testing, testing....

As you already know, or if you are arriving late, you will find out NEXT, reading downward, I have been testing a couple of 'new' old Nikon D70s, and its as if I have NO SKILL whatsoever in shooting photos with a camera of any kind.  Consistently over-exposed, terrible color, etc.  But then I am finding that it is rarely a lost cause with some adjustments in Photoshop, and I am getting the feeling that a lot of what we see in 'modern digital cameras' is a decade of learning by the industry to sweeten the image very effectively in camera before you ever see it.  This old D70 is right there on the cusp of technology where digital began.  These almost-large sensors were housing large pixels and could take great photos (in 2003) that rival anything you see for amateurs today, but the software packed in to it for turning this old sensor's light input into imagery has come a long way since 2003.  Everybody is tweaking everything now.  And when you get everything right, you get good shots in the camera.  If you get one or two tiny things wrong, you have to seriously work with Photoshop to get levels and colors to look the way you saw them.

I know this is not cigar related, but my sister sometimes reads this, and one of the cameras is hers now, so finally figuring out how to make it take a good picture and then handing it to her and saying LOOK OUT, this camera is insane, is important to me.  Mostly I just share my dejection at looking like a rank amateur instead of a career picture creator.  So here is about the last pic I took in my camera tests, and there was no sun bouncing into the camera, I seem to have hit the exposure properly, with no exposure compensation dialed in...nothing done or not done by me to destroy the camera's effort to make me look good.

Interesting dynamic range.  Interesting to also see that the camera IS CAPABLE of not taking crap-ass pictures.  Now I just need to find the circumstances under which it is willing to do so.

Then there is this one that I took not because I like to take flower pictures, just like everybody who gets a digital camera and runs out of ideas after they buy 5 lenses, but because the Camelia is such a difficult flower to see in a beautiful state just with your eyes.  But to find one and have a digital camera in hand is a little miracle.  The Camelia does nothing but die ugly from the moment it blooms.  You don't get the week or two of slow and graceful aging of a rosebud.  It pops open and then every insect in town tramples all over it and it gets brown spots in mere hours, turns brown all over in a few days, and then hangs on in disgusting brown and white clumps until a strong enough rain comes and knocks them off.  

Not only did the camera handle the light, it handled the color.  it looks really nice there.  And then I saw a coupla hipster girls duck into the local market for some beers, and left their bikes all by themselves.

I had to do some tweaking in Photoshop on this one, it hatched from the camera too bright, not enough contrast.  I don't MIND tweaking in a program, but my sister might not think its very much fun, especially since her point and shoots do a much better job of hatching pics with proper brightness, contrast and saturation already baked in.  I don't think I lost a lot of info in bringing down the brightness here, but who knows.  In the end, the pic works for me, and so does the camera.  But I could see getting my butt in a crack and not getting a shot I want because I am not lucky enough to have figured out what the meter is trying to tell me I am doing.  We'll see, I don't have to turn it over til Easter.  I can still figure out why I suck at pitcher takin.