As you can see by the screen-capture above, there is a lot of dynamic range in some of my slot canyon photos from Antelope Canyon. In fact, there is more than what was visible, when I was looking up with my own eyes. Therefore I need to adjust at least some of the images - mostly for their exposure, with shadow adjustments and reduction of highlights, but since raw files hold more information than a regular jpeg image, I'm able to adjust saturation and color, in order to make the image look more like what I saw, when I was in the canyon shooting photos.
Here's another example of possible adjustments, showing the differences between two different adjustments. As you can see, the purple and orange hues do appear to be in the raw file, and an image can be adjusted to make it look more yellow, purple, orange, red, or some other color. Believe it or not the walls of the canyons looked very colorful in real life too, but most likely my final images will appear somewhat different than what the reality of the canyons appears to be, when you're there, looking at them with your own two eyes . . . but it does depend what time of day you visit, what time of year, and what your eyes can perceive. Are you a tetrochromat? Are you color blind? I believe I have pretty normal vision, and I adjust my images to my own taste, of course.
The adjustments you see demonstrated here show how much different one raw file can look, depending on color adjustments in a raw file adjustment program like this. Here is my first final version of the photo that I was working with, when I created the screen shots above (as you can see, I didn't choose to use the purple color, because I like the more realistic orange look better):
Darktable is just one of the many programs I use. Sometimes I use RawTherapee or GIMP, and sometimes I use some other program, such as a basic viewer that allows me to make some adjustments. It all depends on what I'm doing. Most of the software I use today is free. I've spent money in the past on programs like Photoshop and Aperture, and I have experience with Lightroom, Capture One, and other programs too, but I prefer to use open source software for several reasons.
I experimented with adjusting color contrast and white balance, as well as many other parameters (Velvia was one). Here is the result from yet another raw file:
To learn more about Darktable, read about it on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktable
. . . or watch this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMhe2gYJa9s&t=71s
If you want to download Darktable click here: https://www.darktable.org
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This isn't a review of the Fuji GF 35-70mm lens, but just a few short comments about it and my experience with it. I love the compactness of the lens. I think it's probably the smallest zoom lens in the Fuji GF lens line. I like how it has just a zoom ring and a focus ring, which keeps it simple (no switches - no aperture ring). It's a weather sealed lens, and it has a "stow-away mode" that allows the lens to be more compact, when it's not in use. (I just have to rotate the zoom ring a bit, when I turn on the camera, and the lens extends, so it's ready to use.) This lens is surprisingly light, and it takes pretty small filters (not that I even have any filters . . . but I guess I'll probably end up getting some for it, so I can do stuff like long exposures during the day (i.e. a ten stop neutral density filter). I typically don't use filters, because I find them to be a hassle, and I feel as though a filter would harm the image. (Who buys an expensive lens, with special coatings on the front element, and then puts a piece of glass in front of it? Not me . . . normally.)
The GFX100 camera feels good with this lens on it. It's not like the lens is so small that it feels like there's no lens on the camera, but it's not like the lens is really bulky, and a drag to carry around on the camera. (This is a big camera though - the biggest digital camera that I have ever owned.) One of the things I like the most about this lens is how fast and quietly it focuses. It doesn't have any optical stabilization, but it is a quick, responsive, and sharp lens, that helps me produce excellent quality images.
To see these photos in a gallery view, where you can download them, just follow this link: https://www.bigprintphotos.com/40mmArt
]]>I'm no expert on "the climate" . . . or anything else, except maybe photography, and even that is questionable, since I have not been formally educated on photography, and I have never made a decent living as a photographer. In other words, I'm no successful pro photographer, so why would anyone decide to believe what I have to say about anything photography related? Back to the climate.
CivilizationA typical urban area, where many humans live. Is this sustainable? Could it be, if these people put solar panels on their roofs, and grew fruit and vegetables in gardens on and in their buildings? I think so.
