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.

Posted on March 3rd, 2009 under nature. Tags: clouds, home, lx3, skywatch, sunrise. Comments: 8

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…

Posted on February 27th, 2009 under nature. Tags: fog, home, lx3, sunrise. Comments: 3

One of the reasons for showing you so many pictures of Seattle the past week or two is that there hasn’t been much to photograph in Ashland of late. December and January offer the least attractive glimpses of this town, with the exception of when it snows and the mountains are powdered but not concealed with clouds and/or fog. Otherwise it is too foggy/cloudy to see much or the hills look brownish and the skies look more gray than blue. Sunrises can still be pretty though. Here is one from last week. A half hour after taking this photograph our house was surrounded by fog and we couldn’t see a thing.

Posted on February 2nd, 2009 under nature, only in ashland. Tags: clouds, home, mountains, skywatch, sunrise, trees. Comments: 1

It’s time for another road trip. I’ve spent the last couple of days in Seattle. You’ll get a week, or more, of it here. I hope you don’t mind.

Today’s photo is from the plane flying into Seattle. This is the sunrise behind Mount Rainer. I apologize for the lack of clarity but there isn’t much you can do behind those thick, dirty airplane windows.

Here is a somewhat cleaned up version thanks to Paint Shop Photo Pro. You probably can’t see much difference unless you look at the larger versions by clicking on them.

Posted on January 23rd, 2009 under places. Tags: clouds, mountains, seattle, skywatch, sunrise. Comments: 1

This is a sight that is very, very rare in Ashland. We get snow a few times a year, but when it snows there are clouds. By the time we get clear skies the snow has disappeared or will melt very rapidly. The night prior to the taking of this picture we got snow and then the clouds moved on. The temperature went below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (about -20 Celsius) so the snow wasn’t going anywhere.

While this may look like a sunrise picture I actually took it well before sunrise. I left the shutter open for 15 seconds. If you click on the photo for a bigger view you can even see some stars. The part of town you can see the lights coming from is near I-5, Exit 14 (14 miles north of the California border).

Posted on December 18th, 2008 under nature. Tags: home, mountains, snow, sunrise, valley, winter. Comments: 5

Now that the leaves are gone from my Japanese Maple the sky must make up the difference in lost color.

Posted on December 14th, 2008 under nature. Tags: home, mountains, skywatch, sunrise, trees, winter. Comments: 3

We’ve had lots of foggy mornings lately. I grabbed my camera to take the above picture not so much for the fog as to get the bright oranges and reds on the Japanese Maple tree in the bottom of the picture. Unfortunately, if I focused on the leaves and had them show up in true color in the picture the sky (and everything else) would turn white and you couldn’t see the fog or mountain tops. It was either colorful leaves or sky/mountains/fog. I couldn’t get both in a single picture even though that is what my natural eyes were seeing. Oh well, it’s still a decent photograph anyway.

Posted on December 1st, 2008 under nature. Tags: fog, home, mountains, sunrise, valley. Comments: 2

I took this picture with a cruddy little camera out an airplane window a few years back at about 7 a.m. I was on my way to Mexico. Ashland is right below me. I had just taken off from the Medford airport and was heading south. The tracks my flight were making can be seen most mornings in Ashland. The higher mountain sticking through the clouds is Mt. McLaughlin, a mountain I climbed the prior fall.

Posted on November 25th, 2008 under nature, places. Tags: clouds, mountains, Mt. McLaughlin, skywatch, sunrise. Comments: 5

I woke up and looked out my window last week to the above view. After snapping this picture I hopped in the shower. When I got out of the shower the fog had risen another few hundred feet and nothing could be seen, but fog, until several hours later.

Posted on November 17th, 2008 under nature. Tags: clouds, fog, home, mountains, nature, skywatch, sunrise, valley. Comments: 3