Pretty amazing really how shallow DOF can isolate an object like this. It’s like entering a new world, and I find it very fascinating. Above shot is taken with the Sigma DP2.
As some of you noticed we like mushrooms, and fall in Sweden is like candy store for kids. These mushrooms are called Trattkantareller in Swedish and Cantharellus tubaeformis in Latin. Now you know. And we will dry them and use them during the cold and inhuman Swedish wintertime. See above shot at original size.
Here follows some shots that been on flickr for some time, but without me saying much. These are a bit Strobist as you can see how I did most of them. :) Btw, Everything in this post is developed using Silkypix. I actually learned more on how to use Silkypix since I developed these but they’ll do for now. Quadra time.." width="500" height="333" />
Updated! Now including the RAW from Flyingrooster and Biggydogs english fix.
Movie is now OK. ;)
I also baked a nice little raw pack for you so that if you don’t currently have a Sigma, you can at least play around with some files. It’s a small collection of recent pictures taken with SD14, DP1 and DP2.
The above movie is recorded as HD (1280×720) so view full screen with HD turned on for best experience. It’s currently processed and might be done when you watch. :)
[updated] Thanks silvar23 for the heads up about the DP1s – click here for the announcement! And to Shinzo Fukui for the cool news that there is one more native developer for Sigma RAW files – Silkypix! Click here to download your beta. Windows only though which is a pitty! But VMware is your friend. Anyone tried yet?
According to the DP1s will arrive in November this year. They seam to be quite poetic about the new camera too, at least if you’re reading the Google translated version. Try the last paragraph. It doesn’t say much really about what’s new but my guess is that it will have everything good about the DP2 as the TRUE II engine, faster and easier operations and better image quality with color modes. Perhaps higher resolution for movies? Here hoping. New LCD? That would be great!
Also news about the up’n'coming SD15 – a photo store (Scandinavian photo) has it on their site with a price tag of approximately €800 without tax. Hopefully that means both cameras will be out in a not too distant future. Also this is a VERY welcome update to the somewhat old SD14 and I hope they get buffer and speed right. :) Oh and some bright LCD would be nice and and and..
Now, what I’m really waiting for is a new beast that must be in the make somewhere in the crypts of Sigma – they’re not purchasing Foveon without continuing the magic, are they? I’d like to see a square sensor. Can someone tell me WHY there’s no square sensor except price of cutting the sensor cake differently? No more portrait or landscape thinking – just as with my Mudan 6×6. That’s such a great way to take photos. In RAW they’re always square – in Jpeg you select what ever size you prefer. Or are lenses made for 2/3? is the coating etc just bad in the upper / lower unused part? Also one of the very first tests of the foveon camera back in 2002 utilized a square sensor. Sooo cool. :D
Alright, I got that off my chest, feel much better now. Thoughts?
With the Sigma AML-1 you get closer, and not only that you get even shorter area in focus. You can create new worlds. :) I had the Sigma polarizer attached as well. Further down in this article you will see shots with and without reflections plus a comparison with DP1 and DP2. All except one shot is taken with DP2.
All are developed using SPP. No post production made except vignetting on three shots (you see it clearly). Can you match the number to the correct camera? They’re so many so if you pick two shots from each camera that’s enough. The SD14 used a 18-50mm EX lens + polarizer.. Winning what? Great honor! :D
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Just came home from a wedding session and wanted to share this very DP1′ish shot! :D I wanted the flash inside to get the “sunny” feeling. hehe. Anyways. BEDTIME.
It was raining and great shutter speeds turned into seconds. Well, what to do? These are shots taken with the DP1. I have lots of this type of pictures as I love them. It’s a cool way of isolating a subject. Not always successful but always worth a try. If you have taken shots like this please add in commenting field, I’d love to see yours!
The following photos are all available as full size.
I’m back with more shots from Yunnan, Dali – I really enjoy my stay so far and my DP’s hasn’t run out of juice once yet. I have one spare battery for each and I charge every night. I film quite a lot too, will show later when it’s time. One thing is extremely annoying and that’s when I switch between the two use interface is slightly different so I often press the wrong buttons which has killed some good moments, perhaps there should be some option to make the DP2 mimic the DP1.. :)
As some of you know I had problems with my CS3 installation so I installed Lightroom 2.4 instead, so this time I have a wide mix between LR developed shots and SPP 3.3 developed shots (saved as TIFF from SPP and imported into LR for my little watermark and some post adjustments such as vigneting. Often none). Can you see what is what?
Jaij! I made it again! Another post. woohooo.. Alright, this time I included some of those cool skies from a couple of days ago, they’re in the end of this post. Also another note to all these shots. Some of them has two different developments put together from the same raw. One for sky and another for the rest. Also, one or two has two different exposures and what I did was dead simple, I just made a fuzzy cut out from one shot to the other to get some more DR. Sky behind pigs and the dirty work black and white with a truck and a man. Open them up full and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t have a tripod with me so everything you see is hand held. Developed using SPP 3.3 for everything.
The above and below lady is 92 years old and we visited her because she didn’t have many days left of this life and they wanted some pictures of her. I so much love to look at old peoples faces, listed to their voices and just imagine what life was back then.
Above: Using my sunglasses with some green fading cheap thing to bring sky for you to see.. very powerful – Lucky for us it stayed mountain side.
