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

Panoramas From the Road

Between the Clouds
Before we get into the meat of this post, if you're viewing this on a mobile device, these photos really don't translate that well on it. These are large panoramic photos and really need a large screen to do them justice. Now on with the post.

Occasionally during my Eastern Sierra trip I had the idea to take panoramas to try and take in the full view of what I was seeing and feeling. I tried to focus on a part of the view I was seeing that would fill up my frame, but I felt that it didn't full get the whole feeling with only part of the view, but this led to other problems. All the panoramas I took were literally on the side of the road, meaning I was in the middle of driving, with someone who's not a photographer. So, not wanting to annoy them I left the tripod in the car and took these panoramas free hand. When taking handheld panos my general rule is to take many photos and to go well beyond and after my intended start and stop points so that the photo software has lots of points in common to stitch the photos together, and I will hopefully have plenty of excess photo that can be thrown away on the edges.

The top photo was taken off highway 44, directly north of Lassen National Park and looking out west. We had been climbing for a while at this point and got to a point where we were on top of the fog that had filled the canyon we drove up out of, but just below the cloud base. Not a sight I see all that often. This shot is a 5 shots stitched together in Lightroom.

Looking Down on Mono Lake
This shot is another off the road viewing area, this time off Highway 395 at just about 7,700 feet up. We had just crested a summit and sighted this Mono Lake Viewing Area. This is a view looking south-east down in onto Mono Lake with the Sierra bordering on the right. A storm had just swept through a couple days earlier leaving these great clouds. Towards the bottom middle, and leading into the photo, is highway 395.

This pano was made up of 7 shots, handheld, and again stitched in Lightroom

Eastern Sierras in Black and White
This panorama, from the same spot as the previous one, just looking more west onto the east facing side of the Sierra Nevadas, was a precursor to something I thought I might be doing once situated in Lone Pine; making use of black and white. The desert on here isn't much for color, at least during the non-prime time hours of sunrise or sunset, but is high on texture. From the scrub brush up front, to the trees, and finally to the mountain faces themselves, I though black and white would accentuate this gritty feel. I originally took this panorama in black and white (the camera saves RAW files in color, and spits out JPEGs with whatever treatment I select) and while I liked in general what the camera did, I felt it could be more.

This, I'm surprised to find out, is a 10 shot panorama, though in terms of dimensions is a good thousand pixels slimmer than my 7 shot panorama looking down on Mono Lake. Lightroom certainly threw out a lot of extra space.

I've linked the 3 photos below to show them in full screen, as Blogger doesn't allow for easily showing that.

Up in the Clouds
Looking Down on Mono Lake
Eastern Sierra in Black and White

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