[edit, this post is bumped (brought to top) every time there is an important update being made on the X3F Quick look plugin. The original post was made back in 2008 and bumped a couple of times since then. Now it's time again!].

Jeff Sickels, the creater of Sigma X3F quicklook plugin has once more shown his skill and released a new update with OS X Lion support! He writes:

An updated build of the X3F Spotlight Importer and Quicklook generator is now released for Lion. See version 1.5.1 on the software link.

Here’s a movie I made a couple of years ago about the plugin.

Linn’s grandmother died recently and Linn wanted to send a little something from Sweden to her (our) relatives in China – and we asked my Sister Kerstin if we could make a recording of her singing “come away with me” as we just love her voice – So equipped with the Canon 5D Mark 2, the Sigma 12-24 and an iphone4 for sound (Linn’s holding it) we recorded this little video.

I feel kind of stupid. Long time ago, years ago I got myself two fisheye lenses – the Sigma 10mm and the 4.5mm. I tried hard at the time to make them work as QTVR lenses but somehow I failed or I got better results with my 10-20mm lens. Now, I have this project coming up which made me dust of my QTVR skills and I started off by making a couple of QTVR’s using the Sigma 8-16mm  - which is really wide! It’s actually the same width on the new SD1 as the 12-24 is on a full frame camera.

Anyways. I did a couple of panoramas but wasn’t fully satisfied as I had to work kind of hard with the stitching software to make those images overlap perfectly. But after a few fails I sort of got a pretty decent, sellable result. A couple of days ago I saw this lens list showing the angle of view possible by different lenses and then I saw that my super wide 8-16mm lens only gave me somewhere around 115 degrees per shot – not bad really – but now I saw my 10mm fisheye on the list and it said 154 degrees (on Sigma SD14/15 camera) – That’s a huge difference and I might be stupid but I didn’t realize that fisheye gave that much more. (probably blinded by the mm) – So I attached my 10mm fisheye – calibrated it carefully on my Manfrotto SPH head and updated my PTGui software and WOALA it stitched those images directly without hesitation and without ANY need of my own click.

One of the eight images used to make the panorama below (but there is more images as it’s a three shot HDR). You need to have Quicktime installed to view.

(click inside to view pano or download the file here).

I found that six images around plus up and down would stitch perfectly for a full spherical panorama. And the quality is jaw dropping amazing! Perhaps even better than what I previously got using any of my rectangular optics – but that’s not entirely true as with more images you get more resolution. Now I can’t wait using the Sigma SD1 + my 10mm fisheye.

Now, you might ask yourself – what about that 4.5mm lens of yours? Did you try that one? and YES I did and the results is simply amazing if you think about what kind of lens we’re dealing with. A fully circular, 180 degree lens capable of making a fully spherical image in only three shots. Now, my current Manfrotto SPH isn’t suitable for a 3 shot pano but with four shots it looks great!

As you see on the above image part of the Manfrotto SPH head is inside the image, takes up quite a bit of the view. The new version of PTGui 9 has this wonderful function of being able to mask stuff – so all I did was to simply mask out the manfrotto head – and the result is perfect!

Sigma 4.5mm (click inside to view, or download the file here)

My sister Anna and her husband Krister recently bought some land – and on this land there stood a house, a house that they most likely will replace with a new one but before doing so I wanted a few shots to play with – and here we have the result.

Sigma 4.5mm (click inside to view pano or download the file here).

Sigma 4.5mm (click inside to view pano or download the file here).

I’ve been working at the church before and I really love being inside these beautifully crafted buildings and I went to one yesterday to see if I could make something – I’m not entirely happy with the result as it was a really dull day – we had dull days now for at least a full week – but using a three shot HDR you still have lots of information. Mind you that these are long exposures and light is really mixed. (You can see how blue the outdoor becomes)..

Click above image to go to the tour – this one is exported to work on iPhone and iPad as well, it´s HTML5 based exported from PTGui. I still need to learn how to erase that bottom tripod or how to add another image on top of the tripod (to hide it) before exporting for web.. Oh well. :) If you know, please tell! And those panoramas in the tour with the (HD) sign is taken with the 10mm fisheye – the rest is 4.5mm.

Sigma Photo Pro and SD15 used.

During the years I’ve got lots of emails asking me to talk about screen calibration and with this little video I show how you can do it with your Mac (or Hackintosh incase that’s your thing). When done you can have a look at this image to see if it looks any better, or even use it as a basic calibration tool if you’re a PC user. Please share your own best tips in the comment section below.

[edit] New version with better sound [/edit]

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

This is perhaps not the most interesting movie but at least I had slightly more fun painting.. :) First half recorded yesterday using JPEG mode in camera – Today I switched over to RAW and the difference is HUGE! I even decided to skip colors in the first half as it looked so bad. :) Fluorescent light can be tricky for any camera but using RAW it’s no longer a real issue.

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.

