I noticed the Leica D-Lux 8’s lens renders some dramatic light stars, as seen here, with a large f2.2 aperture. It also creates halos (not sure of the technical term for this) around strong light sources, which may be less desirable. I don’t mind them. I framed it with a 24mm equivalent.

I’m standing in the middle of Electric Drive, shooting east towards the Seaholm redevelopment. Electric Drive has several high-powered Level-3 car chargers. Is that how it derived its name, or is it because it’s next to the old Seaholm Power Plant?

Zooming into 54mm created this framing, effectively capturing the old power plant and the fancy sail-shaped Google skyscraper. However, there are technical issues with this image. First, we get undesirable flares and reduced contrast from the pair of street lights just out of frame.

The image is “mushier” with reduced details and more noise since I used a slower 1/8-second shutter speed and zooming in shifted the aperture to f2.8. Consequently, the ISO moved from 200 in the first photo to 800 in the second. I’ve tested the Topaz Photo AI 3 I mentioned recently, and it adds a snappiness to the image via noise reduction and increased sharpening. It doesn’t improve the optical flaring issue, however.

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