Here’s what I see out of my hotel room window.  That’s 16 storeys of flats.

Here’s another view.  I think they dropped it when they built it. 🙂

More rain today, but that’s good.  The newspaper says they’ve had almost no rain for the past two months or more.  Very unusual, almost unheard of, in fact, for this part of the world.  Plants and trees are dying.  The rain in the past two days will perk things up considerably.

__________________________________________

I’ve just had lunch at an Indian restaurant.  For a samosa entree, curried fish main course, biriyani chicken rice as a side dish and two 300ml beers, S$52.70 or A$46.23.  Ouch.  More than I intended to spend, and more than I intended to eat, too.  I had no breakfast at all, so I was pretty hungry, but I’m not now!

_____________________________________________

People sometimes ask me what RAW files are from digital cameras.  Here’s a RAW file:

Notice how the lines are curved and the corners are dark (vignetting).  It’s also a bit flat, lacking contrast and colour.  Here’s the .jpg (finished file) from the camera:

Notice how the lines are straightened, the vignetting is gone (at the expense of a bit of cropping) and the look of it is a bit brighter.

The point is, all this is done for you in the camera’s internal software and the jpeg output is what you get, regardless of what you might choose to do.  You can’t override these changes.

But the RAW file is what comes from the sensor without processing.  You have the choices then to make whatever changes and adjustments you like.  Once you’ve made your own improvements, you then save it as a .jpg or .tif or .bmp or whatever you like, and the RAW file remains for different adjustments at another time.  The RAW file is the “negative”, the jpeg is the “print” in film and paper terms.

The correction of lens curvatures means instead of lenses having to be designed with extra glass elements to correct these faults, it can be corrected in software.  The lenses can be smaller and lighter without so much glass.  And cheaper too, as highly corrected lenses are expensive to make.

It’s all good stuff, and progress.