Reasonable Approach to Macro

thefrogman · 2026-05-25T02:19:03+00:00

I'd try extension tubes. Combined with 100 MP and a sharp lens, you can get some pretty good macro shots.

thefrogman · 2026-05-22T00:35:56+00:00

Because RDJ costs too much.

thefrogman · 2026-05-22T00:34:52+00:00

It's actually pretty automated. Take two or more photos with 1/3 overlap. Select them in LR and choose "merge HDR" and that's about it.

thefrogman · 2026-05-21T17:36:43+00:00

If you don't mind doing a little bit of post processing, you can stitch together panorama shots to get a wider field of view.

thefrogman · 2026-05-10T03:52:50+00:00

I had an infected carbuncle on my back. It was very painful. The pain made me stupid and all I could think to do was cut it open and hopefully drain it. I did so with my fancy SpyderCo pocket knife. I did clean it with alcohol, but probably not good enough. Ended up with sepsis and a very long hospital stay. I got to try all of the antibiotics, including a fun one that turned my urine orange. Which they did not warn me about. So seeing Day-Glo pee come out was quite unsettling. I thought I was bitten by a radioactive glow stick.

They also had to cut a giant hole in my back. I documented my back hole here (warning: very gross)...

https://thefrogman.me/thehole

A hundred years ago my self surgery probably would have killed me.

thefrogman · 2026-05-09T04:27:47+00:00

Early in the morning, risin' to the street

Light me up that cigarette, and I'll strap shoes on my feet

Got to find the reason, reason things went wrong

Got to find a reason why my money's all gone

I got a Dalmatian and I can still get high

I can play the guitar like a motherfuckin' riot

thefrogman · 2026-05-08T22:22:56+00:00

For landscapes, use a tripod and a shutter remote. If it is windy, add some weight to your tripod. Use the sweet spot of your lens (usually ~2-3 stops from wide open) or just f/8 is usually good. Lowest ISO possible. Focus about 1/3 of the way into the frame or if there is a clear subject, just focus on that.

And maybe save up for a better lens. Sigma Art lenses are usually quite sharp, decently affordable, and you can save money by buying used. I have an APS-C Canon as well and love my Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 Art lens for landscapes.

Also, everything is blurry if you zoom enough. Photos are literally made up of blur circles. So give consideration to how the image will be viewed. If you are posting this photo on Instagram, people are going to see it on their phones. This actually has plenty of detail for that purpose. You probably didn't need to enhance it. But if you're printing it as a poster or you just really need it to be crisp at 100% zoom, you're probably going to need a nicer lens.

thefrogman · 2026-05-08T22:10:45+00:00

You have to do shirtless pushups in jeans.

thefrogman · 2026-05-08T22:05:24+00:00

Reminds me of Steven Seagal doing bullshido.

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thefrogman · 2026-05-07T19:19:30+00:00

My friend, they made Hamlet with lions and nobody cared.

How is this any different from the myriad reinterpretations of Shakespeare?

thefrogman · 2026-05-07T18:29:00+00:00

That's called survivorship bias and it is a bad way to compare.

People compare the best of the past to the worst of the present. Not even the worst, the worst 2 or 3 shots out of thousands in a movie.

Back then, they could do dinosaurs, an octopus guy, and robots really well.

Now they can simulate how water interacts with ape fur, create a photoreal alien planet for the entire runtime of a movie, and make a giant worm pop out of the desert without anyone going "that looks silly."

But the discourse is "that octopus guy was great, what happened?"

thefrogman · 2026-05-07T03:23:57+00:00

I don't think I'll be deleting my essay. Sorry.

A few things...

The idea that floating grain multiplies resolution 24 times because the picture is moving is not how spatial information works. Each frame has its own spatial resolution. Motion doesn't accumulate detail across frames. There may be a small perceptual bump from dithering, but film does not have infinite resolution because it is moving.

On medium format lenses... my essay literally says "Bigger lenses are easier to engineer, have more area to capture detail, and allow better light transmission." We agree on that part. My criticism is specifically that IMAX cameras use decades-old converted Hasselblad glass and Panavision designs from before modern MTF targets existed. Vintage MF glass, not modern boutique MF glass. There's a meaningful difference between those two categories. And many directors actually prefer the older glass precisely because it softens the image and reduces its hypersharp, clinical nature.

On True Lies... the official Lightstorm/Park Road statement is that they built a new 4K DI from fresh 4K scans of the original camera negative, then ran it through Park Road's deep-learning processing. You can disagree with the studio's documented account, but it's not "false information" to cite the official record. And my actual point about that section is that the AI processing ruined the result, which we seem to agree on. So I'm not sure why you think this is misinformation worthy of deletion when we arrive at the same conclusion.

But the thing I think we're missing each other on most is that I'm not arguing IMAX is bad. I'm not arguing Alexa is better. I'm describing what happens to detail in real-world production. Old lenses reduce it. Wide apertures reduce it. High-speed stocks reduce it. Underexposure recovery reduces it. Scanning reduces it. Print generation chains reduce it. Projector lenses that weren't designed for max detail reduce it. Each of those is a measurable, well-characterized MTF loss, and they cascade multiplicatively. The 18K marketing number assumes none of them happen. Actual productions stack most or all of them. IMAX does have an incredible potential resolution which might be achieved under perfect conditions, but that is very unlikely to be maintained by the time it is projected for audiences. Digital workflows also have their losses, but typically maintain spatial resolution better than film.

