pierces

I miss the sweep panorama! They dropped it from the newer mirrorless cameras a while ago. Iused it a lot on my Sony compact. ...and yes, nice shot! Dave

Truly. Isn't it wonderful? So many options out there to satisfy one's preferences. Since I use both Lightroom and Photoshop regularly and for far more than simple panoramas, the $10/mo. is very reasonable compared to the past where you had to fork out $500 for the new features that came out in the latest desktop version of Photoshop that they rolled out every couple of years. Lightroom's organizational features has made managing the 190k+ images from the last 20 years of digital very easy and that function alone makes it worth the money. It's a great time to be a photographer! Dave

The amount of "work" depends on what method you use for stitching. The widely used Lightroom program from Adobe (only $10/mo. including the full Photoshop editor) makes it incredibly simple as long as you have taken care to space your shots with enough overlap for the AI to read and match. Select images and right-click: 15-20 seconds later the panorama is automagically created: The advantage of a stitched image is the resolution. Instead of a 24MP 6000 x 4000 image cropped to 12MP at 6000 x 2000, the image above is 40mp at 10822 x 3784. Great for large prints, but also great for zooming in to explore the detail. Crop from 100% view: Since photography has been my primary hobby for most of my life, I don't consider post-processing to be actual work. I consider it to be a lot like putting a few coats of lacquer on a table or cabinet you just built (my other main hobby). 🙂 Dave

Aren't before and after photos wonderful? In a word, no. I hate to take the before component because those images usually showcase some sort of disaster or neglect that was bad enough to inspire one to work towards a more attractive or functional after state. This week’s photo is an exception to my rule for a couple of reasons. First, the before state wasn’t a victim of neglect or a disaster but simply a location we identified as a good space for some additional storage. Secondly, this and other interruptions kept me from spending any time with a camera. So, instead of some grand scenery or a swath of beautiful flowers, this week’s image is the photographic equivalent of “the dog ate my homework”. The Price of Progress Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, May 16 and Sunday, May 22 Did you see something worth photographing? Why not share it? Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Setting the crop mode drops you to about 10-12 MP, but though this eliminates the ability to crop (already cropped), the images are still pretty good. I strongly suggest that when the time comes, you look at the 24-105 f/4 G. I leave that lens on my A7III literally 99% of the time. It covers a huge slice of what you need for everyday and travel photography and is also very sharp. What really indicates that this lens is a winner is that KEH has no used units in stock. Definitely a keeper. Dave

Keep in mind that the 18-135 and 18-55 A-mount lenses with the SAM autofocus motors were designed for the APS-C sensor on the A37. When attached to the A7III full-frame camera using the LA-EA3 adapter (for SAM and SSM lenses), they will function and focus well but the image circle may not completely cover the full-frame sensor causing darkened edges and even black corners at most focal lengths. Dave

