Don’t bin ‘bad’ shots too quickly

I have a habit of reviewing shots as I download them, and generally cull the worst of them on sight, to save time later.

The obvious fails are easy, lost focus, crazy exposure, mistakes etc can go without much thought, but there are others that look like fails, but are worth keeping (for a while at least) as they may teach you something.

I almost hit the ‘Delete’ button on this apparently overexposed shot, but something made me hold off.

Original on the left, processed on the right.

When I saw the original result I was surprised – to the eye, the scene looks nothing like the pic, which has been severely overexposed in the area around the roundabout.

I thought the detail of the signs was completely lost, then noticed I could see some of their graphics.

I tried a tool that just worked on shadows and highlights, and that eventually produced the result on the right.

I almost didn’t get even that, as there was a fairly sharp point at which the tool caused the windows of the house behind to flip into a weird, almost uniform, wash of colour, and lose most of its detail. The ground was doing the same, but not as bad.

I ended up with a compromise, which recovered some of the sign graphics without making the house like some sort of radiation afflicted hell from a science fiction film.

As an aside, I do have a tool that allows me to target individual light levels, and had thought I could pick what I wanted to alter around the signs, avoiding the dormer window behind.

Not only could I not do that, I couldn’t even reproduce the effect of using the shadow and highlight tool 😲

The issue came from the bright lighting of the signs, with their individual illumination, not shared by the house behind, just lit by more distant street lights.

There was also the colour of the light. Broad spectrum white in the centre from the LED lighting on each sign, but golden yellow on the houses and background, from HP sodium just above the camera location.

That’s why there are white light pools under the signs, while the surrounding road surface has a golden yellow colour.

There should have been one nearer the house, the pole can be seen on the left, but the bulb has failed, so the background is darker than it should be.

Every year – a different apple problem

In a recent post about my apples, I mentioned my sympathy with a commercial grower who might have to put up with all sort of losses from their crop.

Seems things are even worse this year than I thought they were, even back then.

Not something I’ve seen before, but this year’s apples are beginning to spoil almost as I look at them.

If it’s not the appearance of bruising and brown areas, then they’re apparently beginning to rot and ferment almost overnight.

I’m now checking the collection on a daily basis, having to squeeze each one to find out if it’s gone soft and mushy, or developed an area that gone black, and is spreading.

The fermenting smell of alcohol from somewhere in the crop can be detected from some distance, when there was nothing the day before.

I’ve never seen bruising develop so fast in any year before.

In the past, I’ve still been eating them up to Christmas, and beyond.

This year I don’t think anything will last through November.

At this rate, I’ll easily have tossed well over ¾ of the crop.

I knew I’d taken this recent pic late in the day, but was surprised to see the depth of field didn’t even cover this small collection, and the back of the shot was out of focus.

It’s a networked bus stop sign, at night

Although this pic was grabbed while I was collecting a few crazy high ISO test shots, the motivation behind it was really to see what result the sign would produce.

These signs cover Glasgow (although I see other areas have their own versions) and are handy as they can prevent you from pulling up at a bus stop and waiting for ages if you’ve just missed one, and they’re infrequent.

The system is dumb though, and not based on live movements, so it shows arrivals based on the scheduled timetable – if a bus is missing, it won’t know and will still show it as due. That said, it does show cancelled services.

Lots of wonky stuff here – so the vertical is based on the buildings, and lampposts that matched them.

Although edited, the bright floodlights and nearest lamppost didn’t ruin the image, which I often find can happen at night, when one creeps into the edge of a shot like this.

Admittedly tweaked, the contrast and sharpness are better than usual in this type of shot – having even remotely decent light seems to help a lot.

A Ferrari blast from the past

From a lost pic set taken some years ago.

A nice red Ferrari 488 GTB spotted in Glasgow, front and rear.

518 G would appear to be the perfect choice to fit nicely into that handy space in the nose.

Loss of status?

Sadly, like so many fine registration numbers, 518 G has suffered an embarrassing loss of status.

It now languishes on a stinky diesel SUV, a silver 2025 Range Rover Evoque.

Could be worse.

DST silliness – there’s always something

Now that I have so many clocks/watches controlled by various radio signals (DCF and MSF), and now GPS, DST doesn’t tick me off quite the way it used to.

These days I have a routine that gives me what I think of as a ‘soft’ changeover on the day, or more accurately night, since the change take place in the early hours, when most people are asleep.

I wander around changing the ordinary clocks at random, so I see both times before I give in and go to bed. Since I don’t do the awkwardly placed ones until last, this means I still have a few to find and change the next morning. I don’t even notice the change – other than when I get ticked off again, when it gets dark an hour earlier, then I want whoever is responsible stood up against a wall!

