Raw Developer is my preferred tool when dealing with images that I think of in terms of black and white and the SD14 is my preferred camera. Last week I had one of my studio classes (that’s when we did the milk thingi) I took some shots when preparing the light – also because I wanted to test a lens that I’ll come back to later. Raw Developer has lots of interesting settings to play with – today I played with the curve tool and “lightness” channel. Recommended!
This whole post is Bob’s fault and can be viewed as full size (some saved at 200%)
And some in color: (Photo of Dad is ISo200 with noise reduction turned off)
Last shot has been saved at 200% size – Have a look!
OBS! Noise reduction is turned off.. (on all above images)
Happy New Year 2010!! Well, I’m late, I know. But I just came back from celebrating the new year up at my big sisters place in Brålanda. It’s so far away from everything and Internet hasn’t reached them just yet.. (not). I’m not too often up at her place, it’s a 100km drive (that’s the only good excuse I have not to go there more often and I know she reads this)..
Ah, and you might wonder why I have no splendid pictures of cool firecrackers – Well, it all comes down to luck and really, really bad timing. In Brålanda (a small town of what seams to me to be around 10 people) people have firecrackers but they all live randomly around my tripods position and none of them had ANY understanding of photography or photographers. They could have said: – I’ll let another rocket up right now, and I’ll wait for your signal Carl. But no, they just let them up a little here and there and always in the wrong direction from where I stood with my 20-30s exposure.
Oh well, there is always another one coming!
Now, all these shots has been taken with my Sigma SD14 – some of them using the 120-300 and others using a new lens that I will get back to in a while. (all wider shots). 90% has been developed using SPP with minor adjustments using LR3 before flickry upload. The rest (two shots) has been developed using Silkypix.
(All above shots except the bird has been shot using the other lens..)
Now, the new year started with lots and lots of snow. We had to stay one extra day because of it. Below you’ll find “extra day with snow and my sisters family”, pictures. Continue reading ‘One week Winter.. 2009/10′
I must admit, I’m still in love with how SD14 handles monochrome white balance. It’s so rich! I had three classes to photograph today and I selected a few pictures to show. Everything is shot using SD14 + 18-50 2.8 or 12-24 except the very last shot shown. ISO is set between 100 and 800. Elinchom Quadra used in some way(s) in every shot. Some shots has been perspective corrected (bw group shots) – every development is made in Sigma Photo pro. Some shots has two other shots combined inside (No, Linn has no twin sister).
Why so many black and white? The heavy yellow light made it hard to get what I wanted + that I needed to go higher with ISO as I wanted a natural light and not “flashy” as I got yesterday (see group shot from yesterday and compare with todays). Yesterdays problem was that it was way to dark outside to have any use into the scene. Today was very dark too so I put them in the window.. hehe.
In above shot I used the 12-24, and it’s not very sharp wide open so I had to use a smaller aperture – I experimented with different ones but didn’t want to go above 1s exposure. So I ended up using ISO800. But as you know, using the monochrome mode that’s never a problem. I wanted F11, but was only able to get 6.3. Worked well.
Above: I sort of wanted a serious overall look so I asked them to look .. ehh.. cool? They tried. This particular class was pretty small so I didn’t need to go as wide as the one before so I used 18-50 – picture is wider in reality but perspective corrected to get straight lines. Do you notice any other changes made? – and 18-50 is faster and sharper than the 12-24 so I was able to do this one at ISO100 and. Jaij!
Back at Schillerska, this time taking pictures of Linn’s Chinese classes. Will go back tomorrow to take some more. Here’s a few. These has been taken with long shutter speed (2-3s) and El Quadra.. There is still lots of strong yellow light and I’ll try to shield them some tomorrow using something big protective thingi. mm.. need more assistants. :) Developed using SPP and post-developed using Lightroom. Doing develops this late isn’t always a recommended thing. Hope I like it in the morning too.
One problem is the huge color temperature difference between room light and flash. Perhaps I need to get some gels.
Take a look at the Original.
(Above shot as been (re)developed using Silkypix and has noise reduction almost completely turned off). See new post including above as RAW for your own fun!
Today I had my last photo class for this term, I brought my SD14 and the trusty 18-50 2.8. It’s a bit short to be a perfect studio lens, I often find myself a tad too close. :) I think the 24-70 might be better suited but what the 18-50 really has is a GREAT crispiness, very sharp and nice to handle. Most of the time spot on.
Also, the Japanese version of Silkypix for Mac is released (Thanks Gen!) and it’s a joy to be able to work without starting VMWare. :D – the old .dat trick works great if your Japanese is as bad as mine. Also, I now have another 30 days of fun. ;)
It’s now much faster, and most everything is better but the real-time preview when hovering on different WB’s etc is now history. Perhaps a windows only thing. Too bad.
These photos now has been developed in Silkypix and then saved as TIFF and post-processed using Lightroom 3b (that’s where I upload to flickr) – I also painted the background on each shot with a slight color of blue, different tint every time I think. hehe.. Oh well.. Only for fun.
A house once belong to Surte glasbruk. Surte glasbruk is the glass factory famous for designing the very first Coca Cola bottle. But that’s another story. Now the house has since the last 13 years been the home for people with difficulties – in some cases drugs, some health others money etc. Now, a new road is under construction and within a month the house will be emptied – and luckily for the people inside most of them has a new place to go – probably a better place too – this one has really seen the best of days and were never meant to be lived in at all – as it was built and used as an office.
