Keeping fewer photos

• Don’t take photos you know you will not like. Sometimes the camera can just stay in the bag. Once you taken enough photos, you just know. Happens to me sometime. I look at the scene, look at the conditions, and just don’t bother. I know I will not like the results anyway. And trying to force it usually does not result in great photos also.
• Don’t take many versions of the same composition. I have a bit of problem with this one sometime, and should try more to fix this. One does not need the same photo over and over. Take one or few, if you want to be sure to have a good one, and move on to a new composition. Like this you maximize you chance to get a great photo. I would make an exception here, for sunrise and sunset photos. The conditions change so quickly then, that even staying with the same composition can produce different results.
• Limit the number of brackets. I tend to say, better safe then sorry, but one can also overdo it. You don’t need 9, you don’t need 7, mostly you don’t even need 5 brackets. If you are not shooting into the sun, 3 brackets is mostly enough. Try a sequence and check the histogram directly on the camera. If you see that you are getting the whole dynamic range in fewer brackets, adjust your settings accordingly.
• Delete technically bad photos immediately. You can’t always tell directly on the camera if a photo is bad. But often there are problems that you can spot immediately, and you won’t be able to fixt them anyway. Maybe you bumped into your tripod. Maybe there was a strong wind. Maybe you used the wrong settings and over/underexposed you shot complletely. Maybe you forgot to turn off autofocus, so your focus is completely off. This and other problems can be seen immediately on the camera, and it’s pointless to keep those photos. Easier to delete them right when you checking the preview.
• Mark the photos you like. I do this usually if I’m doing photos at an event. I tent to go through all right away, as I have to deliver them to a client, and mark the ones I will edit and send. When I’m done I wait for 1-4 weeks and then just delete the unmarked photos. I keep the ones I deliverd, as in my experience, there does not exist a company or a person that does reasonable backups. I had clients coming back to me after years, taht they lost the photos.
• Be decisive. When you look at a photo and you dont like it and don’t need it, delete it. If you are undecisive and not sure, you will probably just delete it sometimes later, or just keep it for nothing. The thing is, the first feeling about it is usually the correct one. You can’t force yourself to like something even if you try.

Bratislava Majales fireworks

Majales is an open air festival held every year in the middle of Bratislava, next to the Danube river. And it always ends in fireworks. Today’s photo is from the festival in 2012, so already 7 years ago. I stumbled upon this photo when looking for examples for my article on Topaz Denoise AI yesterday, and I decided to edit it.

If you want a photo of fireworks in Bratislava, the next Majales is in two weeks. From the 3rd to 5th May. The fireworks will be in this same spot on the 5th at 21:45 in the evening. There will be a lot of people there, but since this is not the New years fireworks, it’s not as bad. For those curious about the event, here is the official site.

This is a single exposure, double edited in Camera RAW and then blended in Photoshop. I even used Topaz Denoise AI on this one, as I had to overexpose the shot. That created a bit of noise. And the results were again great :). I think it will be my main denoise plugin from now on, if it gives me such nice results on all of the photos.

Topaz Denoise AI

Same as with other Topaz AI applications, the interface is very simple. You load your image and process it. You only have three sliders: remove noise, enhance sharpness and restore detail. They do exactly what the name suggests. There is also a brighten preview option, where you can have it brighten your photos, so you can see the noise better. This has no effect on the image processing, it’s just to make you work simpler.

One nice feature here is the support for RAW images, so you can directly work on the source file. Better to do this before you did other edits on the image. You can save the export as a DNG file RAW afterwards.

But let’s go to the examples. There are three images in every example. The original photo as TIFF (lens correction and chromatic aberrations removed before noise reduction, some brightened a bit to make the noise more visible). Second one is a Noiseware noise reduction with strong noise preset and detail protection set to 6. Last one is the Topaz Denoise AI result, with all the sliders at 0.25.

Please take the comparison between Noiseware and Denoise with reservations. You can set the sliders differently in both, and the results may greatly vary based on photo. There is no way I can show all the possible results here, so this should be taken just as small preview, and one should try both for oneself (there are trials available). I will focus here only on the Denoise results.

Please click on the images to see bigger versions, to see the noise.

