodle that was punted from the property….
…and Mama Quinn’s face.
Silver Blue, who says there’s no love like the love of Roxette Bunny™.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/poml.mp3]More than your daily requirement…
By Silver Blue
…for cuteness.
Nothing more need be said. Except maybe… Awww…..
I’ll be watching over you…
By Silver Blue
I’ll admit, the idea of having a guardian angel is a nice one. To think there’s someone on my side, watching over me. Ergo, when I went for a walk and caught glimpse of a statue at the end of a walk, I knew I had to capture it.
Something about how your eyes are led, up the path, to the angel was something I liked.
In a more abstract sense, however, was this:
Which I can’t explain, but it’s almost as if the tiles are acting as glyphs to represent a guardian angel as well, flitting here and there.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/bga.mp3]Silver Blue, who still, after all this time, listens for the brush of angel wings.
It’s yesteryear once more…
By Silver Blue
Back in the days when I used to shoot 35mm (on my Minolta X-370 because either digital was too expensive or hadn’t been invented yet), I was on the road a lot more than I am today, which in a way, is sad. I think I have a better “eye” for photography these days, and now that I’m exclusively digital (Canon Digital Rebel XTi and Canon Rebel T3i, and 2 point and shoots thrown in for good luck), the price has gone WAY down because I don’t have to purchase film and have it developed … only to find that my photos were crap.
Not every photo I took was bad, however. Some turned out quite well. Take, for example, this storefront window in State College, PA (from 1996):
I don’t recall what store it was (even though there’s a bit of the storefront label on the window int he bottom left), or what they were promoting (other than an obvious throwback to the 50s and 60s), but something about the all in one “original entertainment center” made me wistful for yesteryear. (As a side note, if you look closely, you can see where the TV has been replaced with most likely a CRT computer monitor — the channel selector knob (lower right, under the screen) is missing, and the true TV tube would have filled the hole and pushed out in a convex shape.)
If you’re more into abstract shapes and forms, however, from the same summer, here’s something very simplistic:
Now, I can’t tell you why the broken clothespin (which, in a way, looks like either a bird in flight or a glider) caught my attention, but it did. Revisiting the photo 16 years after it was taken, I cleaned it and recomposed the photo by performing a crop to “simplify” the photograph and give it balance. In case you’re wondering what the original photo looked like, here it is:
I had to do some restoration to the photo from where the negative was rather scratched and speckled, and to correct a colour shift on the right side of the negative, where it had damage from heat (it was stashed in the attic for a good number of years). I like this photo, but I like the recomposition more. I’ve at least learned that you don’t have to put everything dead center of the frame to take a photo of it.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/qtap.mp3]Silver Blue, who wonders how many memories are stashed in people’s shoe boxes, closets, attics, just waiting for their moment to be relived, or in some cases… wondered about because the photographer has passed on…
Another view of DC
By Silver Blue
Taken in 2000. Cold. Snowy in some sections of town. But I never knew things like this existed:
I’ve heard of the Great Pyramids of Giza. But the Minor Pyramids of DC? Actually, it looks (to me) more like skylights.
What we could consider, today, a steel representation of an outfit that perhaps Lady Gaga would wear, I never could discern exactly WHAT this was supposed to be.
I seem to have a penchant for finding bunny sculpture wherever I go. 12 years ago was no exception. 🙂
Finally…. oh, to harken back to high school and…
The dreaded TYPEWRITER ERASER! LOL. Why someone felt the need to enlarge one and make it “art” is beyond me, but… it made me smile then, and still does today.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/mtpw.mp3]Silver Blue, who finds things like this exciting to photograph. Such a mystery!
In a FOWL Mood
By Silver Blue
Took the day off from work because I’m sick of the only days off from work being those days that I am… sick. I have things that need tended to on the weekends normally, so no time for play there. Here comes the word that it will be in the 80s (in February!), and strong, potentially destructive thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Time to use the camera! What to shoot? What I did, put me in a FOWL Mood!
FOWL! 🙂
Hey Mr. Seagull, can’t you read? No fishing or crabbing!!!
I love the form of the gull on the wing. I don’t think this one’s name was Jonathan Livingston, however.
They did perch and peer at me, however. Determining that I had neither Cheese Puffs or bread to feed them, however…
…they soon took to flight.
Personally, I think I was in a flight path, today. 😉
Bye-bye blackbird. The one in the middle was obnoxiously noisy. You can see the open beak.
Mister (or Miss) Dove was looking for lunch. Like most doves, this one was shy and quickly darted behind the tree.
I’ve photographed these pier ruins over the years
(This was from 1995. You can see how little remains, and with each nor’easter and hurricane we get, more disappears…)
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are looking for lunch as well.
As are these Canadian Geese, which no longer migrate. Is it due to the weather, or because people are feeding them?
Finally….just to prove that the weather was good for all…
Not a hare was out of place. 🙂
There were many more photos that are worthy of sharing…but they’ll have to wait for another way.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/saog-ld.mp3]Silver Blue, who really enjoyed being out in nature today….
Just a couple days late…
By Silver Blue
But…
Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!
From my trip to New Orleans in 2003:
The Jackson Brewery, just before a massive thunderstorm.
I loved the saturation of colours and tones in this photo:
It has not been manipulated in any way other than to size down for placing on the web.
This photo also appears in my photo biography. Its a busy photo, but other than the tourists in the bottom right corner, I can’t think of anything I could have removed in order to simplify the picture.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/hotrs.mp3]Silver Blue, who gave up Lent for Lent.
We’re lost…in this… masquerade…
By Silver Blue | 1 comment
1
As you know, I’m very big on my “blues”. Including those that are intermingled with the “silvers”. Thanks to my friend, $tar$hine (a/k/a $ally and her “hubby” James) I have a beautiful masquerade mask on my mantle (say that six times fast!) It blends with the “cobalts” (and candles) so well, and it brings me a great deal of joy.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/sos-m.mp3]Silver Blue, who says “Masquerade…also known as a facade…where people put on a coat of paint and be what they ain’t.”
RSS