I was surprised and slightly concerned when the last batch of images I imported from the camera looks badly decomposed, filled with noise and image distortions. Hopefully, it was just a freak thing and the sensor on the camera isn’t on the way out.
I was shooting in really low light conditions at ISO 1600 in Aperture Priority mode with the fstop around 4.0-5.6 and was alternating between using the flash and not. Three shots in a series were affected with this noise but those before and after are what I expected the camera to capture in those conditions.
Anyways, here’s some lightly manipulated (one converted to black and white) and cropped images of what the camera captured.
From an artistic standpoint I like what happened, especially the black and white image which to me looks like it was transmitted by the Mars Phoenix Lander or captured by Steven Sasson first digital camera for Kodak. Management has expressed her extreme dislike of this series of pictures but then again she is into Realism. 
This was a non-travelling vacation for us. Instead we stayed around the house taking things slow, getting caught up on some home projects–more ceiling fans installed (4 so far) and I’m getting good enough that I might just go into business–and hanging out at the pool club. Gabriella absolutely loved it at the club where she could either take a long dip in the wading pool or run around in the adjacent playground. We loved how well laid out the facility is and the friendliness of the staff and lifeguards. All in all it was a nice break.
This morning I found
four grey hairs upon my chest
old age closes in
Probably well known and obvious to those who read the manual but I was surprised to find that shooting in B&W mode makes no difference really with the image when capturing Raw. When capturing JPG I used it to eek out a little more performance in low light conditions, ie our house night and day. So I was a little more than surprised when I opened the images in UFRaw and they were color–compounding my surprise was the fact that the thumbnails were black and white. However, it was a pleasing discovery because I found that most of the images worked better in color than in black and white, though ones I wanted to convert were easy to do with Gimp (I’m sure UFRaw has an option, my non-maual reading self just hasn’t found it yet).
Below are two shots that are both equally nice in color or in grayscale
This last image is a perfect example of what I would have missed had I actually captured this in black and white. It is so much more vibrant and exciting in color, partly because of all the noise that ISO 1600 introduces, and it just wouldn’t be the same shot in grayscale.
If anything this was a happy discovery but I really need to sit down and read my Magic Lantern guide.
Lunchtime saw a brief sojourn through some new streets which yielded a shot of three buildings I’ve photographed before but at new angles and one of my favorite flower photos to date. The weather was beautiful, clear and bright, which made it optimal conditions to try out my new polarizing filter. I’m very pleased with the results.
The top picture, while not having a stellar composition, really pops and the spray painted sign tickles my juvenile side (on Flickr it is titled “Middle School”). The second is of that church I am so found of but this time looking uptown at it against the Fox 61 building, otherwise known as “Stilts”. The rose was found thriving above the I-84 underpass among dead grass and concrete. I love the effect that the filter gave the background, dark and impressionistic.
