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Another shot from my trip up north and this time it’s a Yak bull (At least I think so).. :) It’s a shot taken at ISO200 – You may want to open the shot in PS in order to fully see what I see, it’s still the strange profile bug making my shots look weird online. :(

Now, maybe you would like to know what the shot looks like in it’s none edited state?

I started with the last shot (almost) and saved at 16bit tiff, and worked with the dodge brush in Aperture to get where I wanted. I’m getting better with Aperture with everyday that passes. It’s good to be forced sometimes. :) I’m even thinking of installing Pixelmator and work with that instead of Photoshop.. At least while in China. :)

 Original from the window of my car..

For the last four days I’ve been on vacation on my vacation to the north of Yunnan province, to a place named Shangeri-la.. I used ISO200 in order to get the entire scene without having to bracket (take three or more shots with different exposures). So in order to get sky and foreground in one shot I used x3 fill light which works remarkably well with SD1 images, very different from my past experience.

Now, the colorbug within SPP5 isn’t yet fixed and I have to fight the magenta touch in Aperture and I feel/fear that I loose density because of this fight. Anyways. Don’t forget to click the boy shot and the water shot as they’re both incredibly detailed.

Some additional info can be found in my Dpreview Sigma forum thread.

 Original Fill light used and cropped as well. Have a look at the original as it’s super-detailed. 18-50 macro at it’s best!

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 Original Driving at Tiger Leaping Gorge

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And last a shot from when I passed a waterfall just beside the road, Linn opened the window to touch the water. :P

There will be more!

Couldn’t resist.. And she even exaggerate the magenta effect quite a bit.. :)

A bit later I saw her again, now her dad had collected some more of what he was collecting.. I tried to make her smile, but she wouldn’t. :(

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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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I will not post much until next release of SPP5 is out. It’s just an amazing amount of work to get anything right and out without looking too off from your original idea. But please enjoy this small selection.

All images taken using the Sigma SD1 + 18-50 2.8 macro.

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A basic tour in how to produce nice black and white images with the help of Sigma Photo Pro. And in case I didn’t make myself clear in the video, no flash or strobes has been used in any of these images. Only halogen “flood” light, a 1000w of it - pretty bad really and therefor black and white is a really good solution. Also, camera used? Dp2. Surprise! :D

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBUOC2ioow0

You made some successful attempts? Please add images to your comments. :)

Here’s the RAW from the video if you wanna play some yourself. All Raw developers links can be found on the right side. –>

Playing some with RD’s monochome settings. It gives something cool. Pretty dirty if you press the original, both is higher ISO too – a little bit above iso200 (so no extreme amounts) mostly because they came out underexposed.

See resized 200% from above crop.

See resized 200% from above crop.

Every Wednesday evening I have a photography class for young people – and last night was this terms first. Tried to keep things simple in the studio as it was new to most and we fooled around with the light a bit. Here’s three shots. SPP + Aperture. No full size (still a bit more if you click each) and also using some old watermark! :)

DP2 ISO50, f2.8, 1/3s – Sigma Photo Pro + Apple Aperture (same to all photos below) Also, all these have their full size version on flickr.

I admit! I’m not a big fan of picking mushrooms but I LOVE to shoot them! Earlier today, Mom and Linn decided to go out. It was already quite some time after sunset and I’m not that keen on searching hard for something I can’t really see so I took my DP2 and Gitzo Explorer and went along (that way I could play with ANY findings, eatable or not). Also, I got some comments about Aperture so here’s a SPP developed and Aperture post processed series of mushy images. When I say dark I mean pretty dark. I’ll give you some exif info below each shot.

Another annoyance with late evening shots is what white balance to select. Light differ quite a lot depending on surroundings and I tried sunlight, shade, cloudy, auto – and went back.. It’s hard not to make it look warm and fuzzy even though you know it was pretty cold colors. Well, I settled for Cloudy in SPP. Except for the very first one (above) that one uses the sunlight wb.  Hope you like it!

ISO50, f4, 4s


ISO50, f6,3, 5s

ISO50, f2.8, 1/2s


ISO50, f2.8, 0,6s

ISO50, f2.8, 1/3s


ISO50, f6,3, 1,6s

ISO50, f2.8, 1,3s

Oh, how much I’m longing for a film function for a SD camera. even at 480p or 720p it would kick some serious but – especially at black and white with it’s extreme micro contrast it has a very special film-like feeling that I yet have to see using anything digital. Including red.

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)

Did I tell you I LOVE my DP1? :D (I don’t love everything about it, but I do forgive when playing with the RAW). These images are all taken with one light. One big softbox with a not well known branded flash so it’s probably a setup that everyone could afford. These images are all available as full size for pixel-peepers out there They are as sharp as they look all the way down to 100% and will look terribly good printed. Better so of printed big! Please do try! :)  (go to my flickr account for more images from the same series).

Workflow is terribly simple. Sigma Photo Pro, save as TIFF 16, post process using Aperture or Lightroom. I did use Lightroom 2 only for the BW below.

Here you can see how big the softbox is, and what the setup looks like. I never moved the light (or at least very little).

SD14 + DP1, 12-24 and 120-300 used most on these. Sigma Photo Pro for all color pictures and Raw Developer 1.80 used on all Black and white shots. Aperture for post and publishing.  Click more for more! :D Full size images for all.

SPP + Aperture + Viveza – workflow HD from Carl Rytterfalk on Vimeo.