March 19 – Picture Post

I have taken some more photos with my PowerShot SX30IS and I’m still trying to figure out things. I’ve got to say that I find my 60D SLR easier to use. The PowerShot has a billion different modes (like scenery or sunset or fisheye or tilt shift or night or selective focus)  which an SLR doesn’t have, but they don’t always bring good results. If you want to photograph full manual, it’s better to use the SLR anyway. But I bought that camera because I somehow just want to ‘snap’ some pics along the way and do it with a camera, not a smartphone. But if I take photos in full automatic, the results are also not always good. I guess I’m not practising enough with that camera. I’m sure there’s a way to get out better results, but so far I can’t use the photos I take without editing them. At least a bit.

Then again… when can photos be used without at least some basic editing?

I took photos last weekend while S was on her weekend break from the hospital. We took at stroll at the Baldeneysee in Essen and later had lunch at restaurant Lukas. I wrote about it in my March 17 article. But I only posted photos I took with my iPhone on that day. Here are some I took with the camera.

Due to me not paying enough attention to settings I had to delete a good amount of them. This is what’s left. Not impressive but at least decent enough to edit and keep them.

I’ve edited all these photos with Adobe Lightroom 5. And please note that I’m a complete amateur when it comes to using the program. I only know a few basics, so…  Also the XS30IS doesn’t take RAWs and there’s only so much you can do with a jpg file in editing.

Graftiti says: Freedom for all nationalists. Photo was cropped and color- and contrast enhanced. I also worked with the adjustment brush in Lightroom to bring out the tree trunk colors a tad bit more, but didn’t overdo it.

Bridge detail. Just trying out things and later straightned the photo and made the colors more intense.

Basically boring but it looked a tad bit better in b/w

I took this completely blinded by the sun, not really seeing what I was doing and if I was even catching something on camera. Turns out I caught a flock of geese. Gotta say that I kinda like this pic complete with lense flare and all.

Another bridge detail. Nothing special, but I like the color contrast.

Here, the selective focus setting comes into play (you see how the top and bottom of the photo are blurry and only the middle is sharp?). Problem is, that I had no clue that I was using that setting. Again, I hadn’t payed close attention. And I took a lot of photos with that setting and most of them were ready for the trash. Wanted to kick myself when I found out.

Sharpened and enhanced in contrast and color. The original one looked bland and boring. (Not that this one is spectacular LOL)

I had written in an earlier post that some Rosenmontag parades (main day of street carnival in Germany) had to be cancelled because of severe weather warning. Some of these parades were postponed to this March weekend. It was funny when some people who had watched a parade in Essen came along in full costume. While none of the people in the photo are really in full costume, that person in white was still wearing something… um… funny. Never saw her from the front, but I thought she looked funny from behind. To make her stand out from the rest, I darkened the rest of the photo and the other persons and lighted up the white person even more.

Trying out the veeerrrry big zoom (300mm). If you knew how far away from these birds we were, you’d realize how big that zoom is. Quite spectacular for such a small compact camera. This pic is heavily edited though. If you saw the original large version, it looks like total crap. At least I could save it from the trash with some editing.

contrast and color enhanced

straightened, contrast and color enhanced, but quite boring.

only edited the contrast slightly

This one was taken with the fisheye setting … but I see that it was the wrong object for a fisheye. It doesn’t have a big effect. At least it was sharp.

Here I tried out the selected focus on purpose. Hmmm…

This is just a regular photo of the restaurant Lukas, located in the historic building of the old train station in Essen-Kupferdreh. If you’re in the area, you should go there. It’s a really really great location!

Deilbach (creek). Slightly contrast- and color enhanced.

See the line of trees in the background? They looked all pale-brownish. The things you can do with Adobe Lightroom 😉 Again thanks to the adjustment brush tool.

Someone has lost their ball at the banks of the lake. Due to heavy zooming the photo was a bit pale-ish and not really sharp. While it’s still not completely sharp, at least the colors look as lively as they did in real life.

This one I really like. But only after I edited it to b/w. I have a similar one in color… it’s not even half as nice. At least for me. If you think that one looks sad and boring… fine. 🙂

Duckies 🙂

I almost hit the delete button for this one. It’s not really good. It’s even worse in color. But then I decided to keep it.

The End.