Thread #4499456
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New Ken Rockwell just dropped! Time to dial those saturation sliders to 11, baby
https://www.kenrockwell.com/trips/2026-02-route-66/index.htm
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>>4499462
>He uses the in-camera settings
he uses Luminar Neo one-click solution for everything (because they sponsor him) which cooks every photo *in addition* to 150% in-camera saturation and JPEG basic, which destroys any chance of salvation those poor images had in the first place
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>>4499457
it's called an artist eye
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The op pic is ridiculous but I actually liked the rest of that set
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> I'm an artist, not a documentarian. I'm creating a new work of art, not documenting what's already there. I use what I find as elements for my compositions; I'm not trying to show how Barstow looks.
Why does this man bother with taking pictures anymore? Why not just have the gAi conjure up what he wants for him? I'm sure it doesn't need any of the "elements from his compositions", words would suffice.
> how many babies is he up to these days?
Two many
picrel: Kenneth manor
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>>4499489
kek
Do they talk about cinematography anywhere on 4chan? Actual movies not gerfagging like /vid/
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listen here nigger, i have no idea what i m doing in photoshop or lrc, but my pictures don't end up like this
did he use the airbrush toll in paint to get this?
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Skylum Neo made it easy to boost this snap from yawner to awesome from just one JPG file. All it takes is Edit > Color > Saturation and slide it to 100, then Supercontrast and slam Shadows Contrast to 100, and you're done! (see my user's guide.)
fucking hell
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.>>4499456
whats ridiculous is that even his film photos are this cooked
>velvia 50
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>>4501082
I think that its his "I only shoot jpegs because theyre good enough" and "Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software" combo. he shoots basic jpegs and then does whatever he can to get back the details and dynamics he lost by shooting basic jpegs, and in doing so he just cooks everything to fucking oblivion
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>tfw can't tell one anon's photo from another's
>can barely tell apart modern pro photographers from 1 photo alone
>everything looks the same except for Rockwell
I hate to say it, but producing a photo that elicits hate, speculation and commentary is more admirable than making the same photo over and over (ie modern photography). Almost no one is distinct anymore, Rockwell at least reminds me of the "old guard" in that sense (although they also made consistently beautiful photos).
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>>4501088
I think you're right in saying that there is some value in making something different and provocative, but if you can't do it in a way that's also beautiful or impressive, then what's the point? You could be 'the only' photographer taking photos with shit smeared on the lens and it would have about the same artistic value as this. Sure it's different, and each shit smear is unique from the last, but it's also ugly and unimpressive.
I'm also not so sure about how 'different' his work really is. There are lots of people in halfway houses taking photos with their cracked iphones that look just like his. I think a lot of the discussion around Ken isn't about how his photos are so amazingly unique, I think it's more like "holy fuck how does it say the word photographer under this guys name when you type it into google, he sucks".
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>>4501084
Rockwell, Mossad and Adobe hate me for sharing this one simple trick to bump saturation sliders to 150%:
- shoot jpg
- edit in LR and bump the saturation slider to 100
- Export to jpg
- open the new jpg and increase slider to 100 again
- repeat as many times as needed until you feel the image us just the right balance of punchy and provocative.
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>>4501081
The skies are always the most egregious thing in his edits. That one with the orange mountain is my absolute favorite for taking his saturation and HDR obsession to the max.
>>4501148
If he retired and became a regular in the gear threads, it would be the best thing this board has ever experienced.
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>>4501051
I was just scrolling Tubi and I happen to cross an episode of 21 jump I worked on with a disabled woman who played a swimmer after a bunch of other disabled athletes who gotten their lives back were murdered.
I remember this one specifically because Peter DeLuise was working on it by now and it's through him that I got work at Stargate years later.
I was heavy into cycling, and we were killing time on set waiting for the setup for some athletic event. So takes were about 15 minutes apart as everyone had to get repositioned on props had to get moved back. She noted my athletic legs and ask me if I danced and I told her I used to at Royal Winnipeg but kept getting ankle injuries so I switched to cycling. She said she always wanted to do cycling but her CP left her with poor balance. I told her I could take her cycling she wanted to. She expressed skepticism, and I told her I had a friend who ran a bike shop and I could borrow a tandem from him. It was a lot of work to get it from the North Shore to Stanley Park but once there she enjoyed the ride around the seawall. There was a hiccup in production and a scheduled night shoot was moved to a Saturday to better accommodate the amount of time they would need to set up. We ended up spending the evening together at her hotel room. And I was heavily smitten with her.
Geri Jewell, season 4, episode 21, unfinished business.
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>>4501150
He says that, then he says the z8 isnt good enough for him, then he says the z50ii is the ultimate camera, he says every lens is sharp, he says random
lenses are shit, he says film is 100000mp, he says the iphone is as good as a canon r5, and his raw vs jpeg “hot take” is blatantly incorrect for any year past 2007.
Reading any one part of his website will end in bad advice, which will end in people thinking cameras are WORSE than phones.
The only conclusions a sane and knowledgeable person can draw from this are 1: ken rockwell is so fucking bad at photography he can make a canon r5 look as bad as an iphone 2: ken rockwell can not figure out how to use a nikon designed to do almost everything for you and may not know how to use a computer either 3: ken rockwell is somewhat delusional and considers himself a gear expert despite not actually knowing how to use all his gear
Do the opposite of what ken rockwell says
Buy a cheap ff mirrorless. There is no real, non-autistic reason to use a DSLR or a small sensor.
