Original

Another shot from my trip up north and this time it’s a Yak bull (At least I think so).. :) It’s a shot taken at ISO200 – You may want to open the shot in PS in order to fully see what I see, it’s still the strange profile bug making my shots look weird online. :(

Now, maybe you would like to know what the shot looks like in it’s none edited state?

I started with the last shot (almost) and saved at 16bit tiff, and worked with the dodge brush in Aperture to get where I wanted. I’m getting better with Aperture with everyday that passes. It’s good to be forced sometimes. :) I’m even thinking of installing Pixelmator and work with that instead of Photoshop.. At least while in China. :)

If you go to a party, what could possibly be better to bring than your SD15, the 17-50 2.8 OS and a couple of strobes? I asked myself the same question and came to the fantastic conclusion that  - nothing could be better! if you find some of these shots a little bit “smoother” than usual – then you’re correct and what I did was using a new plugin that I felt I needed for another mission – a skin fix thingelebing.. Imagenomic Portraiture. Amazing software, if you ask me.

Now taking a picture in a mixed light situation like here you really need to think twice about how to place your subject and what you use as your background. I personally love the warmth that light bulbs provide when used against the colder flash – but in order to get the effect wanted you need to meter for the background – in this case here my iPhone light meter gave me 1/8s at ISo200. (Some are ISO400 as well) – and as you understand, using 1/8s would be a No No if there was any light in the subjects face you would end up with a smeary result with mixed yellow / bluish tones.

Lucky enough, I was able to stand in another room with the light turned off – and if I took a picture without using any strobe, you would see the person almost as a silhouette. My Friend Josef Johansson, a photo entusiast, helped me by running around with the smaller Sigma 530 strobe as a “head light” – I really like when it hits hard as with Elin’s portrait below – but it does take away some of that contrast..

added explanation.
But having a headshot without light wouldn’t cool so I placed my Quadra with a tiny amount of flash, in an umbrella over my right shoulder – Powered at something like 25-40Ws (full power is 400Ws) – and because there is no ambient light in their face, all light comes from the flash which gives a very pure coloristic and a VERY warm background.

Now, how can I possibly shot with such a super slow shutter speed hand held and still get away with it? Well, the trick is dual – First, the Sigma 17-50mm 2.8 OS which has a fantastic optical stabilizer gives me the opportunity to freeze the background enough even with speeds as low as 0,3s – normally if it was a persons face I would have had him / her to stand completely still in order to freeze – but that isn’t possible, people move, it’s in their nature.

So why is the face so sharp and even looks like it’s sometimes in the middle of an emotion which sugests movement. The answer is that because the face isn’t lit by anything except the flash, the flash exposure overtakes the cameras exposure. So the shutter speed in these photos is in reality two different ones in one. The face is exposed with a very short flash duration of something like 1/8000s and the background which isn’t touched by the flash with it’s 0,3s..

Pretty cool really. :)

As a skin fix show – in this case it’s kind of stupid to use it, but it gives you an understanding of what it does. the foveon sensor does catch a tremendous amount of information and in a portrait situation, some of that info just is a little too much. :) So, we could call this a forced bayer / nutella effect.

All images was developed with Sigma Photo pro 4.2 (Mac) and then post-processed and uploaded to flickr using Lightroom 3. All images can be found in their full glory at my spring 2011 set.

I tried my best to make a shot that more or less looked the same and to my surprise I learned a thing along the way. The DP1x (and perhaps DP2 and SD15 too) is extremely sensitive to what WB you select. Make sure you pick the right one and your colors will look much better! I selected the wrong one first in the scene below and SD14 got it right using auto WB, but DP1x looked correct first after using “Shade” wb – all other options made orange look red! (This is a shade situation)..

All developments done using Sigma Photo Pro 4.2.

Dp1x – f11, 13s iso100. Full size. If I selected Incandescent WB then the greenish corner issue disappear but over all colors will be slightly less pleasing although some parts looks a bit more true. Like the green color. See that version here.

SD14 – f11, 8s, iso100. Full size. Strangely I had a short exposure time here, might be that light fell quickly at the time but .. hmm.. anyways, this SHOULD give the edge to SD14 so bare that in mind.

And some easier to view comparisons shots..
DP1x to the left. SD14 to the right.