It is my belief that we just don't know what's happening (in many things, not just the climate). Yes, I'm denying the so-called "science" of those who believe the climate is changing for the worse, and that today's climate change is due to human activities. There is plenty of science that indicates that the climate has warmed and cooled in the past. Take the Medieval Warm Period, as an example. Did everyone die? No. Did it kill off half the population? No. In fact, when the climate warmed it allowed people in the north to grow more crops! It was apparently a time of plenty. When that centuries-long warm period ended many people starved to death. Crops would not grow. Land would not produce (at least not as much as it had in the past few centuries). A cooling climate may be far worse than a warming climate. The one thing we can be sure of though is that the climate will change. It always has. Yes, there are times of relative stability, but every time that happens it eventually ends with a time of climate change. In other words climate change is nothing new. Do you know they used to call it "Global Warming" once? It does look like the climate may be warming back up again . . . after it cooled down for a while. That may or may not have something to do with human activity. I don't know, and I don't believe you know either, whether you are a believer or not.
Why do I think these things?
Well I have read some stuff - history, and science articles, and done my own research, based on records that are readily available from various government websites. After the age of the steam engine and the industrial revolution, along came World War I. That was more than a hundred years ago. In that war human kind polluted the planet more than ever before. Then came an even more polluting World War II, at which time our factories belched out smoke like never before, and the burning of bridges, farms, ships, and entire towns and cities polluted the atmosphere like nothing that has happened in my lifetime. (I'm 55 now.) We humans even dropped atomic bombs! Then came the Korean and Vietnam wars, and of course the popularity of the automobile. For more than thirty years after WW II people around the World, but especially people here in the U.S.A. bought cars and trucks, and burned gasoline like it was going out of style! Then, around 1975 there was a cold spell. The climate got cooler, while we polluted like crazy! How could this be, after a hundred years of human pollution of the air? If our pollution causes the climate to warm, then what happened? Does it make sense to you that all that pollution caused the climate to cool? You could say that the climate cooled in spite of what humanity did for the entire century before that (steam engines became popular about a hundred years before the cold times in 1975 and 1976, when it snowed in south Florida, where I lived as a child). Well, now the climate seems to be getting hotter, and for about fifty years now that has been the case. It's easy to be short-sighted and arrogant, and think that something humans are doing must be causing this, but does it really make sense?
If you look at the climate over the past five or ten centuries, rather than just the past fifty years, I think you'll have a different view of the changing climate. If you look far back, as far as the ice ages, you will understand that what is happening right now may be almost insignificant. At least we're not heading into an ice age, which might cover half the land masses on Earth with ice and snow, right? Imagine the levels of extinction that we'd see in such an event? Such things take many thousands of years though, so nobody on Earth today will ever see such things happen . . . unless we figure out some technology to prolong life to more than ten times our current lifespans. I definitely don't see anything like that happening in the next century. Sure, it could happen some day, now that we're inventing A.I. In fact, it could be that the coming computerized beings will live to see ice ages come and go, but most likely not humans, and almost surely no human who is alive today will live for hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years.
The age of machines is upon us.
I believe that (the invention of robots and A.I.) is something worth worrying about much more than climate change. The climate has always changed. Evidence of that has been found by archaeologists and others for centuries. We know that people in the Americas were dramatically affected by long droughts (climate change) many centuries ago, long before the industrial revolution. Much has been published in the past, even before the whole "Global Warming" scare became a popular news topic.
There used to be "science" articles claiming another ice age is coming soon.
Did you know that Newsweek published an article titled "The Cooling World" on April 28, 1975? There were many other articles published back in those days about the possibility of a coming ice age, and they were "based on science" back then too. The fact is that drama sells newspapers and magazines, and it makes for good headlines. What has changed? It's different drama today, but I believe it is all just drama. Sure, they talk a big game about all the science involved and all those old natives around the world who are in touch with nature, and how this has "never happened before" . . . What? You don't think they were saying the same kinds of things in the articles back when they were selling magazines and newspapers with headlines and articles that said the climate is cooling? Of course they did. There were all sorts of scientists who jumped on the bandwagon, and old natives talked about how it was getting colder, and how they couldn't catch enough fish or deer or whatever. But it was all a lie, sold to us by the media. Who's to know if they're telling the truth today any more than they were in 1975? Are they just selling us a big lie once again? I don't know, and I'm willing to bet that neither do you. Hey, I'm just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger.
