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I thought I’d mix things up in this series by jumping forward 12 hours to some fireworks that happened later on the 4th. We watched them from the hill just below the Science Building on the SOU campus.
I tried a bunch of different options for taking pictures of fireworks on my LX3. Once again, the setting that worked the best was the default “ia” mode. The SCN Fireworks mode didn’t come out as good.
I was playing around with the modes on my LX3 on my bike ride the other day around Lithia Park. By flipping the switch to SCN and then choosing “Hi Speed Burst” I was able to take six pictures per second. You lose a lot of quality in so doing, but the pictures aren’t bad if you are in good lighting and close to your target. In this series I wasn’t close enough.
Check out the fun you can have with putting these pictures together backwards with a program like Windows Movie Maker.
Here is another Floater picture for you. And below is an HD video I took on my LX3 at the show. I forgot to follow my own advice and zoom before starting the video, but given my state of mind at the time it’s amazing that I remembered to take any pictures or a video. 😉
The above video is Floater performing “Ghost in the Making” off of their Stone by Stone CD. This live performance at the Rogue Theatre in Grants Pass, Oregon on May 29, 2009 features an extended jam beginning at about minute 5 in this video.
I experienced Floater for the second time on May 29, 2009 at the Rogue Theatre in Grants Pass, a little over an hour to the northwest of Ashland.
The first time I saw them was November of 2008 at the same venue.
Tomorrow I’ll have another photo from the show as well as a video taken on my LX3.
The subplot of the show was Carmen San Diego. The audience, through the MCs, chased her around the world while enjoying performances along the way. Mexico was the first stop.
We were about 10 or 12 rows from the stage. The lighting for these kinds of performances is never good for photography. The lighting is low, artificial, and not flash based. Also, my camera doesn’t have much of a zoom lens so I wasn’t expecting great results. I tried lots of different camera settings on my Panasonic DMC-LX3 as an experiment. I used IA (automatic adjustment by the camera’s software), night portrait, night scenery, party, candle light, and high sensitivity modes. The only mode that turned out presentable images was IA.
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.
The other day on my way to work I slipped my camera into my pocket as I headed out the door. My wife asked, “What are you taking that for?” My response was, “Because I can.” I smiled as did she. You see, previous to my LX3 purchase I only took my old, large camera places on “special” occasions. It was simply too big and too much of a hassle to haul around. Not so anymore.
Later in the day, the clouds started going crazy so I had opportunities to take several pictures that would never have been captured in my old S3 days. The above is one of them. Omars is an Ashland landmark, but I’ve never had a reason to take a picture of Omars before. Nor have I ever had a camera on me when in the vicinity of Omars. But while waiting to cross the street, Omars looked rather marvelous with the sky doing its thing so I whipped out my LX3 for a quick picture.
Omars has been around for more than 60 years, something few restaurants/bars can say–especially on the west coast. The name is a fluke of sorts. The original owner’s name was Omer. But when he ordered this sign the company made a mistake and spelled his name Omar, and the rest is history. Have yourself a great steak, fine seafood, or just grab a beer at Omars the next time you are passing through Ashland.
Friday night we went to see Hanneke Cassel (center) at the Unitarian Fellowship. It was the first time I’d been back inside that church since we stopped attending maybe 6 or 7 years ago. The show was great, really amazing at times. On the cello was Ariel Friedman and on guitar was Keith Murphy.
One of the reasons I’m sharing this photo though is to show off the low-light capabilities of the LX3. The lighting was absolutely awful for picture taking purposes, and I wasn’t going to use a flash. I was several rows back, too, so I had the camera on 3.6X zoom. In addition, the subjects were moving, and the picture still came out pretty decent. No other camera I have owned would have done nearly as nice a job.
I have some good video with the LX3 from this event too. Perhaps I’ll show that to you in a later entry.
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 LX3Â 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.