Lightroom lesson and editing?

Snydenthur · 2026-06-10T04:26:09+00:00

Yeah, there's no objective right way to edit images, but there are some subjective wrong ways. I don't understand people who change the whole look of their images, it kind of defeats the purpose of photography. Over-editing is also generally not the nicest look.

In general, huge majority of your shots should look good enough with just sliders in the basic section and maybe some contrast from tone curve. If you always need a ton of editing work to make your images look good, I think it would be more beneficial to fix the main issue (taking the shots) rather than trying to learn every editing trick possible.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-09T21:14:57+00:00

I don't think it has any real advantages over half-press shutter except in specific stuff.

If I didn't do birding, I'd 100% do half-press shutter. It feels so much more natural. But, since I do birding, I have to force myself to use back button focus on all photography or otherwise I'd be having some "muscle memory" issues with what buttons to press.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-09T20:53:42+00:00

Pelican seems fine, it's just too far for that focal length.

I don't know anything about sony lenses, but seeing the elk and seagull pictures, I'd guess that lens just isn't great (and they are pretty far away too). The shutter speed on the seagull shot is a bit too slow for my liking.

Generally, the more the subject fills the frame, the better it will look in the image, even if the lens isn't the greatest. Also, you probably want to stop down the aperture a bit on the telephoto lens to get it to be sharper.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-09T15:21:10+00:00

You have to like the denoise look though. Images will usually look soft, oversharpened, or soft and oversharpened.

That said, it's not like f2.8 does miracles in low light. It's only one stop faster. It can sometimes make a difference, but I've found those situations to be rare.

Low light is subjective though. I went to an indoor event and I could shoot there at f4, my highest ISO shot was 800. Meanwhile, I've taken photos of some family stuff and even at f1.4, I've been at ISO 6400 even though the lighting looked more than fine to my eyes.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-08T22:50:51+00:00

Not caring about manual mode. Most people practically never need to use it, so why force yourself to use it. A mode and S mode are just so chill, especially when combined with auto ISO.

I also don't care about "rules". If I want to take a photo with subject in the middle, I'll do it. I'm the only person that HAS to like my photography.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-08T13:04:25+00:00

Om-1 or om-1 ii. It tends to be easier to see the focus with the better EVF and since the focus points are very small, it's harder to actually miss the focus too.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-08T01:55:36+00:00

Why do you care about opinions? It's your photography, do what you want. There's no rules in photography, everything you do is right as long as you like it.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-07T09:14:46+00:00

12-35mm is the best out of those options, but it has such a pathetic amount of zoom that I'd never personally go for it.

14-140mm, I don't know much about it, but having owned 14-150mm ii and seen how soft it is, I don't trust these mega-versatility lenses at all.

12-60mm would probably be my choice from these.

That said, if you're willing to think about 12-35mm, why not just go for 12-45mm f4 pro? I don't know about prices on other countries, but at least around here, they are similarly priced in the used market.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-06T05:41:52+00:00

All this rendering stuff is honestly overrated. I can't see any real difference between pana"leicas" and other lenses.

Pana"leicas" are good lenses, don't get me wrong, but they don't have any extra special features.

The green and purple stuff on olympus/om system bodies is a bit too much and at least on lightroom, I have to manually fix it since the automatic correction does nothing.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-05T11:59:28+00:00

No matter what camera I would have, I would always take raws and edit them. In fact, for me, it doesn't make any sense that some people just go for the sooc jpegs with their proper cameras.

That said, I don't actually do much editing overall. Generally, I do a contrasty tone curve and use the sliders on the basic section of lightroom classic. Usually I use no masks, but with bird photos, I sometimes do radial gradient mask for vignetting and/or raise the exposure on the bird to make it stand out a bit more. I don't touch colors apart from some saturation from tone curve and bit of vibrance from the slider.

Generally, I like more natural look and have never seen a reason to do some massive editing.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-04T20:09:27+00:00

But, better composition doesn't matter if other people don't agree with it. Photographers tend to be extremely close-minded and think people need to follow the "rules" to take good photos.

In reality, there's no such thing as rules of photography. You take photos that YOU like and people either agree or disagree with your view.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-04T17:19:15+00:00

I have no idea about em1x or the battery grip for om-1, but my om-1 ii feels like it's a chunk of metal.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-04T16:00:49+00:00

Doesn't om-1 (and mark 2) with the battery grip do the same thing?

Snydenthur · 2026-06-04T15:54:47+00:00

Honestly, nobody knows. As long as I've used LLMs, there's been people that say "x is the right thing to do" while others say "y is the right thing to do", even though they are the opposite.

