SDIM1515 – X3F Zipfile Or just have a look at the large JPEG (Med 3264 x 2176). ISO200. 18-50.
Just an everyday photo from where I am right now, Kunming. It’s truly nice to be here again, this was my home for four years and it really feels good to be back again even it’s for a short while. Now I just need to dust off that Chinese of mine.. :)

Oh, and we had this HUGE thunderstorm yesterday night and I tried to get some lightning shots – but.. I didn’t get many good ones. I got one which was handheld for 10s. ;) (leaning to my window). I didn’t bring much extras such as tripods etc with me – I think I’ll get one of those Gorillapods though.

The one that I got locked crazy over exposed at ISO100 and I thought that it was truly a trash shot (knowing the limitations of low ISO highlight) but after stopping it down to ISO25 and the lightning is as clear as day! Though with some strange artifacts.

Before exposure compensation in SPP (embedded JPEG)

After, at about -2 exposure compensation and ISO should be around 25 at this moment. But it’s also a bit tricky as the lightning itself gives the sensor a tough time. I’d like to see a proper exposed lightning done before judging too much from above shot. :)

Oh, and I don’t have any photoshop on my macbook so every post editing is done in iPhoto.

Been fooling around with my mirror adjustments and one of my old SD14′s got helped and asked for a last ride – we had our glorious moments in the past and I must say that although the SD15 is a much improved camera with it’s awesome LCD and more realistic colors – the SD14 does indeed have another stop or two of highlights and those colors are much more playful and “foveonish” than later cameras. (including the DP series). Having used the SD15 as my main work horse since it was released the SD14 feelt very old, perhaps mainly because of the tiny LCD! It’s so hard to evaluate anything useful from it compared to it’s bigger brother, the SD15. I was also reminded that bigger buffer is better. :)

I will not write much here, but let these pictures do the talk. It’s some of what’s been passing by the last two days and well.. SD14 is a great camera and somehow I feel that it has a wider spectrum of colors compared to anything out there – especially in ISO50 mode and that will also be the reason for me to keep using it. It has a depth that’s really hard to beat.

The two bird shots are both highly cropped.

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.

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!

I’m letting the video speak for this post. All images are available as full size in my Spring 2011 set.

I really can’t wait for the SD1.. Can you?

Btw, my facial expressions isn’t in sync with what is going on in the video – I was eager to make this video and get it OUT as it would make some of you see the light. But my computer was acting like a baby and crunching data a little too often and the teddy shot is truly impossible. That shot is one of the reasons for my computer to — almost die.

yes, after lots of time - dissecting one of my 500GB Wester Digital book drives – couldn’t find the right power adaptor (I have lots of external drives and I never know which has what adapter) – it was the last drive that could have the “lost” wedding images in – so I ripped it open. it took me some time and now it’s in a more – say, mobile format. :) Less plastic. I have this e-sata reader that can connect naked drives and it worked perfect. I found my lost picture too and I couldn’t help myself not processing it instantly.

So here’s the result. Compare to old post with the “old” process. :) And yes I took the car away in LR – fast and dirty. Added some vignette again too. Should be around ISO35.

(original size)

here’s the original, unprocessed. :

I could save some of that highlight but not all. Still I’m happy. Maybe I’ll rediscover this shot when SPP 5 comes out? :D The beauty of RAW!

Original size. She is lit by Sigma 530! :) (Sigma SD15, 50mm 1.4 at f3,5 1/40s ISO50)

Original size. (Sigma SD15, 50mm 1.4 at f10 1/13s ISO100)
Above shot of the road is an Enfuce test (open source HDR software that I use inside LR3). Shot is made from the same RAW file saved as three different TIFF files with various exposure compensations in Sigma Photo Pro)

Mom, Linn and myself went off a few hours to see if we could find any mushrooms. Equipped with both SD15 and strobes I had very little luck and light disappeared way to fast.. I did get a shot of mom though and the road. It was pretty dark when I shot those but I think SD15 did a great job! hmm.. Autumn is coming way to fast this year. And yes, we got some nice mushrooms with us home!

Developed using SPP 4.1

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.

