EDIT. Late Evening, day three. Last edit for tonight.
This last one has very strong colors because I selected “vivid” color mode in SPP. No added saturation - actually I pulled it back a bit in PS. The full size shot, with all it’s flaws.
Continue reading ‘Jewelry photography, Day three.. (Update)’
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.
This post will look strange because these images has been taken from my pbase gallery. They’re all uploaded at 100% quality, no PS used. Enjoy.
Had another wedding session this friday and just started to develop the first images and thought I could share some.. It was a pretty cold day that ended in heavy rain! :D (grain is fake, yes)
My friend and artist, XuYun has been artist in residents at the Nordic Watercolour Museum on Tjörn. She’s just leaving and I rushed out to her little island to take some last minutes pictures of her. Here’s some of them. All taken with SD14 and lenses used 10-20, 30mm, 70mm and 50-500 OS. Can you see what lens took what photo? edit: Some images has a warm light coming in from the side, my doing. Some of these shots has been lit by light from reflecting windows.
above: Double size output
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).
Second batch from the session with my students only this time I involved a little bit more photoshop. All these are available as big size (around 4573 x 3048px = 14MP) in this flickr set they’re all developed using Sigma Photo Pro 2.5 for PC and later post processed on a Mac.
But there is many more images to be developed, I might put out a few more.
We had real fun last night – me and my young peoples group. I told them to add some make up this time and telling by these shots, at least there is some hair spray! They’re all saved as double size output – so if you want to see what they look like as huge printable pictures – please go to my flickr page and enjoy.
This time I didn’t use the DP1 – only SD14. Lenses used was Sigmas 28mm, 70mm, 70-200 and 50mm 1.4. All of them performed splendidly!
Hans Gardelach story, translated and partly edited by me and google.
[slightly updated] My dad was a alcoholic, mom divorced and we moved in with another man. Some guy from the neighborhood tricked me down into a basement and raped me when I was four years old. I was almost beaten to death at the age of 12 and a couple of years later raped again by another man.
I had an incredible meeting with this man the other day. This guy had full blown AIDS back in 1996 – but not only AIDS he also suffered from hepatite A, B and two types of C. (the most evil and the kindest type). Today he’s alive and kicking – he has no hepatite and no AIDS virues what so ever – and his story is mindblowing. Will get back to this.
So I had to have another session without my DP1. My 28mm and the 70mm made me proud and the quality was as expected. The full size is all available over at flickr.
Once more I used one light, you even see it bright and clear including ME in their eyes. Aperture differs quite a lot in these shots from f3.2 to f8. I did notice that the 28mm sharpens up quite a lot with aperture. Sweet spot around F8 as normal, but this one really becomes VERY sharp at f8. Most of these shots are done with the 28mm. It’s my favorite studio lens. (I wish I had the 20mm and the 24mm as well).
His music happens to be very good, listen at www.broshan.com (or at their myspace page)
Sigma Photo Pro + Lightroom 2. 70mm is a very very sharp and picture perfect lens! One light. All vignetting etc comes from Lightroom post processing.
Continue reading ‘SD14 and the Sigma 70mm. Studio.’
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
Sigma DP1 AML-1 test images" width="500" height="333" />
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.
Continue reading ‘Crazy studio session, SD14 + DP1 | Part 1′
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