I wanted to give you a little treat. Three shots each developed using one out of three great Sigma RAW developers. I took about a hundred shots of Ester, the dog and my little sister and most of them came home in very good condition. Focusing is fast and snaps into place, most of the time on the correct spot. But I’m looking forward to see how well the 50-500 works together with the SD15. Can I catch a running dog?
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First out. Silkypix! Shot was once more wide open (f6,3) and at 450mm. ISO 100. I turned off (more or less) noise reduction in silkypix to gain some natural noise but it did paint a little as you can see if you open up the full version. SPP version is softer but also very nice looking without smear. Open original size.
50-500 OS - Developer: Sigma Photo Pro 4" width="500" height="333" /> Sigma Photo Pro 4 does a very good job, and gives a slightly more warm tone – which fits this image very nicely. Also, details overall looks much better here then with Silkypix. But Silkypix often gives very “pleasing” colors and you have such nice control. mm. f7.1 This one is at a full 500mm. This one in original size. (I did not focus at the dog)
And lastly Raw Developer. Raw developer has such nice controls over RGB curves, lightness, overexposure, sharpness, black and white and noise. BUT it’s trickier to get perfect white balance then most other developers. I was actually helped by having Silkypix open at the same time, showing the same image. You need to know your thing but once you do Raw Developer squeezes out slightly more detail than any other developer and can give very film-like images. This one has noise reduction completely turned off. 373mm. Full size.
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′
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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.
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..
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. Quadra time.." width="500" height="333" />
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. :)
You want to make my next video together with me? With Screen share it’s easy and all you need is a Leopard equipped Mac with microphone. Also, you should be interested in talking Silkypix and image quality. But that includes most people visiting this site? :D It’s nothing advanced or fancy just a bouncing ball of thoughts and images..I have lots of good and bad images, and many developers installed to make it more fun.
Above shot is taken in a studio yesterday (the place I worked with jpegs only – this shot I took as RAW though). The shot came out underexposed and has been adjusted solely inside Silkypix (except for the white border). Even the copyright text is inserted inside Silkypix. (Really good control over watermarks btw).
So what do I think about Silkypix? I have found both greatness and the other way in the way Silkypix does its processing. The good thing about silkypix is that you can go back to the start, take away all noise reduction, all sharpening, all whatever they applied when you first open the shot – and slowly adjust to you liking. You have very nice control over colors and contrast – better than Lightroom (at least better for SD / DP shots) and also parts of it is better than SPP.
I’m now putting together a video showing the good and the bad. With some comparisons with SPP and RD. Perhaps LR and Darkroom too? If my RAM is big enough. hehe. Poor iMac.
FlyingRooster has posted his findings as a comment in this thread. Including comparison images. Well worth reading.
[updated] Thanks silvar23 for the heads up about the DP1s – click here for the announcement! And to Shinzo Fukui for the cool news that there is one more native developer for Sigma RAW files – Silkypix! Click here to download your beta. Windows only though which is a pitty! But VMware is your friend. Anyone tried yet?
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Sigma SD14
Quadra
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