Photographic Vignetting

I have a planned post for either later tonight or tomorrow (well, soon anyway) about cameras and photography, and doing a little research on topics I discuss in that post, I learned about vignetting.

Vignetting is when the outer edges of the picture are darkened and is sometimes considered an artistic effect. It can be purposefully done during the development phase when using film; it can be done during the image-capture phase using film if the camera's lens is of low quality (back when it was considered less-that artistic); and it can be done after image-capture on digital media using photo editing programs.

It also happens "naturally" with digital cameras, if the data is of high energy at the edges of the frame and the camera's data-capture ability is easily overwhelmed; basically, if the background is too bright and your camera sucks. I joke like that, and I have three examples from my own Old Reliable, my first digital camera, that highlight this phenomena, but I want anyone reading this to understand how much I love my Old Reliable (that is sadly less reliable now) and how well it has treated me and Corrie.

In the course of owning this camera and using it as my primary device, basically 6/04 to 12/07, I took somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand pictures. It couldn't really handle anything close up, or in low light levels, or at night without a flash or a with the flash on and the subject farther than five feet, but that still leaves a wide range of possibilities.

And I never really minded the vignetting.

Here are some examples, in chronological order:

This one Corrie took of me at Sequoia Park in February of 2005. Anytime the sun is in my eyes, I have to squint, even with my sunglasses on.



From the same year, '05, but in either August or September, in Florence, looking out over the town and the imposing Duomo.



This is from June of 2006, taken from the roof of our apartment in Brooklyn. It didn't really do justice to how close those buildings in the distant skyline felt when you were up there looking at them.



This is from March of 2010, from the Guyton Ranchette, outside Bastrop, Texas, after Old Reliable was called back into service.



In all of these pictures you can see the vignetting heaviest in the upper right hand corners, where the picture looks rounded.

My Old Reliable is a Digitrex, the DSC-3000, now known as an Apex DSC-3000. I've seen reviews that paint the camera a nice, affordable, lightweight deal, and that was in 2005-6. Mine came as a free(?) gift with a computer I got as a graduation present.

Thousands of pictures later? Score.