Trying to find a messed up photograph and make something good out of it, is something I don't do often. Since my camera, like most camera's these days, has a LCD display, I can usually see if a picture I took is good or not, right after I take it. And if it is not good, I take another one, and another until it is a good one.
However, I now have a camera phone, with a display that is not as good, and a camera that is not that great either. But they can capture those great, rare moments, that make the quality of the picture less important than capturing the moment itself. Below I show the original picture I took of my oldest daughter. This is a great pose, with a beautiful smile. I just love that picture. But it is very soft, and out of focus. So instead I ran it through a whole bunch of filters in Picasa, and came out with the sepia colored, very focused second picture here. And I'm glad I did not discard the picture, because I think the final result is a great picture of my daughter.
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Editing a picture to show three different impressions of it, was one of the more difficult tasks in this class. I usually take photos with a specific purpose in mind, or even if I take a picture multiple times, I end up with only one or two copies of it. Mainly because the rest is waste disk space, and for me that's a premium. So here it goes.
This is the original picture I will work with.
The next picture is a enhancement for this picture, as I had intended it to begin with. With more contrast (sharpening) and more warmth to it, I think it looks a lot better, and much more like I remember it....
OK, now my second use for this picture was as a banner for my future faculty web site. I'm working on setting that up, and learned how to create a banner in a workshop I took earlier this semester. So in order to do that, I had to resize the picture (crop) and get some of the coloring a little adjusted (I'm feeling lucky settings in Picasa). The result is display in the picture below.
And coming up with the third editing idea was rather difficult to me. But I am actaully rather pleased with the result. Since this was a picture of snow on trees, I figured why not make it look like it was taking while it was snowing. Although that effect isn't completely right in this picture, I stil like the look of it. I ran this through the film grain filter in Picasa, then put it in black-and-white, and as a finishing effect, increased the shadows just a little bit. The resulting picture you can see below.
Ok, this is a fun assignment, and I had just the picture for it....
On a vacation in Arsen, Belgium, I took a picture of a swan who was going after my mom. He flapped his wings and started quaking a bit. Although he did not look that scary to me, he did look very beautiful. But the original picture had too much background focus on it, so I edited the picture to show off the beauty of the swan, and... well, you can see the result below. I hope you like it as much as I do.
I have about 4000 digital photographs that are kind of organized randomly. So as part of this assignment, I actually sat down and made more of a structure to the current archiving, which wasn’t easy, working with that many photographs. And it is by no means done, but I believe it is off to a good start.
Picasa has been a great tool for me during this class. I’m very happy with the ease of use of this great, free, program, and I’m really happy to find out that I can edit and organize my pictures quickly and easily on the fly. And that is good, because I usually do not have much time to do that.
I start with transferring the file from my camera to my computer. I do this manually, and put them all into one big folder, called Originals. In there, I change the view to thumbnails, and delete the pictures that did not turn out well, and rotate the one I took at a different angle.
At that point, I start separating the pictures out into different folders. Most of the folders have names that are the same or similar to the folders I listed below for the “final” pictures. The difference is in the root of the folder, which in this case is still on my “C” drive, and together in a folder called “Working”.
Then I edit the photos with Picasa, or Photoshop, or Paintshop Pro. Its been awhile since I used that last program, but it is similar to Adobe Photoshop Elements. After a photo is “done”, I save a copy of it to the “Digital Photos” folder on my “D” drive. This drive is 1 TB of two mirrored 500 GB hard drives. And for some double protection, I do keep a backup hard drive in my fireproof safe. I back that up once a month.
Below I have a sample of how I divided my photographs in categories/folders. These are the final phtos. It’s a work in progress, but it works so far. Besides that, since I use Picasa for most of it, that program lets you actually view the pictures in real time, right in their folders, which makes it really easy to organize them.
