Mercedes on a Colorful Street – Utrecht, Netherlands

I created this photo moments after the photograph that I featured yesterday, from Utrecht, Netherlands. I talked about the irrational fear many enthusiast photographers have about JPEG, Today’s post is a continuation of that — a more extreme version, in fact, of what’s possible, post processing JPEGs.

I shot this in JPEG with the Fujifilm X100S back in 2014. Getting the exposure right was tough, since I needed to underexpose to preserve the color of the lights, but still have my subject, The Mercedes, bright enough. And, this is an example where a RAW would have been a lot easier, but I want to see how much I could push JPEG post processing and still have a result that was halfway decent. Viewed full screen on my 27″ monitor, there’s bit of a grain, but most people, especially laypeople, would probably not object.

There are many ways I could have taken a higher quality picture. Shooting on a tripod or having image stabilization would have helped, which would have lowered the ISO. This photo was hand-held at 1/60 of a second at ISO 2500. To get the ultimate in quality, a HDR would have been required, especially to preserve the details on the blown out sign on the left.

Ironically, I had a tripod and an Olympus E-PM2 with me. But, this was a quick grab shot, on the way back to the train station. I probably thought it wasn’t worth the effort. In retrospect, the image turned out better than I expected. I guess JPEG will have to do.