Wolfgang Lonien

I was playing around with my camera today. First I reset my usual settings back to “normal”, with both contrast and saturation back to “0” (normally I have them at “-2”). Then, still indoors, I took a custom white balance photo and stored it in the camera. And finally, I set my picture parameters from jpg “fine” plus raw to just jpg “super fine”.

Which means that I *have to* get everything right in camera. No post processing, no tricks, no safety net. Oh, and because my Olympus camera exposes for the highlights just a bit (which makes images darker but “protects” those highlights from bleeding out), I also decided to ignore that and set a + 0.3EV correction. Maybe I’ll keep those settings for a while, just to get used to doing things right, because I’m forcing myself to.

Those indoor shots are boring of course, just interesting for myself. So I set the white balance back to “auto”, with the option to “keep warm colours = off”, and went outside to have a smoke. To get a nice and dark sky in the evenings with any automatic settings, you have to apply some negative correction, minus 1 is like my base setting for night shots. And with my newly assumed standard setting of + 0.3, minus 1 from there means – 0.7 in total. Simple enough that I can still do this without much thinking at all. I let the ISO on “auto” as well, so it went up to my default max setting of 800. Et voilà, here’s my out-of-camera-during-a-smoke shot:

A quiet evening, almost autumn. Olympus E-PL5 and PanaLeica 25mm/1.4.

Thanks for viewing.

I rarely crop photos, mostly I compose them like I see them in the viewfinder or on the rear display of my camera (and sometimes I decide on a square or on a 16:9 TV-like format, which both can show before taking the shot).

But there are times when some other aspect ratio than the native 4:3 one fits better. I like 5:4, especially in portrait orientation (and for portraits), it has that large format look somehow. And when I crop in post production, I tend to do it only on one side, and into the “classic” formats. Here are some shots from today, all in different aspect ratios:

Fairies (or mini models with wings?). Cropped 3:2 during post.

Chilies (there are still some left). Uncropped 4:3 full frame from my Four Thirds sensor.

Peanuts, roasted and salted. Cropped 7:6 during post.

All taken with my Olympus E-PL5 camera and the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 lens, at apertures 4, 2, and 2, and with ISO 800, 200, and 800.

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Sorry – couldn’t resist:

Sky in a pond. Olympus E-PL5 with Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4. Cropped 16:9 in camera. Turned upside down in post.

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Some two weeks ago I wrote about the roadblock which affects us for three months. And like a neighbour told us by now, it’s because one of the two bridges on that small road has to be repaired. It’s the first one seen from our village, leading over a train track.

So today I went there again. I still had the 45mm lens on my E-PL5 camera, which was also still set to display a 16:9 crop of the whole image (from yesterday’s chili photo). And because I composed today’s photos through that 16:9 view I also decided to leave that crop intact (which I could have removed in the raw converter). So while the first time we went there I had some wide angle shots, here are some more detailed ones using that short telephoto lens on my camera. Without captions and/or further comments, here are 8 photos I took:

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Mitchie had chilies outside on our veranda – remember? Well by now we’ve taken most of them in, and also gave away some already. They’re awesome, hot, and also really beautiful:

Chilies. Olympus E-PL5 with 45mm/1.8 lens and flash. Cropped 16:9.

Thanks for viewing.