The movie is self explanatory, not sure I need to write anything here. I do thou need to tell you one more time how to deal with your movies AFTER you’re done shooting. Btw in this particular shot you see some flickering and that’s due to 50Hz light. :) (or is it 60Hz?!)
You need to resize (upscale) your shoot first. This is good to do because of two reasons. First. Protect the 320×212 data that you have - try directly to make the data embedded into a bigger file. That way it’s easier to deal with your shot in Final Cut or Adobe Premiere or any other software that you like to use. Less risk of loosing data due to re-compression.
The second reason is that by rescaling with “super resolution” you will take advantage of the fact that the scale algorithms reads more frames in order to upscale and therefore you squeeze more detail than what each frame originally had. This is something no other software that I know of does by default. I usually upscale to DV PAL or NTSC resolution. Easier to work with standard numbers. :)
Before posting to web I use Adobe flash converter and a high bitrate. Mostly to end up with a small file that I can send to viddler without another re-compression.
Listen carefully in the end and together with this movie you can go and create your own great DP1 epic thing. AEL + WB + Close focus + ND = great stuff!
1. Lock white balance to dominant light source (or whatever you want) in this case “sunlight”
2. Move camera around and press AEL (lock exposure) when you think you got a good overall working exposure. Sky skin should be ok.
3. Press the “Focus” button (one time up on the four way dial on the DP1) this gives you close up mode or Macro mode (focus is now about 30-40cm from camera)
4. It helps to have a ND grad filter ready. Most occasions are perfect for this, makes a nice moody feeling. Very much used by the film industry. You can of course try different colors etc .
5. If you attach a polarizer it gives even more dramatic feeling to your movie. Deep nice colors with cool skies and less sweet in faces. If you have the wrong size you can hand hold it. haha
6. Upsize your video using “super resolution” with Video enhancer software (free 30day trial). PC only. I use VM-ware to run it on my Mac.
You don’t need a close up lens. I don’t have one. I will try to find one though. :D Film in macro mode MUST be cool!
What is a nice, sunny spring day on the cliffs at the swedish west coast like without a cold beer? Well. Ole tried to get rid of it using a tire - but soon decided to pick it up again. Watch the action here!
This was FUN! I took a lot of photos this way too, a cool way to frame your subjects but a bit tricky to balance it all. One hand filming and trying to keep sturdy and control the polarizer at the same time. AND walk. I’m not a woman am I.
Video clip hosted by the Norwegian photographer Yvind giving us important info on the 120-300 and how to use it properly. Inside you’ll find people like Ole, Filip, Oliver and myself. We also try to find another lost soul - the danish dragonfly photographer Fritz. - these are regular posters over at Dpreview and we had a little “get together” here at my place this very weekend. We had really great weather and much to talk about. And of course to shoot. I will post several un-cut videos.
These are all taken with the Sigma Dp1. If you wonder why you can’t see the SD14 display in this clip, that’s because I looked exposure by using AEL (because sunlight was very strong at the moment) and therefore the LCD will not show.
Somehow the movie became squeezed, not sure when or how. hehe
Using a filter holder + Cokin filters you can play with black and white the good old way. First I tried with filter and then I tried the photoshop / lightroom way - I used the predefined color filter option that is available in photoshop in order to make a fair comparison. Click for “the big picture”. The black and white “real” images are made by using the monochrome wb option inside SPP. And yes, it could have been a more intresting scene but it works. You get similair result directly from camera if you select in-camera black and white jpeg mode. see this image.
When I bought my mini cokin A (amature) holder then I bought some filters at the same time. All ND’s were sold so I had to buy some colorful ones instead. One was called tobacco or coffee grad - can’t remember what word they used. Both works. :) And I have done several black and whites with it on and it works great. One cool thing is also that when you put camera into black and white mode (jpeg) and use a filter such as this you get really nice nice results directly out of the camera. Feels cool too when you aim as you see the result directly on the LCD.
Direct output from camera using filter and black and white mode: (ISO800)
My little sister Anna Ingvarsson went away to shoot nature and lent my DP1. She came back a day later with lots of really nice shots - I’m only going to show you one because that’s the only one I dealt with (making it black and white). I think it’s beautiful! What do you think?
I sometime visit a local school to spend time with local youngsters - most of the time I bring my DP1 and a snap a few. Always at ISO800 (badly needed). Colors looks ok but black and white is just so much better! These have had some vignetting added in Photoshop - so it’s not the lens fault. :D - And no, I wouldn’t use the flash as it would feel wrong. Btw, these are made black and white using the monochrome mode in Sigma Photo Pro.
My little brother just had his first kid - a little fellow named Jakob. These are just a few shots taken with the Dp1 the very first time I saw him. :) I’m a very proud uncle! (a few more over at my flickr account)
I’m just having a smaller vacation from blogging. I’m also waiting for some good light for photos. Especially street photos. I just upgraded my blogs engine to Wordpress 2.5 - and I’m looking into different possibilities to make my site a little bit better without scaring people away. :)
[edit - Sigma today announced the new version for PC and Mac here as well as first DP1 update]
I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a beta of the next SPP 2.x and for those of you being irritated of green corners I can now tell you that green corners are now only a bad memory! :D I could only test the PC version but it ran extremely quick under vm-ware, actually much faster than my Mac version of SPP3.1. I did try some SD14 files and especially reds are now better. But this article will concentrate on DP1 images.