;)
That said, I still don't like fossil fuels.
I acknowledge the fact that kerosene and gasoline have had many positive impacts on humanity. They've allowed us to do amazing things, and transport would likely not be the same without fossil fuels. All that is not to say I think we should just keep driving gas-guzzlers, with no regard to how much pollution we are spewing into the atmosphere though. In fact I think there are many reasons not to. The biggest is the horrible health hazard posed by pumping carbon monoxide into the air we breathe in our cities, where most cars are driven. On cigarette packages it says that carbon monoxide causes cancer. Both of my parents died from cancer. Maybe it was pollution in the air that killed them both. Maybe it was the rampant use of pesticides, plastic food containers, fluoride (a poison) in our water, chemicals in our soaps, skin lotions, and shampoo, or so many other dangerous things in our "civilized" world that caused my parents to get cancer, and maybe all the pollution and bad stuff in the products we use and eat is killing us all. Ever heard of Teflon? Amazingly people keep on buying pots and pans with that crap applied to the cooking surfaces of those pots and pans. Did you see that movie about Dupont Chemical Company? Maybe "climate change" is just a thing to distract us from what's really going on, both here in the U.S. and around the Globe.
Words like these may get me killed.
Yes, even today there are people who literally hate anyone who doesn't agree with them, and when the "norm" is to believe something is one way, and you believe something else, then most people . . . that's millions of people . . . will disagree with you, and some of those people are lunatics, or what one might call radicals, similar to those who in centuries past would claim someone who believed the "wrong thing" should be burned at the stake. I hope nobody kills me for writing and publishing this, but what if they do? So be it. This is a country where we have something called the First Amendment to assure that we are free to say what we want, write what we want, and publish what we want. People need to know that there are others out there who think something different. People need to understand there are people who believe things that are not the conventional "wisdom" of the current times, and that it is indeed o.k. to believe something that maybe not everyone else believes. Without diversity in our beliefs, how can we have diversity in anything? Without diversity life would indeed be quite boring.
I am anti-pollution.
I am a fan of Tesla, because that company makes cool cars that run on electricity, which does not pollute the air we breathe in our cities. Sure, it's possible that one might pollute a lot when making electricity and/or the infrastructure to deliver electricity, but it can be done cleanly too. We can use dams to make hydro-electric power, which is about as clean as it gets. We can use small vertical-axis wind turbines or those massive wind turbines they put in the sea off the coast in places where there are constant on-shore breezes, or on hills in places like north Texas, where there is lots of wind to produce electricity, and we can use a few warehouses full of big battery packs to reduce the amount of pollution produced by those natural gas fired power plants they used to take up the slack, when the wind dies down in the local area. We can use solar panels too, because it is absolutely certain that the sun will come up every day, and be in the sky for a few hours, and we can make electricity with solar panels every day (though I do acknowledge that some days are better than others for making solar power, with clouds blocking out a lot of sunlight on occasion, and in some places more than just occasionally). Elon Musk seems to believe that if we were to use conventional solar panels to cover just one small piece of one corner of one state, like Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada, that would produce enough solar power to power the entire United States. I believe that if we put a few solar panels on each of the roofs of most houses, warehouses, and low commercial buildings, such as retail shops, small office buildings, and factories, then we will be making enough electricity to supply most of our electric power demands. I'm not a proponent of nuclear power. I believe humans have demonstrated time and time again that they can not be trusted to build safe nuclear power stations. They can not be trusted to store the deadly poisonous, radioactive waste from nuclear power stations in a safe manner either. Ever head of the Hanford Site?