I noticed that it’s more or less impossible to get correct focus at more then one ring at a time (at f7.1) – so I took three shots and combined them in PS.. :)  It’s really late too, I should go to bed. hmm.. This is a Lightroom 3 conversion of SD15 file, not bad – but not as good as from SPP.

I’m pretty much set now with my setup – this last shot had no changes, no painting except taking away a little dust – although getting the background WHITE is time consuming when there is so much blur to deal with. The foremost black corners will also be a little bit less black – one white foam infront of camera is missing.

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).

Alright, it’s not really day two, but at least it’s first shot! I dealed a little with it in Photoshop and will play more with reflections to get the right feel (but not in Photoshop, but on the set). What do you think? It’s ISO50. I think I will get more black in the corners of the ring, like a black frame somehow. Also it’s a little too tilted. :) But that’s not the important part right now.

Right now, I only play with fake rings – will get the real stuff when it’s time for the real deal. About 200 of them.

Light from above, two paper reflectors on the side. Elinchrom Quadra. Sigma SD15, Sigma 70mm.

The knife maker. Shot on Marstrand using SD14 + Sigma 50mm 1.4 and using sun as main light and Sigma 530 DG and back shape light.  ISO50. Now, ISO50 is such a compressed format that you really need to expose with great care. His shoulder is totally white and if it was shot at ISo100 it would still be information there. There is, if I convert to Monochrome but because it’s only info from one or two channels (Showing strange colors if still shown) Sigma has decided to erase everything in those areas.. I had lots of overexposed ISO50 shots yesterday and I regret shooting at ISO50. Stupid me.

If you look closer you’ll see a light shadow in his glasses, that’s where the round shape of a tiny beauty dish were before I erased it using LR3. Strong sun from the back and the Sigma 530 DG from slight above using a beauty dish making the sharp light disappear. SD14 + 50mm 1.4 + ISO50 (or more ISO25). Too much light entered the 50mm so I had to emphasizes those shadows and the hat quite a lot.

The oldish couple. Shot using 10-20 with sun as main and 530 DG as side light. Slight green color on the left shows where 530 is placed. SD14 and ISO50.  This came out slightly dark, best viewed at full size.

The above shot was slightly overexposed ISO50 shot, skin was overexposed in the color version – this version is equal to ISO25.  These two guys are well known over at www.99.se Goflorp (handle) and Rei Trulsson.. Nice to talk a bit with to of my readers in real life. :)

Childhood friends passing by, had to take their picture. The 530 from the far right. I should have used one more flash on their legs, that would probably make this shot a lot better. And yes, the 530 was a little too powerful this time. SD14 10-20mm ISO50

And finally, three shots of Linn. I’m so happy to have her around so I can play!! :D

These last two could have been more worked on in SPP or LR but.. I didn’t. In the last shot the flash was slightly to close to her and skin is a little overexposed. Could work better as monochrome. All three  shot using SD14 and 10-20mm. ISO50 on all.

All above images available as full size on flickr. Handle with care.

Today I had a wedding photo session – used Sigma 10-20 and Sigma 70mm together with my beloved SD14. Linn assisted (I LOOOOVE when she assists!) and on he way home we had a car full of gear, far away from home. What to do? Of course, we stopped and took some shots of each other. Sky was rapidly changing which made everything so much more interesting. :) And just for fun I used my new Chinese equipment. Two speed lights, stand and some transmitting equipment. Shot of me was way overexposed (ISO50) but in monochrome WB there was lots of information in blown areas so I turned it BW. Shot of me is also cropped some.

Btw, the cheap chinese equipment that brought works perfectly well together with the Sigma, (including DP’s) which is really nice! I had my Elinchrom Quadra in the car but – the Yongnuo YN460-II worked great, especially when two put together.

Everything developed using SPP 4.1 and post edited using LR3 (darkening sky some etc). Full size available at my Fall 2010 set at Flickr.

You might ask why I don’t use my Sigma 530 DG Super instead of some cheap chinese ones – well, as you see the light is on a pretty light stand and it’s windy, I don’t dare having my beloved and TTL working 530 on that one without someone being able to save it of it falls. The two in the background DID fall – and one broke but was easy to fix. :)

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. :)