Categories (folder):
- Family
- 1.Us
- Chris
- Danielle
- Liz
- Mari Ana
- Mom and Dad
- Chris
- Kevin
- Hans and Tineke
- Erik and Ilse
- Erik
- Ilse
- Danique
- Sebastiaan
- Peggy
- Places
- Veghel (my home town in the )
- North Pole
- Fairbanks
And on and on......
My current camera is the Konica Minolta DiMage Z5. Its been a camera that has been in every way pretty much perfect for our family. Its easy to use, doesn’t way much, can take pictures in almost every light/dark situation, and can make small video clips as well.
So when I looked up the reviews for this camera, I wasn’t that surprised to find that they were very similar in nature, and kind of what I expected.
Using the web site http://www.dcviews.com I picked the following three reviews:
CNet review
http://reviews.cnet.com/Konica_Minolta_Dimage_Z5_black/4505-6501_7-31305784.html?tag=pdtl-list
Photography Blog
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_konica_minolta_dimage_z5.php
DP Review
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/KonicaMinoltaZ5/
Most of the reviews compared this camera with its previous version, the DiMage Z3 or a similar camera from the same company, the DiMage Z20. Also, many reviews compared it with Panasonics Lumix DMC-FZ5, which seems to be the DiMage Z5’s direct competitor.
As for the conclusion of most of the reviews, I found they were all pretty similar in their conclusions. Most of them find this camera to be easy to use and take pictures with. Good color and white balance for most situations, although not particular in artificial light. The flash is quite good, and it has a shoe for an optional external flash. The menu is easy to navigate, and the large size LCD display helps with that of course.
My biggest sell on this one was the Anti-Shake feature which works really well. Even for fast action shots, it focuses quickly, and takes pictures accurately and focused. Also, for the price of this camera, I think I got features that were only present in more expensive camera’s.
Some of the downside to this camera, according to the reviews was that most of the photo’s will require some post processing, most of them because pictures will be too soft/mild/unsharp. The highest ISO setting is 320, which is not at all accommodating. And after this class, I would like to see that a lot higher.
But all in all, I like the camera, and it seems I’m not alone. I did a little research before I bought it as well, but nothing as much as I did for this assignment.
- How do you adjust the ISO on your camera?
In camera mode, my camera can be set to 50, 100, 200, and 320 ISO. The other option is Auto which will adjust it based on the current light conditions between 50 and 160 ISO. If a setting is used other then Auto, it will show up on the LCD display.
To set the ISO, you would press Menu and navigate to the 3 tab. The first item in that list is Sensitivity will allow you to change the ISO. - How do you adjust the color balance on your camera?
In the same section of the menu where you set the ISO, you can adjust the color balance. There are four settings for Color Mode: Natural Color, Vivid Color, Black and White, and Sepia. All of them are presets, they cannot be altered and there is no “custom mode”. In addition to these adjustments, there is a Contrast Mode below the Color Mode. In Contrast Mode there are three options: , High, and Low.
By default the setting are set to Natural Color, and contrast. - How do you set exposure compensation?
If I’m not mistaken, on my camera this would be the White Balance setting. You can get there by pressing Menu and selecting the first tab. The fourth item on the list is White Balance. It has 5 presets: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Flash. It also has an Auto option, and two custom options. Until now, I’ve had never used any of these options, but I will start experiencing with it now. - How do you set file size and compression?
Image size on the camera is set again by pressing the Menu button, and on the first tab, it is the second item on the list. The third item on the list is Quality which also contribute to file size. The way this camera works, is that the Image Size is the resolution of the picture. This can be set to four different settings: 640, 1600, 2048, and 2560. The Quality can be set to three settings: Economy, Standard, and Fine. The Quality setting puts more pixels in the picture. So a setting of 2560 at Fine quality will produce the biggest file size, where 640 at Economy will be the smallest file size. According to the camera manual, the file size can vary from 2590KB to 100KB. - How do you set the exposure meter mode?
The camera has three preset exposure modes: P, A, and S. You can select these modes by turning the little dial on top of the camera to the mode you want. - How do you set macro focusing?
