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.

Just received the new Sigma 50mm F1.4 and due to heavy sunshine I couldn’t really in a fair way try it wide open – but even if the above shot is taken at F4 the bokeh is amazingly sweet.

I was thinking it would be bigger. a whopping 500g piece of glass could have been heavier. It’s pretty short and very fat somehow – gives a very cool impression – big opening that tell you I’M BRIGHT.

Alright, another shot at F2.5 and a shutter speed of 1/3200s. A friend holding a reflector to even out the light a bit. The widest I could go was F2 – so here goes another shot at F2.

(This one is not perfectly focused, it’s kind of hard at F2 – hard training lays ahead)

I will try hard the coming days to find other things to photograph and hopefully I’ll be back with some nice pics.

Linn is pretty active in some Chinese photo-forums and they have these missions that they give eachother. This time it’s about coffee and well, I became assistant! Nice. :D These are two of the resulting pictures, the rest can be seen over at Linns blog – put together in a very Chinese fashion with texts etc. We did that i Apple Pages.

Oh, and in a couple of days my USB sound card will arrive and I can do a screener with RD. I’m thinking about making a series. My problem so far has been that I can’t use my Hackintosh because no mic in. there is one but not supported. So a USB sound card will solve this and make everything much more fun.

AND one last thing. Jeff Sickel has begun the hard work with a Quicklook plugin for X3F files and all I can say is WOW! I had a chance to try it and it works better than I thought. Thanks Jeff. It will become public when Jeff is done. Update! Jeff is DONE! :D see http://www.rytterfalk.com/2008/01/22/apple-quicklook-x3f-plugin/

We had lots of fun and after looking thru the resulting bunch of images I found a couple that I’m willing to share. :) Some flower closeups are pictures taken by Linn, and I’m sure some more. Anyways. 27 Photos to look at. If you can’t get hold of Dry Ice and Liquid Nitrogen, this page might help a little. :D

PS. Thanks Thunderlance and Linn for making this possible.

Above flower and a 16MP crop. Both these shots are developed using Raw Developer 1.7 using X3F file. My friend Filip aka Thunderlance had the wonderful idea of bringing dry ice and liquid Nitrogen to my home. We had fun with it. Not very easy to just take picture of / with it.. but we did try. hehe. Will post more soon.

30s of my home – this was pretty late. F11 – can you see my sister Emmy? She came in the middle and… Oh, the strong yellowish tone comes from streetlight behind me. I’m thinking if i should go and swap the bulb to something cooler. :D

30mm – Tiramisu. It’s not perfectly stable – not sure what I was doing but It should have been sharper. For the next one I used a tripod.

50mm – Tiramisu – Linn is crazy about making, I’m about eating. Really nice! Wanna try?

my mother Painting colors with water

Emilia – my sisters kid – trying to make a rainbow for my car.

She was also trying to make me wet – and sort of lost it. :D

Definately trying to make me wet. I got a few drops on the lens.

My smallest brother Samual – in a small lake which is 77m at the deepest. (Hultasjön – if you wanna know) – nice, warm and clear water. You see the fish beneath you most of the time.

Who is this? mm.. Not sure why we went down to the railway this time but I had to snap a few. 120-300

Hultasjön again. This time it’s Elin trying to hold her breath – competing with my brothers. I think she managed 10s or so.

Not easy to catch something like this. But it WAS beautiful.

My brother Sven Ingvarsson is selling his car and needed some pictures for the advertisement. A Xantia Activa – a very cool car to ride. (not so much to look at but I tried my best). 70-200

Details with 70-200. It’s fun shooting like this with a zoom.

So much fun to do this type of photography. Should have done some more. Next time I’ll stay in someones trunk and do it from there. Anyone?

Download RAW pack 3 now.

I just bought a screencast software named iShowU – very small and cool. Makes screen movies in real time in whatever file format you want. Cool! The Lightroom movie you see is made with it.

Software recommended: Sigma Photo Pro, Adobe camera raw 4.1 or Lightroom 1.1

I’m back with some pictures! First some here on the blog, and then if you click the picture you will be moved over to the big version (1000px). And the rest.

Camera: SD14. ISO100 – 1600.
Lenses used: Sigma 10-20, 12-24, 30, 50, 70, 70-200 and 120-300 EX DG.
Developed using Adobe Lightroom 1.1.

Go directly to gallery.

Ever since Sigma photographer Olga Vasilkova showed her amazing bubble work I wanted to explore the world of bubbles myself so last night me and Linn took a small, pretty square, glass flower vase and pulled the SD14 trigger. Lenses used was Sigma 50mm and 70mm EX. Click each image for bigger version.
This one should be viewed at 100%, I will later change link to original size. Remember that the vase used had pretty thick glass walls so it was really a very bad setup but result is still so nice. Pretty amazing what you can do with a little bit of water. :)
This was acually the very first image and there has been some cleanup done in the background. You can find a different version of the same photo over at Linn’s blogg.
This last photo was from another serie that I will show more from later and I’m again inspired by the work of Olga. The SD14 is such an amazing tool in the studio! Quality is amazing and prints are even more amazing. If you look carefully you see that red is blown-out but that’s just my tweaks fault. I just don’t have the energy to go back and make it nice again. hehe. There is a redish tint in the background, it IS part of the image. :)

[Bubble photo talk over at www.99.se and www.fotosidan.se ]

My little sister has some pets, they’re growing fast and soon their tails are gone. (or built in) so I had to take these images tonight, at least she wanted me to. So here goes. Small mini tiny frogs. Five close ups.

