In fact, much of the rice around our apartment has been mowed and bagged, so I headed up to Gotemba, with the climb in altitude simultaneously winding back the season's progress. The challenge was great, with my goal being a fantastic photograph of an expanse of ripened crop, with composite features including blue sky, white clouds, lush green surroundings, and a complete lack of powerlines. Mt. Fuji in the background was to be a bonus.
Unfortunately I underestimated a further crucial factor: The Formula One racing being held at the Fuji Speedway (in Gotemba). While I was able to catch promising vistas from the car, the usually desolate roads were filled with buses, and the usually welcoming fallow fields had been pressed into service as endless parking lots for the fans. I couldn't slow to assess views, and pulling over out of the question.
I continued further and higher to escape the madness, but the F1 effect was spread beyond the rice cultivation zone and into the wild tall grasses. Another harbinger of autumn, the susuki is beautiful too, just not as golden, and without the associated promise of full bellies for another year.
Finally, I turned around and gave up... the sun was to high by now to really be good, and I would have to try another area on another day. Where I turned, I snapped a few pictures of my Pajero (which is now 15 years old, by the way).
The lens was a wide angle Tokina, 12-24mm. This is actually Tracy's lens, and it doesn't autofocus on my camera (the D40x, to be so small of figure, doesn't have a focus motor in the body. To autofocus, newer lenses with built-in focusing motors are required). It is an awesome lens, though, and I brought only that one on this outing.
My camera can capture the pictures in jpeg, or in RAW format, or both. I usually use RAW when I consider making the scene HDR (High Dynamic Range), but that wasn't my intention this time... I really wanted to capture the image with both, and then see what the difference would / could be. Here are the results:
If I set the camera to jpeg, the yield is this:
The same picture saved in RAW and opened with Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 is this:
Finally, just for fun, I converted the RAW into a single-exposure HDR image:
There are a few more steps in opening a RAW file and saving it as a jpeg as I did above, but I can really see how it is worth the effort. I might not shoot just jpeg again!
The HDR I'll continue, but just for fun. To do it right, several exposures of the same scene are needed, requiring a tripod and a total lack of wind, waves, or walking/swaying/flying subjects. Also, my camera doesn't have an autobracketing function, which would greatly assist the process.
The predicted rains have set in, so this weekend's plans are currently under review. I hope to post again soon, no matter what we get up to!
2 comments:
JPEG compression is handy though if you have limited memory at your disposal. If I were shooting in RAW all the time the need for multiple high capacity memory cards would be an absolute necessity - though the differences in quality of definition and light are obvious. Thanks for the pointers.
Fun to see the differences. My previous camera had the RAW option but I never learned enough about it. Now that I see your work I am inspired, but my present camera doesn' have the option. Drat.
Like seeing your comparisons, though.
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