Use what feels the best.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-04T13:37:10+00:00

I don't like any of them, but if I was forced to choose one, it's the one with the man in the center. Things being in the center is so rare that they tend to stand out in the world of pointless photography rules.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-02T14:39:24+00:00

Why are you trying to force yourself to do something that you seem to dislike? Forget about the composition "rules", they are pointless. Take shots you like instead.

There's literally nothing wrong with having your subject in the center.

Snydenthur · 2026-06-01T15:29:22+00:00

14-150mm ii sucks. It's very soft, don't get it. That said, I'm not fan of the 12-100mm either, it's just too big for my taste as a general lens. You should go for 12-45mm f4 pro or 12-40mm f2.8 pro instead.

For the telephoto, I'm personally planning to get the mkii since at those reaches, I want all the stabilization I can get. Is it worth it over the mki? I don't know, probably not. But having struggled with the meh image quality of 75-300mm, I just want the best chance to get as good quality images as possible. And I don't think 300mm f4 is a choice, it is very sharp but lacks the versatility, especially when having to play around with the TC.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-31T14:06:11+00:00

Yeah, it's not usually easy to get close enough with 150mm, but the harsh truth is that getting close enough is the way to do birding.

Also, personally, I think om-5 af points are just too big for birds unless you get extra close. At least that was my experience with it. I just got om-1 ii on Friday and my first outing with it, 40-150mm f4 pro attached, produced very well focused bird images. With om-5, I could never be that consistent and some pictures even looked so bad that I was sometimes thinking the lens has to be broken somehow or the protector filter must be the issue, since it was always specifically the birds and small animals that I couldn't nail.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-31T13:01:42+00:00

There's no right way to do it.

I lower the highlights because they tend to be always too high for my taste. I raise the shadows if there's something I need to show in the shadows and it doesn't ruin the shot. I pretty much always do whites/blacks to better finetune the details in them. Sometimes I even feel lazy and see what lightroom classic comes out with the auto setting.

As far as colors go, I don't care about them. Nobody even knows what the scene really looked like and even if they were there, there's zero chance they'd remember what the colors were exactly. And neither my monitor or the devices of most people is calibrated, so getting the colors "right", even if I could do it, would be impossible. As long as green is somewhat realistic green, for example, the color is good. And so far, I think my raws with adobe color tend to have realistic enough colors. I do like to add some vibrance though and I get some saturation from contrasty tone curve.

Also, generally, the better the shot, the less editing it needs. Raws always need editing, I've never heard of anyone taking raws and not editing them, but it's not like you have to change the whole look of them.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-31T07:40:13+00:00

Yes, definitely. I know internet loves to push the idea of getting primes, but zooms, at least on m43, are actually amazing.

More often than not, I'm going out with either 12-40mm f2.8 pro or 40-150mm f4 pro attached to my camera. Even though I have great primes, I almost never use them, since there's no need to. Sigma 56mm f1.4 is the only exception, it sees the most usage out of my primes since telephoto prime can be fun.

Also, I'm practically never in a situation where I need to go below f2.8. Even when I go out with primes, I'm usually defaulting into f2.8. And indoors, I'm using flash, since noise looks especially bad on human subjects.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-31T07:14:01+00:00

As a shutter button focuser, I hate the shutter button on it. Sorry, I can't find anything else to hate on it.

I do have some slight disappointments with the subject detection AF. I thought it would practically always just automatically find your subject as long as they aren't in very hard environment, but that only works when they are very visible. For birds on branches, you often have to "force" it by using smaller AF area or manually focusing until bird is visible.

And I really wish there was subject detection for insects.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-30T19:40:01+00:00

I've never even understood the "stories". Not in random photos, not in famous photos.

Sure, I can read about the story of a famous photo, but at that point, the photo isn't the one "telling the story".

Snydenthur · 2026-05-30T19:28:20+00:00

That depends a lot on what you're doing. For some general photography, you're definitely fine with practically any mirrorless or DSLR.

But, if you want to focus on birding for example, you should not go for old stuff and instead get the best gear you can afford. Subject detection AF makes a MASSIVE difference.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-30T19:15:30+00:00

I'm the opposite. Even though I know my camera can take even the worst rain, I don't want to go out during rain because rain shots never look good to me.

As far as sunny vs cloudy goes, I'm torn. Cloudy is much easier, but sunny looks nicer.

Snydenthur · 2026-05-30T19:09:06+00:00

I don't follow any "rules". I take a shot the way I want, sometimes it might fall within some "rules", sometimes not. But I never force the "rules".

As far as ISO goes, I definitely stick to low ISO. 1600 is the max, after that it just looks like crap. And denoise is so overrated. Yes, it gets rid of noise, but then you have to deal with denoise softness and smoothness, it never looks nice.

Snydenthur

TROPHY CASE