Original

Imagenomic Noiseware

Topaz Denoise AI

In this interior photo, Topaz Denoise very nicely removed the noise and added quite nice structure to the pillars. Strangely, which I noticed in multiple photos, some lines caught a bit of a green color tint. You can see it in the middle here and also in the top right corner. Hard to say why this happens. Original and Denoise versions in one photo for comparison here. 

Original

Imagenomic Noiseware

Topaz Denoise AI

Here is a very noisy photo, taken in the middle of the night. Again, you can see how Denoise tries to add more structure to places that it removed noise from. Original and Denoise versions in one photo for comparison here. 

Original

Imagenomic Noiseware

Topaz Denoise AI

This is my favorite result here. The car looks so clean afterwards. All the detail is preserved and overall this is a great result. Original and Denoise versions in one photo for comparison here.

Original

Imagenomic Noiseware

Topaz Denoise AI

This is a different example from the same photo as the previous example. Again, very nice result, very clean, very crisp. Original and Denoise versions in one photo for comparison here.

Original

Imagenomic Noiseware

Topaz Denoise AI

One last example here (again from a car, really have very few photos taken at a higher ISO :)). Again a very nice clean result here. Original and Denoise versions in one photo for comparison here. 

Long exposure reflection at the lake Bled

I’m not really happy with the photos I took at lake Bled last month, but I also would be sad if I did not edit at least some of them. But looks like I will have to go back to get some sort of a nice sunset there. Maybe later this year. Who knows :)

Here is another panorama with the church in the middle of the lake, nicely flanked by the mountains. This is a two shot panorama, each shot from a single exposure. Edited and merged in Photoshop. I used a 10 stop Formatt Hitech filter here, to blur the water.

And here are few details:

Useless information

Do I really need to know the specs of every camera that is released? Of every lens? Do I even need to know that some camera was released? I have been using Canon cameras for about 10 years now, and I no longer even know what professional cameras Canon offers anymore. It’s useless to me. It will not make my photos better. Rather than reading up on this, I prefer to look at new editing techniques, processes, ways to improve, cool spots to visit, interesting compositions and similar.

Only time I look at this stuff now, is when I know need a new camera. When the shutter count is closing up to the camera limits, it’s time to have a look at something new. But other than that, why?

Gear envy

I know I had this. Seeing other photographers with pricey cameras, all the best gear, can make one feel envious. I felt the same before. But I don’t care anymore. There is a point, where what you have is good enough. The Canon 5D mark II, that I bought in 2012, is probably still good enough for most of what I do. And I still use it. Do I need a 30Mpix photo when doing photos at an event? Do I even need the 22Mpix the 5D mark II gives? It’s different for landscapes, but even there most of times you could get by.

Seeing all the new releases will only make you have more gear envy, that you don’t need at all. Focusing on what you have and how to get more from it, is much more rewarding in the end.

Diminishing returns

I think you all heard of the Law of diminishing returns. Here it would be, that there is a point where spending more on something, will get you almost nothing more. A good example would be tripods. Buying a 200 USD tripod, will give you a much better experience than a 40 USD tripod. It’s can easily be 5 times better. But how much better is a 1000 USD tripod than the 200 USD one? Maybe 2 times better? 1.5 times better? Maybe even less.

This goes hand in hand with gear envy and just useless information about all that is available. Do I need to know that if I spend double what I already did, I get something that is 5% better? No.

Pointless rumors

I hate rumors. And not just in camera news. They mean nothing. Do you know that Canon, Sony, Nikon and others will release new cameras? Of course they will. Will there be new versions of popular gear? Of course there will be. Will the new cameras be better? I do hope so. But do I need to know some random persons idea what they be? Not really. I seen rumor articles based on a single tweet from a new, never before used account. Really. News sites need content, and often they go with anything.

There has not been a big change in photography for a long time. I would count the switch to digital photography as one, but stuff like going mirror-less is just an evolution. You probably can predict every new camera that comes out just by looking at older releases. The changes are quite minor.

Minimalism

Over the last 1-2 years, I have been interested in scaling down. I got rid of a big pile of things. And I’m moving with this approach also to my digital life. I stopped using some social networks, unsubscribed from a lot of accounts on other sites, limited my visits to even more. And information on new cameras and gear just fits perfectly in a category I don’t need and can easily leave out.