Another really fun wedding session, this time a bit north or everything in a town called Mariestad – more famous for it’s fine beer. It was a bit tricky as Linn is now working down south as a guide on a castle and she couldn’t be my assistant. I really wanted that – so we improvised and used the best man for the job. Lucky for Jon and Carolina, it worked great! You can actually see him on several shots.

Oh, I also improved my car shooting style thingi – fun stuff! Lucky for me we had the time needed to play.

Cameras used was SD14 and DP1 – I had many lenses with me – more or less all but I ended up using the trusty 12-24 the most as I love the cokin filter border effect so much. Second place I think is 30 or 50mm 1.4 not sure as 50 is so new for me I tend to reach for the 30mm. 120-300 does give me joy when needed. It’s not very easy to find good occations or locations for it but when it’s time then it’s great!

I also noticed a slight magenta cast in some of the “just out of the church” shots – just so you know. :D

When open the whole article more pictures appears as well as some whom has been shown already above. Don’t be frightened about that, it’s perfectly normal.

Another wedding session, and I’m happy to announce that DP1 is a great b camera! :D Linn had hers with her all the time (she assist me) and she took quite a few really nice shots. I used mine as well and I got more keepers from the DP1 (compared to amount of shots taken) than with the SD14. More time to think? I think one or two of Linns are among these too.

My workflow has slightly changed and looks like the following. I make the basic adjustments from SD14 and DP1 RAW in SPP 2.5 Windows. After adjustments are done I import all into a new project in Apple Aperture.

In Aperture I use the new plugin called Viveza to further adjust certain spots – add light to face or simply to enhance black and white images. I also use Aperture to dodge and burn, crop and straighten, add vignetting and my little watermark. I don’t apply vignetting to all but to many shots. So don’t judge lenses because of my images. hehe..

During all this I also add stars to my favorites, this I later use when publishing to the couple and the very best here on my website. I ended up with 44 images in this post and 133 to the couple, I started with about 300 from SPP and around 700 in total from field..

The two above shots are DP1

DP1

There is all in all 44 images in this post. Click each image to view the full size image. Remember that this is copyrighted material.

DP1

DP1

DP1

DP1

Linns shot, 10-20mm

DP1

DP1

DP1

DP1

About a week ago I received the much awaited (at least by me) close up lens made by Sigma. I must say that I was happily surprised about the little leather box that came with the lens! Soooo retro and beautifully crafted! WELL DONE SIGMA! Now, is the lens as good as the box it came in? :D

I’ve read numerous threads over at dpreview on different solutions and I’ve seen magnificent macro shots with all sorts of filters – some good, some not so good. Now, when the Sigma AML-1 was announced I was a bit surprised on the closest distance which is 20cm – not very Macro on a 28mm lens is it?! :D and in order to show you just how close 20cm is and what it feels like – I made this little video. If you watch it on Youtube then you can see it in higher resolution. Embedded is low res.

The lens is very bright – not sure you loose any light. Can’t really see any difference in shutter speeds and the lens says nothing about it. You can’t focus to infinity with it on – but it’s made for closeups so it’s not really a problem. OOF becomes BEAUTIFUL! Especially welcome when you’re making movies. Along with the extremely sharp lens and sensor it becomes almost unreal. Take a look at the shot of Linn, click it and the full version will load. It’s so so detailed. If the DP1 only had MORE resolution when making movies!! :D

The AML-1 as a slight negative distortion in corners – The opposite to the type of distortion we’re used to with normal lenses. But it’s not noticeable in day to day images. The picture below shows the effect, look at the window and you’ll understand what I mean.

Conclusion. I should have had TWO lenses or even three and stacked them, that would probably give very nice macros. Right now you don’t get close enough for that type of photography with only one lens. For movies and portraits such as the ones above it’s a wonderful solution and gives you new views – plus that the extreme OOF is perfect for videos.

Btw, the lens / filter itself is very very well made and NO CA can be found. At least not in any of my photos so far. Contrast and sharpnes are really top notch.

Finally after much wait – here is the first of two parts from a photo session I had for the second year somewhere in the wilderness of Sweden. Now, these shots are not meant to be examined deeply – much because some of them are not extremely in focus. (I left the camera sometimes on a tripod having just a trigger in my hand and therefor they could walk out of focus).

I alternated between three different PS plugins to get the look that I wanted or simply to blow out the white background. The ones used most (for white background) is Viveza, the secondly most used is AlienSkin Exposure and the third used for one or two shots is Nik Color Efex Pro.

