Exploring A New Area

[Teegate]

We had not ventured in this area before so I looked over the Historic Aerials and saw this building in 1956. It was not there in the years before or after. It appears to be a small gun club or shack with a parking area. The road to it was semi hard to follow in spots but we eventually made it there fairly easily.

The location today.

An old bench and wood is all that is there today.

We moved on and started to look for state property corners that no longer are valid. The state has in more recent years purchased all of the land around them and nobody will ever look for them again. Except me most likely. We found one of them.

Jessica took a stab in the ground and unbelievably found it in a second.

We then walked to private land that we received permission to visit. Jessica again was extremely observant and saw this.

I had some trouble having this turn out like I wanted. I give you two options.

Continued in next post. I reached the ten photo limit.

 

[Teegate]

I stopped here because old aerial photos show a path through the woods behind me but I did not see anything anymore.

And Jessica enjoying the view.

 

[bobpbx]

I like option #1

 

[Teegate]

I do also but I like the clouds in option 2. I could not get both to look the same as what I was seeing.

 

[Jon Holcombe]

I do also but I like the clouds in option 2. I could not get both to look the same as what I was seeing.

Bright sky and dark foreground are very hard to handle. I do it in Lightroom or Photoshop - drop the Highlight and lift the Shadows. There are some free apps around that would do the same thing, but that depends on how much time you want to spend sitting in front of your computer. Not sure about the apps though, maybe others would know.

Your cell phone probably has an HDR photo option that may take a good photo in this situation.

 

[Boyd]

Have been very impessed with the HDR on my new iPhone 12 Pro Max, it can handle a really wide range. I have a couple shots that actually show the sun and still have good shadow detail. Computational Photography is a whole new world!

 

[Jon Holcombe]

Have been very impessed with the HDR on my new iPhone 12 Pro Max, it can handle a really wide range. I have a couple shots that actually show the sun and still have good shadow detail. Computational Photography is a whole new world!

Cell phones have capabilities that far exceed expensive cameras. I take reference photos of locations, and I often wonder why they look better than my Nikon shots.

 

[manumuskin]

The only complaint I have about cell cameras is they have no where near the zoom capability of the average camera with only moderate zoom capability.

 

[Teegate]

but that depends on how much time you want to spend sitting in front of your computer.

Anything more than a few seconds and I give up. Not really that important to me unless I have a specific photo I want to look better.

BTW, Jon, does your camera take multiple photos above and below an F stop setting? I am trying to find if mine does and still am unsure.

 

[Boyd]

The only complaint I have about cell cameras is they have no where near the zoom capability of the average camera with only moderate zoom capability.

Of course, it's no match for my 300mm Nikkor, but the telephoto on the iPhone 12 Pro Max really impresses me for a phone.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-12-pro-max-is-the-new-camera-phone-to-beat-heres-why

"The iPhone 12 Pro Max also uses a system that blends a 2.5x optical zoom of the 65mm focal length telephoto lens with the wide angle lens to deliver a 5x optical zoom range. In comparison, the iPhone 12 Pro has a 2x optical zoom. Unsurprisingly, this lets users get close up to subjects without running into digital zoom distortion and loss of detail."

You can go all the way to 12x digital zoom and it looks surprisingly good. I shot this on Thanksgiving at dusk - handheld at 12x zoom, shaking all over the place. But the computational magic almost completely eliminated that. I need to go back out with a tripod and see how much difference that makes. This image has been sized way down to fit on the page, the original is 3024 × 4032 pixels.

Here's a 100% crop from that image. You can see a lot of artifacts, most are probably from the JPEG compression but could also be related to image stabilization.

Another impressive feature is the advanced camera controls, have not figured them all out yet, but its a lot like having photoshop built right into the camera. One cool feature is that you can adjust the geometry of the image to correct perspective distortion, and you see this all on the screen as you compose the shot. Then after taking a shot, there are a lot of editing tools available also. It's really helpful to see what can be done to improve your pictures in the field, rather than shooting tons of extras and hoping to fix them in Photoshop afterwards. And the phone screen quality is arguably better than my BenQ computer monitor.

I'm a big fan of wide angle landscape shots, so the 14mm wide lens on the phone is great. You can create panoramas right on the phone by just panning the camera (handheld) and recording. These can be up to 63 megapixels and are pretty impressive with the 14mm lens.

Have only begun to learn my way around this new camera, but it's very cool. Eventually I will want to replace my dead Nikon DSLR but this phone should keep my happy for awhile and it's a lot easier to carry around than a camera bag full of lenses, batteries and stuff.

Granted, it's an expensive phone but many of the same features are available in the less expensive iPhones and Android cameras have come a long way too. The technology "trickles down" to inexpensive phones eventually, the whole concept is that you can use the processors in the phone and software to make up for limitations of the camera hardware.

 

[Jon Holcombe]

BTW, Jon, does your camera take multiple photos above and below an F stop setting? I am trying to find if mine does and still am unsure.

My phone has an auto bracketing function, which I believe is what you are describing. You can set it to take multiple exposures above and below (for instance) f/8, - f/4.5, f/5, f/5.6, f/6.3, f/7.1 then f/11, f/13, f/14, f/16, f/18. The idea is to ensure one of the exposures is correct. It also has auto HDR, auto focus stack, etc. Auto HDR may combine them in camera and give you a finished HDR shot similar to a cell phone, but I am not certain since I do not use those features. The only auto feature I use is Focus Stacking (sometimes) to get everything in focus, front to back. I have to take the images into Photoshop and combine them.

A cell phone satisfies 95% of people for 95% of photos they take. But it doesn't necessarily take macro, or long "quality" telephoto shots, it makes decisions for you instead of you being in control, the sensor is tiny and generally noisier and not as clean as a full frame DSLR.

I strive to take a photo that is truly exceptional, often when it is quite dark or in other very challenging conditions like shooting directly into the light or sun. In those extreme conditions a mobile phone would probably often fail to give me what I am after, with a super clean result. The optics of Nikon lenses probably far exceed the mobile phone lens. And the mobile phone sensor is so tiny, that even with computational software, a correctly exposed photo from a Nikon D850 will be exceptionally clean and crisp.

Learning how to use a DSLR has it's rewards but it is time consuming as hell.

 

[Jon Holcombe]

Of course, it's no match for my 300mm Nikkor, but the telephoto on the iPhone 12 Pro Max really impresses me for a phone.

You shot is amazingly good... to a point.

I would probably have to take multiple exposures to achieve what the cell phone did in one shot. And it is possible, even probable, that I may miss the shot completely, and your cell phone got it.

BUT... when I looked at even the first image, I could immediately see the artifacts, soft focus and chromatic abberration.

I am still learning to shoot at night. Shooting the moon and Milky Way is is a specialized skill. I have found that learning how to use the DSLR to take night or astronomical imagery is difficult and really time consuming. They are very hard subjects to shoot well.

 

[Jon Holcombe]

BTW, Jon, does your camera take multiple photos above and below an F stop setting? I am trying to find if mine does and still am unsure.

Guy, I found this link for the Z50. I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for but it discussed auto bracketing.

Auto Bracketing

onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com

 

[Teegate]

I will check it out tonight Jon. I was busy yesterday.