All images taken using Sigma SD15. ISo200-800. Developer: SPP.
Click each image to see what lens and ISO used.

Last five images are all taken using the Sigma 17-50 2.8 OS (using OS) and all are available as full size jpegs over at flickr – But the very last one you can take a closer look at here. Most shots above are ISO400 or more.

Now, first of all I want to tell you that Jacob, the kid that looks sooo sad – was that because his father (my brother) didn’t want him to have the pacifier in all day. He’s in a quite emotional age so to speak which I kind of used yesterday. I had the 85mm ready at all times and when he started to cry I was soo happy! :D – The girly looking kid, is a girl. That’s Jacobs little sister Ida. ISO range between 50 and 800.

Here I told him to stand in the corner, not sure he quite understood that the light there was interesting – the original shot was quite dim as light hit the lens – fixed that a little bit in Lightroom. But development is SPP.

Instead of the pacifier Sven tried hard to give Jacob something else to play with – here showing some youtube clips on his iPad. (Which under normal circumstances would keep him busy, and happy). But not today. :P

Little sister Ida not really understanding her big brothers agony.  All above shots taken with the Sigma 85mm – Developed using Silkypix and Sigma Photo Pro.

All images at full size here.

Went out today with the intend to do some shooting with my friend Bengt Werner – while on my way I stumbled upon another photographer which tried desperately to find the little kingfisher that had hidden himself somewhere.. I took him with me and off we went all three into the wilderness of sweden and finally there (around the corner from anywhere) we found an Emu.. (Dromaius novaehollandiae) And of course I had to take a few shots – I’ll show you one..

Sigma SD15, 50-500 @ ISO100

Now. The thing I really wanted to talk about wasn’t this bird – but those colors when dealing with ISO400 and above – using Silkypix! And the strangest thing was when I imported some shots taken just before entering home – standing at my door I shot some small birds sitting in a bush – light was bad and I switched to ISO400 and OS on – these shots looked pretty bad opened in Lightroom but instead of crying I tried opening one of them in Silkypix and what a sight! It was really like day and night – never seen such direct difference before.

I did know that Lightroom processed my Dp1x files pretty bad but didn’t know it could mess up my SD15 files this much! Oh, and yes, I’m ok with some noise so LR3 has normal noise reduction turned on while Silkypix has very little of it.  Still.

All photos below shot using 50-500 with OS and ISo400+ (some came out darker and had to be pushed some)

ISO400 50-500 @ 450mm 1/30s hand held.

This last one one stop under exposed – pushed to ISO800.

And as always – they are all viewable at it’s full glory at my 2011 spring set at flickr. I might also add that I also tried to open one of the shots using Sigma Photo Pro and it came out beautiful as well, so no need to get Silkypix just because of these birds.. :) SPP is still free!

Look what I found.. ISO is around 1000 and developed using Raw Developer using very little noise reduction (much less than Sigma Photo Pro applies).. There is some banding seen in the background and I’m curios to know if the new Sigma SD1 has less of that as it’s a bit annoying. (even if only seen at higher ISO’s).  I must say that I believe my SD14 having less of that banding type noise – but I guess it varies beween cameras.

Most viewers would’t care though and just look at the crow as the crow it is! :D

Raw Developer has for many years been a jewelry among developer available for the Sigma raw. I had many letters and raw files exchanged with the creator of RD and  I can’t say how happy I am that we have native support for more or less all Sigma cameras to date. It’s NOT a perfect developer but it has a such neutral and natural view of colors that I feel is really hard to get using any other software.

These were post developed using Lightroom as a green shift on the right side of each shot was left untouched in RD. I had to add a touch of gradient filter to take it away. (a tiny amount of magenta).. I also lifted the chest of the bird in some shots and I switched off noise reduction in RD to further bring those colors out in the open – if you open them at full size you will see some of that.. :)

All shots shot between IS075- 1200 and of course taken with the Sigma 50-500 OS. Hand held.

This was shot using ISO400, I lifted the bird slightly so it’s a bit more ISO in terms of noise. Noise reduction is put at a minium so it’s quite noisy if you look really close. :)

These black and white ones has been heavily cropped and was both shot at very tricky light conditions.. ISO on camera was set to 800 but they had to be pushed some to get the right look. I shot using bracketing with a +0.7 setting to ensure some correctly exposed shots or a shot with useful sharpness. Noise reduction is completely turned off, which gives this really nice tone to the shot.