Below: This is acually shot at F14 using DP2. I cropped out some, the oof is very nice don’t you think? And woaa how sharp these lenses can be. DP1 is probably slightly sharper but Dp2 has slightly better bokeh. :) Above: A really fast two shot sky magic thingi. Don’t look too close at the right side if the picture as it’s not a perfect match. I was shaking a little or something. Sat on a double seat bike at the moment (those bikes are so much fun!).
Below the below shot and the below shot: Cool with all these old style trucks! Not so cool with environment in mind. Also x3 fill light is used for many of these shots. Above: Spiders!!! These are BIG things, totally dangerous for flies and stuff. :) And they come in massive amounts, I don’t like spiders too close to me..
Below: Sky is double exposed. Copied with fluffy border to fit nicely. I moved too much between shots so it’s a bit dirty. But works. Above and below: Would you mind being here?
Below: Some of those shots from a couple of days ago. We went up for 276 stairs and enjoyed the view. If you open up some of the portrait shots you’ll find lots of dragon flies. There was literally thousands of them, especially higher up. They said it was because of rain coming. Pretty big too.. Above: Dragonflies!! See this shot even bigger, or you can’t really see any of those flying thingis.. Above: Lastly, a special breed of dog from Tibet, once made to protect tibetans from Tigers and other predators. This one is about a year old and will become much bigger. It’s nothing you really wanna play around with even if it looks like a family dog.
Hi again, now I developed some more from last days. I took some today that I hopefully can post tomorrow of the lake here. Very dramatic weather these days. Oh, and we’re on 2000m elevation (height?) and mountains around are just below 3000m. Very cool environment. :) And these are developed using none calibrated screens. I checked on some other computers and it looked ok. Mixed DP1 and DP2 shots, click each for bigger and with info regarding DP and ISO. Exif should be there too.
Something you drink always, tea! Like in Britain only it comes in more visible form. Often they have some herbs inside that they call medicine and doctor told them to drink. When eating you always get green tea to the food, lots of people carry a tea thingi with them at all times such as these below.
I was teasing Linn telling her that modern China used VC machines to cut all those fancy patterns and images they have everywhere in windows and chairs and stuff. How wrong I was. Lots of those are man made. I walked on a street with a huge amount of smaller companies with people making really really beautiful stuff such as these below. Light was worse than I though so ISO should have been higher for better sharpness. My fault.
Pictures below are from Dali ancient city. Very cool place.
Above shot isn’t ISO400 as image says. It’s 100. Too fast work. Linn is waiting for the computer. ;) She wanna develop her shots now. aaaaaaa
Food, what can I say? Chinese cooking is just from another planet and something to die for. A restaurant often looks something like this and you point your finger on whatever vegetable, meat or mushroom or whatever is visible and they’ll tell you one or two ways to cook it – you select one and oala you have your dish. So if you point a tomato they will most likely make a tomato egg mix that is very nice.
I went with friends to some different restaurant these days and I took some shots to show you what it looks like with many dishes on a table. And I’ll ask Linn to fill in some short info on what’s being served but in short it’s donkey, pork, water living vegetable, beans etc etc – even grasshopper (but not on any of these shots) and the candle is not there to be nice – but to keep flies away.
Developed on uncalibrated equipment, tried to make sure they looked ok using histogram. Not that easy with colors. Oh well. Will update with some text later but now I’m off to that hot spring to swim. Big thing with Linn’s relatives etc. They have high hopes for my swimming style. haha.
Oh and under each picture you see if it’s DP1 or DP2. Most is DP1 as it’s wider and suites my photography style a bit better.
Human power. Or the power of humans. It’s quite amazing how some of these people work and you can’t really see it on this shot but if I wanted to take a picture of him he would most likely give me a big smile and treat me a cigarett (which I would have to decline). And no, I’m not talking about any of the guys sitting there..
I have shoe size 46 in European size, that’s extremely uncommon in China and maybe if I lived in Beijing (Northern Chinese are often bigger, they say it comes from them eating less rice and more bread) I could find something but down here in the south it’s nearly impossible. So above is a shoe maker that I ordered sandals from. I had to paint what I wanted it to look like and everything. The bottom layer is made from an old car tire too. How cool isn’t that? Well. In another week or so I’ll know the result. And price? He was a bit on the expensive side. 60RMB
Above lady has Bai minority clothes on, the same minority that Linn comes from.
No money to read the local newspaper? No problem! :)
Jeff Sickels, the creater of Sigma X3F quicklook plugin has once more shown his skill and released a welcome update. He made this comment a while back:
There’s a new version of the X3F_qlgenerator out that now uses x3f_extract. It handles the DP1 X3F files significantly better than earlier versions (a plus), and keeps the same orientation enhancements from v1.2. Thanks to Carl’s RAW DP2 Pack, I was also able to verify that Quicklook handles the DP2 files rather well (now I just have to get my hands on a DP2). Enjoy.
Getting bored of myself, decided to take a look at what I forgot to post. Some has been posted but some was forgotten. So here we go. :D A year with the SD14 and DP1. And to make this post super honest I only used Sigma Photo Pro, no Photoshop at all. So this is what you could do without magic wands and plugins.. :P
There is a house close to where I live, it’s a house where people live that haven’t got the best out of life. I go there a couple of times every week and I almost never bring my camera – mostly because I don’t want them to think I’m there for the shot. But this Monday I brought the DP1 (I so much love it’s size!) and I under exposed ISO800 to get better shutter speeds. (light was dim).
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