I may have posted this sometime in the past but since I just added it as an article on my pierce324.com article list, I thought I would post it here too. Got A Dirty Sensor? While preparing and packing for an upcoming trip, I decided it was a good idea to check to see if the sensors on my cameras needed cleaning. My usual indicator that it’s time to do housekeeping is when I get back from a trip and find the dreaded blobs on a few hundred otherwise excellent images, so my smugness over actually doing something proactively prompted me to post this. Sensor dust is easiest to see at small apertures so I opened Notepad full screen on my monitor (any application that will display a blank white page or a well-lit white wall will do), cranked my lens down to f/22 with a slight underexposure and took a shot of the screen filling the entire image. As you can see, my hunch paid off: (No, my sensor doesn’t have a tiny arrow stuck to it…) All but the largest spots would be invisible in most images at wide apertures but if I were to stop it down to blur a waterfall or something like that, it would look like I shot it through the window of a gas station restroom! Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but still… What to do? 1. You can take your camera to a local shop that offers sensor cleaning services. The going rates run from $40-$70. 2. Send your camera body in to a service center for about the same price plus shipping. 3. Do it yourself. (*GASP*) It is actually not as hard or as scary as it sounds. True, if done with improper tools and materials you can make it worse than it was or even damage your sensor but with a little care and a moderate investment, you can save yourself some money and show up at every photo-op with a clean slate. So to speak. For years, my weapon of choice has been the Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly 724 pictured here. It has an ultra-fine brush that picks up dust with a static charge. The odd handle is the secret to the static charge. It contains a high-speed motor that spins the brush to build up the charge from the air around it. About 10 seconds worth will turn the fibers of the Butterfly into a dust magnet. It also does double-duty by ejecting particles from the prior cleaning during the spin. The cost is about the same as two cleanings at a shop. Once you have the lens off, take a moment before activating the cleaning mode from the menu to use a bulb blower to blow excess dust off the area around the sensor and if you have a DSLR, do the mirror box area as well. Take a moment to blow any dust from the rear element of the lens. This will help avoid re-contamination later. Do this holding the camera face down while blowing up into the cavity so dislodged particles won’t re-settle inside. The Giottos Rocket is my choice since it has an intake filter to prevent sucking in dust and spraying it back on your lens or into your camera body. DO NOT use canned air or even the specialized dry air CO2 dusters. There are a lot of delicate mechanisms in DSLR mirror box and anything more sharply focused and stronger than a bulb blower could possibly deform the shutter mechanism. Additionally, most commercial compressed air uses liquid propellants and a frigid stream of fluorocarbon accidentally washing across the sensor or mirror would be a bad thing. After pre-dusting, activate the cleaning mode from the menu. This will flip up the mirror and lock the shutter open (or just the shutter lock in the case of mirrorless cameras). A fully charged battery is recommended to prevent the shutter from closing during the procedure. (Cameras that closely monitor charge levels won’t allow the cleaning mode to even start with a low battery.) Take another moment to gently blow out the exposed cavity to remove any stray dust trapped behind the mirror (also with the camera face down). Set the camera down on its back and spin up a charge on the brush. Make a single light pass from one side to the other. Spin and repeat from the other direction. The brush itself is wide enough to cover the entire width of the sensor making the single pass the most effective method. Take care not to let the bristles touch the area around the sensor. If there is residual oil, it can contaminate the brush and spread it on the sensor. Check the results. To inspect the sensor, Visible Dust also makes a tool called a Sensor Loupe that is basically a side-illuminated magnifying lens designed to set on the lens mount and let you clearly see dust on the sensor. Opteka offers a less expensive alternative. If you elected to pass on the loupe, simply reattach the lens, turn the camera off and back on to deactivate the cleaning mode and take another test photo. Repeat as necessary until the blobs are all gone. A few minutes and two swipes with the Butterfly…voila! If you somehow got some particularly nasty particles on your sensor that resist brushing, you may have to resort to a wet cleaning which is a rather more delicate operation requiring specialized swabs and cleaning fluid. The need for this is far less common than a simple dusting so by the time you actually need to do a wet cleaning, your experience with the dry brushing may inspire you to attempt that procedure as well! Happy (spotless) Shooting! Dave

Earlier this year, I made a promise to myself to pay less attention to the lingering pandemic projects and more to my favorite hobby. To date, the resolution has been moderately successful with only a week or two finding me scrambling at the last minute to find anything remotely photogenic. This week had a lot going on with our Mother’s Day family event. It happened on Saturday to accommodate work schedules so all the family’s mothers could attend. It went well but left me with no photos since I was doing the grilling. Fortunately, I spent some time earlier in the week playing with the macro lens and Photoshop to capture and process a stack of ten images into a closeup of one of this week’s tulip blooms. Flower² Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, May 9 and Sunday, May 15 Still May. May photos please! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