I really will never understand the supposed logic of claiming safety as a reason for this change, making it light an hour earlier in the morning, when everyone has a had a night’s sleep, and presumably wakes refreshed and ready to go. Surely THAT is the time to make them travel in the dark.

But no, those in command prefer to make them travel in the dark in the evening, making it dark an hour earlier, so they have to travel in the dark, after working for a day, and presumably tired and worn out, and ready for bed.

US and Canada play this game a week later

I was reminded of the different days for playing the DST game around the world when one of my clocks was an hour behind this morning.

I’ve got a few clocks that show the day with text, and I gave them a chance to set themselves last week as I don’t have full data on their operation.

That seemed to go fine. They share slightly different versions of the same software, and none showed a country or DST setting, and it only takes a moment to move the hour setting alone.

So, I was taken unaware when ONE of those types was an hour behind this morning, and had set itself according to US/Canada rules – not something I’d expected after last week’s checks.

I have what I thought was an identical model, which although unpowered and not in use, has the same battery backup and RTC (real time clock) inside.

Clearly NOT identical, despite appearances, when I did power it up, it was still an hour ahead, and needed a manual adjustment.

Guess I’ll have to dig into the menus and see if I missed something, or just wait until we have to go through all this DST silliness again, when spring arrives.

Skeleton Clock

A different view of Stockingfield

Not actually one of the current crop of high ISO ‘Do what you like camera’ pics, but an example taken to evaluate what a decent camera from some years ago would produce in the dark, or rather at dusk, when an ordinary sensor of the day was pushed.

From some earlier test shots I looked at, this camera does a reasonable job in daylight – and should, since its reason for being was having a fairly long zoom (in the edge of the superzoom class). But, like all cameras of the day, except dSLRs, real night shooting without a tripod or support, isn’t a good idea, unless you what tricks to play.

In this case, my opinion is the lit column is probably the worst area, as the sensor couldn’t cope with the overbright in the middle of the dark scene, As ever, while shadows have a chance of being lifted for hidden detail, one an area has reached peaked white, there’s just nothing to recover.

It’s notable that at high ISO (for this camera) the detection of colour is almost non-existent, as we know from all the other pics I’ve taken here at night. The green of the vegetation could be described as a nice shade of… mush.

I’m used to missing detail in shots like this, and was almost surprised to see the wires of the fencing around the viewing area, although I did have to peak those myself, using contrast and sharpening filters.

The main lesson to take away from this outing is NOT to use the highest ISO offered on an older camera – you’ll get the pic, but not the detail.

Better to use the highest ISO in keeping with the abilities of the camera’s anti-shake system(s).

This being driven by my custom of hand held pics only, no tripods or the like.

I will use supports, but generally just what’s lying around on the site, or what the camera can be sat on.

A streetlit street view – not bad (but not good either)

Continuing my self-inflicted now light night shot pain, another result of giving the camera free choice in everything except the f-number (randomly set at f/10) – this one had a shutter speed of 1/15, just to keep the shakes away.

As usual, the focus is best not talked about – it just doesn’t work under these conditions.

What needed fixing?

Shadows and highlights, of course.

Then a combination of sharpness, contrast, and noise reduction to smooth things out and find some edge detail.

The one thing that can’t be removed at this level is the horizontal lines in the sky, like the lines that could sometimes be seen on old CRT TV pictures – the high ISO throws lots of these into the largest darkest areas.

Fortunately, although these can’t be removed, they can be altered until they look something like weird clouds.

Interesting effect/observation in this one, the wires between the lampposts – completely lost in the background sky noise, except where they were brightly lit by the street light.

Not ALL LED yet

They really sneaked the LED conversion into this street, and despite regular visits, I never saw it happen – just realised there were NO LP sodium light left.

A few had been replaced early on, but I think they let the rest of the sodium bulbs fail in service, but just didn’t replace them for months, leaving lots of dark gaps, finally making a visit in the depths of one night, replacing the failed units, and converting the remaining working sodium lights to LEDs.

But, the process is still far from complete.

For example, counting down to the third lamp on the left, it looks longer than the other because it is, and is one of a number where the council is making use of its stock of old white fluorescent stocks rather than use new LEDs. These are still appearing at random when LP sodiums are replaced around this area. Although it appears to be the same brightness in this view, when seen in real life this one is really beginning to fade.

Also, if you look below and to the left of this fluorescent light, you’ll catch a definite hint of sodium yellow – the side streets are definitely being left to last for their LEDs, as many still have their sodium light sources in place, sometime for long stretches, and even complete streets, which actually look as if they are being kept as sodium, and used to get best value out of the remaining old sodium lamp stocks, rather than just discard perfectly good lamps.