smc Pentax DA 14mm F2.8 ED lens samples

I have uploaded two F-stop series of the original jpg's made with the smc Pentax DA 14mm F2.8 ED lens. These jpg's are AS IS, as they came out of the camera. All stops are covered, going from the lowest (F 2.8) to the highest (F 22)
The photo samples are available on the following link:

Pentax smc 14mm f2.8 ED

A HDR for comparison

I also made HDRs, and so I am also showing that, for comparison. First non-HDR, made from the middle exposition. Second HDR, + and - 1 shutter brackets.



Look at how the sky is pixelated in the HDR.

Pala Favera has no . Normally, this would be the situation when one would want a HDR: early morning, sun is coming up, part of the landscape is lit, but otherwise it is in shadow. But this pic is not so good - although it can give back the feeling of the shadow over the road.

Toying with LDR and HDR

I have been toying with the LDR technique, and I have got some nice results.
LDR (low dynamic range imaging) is like HDR (high dynamic range imaging), but here one RAW pictures is used instead of more expositions (usually three in HDR). The application (I was using Photomatix 3) offers the option to automatically create an LDR image directly from a raw original, profiting of the wider range of information available in the raw.
Later, I was trying to toy with saturation in the same photos to make the most out of them. It is not that I am extremely fond of saturated colors, but here I needed to put some colours in the pics because otherwise they were flat. And also, this will allow a comparison: what you can have with LDR and with a simple Lightroom edit.

Here are some paired photos for comparison - first is regular, second LDR.

When the sun was not yet shining:





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Some sun coming out - I think these are very successful LDRs:





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Here I prefer the normal version - there is a lot of sun on the green grass:

perfecyello.xxl meets PENTAX smc DA 16-45mm f/4 ED AL

I have uploaded two F-stop series of the original jpg's made with the 16mm wide angle of the PENTAX smc DA 16-45mm f/4 ED AL lens. These jpg's are AS IS, as they came out of the camera. All stops are covered, going from the lowest (F 4.0) to the highest (F 22)

Here is the album at Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/perfectyello.xxl/PentaxSmcDA1645EDAL

1.
A series made at the Gresham Palace (Grasham palota), right in front of the Chain Bridge, Lánchíd (now a prestigious Four Seasons hotel).

Származási hely: Pentax smc DA...

2. The other is the Puskás Ferenc Stadion:

Származási hely: Pentax smc DA...

I took these pictures at the beginning of February, on two unusually sunny days, when there was also huge wind, which gradually covered the lens with dust particles at Puskás Stadion.

Clone tool discovered in Lightroom

There is a tiny dust particle on my CCD. Well, you may all know this, but after having used Lightroom for some time, I have discovered that there is a Clone/Heal tool which allows removing signs from dust on the CCD or the lense. This is just to let you know. Good news.

As is

I decided some time ago that I would rescan my negatives already scanned with the Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner because I realized that batch scan in the Epson 3170 simply cuts off the edges of all pictures. I was thinking of my great art that inhabits the entire picture space and how it was brutally distorted by this machine and I made the decision to rescan everything.

Besides, I have recently bought an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner because I had the impression that my earlier Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner started to perform badly.

(It was pixelating photo scans, see my earlier blogpost about that.)

Now that I have been using Epson V700 for a while, I have really come to rescan some photos. I have given up the thing about the edges (in Epson V700 the plastic holder is such that it even covers the edges so finally why bother...). Rescanning these pictures was really the acte gratuit, the meaningless action, so probably I wanted to find some meaning, and this meaning I found in sharing.
Here we go, lo, a comparison of the very same slide scanned with both scanners.
Each scan is provided AS IS in 3200 dpi resolution over at my Picasa account, just click on the thumbnails and enjoy the view. But also beware, as they are above 60MB each.

These are 100 ISO Fuji slides taken with a Canon Eos 300 and scanned with 3200 dpi:
Epson 3170, 24-bit colour

Epson V700, 48-bit colour

Epson 3170, 24-bit colour

Epson V700, 48-bit colour


Any difference? Images of V700 are more vivid. The Epson 3170 is said to have something like a white veil on all pictures.
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Keleti yellow light revisited

This was the original photo taken in yellow light:


I manipulated it by decreasing the Saturation of Orange and adding some extra saturation for the Blue. (I also added some extra Contrast and Brightness)


Then B. came up and tampered with White Balance.
Interestingly enough, he picked a spot which was white (to our eyes at least) - it was a brightly reflected, burned spot on the back of the dustman in the yellow overcoat in the middle of the photo).
This made the photo even less orangy than after my manipulation. What is more, the blues also came back.
Then we started experimenting with the different colours. Extra saturation for the yellow would make the panels underground as well as the yellow trains regain original colours. This was also an effect pleasant to the eye.
We then took back from the Luminance on the blue spot of the train's neon sign. This drastically effected the Luminance of Blues (-67). This was useful for making the shining blue surfaces, lit by neon lights, come back to reality, and become less bright (less overexposed) and more contrasted (which also means sharper).
Finally, the saturation of this spot was pushed up a tiny little bit.

Here is the result:


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