I am a bit late to the party but here is my fortnightly update on what I’ve been up to.
Now with everything that is going on in the world, I haven’t been shooting much. Here in Sydney we are in a stage 3 lock down due to COVID 19. What this means is we are only meant to leave the house for essential requirements like attending work, exercising and buying groceries.
If we are found to be outside not doing one of the essential activities we face a $1000 fine. Due to this, I haven’t been out much. Animal Crossing also released over a week ago so whenever I’m home I have been glued to my Switch.
Although nothing special, the image below was taken from my balcony on a cloudy day. I originally wanted to go shooting on this day but was too busy and it was forecast to rain.
Aside from this, I haven’t stepped outside with my camera for a few weeks now or even used my camera at all.
The below images were taken a few weeks ago. I love pocket watches and I always want to try to take different photos of them. I got the watch below some time ago and even took a photo of it before.
For the above image I wanted to try something different which is why I decided to make a floating image. I would usually use a macro lens for this kind of shot too but I love the bokeh of the Sony FE 85mm f/1.8 so decided to use that lens for a change. This has now become my favorite pocket watch photo that I’ve taken.
While at it I decided to try the same with one of my new games, Luigi’s Mansion 3. I tried to add some props in which are the Switch console itself along with the Pro controller.
One thing I have to say is I wish I had used the 90mm macro for the above shot. The extra magnification of that lens and the a tighter framing would make the game cartridge look a bit bigger. I used the 85mm for this shot purely because I have been trying to use it as much as I can recently to help decide if I should keep it or sell it.
New Gear
Next is the most exciting part for me, some new photo related gear. Below you can see my new monitor, the LG 27GL850.
I’ve been itching to get a new monitor for quite some time now. My old monitor (The Asus PB278Q) is now around 7-8 years old so quite dated. At the time of purchase, it was a huge upgrade for me. It was not only my first IPS monitor but also a 1440p display.
In recent years I’ve noticed quite a difference when looking at displays on devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro or a Macbook Pro. Recently I was lucky enough to get a promotion at work which means I could justify the purchase of a new monitor to my girlfriend. Based on everything available, the LG was best suited to my needs. This monitor has a wide color gamut covering 98% of DCI-P3 and 135% of SRGB which is a significant upgrade over my old monitor which was only 100% SRGB.
One concern I had was that I wouldn’t see much of a difference for general use or photo editing. I knew for gaming I would see a big difference since it’s 144hz with Gsync/Freesync but was unsure for everything else.
After some use I’m pleased to say the difference is night and day. For everything from viewing photos to watching movies I can see a significant difference. The colors are so much more vibrant and all details are much sharper. I couldn’t imagine going back to using my old monitor and this is the new benchmark for me.
I was going to take a photo of my whole desk setup to show off the monitor but couldn’t get a shot I liked. Eventually I decided to try something different and was quite happy with the image above. I used my RGB light stick to give the purple illumination which did a great job too.
This is the end of my fortnightly update and hopefully I’ll have some more photos to share in the next fortnight. If you enjoy these post please subscribe using the form at the bottom of the page.
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