The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca

Streaking

My last photo from the archive, and probably last post of the week. This shot isn't so much about how it looks but more about achieving a "look". One of the neat things about having a camera that allows you to change settings like aperture and shutter speed is you're able to do things that you just can't do when you leave the camera on Auto. I remember having read an article online about getting a light streak effect in photos, which was great because I had always wondered how to capture that. So, one night while up in San Francisco's Union Square area I found a not so busy corner, a steady wall to put the camera on, and shot. In looking at the 20 or so other shots that came before and after this one, it was interesting to see what worked (wide angle, 3-5 second shutter speed) and what didn't (zoomed, and anything longer than 6 seconds). According to the time stamps I was at that corner for 30 minutes just experimenting with different settings, and apparently, when I got frustrated taking shots of other things.


It's not pretty, but I got the streaks I wanted of cars going by. Shot with the Canon SX10is with an f.8 (to keep the amount of light down for a long exposure), ISO 80 (should have maybe kicked that up some) and a shutterspeed of 6 seconds. I corrected for white balance in Aperture, as everything had a yellow tint to it from the street lamps that I didn't like.

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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor