The Value of Photoshop

 As described in a previous post, Apple has improved the iPhone camera significantly. I took this pano of Edinburgh from the rooftop of the National Museum of Scotland using the pano option on my iPhone 14 Pro. The only problem is that there is no control over exposure. The original photo, above, is too dark in my opinion. So, I changed the exposure and saturation in Photoshop. In doing so, I followed in the footsteps of Ansel Adams who said that the negative was not the most significant part of the photo. He took liberties in making the print. I do that in Photoshop.

An Easy Fix for a Printing Mistake

 I recently noticed that I forgot to photoshop out a pole before I printed. And I forgot to put my ‘signature’ in the lower right hand corner.  I decided to go back to Photoshop and make the changes I ‘would’ have made but print them on little 1”X3” adhesive labels. It’s amazing how forgiving ‘photoshopping’ can be. I placed the labels on my photo and can’t see the changes.

A Blast From the Past

Sometime around 2001 I bought a 4X5 so-called View Camera, a smaller version of the camera Ansel Adams used.  This model was constructed of cherry wood.  In 2001 we visited Yosemite National Park where I took these photos of common Ansel Adams’ scènes.  This camera was completely manual and very difficult to use.  With the aid of a hand-held light meter it was necessary to adjust the exposure settings, for example F16 at 1/10th of a second.  In addition, the camera had to be focused by adjusting the length of the bellows. You actually look right thru the lens to focus, also looking thru the ground glass on the back of the camera. Unfortunately, the view is upside  down. Each photo required loading of a separate piece of film, but after the camera has been adjusted for exposure and focused.

 iPhone Gadgets 

In an attempt to make the iPhone function as good as possible, I found a tall, lightweight tripod that folds into a small package—made by Eucos. Then I’m thinking maybe there’s a lightweight device that rotates a camera for videos or panos. Unbelievably, I found such a device made by Suptig for $29! I made the Gulf photo seen here by rotating 90°; automatically. You first turn on the camera and initiate ‘pano’ using the remote that comes with the tripod. Then press the start button on the Suptig motorized panoramic device. From then it’s automatic. The camera doesn’t start taking photos until the device begins to rotate. 

Apple Steps Up

 I know this may be premature, but the iPhone 14 has made major improvements in panorama photography. I have been using the ‘pano’ feature—the only phone that has it—for years. But, the older phone cameras were not good and the pano had no features. Now, the iPhone 14 has an unbelievable 49MP camera and the pano feature allows zooming. I know this sounds trivial, but the lack of zooming was a showstopper. Anyway, a few weeks ago I took the pano shown just to check it out. My judgment is based upon printing it 60” long. It looked great! My future travel plans do not include taking along my Sony A-7. That’s sad, but technology evolves. I started with a Hasselblad until SLRs caught up, in my view. Now, maybe I will leave that behind, too. Only time will tell. 

Revised Picture Centering

 As I mentioned previously, a difficulty with floater framing is centering the picture. I posted about the use of shims to center the photo as I inserted screws in the rear. But, now I’m trying to glue the photo in from the front and inserting screws later. This way you can visually center the photo before the wood glue dries.

Panoman’s NFTs

 I have created 5 NFTs—non-fungible tokens—in the OpenSea application. It was first necessary to purchase Ethereum cryptocurrency, in my case using the Coinbase app, and transfer it into my coinbase wallet. I originally bought Dogecoin, but couldn’t figure out how to use it. Now I have 5 completely unique NFTs that I own. After my Ethereum purchase, I put my NFTs up for sale. The ‘dirty little secret’ of the sale is the high so-called ‘Gas fee’. It is a mining fee paid to programmers that make the Blockchain work. In order to make money selling NFTs, they must sell for more than the gas fee, which can be several hundred dollars.🤞