Spring, Finally . . . .

[VidThreeNorth]

For Toronto, it was a long winter and the winds around the beginning of May caused a lot of damage, and even deaths. There is nothing brilliant in the pictures I have taken in this sets. I'm just happy to find something colourful.

This first group was taken May 4, after heavy overnight winds and a morning rain.

Camera Yi-M1
Lens was a Pentax 50mm F2.0 using a K&F adapter
w/monopod

These three pictures made from DNG (raw) files using PaintShop Pro X9 on a Gateway dx4375, AMD A6-5200 processor, Windows 8.1.

Colors have been mildly adjusted, and some sharpening done, but no cropping, leaving the compositions "loose" and relaxed.

 

[Jeff15]

Lovely...................

 

[VidThreeNorth]

Lovely...................

Much thanks! I think I might use a version of that first picture (hyacinths?) as my wallpaper for a while. It's kind of a relaxing image. I could use that right about now. . . .

 

[VidThreeNorth]

These are the last two images I planned to upload. The delay is because they needed cropping, and deciding on the crops took a whiie, and in the case of the cherry blossoms, I had to decide whether to work from DNG (raw) or post a version from the JPEG files, which I liked.


"P5020039 -1c-rsz1440-C1.jpg"

The one thing I found was that auto-focus on this camera can be a mixed blessing. There was a relatively strong breeze blowing, causing the branches and blooms to move around. I eventually was using touch focus, and this picture might have been one of those. The problem is that "touch focus" does not track movement, so if the object moves out of the touch focus area, then the focus will be wrong. In effect, in this situation, it is not much better than manual focus Either way it was chance and probabilities.

Exposure was a similar problem since I was using "center weighted averaging." If the branch blew out of the middle then the meter favoured the background a bit. It would have been worse if I used spot metering. I used a slightly higher exposure to cover the fact that some of the blooms were in shadows.

Yi-M1, firmware 3.1 Int.
Lens: Yi 42.5 lens F1.8 using Macro setting
Optex monopod

"P5070077b-rsz2048-C1.jpg"

I have decided to upload a cropped version of the camera JPEG because it did a very nice job of portraying the colours, which would have been difficult for me to replicate using the DNG (raw) file.

I was below the branches and I felt that I wanted to expose high (ev = +0.7) to retain shadow detail. According to the histogram there is actually just a small amount of clipping (white). I checked for it and found it on a couple of small blooms near the upper middle. If I worked from the DNG (raw) I think I might find that the whole file is actually "contained".

Yi-M1, firmware 3.1 Int.
Lens Yi 12-40mm 3.5 - 5.6 zoom lens and Vivitar Wide Angle Rubber Lens Hood
Optex monopod