Thoughts from My Recent Trip West

[dan_moore5]

<p>So, last week I ventured west to see some of western Colorado and eastern Utah. This is about my favorite part of the country. While I was there photographing away with my E-600, a couple of thoughts popped into my head:<br>

1) This was my first extended use of my 12-60 SWD. Wow. I'm really glad I bought that.<br>

2) The 40-150 kit lens is small. So, uh, I guess it's good for being small, but I really need to upgrade that. Not that you can't take a good photo with it, but when I look at one shot with even my 14-42 kit lens, and then another with the 40-150, there is (to me) a noticeable gap in quality.<br>

3) I've had my 9-18mm for a while now, and it continues to impress. I'd like a 7-14, but this is so good that it allows me to hold off. That and the price of the 7-14.<br>

4) I was out shooting at sunrise and sunset, usually with a tripod. But at almost every session, there'd be an angle I wanted to shoot where a tripod would be difficult to use. It is a moments like these where the 4/3 sensor really shines. I don't have to choose between a hand-holdable shutter speed and depth-of-field. I can have both. There were a couple of shots that I just don't know if I could have taken with a full-frame sensor due to this.<br>

5) If I never have more than 12 megapixels, that's quite fine by me.<br>

6) I shall never buy a camera without a tilt-swivel screen.<br>

7) I'm much too lazy to shoot raw. I've always been pleased with super-fine jpg. I don't intend to change that now.<br>

Now, I don't mean to come across as an Olympus fan-boy. In the end, some cameras have an advantage in one area and others in another, and it's up to the photographer to exploit the advantages of whatever they have. That said, every time I go out for any extended amount of shooting, I'm very happy with what Olympus has sold me, and I really doubt I'd produce significantly better results with another brand's cameras.<br>

Finally, a few photos from the trip. I have a lot more to work through, but these ore the few that I've worked on to date.<br>

Delicate Arch at night. 12-60mm at 12mm, f2.8 1/30 of a second, ISO 640. Brought a spotlight up with me.</p>

<p><img src="http://www.uwgb.edu/moored/delicateNightweb.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="1000" /></p>

<p>Mesa Arch at Dawn. 12-60mm at 12mm, f8, ISO 200. The is 6 exposures between 1/30 and 1/1000 combined in various ways in Photoshop.<br>

<img src="http://www.uwgb.edu/moored/mesaarch1web.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="667" /></p>

<p>Juniper at Capitol Reef National Park. 12-60mm at 14mm. f8, 1/500, ISO 200. Made Black and White using the Image > Adjustments > Black & White tool in Photoshop.<br>

<img src="http://www.uwgb.edu/moored/capitolTreeweb.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="1000" /></p>

[Greg M]

<p>I love #1 with Orion in the background!</p>

<p>#2 is a classic image. Never gets old and this ones' another good one. very nice use of image layering.</p>

<p>#3 has a hint of Ansel Adams to it for me. Great shot.</p>

[famico]

<p>Nice shots, all, but my favorite is #1. Well done? Did you camp nearby overnight?</p>

[dan_moore5]

<p>Thanks for the compliments!<br>

Greg, #2 is indeed the "standard shot" for Mesa Arch, but with good reason. I have another one taken with the 9-18 from off to the right side of the arch which I've yet to work with yet, but which is a bit more of a unique angle and I think it should work well. Although, just how unique it is I don't know... I'm sure just about everything imaginable has been done with Mesa Arch at dawn.<br>

Hosteen, I didn't camp overnight. Camping at Arches outside of the campground isn't allowed. It is about a 1.5 mile walk uphill from the trailhead to the arch, and a pretty well marked trail. I started at about 9:00 pm local time last Tuesday, and was back to the car by about 11:30. I think moonrise was at about 11:30 or 12, so I wanted to shoot in the window after dark but before the moon started to cast some light.</p>

[GerrySiegel]

<p>Great work, Dan. As for the old fanboy appellation, you know, I guess I probably am a fanboy after 7 years with the brand. Well to extent that I don't accept someone lookin' down their nose at Olympus. You take any E body and two lenses like the 12-60 and the 50-200 mm and you can handle just about every situation in the real world. Add a tripod, or a monopod, a dash of patience and a good eye, and<em> voila</em> you come up with three stunning images. The tree shot B and W, grabs me strong today, as merits to be hanging in a gallery.. All 3 do actually. Well done, ole "fanboy." PS, I also shoot JPEGs, but don't tell, (who cares/who knows.) Aloha and happy trails, Dan, gs</p>

