Oh, and I’ve taken a few pictures:
Opening day of the season, Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, Antonito, Colorado. Of note, the opening day train was cancelled, the locomotive in the first picture came up with an electrical problem. The locomotive in the second picture is a bit small , but will pull an abbreviated train tomorrow.
I was expecting to see pictures of the rattlesnakes 
I wish. I wasn’t there, but I imagine the whole scene was entertaining - pissed-off snakes in a bucket, construction workers running helter-skelter…
Did some cranachan for dessert.
Fun thing, I posted the picture in r/scotland on reddit, and someone asked if it was AI-generated.
From yesterday: two males of the beautiful demoiselle and the banded demoiselle damselfly occupying the same leaf.
Wow the colors are exquisite!
Over Memorial Day weekend I visited my home town, which holds a parade every year. It’s a slice of Americana that I once ran away from but find myself appreciating as I get older.
I only took my Lumix GX7, which I haven’t used very much, as a sort of challenge to myself to get my brain working in some different ways than my usual macro or IR stuff. I am not really comfortable doing street photography stuff.
Google is actually pretty open about what they do. HDR+ Pipeline discusses the original HDR+ pipeline
GitHub - kunzmi/ImageStackAlignator: Implementation of Google's Handheld Multi-Frame Super-Resolution algorithm (from Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 camera) is an implementation of their newer subpixel MFSR algorithm
This has not even remotely been my experience with either the Pixel 4 XL or Pixel 7 Pro, except for a handful of day-zero shots from the 4. (Google shipped early so the phone arrived one day before official launch - then a camera app update on launch day fixed the bad color profiles saved by the pre-launch app)
Note that every manufacturer other than Google has their own implementation (HDR+/MFSR are Google Pixel exclusive without special hacks), and third-party camera apps don’t have the MFSR/HDR+ pipeline.
Here’s the #168 pulling it’s abbreviated train out of Antonito last Sunday:
This is a bit of a story. This locomotive was restored as part of a “historic” trainset, circa 1915, not big enough to pull the regular train of 8 1940s-style heavy cars. But, when the other locomotives are still laid up in the shop on the first day of the season and it’s all you have…
You mean you find the DNGs don’t need much work? I’ve gone back and had a look at some of my recent phone shots, and I’d now revise my earlier statement to say that only some need a lot of work, while others are actually in a better starting state than the JPEGs. it varies quite a lot depending on the conditions. Anything with high contrast can need a fair amount of basic processing to get it display ready, and I find all of them quite soft when you zoom in. But obviously it also depends on your editing style. If you like a high contrast, low saturation, soft look, then the DNGs are a good starting point.
Here’s an example of a JPEG and RAW straight out of phone:
Not a great photo, but it shows how much work the JPEG is doing.
Out the other evening with my local Camera Club, for a macro / close up session at Devilla Forest, Fife.
We actually saw some Damselfly, and Sundew!
Nice shot. I love the glimpse into the other room on the right side. The light on the operator is good too. Natural light?
All “natural” light, IIRC ISO 1600, auto WB. Y’know, I don’t even know what kind of bulbs they use in their fixtures…
Yeah, the “room” on the right side is this:
Taken from a few feet to the right of the first photo. All the wood and metal tools to work on railcars, two tracks on which to wheel them in. Behind the tank car is the office/lunch/morning coffee commiseration space.