Open up those shadows! What happens then? I added som e nasty X3 fill light so see what was behind the darker areas of the picture. How well does the DP1x hold up? The DP1x crop is from the second shot above, using the incandescent WB. Dont’ ask me why.

Another note. The Sigma 10-20 that I used on the SD14 performed very nice before I got the DP1 , but now, knowing how good the lens of the DP1 is everything else looks pretty pale in comparison. True with the DP1x as well. There might of course be a slight difference in focus as well, it’s easier to focus perfectly on the DP1x for sure. LIVE VIEW PLEASE!!! (SD1)

(Above is shot and painted using iPhone and the SketchBook application)

I’m sorry, I’ve been looking at pictures all day long and suddenly I felt I wanted to do something different – looking around and found much foam board / core that I could use to make something. Now, my iPhone 4 arrived a couple of days ago and I realized that I shake way to much when filming – I need to concentrate hard to get anything stable. So I made myself a stabilizer, steady cam or whatever out of foam core. Now, you could use corrugated paper (wellpapp) if you don’t currently have any foam core thingi at home.

Movie is filmed entirely on the iPhone 4 – and edited and uploaded using iMovie. Music by my sister Kerstin Karlsson. Get it here if you like. :)

enjoy!

Here’s a short wrap up on how far I’ve come to date. I now actively use my home built opal plastic tube thingi that some of you have seen and I want to thank Ted who gave me the idea (the round shape that was). Also a big thanks’ to all of you that gave suggestions and comments in my “HELP ME” post – for you that missed it, please visit and read. Great comments!

On the right is my original sketch of how I thought the opal stuff could be used and my setup right now more or less looks the same, although I only use three light sources – One from beneath as the picture show and one from the left and the big soft box from right, tilted 45 degrees. So it’s not exactly as the sketch but very close.

Here is the video I made that shows how I built the box.

And yes, it’s very irritating that the video size came up wrong – Mom looks fat! :D I tried to use the built in uploader within ScreenFlow – but as you see it doesn’t cope well with my wide screen iMac. I better export using x264 in the future as well.

I also try to eliminate the need to paint those rings – and by painting I mean using the curve tool and then paint in Photoshop using the brush – which you need to do if you have bad reflections – and with this setup I more or less eliminated any unwanted, unfriendly reflection. The thing that looks like a light source is actually a white paper thing that I put inside to give a shape. (Clive). I’m still experimenting.

In order to make it look as goldish as possible I needed to see gold because these rings are all made out of different materials – and has slightly different tones of metal color – kind of goldish but often not so I have to work on each to make them look kind of the same. Although I do feel that I over did it some on these below. I used this shot / illustration as gold model.

All images developed and edited using Photoshop Lightroom 3 and Photoshop. No painting this time – I might do that with the final thing but I’ll try to avoid it as much as possible. ISO100 used. Might change back to ISO50 as it’s MUCH denser to work with.

I have some left to do, but something tells me that the hardest part is behind me now.

Here’s a second movie about the set in action. :)

Now I moved so much away from my initial setup that I feel that I will show you a picture or two of what my current setup actually looks like. Woohoo! I will post some in the comments section.  The above shot is slightly cleaned up – the gold surface was slightly scratched and some dents so I repainted the middle reflection and the bottom left - but other than that it’s the original photo – I’m now very satisfied with how reflections works – and if I change ring reflections still look beautiful. I must say that the pure IQ that the Sigma SD15 gives is extremely high. I’ve been looking at other photographers works with jewelry and once you go closer it just doesn’t look good. This shot is available in full size as well. A bit too full really. :)

This time I didn’t use anything else than LR3 and PS5. The only thing left now is to continue with OOF – and see where I should stop before text is readable. This shot is ISO50, 105mm, f11, 1/160s.

Final capture for day four: We had a long talk today, me and the jewelry guy. He wanted the text within each ring to be unreadable so we decided that taking each text away using PS would take way to long, but using a wider aperture could work instead. I had to move the light quite a bit (I used lowest power at f20 on those last shots) and now I had to use  a semitransparent white circular reflector in-between the softbox and the “set” . I finally got a working F8. I could go all the way down to f5.6 but then it was hard to see anything exept one or two diamonds in focus.

I also wrapped the whole sets bottom in golden reflective material – and it seams to work pretty nicely. There is a 3000px version of the below image.