I eat and drink a lot of organic products.
This is because I don't want to pollute my body with pesticide residue, hormones, and other bad stuff. I try to buy products that come in glass jars and bottles, rather than plastic containers. (I believe chemicals leech out of the plastic into the food and drinks kept in plastic containers for days, weeks, or even months before we buy them.) I prefer flour that comes in paper. I prefer boxes made of cardboard, rather than boxes made of plastic. Cardboard boxes last for decades, but very few plastic boxes I have ever seen were able to last for more than a few years before cracking. Most plastic is garbage, and it's polluting our planet!
We're polluting our planet with plastic like never before!
Ever heard of an ocean gyre, and the massive "islands" of garbage that float out there? That garbage is mostly plastic - buckets, bottles, plastic bags, plastic nets (made of nylon, polyester, and or some other plastic), and so many other items, like those little plastic bottle caps that come on water bottles and soda bottles. Sure, you can make something cheap by using plastic instead of aluminum, steel, stainless steel, or something else that will last longer than some cheap plastic. Why? Why would you want something made of plastic, when it could be made to last longer by making it out of something that will last? Wood, steel, aluminum, stainless steel, titanium - ultimately we have many materials we can use to make things that last longer than if they were made of that cheap, garbage we know as plastic. I prefer things made of other materials, obviously. That's not to say I won't buy something made of plastic. I bought Milwaukee Pack-Out tool boxes. They're made mostly of plastic, but I just prefer other stuff, like glass bottles, cardboard boxes, rather than plastic ones, tools made of all steel, rather than tools with plastic handles, knives with stainless steel handles, rather than the ones with handles made of plastic, etc. I recently bought a rolling tool box. It's stainless steel, with a wood top.
And what about clothes? I try to buy 100% cotton, wool, or silk, rather than stuff made of polyester, nylon, rayon, or some other plastic.
So what is this rant all about? Really it's just to let you know where I stand. Obviously this is not an extensive discussion of all the things I've mentioned here, but who wants to read something so long and boring anyway? Go have some fun!
:)
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As you can see in this photo above, the lens is very small. It's metal and glass, so it is light, but not super light. It's all manual, and has a preset ring for the aperture, which is set by the ring near the front edge of the lens (which is unusual for camera lenses - even old ones like this). This lens is called a Helios 44-2 and it is 58mm and can open up to f2 (a pretty wide aperture, though the aperture of some lenses in this range can open up to f1.4 or even wider).
Below are a couple of shots, with crops, that show how sharp this cheap little lens is. They also show how little vignetting there is, even though this lens is for 35mm cameras, and I have mated it with a 44mm sensor (which is 33mm high).
Street scene shot at f5.6This scene shows how little vignetting there is with this lens, and gives an idea how wide the view is, when this little 58mm lens is put on a medium format camera with a sensor about twice the size of the sensor in a full-frame (35mm) camera.
Crop of photo aboveIn this crop you can see how much detail the photo contains, even though it was shot with a lens that's more than half a century old, and only cost about $50.
Below is another shot with a crop following.
What do you think?
EDIT: I decided to shoot some photos at f11 with the Helios 58mm lens. Here's two of them (with crops):
Bicycle shot with 100 MP Fuji GFX100 and Helios 58mm f2 at f11I shot this bicycle at f11 using the Helios 44-2 58mm f2 lens on the Fuji GFX100. I'm pretty satisfied with the detail and lack of vignetting, when using this little lens.
Crop from image aboveAs you can probably see, the detail in the bottom right corner is quite good, so setting the Helios 58mm lens to f11 works well.
Flowers with Helios 58mm f2 lens set to f11 on Fuji GFX100I figured these flowers in the sun would be a good subject to show off the detail this Helios 58mm lens can produce at f11 on the Fuji GFX100.
Crop of flower shot made with Helios 58mm f2 lens set to f11 on Fuji GFX100In this crop from near the bottom right corner of the image above, you can see the fine detail the lens and camera can be used to capture.
