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.
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.
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
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.
This is the third and final part in the series about Jeannette & Magnus. We have covered the preparations for the bride in two sets (Hair and Face) and here, finally we put the Groom into the picture and look at him! :D
Pictures are mainly taken with Sigma 10-20, Sigma 28mm and Sigma 70mm. Camera used is SD14. This last series contains 36 photos. Processed using Lightroom and Darkroom. (read more about them here) - Assistant was Linn (Liu Dong Yun)
All pictures are linked to my flickr album. Half full size images are available there.
This is the first part in a series of three. Hair,Face and finally Together. These images was all taken this last Saturday, 15th of Oct and I used SD14 + four lenses. 10-20, 28mm, 30mm and 70mm.
This first part from the hairdresser contains 19 images. Processed using Lightroom and Darkroom. Some images have been altered using Photoshop. (colors) - click on each one for half, full size.
I went out with mom yesterday (sunday) and we decided to pick some mushrooms again. Linn was working which was too bad, nature showed us her very good side. Weather was British and colors very strong - and light low. grrr - sun actually came through one or two times and I tried to do something when it showed but we often sat in the car when it happened.
These are developed using Lightroom, I did develop side by side with SPP3 but Iwasn’t sure which one I liked the best so I went for the easy ride. I did try Raw Developer again and I still like the way it handles colors but it’s so much fiddling to get there. Too much work and too little time.
I will tomorrow end my “product” job - it’s now done and we’re very happy with the result. Next up is a week long real estate photo session.
Horse: Picture taken by Elisabeth Ingvarsson. She didn’t know how AF worked.
Click above picture to get full size view. Lens: 12-24 @12mm with some plastic in front of the lens.
[edit, text updated #2] We had a great time at the Wedding and I shot something like 700 photos - 83 of them are now published. Their full names was Zeng Xiao Gang and Maria Ådahl - the new name is unknown. [EDIT: Putt Mr and Mrs before, no other changes are made] :D I was too busy taking pictures to listen. Maria, maybe you could add a comment about it?! These pictures will now find its way into a picture book.
The black corners a due to a filter thread that I use sometimes with my wide angles. (I got it very recently) It’s something that could be described as a “sky saver” a faded one stop saving plastic. I felt very happy about using it because it gave me the feeling of 6×6 (you can easily see the black left / right frame on some pictures). It’s much more fun to balance the picture this way (and I got more powerful skies at the same time).
I still wonder why there isn’t any 35mm digital SLR’s that has a square image. That would be so nice! You would never have to think in terms of landscape / portrait any longer. Just like in the good old days!
I did a quick sweep in my lightroom Norway directory and found some images that I here use as examples of what the differences are between Raw Developer DNG and Raw developer X3F. I found that Lightrooms way of handling colors was pretty much the same as Raw Developer + x3f’s converted to DNG’s. ISO100 - 400. and some as close as 500%. Images always sharpened the same way and if possible I used eye dropper for white balance (clouds or snow etc). DNG mode in RD will only use RGB sliders. No temp slider. So it wasn’t that easy to make them look the same.
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.
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.
Photo: Linn (in Norway, Sigma SD14, Lens: 70mm) Yesterday me and Linn had a Macro photography competition in the rain and with big bags around our cameras we went out. I had the 50mm and Linn the 70mm. And this picture was taken when I gave up and returned home to the trailer. The rain was just too much. :) Click for 100% crop.
Linn made lots of delicious stuff yesterday and she begged me to take some shots together with her. So we did. :) We cleaned the kitchen table and used the light from the big windows and start shooting. The table is really very boring. It’s some yellow wood, not very natural feeling to it and on top it’s glossy. bha! So I tried to not show the table too much by expose all pictures + 1 or more. We did use a reflector to gain a little extra light. We tried with two lenses, the 50mm and the new 70mm. I think both performed very well. F is between 3,2 to 6,3 - all manual mode. Click each image to bring full size version. even download RAW.
I’m going to norway now for a week, so I’ll give a little extra to play with while I’m gone. If you live in Norway and would like to meet I’ll stay close to Ål (Aal), Vats, Farm Langegaard. Give me a ring at +46 734 00 17 17 - I’ll bring my cameras etc so if you wanna see me (and try equipment), please do!
These are taken using a halogen IKEA tablelamp. One of those nasty, strong extreamly hot small lamps you have on your desk. It’s a A3 white paper under the vase and bent up behind, with the light aimed on the paper. Shutter speed is pretty low, so a tripod is needed. around 1/20 - 1/60s at ISO100.
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. :)
The following image was overexposed by one stop at ISO100, making it an ISO50 image. Somehow the saturation was way high and I had to desaturate quite a bit. The picture is also saved without any noise reduction (from Lightroom 1.1) and I give you the full size.
Camera: Sigma SD14 Lens: Sigma 70mm 2.8 EX
Full zise: IMG0455__full.jpg
(in firefox the image do look a bit pale, so if it’s pale in your browser, open the full size image in Photoshop. :)
I took Linn out to the railway for a focus test and for your enjoyment I publish some of the resulting images. We had a nice time and rain was in the air. We had to run before we were done.
If you want full size, write a comment about it and I might consider posting. :)
To see them all in a bit higher resolution click an image or click here.
120-300 2.8 EX @ 300mm f3.5 [edit: color adjusted]
24-60 2.8 EX @ 50mm f2.8
70 2.8 EX @ 70mm f2.8 (blue desaturated)
70-200 2.8 EX @ 160mm f3.2
Hi everyone! Soon I’m off to the beautiful Norway but before that I’m keen on showing something from a new little baby of mine. The Sigma 70mm 2,8 EX. A lens that after an hour of use I’m in total love with. Now, I’m sitting on one of those computers that isn’t calibrated so I hope that what I see you get. :) Please enjoy the full size image in photoshop. Photoshop pushes colors a bit more and brings what I saw to life.
For users of Lightroom I noticed that images in Lightroom looks a bit posterized (speling?!) and that effect disappears when saved (exported) or when opened in photoshop.
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
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