Polishing a Turd Trying To Save It in the Edit

What could I possibly encounter in a graveyard that would require use of a “Tough” camera ghosts’n goblins, of course not I went during the daytime so just be some crackheads then. Well that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but some of these cemeteries are in rougher parts of town and I had never been to this place before.

This was only a scouting mission so I just wanted something cheap and janky to document any compositions I may find, the weather was also looking like it would be pants.

The original intention for purchasing this camera was to have a small, fully weather sealed camera that I could take out in terrible weather without worry. For that purpose it works fine, upon testing it after purchasing (for about £20) I turned it on and put it straight under a running tap no problems.

The Tough 6010 is a 12 megapixel 28-102mm from 2009 that’s water, freeze and drop proof. Reviews from back then are middling with regard to image quality, I was not impressed with the results I got out of camera. The camera uses the Olympus and Fujifilm developed xD-Picture Card for storage luckily mine came with a micro sd adapter as the xD-Picture Cards are quite expense for the amount of storage you get. More features of the camera include picture modes disappointingly no black and white, art filters and a double tap functions for different settings, none of which I use. Good news it has a live histogram and exposure compensation as there are no manual controls.

I was not impressed with the image quality or my compositional skills but there was one composition which I thought had potential so I used the old cliché of turning them into black and white. I decided to process the jpeg inside my go to B&W converter Googles free version of Nik Collection Silver Efex Pro 2. I have very much taken an infrared inspired approach to editing these with a green filter emulation and the soft contrast slider turned to 11 some have also been double processed because maxing out a slider once was just not enough. You will have to let me know if you think I have over done it. The first image below is my favourite and I will be returning with my infrared camera.

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