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

Beach Grass (Photocentric)

I love panoramic shots. Especially when my lens at it's widest angle just doesn't cut it. But panoramic pictures are difficult to both shoot and put together. Ideally I should use a good tripod to steady the camera and negate any up and down variation with notations to easily tell where to setup the camera for the next shot in the series. Sadly I a) have no such tripod and b) don't often carry one with me when I'm not planning to shoot from the beginning... which is most of the time I shoot. Today cameras have great settings to help you handhold your panorama scene; from Sony's sweeping method where you just slowly sweep the camera across the landscape to Canon's previewing the edge of the last shot so you can line up the next shot system. This usually gets good results for me. It's when putting it together that I get issues.

 I have found the software solutions to stitching together panoramas to be iffy at best. I've used what comes bundled with my camera (a Canon solution) I've used Photoshop, and I've used various open source programs that go into great length to describe their mathematical reason for why they're the best. None really have done a reliably good job for me. Today's shot is a 6 shot beach landscape that took me 5 different tries through 2 programs to get correct. And that's before the editing and touch up work to try and conceal the seams of the photos and to give it the look I was going for. After the work is all done I think this is one of my favorite panoramas, and one of my favorite shots. I hope you like it. Be sure to click the image to see it larger.

Beach Grass

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