S90 In Late Fall Woods

It is late fall, long past the peak for fall colors and the weather is usually overcast, but I've still been having some fun playing in the woods in the two days since I got my S90. If is a fun camera to carry around in my shirt pocket, and I thought the photos below were worth sharing. The only processing was RAW conversion in DPP, though I did work the sliders a bit...

A nice little waterfall, I used F8.0 to slow down the shutter speed and waterfall as much as possible on a cloudy afternoon, and then recovered the highlights in RAW. ISO 80, 1/13 shutter and a net +1/3 EC (-1/3 EC + 2/3 AEB).



Frosty early morning with leaves the sun had not yet lit up and melted. Down and past their prime, but still some muted colors. F/4.0, 1/40, ISO 160 and EC -1/3.



The undergrowth is succumbing fast to the freezing nights, but a morning sun that had just come over the ridge isolated a fading burst of color. F/2.0, 1/1000, ISO 80 and EC net -1 2/3 (brought highlights back in RAW processing).



Hope you enjoy, I really do like this fine little camera... C&C welcome

Great pics. Thanks for sharing.

All 3 are nice but the frosty leaf is great.

Great shots!

I'm off at college and these make me miss the woods and mountains back home (in a good way).

Thanks. : )

Thanks for the comment, glad you liked them!

Thanks for your comment! The leaves were at an interesting stage, not bright but not brown, with muted remains of their peak colors. I thought it worked well in combination with the frost outlining the "veins".

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad they brought back pleasant memories!

Really nice pictures.

Anyway, I'd like to see your photos with 2mp phone. I think they would be great too. This says very little about the camera, except maybe that it is easy to play and experiment with.

What is your general opinion about S90, both controls-wise and IQ-wise ?

Terrific shots, thanks for passing them along. The S90 is a gem!
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Kirk

Can I ask a dumb question? How to you attach pictures directly to a new thread? I can do links to Smugmud but the images are always scaled down and the EXIF data isn't there. Thanks.
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Kirk

Thanks Dr. Sid,

I'm glad that you liked the photos! Whether a phone camera could have captured the 2nd and 3rd photos I don't know, my aging cell phone doesn't have a camera.

The first photo is beyond the range not only of camera phones, but the vast majority of P&S cameras as well, at least under those light conditions. Maybe in describing why, that will help to answer your other questions.

The situation was midday with a waterfall on a day that was cloudy but not dark. I was experimenting, and wanting to capture silky smooth water without blowing things out. Big huge problem for most P&S right there - you need full manual controls to do it right.

Out of a huge number of possible configurations, I had selected Aperture priority mode, with the front ring controlling ISO. The ability to control ISO in 1/3 stop increments is unusual and really nice (kudos to S90), and while not essential in this case, I easily used the front control ring to ratchet ISO down to 80, helping force the slowest possible exposure for the conditions. I then used the smoothly gliding control dial on back, to easily move the aperture to the maximum of F8.0, again to produce the slowest shutter speed. I'm still learning the camera, and am finding it seems to produce best at -1/3 EC for early morning or clouds outdoors, but I'm also still experimenting, so I used Auto Exposure Bracketing at -2/3 and +2/3 to see how things would work out. This combination yielded a 1/13 shutter speed with the brightest exposure, and would be extremely difficult to create without full manual controls.

When I opened the partially processed image in DPP, my RAW processor, I found that the waterfall highlights were blown out at my brightest bracket - and if I had been shooting jpeg, that would have been the end of the story, discard a bad photo. Instead I slid the highlights slider all the way down to the max of -5 - and voila, through the increased dynamic range magic of RAW I fully recaptured the lost highlights, and had a detailed but smooth waterfall. Now however, the net +1/3 EC meant that the rocks and trees were bland, so I pulled the shadows down by -4, and increased color saturation by +1.

It may sound like a lot, but it took under a minute of processing work, and the result was a beautiful photo that would have been impossible to take (in those lighting conditions) without a fully manual camera that could record RAW. It would have been literally impossible to slow down the water that much without blowing out the highlights - unless they can be recovered in RAW.

Yes, the detailed and extensive control set is a joy to use. IQ? I'm still learning. It's not up to DSLR standards, but excellent for a compact, maybe best compact out there in some challenging situations.

DrSid said:

Really nice pictures.

Anyway, I'd like to see your photos with 2mp phone. I think they would be great too. This says very little about the camera, except maybe that it is easy to play and experiment with.

What is your general opinion about S90, both controls-wise and IQ-wise ?

Click to expand...

Kirk, thanks for your reply above, I'm glad you liked the photos!

As for the image linking, I don't know the right answers. I use Photobucket, they make the appropriate html easy to copy and paste, and that takes care of it.

I just meant that those picture yells 'great photographer' more then 'great camera'. Sure, you can't control shutter time with phone, and you need that for waterfalls, but those pictures are result of good eye in the first place.

Thanks for info about the process, that says a lot. I so want to try the ring (S90 is not in shops around me yet).

It was the frost in the veins that I liked so much.

Love the frosty veins, great capture.
wj
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canonfujinikon

Impressive one with the Falls.
Interested to know if you have to shoot RAW to get the most out of the S90?

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regards,
sue anne

--I have been looking at buying this camera but the 11 stands in the way. Just can't make up my mind but these images gets it closer, some of the S-90 shots I have seen haven't been all that great.
Tanglefoot47
Tulalip Wa.

Thank you very much, glad you liked those "veins"!

Now THAT has been the subject of many heated debates in these forums over the years! Not about the s90, but RAW in general, and whether it is necessary compared to jpeg.

I shoot pretty much exclusively in RAW, so I think you can guess my opinion. The control I have over white balance, custom noise reduction, fine details (which can be uncovered through decreasing contrast in the RAW file), recapturing lost dynamic range that would otherwise be outside the capacity of jpeg, it's an important list. As I discuss above, the falls photo literally would not have been possible in that light without using RAW (or a neutral density filter I suppose).

That, said there are quite a few skilled photographers who disagree, so I guess it comes down to a matter of personal preferences, and what it is about photography you enjoy the most.

sueanne said:

Impressive one with the Falls.
Interested to know if you have to shoot RAW to get the most out of the S90?

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm glad you liked them. I don't think you can give too much weight to bad photos, any camera is capable of them, and it usually has more to do with the user than anything else.

For me, the G11 wasn't option. First and foremost, I wanted a true shirtpocket complement to my DSLR, and neither the Gs nor the LX-3 fit that requirement. Also, I do a fair amount of indoor photography with my two little ones, and I'm really liking that f/2.0.

If it weren't for those two considerations, and I don't know how important they are to you, the G11 might (or might not) have been a better choice.

mike bustad said:

--I have been looking at buying this camera but the 11 stands in the way. Just can't make up my mind but these images gets it closer, some of the S-90 shots I have seen haven't been all that great.

Click to expand...