Olympus

(now) OM System's "Live Comp" function, also known under the title "Live Composition" - allowing you to expose an image up to 3 hours - without that the image ever gets overexposed. Only lighter image elements get "exposed into the image" - but never shadows.

Great for stars, light painting, and if you like - weird compositions of daylight clouds, as well. Here i took a harmless photo of the clouds looking over N-NE Stockholm from my balcony, about 40 minutes. With help of a 1000x gray filter in order to reduce the light just enough to bring the light levels down for correct exposure.

If i do this against the sun, I use a much strong gray filter: Marumi 100000x !

The clouds

look rather natural despite having used the "Live Comp" function in the camera. They simply moved from left to right - and that was about it.

Now since i have disturbing buildings in my outlook at the balcony, i replaced some of that with Photoshop AI. Just enough for my Diary - but in truth, not really to my liking. It just serves the purpose to get rid of the rooftops of the near by buildings.

The Trees

Now when it comes to trees and the "Live Comp" longtime exposure function - i often find that they look funky. Almost AI generated. As soon they wiggle or move, they become thinner and get double outlines - which look... well, just weird.

Here is the normal photo after 40 min exposure, before I changed the rooftops with elements from Photoshop's AI. And speaking of the many white buildings - they are basically all belonging to Högdalen - a suburb here in the South of Stockholm.

Not that long time ago

Once up on a time, there were only green trees visible from my balcony. Not a single building ! It was absolutely heaven.

Until they punched a whopping NINE buildings into the ground within a circle of 250 meter from my balcony. Talk about crammed. (Imagine all that noise during those years they've been digging and building in this very spot... mama mia.)

I am still lucky

that the view towards the city and sky itself, never have been compromised. I can still see all the way... Quite remarkable that all buildings would end right below that horizon line.

However, as soon i take a picture with a little bit of the horizon in it - i also get those disturbing, quite ugly roof tops (mainly to the left) in it. At night combined with glaring lights... Sometimes I take those away with help of Photoshop AI. Using that, is always funny business - e.g. a hit or miss.

Like playing lottery.