Slightly older part, posted this morning: Today I wanted to try something real and off went Linns ring. I told her to clean it carefully because of all the dirt seen by the mighty 105mm Sigma lens. But wow, we didn’t expect this much scratches to be there – and thanks to photoshop and my great painting skills I was able to partly save her ring. :)

This time I added the Sigma 530 DG, snooted from the right – and the big softbox as always from the top, slightly tilted so that I can reach with the Sigma SD15. Developed using Sigma Photo Pro 4.1 using vivid color mode.

After:

Before:

Also, here’s another shot, another ring, this time a fake one – just trying different ways to reflect. This time I’m holding a long hard, white paper above the ring, infront of the flash. Creates a light, pretty OK looking thingi. And don’t look too close on this one, at 100% size it looks horrible!! Sooo much dirt. (although I didn’t upload the full size of this one).

Decided that I wanted some practice using my Sigma 530DG Super and my Elinchrom Quadra. Today was a bright sunny day and I was hiding together with my students in the shadows trying to get optimum conditions for photography. I used both Sigma DP1 and DP2 and as soon as you see strong colors around the flash, that’s the DP1 used and It’s me forcing it by placing the light inside the frame (I enjoy those colors tremendously) . All shots processed using Sigma SPP4 and Lightroom 3 Beta 2. (from TIFF)

These above where the very first shots, I noticed that I had to turn on something in order to make it work. :) And as you might notice it has a very strong “flashy” feeling and by increasing shutter speed and lower the quadras power I got a more natural looking light. See below. Also notice that there is no “color” problems as long as light is outside frame.

Zooming by running! Above shot shows how you can get some cool colored light even from the DP2.

ON / OFF, With and without light below. Sigma DP2 used. It was pretty tricky to get a good ambient light in order for the background blue sky to show, but after a few exposures I found a good balance. ISO100 used.

And about the same place a few meters to the side, but this time using the Sigma DP1. And it’s also slightly cropped.

Silly tests below. ISO200. Dp2 and DP1.

And finally, one shot of Johannes who was holding the light most of the time. Shot taken using Dp1 and ISO200.

All shots available as full size, click here if you want to have a closer look.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc63rO-MuRA

Full size image

Alexander is trying to quit smoking and I’m not sure what it is I see in his eye, but a little bit of shame perhaps that I caught him? But it’s a bit of a setup, I asked him to look serious and he tried his best.

I developed this image twice in Sigma Photo Pro. Fist one with ONLY background in mind. Red channel worked nicely but then his face was very very dark. So I developed a second time with the blue channel and this time his face was nicely lit. (shadows often brightens up in the blue channel).. The rest is all about PS.

 

Photo taken by Martin Carlsson using a Canon 5D Mark2

Me and my friend Martin Carlsson had one of our nerdy meetings yesterday. We didn’t have a real plan, more then go out for a session but weather was really as dull as it gets and none of us felt really happy about it so Martin came up with this truly excellent idea to try out some extreme macro using the reversed lens technique.

I thought the idea was brilliant, especially in mind that I had my trusty 70mm macro that probably would become like a microscope and what if I turned my 120-300 bigma around? Would that make me see atoms for real? I was pretty sure I would so we made a setup with my Quadra, a bunch of lenses and a VISA card. Mostly because people know what it looks like.

Now, here’s a shot with the Sigma 70mm Macro NOT reversed. You get pretty close by doing nothing, just using it as it’s supposed to be used. This is as close as you get. (and don’t you dare try using those numbers!!!)

Now I reversed it but to my surprise nothing much happened. I didn’t get any closer. hmm. I ran out getting myself a bigger gun. My 70-200mm 2.8 lens. I swong it around and it gave me less then the 70mm, at least at 200m. 70mm looked closer. So I figured that my assumption of more mm was wrong. So I got myself my 17-70. At least I could try and see if wider meant closer.

Sure enough, soon I was traveling over the VISA cards surface and maan was it a beauty. I never thought a piece of plastic could look this beautiful. Close to the same feeling looking at Avatar in 3D for the first time. :D

So if 17mm meant closer what was my next step? The 12-24 (which Martin now tried in the background) was a bit tricky because of the round frontal lens. But I did have something even wider – my 10-20!

Now, the 17mm was difficult enough to control. Every breath and dare I say heart beat effected my steadiness greatly and things didn’t get easier with the 10-20 at 10mm. It was really tricky, to give you a feeling for how shallow depth of field is I tried to catch the top of one of those small letters on the card.. See how background fades away! Nice bokeh too! :D

It was EASY to miss, either you got the top, bottom or just a big blur. All depending on who touched the table or walked the floor or if a big bird flew outside my window.

Now, what’s next? All above shots has been taken wide open. I had no idea how to change aperture on a lens that wasn’t mounted but Martin had an idea. By changing the Aperture while mounted he then pressed the “aperture test button” and while holding the button he gently released the lens and oala – aperture was still at wanted f-stop! Now things got even more interesting!

How about Linns face at f8 – f32?

Or why not some fine salt? (not sea salt or anything huge like that)

Or the landscape of a swedish 20kr bill? And yes, the black part of the image was me not holding the reversed lens perfectly aligned. It wasn’t that easy!

And finally Martin started staring into a good old light bulb – as if the quadras flashes and strong LED wasn’t enough disturbing. I’m pretty sure Martin took some better shots with his 5D but here’s my only sharp one. Or at least, a bit sharp. Lamp never stood really still and it was terribly hard to take a decent shot.

But I got pretty close! :)

Alright, if you have your own shots to share, then please do! (it’s easy to do when you post a comment).

EDIT: You saw it? Please check it out again as it’s now much nicer looking, especially full screen” Make sure you have HD selected.

This video is made for Linn to show on her last day at work for colleges. But I think it might be fun for you to see it as it shows how I work a bit. :)

And here’s a picture of Linn, in case you don’t know what she looks like. She’s the shorter of them two.

UPDATE: Some of these shots has now been redeveloped using Lightroom 3 beta. Just wanted to try the flickr upload function, not sure these looks any better, but contains lots more black. Previous upload was developed using Raw Developer. They’re all in full size available in my flickr account.

The other week, two of my photography students wanted to play with a home built disco strobe. A 50W light connected to a big wooden box with a car battery inside along with a mix of cables.. We turned off all light, put the camera on bulb mode (a students Nikon D60) and started shooting using a trigger.

One guy standing with the strobe controlling speed of strobe and direction – another holding something to shield the light some (barn doors), a third to hold the trigger as long as something happened in front of camera and the rest standing around waiting for their turn.

We did this for about 45minutes, continues flashing light – it was a very strange feeling to turn on the “real” light after and you could feel how much your brain had worked. Felt very very tired!. :) Almost the same feeling as going of a boat after a windy day..

So these shots of nothing serious – Jimmy, the owner of the camera uploaded some of the shots on my FTP – but unfortunately only those of me. ;)

Recently we had some friends over – all the way from Germany. Bob, Olga and Anastasia came for Linn’s birthday (Days later Olga had her birthday as well). Bob and Olga are two well known artists in the Sigma oriented photographic community and our roads crossed many years ago deep in the dpreview forums and later we also met when exposing our photographs at the Photokina fair.

I often discuss work with them, they’re two brilliant artists with a rare eye combined with great technical skills.

Now, during their visit in our home they showed me some photos they’ve taken for Schwarzkopf German Hairdressing Awards – photos were taken back in February but they weren’t allowed to show them in public due to the rules of the competition. But I could have a peak.

Fluid females. Photos taken with the Sigma SD14.

I remember that my first feeling was, oh, such nice light – perfectly lit and great focus on hair. Cool expressions from models, dead cool! Soon I had too look again, something was wrong, (right) and I saw that one of them must’v had some body paint or something. Looking even closer I saw some drops hanging in mid air from one of the girls cheek and I soon realized that it was liquid. I don’t know if Olga perhaps told me before I fully understood but oh how cool I thought it was. Is! If a jaw can drop, this was it!

Now I begged them to tell me how, and we talked for hours about how these shots saw the light of day and I was totally inspired! I’ve been waiting for them to be able to publish them somehow and not only that, here’s an article with a “how to” guide so you can – at least try – your own liquid person!

A huge thank you to Olga Vasilkova and Bob Van Ooik for sharing their work and this article on how they created magic!

“how to” liquid Females article.
V-Studio international. The blog.

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. :)

Download the Silkypix Raw Pack.. 109MB ZIP file.

Get the Silkypix beta software, go here for info.
Get flyingroosters test RAW file (used in his comments below). Download.
Get BiggyDogs English menu fix (read comment for install help). Download