With an action packed weekend as usual, I squeezed in a hike this afternoon. My first time to Almaden Quicksilver park in South San Jose. This park is huge with lots of trails to choose from. Since I didn't have that much time, I settled for a couple mile loop and hiked for around an hour and a half. With mostly an uphill start, I got my exercise in for the day. I discovered I need to read my camera's manual as I couldn't figure out how to set both the shutter speed and aperture when in Manual mode. I need to do this for panoramas to work. I was able to get one panorama, but with a much wider f/stop that I had hoped.
Here's the photo album :
After a short hike (without the camera) on Sunday at Bayshore park, I returned after work on Monday to shoot some photos around the duck pond. As expected, it takes a lot of photos to get even a handful of good ones. Here's an album of my favorites:
http://www.sanjoseabrams.com/photos/BayshoreJune2007/
I'm learning more about the post processing software that comes with the camera. "Digital Photo Professional" by Canon is a very handy program for working with RAW pictures from the camera. It's amazing what some simple changes can do to a photo.
Here's one original pic from the camera. Not bad, but it doesn't have that "wow" factor:
Here's the after shot (increased color saturation, sharpness, and set to "landscape"). Much better.
Another pair of before and afters is here:
Before:
After:
Not a dramatic difference, but the colors are better, the distant scenery is clearer, and the photo is improved overall.
I went on a short hike of El Sereno Open Space Preserve which is located between Los Gatos and Saratoga off of Highway 17. It's pretty convenient and had some good views. Here are a few of the photos:
http://www.sanjoseabrams.com/photos/ElSerenoJune2007
When shooting in the RAW camera format, I've learned that some simple post processing is required to really make the pictures look their best. With only minor changes to sharpness, white balance, and color saturation, I think the photos can turn out much better than they look on first pass. Here's a pair of pictures with before and after the modifications.
http://www.sanjoseabrams.com/photos/before_and_after/
Which one do you like better?
