Tag Archives: aperture

November 28, 2011 · 10:08 am

Experimenting in Lightroom

As I mentioned a few days ago, my MacBook went kaput. Thankfully, everything’s backed up and the hard drive is still alive. This did leave me, however, without a photo processing tool. I’ve always used Aperture 3 just because it was the first thing I  tried. While I’d played around with Lightroom, I hadn’t had a chance to use it for my own shots.

I think I might stick with it. It’s much more responsive to Aperture 3, for one thing. Even though it always deals with the huge amount of data in a RAW file, it’s a million times faster on a PC comparable in hardware to my  MacBook. I was also able to experiment with the different settings – which do the same basic stuff – and have some more features.

A few things I was looking for include contrast, color, and sharpness. All went extremely well. Here are three results:

The above was a bit over-saturated for my taste. I’ll keep experimenting with what to do with saturation in the future.

With how poorly Aperture 3 acts on my more-than-decent MacBook, I might just have become a convert…

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December 27, 2010 · 10:29 am

Have a (Late) Merry Christmas!

I’ve always been the one in the family that sends the Christmas card a week late.  I’m not sure if it’s procrastination – I think it’s more of the idea of “eh, Christmas seems like it’s too far away…” which I guess could be interpreted as procrastination… anyway, that’s the case this year as I think I sent cards back to the US on the 22nd or 23rd.  Not good.

This photo was taken with the theme of a photo club in mind.  I actually had plenty of time for this, but never got around to it, partly because Christmas is more minor in Taiwan.  This was taken at a church in Hsinchu on the day AFTER Christmas, and I thought the HDR complimented the theme well.  I think it’s a bit over-processed – as I’ve said before, I’m moving away from HDR in general, but pull it out from time to time.

I took it with the multiple focus points enabled (rare for me anymore) at f/3.5 to accentuate the difference between the foreground and the church in the back.  I also increased the saturation (too much?) of the reds to make them stand out and tried to hilight the garland and flowers more than they are showing up.

Even if it’s late, I hope everyone’s holidays are good.  I’m looking forward to my time off in a month – for Chinese New Year.

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September 16, 2010 · 10:56 pm

The Park by the River (Again)

I have previously taken photos at this large park near the river which acts as the border between Hsinchu and Jhubei, but I wanted to go out again tonight as we had a perfectly clear night for a change.

With the 18-55 lens, I got some regular landscape photos and a shot of a tower which carries powerlines.  They are somewhat obnoxiously right on the trail – but good for an HDR from a different perspective:

I was also happy with this HDR of Jhubei.  My apartment is nestled somewhere in the middle of the buildings.  I would consider this to be a “newish” part of town because as it is indeed newer than the winding, crowded streets of “Old Jhubei” further to the west, it pales in scope to the newer section of town which is being billed as a “New Taipei.”  It certainly is getting that feel – I just hope we don’t have a construction bubble on our hands.

Anyway, be sure to click on the photo below to see a larger version in Flickr.  This blog’s limits make me keep photos small.  This was also taken with the 18-55mm.

…and finally, a bird shot taken with the 70-300mm – of course the glass was stretched out as far as possible.  I’m not sure what kind of bird this is – please let me know if you’re familiar with Taiwanese fauna.

Things are still going well here.  I will be having a day off in a week due to the Moon Festival – I’ll be sure to post any photos that come up as a result of that experience…

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