Download SD1 RAW Pack nr 4 255MB
You need Sigma Photo Pro 5 (or any other SD1 compatible aw converter).

The above shots all have a huge dynamic range (perhaps not the water shot) for you to play with – and in order to achieve good results you will have to either use X3 Fill light a lot – or save the image two or three times with different exposures and make a “fake HDR” in PS or whatever software you fancy. You can also dodge and burn if you save as 16bit tiff.

As I’m on the road and I do think above shots has been problematic – but interesting –  I’d LOVE to see what you guys can do! Anyone up for the task with any of these shots?

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I love ev-bikes! I had one many years ago when I lived in Kunming and the other day we tried a few to see if perhaps it would be time to get another one.. They’re really awesome!! This one can do about 45km before running out of juice and cost around 2000rmb (€200) – And it’s foldable and battery is easily removable. Cool stuff!!

Good that I have Linn, she makes my photos look so much better! :D

These are some older shots from some weeks ago, still SD1 of course. Now looking at them thinking that maybe a bit too magenta. Oh well. :)

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None of these are taken in HI mode, but in mixed MED and LOW mode.

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What do you do when you have set day to shoot, and that day turns out to be very dark and rainy? You could reschedule or.. use your SD14 and the Sigma 120-300 OS for every single shot. Why SD14 when I have SD15? Well, it wouldn’t be as much fun now, would it? No. :) And it was tricky to get colors the way i like them – and these are more or less straight out from SPP5 beta.

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The 120-300 OS is such nice lens to work with – I had a monopod and nothing more. I wasn’t afraid of the rain as I know the SD14 can take quite some – and the 120-300 OS is weather sealed so the combo should work fine and as you see in these shots – even if it was raining it wasn’t like cats and dogs.

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I tried to keep a nice distance between me and my objects – Above shot is taken using the full 300mm – they’re all electric bikes so I thought it was a bit fun to shoot with the old gas thingi in the background. Sort of fit the retro look of those bikes as well.

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There was some foldable bike that I had to shoot – I used my little brother as my model, he’s very proud of his work. :) I might also add that the bluish / magenta tint that’s slightly over each shot is more or less a side effect of bad light and sd14. SD14 has a strong tendency towards green and well, I could have fought back using flash and more light which normally solves the issue but this time I didn’t wanna risk them due to the weather. So bare the slight tint – and try to look beyond.

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So, these are all taken using the old SD14, using it’s 4.6MP capability. Please have a look at those full sized versions to fully appreciate the quality.

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As I said, we ran out making sure that our beloved SD15 coupled with a 17-50 OS still loved us and it sure did. :) Here’s a few shots from this very evening. And yes, that’s Linn playing with the Sigma 530 flash.. :) Please enjoy the full sized versions as well – I might add ones more that I really want to see how the SD1 works using this lens. It’s really crisp. Rumors has it that the camera is soon to be released. Oh, how much I want that to be true!

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Three days at a Baby fair in Göteborg – Shooting hundreds of kids and babys climbing a mountain, at least by the looks of it. The youngest model was two weeks old and the oldest – well, I think she was in her 60s. I used Linn as my computer girl, selecting, retouching and printing pictures. My little sister Emmy as the placing and getting kid to smile person – and finally myself as the photographer, using a Canon system and a 24-70L because we needed a tethered system in order to make everything flow smoothly. (SD1?!)

We had a great time although It really annoys me not being able to use my own gear when on missions like this. I’m still happy that the Canon works as well as it does. :) Today was the the final day and when arriving home it didn’t take long before we ran out shooting a little with the SD15 – just to make sure we didn’t hurt it’s feelings! :D

As you might have noticed I haven’t posted in about a week – and it’s mostly because I’ve been busy taking photos.. And to make things more fun I also used the Nikon D300 along with my SD15 – the true reason was an assignment that included some football player running around with a ball – and knowing my cameras limitations I decided to make it safe – and got the D300 along with the 70-200 2.8 VR lens (Thanks Niklas!). When I lent the camera the guy also lent me the Nikon 24mm 1.4 lens – which I just HAD to use now that I had it – so lots of photos was taken with that combo. :)

Because these images is being sold to customer I can’t publish them – but what you see below is the way I present a shoot to my customers – they then pick what they want and I develop those shots and send them as TIFF. First a shot taken with my SD15 and the 17-50 2.8 using strobe light. (Lightroom)

And here’s two sessions using the Nikon D300 and the 24mm 1.4 lens.

