Anatomy Of A Photograph

Belted Kingfisher (click to enlarge)

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing how this image came to be as you see it above.  I made it last week when I took out my newly repaired Olympus E-M1 Mark II for sort of a shakedown trial.  Before I take any photo trips I wanted to make sure every function worked as it should.

According to the experts, I did just about everything wrong when making this image.  Yet, it seems to have turned out okay.  At least, to me, I'm happy with it.

First, this little Belted Kingfisher was pretty far away.  Even too far away for 840mm FOV, in fact.  However, I wanted to test the focusing ability of the camera and lens after repair so I made some images of it.  As I said, I did everything wrong so sorry to post this lousy image.  That being said, I wanted to use it as an example of how to do everything wrong but still have an image that you like.

First, this image was made with a micro4/3 camera.  As we all know, because the sensor is so small the image can't possibly be any good.  At least that is what many of the Internet and You Tube pundits say about the "orphaned" micro4/3 format cameras and lenses.  Too small for "professional" level work although many, many pros have switched to it.

Below is the original RAW file straight out of my Olympus E-M1 Mark II.  Its about 2 stops  underexposed.  That was my fault.  I had never seen a Kingfisher at this location and I just swung the camera up and started shooting without paying attention to the accuracy of the exposure.  Even with all my experience, I still get excited.  I should know better.

Everyone knows that if you underexpose an image the shadows will be full of noise when you brighten it.  Again, this image can't possibly be any good.  

This is the raw file straight out of the camera.  It is about 2 stops underexposed.  My fault as I was kind of amazed to
see this bird and didn't pay attention to exposing the RAW file correctly, which is about 1 stop overexposed in the
camera. (click to enlarge)

The image was made with the Olympus 300mm f/4 PRO lens with the Olympus MC-14 1.4x tele-converter attached.  That is an equivalent field of view of 840mm for 35mm sized cameras.  Everyone knows that using a tele-converter degrades sharpness.  

Also everyone knows that you can't successfully handhold a focal length that long especially at such a slow, 1/250th sec., shutter speed.  If you listen to the experts, there is no way the image could possibly be sharp.

The image, as you see it at the top of this post, was heavily cropped.  Originally it measured 5184 x 3888 pixels.  The crop was 1774 x 1331, or from 20.2mp to 3.6mp.  This reduced the size of the image by almost 90%.  Everyone knows that you can't crop that much of an image and it be any good. 

I then exported the cropped image into Photoshop.  In Photoshop I resized the image to 4000 pixels x 3000 pixels.  In other words, I increased the size up to 12mp from 3.6mp.  I more than tripled its size.  If this were still the original file, the image would now measure over 67mp!  Quite an increase in resolution.  But everyone knows you just can't do that with a full frame image let alone a micro4/3 image.  It too much.  Its wasting time to try.

I then exported the now 12mp file from Photoshop into Topaz Sharpen AI where I allowed that plug-in to work its magic and sharpen up all of those pixels Photoshop added to the file.  Topaz Labs also has a file resizing product called Gigapixel AI.  From the testing that I've seen from reputable people, it is now considered the best resizing software on the market.  If I would have had that to use, this image would have been observably better, I believe.  But with all that cropping and resizing, the image can't possibly be any good.

From Photoshop, the image went back to Lightroom for just a bit of tweaking.  The result is what you see here.

Too bad the image fails miserably for technical reasons.  Too bad micro4/3 is too small a sensor to give us photographers professional results.  Too bad I badly underexposed it.  Too bad I used a tele-converter and only used 1/250th sec. shutter speed for such a long focal length.  Forget about Olympus' utterly industry leading image stabilization.  Too bad cropping then resizing the cropped image is a waste of time.  It can't possibly be any good for all of those reasons stated above. 

You get my point.  I did about everything to hurt this image, yet it looks just fine.  Don't let anyone tell you that your gear is not good, you need a full frame sensor or anything else.  

My suggestion is to take your camera out, make the photographs you love then leverage the available technology to edit your images to match your vision.  As for me, I don't listen to those pundits and their "expert" opinions.  I grab my camera and use the gear I own to make the images I want to make and enjoy. 

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

All content on this blog is © 2013-2020 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.