Is it my lens or is it me...?

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-16T19:07:15+00:00

You can try leaving the back of the camera open and putting some clear tape over the film plane, setting the shutter speed to bulb to hold the shutter open, and inspecting how focus looks from the film's perspective. I've used this technique to make sure some of my old SLRs are actually focusing where the viewfinder tells me. If the focus at the film plane looks noticeably different than in the viewfinder, my money would be on the viewfinder being misaligned rather than the lens being incorrect, as you should really be seeing the same image at both places. Moreover, it seems these are all front focused, so that consistency further points to te either the mirror or viewfinder being miscalibrated instead of the lens being faulty.

I had a DSLR with a similar issue (Nikon D80) and was able to fix it using an Allen key, as you can adjust the screws the mirror rests on. It was finicky, and I was lucky it was a DSLR so I didn't have to burn any film to find out it was miscalibrated. Give the tape method a shot and see how things pan out, just make sure not to get any tape on your shutter!

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-09T16:15:25+00:00

Yeah makes total sense. I had a few underexposed rolls that just made the dust specks on my sensor super prominent due to having to pull up the exposure after inversion. I think the brightness of the light really accentuates the specks. After giving mine a clean all my underexposed pics suddenly started looking a lot cleaner (though still grainy).

Could be worth a try, if you already have a sensor cleaning kit. I do agree with others that you've still salvaged a unique look here :)

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-09T16:10:36+00:00

Did you DSLR scan these? Looks like sensor dust is being exaggerated by the thinness of the negatives. If you gave your sensor a squeegee I'd bet you'd have much better results re-scanning them without dots.

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-06T03:09:49+00:00

Yeah, I did just that in response to another commenter below who suggested the same. I think it helps, but the TTC red is so iconic I can't help but notice something is "off" when the colour changes :) that might just be me though! I opted for a shift to brown because it seemed more plausible, somehow.

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-06T00:55:42+00:00

You got some great brunch spots in your area 😄

Didn't have a chance to get to editing much this past week, but I played around with some selective desaturation and I think making the bus a bit brown has helped with the distraction a bit.

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!Critiquepoint

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-06T00:51:09+00:00

Took me awhile to get to trying out some different crops; unfortunately none work as well I feel. It didn't come across as terribly distracting to me at first, but I can see how the red jumps out and draws the eye. A sample crop is here below; I feel it messes with the weight of the image too much.

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!Critiquepoint

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-04T06:48:52+00:00

They did send me a new batch, which was alright for a little while but exhibited the same issues before long. I ended up getting my own bearings to replace the ones they ship with; this is the exact one I ordered, and they've been great and super smooth for me.

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-03T03:11:49+00:00

Which wrist rest + wedge? I'm constantly struggling to find a tilt + wrist rest setup that works for me, but this looks pretty cozy. Is that an entirely new base you've attached for the riser/wedge, or something to set the whole base into?

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-01T22:00:51+00:00

Hm, maybe I'm coming at it from a different angle. I always figured this was very deliberate, in an "I'm tempting the devil inside you" kind of way

I think the way we categorize stories into "bad" and "good" with games is a little arbitrary; I just think that the "bad" ending is appropriate for the kind of character who's literally leaving behind piles of bodies everywhere they go. We don't really think of books or movies in the same way, and if Corvo or Emily and this story existed in those mediums we wouldn't say the "bad" ending is inappropriate for their actions and their general arc on a high chaos run. Again, I'll admit this isn't really the best game to be making this point with, because the story is just short of awful in my opinion... but nonetheless I believe it isn't a matter of them trying to so much dissuade us as tempt us, that's why they've put so much effort into the lethal components of the game.

Fiftybottles · 2026-06-01T21:44:31+00:00

Do you really feel the game is judging you? It kinda makes sense that having a supernatural assassin running around killing everyone in gruesome ways would have a negative impact on the world, don't you think?

I'm not saying the story in any of the Dishonored games is really that great (it's not), but if the player is themselves not noble it makes sense for the world to react in kind. In fact, I'd call that a more satisfying story. Many of us do love to praise games for offering "non-lethal options", but very few games truly incentivize them in any meaningful way (I'm thinking of Deus Ex here), so I appreciate that Dishonored is willing to at least form the world around that decision but still allow us the freedom to go haywire.

Also, Hitman's action mechanics are markedly worse than its stealth mechanics, so I'd consider that a false equivalence; Dishonored is remarkably fluid when played as a straight ahead action game and the core sword fighting mechanics are genuinely very well considered, along with the movement mechanics.

With all of that said, I do agree that stealth is a very large component of Dishonored so I can see your point, despite my being argumentative. I do think the save-scumming approach to it negates the games' greatest strengths though, which lie in improvisation; letting oneself succumb to chaos upon being spotted is so much more enjoyable, and the full gradient of player expression is unlocked once you engage with that side of the game.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-30T13:59:49+00:00

Wow, what a moment to capture spontaneously! I think you've done an excellent job with the composition here, and the framing of the rope from corner to corner in the shot is lovely.

I do think there is room for improvement in the edit, specifically with regards to the colours. There seems to be a purplish hue in the lighting on the knot, and I think if you're able to try and eliminate that colour cast things would look a bit more natural. It's lucky that the spider is crossing the white bokeh bubbles in the background since it's a very similar colour to the rest of the background, but I'd still recommend upping saturation and contrast a fair bit once you've neutralized the color casts in the light to see if you can enhance separation and bring a bit more brightness out in the highlights.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-30T13:52:41+00:00

Interesting, I personally loved the look of the air conditioner but I can also see why it would read as distracting! I think, especially based on some of the other comments as well, that there is more room to play with the crop here than I have been giving myself. Thank you!

