silver fx, etc

Still plugging away with the one lens black and white thing.  I was sensing a need to stop and asses things, it seemed like some sloppiness was creeping in.

I am pretty used to the GF1 by now, and I am pretty happy with it.  I did purchase a lens hood and a plug- in electronic viewfinder.  The 20 mm lens from Panasonic does not come with a lens hood, and I have been having some flare issues.  I have also noticed some things creeping into my composistiosn, and I blame the fact that the the lcd on the back of the camera can make composition a theoretical excercise if there is glare.  The extra viewfinder is a long way from perfect, but I can at least see what is in the frame and tell where the point of focus is.

The other thing I feel I need to work on is really understanding black and white.  When I look at some of my pictures over the last month or so, there are some I am really happy with, and some that just look flat.

Case and point is the picture below.

I took that picture because there was a game trail going into the brush, and I thought it might look interesting.  Unfortunately my best efforts with Lightroom resulted in the game trail being almost invisible.

Below is the original file in colour.

Here the trail is more visible because of the blue shadows.  I think the issue I run into in Lightroom is that getting the snow white results in the details being lost.

I keep hearing about Silver FX, and there is a new version available for a 15 day trial period.  I downloaded the trial version, and gave it a try, below is the result.

Still not the Sistine Chaple maybe, but this version looks so much closer to what I saw when I took the picture.

So Silver FX might be worthwhile.  More playing around is in order I think.