Camera Sigma SD14 – Lenses 50mm and 105mm Sigma Macros.

I underexposed by mistake (hard to use flash when something is this small) bounced to some paper that I asked Linn to hold and as I moved she had to move too. Not very easy. So these are much brighter than my originals. Lucky me I shoot RAW! :D


Look at bigger Black and White version.

Open 100% crop of this last frog. (it’s crop as above, slightly more time spent in photoshop to get it perfect).

Linn as many other girls has this talent of making small things, Linn can spend hours on Google to find out best possible way of making the doe and shapes. All flowers you see here is made from homemade something that makes it eatable (some sweet stuff). They will be used for a cake or something (I turn 30 the 11th of May) and she’s now practicing her skills and wanted me to take some pictures for a Chinese wedding/birthday cake site.

Me myself and I are really impressed and I thought I could share these pictures from last night with you all. Images shot with Sigma SD14 + Sigma 50mm manually in evening sunlight (just before sunset) I used an A3 sheet as bottom and reflector. (just bent over the flower).

Oh, and EVERYONE wanting to come for my birthday are WHOLEHEARTEDLY welcome to do so! Anyone! I will treat home made ice cream cake and some chinese food (made by Linn). 11th of may 2007 at Malmers v 5 – 446 33 Älvängen. Sweden.

A photoshoppped closeup – I made it a b it blue :)

This one is photoshopped a bit. It’s a 100% crop from this image. Click for 100% B&W crop:

[EDIT] Movie is up!

[Edit 2008 | 1 | 23 - Now I look at these shots and I can clearly see that with todays software (both SPP 2.3 and RD 1.72) I could make better developments. So if you happen to download these are RAW - don't be surprised if they look better! :D /Edit]

I went to Denmark yesterday invited by the Danish photographer Alroe to record my third “review” of the SD14. This time in his studio. It will take a couple of days to finish the movie but until then I want you to see some of the resulting images that came out and in full size and possibly soon as downloadable RAW files. (depends if you’re able to use a decent raw converter. ;)

I must say that I’m very happy and very satisfied with the result of our shoot. mr Alroe is using a Canon 5D with L lenses and that made this shoot a little more interesting. Now, we don’t want you to kill your eyes with pixel peeping so we didn’t take “exactly” the same shots, maybe next time. I’ve heard that Sigma SD14 images are too sharp and might hurt your eyes.

Last in this article you can read some more about my inital 5D feelings. I was using the latest firmware 1.01 for my SD14 and it’s a GREAT update. Colors of the LCD is now very nice and speed is also improved. It’s overall a better feeling doing photography with it. Many of these studio shots are shot at ISO200 BY MISTAKE! But, Bo also did on his 5D so for the sake of review it’s a good thing. But I’m sure result would be even more impressive using ISO100. Now over to some of my images.

One more thing. Lenses used was 30mm, 28mm, 70-200 and 50mm Sigma EX lenses. My ABSOLUTE favorite in the studio was the 28mm, it just nailed focus all the time and it’s very “correct”.

Download 8bit TIFF version of above image. Untouched.Right click and hit “saved linked file..” or something like that..

This one was ISO100! Yoohoooooo!

Now, you wonder, how do you like the 5D? Well, in short. It’s a nice camera that feels a big clumsy and not as easy to operate. The viewfinder is just ENORMOUS! Oh, how much I envy that one. The LCD on the 5D isn’t good at all, not showing anything useful really. You need to open the photo in the computer or read the histogram to really know anything.

Image quality? It’s lots and lots of detail on the 5D’s images. BUT you need to be quite aggressive with sharpening in order to get anything sharp (for a Sigma user at least) and things start to look digital when making bigger.. When it comes to colors I’m puzzled. It really really looks like canon has a “skin tone detector” that tries to make every skin look the same or at least pleasing. It has some reddish / magenta feeling. Linn has yellowish tone compared to me, it’s more obvious if you see us together but the Canon do NOT tell the true story.

Shutter. hehe. The 5D has a cool shutter sound that probably is from the 70′s. The Sigma is whispering beside it. In a church I would be almost afraid of using the 5D, I was with my SD9/10.

AF and buffer is much better on the 5D, not sure about AF accuracy (Alroe did get some “off focus shots” and so did I), but speed. It would be nice to have bigger buffer on the SD14. Sigma Listen! BUT at NO time during our session I had full buffer or even close. Mostly due to the fact that flashes can’t recharge and that you rarely take more than 4-5 shots in fast succession. It’s another story outdoors where bigger buffer is more important.I know that Alroe will show some of his images over at the dpreview Canon forum (some really nice ones of Linn) and I’m sure you will be impressed by the quality. But my own feeling is still there:

I’m using film, he’s using a digital camera.

Go deeper:

Alroes post at dpreview Canon forum
Alroes flickr page with 5D images from this shoot
My post at the Sigma dpreview Forum
Sigma RAW package-download
Mike Chaney’s SD14 vs 5D resolution comparison (a bit technical)

Link broken, take a look here for some of them: http://www.pbase.com/rytterfalk/minority

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Camera: SD9 Lens: Nikon 50mm F1.4 @ F2\