I thought that my photos from Elmia foto video 2008 could be used for this preview and at the same time you can see what I do in SPP and maybe learn something about processing. In every image there is important data inside. Exposure, ISO, White balance as well as processing. All kinds of situations ranging from high iso mixed light to long exposures in tricky situations. And as an extra bonus - studio shots! Continue to read this article.
Thank you Sigma for making my SD14 better and better! First you gave me ISO50, and wonderful colors that comes with that - and now 2 minutes exposure!! I love you! :D Will try and show images as soon as I’ve upgraded. I was soooo tired two minutes ago but now - I’m wide open and trying to find my tripod! :D
Red is a new camera (brand) embraced by directors such as Steven Soderbergh and Peter Jacksson - Red is the new cool thing in the world of cinema. And what you probably didn’t know - the DP1 is like a tiny Red. Extremely simplified, but still.
The Red has a sensor-size of 24.4×13.7 mm and DP1 has 20.7 x 13.8 mm. (see comparison) This means that the Red sensor is slightly wider (as in 16:9) than the Foveon equipped DP1. This makes them very similar - the depth of an actual movie using a f4 lens at 28mm would look more or less the same (at least at extremely small size).
Now, what would happen if the next Sigma SLR would have the DP1s movie mode AND with higher resolution. Wouldn’t that be a real killer?! (plus mic in etc) :D
I’m even sure that the Dp1 will get much improved movie mode with time. Sigma is known for good firmware upgrades (at least on the SD14) and hopefully this will continue with the Dp1.
Link to Red.com
Here’s a small little video showing depth from Dp1. :)
I was asked to stand in the Sigma booth at another photo fair here in sweden, Elmia Foto & Video the 4-5th of April. I will show the Dp1 and SD14 to the public. If you have any nice shots that I could use then send them to carl@rytterfalk.com in JPEG format. Will be printed as A3 if I like what I see. :)
Just checked some statistics for my blog and for the last 30 days 114 countries has been represented among my visitors. That’s HUGE! Back when I only wrote about photography in general and other SD SLR’s (SD9/10/14) I had something like 35 countries on that list. Last on was Zambia - now just waiting for someone in North Korea to get hocked up. :) - Most visitors comes from US and A - second on the list is China third is Japan. But, on the other hand I have nothing to compare to. Only my own statistics.
Sigma will come out with a easy to use solution within SPP itself or by firmware, until then we can do it our self’s in Photoshop (or other software such as Gimp).
Soon I will participate in a photo fair here in Sweden and for this I now have two DP1s - Trying to make the most out of this I connected them via the screw mount in the bottom via a small wooden (chop)stick. Then I started movie mode on both cameras (Not important to be sync). When finished I imported both files into the same sequence into Final Cut Pro and rotated both videos (each video different way) and placed them beside each other. Very very simple. Then I synchronized via my voice. Extremely easy. Took 15min all in all.
I’m sure that a nice day BEFORE sunset would make very cool videos like this. It’s so simple. :)
I felt for some time that the DP1 have much better battery life than I expected or felt at first - mainly due to the fact that my initial shooting habit changed some with time - my interest in zooming into every single detail in every image has now matured and I can relax more.
I decided to make new test.
I turned off the LCD, turned on full AF and put on the external view finder. In order to take as many shots as possible I also turned on continues mode. Three pictures was taken each time. (95% of the time). ISO100 used on the first 400 - then ISO400 after that. I restarted the camera 30 times in a row to make test more real. I shot some indoor and some out door. It does take some energy to take as many shots as I did. :D In one day.
I was asked to stand in the Sigma booth at another photo fair here in sweden, Elmia Foto & Video the 4-5th of April. I will show the Dp1 and SD14 to the public. If you have any nice shots that I could use then send them to carl@rytterfalk.com in JPEG format. Will be printed as A3 if I like what I see. :)
1. Lock white balance to dominant light source (or whatever you want) in this case “sunlight”
2. Move camera around and press AEL (lock exposure) when you think you got a good overall working exposure. Sky skin should be ok.
3. Press the “Focus” button (one time up on the four way dial on the DP1) this gives you close up mode or Macro mode (focus is now about 30-40cm from camera)
4. It helps to have a ND grad filter ready. Most occasions are perfect for this, makes a nice moody feeling. Very much used by the film industry. You can of course try different colors etc .
5. If you attach a polarizer it gives even more dramatic feeling to your movie. Deep nice colors with cool skies and less sweet in faces. If you have the wrong size you can hand hold it. haha
6. Upsize your video using “super resolution” with Video enhancer software (free 30day trial). PC only. I use VM-ware to run it on my Mac.
You don’t need a close up lens. I don’t have one. I will try to find one though. :D Film in macro mode MUST be cool!