BLOG
Saturday, April 04, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography
Part two of my journey into the digital world. Yesterday I said I had an issue with storage of images in camera with a one gig compact flash card.
 
I learned that the images out of the camera were going to need some post processing. I bought a printer and with the printer I got a free Photoshop Elements processing program.
 
Now have to learn how to use that.
 
So, I started processing my jpegs and everything was working fine. I knew about RAW files so thought I would shoot some and see the difference. I converted the Raw files into Tiffs and did some processing.
 
Here is problem two. In 2004 I owned the cheapest tower computer because I'm cheap. Very slow processor, back in those days a cheap computer maybe had a half a gig of RAM. You all know for processing images it's good to have at least 8 gigs of RAM and a fast processor.
 
So, when I went to process the first Tiff images I was experimenting with, I found the time it would take with any adjustments I was making in Elements was taking forever.
 
The computer was not powerful enough to process the larger files of the Tiffs. So, I'm back to using the Jpegs, because I just spend a lot of money on the new camera and am not going to buy another more powerful computer.
 
Problem number three. Even if the computer was fast enough to process the large file Tiffs the hard drive on a cheap computer didn't have enough space to store all these large files, but it could handle the smaller files of the jpegs.
 
But here's the thing, the jpegs images with some good processing looked really good.
 
Come back tomorrow as the saga continues.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Friday, April 03, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography
When I speak to camera clubs, photo conferences, workshops, or my two online photo clubs, I am always asked why I shoot in jpeg mode. The answer is pretty long so I will answer over the next few days. 
 
In 2004 I bought my first digital DSLR camera body which was a Fuji S2. It was recommended to me by a good friend who is a commercial photographer.
That camera was $2000 which I thought was crazy, but my friend explained that I would be spending a lot of money now but would save a lot of money by never again having to buy film or pay for processing of the film, so that sounded good. Over time I would be saving a lot of money.
 
The camera store salesman was ringing up my purchase and said I will also need to buy a compact flash card. I had no idea what he was talking about so he explains that the compact flash card would record the images I would be shooting and then I could download the images off the card into my computer.
 
Okay, give me one of those. I was shocked when I found out it was $240. I was a little upset because I was already spending $2000 and now, I have to come up with another $240.
 
That compact flash card was only one gig. Which you all know is nothing for storing your images. But I wasn't going to buy more cards.
 
I only had the $2000 in cash, so had to pull out my credit card.
 
I had lenses to use with the new camera so didn't need lenses.
 
When I got home and started learning about my new camera and also about this compact flash card. With a one gig card as I recall I could only record about 35 RAW files, and about 175 jpegs.
 
I bought this camera for a trip with my photo friend to Yosemite.
 
Now we can't drive into Yosemite each day and only shoot 35 RAW files and call it a day. With the Jpegs I could at least shoot 175 images. My friend brought a laptop that we could download each day's image into.
So that was the start of me shooting jpegs because I was limited on storage of the images.
 
Come back tomorrow to read more reasons I was shooting jpegs.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography

Last Fall on a frosty morning I was out at Ankley Farm shooting sunflowers.

Some of the sunflowers were dead and brown. I saw this interesting pattern that formed on the backside of this flower head.

Shot with the Fuji X-T30 MKll and the Tamron 18-300.  f/32.

In Smart Photo Editor I cropped what I wanted, Sharpened, and then clicked through filters until I found one I liked.  This is the final result.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography

Prairie Coneflowers - Stony Creek Metro Park, MI

Fuji X-T30 MKll Tamron 18-300 f/32 @1/20sec, ISO2000

Creative Processing in Smart Photo Editor.

Original out of the camera.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Sunday, March 29, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography

I visit Facebook photo groups every day and 99.9 percent of the images are of the same format that comes out of the camera.  the vast majority of my images follow that same format. But every once in a while, I see a subject that just seems to fit well in a square crop. So here are a few on my square crop images. Try it will some of your images.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer