Posts by Bruce Buckman
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St Albans Abbey and Yorkminster Cathedral from a UK holiday a few years back.
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Capture: Two Tone, in reply to David Hood,
Agreed. I'd be lost without RAW. And I've actually tried not to use it at various times and always ended up going back.
If you are taking lots of time to compose the shot and get exposure absolutely spot on, then sure the final JPG may not be far off what you'd end up with after RAW conversion. But I do lots of bird pics and you often don't have time for careful composition/exposure setting. RAW really helps compensate for those failings by giving you more leeway to get shadow details and blown highlights back.
Also I use a third-party noise reduction plugin because it gives me more control (i.e. I apply it to the level I want, and only in those parts of the image I want to apply it do) so I don't want a JPG where the camera has done some of that in a blanket fashion before hand. Likewise with sharpening, which I also now usually apply to only part of the image and in an adjustable way.
RAW + Photoshop feels like the B&W film developing I did as a student whereas JPG just kinda feels like getting the packet of prints back from the chemist.
Also, getting a USB 3.0 card reader makes transferring GBs of RAW files way less painful.
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Something I’ve found B&W is awesome for is when the weather is rubbish and colour just isn’t going to be a factor. Plus, when I stack my cheap ND and ND grad filters I get horrible colour casts which are a trial to get rid of in post processing.
But make it B&W and most of that kind of goes away, from original colour cast heavy shot to B&W.
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Rangitoto from a gun emplacement on North Head. A panorama stitched together from pairs of shots – I had to take two shots for each section, one exposed for inside the emplacement and one exposed for the outside light. I then merged each pair to HDR using the same settings. Then merged the resulting images into a panorama. Phew.
I really should look into printing it - the full size image is 10,966 x 4223 pixels.
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The caves under North Head, Devonport.
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Ice in the Arrow River, Arrowtown from a winter holiday this year.
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Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Sacha,
Oh yay, the Kingfisher's mate just turned up this afternoon. One minute I'm hearing it's normal solitary call and then suddenly there's a new call from further away. Next thing I hear the distinctive "ack ack ack ack" sound they make when they are flying up into the Phoenix palm. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate call they make or some involuntary sound but they always do it as they fly to and from the palm tree.
So I roll my office chair carefully to the bay window so as not to spook them and there they are taking turns flying up to chip out a new nest hole.
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Rainy this morning but rain or shine the kingfisher turns up calling for his/her mate. Hope the mate turns up. I'd be thrilled if the had a successful breeding season this year after loosing their eggs last year. Had to sit on the floor and shoot this through the open window and a gap in the branches. Even trying not to move too much it still kept eyeballing me with disapproval.
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First time I was involved in hiring anyone (early 90s) my boss and I used the following high-tech psychometric testing technique:
"So, what do you like to look at on T.V."
"The X-Files."
"When can you start?"
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Cornwall Park was gorgeous this morning. Full of early morning joggers and cyclists, bouncy lambs, chirpy rosellas, even a couple of very casual pheasants that weren't too perturbed to have people walking near by.
