Posts by Olin Lathrop
Because of compression and different sizes. The original JPG image you are referring to is 1080 x 790 pixels in size, for a total of 777k pixels. Since the image is true color, there would be 3 b...
Do the math. Let's say the bullet in question is travelling at about the speed of sound, around 330 m/s. That means it moves 1 meter in 3 ms, or about a foot in 1 ms. Now look at the speed of "p...
Dots and pixels can be the same or different, depending on context. In a computer file, an image is usually made up of a rectangular array of color (or gray) values. We call those pixels, for "pi...
My first response is that a really like this picture. However, there are some details I'd probably change, or at least experiment with. Here is a scaled down original for comparison with subsequent...
Moon over saguaro 16 Aug 2011, in the White Tank Mountains just west of Phoenix Arizona, 300 mm lens, 6:47 local time. The moon was nearly full, and low in the west around dawn. I wanted the moon...
Possible problems, with their solutions, are: Inability to focus properly in the dark. Put the camera on a tripod. Focus and compose with the lights on. Depending on the camera, you may have to s...
Here is another totally different derivative of the original: The waterfall and the swirling leaves are really two separate features that happen to be in the same original photograph. Trying to s...
The problems The basic problem is that the flames are small bright things in what is otherwise a dark scene. The automatic exposure system then messes up because it strives to make the average com...
Storm over Mesa Verde This was taken 16 Aug 2018 from the side of the highway a little west of Mancos Colorado. The storm clouds looked so dramatic that I stopped to take a picture.
No. Dirt happens. Phones don't magically get dirty less than lenses of high end cameras. In fact, the opposite is true. Even a semi-serious camera lens has a cap or hood. This is a simple mech...
Comet Neowise Groton Massachusetts, 20 July 2020, 22:19. 135 mm, full frame (24 x 36 mm) sensor, 4 seconds.
Thunderstorm over Mt Elden 18 Aug 2014 northeast of Flagstaff Arizona. I was on the east side of the ridge, so didn't get much warning about this thunderstorm coming from the west. A few minutes ...
Red Squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, Grand Tetons National Park, 21 June 1985. I was surprised how close this animal let me get. It was quite content to continue eating the pine cone, even wh...
Mountain Goats (Oreamnos americanus) Glacier National Park, Montana, August 1974. I came across these goats on the Garden Wall Trail about halfway from Logan Pass to Swiftcurrent Pass. They le...
You could do it either way, but it is usually better to apply effects that depend on the size or resolution of the picture on the final-sized picture. This is assuming, of course, that proper anti...
Shutter speed, ISO, and f-stop are the three variables you can control in the camera to adjust exposure. Changes in one can be offset by changes in another to keep the same exposure. However, cha...
Why? Probably because the photographer told the subjects to do that. Personally, I don't think it looks that great. The bottom picture seems better to me than the others in that regard, but I can...
Obligatory shot of just the moon Yup, it's the moon. I included this to document the exposure. Getting the moon right is tricky, since it's a small but bright object in the middle of a dark back...
Yes, this is a good idea. If you do that, seed the proposal with the new top level posts generated here from the Q&A category. Skip the other categories for now. Contests is cute, but there ...
First, let's clear up a misconception. Shadows move faster at the beginning and end of the day This is not true. The angle to the sun changes at a constant rate during the day. That rate is eas...
Instead of "stripping" EXIF data, think of it as making a copy that doesn't include it. My various image manipulation programs do that by default when writing JPG output files. This may have chan...
I wrote an answer a year ago to a question about how much power some consumer device uses. My answer was basically to measure it, gave a starting explanation of how to do that, and suggested to as...
Which posts or types of posts to migrate in? None of them. For this site to be successful, it needs to have activity here. Copying posts from SE only creates the illusion of activity, then becomes...
Different flashes will have different brightnesses, so you don't want to fix the complete exposure across all the pictures. You should fix the ISO to a good value for your camera. Set it to 400 i...
While there is a point in linking from SE to here, the reverse makes no sense. We want people finding this place from elsewhere. We don't want to help people go elsewhere if they happened to stum...