I really have no idea… I think it does it automatically by default, but I’m not sure. I can’t seem to find that in the manual either. - How do you set the flash mode?
My camera has a built in flash. To activate it, you just flip the flash up on the top to the camera, and it will by default select the Autoflash mode. With a button on the front of the camera you can change the flash mode to three other settings: Red-eye reduction, Fill-flash, and slow sync. Of course, if the flash is flipped down or closed, the flash mode is disabled.
- During 1994-1995 I traveled with an international cast of about 160 people. For a full year, a lot of the people in this group were very close friends of mine, and some of them still are. However, looking back through photo’s I took of that year, I really don’t have a lot of “people pictures”. Many photos’ I took were more of places, or events. I wish I had more photos of individuals, especially of my close friends.
- Having been born and raised in also makes me look for photos of family a lot more. Not direct family, I do have quite a few of my mom, dad, and brothers. However, there are lots of aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. Trying to share that with my daughters these days is not always easy, because I don’t have a lot of good pictures of them. On both sides of my family, they usually got together once a year with the whole family. I wish I would’ve taken more pictures of family members during those get-togethers.
- While I was hunting this past fall, I spend a lot of time on my neighbor’s property, hoping for a bull moose to come to one of his big barley fields. I sat many nights on the edge of the field, usually on a big pile of dirt, overlooking the field, with the tress on the horizon. Although toward the end of the evening, it would get pretty cold, the sunsets would be awesome. Right over the field, the sky in hues of purple and orange. It reminded me of how beautiful this great place is that we call . And of course, I wish I had captures that moment in a photo.
- A good picture of Illa. She was my parents-in-law dog. A absolutely beautifull white Alaskan husky, strong, and with a attitude…. A true farm dog. A day last winter, she disappeared. We’ve looked for her all over, but have not found her. Most of us hold out hope she will return one of these days, but know that most likely, she’s no longer alive. While we have a lot of pictures of her, I wish we had more photos on which you can fully see her, in all her glory. We miss Illa a lot.
- Going back to my traveling year. The last night I spend with the group was in a lock-in. We all gathered with all of our travel gear in a gym. We spend time talking, saying good byes and exchanging contact information. We talked about the past year and how it had effect us. A lot of tears were shed during that night. I took pictures early in the evening, but as the night went on, I didn’t want to take more because of the sadness of that last time I saw many good friends. Of course now, almost 14 years later, I wish I had. It was a time and place in my life I will never forget. I certainly wish I would have captured the emotions of that night in more photos.
On the first day of class, Steve talked about several different software programs that are available for editing photos, including Adobe Photoshop, Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Elements. This last one was at version 4, and Steve told us to wait buying that version, since the newer version 5 was about to be released.
Well, it has been released, and PC Magazine did a review of it on their web site. Although it is a short review, it gives you an idea of the added and improved features of it, and it has a short slideshow of screenshots of the new version. I've been using Picasa for the last 2 weeks, and I really like it. But it looks to me that Photoshop Elements gives you more control over the features, which I might like later on in this digital photography class. There is a trial version available for version 4 from Adobe right here.
Photographs for me are meant to capture a specific moment in time, or a specific emotion in time. This could be a emotion for yourself, or for someone else. Photos bring back memories of places, people, things, and other times. Especially capturing people on photgraphs is very enjoyable for me, and one of the main reasons I take photos. People express their emotions through a variety of different ways, and a photo can really capture the non-verbal expression very well. Taking a look at a photograh years later, it can make you appreciate the moment or event captured even more, or again.
When my wife and I bought our camera, we bought it just before a trip to see my parents in Europe. It would be the first time my oldest daughter would get to see the country and culture I was born and raised in. I wanted to make sure that we had a good camera to capture all of those moments and emotions, so we would get a good "picture" of that whole experience. We certainly did, and we are very happy with our camera. Having family far away makes you send pictures back and forth, and it is nice not to have to worry too much about your camera and how it will take the pictures, but instead worry about what you want to take photographs off. I hope to learn more about this camera in this class.
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