Now, I’ve been visiting them to help my way and I consider them all close friends. I hardly showed them a camera before mostly because I don’t want anyone to think that I’ve been there because of a shot – but today I just couldn’t hold myself and I went there and took a few pictures. No one had any objections..
I brought the SD14 coupled with the 12-24mm lens and I had my friend Bengt assisting me with my quadra. I tried hard to recreate the light that I felt was in the room to begin with – and often going above 2s exposures. tricky. :)
Also all shots has first been developed using Sigma Photo Pro and then post-processed in Lightroom 3 – mostly adding vignetting and some contrast adjustments.
2 världar and Broshan (names of above guys) is about to release a new album called Hollywood and asked me if I could take their cover shot. Bob and Olga was staying at my place at the time so we decided to have some fun together. With me and Bob dealing with the camera, Olga took the job of running around with the light, light in this case is my beloved Elinchrom Quadra. It was difficult to find a good spot that was dark enough because we were limited by time – (we had about 30min). Actually we took what was closest at hand, beside the very parking lot that we were at. :) But it worked out great! Olga did a great job of light painting. (above shot is taken with a Nikon D700)
I also went to Brålanda taking this shot of one of my students there – this time using a small LED lamp that someone lent me. and then ending the whole thing with a flash from the Quadra. Above shot is developed using the latest version of Silkypix pro for Foveon. And that shot is a 30s exposure taken with the SD14. Heavily cropped too..
Recently we had some friends over – all the way from Germany. Bob, Olga and Anastasia came for Linn’s birthday (Days later Olga had her birthday as well). Bob and Olga are two well known artists in the Sigma oriented photographic community and our roads crossed many years ago deep in the dpreview forums and later we also met when exposing our photographs at the Photokina fair.
I often discuss work with them, they’re two brilliant artists with a rare eye combined with great technical skills.
Now, during their visit in our home they showed me some photos they’ve taken for Schwarzkopf German Hairdressing Awards – photos were taken back in February but they weren’t allowed to show them in public due to the rules of the competition. But I could have a peak.
Fluid females. Photos taken with the Sigma SD14.
I remember that my first feeling was, oh, such nice light – perfectly lit and great focus on hair. Cool expressions from models, dead cool! Soon I had too look again, something was wrong, (right) and I saw that one of them must’v had some body paint or something. Looking even closer I saw some drops hanging in mid air from one of the girls cheek and I soon realized that it was liquid. I don’t know if Olga perhaps told me before I fully understood but oh how cool I thought it was. Is! If a jaw can drop, this was it!
Now I begged them to tell me how, and we talked for hours about how these shots saw the light of day and I was totally inspired! I’ve been waiting for them to be able to publish them somehow and not only that, here’s an article with a “how to” guide so you can – at least try – your own liquid person!
A huge thank you to Olga Vasilkova and Bob Van Ooik for sharing their work and this article on how they created magic!
“how to” liquid Females article.
V-Studio international. The blog.
Movie below shows what I mean with bleeding colors in Silkypix and how you solve it – but I must admit that in many pictures, this type of noise reduction is clearly visible in a way that I really don’t like – especially in bokeh areas. Lucky for us you can reduce and perfect it to your liking, but only almost. Sigma Photo Pro has a better way of noise reduction. I guess they should have being the master of everything Foveon but still.. Also, Sigma has a really really nice sharpening that is somehow not affecting areas out of focus in the same way as the rest of our developers. (RD, Silky and LR included). The Video below tries to somehow show what I mean. Also the RAW is available in this post.
I’m sorry for not being very clear when speaking. I hardly hear myself sometimes. grr.
EDIT: Now LINKS ARE FIXED FOR REAL! Man that was tricky. :D Now you can switch between shots easily. Raw file for download here!
It’s quite a big difference if you click between. Especially at skin tones / skin contrast and the blue thingi. In Silkypix you have so many options – and it’s easy to loose yourself in all possibilities. The blue has been desaturated using the special color wheel and lightened and all green tones has been moved towards a greyish saturation as well as little magenta. Also noise reduction has been reduced quite a lot as blue has a tendency to bleed. Why I have no idea, something with the noise reduction in Silkypix. Raw Developer has a better solution I think.
To be fair, SPP (Sigma Photo Pro) is made with more or less one click. Nothing really changed. I use florescent WB with a warmer touch using color wheel. Other than that it’s “out of the box”.
Pretty amazing really how shallow DOF can isolate an object like this. It’s like entering a new world, and I find it very fascinating. Above shot is taken with the Sigma DP2.
As some of you noticed we like mushrooms, and fall in Sweden is like candy store for kids. These mushrooms are called Trattkantareller in Swedish and Cantharellus tubaeformis in Latin. Now you know. And we will dry them and use them during the cold and inhuman Swedish wintertime. See above shot at original size.
Here follows some shots that been on flickr for some time, but without me saying much. These are a bit Strobist as you can see how I did most of them. :) Btw, Everything in this post is developed using Silkypix. I actually learned more on how to use Silkypix since I developed these but they’ll do for now.
Updated! Now including the RAW from Flyingrooster and Biggydogs english fix.
Movie is now OK. ;)
I also baked a nice little raw pack for you so that if you don’t currently have a Sigma, you can at least play around with some files. It’s a small collection of recent pictures taken with SD14, DP1 and DP2.
The above movie is recorded as HD (1280×720) so view full screen with HD turned on for best experience. It’s currently processed and might be done when you watch. :)
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