Buy one prime lens 35-50mm
Understand that most lenses are NOT sharp and buy a good one and only a good one
Ignore zoom lenses if you are not a professional. They are socially inappropriate, massively inconvenient, and range from hideously overpriced to worse quality than a phone. The world has enough frame filling ID pics of everything that is already.
Only ever shoot raw. Never use jpeg. Raw is the point of photography. Your phones raws are better than any DSLRs jpeg.
Never edit a jpeg
Never use any program he recommends - go for darktable or capture one instead
Fear the saturation slider
Only ever lower, never raise, the sharpening level
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>>4501151
It is never correct for most people to use a DSLR. They are bad cameras.
This might hurt your feelings but yes, DSLRs are bad cameras. Classic cars are bad transportation. Old computers are bad for getting things done. Mechanical watches are inferior to quartz.
Do the opposite of what ken rockwell says
Buy the cheapest FF mirrorless you cam afford
Buy a sharp prime lens
Only ever shoot raw
Never add saturation or sharpening ever
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>>4501191
You cant make an argument to the contrary that doesn’t amount to trying tp use bad equipment to torture people into learning. Fucking split prism screen film SLRs are universally considered nicer to use than old DSLRs by normies and photographers alike. That should tell you something. Even experienced photographers avoid shooting jpeg unless they buy an expensive mirrorless for its jpegs or are purposefully imitating their moms photography for a faux-nostalgic mood board. That should also tell you something.
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>>4501188
so yr saying I should buy a canon rp and nifty 50 and then git gud?
I don't think ken would disagree with that
he would disagree with the raw thing but he may genuinely have a neurological disorder that changes how he sees color
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Ken doesn't seem to have a huge bias towards or away from cameras, except he loves the latest hasslebladden leica, which I think have been turned into a rich person's niche for snapshotting. I like his take on Legacy equipment as I fondly put it. I plan on loaning him a couple of lenses that he's been wanting to try out and review for years but hasn't been able or can't afford to pay a huge pile of money just so he can review it.
Snapshots of the natural wonders of Southern California seem more bent on getting customers for his Photo Tours there than anything else. Those are once in a lifetime things that some people want to cross off the photography bucket list. Me, I lived near Whistler British Columbia and also in Squamish and I've seen a lot of spectacular stuff that I could just walk to for my front door. California is a bit overrun by tourism and bloggers and shit like that. Really beautiful Parks like Yosemite aren't really all that quiet anymore
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>>4501193
Ken would disagree with that. He’s a huge aps-c shill who shoots with fill flash in broad daylight and he’s firmly in the using a cringe unc af zoom lens to take every permutation of a photo of everything camp. And then he says the z8 is shit after recommending canon rebels.
I dont think he has vision issues either
I think he is genuinely autistic with a bit of OCD on top of being a boomer. He obviously does everything the same way he did it first, he gets mad when he has to change doing something he’s used to, and his default solution for an aesthetic issue is to install a program that claims to fix it. Look at deviantart and furries and shit. All autistic people have negative artistic sense and lean towards garish colors.
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I was scrolling through my download folder, and when I saw the thumbnail of this image, I was taken aback. I thought, "Damn!! That's a GOOD photo!". And when I opened it, I was surprised to see it's a Ken photo. This is a legitimately good and lovely photo.
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>>4501200
>Ken would disagree with that.
he reviews both the camera and the lens highly though
he even says the 50 f/1.8 is optically perfect and there's no reason to buy the bigger, more expensive 50 f/1.2
>Look at deviantart and furries and shit. All autistic people have negative artistic sense and lean towards garish colors.
so you agree that he has a neurological disorder that changes how he sees color?
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>>4499457
He's just colorblind, I am 100% sure of that. Probably Protanomaly.
There's a lot of people who never got diagnosed.
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>>4504160
ken discovering the perfectly clear/radiant/luminar neo software. his maxed out (+10 saturation) jpegs from times before are somewhat excusable, the perfectly clear era sits right on the border of being too much, but the stuff he does to the files with luminar neo is just...
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>>4501152
>If he retired and became a regular in the gear threads, it would be the best thing this board has ever experienced.
He lurks, he sometimes leaves easter eggs in his articles but in this literal fucking blog that OP posted he left an easter egg right there in one of the pictures
>CHECK OUT THE SIGN
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>>4504244
Ken rockwell was doghair and huskyfag. He does pet sitting on the side. Recently he dogsat some kind of collie and a little brown creature.
The reason you stopped seeing these dogs so often is because he no longer dogsits them. But you’ll still see the german shepherd sometimes. And yet before and after those supposed people (rockwell larps) disappeared their exact same hot takes were all over /p/, the two were in constant agreement, with each other, and rockwell, and they somehow had three dozen cameras between them, all ones rockwell reviewed and liked, and guess what, ken shoots 4x5 and 8x10 for his real photography.
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>>4499456
In regards to Ren Cockwell
--> her (pic related). This is actually a really nice tranquil graveyard in Switzerland. Hopefully it fits Ren's theme, but it does it unjustice.
p.s why jpeg over png?
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>>4504270
>why jpeg over png?
The difference in how they compress images.
I'll spare you the technical part, but PNG is better at large areas of uniform colour and predicatable areas like shapes or patterns you could make with digital tools.
JPEG/JPG is specifcally designed for photographs because it's better at random, highly varied scenes with few or no repeating patterns and large variation in color values.
So basically you get smaller file sizes using the right compression algo for the right file. Go ahead and try it. Save a photo as PNG and as JPEG and you'll notice the JPEG is smaller.
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