One of the things I’ve tried to learn and I’m still trying to learn is to accept my gear for what it can do and make the most of it. Sometimes that’s easier than other times.
This is a shot taken on a 2008 cruise to Alaska. It was taken shortly after leaving port in Vancouver. I used a fairly early model digital — a Pentax K100D. I had purchasedt a newer K20D for the trip, but brought the K100D along as a back-up/second body. In this case, I had my long lens on the older camera and didn’t have time to switch to the other camera.
I’ve always kind of liked this shot but have been frustrated with it, too. I’ve spent a lot of time wishing that it had been taken with the K20D instead of the K100D. The K100D was only a 6 Mp camera, so there aren’t tons of pixels to work with. Additionally, the pixels that it did have were kind of limited. I look at some of the cameras I’ve owned and used since then and the dynamic range and noise characteristics are simply in another league. Both of those characteristics come into play in this shot.
The lack of dynamic range made it tough for me to make a single image that captured detail in both the shadows and the highlights. I was on a moving ship, so making multiple exposures and combining into an HDR after the fact wasn’t really an option here. I simply worked out the best compromise I could and went with it. The result leaves a lot to be desired in the highlights. I can’t get some of the smooth tonal characteristics that I like. Additionally, the shadows are starting to show a fair amount of noise, too. I was at ISO 400 to combat the motion of the ship. While that’s only one stop away from the K100D’s base ISO of 200, it’s still incredible just how noisy the shadows are.
When I came to this image during my recent Lightroom organization efforts, I decided to just accept it for what it is and try to make the best of the RAW file. This was the result. Newer, better noise tools have helped me to dial in the shadow noise but no post processing tool will ever be able to reclaim the overblown highlights. So I rolled with them and let the image be a little more contrasty than my norm.
Honestly, I’m pretty happy with the end result. And it’s reminded me that if I can let go of the wistfulness of what I couldn’t do and instead make the most of what I can with a given tool, it’ll make me that much better of a photographer.