Tired of this little bird now are you? :D It’s funny how many angles you can find of a bird that only sits still for about a minute only to fly away and stay gone for an hour or two and when people decide to give up he shows again for another minute or so. The orchestra of shutters accompanying his arrival is such music and such fun!

Today a fellow photographer (Martin Carlsson from Pixelstore) called and asked if I wanted to assist him during a session with some rock band named Skurk – of course – and because I was only there to assist I only brought my SD15 equipped with what was on since yesterday,  the 8-16mm. I did manage to squeeze the trigger a couple of times and below is a selection of images. Studio images are mostly higher ISO (1600-3200) but there are a few where I did use a tripod and lower ISO as well – Seconds of exposure! aaaah. Lights was disturbingly bad so I HAD to switch to monochrome WB. Martin was using a couple of flashes placed around the room. I didn’t.

Pictures has been developed using SPP and in some cases only LR3.

ISO400 @ f4 and 1/6s hand held leaning on car window. Yesterday evening – on my way home from my parents house where I filmed yesterdays movie – the DP1x really comes in handy when scapes (?!) like this appears.

Lightroom 3.2 used to develop and process.

Edit:

I just had to add a Raw Developer version as the latest 1.8.11 has native DP1x support! I used monochrome XDR and saved as 16bit tiff and continued with some post stuff in Lightroom.. Noise reduction is completely turned off (you can find stuck pixels) and sharpness is down to a minimum.  I also managed to save as 11MP without knowing. So, you have a pretty big image to look at if you wanna pixel peep.

EDIT! I redeveloped some using SPP 3.3 and added some others. Please see the full set for higher resolution.

Now, it was getting dark, really dark and that’s when people started to gather in the city center of Xia Guan, the Capital of Dali County. Now, this festival sounds nice and I’ve noticed preparations for days. People walking around with large torches, or truck loads with them preparing for the final day of sells.

Fire festival. I heard about it for years but I never had the chance to go and now, finally I’m here! My SD15 (had to return the “pre-version” and being sent a real one) is stuck in customs and I only have my DP1s and Dp2. Not that they’re not good but the SD15 would give me more situational shots – but I’m very very happy with these images! Not as many as they could have been but SPP did a great job on those colors!

The strange thing is that EVRYONE was here, streets where filled with people of all ages and torches was being lit everywhere. Some placed like on the picture above as a big fire others where carried around.. Everything would have been just fine if it stopped here but no, these Chinese are crazy! in every street corner sits people selling some kind of powder containing wood and from the smell I guess it’s something else that ignites superfast and this powder you buy and then you take a hands full and throw it into the fire! It all fires up with a woff and a huge flame and people are cheering.

Three images below, made using SPP3.3. First is Linn, second me and third her mom.

We bought some too and we had lots of fun but we soon realized that people carrying those torches was looking at ME with fire in their eyes and suddenly I find my self in a huge flame and my back is superhot – they’re throwing this powder at each other too! And me and girls are perhaps the perfect pray – it’s from now on I feel like a hunted animal and I don’t want to go home! It’s dangerous and it’s not dangerous and they’re putting me on fire with a smile! SOO STRANGE!!! :D

Below, the second more blue version is SPP 3.3 while the first is SPP 4.1. ISO is above 1600, but exposure compensated for higher so more noise visible. Still, fire is beautiful!

This guy was trying to get closer to me without me seeing and his friend had his hand full of powder getting ready to throw at me, luckily I turned around before it all happened and could get this shot instead. hehe.. We where really running around like crazy trying to hide with groups of people and at the same time I was eager to get some shots. aaaaa

I would be surprised if there was less than half a million people on the streets – it was that many and I didn’t see ONE foreigner. So I was the haunted one. haha. And beautiful girls too, like Linn. So we tried to stay together as much as possible – she went up in flames a couple of times and her but hurt.. at least she said. My eyebrows was curly the day after, says something about the heat.

All images available at full size at my flickr China 2010 set.

