Yes, the weather outside is not conducive to me doing a first flight and, no, I did not try flying indoors for my first test with the new (to me) DJI Mini SE drone. However, I did activate it while it was sitting on a coffee table and, or course, had to take a couple of pictures. This indoor “practice” with the DJI Fly app on my (older) iPhone 6 should help me be more comfortable when I do launch my first drone flight.
But – on with the first test – where you can see the initial test photo of a bookcase in our family room lighted only with a couple of room lamps. The lighting was certainly not ideal!
You can see the coffee table in the bottom foreground and one of the lamps used for lighting the room. There was also a lamp behind my wife in the chair on the right and a lamp behind where I was sitting.
A normal, daylit scene, flying outdoors, will have about 50 to 100 times more illumination. Our eyes are surprisingly adaptable to the difference in light between night indoors and sunlight outdoor. Camera sensors – not so much. With that said, here is a center crop of that full frame to show the detail captured under these poor conditions.
This is a 660×300 pixel section of the original full 4000×3000 px image. The only editing I did, besides the crop, was to run it through one level of Topaz Studio2 denoise. I am eager to see what this camera can do when outdoors flying on a nice day.
Which camera to keep and build into a better system?
I am in need of a quality macro lens but was unsure what to purchase – to add to which camera bag. Today I decided to evaluate my arsenal and did an A/B comparison between my Nikon DSLR and my Olympus Mirrorless Micro four-thirds cameras. I tried two different “kit” zoom lenses on each – varied the focal length (18-300mm) and ISO (200 and 3200). Below is one comparison – guess which one came out ahead – in all instances…
Both cameras were mounted on tripods on our front porch and targeted a neighbor’s front window for a variety of surfaces. Some of the more “distant” shots (wider angle) included sky and lawn for additional comparison textures. But the stone and window frame were good for comparison in the sample below and are indicative of all the shots.
Click the image for a larger version…
Both camera are 5+ years old and have been true workhorses for me. We cruise often and these have been in several foreign countries as well as all up and down the East Coast of the USA. Both still work perfectly.
The cameras are 1) Nikon D3200 compared with 2) Olympus OM-D E-M10 (original model – now up to model 4, which may be my next purchase.)
BTW, if you haven’t already guessed, the Nikon image is the one on the left. An old adage states, “The best camera to have is the one you have with you.” That may not always be the bigger, more expensive camera.
The caveat is that the Nikon can produce a large art photograph because the pixel size is 6012 by 4000. That is good for up to a 60″ print at my Fine Art America Gallery. The Olympus images are 4608×3456 pixels, good for up to a 48″ print.
The “fine print” so to speak…
A friend said if I didn’t do this in RAW I ain’t done. True, I ain’t quite done. However I tried to keep this as “real world” as I get. I stopped using RAW a good while back. Why? Everything in RAW has to be converted to JPEG in post processing and I found that the camera software engineers did as good a job as I would usually do – nearly every time (with a slight edge going to Olympus). Today I only save an image in RAW if is is majorly important and I may not have opportunity to re-shoot – but that is seldom the case. Keep in mind that both of these cameras are of a vintage going back over a half dozen years.
The sample image above was one of several comparisons I looked at and is representative of what I saw across the board. Nikon DX lens AFS Nikkor 55-300mm 1:4.5-5.6 G ED. Olumpus MFT lens M. Zuiko 40-150mm 1:4-5.6 R ED MSC.
Focal length for those samples was set to 100mm, using an aperture of f-8, shutter speed 1/160 and ISO set to 200. I chose that because I usually shoot Aperture-preferred and either wide open, fully stopped down or f~8. I also usually zoom to 100mm if I am in a tele frame of mind – or I’ll go quite wide in the 20mm range.
Not for the faint of heart but a good source of sales data.
A recent post on the Fine Art America forum/discussion group gave me reason to take another look at the data available for people with an art business at FineArtAmerica/Pixels. It was suggested that having more sales data in the on-board analytics would be helpful in marketing one’s art. The following is what I had responded but, later on, realized it may reach a larger audience here…
“There is a work-around for obtaining some of that information – but it does take some effort. The “Export to Excel” feature, available on the “Balance” page in Behind the Scenes (the user administration interface) provides info for:
Date (Transaction) – Date (Reporting) – Pay Period – Description Image ID – Order ID – Artwork Name – Artist Name Buyer City – Buyer State – Buyer Country Deposit – Withdrawal – Balance
The caveat is that one must have an understanding of spreadsheets to be able to manipulate and interpret that data. My knowledge is meager, at best.
Having that info available in Analytics would be helpful to many of you with numerous sales. With my dozen or so sales a month average, I pretty much have – in my head – what has been selling the best.
With that said, here is a very basic example: a “sort” on Column D, Description, gathers all of my titles into groups. I can refine that sort by date – but, keeping it simple, I see that my best selling image of all time is this: https://bill.pixels.com/featured/indian-river-inlet-bridge-twilight-bill-swartwout-photography.html – with dozens of sales. I can look at smaller “groupings” in that column and see that seven (7) of those sales were puzzles (5 – 500 Pieces and 2 – 1000 Pieces). I can also see that four of them were sold with a Discount Code, what that code was and the amount discounted. I can also see the sizes of prints that sold and the variety of other products (face masks, beach towels, etc.) on which this image was sold. It is also interesting that with only one exception, all of my sales over the last 7+ years were within the United States (we can see City, State and Country, but no buyer-specific detail).
I can also see that in 7+ years here I have had four “Cancelled From Order Prior to Shipment” and two “Returned for Refund Within 30 Days.” What is good to see here is that there is no pattern – not like I might have a bad image that was returned multiple times. Of the two that were returned one has been sold (and NOT returned) several times.
What I cannot see, and would love to know, is which platform made the sale – My Premium Site, my profile at Fine Art America or my profile at Pixels.
I added later to say: “BTW – in my example above – about the Export to Excel feature. I do not have the actual “Microsoft Excel” software. I use the FREE Apache Open Office version and it works just fine. It costs nothing, other than some time, to do this.
The down side is that it takes a bit of work on the part of the artist to obtain those extra metrics. I don’t believe the online FAA Analytics screen is meant to do all of that.”
