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

Google Auto Awesomes

Animated Waterfalls
Auto awesome Falls
Like most photographers I shoot with two cameras; my dedicated camera and my phone. I like the flexibility because the phone let's me shoot and share right away, and I get to grab those shot's GPS coordinates and import them to my non GPS'd shots once I get into Aperture. The other nice thing with using Google's photo backup service is that Google "gifts" me with Auto Awesomed shots. Whether it's putting together multiple shots to get a panorama, HDR, or an animated gif, or just applying filters and borders, G+ usually spits out something nice, and admittedly gimmicky, to shoot out to my non-photography friends who won't judge me for using tools like this.

The nice thing is that this isn't just for mobile devices. On occasion I'll import, at the max resolution for free storage (2048 pixels on the long side), all the photos of a recent shoot just to see what Google+ gives me back. The above shot is supposedly based on 22 shots from my G3, which is interesting because those are all of different shutter speeds, and it looks like there's one or two frames that I might have already started editing. This is not so bad.

Moto X Auto Awesome
This, shot on my Moto X, was gifted to me. The shot to begin with isn't very good, but this is an example of times when I'd return this gift, if it was possible. Instead I would delete it, except it's now here on this blog for eternity.

G3 and Auto Awesome
Google+ must have a thing for this border and filter effect for waterfalls, as it gave me another one. It's also not any better. In fact this is the shot I used for this. I'd say Google made it worse.

Running River
Again this is multiple shots of the same thing but with different shutter speeds and apertures. I find this one funny because Google says this is made of up 27 shots (which I don't think is right) but one or two of those shots are with the polarizer on, which explains the color shifts from cool to warm.

Undulating Waterfalls
This one is my favorite. You can see that not only does the water flow in this awesome shot but the rocks move. Sadly this didn't happen in real life, as that would be something to take photos of. I assume I changed the position of the camera a little bit, but not enough to throw off Google's algorithms.

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