Now, I had a some days together with only DP2 – the strange thing is that when I bring the DP2, then all situations are begging for wider – and when bringing the DP1 the opposite. But these below worked perfectly well using the DP2′s 42mm lens. Also, a reminder. Edited on nothing calibrated but I think they should look ok.

This little girl  stood outside the window of a restaurant and she looked at me constantly – the guy sitting there is the restaurant owner and he tried several times to scare her away by banking on the window and by by looking at her with angry face.. But she remained with the same face, looking at me.. This is perhaps the only time I been thinking about adoption. :P

Also notice that some have a cropped version as well.. it’s not me taking two shots. :)

A couple of days ago Linn wanted to get her nails done as it’s extremely cheap in Kunming compared to Sweden (about 1/20th of the price) and while waiting I walked around a bit and saw these two young girls coming in a near by alley.

I walked a bit more and when I returned I saw the same girls standing outside the same store where Linn did her nails. I took another shot.

Now, they really did time pass fast and we had a great time together. They really wanted me to take lots of shots and their mother came too – but I didn’t get a picture of her. (or one of the girls mother as of the one child per mom rule).

All shots taken with the Sigma DP1s and developed using SPP 4.1 / but I really have no idea about colors as I sit on an old laptop only visually calibrated.

These are part of my China 2010 set. Almost all are higher ISO, 200 and above. lots at 400 and 800 as weather was pretty dark. Raining a lot. Also I’m not keen on the way SPP 4.1 handles noise at higher ISO, will perhaps redo some using SPP3.3.

Post processed using Lightroom 3.

Went to the famous Hornborgarsjön today, it’s famous because every year tens of thousands of Common Cranes come here to play and so do tourists. And me. The lake is located about 100km from where I live so it’s a bit stupid that I don’t go there more often. It’s such a nice place for the 100-300 to play. Perhaps the SD15 plus 50-500 OS would be even better?

I made them BW because it’s so nice, colors looks perfectly ok too but.. and these are all SPP 4, which actually, believe it or not makes pretty nice BW’s from ISO400 and below. (not above). I had to underexpose some in order to get  decent speed, light was so so.. So BW’s the way to go. Might show you color version another time.

Oh, and do you know what’s so cute about these birds? Once they found their mate, they stick together! :)

Above: Cropped image.

Another way to crop the above shot. :)

Please enjoy the bigger version. Click to get it.

It fits perfectly to have a post about my Canon 5D experience after my article from yesterday don’t you think? :D Anyways. Every wednesday evening I have open photography classes in a near by high school and this time I brought the Canon 5D Mark 2 with me – much because it’s still dark at this time of the year and indoor light isn’t perfect for any of my current Sigmas. So I went coupled with a 24-70mm and my Elinchrom Quadra. (Quadra is only used when I say so, or you see it).

OBS. None of these images will hurt your eyes. I promise! :D

And we’re not the only ones on school at this late hour. ISO 3200 on photos above, below is ISO2500. Pretty impressive if you consider the really really bad light in that room. All images in this post are available in it’s full size, some cropped some not. All images has been developed using the latest version of Capture One.

What I really enjoyed was how well the Canon 24-70mm 2.8L lens worked. Focus was ok even in bad light – it failed from time to time but only in situations where I would understand. :)

Above is a shot taken with the 50mm 1.8 lens at 1.8 and ISO2000. (second image is a crop of the first one). Lens itself has a very cheap feel to it, made of cheap plastic and cost very little but its optical performance is nothing but cheap! So I took it for a ride into the rainy outdoors and created a nice little setup using my Quadra and an umbrella.

Canon 50mm 1.8 @ 2.5. The girl above is a heavy metal drummer. She’s really good too but it’s really hard to imagine her banging those drums when you talk to her. :)

It’s sooo easy to blow those highlights (see sky?!), I have a feeling that I got at least two stops more on any of my Sigmas. Also, so many colors has been lost, and most of these shots has been developed using more or less zero color noise reduction in order to get as far as possible away from that nutella look that we all hate so much.. (don’t we?!) – but, even with color noise reduction set at zero, lots of colors has been lost. Her zipper has this strong yellowish metallic color on one side, but lost on the other. I tried hard to make it visible but it just wouldn’t. (the raw file itself DO contain some  yellow information in the zipper but developer just wasn’t able to pull it through). The three layered Sigma would show everything, especially at this low ISO. (320)

But the 50mm 1.8 is really nice!