I have long been a fan of automation. Blessed is he or she who says, "I only shoot manual", but in my opinion, they are turning a blind eye to decades of advancement in metering and focus technology. Don't get me wrong, understanding basic photographic theory and the relationship between the three main components of exposure that shooting full manual requires will lead to better results regardless of one's philosophical approach. Still, packing a tiny supercomputer with 100 years of photographic experience and near-infinite control over the mechanics into a modern camera should be celebrated and used to your advantage, not dismissed. Another often overlooked innovation in modern photography is the impact of mirrorless on composing and managing aspects of an image. The ability to see how the system has managed the exposure and see the effects of manual intervention like exposure compensation in real time is a phenomenal tool. (I wonder how many "I only shoot manual" people use mirrorless cameras that provide real-time visual feedback to steer their "manual" settings?) It should also be noted that while full Auto will provide excellent results in a ridiculously high percentage of situations, there's a lot of room for personalization while still making use of the robo-settings. My personal human-assisted automation preference is to manage depth of field to my taste (A-mode) and let the camera fuss over the other bits. Features like setting Auto ISO maximum to limit noise and the ability to set the lowest shutter speed before ISO is boosted has made my photographic life much easier (this eliminated the need to use shutter-priority for me). My phone is also capable of a lot of user input, but except in rare cases, I find it unnecessary. This is mainly due to what I use it for (which has expanded a lot), but also because it has its own supercomputer and I suspect, a dab of actual magic to manage all the aspects of image capture. As you said, there are still situations that require user experience and input, but that gap is narrowing. That's why I say this a lot... It's a great time to be a photographer! Dave

You need to lay off the caffeine... 🙂 I shot thousands of photos at 1/60s and below with both the A6000 and A6300 and non-stabilized lenses and had a remarkably high hit rate. However, you are correct when you say stabilization makes life easier and shooting with the stabilized 16-50PZ and later the 18-105 f/4 were my go-to for general photography. When I picked up the A6600 with its in-body stabilization, low shutter speeds became much easier to manage with all lenses since Sony uses both lens and body-based stabilization in concert. It really opened up the possibilities for the fully manual Rokinon 8mm fisheye and 12mm ultra-wide. My recommendation for a small travel kit would be an A6600 with the stabilized 18-135 zoom. Very compact and the 18-135 is sharp and covers 95% of focal lengths used for general photography. The inexpensive Rokinon 12mm f/2 could be added for wide shotsFor wildlife I would recommend the 70-300 FE lens which gives an effective 105-450 focal length. (I use it to shoot our grandson's hockey games and the dual stabilization along with the A6600's fantastic autofocus really delivers.) My 4¢... (up from 2¢ due to inflation) Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, May 2 and Sunday, May 8. May! May! - May! May! May! May! May! May! May! May! (May 2 - May 8 ). May photos please! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Pictures taken between Monday, April 25 and Sunday, May 1. Mayday! Mayday! Post photos! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

From my blog on pierce324.com: Phone vs. Camera Recently I have posted a few commentaries over on the Cruise Critic message boards regarding the tremendous advances in smartphone camera modules and how that has led to me using my phone for causal or even some travel photography instead of an advanced compact camera or hauling a "real" camera along. I thought I would add some real-life samples to compare. A few weeks ago, we drove up the hill to our son's church to see him deliver his sermon. While he was on stage, I used the phone's 105mm equivalent optical zoom to take a few shots. The results were really quite good, considering the relatively poor lighting. Here is one of the shots straight off the phone with only resizing for web presentation done: 1/35s - ISO266 - f/3.5 The photo below was taken last Sunday under identical conditions (even the same seats) with my Sony A7III also at 105mm: 1/250s - ISO3200 - f/5.6 Not a great deal of difference when resized and posted to a blog page. Considering that most of my photos are viewed online by friends and family, why would I ever carry a relatively bulky mirrorless camera when I can just pull out my phone and get the same result? I said "most" and the results aren't "the same". That's why. While we only print a limited number of family and travel photos, when it comes to the small details and photographic versatility, the camera trumps the phone in almost every way except convenience. (I said "photographic versatility" because the phone kicks the camera's butt when it comes to making a call, driving directions or browsing the web.) How much trumping depends a lot on the conditions. These images were taken under way less than ideal lighting and the fact that the phone was able to capture an image with the amount of detail shown above is a testament to how far phone camera tech has come in the last few years. However, if you need to crop aggressively or are adding the motion and another 100 feet while shooting one of our grandson's hockey games or our granddaughter's skating routine the phone just can't keep up. If the phone's AI assistant was honest, it would tell you to get a better camera and do a search for examples on Amazon. How big is the diffference? A closer look at a crop of the original un-resized phone version shows artifacts from the AI processing of the behind-the-scenes burst of several images into the best result. While both cropped images are softened by WordPress' compression algorithm, the image from the Sony retains far greater detail. Add the fact that I could have switched lenses and gotten this field of view without cropping and the camera pulls even farther ahead. Is the phone useless for anything other than snapshots destined for the web? Not at all. In good lighting and non-extreme situations, the gap between the phone and camera narrows to the point that I am comfortable using the phone to capture images for almost any end use. My decade-long Picture-A-Week project has shifted heavily to phone images in the last few years. They look great and are generally indistinguishable from "real camera" images in the annual book I make on Blurb at the end of each year. For example, the photo below was taken in good backyard light with the Pixel 6 Pro and would make an excellent 16x20 print. My dad always said, "use the right tool for the job" and I try hard to stick to that valuable bit of advice. Using the mirrorless cameras for action, serious landscapes or portraits and the phone for casual walkabout or family gathering shots is a good rule of thumb. In real life, these types of rules tend to be pretty flexible. I have used the flat part on a pair of needle nose pliers to drive small nails, shot many a blowing out of birthday candles with a full-frame mirrorless and taken some darn good portraits and travel photos with my phone. The bottom line: Use the right photographic tool for the job but in a pinch, the picture you take with whatever is at hand will always be better than the picture you didn't take. Happy Shooting!

