Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Sony R1 / Prairie Grove Antiques

A couple SOOC, most treated with Topaz to add pop. One of the Sheriff Woody's has examples of both for contrast. Prairie Grove's antique stores are a great place to shoot to test for low light performance. The R1 is now almost an antique itself but it's still an amazing camera for all purpose shooting and well suited to HDR as it is easily set for bracketing. I recently got a backup R1 for next to nothing and took it out for a test today. Really fast primes work best in this store but the R1 can go f2.8 and is razor sharp.








 

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Panasonic LC1 / Topaz / Cafe Tusk

Straight out of camera
Top shot is OOC, 2nd is Topaz processed.


Panasonic LC1 / University of Arkansas / Fulbright statue

I thought I'd post an OOC Jpeg then the Topaz treatment. As you can see, the LC1's Jpegs are outstanding. The first shot is OOC and the second has been post processed with Topaz.
 

Panasonic LC1 / University of Arkansas / too many shots of Old Main








Panasonic LC1 / University of Arkansas / Union









Panasonic LC1 / University of Arkansas / Pi Beta Phi Centennial Gate

Decent enough day so I grabbed the LC1 which I haven't used as much as I wanted to go to school to capture a few frames. I like everything the camera took and I very much like using the LC1, which is a "real" camera with manual controls for aperture and exposure. I did post them a bit in Topaz, I guess because I could. More will follow soon.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Leica X1 / Topaz / Lesley Dill / University of Arkansas Fine Arts


The Lesley Dill show is pretty cool. One of the benefits of being close / working at a university is access to the fine arts as presented and represented by the University. It's almost hard to take it all in (Lesley Dill's big sized work) and compute it unless you can capture it and review at leisure. The first shot is a merge to get the whole "Drunk with The Great Starry Void" in. The 2D stars pop like 3D in the photo which is cool. Again, the website with more information is here:

  http://www.lesleydill.net/faithDevil.html


I did appreciate that the one gal who studied the show for the ten or so minutes I was taking it in and taking some photographs managed to eschew staring at her smart phone for more than a minute straight. She is in the great minority in that respect.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Leica X1 / University of Arkansas / Topaz

The old/new X1 went to the university today to look around. I took a few dozen shots and toned them in Topaz, for which the X1's output shines (literally and figuratively). I've read quite a bit about the X1 while looking for a replacement for the one I sold a year ago. One complaint is dust spots on the sensor and yes, I see a couple on this example. Not supposed to happen on a non-interchangeable lens camera but the telescoping lens has the potential for sucking in dust particles. I remember the original Ricoh grd suffered from the same fate, as well as a handful of other cameras with lenses that extend. There are ways to protect the sensor (add a lens hood and filter to protect it when it extends and retracts) but that won't work retroactively, so I have to live with the small spots which show up mainly on bright sky shots. They can be Photoshopped away (with extra work, of course). I didn't bother for these blog postings, so you can see them in the sky shots. Here's a few exposures from today's (virtual) rolls. If you are interested in the fine arts presentation on campus, which is partially captured hereunder, the details are here:

http://www.lesleydill.net/faithDevil.html