Photographs and articles by A. Cemal Ekin
The weather in May 2023 has been pleasant, mostly sunny and not too warm, with occasional late-night rain showers. And I had a new camera to try, a newly replaced Canon R7 kit with an 18-150 mm RF-S kit lens. Jim and I arranged to visit Roger Williams Park on Friday morning. The Replaced Canon …
Digital photo editing has come a long way in the past two decades, and two software programs that have impacted the field are RawShooter and Lightroom. Released in 2005 by a Danish company, RawShooter quickly gained popularity among photographers with its non-destructive editing capabilities and intuitive user interface. However, the RawShooter brand had a short …
Are you an amateur photographer looking for a way to take your work to the next level? With the right design tools, you can. Adobe Express is an affordable alternative to Photoshop for photographers who are just beginning their journey. To help you make the most of everything Adobe Express has to offer, we share …
A little while ago, I reviewed a microscope adaptor from the same manufacturer, and, no I am not working for them. They help me pass time as I play with things I enjoy and share what I learn with the readers and the manufacturer. Apexel Macro Lens Kit Early on, when they asked me to …
I received a request from Apexel to review a phone accessory that connects to microscopes, telescopes, or binoculars. I replied to inform them that I had none of those pieces of equipment but I might be interested in reviewing a macro or microscope attachment to mobile phones. They agreed and reasonably quickly shipped the microscope …
Low-cost lenses started appearing in the market in the last twenty years or so, with prices coming down steadily. When I saw another inexpensive lens in an article a couple of months ago, it grabbed my attention not with its price but with its core feature. It was a shift lens. An 18 mm, fixed-aperture …
The more we use technology, the more problems may emerge and technology issues may force your hand. That is the nature of the beast. The source of the problem may lie in each solution provider thinking they offer the best. Sometimes it is true but when it is not, watch out. Technology Issues 1 – …
Life in the Days of Corona We have been home for quite a while now except for going to the local CVS to pick up our prescriptions. To keep busy, Jan continues to take Karma for walks several times a day if the weather permits. But in any case, they walk at least two or …
I have scanned many slides, negatives, prints over the years. Since late December 2019, I have been doing it as a project to convert old photographs to digital and, in some ways, relive the memories. The result, I hope will be an archive of family members, gatherings, events as well as many photographs I took …
If you could view images in Windows Explorer, you could maintain the files more easily, you could pick the correct file and drop it on an application to open it, and in general, be a lot better informed about what is where on your storage drive. When browsing the folders with tons of images using …
How Good Can Automated Correction Be? Automated image correction has been around for a long time. Many image editors offer a button “Auto” to quickly adjust your photographs, but most of them generally fail and grossly misadjust the image. The latest version of Lightroom does a pretty good job, but I want to introduce a …
Stitching images sequentially photographed has been around for quite a while and the software that can assemble the images has come a long way from the early days of panoramic photography. I enjoy creating wide-view images using single or multi-row stitching as the vista covered takes a different look after all is said and done. …
I have been doing infrared photography for a while, which started with a Canon G7 point-and-shoot converted for this purpose. With that camera, I took a series of photographs from the window of commercial flights between Providence and Salt Lake City over four years. Eventually, that collection, Infrared Earthscapes, got published in the LensWork Magazine …
Lightroom has had some weaknesses when it came to processing infrared images like channel swap and white balance. The primary problem has been and continues to be the range of white balance options not being wide enough into the blue end of the slider. That has had a fix for quite some time, but I …
Leica Meant High Quality When I was in elementary school, my father worked at the Sariyar Dam construction project. It was in the middle of nowhere and my sister and I stayed in Istanbul with my grandmother as we attended school. One summer, I got to spend a little time there. I remember a few …
This post contains a few pieces of information I wanted to share with all who follow this blog. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, just a few things I stumbled upon, about dogs and cats, and a couple of useful services. Enjoy what matters to you, ignore the rest. Online Storage Online storage has become a useful …
Summary: HP Spectre x360 Is a Lemon! Sour lemon. Details? Read below and the previous article linked. (Read the two updates at the end, I added them after HP contacted me.) A Sour Experience With the Laptop and HP I wrote about the problems I had with a new HP Spectre x360, and I thought …
HP Spectre x360 Gorgeous Looks, Serious Flaws This is a much-delayed product review, actually a fair warning to those who may be interested in the very nice looking, and potentially (but not actually) very good, 2-in-1 laptop: HP Spectre x360. Over 10 years ago, I had a very poor experience with an HP product and …
A while back, I wrote a post that explained how to make Photoshop CS6 or below to honor the changed screen size elements on QHD displays. Since then, I have discovered a critical setting. This is to update the earlier post. QHD Displays Hard to Read On high-resolution laptops, and even some desktop displays, Photoshop …
During some of my presentations, I get asked about the work environment for editing digital photographs. I also get individual inquiries about the subject. In this post, I will address those questions with some photo editing workspace examples including my own. Vision, the perception of luminance, and color are generally relative. If you want to …
Microsoft is readying to launch its latest version of Windows on July 29, 2015. This time, upgrading from Windows 7 or Windows 8 systems to Windows 10 will be free. Microsoft will do this for even pirated copies of earlier versions of 7 or 8 although the upgraded version will still be an unauthorized copy. …
Would you say the above photograph has any compression artifacts? JPEG compression too much, not enough, or just right? What exactly is “just right” anyway. This post will explore the concept of compression, why and how do we do it, and how aggressive should we be in either reducing the file size or increasing the …
A New Canon G1X, Mark II A few years ago, I purchased a Canon G1X, a large sensor compact camera. Its image quality and portability are highly enjoyable. After I gave it as a gift, I found another one on eBay and purchased it. Recently, I received as a gift the new and improved Canon …
(Fair warning, long post but worth every word you read!) Your ColorChecker Passport, I mean. Many photographers purchased this very useful piece of equipment but are yet to use it. They probably carry it in their gear bag hoping one day it will suddenly make sense and they will become devoted users of it. Alas, …