This January, my "new" PC will be two years old. My plan is to start collecting hardware starting in January 2023 and recent developments in available and upcoming hardware has me back in study hall learning what will provide the best bang for the buck. My PC usage hasn't really changed with the new machine and since I prefer doing photo stuff on the desktop and am still working from home, I don't see myself moving to a laptop. That means I will be building my own machine again and as before, I'm less concerned with saving money (though it's likely) than getting a machine optimized for how I use it. By the time 1/2023 rolls around, my i7-9700K processor will be four generations removed from the Gen 13 Raptor Lake Intel family and AMD will probably have their Zen4 CPUs rolling out. DDR5 memory should be fairly common by then and Lord only knows where graphics will be. PCIE 5.0 may be too new to the consumer market in the Q1 2023 timeframe as PCIE 4.0 was early last year, but demand for high-speed storage may speed up adoption in consumer machines. My current configuration with solid-state drives for boot and new file processing and a fast disc drive for long term storage is working out very well. Unless SSDs plummet in price per gigabyte, I will likely go with a similar configuration. The 64GB of RAM I put in the current machine was overkill and I will likely drop back to 32GB unless memory gets super cheap or future Lightroom and Photoshop releases get really hungry. The mid-range graphics card is handling my needs well and since I'm not likely to take up competitive gaming anytime soon, I will probably use whatever passes for mid-range in 2023. An 8K monitor upgrade might stress that plan but I'm still pretty happy with my current setup and it will probably suffice for another few years unless 8K gets cheap and common enough (after all, I do like shiny new tech). Liquid cooling is still by far my preference. At no time since I started using this machine has the CPU temperature wandered even into the yellow zone. I current have an all-in-one kit, but I'm tempted to dip my toes into a custom cooling solution with cooling blocks for the CPU and graphics card, fancy fittings and and hard piping. Or, maybe not. Then again, that stuff looks really look cool... Anyway, I'll post on this thread occasionally with info on the new stuff as I stumble across it and start building my shopping list. As before, questions are welcome and I don't consider any time spent researching an answer wasted. Happy computing! Dave

I was waiting at a coffee shop today and snapped a couple of photos....'cause I do that a lot. I thought to myself, "what a great idea for a thread!" I figure that we all have hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of equipment and too many of us only haul it out on special occasions or for trips. Bad photographers! Bad! Bad! Get your cameras out, find a nice composition, snap the photo and post it! Let's have some fun! Gallery Row Coffee House - Carrollton, GA Happy shooting! Dave