I also had a session at a tire hotell – some newly built place where you put your tire over winter / summer. This was shot using the Sigma SD15 and the truly awesome 10mm fisheye lens. (this is a screenshot from the full 360 QTVR that I gave the customer). Developed using SPP and PS.

Now I’m off watching the news again – I can’t really stop thinking about Japan at this moment and I’m happy to report that none of the Sigma employees are missing – although we know little about their friends and families. JAPAN, WE LOVE YOU!

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.

yes, after lots of time - dissecting one of my 500GB Wester Digital book drives – couldn’t find the right power adaptor (I have lots of external drives and I never know which has what adapter) – it was the last drive that could have the “lost” wedding images in – so I ripped it open. it took me some time and now it’s in a more – say, mobile format. :) Less plastic. I have this e-sata reader that can connect naked drives and it worked perfect. I found my lost picture too and I couldn’t help myself not processing it instantly.

So here’s the result. Compare to old post with the “old” process. :) And yes I took the car away in LR – fast and dirty. Added some vignette again too. Should be around ISO35.

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here’s the original, unprocessed. :

I could save some of that highlight but not all. Still I’m happy. Maybe I’ll rediscover this shot when SPP 5 comes out? :D The beauty of RAW!

Original size. She is lit by Sigma 530! :) (Sigma SD15, 50mm 1.4 at f3,5 1/40s ISO50)

Original size. (Sigma SD15, 50mm 1.4 at f10 1/13s ISO100)
Above shot of the road is an Enfuce test (open source HDR software that I use inside LR3). Shot is made from the same RAW file saved as three different TIFF files with various exposure compensations in Sigma Photo Pro)

Mom, Linn and myself went off a few hours to see if we could find any mushrooms. Equipped with both SD15 and strobes I had very little luck and light disappeared way to fast.. I did get a shot of mom though and the road. It was pretty dark when I shot those but I think SD15 did a great job! hmm.. Autumn is coming way to fast this year. And yes, we got some nice mushrooms with us home!

Developed using SPP 4.1

The knife maker. Shot on Marstrand using SD14 + Sigma 50mm 1.4 and using sun as main light and Sigma 530 DG and back shape light.  ISO50. Now, ISO50 is such a compressed format that you really need to expose with great care. His shoulder is totally white and if it was shot at ISo100 it would still be information there. There is, if I convert to Monochrome but because it’s only info from one or two channels (Showing strange colors if still shown) Sigma has decided to erase everything in those areas.. I had lots of overexposed ISO50 shots yesterday and I regret shooting at ISO50. Stupid me.

If you look closer you’ll see a light shadow in his glasses, that’s where the round shape of a tiny beauty dish were before I erased it using LR3. Strong sun from the back and the Sigma 530 DG from slight above using a beauty dish making the sharp light disappear. SD14 + 50mm 1.4 + ISO50 (or more ISO25). Too much light entered the 50mm so I had to emphasizes those shadows and the hat quite a lot.

The oldish couple. Shot using 10-20 with sun as main and 530 DG as side light. Slight green color on the left shows where 530 is placed. SD14 and ISO50.  This came out slightly dark, best viewed at full size.

