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
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Pano Sunset

Epic Sunset
Stumbled across an album primarily of sunset shots. I remember at the time not wanting to publish them all for fear I run out of things to post, and I shot them about the same time I shot my zen rock (cairns) focus fun shots. I rediscovered them today and ran across some shots I took for a hopeful panorama. There's one thing I've learned about stitching panoramas with Photoshop Elements 11, if you don't like the outcome the first time around just try it again. I don't think I've ever seen PSE spit out identically stitched panoramas. Now I don't know if that's a quirk in the software or an issue with how I shoot my panorama shots, but it has proven to be very helpful at times. This is a 10 shot panorama with the finished dimensions of 9225x3724 and clocks in at roughly 36 megapixels. And this is not an HDR'd shot.

I really like, for the most part, how this shot turned out, though it's not without some problems. Processing wise, after I got it back from PSE into Aperture I went and adjusted exposure and set the black and white points. That sun was a little blown out, probably still is, but it's the sun. What are you going to do? I did a little capture sharpening and some noise control. Then the heavy lifting was done in +Topaz Labs Clarity using the Sunset preset in the Landscape group. From there I did a little tweaking to get things the way I wanted, then off to Detail to get a little more detail popping. I wish I could say I had planned on the composition turning out this way, with the sun near center with a nice trail of golden light leading to the bottom of the frame and centered by Trinidad Head on the left and Pewetole Island on the right, but honestly it was luck. Or skill that's become second nature. But my money is on luck.What I don't like and will try to fix is an inherent problem with a moving subject (the surf) and a sweeping panorama; things don't line up.

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