All shots are here presented in full resolution. Two shots have been slightly cropped. The rest have been left as is.

Click each for full size view. Enjoy!

Yes, it’s me (above and below).

There is more to come.
Click below for some more from this very session.

ISO800

I decided to see how good the battery was and how much juice I could squeeze out before dead – It’s not a perfect test but a real world sort of version. I manual focused more or less 99% of the time – I did try some AF shots but decided that manual focus was a bit more cool. I’m sure that AF + no LCD would give you lots and lots of more shots.

I turned off the camera very often. I’m not sure if that’s draining or some, but I guess that there is a good sleep mode that could have worked instead. Of course I looked and showed everyone around me so lots of peeking done.

Result? I have a total files of 182. Among those is 26 movies, 3 audio recordings and 151 RAW files. No Jpegs. Sorry, have a hard time getting used to the ability to shot JPEG’s since my early days with the SD9/SD10.. :) And camera is fast with RAW so there is no reason not to use it.

Movie clips direcly from the DP1:

Now to some of the images: All hand held. Click for full size.

ISO200

ISO800 (redeveloped)

ISO100

ISO100

ISO400

ISO100 + EF-140 DP1 flash. TTL-mode.

ISO100 (shaky – should have used higher)

ISO100

ISO200

ISO100

ISO400

It’s been lots of buz lately about the much anticipated Sigma DP1 – the every mans Leica that finally is ready to ship (or very close to) and I, as maybe the most happy guy on earth right now I HAVE ONE! :D And of course I will have to write a little something about it – from an SD14 users point of view.

ISo200

Build quality is very good, front and back made out of metal and nothing is flimsy. Very sturdy feeling. Should be at almost 300g. Almost too much when it comes to the MSAP wheel. The other wheel is the one for manual focusing and it’s very easy to turn without any clicks – easy to fast manual focus and this feature was one that I was afraid of being bad – is very good and very very useful. I use it 100% of the time. (at least at day one. ;)

Lens is superb. Bokeh is wonderful. F4 works very very well much thanks to the great sharpness wide open. Remember that common lenses such as 10-20 and 12-24 is the same or slower and much bigger! Do I dare say that this little DP1 16.5mm lens is sharper? I think it is. More or less all my shots this first cloudy day has been taken at F4.

ISO500

Speed was another thing that scared me some. In order to make it less painful I bought the fastest SD card I could find, the SD Extreme III from SanDisk and I have no idea if it helps but I have yet to miss a shot because of save times. It’s a bit faster than my SD14 I think but with smaller buffer. About half I guess. There is two ways of taking shots. One in continues mode – about three shots in less than a second (RAW mode) – and a “normal” shot mode that will give you about two-three seconds between shots. – this is no SLR and will not be used as one either.

Flipping thru images, zoom in to see 100% etc is very fast and interestingly enough much faster and better implemented than in my SD14.  Feels instant.

ISO200

The external flash is extremely cool looking. I had it to one of my night club sessions and people wowed it many times. I had to lend my little camera to many people. Never did that with my SD14. :) – one good thing here is that you can turn the focus wheel to 1m and leave it there. It’s pretty easy to learn how far away 1m is and keep it that way. :)

LCD is 230 000 dots and OK. It’s not the brightest in the business but works great. Better than the LCD on my SD14. Colors looks accurate and gives me a good feeling for sharpness etc. It’s also possible to see histogram etc as you would expect. In dark enviroment the “live” flow becomes very grainy – look cool but isn’t very useful to judge sharpness from at those times knowing how far one meter is, is good. :)

Battery life is yet to be known. First impression is that it’s similar to my SD14, maybe a bit less.

Final word from day one – I like it – it’s going to be where I go. :D  and now some images. Experimental ISO3200 and others.

ISO3200

ISO3200

ISO200

ISO100

ISO1200

Dpreview thread.
Video example

Alright – I have a movie clip made from a cool little camera known as the Sigma DP1. It’s my sister performing a well known song outside our home. Despite the size (320×200) I think it’s really nice and the sound quality is MUCH better than I thought it would be, there is a certain depth to the picture that you will not get with a small sensor camera and it looks very filmish, do you agree?. Enjoy 12MB worth of sister singing for the love of the DP1. ;)

http://www.rytterfalk.com/movie/1.AVI

[See post to watch QuickTime movie] ]]> http://www.rytterfalk.com/2008/03/01/sigma-dp1-movie-clip/feed/ 20