Bad luck

So I had no real luck with the new monitor, and I’m having it replaced tomorrow. Just after few hours, the backlight bleed became so strong, that it was just no longer acceptable. I really hope the new one will be much better, and defect free.

Golden bridge

I’m so not sure about the contrast and colors of this photo. The new screen is just so different, and has such a higher brightness and contrast compared to the old one, that all just looks strange. I will take a little white to get used to it.

This is a HDR form 4 exposures, taken in Budapest Hungary.

Today I finally did a planed upgrade to may PC, on which I edit all my photos. This time, it was time to upgrade the monitor. For the last 7 years I used the Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW, a 24 inch full HD monitor. It was, and still is one of the best monitors I ever seen. And for how much I used it, it still works great. But after such a long time, it was time to replace it with something new :)

21:9

I always liked widescreen monitors. Even when I bought the first one, most people at that time only bought 4:3, and very few wide-screen ones. So when looking for a new monitor, I was immediately drawn to this ultrawide aspect ratio. But since first monitors that had it were just 29, I felt that that was just too small of a step up from a 24. So I waited, and now, the 34 inch versions are available, so I got one.

Here you can see my workspace with my old 24 inch, vs. the new 34 inch.

Old setup

New setup

LG 34um95

So the monitor I just got is the LG 34um95. It’s a 34 inch 21:9 screen, with a resolution of 3440×1440. In this post I will show you how it looks and what it does, and in a second post, probably next week, I will do a bigger review, especially how it is to edit on such a screen.

The screen have a very Apple style look, with shiny parts and silver background. Not really my favorite, but as I don’t see it from the back I don’t really mind. The screen comes with a nice looking, partially transparent stand, just too bad they chosen style over substance. The stand can’t be height adjusted more than 2cm (by selecting one from two sets of mounting holes) and it allows the screen to shake a little when you touch the table a little stronger. It also allows for a small tilt, but no rotation. The stand is also mostly metal, so has a nice quality feel.

The screen is mostly covered with plastic, with a metal rim around it. Here I actually seen few production errors, with the gap between the rim and the screen not being the same in all the places.

Box it came in

Stand connection and ports

The LG 34um95 allows for a lot of connections, from HDMI, through DisplayPort to Thunderbolt. It also has speakers, which I think nobody will ever use, as compared to the screen they are not so great. Additionally, it includes a USB hub, with a single USB 3 port and two USB 2 ports.

I only had few hours with the screen, so these are my first impressions. First of all, it’s huge. It’s very immersive and something completely different to a 16:9 screen. It’s very bright and colourful. It’s not only factory calibrated, but there is also a software directly from LG, that work with most calibration devices, so you can easily tune up it even more. The resolution allows for a lot of content to be seen at once, and especial panoramic photos, or new movies looks perfect.

The only issue I found that was not that great, was the backlight bleeding in the bottom corners and a little also in the top ones. It’s quite visible when the screen is completely black, and a little when it’s partially black. Not yet sure how I feel about it, as quite often it’s not visible. Will continue to use it and see.

Both monitors at same time

Calibrating

That’s all for now, more in the full review next week :)

I’m very sad to see that one of my favourite photo locations in Prague was destroyed yesterday. The John Lennon wall was a continually changing gratify wall for few decades, as a protest to government in Czech republic. And I don’t even like gratify, but there is a moment when gratify can become art and also a piece of history. And now, this wall was completely painted white by students. This is very sad, not only that they destroyed a historic landmark, but also but the lack of talent and creativity they shown. This is just lazy vandalism, nothing else.

To see how the wall looks now, check out this post in Czech news. Here you have one of my photos I took of the wall last year, as a memory of this landmark. .

For this Monday, I selected a little easier edit I did on one of the photos I took at the Schwarzsee under Matterhorn. It’s a state holiday in Slovakia today, so why not something easier. So let’s get started.

First, lest’s look at the finished and the original photo.

Finished photo

Original exposure

It looked not so bad to start with, but I still wanted to recover more from the sky and the reflection in the water. So I took 5 exposures and in Lightroom I corrected the horizon line, and lens problems.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

From there I continued into Oloneo Photoengine. There I only changed the strength and added contrast. As I mentioned before, I very rarely change anything else here. It’s just not needed. After that I only took the Photoengine result into Photoshop to edit further (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2+3. Added glow to the photo, as I wanted the bright areas to shine a little more (check out my glow tutorial here)
4. Color efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo and more detail
5. Curves to add a little more contrast to the photo
6. I ended up loading the 0EV here, to recover few areas, where the process created too saturated colors, mostly in the foreground.

Combined in Oloneo

Finished in Photoshop

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

These are the exact clouds I like to have in my photos. Big, white and fluffy. The HDR process usually makes them more great, but that’s one of the first things I always correct. I usually just take the +1Ev exposure and blend them from it.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.