Post Christmas Panorama

Ran away for breakfast the day after Christmas and had a great time looking at the blowing snow on the mountains around us here in Utah. Just had to take a picture. Was wishing I had my long telephoto not my standard zoom to work with but you do what you can with what you got right?

Two Lenses, Two Focal Lengths, Same f stop

One of the fascinating things for me about photography is how changing the focal length of the lens you are using can subtly or dramatically change the look of a photo. Going from say 17mm to 300mm would be dramatically different. Which is the subject of a post I want to do someday, where I try to keep the subject approximately the same size while changing the focal length drastically... say from 8mm Fisheye to 300mm Telephoto.

What I wanted to see here was how differently a photo would look using a 100mm v. a 200mm lens. This was spurred on by taking this first shot of an ornament given to my family by my brother in law for Christmas. After taking the first one I found myself wondering if I could take essentially the same shot with my old manual focus 200mm lens.

I was intrigued by how similar they looked after processing. The older lens lacked contrast and the exposure was not quite the same, but they are quite similar upon initial examination. If you look closely though there are subtle differences some due to having to move the tripod further away to keep the relative size of the ornament the same and some due to the change in focal length exclusively.

I think I need to pursue this line of investigation more closely. It would be a fascinating thing to explore in a blog post when I have the time to sit down and write in a lucid manner.

Every Other Year Temple Square Photo Session

I won't go over all the reasons that I love Photographing the Temples of my Church. Suffice it to say that I love it, and that Christmas Lights make it even more enjoyable.

It was unfortunate that I only had an hour and half on one night to go. Fortunately it had snowed recently and it looked fabulous! I stayed on the East side instead of running around through the crowds, and managed to mostly stay dry and warm. Hope you enjoy the photos!

And a belated Merry Christmas!

Moving into December and Christmas Stuff....

At most of the Mormon Temples in Utah they will put up a nativity scene, very simple and plain. The one at my local temple has the statues facing the temple instead of away like many. When I dropped by one morning I thought the clouds would make a nice background. It was quite tough to make the scene look good, the lighting was MUCH brighter than the sky. Needed some serious HDR magic to make it look like I wanted it to.

In a park my hometown there is a large tree that has been heavily lit the last few years. It makes for some interesting photos and is really cool to visit.

This is more like it looks to the naked eye. The mountains were difficult to capture on camera and required a LONG exposure and HDR to blend it.

In Camera Processing from RAW

For some reason I used to find my 28mm lens restrictive in field of view, don't know why. So I haven't used it that much. Deciding to rectify that situation I carried it for a few days on my commute. The sunrise was not much, no clouds, but the light on the partially frozen lake was kind of nice.

After making it onto the train, I decided to try and process a couple of the shots "In-Camera". I don't know if all brands allow you to take a RAW file and process it using just the camera controls but my Pentax does. After doing that I then came home and took the original files and did my usual processing on them. They are paired up here below. The first one is my version, and the second is straight from the file processed in the camera. I think I do a little better job at home with Photoshop.