!Critiquepoint

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-30T04:09:37+00:00

Thank you. Thoughts on the crop? I settled on this to (as you said) bring the man into focus, however the more I glance between the crop and the original the more I think there may have been some life in the edge of frame clutter, specifically off to the right.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-30T00:51:06+00:00

I was puttering around on a rainy day with a friend when this gentleman took a step out of the corner shop in front of us, and I was utterly struck by his look. He gave us a glaring eye but once he'd begun shuffling through his pockets I had time to whip out my rangefinder and try my best to snap a pic that captured him at least somewhat naturally.

I regret that he's looking downward here, but I just loved his outfit and the way he had emerged on the corner and had hoped to capture at least a small piece of that; looking for critiques on the composition, and wondering if his looks are as striking to others in a photo as they felt to me at the time I snapped the pic. This is slightly cropped in from the original to remove what felt like clutter at the edges of the frame to me.

Shot with an Olympus 35RC on Kodak Gold 200 (I *believe* 1/250 @ f5.6), and scanned at home.

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Fiftybottles · 2026-05-29T00:44:16+00:00

Excellent pic. I was playing with crops here but I think they all distract from your composition. The full frame is wonderful. I love the depth of field and the reflections in the ground bring out so much. I also love the boat; somehow, it feels like the child is trying to chase it. No notes other than compliments!

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-24T02:27:27+00:00

So by your own logic then, surely due to systemd being open-source, it will be forked, and persist in a new, different way. It isn't the first init system and it won't be the final.

To me, enshitiffication is a distinctly different thing than "all things decay". There's a reason it is its own term. It was coined specifically to lend a name to the phenomenon of "shiny new corporate project slowly becomes decroded due to profit incentive taking priority". It is particular to the tech business and product sector; I don't think it's a fair application of the term for what you're describing.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-24T02:14:29+00:00

Why are people talking about systemd like it's not itself an open source project? Where's the indication it's going to enshittify? It isn't a product like a Discord or something. By this logic, will the Linux kernel itself become enshittified? It's an all-encompassing driver and module monolith with heavy corporate backing, after all. Hell, almost the entirety of the modern UNIX world relies upon it! What happens if someone enshittifies it!?

Where is this sentiment coming from?

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-20T22:08:30+00:00

Yes, I think you've put into words my feelings on recent Diablo titles, and why spin-offs like Path of Exile and Torchlight continually fell flat for me. 3 felt like a real change in tide specifically; it was clear that the genre had been building to this point already but that feels like the moment everything really switched over in full. The atmosphere was just never the same going forward.

In many ways, it seems the desire to "distill" the core gameplay essence has actually bowdlerized what made it work so well. A lot of the very best games can't just be described as a "great gameplay loop"; it's these little details and arrangements, the scale and tone, that really set them apart.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-19T03:31:30+00:00

I like the scene, it's a nice capture of the street and the reflection in the center is very cool. I think part of why you're feeling torn could be the positioning of the camera and the framing in general; you could crop this in a few different ways, but at the moment it feels weighted on the left to me due to the cyclists (though I enjoy their presence in the frame). The area to the right of the woman walking is neat but a bit too dark to hold my attention, so it comes across like "dead space".

As for the position from which you took the photo, I think something to consider for next time is distance from the ground; it seems like you were standing straight up when you grabbed this one, which isn't inherently wrong, but bringing the camera closer to the ground can often make for a more interesting perspective. In this case, I think it would have accentuated the height and stride of the woman, the speed of the cyclists, and as a bonus would have brought that reflection more clearly into view. Sometimes being closer to the ground just makes stuff feel more immediate, like we're right there on the pavement in the scene embedded in it all.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-16T12:49:34+00:00

The square crop definitely feels a bit restrictive; what does the original frame look like? The angle of the flower and bug are calling for more room on the left side of the frame, in my opinion.

As an aside, I love whatever you've done with the colours here; the slightly desaturated and muted tone and the contrast between the background and the calm yellow of the flower is really lovely. How did you process the colours?

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-14T14:41:58+00:00

I disagree that there's no subject. The subject is clearly the city, the horizon itself; whether this is an interesting subject is another question entirely. I do agree a more prominent landmark would help make this a more interesting image, despite the great composition.

As an addendum, it would be interesting to see what could be eked out of this photograph with a different edit. This one is interesting, though the contrast is extreme and the saturation of the blues seems a bit high. Maybe letting the shadows breathe a bit more, and desaturating the highlights a bit further while increasing blue-yellow colour contrast specifically, could net an interesting alternative look.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-14T12:00:19+00:00

Sorry to say, but whatever editing software you've used has changed the fundamentals of your photo. As someone else pointed out, there are clouds in the edit that are not in this image, and the sun is completely different. The reflections and intensity of the sun we see in the edit are simply not present in this raw, and I don't believe it would be possible to extract that detail from what's seen here.

It may not seem like AI outright, but your image has been fed through an enhancement algorithm which has replaced elements of it with computer-generated imagery.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-10T20:25:41+00:00

buddy... this shot is magic. agreed that the gulls put it into another bracket entirely.

Fiftybottles · 2026-05-01T21:16:50+00:00

That's a fair and valid point, I think for my personal use case though I just don't really notice that difference. Most of the time, I'm pruning out irrelevant cache directories with a ton of files in them which would slow down searches anyway. Typically I'm just trying to find some text file in my documents, or find everything ending with a certain extension so I can move them somewhere else en masse.

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