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′
UPDATE: Some of these shots has now been redeveloped using Lightroom 3 beta. Just wanted to try the flickr upload function, not sure these looks any better, but contains lots more black. Previous upload was developed using Raw Developer. They’re all in full size available in my flickr account.
The other week, two of my photography students wanted to play with a home built disco strobe. A 50W light connected to a big wooden box with a car battery inside along with a mix of cables.. We turned off all light, put the camera on bulb mode (a students Nikon D60) and started shooting using a trigger.
One guy standing with the strobe controlling speed of strobe and direction – another holding something to shield the light some (barn doors), a third to hold the trigger as long as something happened in front of camera and the rest standing around waiting for their turn.
We did this for about 45minutes, continues flashing light – it was a very strange feeling to turn on the “real” light after and you could feel how much your brain had worked. Felt very very tired!. :) Almost the same feeling as going of a boat after a windy day..
So these shots of nothing serious – Jimmy, the owner of the camera uploaded some of the shots on my FTP – but unfortunately only those of me. ;)
Just came home from a car photo session – an old Ford Escort from the 70th with about 700hp. We drove into a beautiful landscape, my assistant Bengt drove my car, I sat in the trunk with back open. It was cloudy with strong sun now and then, a bit chilly – three nights in a row with frost. Well, the car broke and we were stucked in the middle of nowhere with these little fellows as company. Sun was really low and I tried to shield the 120-300 with my hand without too much success. :D (to my delight)
I developed once more with Raw Developer. I did first with Lightroom but RD gave more filmic feeling. These are ISO200 and 100 – noise reduction turned off. All available as full size at flickr.
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.
Nothing much, just a few shots from todays lesson with my yongsters. We used the Elinchrom Quadra plus a raster (no make light spread as little as possible) plus a big softbox in background (behind photographer) to control ambien light. I just finished developing using Raw Developer and made final changes in Aperture with 16bit tiffs. In RD I took away all noise reduction and all (almost) sharpening to get as neutral result as possible. See my latest youtube video for more info.
These last two black and white shots are actually developed as color and later processed using Silver Efex Pro in Aperture (plugin).
Here’s pictures of some of my photo students – the very top shot is taken by Alexander Troll, the rest before the brake is mine. And what we did this time was using one light only, using a pretty big softbox (same as last time) and a blue background. We tried two sets of lenses – Sigmas 10-20 and 70-200 – none of the 10-20 shots where worth showing as it’s a small studio and too much of the surrounding stuff is showing. Might add that it’s great fun teaching photography to a group of this sort as they’re in different ages and nationalities. I have my class in english.
Most shots are developed using Lightroom 2.5 and I played a bit with colors. :) (what?, you did? I thought they came out like this!!)
Sigma DP2, ISO200. SPP conversion. Click above photo to enter article. EDIT: The above shot is taken using Sigmas optional polarizer (DG Filter, Wide C-PL).
Original shot taken with Sigma DP2 at ISO50. When I took it I thought, jaij, this is beautiful. Well, back home I wondered why I didn’t pay more attention on what it was that I got. Well, I decided to play with it and make a developer test out of it. So here we go. As you see, the original is badly under exposed and slightly tilted. The first software I tried was Lightroom 2.4.
With Lightroom I used some tricks like painting in order to make it look even better. The paint is a slight orange tone applied to places with direct sunlight. I made a movie that will be on youtube in a while with my exact workflow.. I didn’t use fill light much, instead I used a gradient mask to make half the picture lighter.
I’m back, and after dealing with sleep and such my brother got sick and needs attention. Spending lots of time at hospital. Well, I’ve also installed Snow Leopard and enjoying the new speed and snappier behavior. Although SPP felt slower, here hoping for a speedy upgrade from Sigma built on macier code :P
So, without further talk I give to you two shots taken with the DP2 and developed using Raw Developer. Well, first saved as DNG using LR2. I think these colors are so cool, don’t you? Perhaps it’s my iMac screen that makes everything red so bling bling but hopefully it looks good for you too! Oh, and in case you wonder what those strange stony things are, it’s stamps. :) The stamp on my top banner is made using a stamp like that.
It was raining and great shutter speeds turned into seconds. Well, what to do? These are shots taken with the DP1. I have lots of this type of pictures as I love them. It’s a cool way of isolating a subject. Not always successful but always worth a try. If you have taken shots like this please add in commenting field, I’d love to see yours!
An old friend of mine is about to have a baby and wanted me to take a shot or two of them together. :) Lucky me I meet another friend that has a smaller studio – more made for passport type of photos but after rearanging some I got a ligth that worked ok (her husband is holding the flash and Linn is standing on a chair trying to take away stray light). Hope this isn’t seen as a sexy picture for my viewers as it has nothing to do with that. And no, this time I used a Nikon D90 – mostly because it had a lens better fit for this. Didn’t want the wider feeling of DP1 and 2.
I was fooling around with Raw Developer, old version too and converted some new DP2 shots to see what they would look like with noise reduction turned off and sharpening smoothing turned off. Colors are as opened on these two crossing shots. All shots below are saved as 200% size and opened in LR2 for the watermark and sRGB save. EDIT, just realized that my watermark is not applied. Still copyrighted!! :)
And here’s some partials crops of above image: Click each for highly magnified view.
And some other shots developed with Raw Developer. Also DP2. Now I have to admit that I developed these lats night and I felt at the time that Oaaaa, they had such incredible colors but today with this screen I’m using it looks pretty boring so I have no idea what you will feel or see. Hopefully what I saw!
Just wanted to share two late shots taken during the session that you saw previously and they’re both taken with the Sigma 120-300 at ISO50 and SD14. It was a VERY bright sunny day so stayed in the shadows under some huge trees – Tried to equal the light so that my elinchrom quadra wouldn’t be too noticed, used a white umbrella and without a meeter I had to test shoot some before setting the correct power and exposure. But I never really used a light meter before so I’m not sure it would make things faster. As long as my assistant was staying on the same distance exposure would stay about the same. My biggest problem was that clouds would come and go, so light would change LOTS in a couple of seconds – and so would exposure. Lots of shots trashed because of this.
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