Not half bad…

A photographer friend from Florida, William Beebe, recently wrote in a series of articles titled “Use what you have” (part 1 and 2) about some cameras and phones, and that he’s tired of RAW processing and mostly uses what comes out of the devices. And since we both have a Google Pixel 4a phone, I took a photo with that one today. I set the phone cam to “portrait mode”, but later also edited the picture in-camera (or rather, in-phone) with the “Eiffel” black & white preset which I really like. That almost gets you a film-like look:

Google Pixel 4a photo in portrait mode, with its “Eiffel” preset

Reminds me a bit of photos I took with using Kodak’s Tri-X (TX400) film stock, and really – a counter-shot from my camera with simulating that film in RawTherapee gives you this:

Self portrait, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

I sent myself the phone image with Signal, and that cropped it to 2048×1536 or around 3 Megapixels – very nice for using it on web pages. So I did the same using Gimp with the photo out of my camera.

But really, that “Eiffel” look in Google’s software isn’t half bad…

Like always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Edit: after searching and reading a bit about it I decided to just try and uploaded my photo taken with the Olympus camera into the Pixel 4a phone, then treated it like the first one in this article: opened it with the camera app, selected “portrait” mode (which blurred the background quite a bit more), and then applied the “Eiffel” black & white preset to it. Then I sent it to myself with Signal again, so here’s the result:

Olympus photo, edited with the Google Pixel 4a phone

Quite a bit more “dramatic”, isn’t it? But even this can be set with a slider – here I had “Eiffel” at the max (100%).

Interesting. Who needs Photoshop or Lightroom with that (and lots more options and presets) in our cameras?

Again, thanks for reading/viewing and so on…

Edit2: I wanted to examine this a bit further, so I took an image of myself holding a Color Checker, and converted it using the Olympus built-in black & white setting (simulated in OM System’s Workspace RAW processor), and then I used Nik’s Silver Efex (on Windows) and RawTherapee (on Linux) with simulating Kodak’s Tri-X film. Plus I put the image into the Google phone to apply their “Eiffel” preset to it. With the resulting images I made a collage in The Gimp, which I then cropped to 2048×1536 pixels for web use, and uploaded that to Flickr. So here it is:

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Black & white options, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

You can click the image or this link to view it bigger in Flickr if you like.

Again, thanks for viewing.

And another self portrait

OK, with the Nexus 5 in recycling now, I’ve installed OM System’s app “Image Share” onto the Pixel 3a of my late brother, making it a very useful tool even without a SIM card – at least at home it’s now a remote not only for the camera but also for the TV and stereo sets.

To check it out immediately, I took my camera which still has its “kit zoom” (14-42mm lens, equivalent to 28-84mm on a film camera) mounted, and sat in the chair beside the piano. With normal daylight and the Pixel 3a phone as my remote, I took this:

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Self portrait, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

This is again “developed” from the raw .orf into a .tif file using OM System’s Workspace (on Windows 11), then with Silver Efex (the old and free one when it still belonged to Google) I simulated Kodak’s famous Tri-X film stock again; did a bit of metadata editing in RawTherapee (back on Linux); done.

It’s important to have photographs of those you love. I can’t force anyone to sit in front of my lens and have his/her photo taken, but I can at least take my own ones from time to time. Least you can do for those you love.

Like always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Another self portrait

I was just looking at some Canon camera review done by the guys from DPReview, and although that nice camera (Canon R5C) is slightly outside of our price range, it at least gave me the idea to use my own one for another “selfie”, remote-controlled with my phone, and even with its “kit zoom” lens – I have better ones, but it’s still a nice one.

So I set the camera onto my table tripod, and without using any light except that from my monitor in front of me (and behind the camera), I took this:

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Self portrait, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

I cropped the photo into a 5:4 format using the OM Workspace raw editor, and then in Silver Efex I used preset 002 (which means 1 stop overexposure), together with simulating Kodak Tri-X black & white film, and placed a border of type 11 around the whole thing. Then, back in RawTherapee on Linux I tamed the highlights above my head a bit, and that was it.

It was pretty dark, so even with the camera at ISO 1600 and aperture 4.3 I had about 1/2 a second (0.6 according to Flickr) exposure time. so I had to hold still.

Anyway, like always thanks for viewing.

Matti Sulanto in KL

This one is for the gear heads, or for those who want to see some photos from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Matti Sulanto is a photographer from Finland and as it seems he’s currently on a trip to Malaysia where he lent a camera and lens from Robin Wong, another photographer who lives in KL. So he’s talking about the gear mostly, but you can see some photos of the area – I think in one traffic directions sign I saw “Jalan Bukit Bintang” or so? Enjoy, if that is of any interest for you:

Oh, and about that lens – it’s really a lovely one, I have it as well. Like always, thanks for reading and/or viewing. Found these videos via 43rumors.

Self portrait

Haven’t done a “selfie” since a while. But today I reinstalled one of the studio strobes into a corner of our dining area, attached a gridded beauty dish to it, set the camera to share its display and settings via WiFi, and used my phone as a remote controller. Then, with a black background attached to the kitchen door, I took a photo of myself. Looks like this:

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Self portrait, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

I set the white balance to 4800k and cropped the photo into a 4×5 format, otherwise it’s unaltered and like “out of the camera”.

Getting grey, am I not? Well I guess for an almost retiree that’s quite normal perhaps? Anyway, took the same photo into Silver Efex, and used the ‘Dark Sepia’ preset to get this out of it:

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Self portrait in dark sepia, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Thanks for viewing.