| The above will search Ashland Daily Photo. |
I took this photograph from N Phoenix Road in Phoenix, just north of Ashland. Although the “mountain” on the right seems higher, it is actually only at an altitude of about 7,150 feet. The name is Wagner Butte and it makes for a beautiful hike in late spring.
To the left, and still covered in snow, is Mt. Ashland. The elevation of Mt. Ashland is over 7,500 feet. It appears lower from this angle simply because it is further away.
A good way to start the morning…
The cherry blossoms have begun to make their appearance. This tree is in the Ashland YMCA parking lot. Grizzly Peak is in the background.
View out the kitchen window on a day when the weather couldn’t quite make up its mind…
I headed into Lithia Park to try my first pictures shooting in RAW. The above isn’t one of them. I took the same picture in RAW and could not get it to look anywhere near as good as this. I took a bunch of others in both JPEG and RAW mode too. Same result. All look far better in non-RAW mode. The processing of the RAW images is a huge hassle too. Just to load one takes a few minutes and then the manipulation can take pretty much as long as you want to spend on it.
Some people don’t shoot in RAW because it takes a few seconds to save it to the memory card (as the RAW files are huge). That isn’t a problem with the LX3. In fact, I think you can take something like four or five pictures a second even in RAW mode. But my initial experiment in RAW will not likely have me using it again anytime soon.
This photo is of Ashland Creek in Lithia Park. The little kid’s playground is just off to the left.
Grizzly Peak panorama
This image isn’t done justice in a blog window. Hopefully you have a decent monitor (18+ inches) and can click on this to expand it to its full width.
If you look closely you can see not only cows but also some trucks on I-5.
While lying in bed the other morning I noticed my bedroom door glowing red. I decided to get up to investigate. One look out the window and I had to make a mad dash downstairs to get the LX3 before anything changed.
I was curious to see what Photoshop could do with this image. I loaded it into Photoshop and hit “Auto Levels.” Absolutely nothing happened. I think that is first time Photoshop did not tweak anything at all. Photoshop deemed this to be the perfect picture. 😉 I love my new LX3. When Photoshop can’t improve what it produces you can’t complain.
I’m digging my new camera. My old S3 would not have been able to capture the entire rainbow.
I have always thought that one of the best views in town is from the middle school looking towards Grizzly Peak. So, this past week, when I went to pick up my son and arrived a little early I pulled out the camera to take in the view.
The cow in the foreground immediately came wandering over to me as if it thought I was going to feed or milk it or something.
I’ll try to remember to take a similar picture in a month or two when things are much greener.
This morning I decided to do a side-by-side camera comparison to see if I need both an LX3 (Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3) and an S3 (Canon PowerShot S3 IS) or if I can do away with one. I took both cameras outside and set them next to each other on my deck railing. The first thing I noticed before even taking the pictures is that I like everything better on the LX3. It is much smaller, lighter, has a better view screen, features a higher-quality casing, includes a much better lens cap, and just feels better in every way.
Next I took a picture with each at the widest angle setting possible.
The above is the LX3 result on wide angle.
The above is the S3 result on wide angle.
The most obvious difference is the wide angle on the LX3 is wider than that on the S3. While this is great for landscape photography, it also provides some benefits for indoor and portrait photography. For instance, I can take self portraits of the entire family (four people) without a tripod with the LX3. I can barely hold my S3 camera outstreched with one hand (due to size and weight) for a self portrait, let alone have it capture more than two people in the image.
The second difference in the above two photos are the colors are a bit better with the LX3. Perhaps this is just because the LX3 captured more of the grass than the S3, but, to me, the greens of the grass look greener in the LX3 picture. The red-green distinction of the tennis court is also nicer looking in the LX3 photograph. The clouds also look a bit better in the LX3 photo. Maybe that is because they aren’t quite as close, but they seem less grainy in any event.
Conclusion: For landscape photography I’m usually going to get better results with the LX3.
Next, I zoomed both to max (3.6X for LX3, 12X for S3) and got the following:
The above is the LX3 result on 3.6X optical zoom. (The manual says it can go up to 4.5X optical zoom, but my settings must not have been right to get to 4.5X.)
The above is the S3 result on 12X optical zoom.
These images aren’t very comparable given the difference in zoom. I should have done a photo with the S3 at about 3-4X zoom for better comparability. However, on maximum zoom the LX3 photograph is far crisper and clearer, the colors are much better, and the image isn’t even remotely grainy like the S3 image on 12X zoom.
I haven’t needed to take many pictures with 12X zoom. Most of the times I have used maximum zoom on my S3 the results have not been good. The images are usually blurry and/or grainy like you see here (even though the camera was at rest so there were no jitters on my end). Is 12X zoom nice to have on occasion? Yes. Is holding on to my S3 for those rare opportunities worthwhile? Probably not… So if you are looking for an S3 at a good price…