Month: June 2015

A Slice Of Life: Colourless At Slim River Bus Terminal

Frustrations from waiting can get people to come together and to interact. Sometimes.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f11, 1/160 sec.

Is Adobe Photoshop CC 2015’s New Dehaze Made For Us?

Adobe announced a major update to its Creative Cloud subscription service last night. Photoshop CC 2014 became Photoshop CC 2015, and included with it are several useful new features.

One of the new features that caught my attention was Dehaze. I downloaded the new version immediately to try out Dehaze. Well, not as immediate as I wanted; for the update process was a bit clunky and took a while.

You have to update the Creative Cloud Services first, Then download the big install of Photoshop CC 2015 (and Lightroom). Copy all your plugins to the new folder and download, reinstall the latest Camera Raw.

Yes it can get ugly; so here’s a quick and dirty demo for those who don’t have the patience, time or a fast internet connection. Haze can now be easily removed or reduced with a simple slider in the Camera Raw Filter. It can add haze too, if desired.

As you know, Malaysia has one of the worst haze occurrences thanks to a leaky neighbour. So the true test of the Dehaze slider, for me, is whether it can fix a picture fogged up by the transboundary haze or smog.

I ran a picture from the last bad haze day which that was captured in October 2014. The original picture was photographed in RAW and I opened it directly in Photoshop.

For a different comparison, I included another picture with organic haze or mountain mist photographed at the Genting Highlands resort.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f4, 1/800 sec (city scene)
Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f7.1, 1/100 sec (mountain scene)

Like A Boss

Went inside a grocery store in the suburbs of Slim River to get some info and a drink. There I met Nurul Izza behind the cashier counter. Her stern-looking mother was keeping a watchful eye from the back of the shop. Heh.

When another customer came in, I went to chat with the mother. Sounding a bit perplexed, she said her daughter is a university graduate but chose to run a provision shop instead.

I told her is nice to see a young woman succeeding in a trade mostly dominated by men. Nurul can drag a cooking gas cylinder, talk terms with gruffly suppliers and discuss local history with me, all at the same time.

She’s not just like a boss, she is the boss.

Yet she blushed and giggled when I invited her outside the shop to photograph her. She said she’s shy. The interior of the shop is really too dark to do justice to her sweet smile, I explained.

I even asked the mother’s permission and aunty approved with a smile. After more coaxing, the daughter finally relented. So here’s a portrait of a local entrepreneur.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 320, f4, 1/320 sec.

Laundry Day In Slim River

When I saw this house from across the road, I knew the dark planks will play tricks on the camera’s exposure reading. It will overexpose the picture if there is no manual intervention.

Photography Tip: Make your brain an important part of the exposure metering process with street photography. I anticipated a -1 EV compensation. I was already rolling the EV compensation dial before bringing the camera to eye level.

This is where the high-resolution WYSIWYG electronic viewfinder of the Sony A7R (or any good mirrorless camera) is superior to an optical viewfinder.

You can fine tune the exposure (and white balance) precisely without bracketing, firing several shots or chimping by the roadside.

Judging via the viewfinder alone, I dialed it further down to -1.7 EV. The pre-estimation saved time as the road where I walked was narrow, the traffic busy and therefore dangerous. I must get it right with one take and as quickly as possible.

On the road and without a calibrated monitor, I don’t like to mess around with RAW. As such, it is important the JPEG is spot on and ready for upload from location, without further adjustments.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f9, 1/250 sec.