[WoW] WoWScreenshotADay 12: Macro

As you’ll no doubt have picked up if you’ve read other posts on this blog, photography is my hobby. Thus, when I see the word ‘macro’, I think not of a list of commands for doing mouseover healing or whatever, but of small things made large: macro photography.

Small bug, big. Click to further embiggen.

Once again making use of the surprisingly versatile Ornate Spyglass, I had a hunt around for something that would a) not look too bad when made huge and b) would keep still enough for me to get a shot of it (quite tricky with a super-zoomed-in view).

Image notes: as usual, colours and contrast tweaked in Aperture, then fake depth-of-field blur added in Acorn.

[WoW] #WoWScreenshotADay 11: I love doing this!

This post is part of a series of screenshot entries into a competition run by Tycertank.

Tricky one this, mostly because there’s a lot I like doing in the game, and it was difficult to decide which thing specifically I should represent in a screenshot. Thinking about it in a wider context, though, one big thing I like doing in games is exploring, be it Skyrim, Tyria or Azeroth. I like seeing what’s around the next corner or over the next hill, and marvelling at what the game’s creators have come up with. In the past, I’ve spent plenty of time more fully exploring one zone at a time in World of Warcraft, and would love to find the time to do more of that.

Sometimes exploring can be a bit dangerous. Click the image for a larger one that shows my entire UI.

It’s not quite the same thing, of course, as proper exploring – getting this achievement is more a case of staring at the map window looking for blank spots, then flying directly to them, without really looking at the world around you.

Still, you can still explore Azeroth without specifically aiming for the Explorer achievement, and this is, to me, more rewarding, particularly in Pandaria, both because it’s less familiar, and because it’s just so much prettier, more detailed and generally more interesting than Old Azeroth.

[WoW] #WoWScreenshotADay 10: Beverage

This post is part of a series of screenshot entries into a competition run by Tycertank.

I had a couple of ideas for this one, but in the end I decided that going the extra mile to get this shot was worth it, as I feel it’s a bit more interesting, and for some might provoke feelings of nostalgia:

The Grim Guzzler, in Blackrock Depths. Click for large version.

The first time you encounter this place is a bit disorienting – after fighting through waves and waves of hostile dwarfs, suddenly you’re confronted with a seemingly friendly (or at least indifferent) pub, which you can more or less walk around with impunity, sitting at the tables with the revellers.

Of course, it only takes one stray spell or arrow to spark complete chaos, and very often a wipe, thereafter making life much more difficult for the group. Beware!

Image notes: another stitched-panorama, and some post-processing in Aperture to increase brightness and contrast – BRD is kinda dark, which you don’t notice much when you’re there, but definitely do in screenshots later.

[WoW] #WowScreenshotADay 9: 2 o'clock

This post is part of a series of screenshot entries into a competition run by Tycertank.

This one was never going to be a “screenshot taken at 2 o’clock” thing, as I'm working at that time. So! Creativity required, and this is the result:

Laser-crystal targeting-circle clock!

Huge thanks to my wonderful guild leader, who took the time out to supply both the laser crystals and the act of lasering!

[photography] Comparison of sensors: Fuji X-E1 versus Ricoh GR-D III

There’s no good reason I decided to do this, just that I was pixel-peeping files from my Fuji X-E1 in Capture One, when a silly thought occurred to me: how do these files compare to my Ricoh GR-D III?

The comparison is also completely unfair: the GR-D is a pocket-sized camera with a fixed 28mm-e lens, whereas the X-E1 is much larger and heavier (and I used the 18–55mm lens for it, which by itself is bigger than the Ricoh, although Fuji’s 18mm f/2 lens is much smaller and would be a slightly fairer comparison).

Fuji X-E1 and Ricoh GR-D III.

Sensor Dimensions

The X-E1 has an APS-C–sized sensor, meaning it’s 23.6 × 15.7 mm, or around 370mm². The GR-D’s sensor is 7.6 × 5.7 mm, or around 43 mm². Here’s a visual illustration of the sizes:

So clearly the Fuji’s sensor is huge in comparison, which means it has much more surface area for gathering light, and despite being 16 megapixels versus the Ricoh’s 10, those pixels are still much larger. All else equal, larger pixels gather more light for the same exposure, so they need to be amplified less than smaller ones, resulting in less noise.

Noise Differences

This image, taken in low light, shows the same scene as shot by the GR-D (left) and X-E1 (right):

Both were processed in Capture One Express 7. At this size they both look okay. Now here’s a comparison of the images at 100% zoom:

Ricoh: ISO 1234; Fuji: ISO 3200

Now the difference is much clearer. Obviously the Fuji has more detail in it simply because it has more pixels, but the advantage goes much further than that: the amount of noise in the Ricoh’s image has destroyed a lot of the detail, despite it being shot at less than half the ISO of the Fuji. In addition, the camera is not very sensitive to blue light, so the middle book has lost all of its real colour, whereas the Fuji represents it accurately. You can click the image for a much larger 100% crop.

Highlight Recovery

Another advantage of larger sensors is that they tend to offer smoother-looking transitions to blown highlights, and often allow recovery of more image data in raw processing:

By comparison, the small sensor in the GR-D III doesn’t allow as much:

Notice how although the globe is darker, there’s not actually any more detail to be seen in it – Capture One has done a pretty good job of guessing what colour the globe should be, but it can’t recover detail that wasn’t there to start with.

Depth of Field

One last major difference between sensor sizes is their depth of field:

Note how even though the GR-D III is using a ‘larger’ aperture, the image still has much more in focus than the X-E1. I put ‘larger’ in quotes because the the aperture number takes focal length into account (that’s what the ‘f’ part is), so the Ricoh’s aperture diameter is actually 6mm/1.9, or 3.16 mm, whereas the Fuji’s aperture is 18mm/2.8, or 6.43 mm.

[WoW] #WoWScreenshotADay 8: Peek-a-boo!

This post is part of a series of screenshot entries into a competition run by Tycertank.

I struggled to come up with an idea for this one. The end result is from an idea I had fairly early on, but I dismissed it at first as I didn’t think it’d work very well, due to a pretty boring background.

But then, just before we headed to bed, my fiancée and I decided to try it anyway, and thanks to some extraordinarily fortuitous timing, we had our background interest!

Helvecta peeks over the walls of Stormwind.

Image notes: zoomed-in view provided by an Ornate Spyglass. Blur, vignette and chromatic aberration (of the lens kind, not the dragon kind) added in Aperture.

[WoW] #WoWScreenshotADay 7: A sign

This post is part of a series of screenshot entries into a competition run by Tycertank.

My first thought here went to the obvious: look for a photogenic signpost somewhere in Azeroth. I’d been idly wondering for most of the day where I might find such a sign when my lovely fiancée came up with a much better idea: we could create our own sign, with fireworks! Initially we wanted to use the ones that form the Alliance logo, but apparently they’re no longer available in-game. As luck would have it though, Darkmoon Faire is currently open, and therein one can buy fireworks that form the DMF logo!

With that part settled, we had to decide on a suitable location. It needed to be somewhere with a suitably dark sky, to show off the fireworks nicely. Furthermore I had this idea that the fireworks could represent a sort of ‘Bat Signal’, or a light in the darkness, bringing cheer to a place where there might not currently be any.

Bringing cheer to Shadowmoon Valley. As usual, click the image for a larger version.

Thanks to my fiancée for taking on the role of Pyrotechnics Manager, to which she is well-suited, being a fire mage and all. And regarding the image, turns out that Aperture is good for manipulating virtual photographs as well as real ones.