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Some recent photos taken around my desk

Working on our server is about finished, with only minor issues left. I have to thank Michael from Frankfurt who is the lead developer of our admin tool which is called ‘Froxlor‘, and who is known as ‘d00p’ in the forums and IRC channel of his program. He helped a lot, also directly on our server (thanks again Michael, and my offer for coffee still stands).

Last Sunday, in between those server works, I took this photo from Tuna from under my own chair, using my 50mm/2 macro lens from the digital Olympus Four Thirds system:

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Lazy Sunday Afternoon, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

I cropped it into a 3:2 format like from a film camera.

And a few minutes ago I took a photo of our bird feeder from my desk ‘workspace’, through the closed veranda door, using my newly Panasonic Lumix 35-100mm lens fully zoomed out at 100mm, and wide open at f/5.6:

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Taken from my desk “workspace”, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

And because this one was taken through a glass door, I tried the ‘Clarity’ and ‘Dehaze’ filters in Olympus’ relatively new ‘Workspace’ raw developer (on Windows). Made a screen shot from these settings, kind of a ‘making of’:

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Settings of ‘Clarity’ and ‘Dehaze’ in the relatively new Olympus Workspace raw developer

Interesting, isn’t it? Almost like using a polariser filter which we used in the old film days when taking photos through glass surfaces. You still can’t beat them even in digital (laws of physics), but you can come pretty close already.

So this is what I see if I look left from my computer. As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

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“Developed” using RawTherapee

I’m still “having fun” with our server, and with some of the software on it. Not much time for music, photography, or any other hobby. So I thought I’d show a photo which I took lately when I had the 50mm macro lens on my camera to “scan” some negatives (from Zuleikha’s films). And while I had RawTherapee open on my Linux box, I decided to use that to make a jpg out of the raw file from the camera. So here’s Tuna from last Sunday or so:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

Love the colours in this one. A good contrast between the cat and the sofa. Oh, and I cropped it into 3:2 like all the “scans” I made from Zuleikha’s films.

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

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After the meal and before the fight

Just heard her outside with what was probably the black & white cat which I saw the other day. Tuna is always fighting, probably protecting her territory. In the photo she was cleaning herself after eating, and I took this hand-held with ISO 6400 and 1/10th of a second at f/1.4 (my lens wide open):

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After the meal and before the fight, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

Midtoned as usual, and cropped 3:2 like from a film camera. Oh, and I haven’t used any noise reduction whatsoever, so this is *much* better than film IMHO. And with 1/10th of a second hand-held, what saved me here is the wonderful IBIS (in-body image stabilisation) from my camera. So I couldn’t have done the same with film anyway.

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

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Tuna the cat, from July 26th, 2019

A first cat snapshot since we’re back from England:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

Taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2 and the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 lens at f/2.0, converted with Olympus Workspace on Windows 10 and with RawTherapee on Linux. Uploaded to Flickr manually.

As always, thanks for viewing.

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A new lens

Got this one as a present last week:

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A recent present, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

I first saw this mentioned in a blog post and thought that it might be a nice addition, much smaller than the 40-150mm lenses we have from the Four Thirds system and which need an adapter, a bit sharper perhaps, and with a faster autofocus. Even image stabilized though we don’t need that on our Olympus cameras which have the stabilization built right into their bodies already. So I had put it onto my wishlist at some big store, not further thinking about it – and what a nice surprise when all of a sudden I had it!

It comes with a lens hood which is reversed on the lens in the picture above (take that, Olympus!), and it is indeed nice & sharp at all of its focal lengths which compare to a (much bigger) 70-200mm lens on a 24x36mm film camera. I used it on last week’s photo of Tuna the cat already:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

But this photo is heavily processed with its “in-body” (added by OV3) pin hole art filter. Still, this somehow also replaces my 75mm/1.8 which was stolen in Paris last year.

Today I used it at the longer end and somewhere in the middle (at 64mm) on some flowers on our veranda:

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Some flowers on our veranda, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
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Some flowers on our veranda, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
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Some flowers on our veranda, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
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Some flowers on our veranda, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

So with its variable aperture of f/4 to f/5.6 which closes down pretty fast when you zoom in it’s a pretty little lens for outdoors – but I also tried it indoors at 35mm already with good results:

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Self portrait, Frankfurt 2019

Cool. This might come handy for the upcoming documentation project of Zuleikha’s school event, and also for the upcoming summer holidays. How great to have this; thanks a lot!

Also for reading and viewing, as always.

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Tuna from today (June 4th, 2019)

Another photo of our cat who likes the warm ground. A bit processed with the pin hole filter and a frame effect in Olympus Viewer 3 (like in-camera):

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

As always, thanks for viewing.

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I simulated film today

I took a photo of Tuna again, using two of my studio strobes and with the PanaLeica 25mm lens on my camera set to f/4.

Then, after “developing” the raw .orf file using OV3 on a simulated Win7 box, I also saved a copy in black & white, using a simulated orange filter (you can do that either in-camera or with Olympus Viewer 3 in post production, the resulting image will be identical).

I also took the colour converted .tif file and loaded it into Silver Efex, trying their 019 “Fine Arts” preset, and also Ilford HP 5 Plus and Kodak Tri-X 400TX film simulations.

And I “developed” all resulting .tif (or in case of SFX, .TIFF) files with Raw Therapee on Linux, and added some meta information. Then I compared the results on my screen for a while.

The “in-camera” (through OV3) black & white conversion was the smoothest of them all, the “Fine Arts” preset of Silver Efex had the most information and almost some kind of a slight HDR look, and the film simulations were very close to each other in this case. In the end, I opted for the most contrasty one of them all which also had some fine simulated grain, which was Tri-X.

As always, I midtoned it to get those grey tones a bit more brownish, and I also cropped it to a 3:2 format like Kleinbildfilm used to have – I thought that also fitted the Leica branded lens on my camera.

Here’s the result:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

See Flickr for full resolution if you’re interested in that.

And as always, thanks for reading and viewing.