Your Canon Photos No. 24: 15th to 21st October 2023

Hi Dunlin, Thank You.

Hi Dunlin,

Love the Autumn colours, so many berries this year around where I live.

Thanks for the link Tim.
I'm still thinking hawthorn. The berries aren't as red as most hawforn berries I see. There's a lot of blackthorn growing very near where I live, and I think the leaves from the photo look like hawthorn leaves. (This photo from that link.)

Thankyou mocha.

Mocha,

Thanks. It is amazing to me every time I see these cars. I do think about the time, energy and money it takes.

A dragonfly and a tree. Shot as RAW, processed in darktable.

I'm pretty happy tonight.

I've been wanting to try my hand at long exposure black and white photography, so I ordered a 10 stop ND filter.
I've also been wanting to get 128Gb SDXC card for my tablet, so that I can take photos out in the field and store them on my tablet.

After I placed my order, I realized that I had ordered a full sIzed SDXC card, and my tablet uses a micro. I went ahead and let my order stand as is, thinking I can use the full sized as a spare for my camera, and ordered a micro for the tablet.

Everything arrived today and works great. The cards went in flawessly..

Now I have to get to work 😀

Steve Thomas

Dunlin,

I like your photos. What camera and lens are you using?

Steve Thomas

@stevet1 I use an Olympus mirrorless camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M10 II, with a kit lens and the Olympus 40-150mm R.
As you know, I used to use Canon DSLRs, but I eventually found the weight just too much. And for someone on a very low budget such as myself, Canon is a pretty poor option for mirrorless cameras. I did consider the Canon 100D, and even shortly a fixed-lens-camera, but I chose to swap brands. The Olympus has some great features (foremost the IBIS) and I enjoy using it, but I'm also hoping to buy another Canon DSLR sometime in the future.

Some fall foliage.

I downloaded this to my tablet and cropped it with Snapseed and uploaded it from there.

Steve Thomas

Looks good.

Dunlin,

Here's the other one I took.

I need to be more patient and look at the Histogram first or something. The light coming off that tree trunk will put your eye out 😀

I wish these DSLR's had a histogram in the viewfinder.

Steve Thomas

Hi Dunlin,

Super photo of the Dragonfly, I'm back into using Linux on a Pi4 at the moment (just for fun) so I'm going to give Darktable a go, I've wanted to try it out before so now's my chance. 😀

Hi Steve,

It's all about highlights and shadows in that photo and probably software will correct it for you. If you shoot in RAW the Dynamic range will be greater than your .jpgs and you will recover those problems much easier.

Hi Steve,

I wouldn't normally edit a photo of your's or anyone elses for that matter, I just want you to see that even in your .jpg the tree trunk has all the detail that you require. You need to lower the highlights of the picture in the software you use.

Mocha,

That's OK. I'm here to learn as well as to share.

Steve

Dunlin,

That's a good catch of the dragon fly. The yellow leaves look pretty against the clouds and blue sky.

Dunlin,

There's some things I did not originally like about the Canon M50 MKII mirrorless camera, but I've learned some things that make it a good option. For video I was able to change the record button to be the large shutter button (instead of that tiny button) in the menu. That sensor shutting off the use of the camera when I get too close is annoying, so I pull the LCD screen out and that reduces that problem. Also when using the LCD screen to take pictures, I change the settings on the LCD screen with my left hand instead of my right hand. That way, my right hand does not accidentally trigger that sensor when crossing over from right to left. I'm getting in the habit of doing it that way, so things are better now with it.

Steve,

I do like this photo better with the blue sky. If you chimp the photos, you can see the histogram. Be a regular chimper like I am. 😀

I do that to minimize post processing. I'm so busy taking pictures, that I hardly have extra time messing with them on the computer.

Thanks mocha.
Have fun with Linux. What distro are you using? We're hoping to move this PC to linux in the next few days. (I'm actually writing this on a live Linux USB drive, because Windows seems to be suffering from a really odd WiFi problem.)
Regarding darktable, I found it really difficult at first. I changed my mind several times on whether or not I'd use it, including the last few months when I've been just using OOC JPGs, but I am fully using it now. I can't recommend Bruce William's Understanding darktable YouTube channel enough, his videos are really helpful. Also, what I did was read though a couple of posts like this, to get an idea of what modules to start with. (pixls.us is the forum for FOSS software.) I'm still really new to darktable, but I know enough to do basic processing.

Thanks Digirame.

@Digirame my Olympus also has proximity sensors for the EVF, I do find it a bit annoying, and I could disable it, but I keep it on as I am shooting through the VF most of the time.

Hi Dunlin,

Because the Raspberry Pi4 is a single-board computer and 32bit there are not many distros that work well or at all, so I chose Ubuntu Mate. My favourite version that I've used in the past on an old laptop is Linux Mint. Thanks for the links I'm going to give darktable a go. It should be fun.