2024 Photo Calendars (part two)

Hi Folks:

This is just a quick update to our previous calendar post as we’ve gone through the (5000+) images we’ve made this year and picked out 12 for our calendar. As usual, some of the images were made with our cell phones and some were made with the Sony a7rIII camera. Half of the images were made by Marcia and half by Mike, but none of that really matters. All of this year’s images were made in and around Victoria, BC except for October’s, which was made in Tofino, BC.

Combined, our calendar looks like the image below. If you’d like to download a copy for yourself, click the image to link to a .pdf version.
A composite image showing all 12 of our calendar pages for 2024. Each calendar occupies on letter-sized page, with the image at the top and the calendar portion at the bottom. —–
This is the fourteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2024 was made in May 2023). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →

2024 Photo Calendars (part one)

Hi Folks:

This is the fourteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2024 was made in May 2023). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →

Low Light, High Noise and ISO Invariance

Hi Folks:

It was a dark and stormy night. I’ve always wanted to write that… haven’t you? Okay, in this case it wasn’t night (mid-to-late afternoon) and it was sunny rather than stormy, but it was dark. Marcia and I were on a trip to Tofino, BC and I was wandering along the boardwalk of the Rainforest Trail in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The elder trees soaring above me blocked out much of the daylight, but they were the reason I was there.

Before we get too far, a few basics to get out of the way. First, I was shooting with a Sony a7Riii camera with the FE 24-105 lens, set to 1/125th second and f/6.3. ISO was set to 5000, but we’ll get to that later. I didn’t bring a tripod that day, but I did have my camera sitting on a Manfrotto monopod. Second, I have no idea what you see when you look at these images. This is partly because I don’t know if your monitor has been calibrated and profiled, and partly because I don’t know if you’re using a web browser that allows colour management and/or if you’ve enabled that. In the end none of that really matters because this is essentially an apples to apples comparison. I should note that this post isn’t targeted toward beginner photographers, but if you read something you don’t understand, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or fill in our Contact Form. The only stupid question is the unasked one.

There are three software packages in this game: Capture One 23 (16.1) is my raw editor. PTGui 12.20 is software for stitching panoramas, and Topaz DeNoise AI 3.7.2 is noise reduction software. AI is a term used ubiquitously these days, but the only intelligence involved here is still with the programmers. AI software uses very large databases of information and certain algorithms to make what one might call educated guesses as to what the user wants. Also, when processing in any of these packages there are what are known as auto adjustments (I’ll refer to them here as AA) and there are also sliders whereby one can tweak the suggested settings. With the exception of the final image, I stuck to AA in order to keep the processing as equivalent as possible.

Continue Reading →

2023 Photo Calendars (part two)

Hi Folks:

This is just a quick update to our previous calendar post as we’ve gone through the (5000+) images we’ve made this year and picked out 12 for our calendar. As usual, some of the images were made with our cell phones and some were made with the Sony a7rIII camera. Half of the images were made by Marcia and half by Mike, but none of that really matters. All of this year’s images were made in and around Victoria, BC except for October’s, which was made in Tofino, BC.

Combined, our calendar looks like the image below. If you’d like to download a copy for yourself, click the image to link to a .pdf version.

—–
This is the thirteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2023 was made in May 2022). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →

2023 Photo Calendars (part one)

Hi Folks:

This is the thirteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2023 was made in May 2022). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →

Capture One, Dehaze and Adding Definition to Landscape Images

Hi Folks:

It’s hard to believe I started this post last year… Eek!!

First of all, what follows isn’t originally my idea. I came across it in two videos, here. The first one explains more of the concept and the second one delves more into the practical application. I recommend watching both of them, either now or at your leisure. I can wait…

Enhancing Portraits with Dehaze in Capture One

Okay, what is my idea is taking this concept and applying it to landscape photography. In the end computers don’t really know, or care, what your subject matter is. A pixel is a pixel.

Continue Reading →

2022 Photo Calendars (part two)

Update!!

Hi Folks:

This is the twelfth year now that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but this year we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2022 was made in May 2021). Part one of this post featured the templates for those who want to make their own photo calendars; this update includes our version of the calendar, which can be downloaded as a .pdf (see below) Continue Reading →

2022 Photo Calendars (part one)

Hi Folks:

This is the twelfth year now that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but this year we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2022 was made in May 2021). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →

Panoramas: Making Waves

Hi Folks:

I’ve been making digital panoramas since I owned my first digital camera, and some time before that with prints (although we called them photomosaics back then). Just to be clear, there’s a difference (at least to me) between a panoramic image – one that’s been cropped to a wide-aspect format – and a digital panorama. A digital panorama is one where 2+ images of the same scene are combined in post-processing software to create one image that captures more of the scene than could be contained in a single frame. There are several advantages to creating panoramas; three of the most prominent are:

  • the aforementioned ability to capture more of a scene
  • the ability to use a longer focal length lens to avoid wide-angle lens distortions and vignetting
  • the ability to create higher resolution images than can be captured in a single image

We’re not going to get into the technical details of making panoramas in this post, but those who are interested are welcome to review our other posts on panoramas, here. This is an example of a digital panorama:

Tofino, BC – 60 images (click on any image to see it larger)

Continue Reading →