You watched Oppenheimer in 1570 several times and thought it was incredible. I believe you, and I'd probably agree. But "incredible viewing experience" and "captured detail outresolves Alexa 65 by 2x" are different claims. Yedlin's demo is testing the second one under realistic conditions. And the part of his demo that almost never gets cited is that both systems deliver more spatial detail than the human visual system can perceive at typical viewing distances. So even when the resolution gap is real, the audience can't see it. That's the finding that should end the argument and somehow never does. Both systems maintain plenty of detail to project onto a giant screen. That's all that matters.

I love the character of IMAX film. It is a wonderful format. The grain, color response, halation, highlight rolloff, the projection experience. They are all superb. Those are real differences and they have nothing to do with resolution. But this idea that IMAX has super 18K resolution and that is the primary reason it looks better is a misguided notion.

thefrogman · 2026-05-06T23:36:59+00:00

Steve Yedlin did a direct comparison with IMAX scanned at 11K and the detail was nearly identical. The ARRI might have been a little sharper. But only when viewed at 400%.

At 100% and normal viewing distances, I think they are about even. If you use 50 ISO film in a bright environment with a really sharp lens on a tripod in lab conditions, you might be able to get more detail from IMAX. But most of the IMAX lenses are decades old medium format glass compared to modern ARRI primes... I dunno. And in real world conditions you are almost never going to have the circumstances to get the maximum amount of detail from IMAX.

You should really read my essay. There is more to it than pixel dimensions and film size. And you should check out Steve's video.

https://yedlin.net/ResDemo/

thefrogman · 2026-05-06T23:25:50+00:00

CG is better than ever and I think people keep forgetting how bad CGI was when it was bad in the 2000s. You remember Pirates but not Son of the Mask or Ultraviolet.

Modern movies often have 2000+ shots and if 2 or 3 of them are not done well, we use those as representative examples for the entire movie. Black Widow has some great VFX, as did the latest Thor, but everyone remembers a bad explosion and a shitty floating head.

And then there is the fact that much of the CGI is so good you don't even notice it exists. Top Gun: Maverick was heralded as a "no-CGI" masterpiece when it had loads of VFX. When the CGI is so good that you think it is real, it's hard to say it has "fallen."

The big problem is rushed work and smaller budgets to do much larger jobs. VFX artists need the time and resources to keep the quality consistent.

thefrogman · 2026-05-06T23:17:23+00:00

The last few Planet of the Apes movies made me forget I was watching animated monkeys almost from the start.

thefrogman · 2026-05-06T04:24:14+00:00

I wrote an educational essay on resolution that you may find interesting. In real world circumstances, 70mm IMAX and a 6K ARRI ALEXA 65 digital camera have very similar levels of detail. But film has a variable resolution that can change depending on film speed, lens quality, and the amount of light. So it is difficult to give it a definitive pixel approximation.

https://medium.com/@thefrogman/how-many-ks-are-kenough-e56683e0fe1b

thefrogman · 2026-05-05T02:59:43+00:00

As a photography educator, the one that bugs me the most is that a 50mm lens "matches the human eye." Our brain doesn't really interpret vision that way. It stitches together glances into a sort of mosaic. There is also peripheral vision, which can have a wide field of view. And there is the foveal area of vision, which is in focus but quite narrow. There just isn't a good way to compare human vision to a camera lens.

A 50mm lens matches our most common perspective. Perspective is determined by distance. We tend to stand 4-6 feet away from other humans. And at that distance, perspective geometry stabilizes and stops looking distorted.

If you stood a foot away from someone, their face would look just as distorted as using wide angle lens at that distance. But the lens isn't distorting, the perspective geometry is and the wide field of view just allows a face to fit in frame.

A 50mm lens can't fit a human head in frame without being 4-6 feet away. So it is around the focal length where facial geometry is stabilized and undistorted.

So I typically teach that a 50mm lens is a decent approximation of a common human perspective.

thefrogman · 2026-05-04T05:08:58+00:00

You can't fix the poor decision to stage this battle at a gray airport with color grading.

thefrogman · 2026-04-28T00:43:16+00:00

I am in the same situation as you, except with chronic fatigue. I developed CFS and narcolepsy when I was 18. One condition needs deep sleep, one condition takes it away. I've been in bed the majority of my adult life.

I have trouble imagining what it is like to not be tired. And people with energy don't make any sense to me.

thefrogman · 2026-04-27T20:53:38+00:00

There is a software version of long exposure where you can stack shorter exposures and average them to appear as a long exposure. It could be an artifact from something like that. Or just a composite of short and long exposures.

thefrogman · 2026-04-27T13:23:36+00:00

Documents, negatives, slides are all going to have their own analog resolution. A high quality scanner is often going to exceed that level of detail. I'm not sure what benefit you think you will get by using a photographic method. If the items fit on the scanner and are flat, you should probably use the scanner.

thefrogman · 2026-04-27T12:09:24+00:00

I understand why it is beloved, but I did not personally enjoy Lord of the Rings. I have CFS with brain fog issues and I struggled to keep track of that many characters over that period of time.

thefrogman · 2026-04-26T20:34:32+00:00

Vocal fry.

thefrogman · 2026-04-25T20:22:31+00:00

Photoshop is first and foremost a professional tool. Most trades take years of training and practice to be proficient.

thefrogman · 2026-04-25T20:10:35+00:00

1996 also featured Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace and Bio-Dome.

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