Photo prepared using SPP 4.x. I’ll let the video speak for itself.
The lens? 50mm 1.4

Joined my moms painting class / group today – printed my own shot and did the above using oil on canvas (in artrage) – great fun!! Posted using wordpress on iphone.

I have lots of unedited video and still footage for the “real” video – but first, have a look at my very first UNPACKING VIDEO! :)

These shots has been taken with the actual SD1 by some Foveon folks and it’s really amazing how much depth is seen in these samples – even if all I’ve seen has beed printed samples – the last one in the video is the “pure” size of what a 46MP file prints like att uncropped 100% resolution and it has to be viewed in person to be understood. Also I’ve been told by persons with no name that the sensor has been dramatically improved over old sensor design – and what surprised me was that each pixel has 5µm compared to SD14′s 7.xµm. I thought the difference would be much greater.

Four years of developing seams to have paid off! :P

I will write some more about the camera itself tomorrow (I hope) but I’ve only looked at it for now and even if I had it close to me I didn’t touch it. Hopefully tomorrow.

I really have a tough time getting a place to stay in Cologne / Köln (The whole city is packed with people – every corner seams to be taken. aaaaa)  so in my misery I found two ways to air paint text using my iphone.

The first way was inspired by a story run on IDG.se were some french guys (I think) painted 3D models using their iPad – it looked cool and I though that I could do something myself but a bit simplified. First I searched for a suitable font which I cut into pieces – I then saved each piece as a picture and I made a slideshow out of them. I saved as a movie, exported to my iphone and put my DP2 on 15s and swiped the phone infront with a nice speed. So the R in Rytterfalk is really three pieces of JPG files, the middle part showed twice as it’s thick.

The I wanted to go further and developed my idea a little.. :

By making a long text and then pan it behind a tiny letter box hole I managed to make any text or picture come out like the picture above. Dp2 used for all shots.

Two videos for those who want to try!

Good luck! :)

(Above is shot and painted using iPhone and the SketchBook application)

I’m sorry, I’ve been looking at pictures all day long and suddenly I felt I wanted to do something different – looking around and found much foam board / core that I could use to make something. Now, my iPhone 4 arrived a couple of days ago and I realized that I shake way to much when filming – I need to concentrate hard to get anything stable. So I made myself a stabilizer, steady cam or whatever out of foam core. Now, you could use corrugated paper (wellpapp) if you don’t currently have any foam core thingi at home.

Movie is filmed entirely on the iPhone 4 – and edited and uploaded using iMovie. Music by my sister Kerstin Karlsson. Get it here if you like. :)

enjoy!

Here’s a short wrap up on how far I’ve come to date. I now actively use my home built opal plastic tube thingi that some of you have seen and I want to thank Ted who gave me the idea (the round shape that was). Also a big thanks’ to all of you that gave suggestions and comments in my “HELP ME” post – for you that missed it, please visit and read. Great comments!

On the right is my original sketch of how I thought the opal stuff could be used and my setup right now more or less looks the same, although I only use three light sources – One from beneath as the picture show and one from the left and the big soft box from right, tilted 45 degrees. So it’s not exactly as the sketch but very close.

Here is the video I made that shows how I built the box.

And yes, it’s very irritating that the video size came up wrong – Mom looks fat! :D I tried to use the built in uploader within ScreenFlow – but as you see it doesn’t cope well with my wide screen iMac. I better export using x264 in the future as well.

I also try to eliminate the need to paint those rings – and by painting I mean using the curve tool and then paint in Photoshop using the brush – which you need to do if you have bad reflections – and with this setup I more or less eliminated any unwanted, unfriendly reflection. The thing that looks like a light source is actually a white paper thing that I put inside to give a shape. (Clive). I’m still experimenting.

In order to make it look as goldish as possible I needed to see gold because these rings are all made out of different materials – and has slightly different tones of metal color – kind of goldish but often not so I have to work on each to make them look kind of the same. Although I do feel that I over did it some on these below. I used this shot / illustration as gold model.

All images developed and edited using Photoshop Lightroom 3 and Photoshop. No painting this time – I might do that with the final thing but I’ll try to avoid it as much as possible. ISO100 used. Might change back to ISO50 as it’s MUCH denser to work with.

I have some left to do, but something tells me that the hardest part is behind me now.

Here’s a second movie about the set in action. :)

I now tried so many different setups – and I’m still not satisfied with how my ring shots come out. I do make one or two images here and there that looks perfectly ok but as soon as I change ring with a different shape everything has to be changed / or lots of work in post (PS) has to be done. See video for more info on what I want from you, you could help me more than you think. :)

The opal plastic sheet that I have is 1.5 x 2.5m (about). I have four flashes that I can use, although I think two or three around and one below shining through somehow could be the best solution. (I need it to be a really white background).

Watch it in HD please. :) Also, for my Chinese audience. I have 500MB per week to upload in VIMEO and my limit for this week is up, I will try to post stuff there as well so that you can see videos. If you want any video (like the videos from last post and post it on some chinese version of youtube, then please mail me and I’ll send those to you!.