[claude-mtl]

<p>At the end of the day, it is the energy you place behind the camera which does the work. You seem to have a lot of it, and you came up with great looking images. Congratulations and thank you for sharing your thoughts.</p>

 

[dan_moore5]

<p>Thanks all!<br>

One note, I see I listed the shutter speed for the night shot as 1/30 of a second. I'm dumb. It was a 30 second exposure.</p>

 

[ilkka]

<p>Very nice pictures and good observations. Just one comment/question. You said you have so far "worked" on these three images. I wonder what work have you done on them. Since you mentioned being too lazy to use raw. I somehow think that you could just as well have worked on these three images starting from raw, and not spent any more time than you already did. And maybe the images 1 and 2 especially could have benefitted from it. Raw is a hassle for a photo journalist shooting thousand images and having to send them all to editors. Many of them shoot both raw and jpeg so that they have the raw files in case more critical work is needed for some images later. But for the rest of us, if we just work on a few select images, raw is really no hindrance.</p>

[dan_moore5]

<p>Ilkka, good point on RAW. To be honest, more than anything I was attempting humor in saying that I'm too lazy to use RAW, it's really down to, for me, wanting to keep file sizes down and the fact that with the Oly jpg engine you gain very little extra range from shooting RAW. I've just never seen the benefit.<br>

In terms of the work I've done on the photos in photoshop, here's what I've done:<br>

Delicate Arch: Mostly just minor curves adjustments for brightness and contrast. I really actually did very little to this, with one big exception: Orion's stars. See, some clouds rolled in as I was taking photos from this angle (I took 5 or 6 exposures, this being the last one), and in that time the two bottom stars got covered up. I have real mixed feelings about adding or removing things in Photoshop, but I couldn't help myself here.<br>

Mesa Arch: no camera in the world (to my knowledge) can capture the dynamic range needed to get the mountains on the horizon (I needed the 1/1000 exposure for that) and the shadows on the arch (1/30). So I used the Photoshop merge to HDR to bring 7 exposures together (I also tried Photomatix pro but didn't like it as well in this instance). I made three layers in Photoshop, two of the HDR version and one more of the, IIRC, 1/250 exposure, and did curves adjustments on each, focusing on different areas. Then I erased/blended areas together to get the effect I want. I spent a good few hours on this, and if it weren't for the mountains on the horizon, I could have done it with one RAW file and a few minutes of editing, I'm sure.<br>

The Juniper: Didn't do to much. Jpg captured all the range I needed. I just used the Black & White conversion, adjusting the color sliders to get the values and contrasts I wanted, then to a little bit of dodging and burning.<br>

All in all, I'm just not sure where I could have saved much time shooting RAW. Not that it doesn't have it's place, it's just not usually part of my work flow. In two of the above images I really made fairly minor changes (well, changing to B&W isn't minor, but it's not necessarily time-consuming), and the jpg was capturing the picture that I wanted. In the case of Mesa Arch, I have a hard time seeing how I was really going to save that much time shooting RAW, as I was still going to need multiple exposures to get what I wanted.<br>

In the broad sense I see that you are right, that in certain (perhaps many) cases it would be easier to shoot a RAW file and work off that than trying to work off of a jpg. It's also possible I'm just not understanding the benefits of RAW, but it's rare that I have a photo and wish I could do something with it that I'm unable to do with a jpg.</p>

[ilkka]

<p>After your explanation I am really impressed by picture 2. HDR that does not look HDR and captures perfectly what was there. Raw can give a bit wider dynamic range, but of course nowhere near as much as you got here. Well done.<br>

Raw does not actually take that much more space because it only captures the actual pixels before bayer interpolation. I checked my EP-1 and it makes 14Mb raw files while best quality jpegs are 8.4Mb. </p>

[Greg M]

<p>The work you did on image #2 is superb. I need to take more advantage of the E5's 7 image bracket feature on subjects like this..... when the mood inspires me to carry a tripod. I have to admit, most of the time it (the inspiration to carry a tripod) is just not there.</p>

[russel_yee]

<p>really, nice shots and i'm super jealous of your trip! <br>

also, you found the perfect camera system for you, I'm also envious of that =) and since you didn't say that all other camera systems suck compared to your oly, I don't consider it fanboyism... just what you need.</p>

[rdm]

Beautiful Shots Dan Moore.