EDIT: I couldn't resist adding some more photos. Here they are:
Duck Pond - shot with Helios 44-2 58mm f2 on Fuji GFX100The ducks were far, but I thought the whole scene looked nice, so I shot it with this normal lens on my GFX100, the Helios 44-2 58mm f2.
Crop of Duck Pond shot made with Helios 58mm f2 on Fuji GFX100This crop shows how sharp the distant subjects are on the GFX100, when shooting with the m42 mount Helios 44-2 58mm f2 at f8 (or maybe it was f11).
Cactus flower buds shot with Helios 44-2 58mm f2 at f8 (or maybe f11) on Fuji GFX100I like how sharp these cactus flower buds and cactus thorns are, and this photo shows how little vignetting there is with the Helios 44-2 58mm f2 lens set to f8 (or was it f11?).
Crop of cactus flower buds photoThis crop makes it easy to see the fine detail captured using the Helios 58mm lens on the 100 MP camera (Fuji GFX100).
If you want to see the originals in a gallery with these crops, just follow this link: https://www.bigprintphotos.com/gfx100
Soon I'll add some more photos, shot with the Pentax 6x7 135mm f4 macro.
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That photo above is from my Nikon D810 - not the new (to me) Fuji GFX100. I don't have the adapter to mount the lens on my Fuji yet.
Here's what that old Pentax macro lens looks like on my Nikon D810:
I shot this photo above with my Sigma SD Quattro H and my 50mm f2.8 EX macro set to 1/800 sec. (The image above is just an OOC jpeg.) I just wanted you to be able to at least see the old macro lens I plan to use on my new (to me) Fuji GFX100.
This lens should be a good fit for the Fuji GFX100, since it will be equivalent to a shorter focal length on that camera (about equivalent to a 105mm macro on the Nikon). The Fuji has IBIS too, so I should be able to handhold down to some pretty slow shutter speeds, like 1/30 or even 1/15 second. I'll create a gallery of photos from the GFX100, using various lenses (only this one at first, no doubt). Eventually I plan to get Fuji's 45-100mm and 110mm f2 lens (for portraits/fashion mostly). I also plan to get some longer lenses and the new Fuji 20-35mm wide-angle zoom, but that lens is quite pricey, so it will be a while before I can post anything from that lens. In fact, I don't even expect to get the 110mm f2 this year, because that too is quite a pricey lens.
I'm hoping the Fuji GFX100 will help me step my photography up to a higher level. I know there are plenty of people who would say it's not the camera or the lenses, but the photographer behind them. I agree to a degree, but I did step up my game when I got my Canon 5 D and some really good lenses, so maybe I can make that happen with this new camera too. Ultimately I need to just get out and shoot more. This should help me with that. I sure hope so.
Once I have the adapter, I'll make a new blog post all about the 135mm f4 6x7 macro lens on the Fuji GFX100, with photos of the lens on that camera.
EDIT: I ended up ordering two adapters, and the m42 adapter came in first, so I mounted my Helios 58mm lens on the GFX100 instead. See the blog post here: https://www.bigprintphotos.com/blog/2023/10/first-shots-with-gfx100
]]>Enough of this equipment talk!
;)
What I plan to do with the medium format equipment that I'm getting is produce photos that look better when printed extra large (i.e. 4 feet by 6 feet or bigger). Currently I don't use any camera with a tilt screen, so I will be happy to have that feature in my camera once more. (I miss having that, from when I used my Sony cameras.) Another interesting thing about the Fuji is the tilting viewfinder. No other camera that I have been shooting with for the past few years has had a tilting viewfinder, but there is an optional attachment that will allow me to make the viewfinder of my GFX100 into a tilting viewfinder. I'll be getting that this year for sure!
So this is the first post of my new blog. You'd think I would have posted something here a long time ago, huh? Considering how long I've been shooting and all the posts I've made in other places (over 18,000 at DPreview alone), I certainly SHOULD have started a blog here long ago.
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