Above shot of me has been taken by Nils.

How about trying the Quadra indoor?

It’s always tricky to have such enormous difference between colors in a shot, and that makes it difficult to process. ISO640. I’m thinking about getting myself some gel’s or something and experiment with temperatures.

Now, over to really low ISO, 3200 to 25600. They don’t look really good in color so most of them has been processed as black and white. Some lit only by the flash on mobile phones. :)

Above is ISO25600, the rest has mostly been shot using ISO5000.

Above is a ISO3200 shot and as light my students helped me with their mobile phones! :D Jaij.

Alright, I guess this will be the first in at least two reviews of SPP4 and I want to concentrate on differences between this version and the old 3.3 image wise (will come back to selective noise reduction a bit more later on). Most things with this new version is good. It’s faster, has better colors and you can adjust amount of noise reduction. But, and there is a big but! Sigma forgot about all of us that loves BW conversions. :´(

Now you might wanna try out different WB´s instead of just fooling around with the color wheel. Each pre-white balance has been altered some and correct WB can sometimes make your day, more so with this version than with old 3.3.

If you have lots of ISO50 images around then you can go ahead and redevelop them because they will most likely look much better in this version, especially if some of that highlight was burnt. Higher ISO shots now has a much more vibrant look, greens are more green, reds are less yellow and less saturated at the same time but in this case this is all good. Also, you can now select white balance for a big bunch of images instead of having to select them one by one. Nice!

First, SPP manage to squeeze much more colors and life out of old high ISO images. Also, have a close look at that fire!!

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO400. You can see how fire has lots more dynamic range and the reflection in his face looks much improved. Also notice how the green trees behind looks more saturated and less dull. Both images has been treated the same, same settings, same WB (shade) and white balance picked from eye.

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO1600. Sigma worked hard to improve image quality in bad indoor light. Be careful with your WB selection as this one looked terrible with the wrong one selected. Also play around with that new noise reduction. Some images don’t need so much and you gain some nice saturation to leave it at lower levels.

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO50. What’s really amazing is how they improved ISO50′s dynamic range!  Take a look at the sky, and remember this image has lots of fill light applied. I think 0.8 on both SPP3.3 and 4.  Colors, especially reds looks better too. Less orange.

At first I thought SPP4 did a bad job, there seams to be less information in the highlight.

But after I pulled the exposure compensation slider back -2.0 you clearly see how much more dynamic range you get in this new version. Looks like a full stop or perhaps even more! ISO50 will certainly be more useful in the future especially with all these OS lenses coming! :)

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO200. Green has been more separated and it feels like you have more tones of green to play with. a very welcome addition! Not sure if Sigma beats Silkypix though, I think they’re still is ahead in the green departement. I know someone over at Dpreview complained about SPP4s green and I tried to find issues with it with many different shots from various cameras but without luck (or should I say, with luck?!) – and couldn’t really find any bad or flawed situations. Help me! :)

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO400. Inside a shop, mixed light. And as you see red has been mighty improved! Now contains much less yellow and has a more realistic tone – also lots more tones and detail inside the red. Nice! (same settings on both images, DP2)

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO1600. Now to the BAD. As you know I’m a monochrome junkie and I love how SPP deals with black and white high ISO images. But that’s now history and we now have something that looks terribly bad.

I’m sure Sigma will do something about this and I hope that they at the same time realize the need of monochrome white balance in RAW mode so that we can enjoy high ISO shooting for real!

SPP3.3 on the left and SPP4 on the right. ISO1600. The only good is that with lower ISO (below ISO400) this mess isn’t applied.

Please Sigma, have an option to turn this strange massacre off!

Alright.. This was a first look. Comments?

Here’s a shot of Linn taken in the big city of Göteborg. DP2, ISO400. I said in the video that I was about to publish it so I felt obligated to do so. :D Full version.

A basic tour in how to produce nice black and white images with the help of Sigma Photo Pro. And in case I didn’t make myself clear in the video, no flash or strobes has been used in any of these images. Only halogen “flood” light, a 1000w of it - pretty bad really and therefor black and white is a really good solution. Also, camera used? Dp2. Surprise! :D

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBUOC2ioow0

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