Road Trip Pictures

Some pictures from the road. In many cases I've uploaded the normal aspect and square aspect versions so you can see the differences. Although the images may look the same in the post they aren't. Click one to view larger and then you can see them all in the proper format.

Some berries. Anyone know what kind they are? This one is in the square format.

Berries in the normal format.

Fedex Truck in square format. I've never seen one with 3 trailers before.

FedEx truck in normal format.

Dig that chain link steering wheel.

Flower in square format.

Flower in normal format.

Old Cougar but notice the reflection :(.

Mountains in square format.

Mountains in normal format.

Road sign in square format. Notice the upper left hand corner and then look at next image.

Road sign in normal format. Notice how you can see part of the windshield.

Terry at a really cool statue. This statue sits suspended in water and you can actually rotate it.

Terry making a self portrait using the side mirror.

Protecting His Nest

This is a very photo intensive post but the photos tell the story. Yesterday I had a opportunity to watch the male Eastern Bluebird (Daddy as we call him) protect his nest from an unsuspecting Mourning Dove that landed too close. All shots were taken with my E-M5 and Olympus 40-150 lens. You can click on the images to view larger versions of them.

Daddy on the left and Momma on the right. The dish next to Momma is where we put mealworms for them.

Unsuspecting Mourning Dove

The Dove finally decides to fly away.

The victor!

Expose to the Right or Expose to the Left. Does it matter?

I'll admit that when it comes to post processing of images that I'm pretty lazy. My typical work flow is to import the images into Lightroom, assign keywords, and then go through them and click on the auto button to automatically adjust the settings to what Lightroom things are the correct settings. Sometimes I like the results and sometimes I don't. I may get fancy and try a preset but that's really just applying someone elses settings to your images. I know if I wanted to get the best possible image I should spend more time learning Lightroom and how to make adjustments but in all honesty I'd much rather be outside shooting pictures instead of inside post processing them. Okay so what does that have to do with the this post you may be wondering? Well something that has been discussed a good bit is just how well Lightroom can process the RAW images from the Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. I have also read about exposing to the right (ETTR). In a nutshell, as I understand it, with ETTR you want to intentionally overexpose the image but not to a point where things get blown out. With that in mind I decided to conduct a little test. This is the first part of a multiple part series I'll be working on over the next few days.

Presented below are a series of screen captures from Lightroom showing the before and after edits. The before image is how the image looking in Lightroom straight out of the camera (SOOC) and the after image shows how it looks after clicking the Auto button in Lightroom. All images were shot with the same aperture and I intentionally set exposure compensation as follows: +3, +2.7, +2.3, +2, +1.7, +1.3, +1, +.7, +.3, +0, -.3, -.7, -1, -1.3, -1.7, -2, -2.3, -2.7, -3. All shots where taken handheld using the 40-150 lens at 150mm, ISO 200. You can click on any image to view a larger version of it.

+3 Notice the shutter speed. 1/30th of a second hand held! Gotta love that E-M5 IBIS.

+2.7

+2.3

+2

+1.7

+1.3

+1

+.7

+.3

+0 Before. This shot shows the image with +0 exposure compensation and before clicking the auto button in Lightroom.

+0 After. This is how the shot looks after clicking auto in Lightroom. Notice how it boasted the exposure even though the camera's meter indicated the image was exposed properly.

-.3

-.7

-1

-1.3

-1.7

-2

-2.3

-2.7

-3

Conclusion
Just going by these images it appears Lightroom does a pretty darn good job adjusting the image reardless if you over, under, or properly expose the image. While the images may look good in this view we need to do some pixel peeping to see how things really look, noise wise with the images. That's the topic for the next post in this series.