Category Archives: Photography

Windows Photo Gallery – It’s Really Bad

Posted on by
Reply

Today I was processing some images in Adobe Lightroom so I could send them to my brother. After the images was done, I did a quick preview of them. The default program on Windows Vista is Windows Photo Gallery. I was not pleased with the result, so I entered Lightroom and checked the export settings only to find them being set to maximum quality.

Then I opened the images in both Adobe Photoshop and QuickTime PictureViewer and to my surprise I discovered that the photo was looking better there.

Take a look at the sample image for comparison:

Windows Photo Gallery vs QuickTime PictureView

To the left: Windows Photo Gallery, to the right: QuickTime PictureViewer

Before you start complaining about the photo being totally awful, and that this has nothing to do with Windows Photo Gallery, but more my camera or my skills. Let me explain to you that this is not the photo itself as a whole. This is a crop of the top right corner of the image. In other words, it’s the background, not the main subject.

From this crop you can clearly see that Windows Photo Gallery renders the dark areas differently than QuickTime PictureViewer (and Adobe Photoshop).

I guess this has something to do with Windows using it’s own JPEG-library which differs from the real deal.

You have been warned.

Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens

Posted on by
Reply

Monday I’ve ordered a Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM lens at a norwegian webshop, and yesterday I picked it up at my local post office. Even though I haven’t tested it much, the results looks promising, and I’m looking forward testing it. For once it’s actually announced great weather this weekend.

I’ve did a few test shot with myself as a subject yesterday. But since my camera, a Canon 350D, has a cropping factor of 1.6, the 50mm equals a 80mm, and then it’s real hard to hold the camera and aim at oneself. The closes focusing distance is 0.45m, and of course I wantet to get more than just my nose in the picture.

Canon 50mm f/1.4 Test

Yes, that’s me.
I stopped shaving when my vacation started and.. well.. you can guess the rest.

I’ll try to publish some more photos on Flickr at the end of the weekend.