2021-02-02 08:46:38
Todays theme: Morning brew. A cup of tea, a biscuit, a cat, a few birds, -22 degrees, and sunshine - one way of starting your day
An unexpected reply
During the last 11 months my total time at work has been about 2 hours. I have spent the rest of the time at home having meetings via Zoom, etc. Support at work gave me a decent webcam that have worked flawlessly … but I wasn’t 100% happy with it. When I looked at the video it looked like some colours got clipped and made my head look a bit strange (yeah, yeah, I know!!) because of how the skin colours were rendered. Since I’m bald, the light gets reflected there and the skin colour looks strange. And I really, really dislike how the result looks like.
At first, I thought the problems was caused by the lighting in the room and tried to fix it but failed. I didn’t really want to spend money on some LED lighting, but I couldn’t really justify spending the money. Once in a while I considered setting up my Lumix G9 as the video camera, but since I’m lazy nothing happened.
But a week ago, I read the article “Why webcams aren’t good enough” where “my” Logitech webcam was tested … and Jeff Carlson had the same experience as I have had. This finally made me set up the G9, and yesterday I had my first meeting.
While we were waiting for everyone to arrive I asked the others if they could see any difference when I was switching between the webcam and the G9.
— Yes, one is much sharper
I was smiling to myself, and asked
— Which one is better?
Here I fully expected the answer to be that the video from the G9 was much better. However, I got the answer that the webcam had a better video and was much sharper. Confused I checked to see that I had focused the G9 properly, yep, and everything looked good on the video feed I could see. So, what was wrong???
— Isn’t the video sharp? Is everything out of focus?
— No, just the background
Duh !!!! I, of course, wanted a shallow depth of field, so the background would be out of focus, but the rest thought that the webcam looked better that because of a sharper background. They didn’t notice a difference in how the skin colours were rendered, not until I asked if they could see a difference.
— Well yes, you’re right. The skin colours do look better on that one.
Sigh, people might not notice the difference, but I will continue to use the G9 because I see the difference, and now I don’t get frustrated about video quality. Yep, I’m a photo nerd 😋.
Collection IV
A week or two ago I bought Sean Tucker’s Collection IV. If you don’t know who Sean Tucker is you should really go to his YouTube channel and watch a few videos. The important videos are not the “how-to” videos but the ones where he discusses various things surrounding photography … and life in general.
The book consists of 90 photos from last year, 45 b&w and 45 colour. The photos are presented one per page without caption, so you’re free to interpret them as you want. There are also a few quotes between the photos, not many but a few.
So, what do I think about the photos? Some of them are excellent, they make me start thinking about how I can take ideas from them and play with composition & exposure. Many of the photos are also good lessons in learning to see the images that are all around us but that we usually ignore simply because we don’t “see” them. There are a few photos that I don’t feel any connection to and my reaction is mainly “Meh”, but that is perfectly OK. It’s Sean book, he has selected the photos and I don’t have to like all of them, they speak to him, but they don’t need to speak to me.
I like this book and buying it is, in my opinion, well-spent money (I bought Collection III last year) and I’ll probably buy this year’s collection if he decides to make one.
I think the perhaps most lesson from this book isn’t stuff like composition, exposure, etc. For me, the most important lesson is that we should all do something with the photos we take. Instead of just leaving the photos on your computer/phone, it’s way more fun to do something with them. You could publish them on a website like this one, but even more fun is to make prints or books. Last year I did three or four photo books, and it was really fun, the process of selecting what photos that should be in the book, figure out in which order they should be presented and finally the layout is really fun. I’m not very good at it, but it’s very fun. I hope I’m able to create at least three more books this year.
One person with strong opinions of photo books is Daniel Milnor who works at Blurb and if you watch his YouTube channel you will get some motivation for making your own photo books.
2021-01-31 12:18:32
It’s not often I think about it but walking on a layer of water (snow) above another layer of water (ice) that is floating on top of a third layer of water is kind of fantastic
2021-01-30 14:52:17
About 1.5 year ago I had this idea of making an attempt for a second degree black belt but it looks like it’s not going to happen. Not only is it that I’m getting too old, fat, and stiff … there is also no chance of training. I haven’t trained for about 15 months or so
I deserve this
I deserve to sit down with this book tonight. I’ve spent the day on administrative tasks and trying to figure out how the various systems the university have should be used. Not to mention 6 Zoom meetings yesterday.
So tonight I will give myself a treat and enjoy this book that I got in the mail today. If you don’t know who Shawn Tucker is I suggest that you take a look at his YouTube channel.