The above shot was slightly overexposed ISO50 shot, skin was overexposed in the color version – this version is equal to ISO25.  These two guys are well known over at www.99.se Goflorp (handle) and Rei Trulsson.. Nice to talk a bit with to of my readers in real life. :)

Childhood friends passing by, had to take their picture. The 530 from the far right. I should have used one more flash on their legs, that would probably make this shot a lot better. And yes, the 530 was a little too powerful this time. SD14 10-20mm ISO50

And finally, three shots of Linn. I’m so happy to have her around so I can play!! :D

These last two could have been more worked on in SPP or LR but.. I didn’t. In the last shot the flash was slightly to close to her and skin is a little overexposed. Could work better as monochrome. All three  shot using SD14 and 10-20mm. ISO50 on all.

All above images available as full size on flickr. Handle with care.

(Strobist info: Behind blue pillow is a gridded speed light. High left slightly infront of girl is a naked flash shooting at low power directly at subject). Camera: Sigma DP1 @ ISO400.

I couldn’t resist playing some today using my Sigma 530 flash – I brought with me a cheap transmitter from China as well that works pretty well, although not as smart as the one I have already from Elinchrom (Skyport). The Chinese version flashes as many times as it can until shutter is closed – so shooting indoors with low shutterspeeds and using the super fast Sigma gun, you will most likely get a strobe effect – lots of flashes in a short session. Nice if subject is STILL! People hardly ever is.  Skyport never does this – it sends ONE signal not a continues flow. The Chinese version is a 10th of the price of the skyport.

Using the Sigma DP1′s fantastic ability to make colors is a sport in it self! Little sister holding the Sigma 530 and myself holding the second gun. Super simple setup. Without light this picture is totally dead. Camera, the Dp1 stands by itself on my Benro 91M8 tripodded monopod. Used in all shots above. :D

Playing indoors using the same two guns as in above shots. Myself being the tripod for the second gun. Not a perfect shot but still fun. :) (And yes, she was tired. :D)

Being outdoors a dull day as today isn’t always fun – incase you don’t have my gear! Then it’s FUN! One speed light (Sigma 530) with the grid, the tripodded monopod and a 2s delay. hmm.. perhaps it was 10s.

All shots edited using Sigma Photo Pro and uploaded using LR3.

Now, I had a some days together with only DP2 – the strange thing is that when I bring the DP2, then all situations are begging for wider – and when bringing the DP1 the opposite. But these below worked perfectly well using the DP2′s 42mm lens. Also, a reminder. Edited on nothing calibrated but I think they should look ok.

This little girl  stood outside the window of a restaurant and she looked at me constantly – the guy sitting there is the restaurant owner and he tried several times to scare her away by banking on the window and by by looking at her with angry face.. But she remained with the same face, looking at me.. This is perhaps the only time I been thinking about adoption. :P

Also notice that some have a cropped version as well.. it’s not me taking two shots. :)

A couple of days ago Linn wanted to get her nails done as it’s extremely cheap in Kunming compared to Sweden (about 1/20th of the price) and while waiting I walked around a bit and saw these two young girls coming in a near by alley.

I walked a bit more and when I returned I saw the same girls standing outside the same store where Linn did her nails. I took another shot.

Now, they really did time pass fast and we had a great time together. They really wanted me to take lots of shots and their mother came too – but I didn’t get a picture of her. (or one of the girls mother as of the one child per mom rule).

All shots taken with the Sigma DP1s and developed using SPP 4.1 / but I really have no idea about colors as I sit on an old laptop only visually calibrated.

These are part of my China 2010 set. Almost all are higher ISO, 200 and above. lots at 400 and 800 as weather was pretty dark. Raining a lot. Also I’m not keen on the way SPP 4.1 handles noise at higher ISO, will perhaps redo some using SPP3.3.

Post processed using Lightroom 3.

And finally here comes some real Sigma SD15 shots taken by Olga, Bob assisted with the strobe or reflector. Both the SD15 and lens used belongs to me and that says something about the ease of use. :) Just pick it up and focus on picture making. All shots taken with the new Sigma 50-500 OS and developed using Sigmas lates SPP 4.1.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow morning I leave for China together with my beautiful wife and we will be gone for about a month. Although I will bring laptop and cameras so I’ll post from there. Until then, enjoy these shots!