I’ve always taken pictures, but increasingly, not with a big and bulky camera. That’s not to say I’m using some smaller mirrorless camera over a traditional DSLR. I’m using my mobile phone. Something that just sits in my pocket and without thought. If you’re interested, it’s the Samsung Galaxy S9.
We know that cameras are getting cheaper and more accessible. But the capabilities of these little cameras is remarkable. For a long time, the control that was on a more traditional camera just wasn’t available. Full manual control, ISO, focus, shutter speed, variable aperture, RAW image shooting. But not any more.
What a Wander in Mornington Peninsula!
Over a jam packed long weekend of Friday through to Monday, we had a great time in the Mornington Peninsula. Only 90 minutes from the city where we live, it’s wonderful to have so much to do that’s so close. Continue Reading..
The Benalla Wall to Wall Festival has run this weekend and I’ve headed north for a 24 hour snapshot of the event. I’m really happy I made the trip and I got to see some amazing work in progress from seriously inspirational artists. Scroll below for a series of photos from 2pm Saturday to 2pm Sunday. Not a complete picture of the weekend, as it started Friday night, wrapping up Sunday night, but I hope it shows the progress of some of the pieces. Continue Reading..
Free Melbourne photo download and a thought about the future
Panoramic Yarra Views
If you’d like the full 150 megapixel resolution image, for non commercial use, download Melbourne in High Resolution right now. If you use it, please let me know. Either on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or link to this regularsteven.com. It’s 33 megabyte file, so best not do this on your mobile. You can print this as big as you like if you like. Please, just don’t sell it or use it for commercial purposes.
As for the quality, here’s the picture at 100%. You can crop in almost anywhere and figure out how to frame a shot. Over and over, a new picture can be found – the quality is crazy!
Panoramic Yarra Views
And, not only, but this picture is cropped down from 330 megapixels. Check out the full view of what I captured while standing in the rain.
Panoramic Yarra Views
The potential detail you can get with consumer cameras is remarkable. This is a photo that has been generated from 50 individual shots, each taken at the same settings, each shot with some overlap from the previous photo, and then stitched up using Adobe Lightroom (actually very easy – select the shots, press Control+M, and it’s almost done). Each shot was captured at 70mm, which is rather tight, but I did that to try preserve straight lines while allowing for a ultra sized end picture result.
You could say this process is a hack. Sometimes, hacks lead to the future.
It’s me using tools to make for shortcomings in technology, but over time, this will change. I’m an early adopter with photography, but these kind of hacks and results are often what drive future technology.
In the future, there’s going to be all sorts of advancements in photography to the point that photography, as an art that it is today, will die. Or perhaps evolve…
There will always be those with an eye for a shot and an ability to compose on the fly to the point it’s second nature. But as technology advances, the need for those skills while on shoot are going to become less relevant with the progressing technology in post production.
Say you’ve got a camera that captures the following at:
More resolution than you need
This would give the ability to crop the shot you’d like in post, if you shoot wide enough
More focal points & depths of focus points than you need (i.e. multi
This would give you the ability to select which are you would like to focus on in post. Look at what Lytro are doing (at least trying).
A 360 degree field of view
This would allow you to crop in the section you like.
Multiple exposures all captured automatically
This would allow for shade and highlights to be manipulated easily – no issue of over or under exposed shots.
Now, my little future thought has issues. For example, portability with regards to optical quality. There are some rules of physics (with regards to light & capturing it) that will be very challenging. Equally, things such as barrel distortion make for surreal looking pictures (think of fish-eye), but again, this will increasingly be less of an issue; barrel distortion is getting better in consumer post production tools, and it’s only a matter of time.
What do you think? Will photography, as it is today, die?
It’s funny how when you’re a local, you tend to not really absorb the great things around you. Using myself in Melbourne, as an example, how much does it take to do something like visit the Aquarium? Or go for dinner on the Restaurant Tram? Or even head down to the Dandenong Rangers for a day out? What I’m getting at, is there is so much to do for locals, yet we often wait for friends of family to visit (from afar) as justification for doing something interesting.
Weekend road trip to the Mornington Peninsula
This last weekend, a group of friends headed down to the Mornington Peninsula, and considering it’s only 90 minutes out of Melbourne, it’s pretty remarkable how much of a change of sights we get (and the fresh, sea air!). I mean, you know it’s going to be different, but it’s easy to forget that beautiful nature isn’t really that far away when you get stuck in a routine of work-eat-sleep-chores-socialise, then repeat. And the photos below really only represent the beachy side of things; the winery and food missions we did were awesome! Only they were more about food and boozing (um, tasting) than photography.
So, needless to say, I tried to make the most of it, and for me, that means getting up at sunrise and trying to get that beautiful glow. Walking around with my camera really is how I find my own space, and I’m always wanting to capture something different (at least for me).
And on with the photography
I hope you enjoy the random splattering of shots from the weekend below. And feel free to download them as your wallpaper – they are pretty high resolution, so just right (or option on a Mac) click and chose to ‘save link as’ for the image. Let me know what you think, share it round/up-vote on social if you dig!
