get PicLens

The more I shot with this lens the more I realise that it’s more tricky than with the 30mm - DOF being even narrower and it’s sometimes painful to try go find perfect focus. When you got it it’s rewarding but don’t expect it to be a walk in the park - more a walk on the moon. (you do make touchdowns now and then..)

These are also sharpened in Raw Developer a bit more than I normally do - it’s needed as 1.4 is loosing sharpness compared to f1.8 and above. Still it’s quite amazing lens. And getting back to the weight of the lens. the SD14 + battery pack + 50mm 1.4 lens is a very good looking package and well balanced - easy to hand hold! I will soon post a shot of myself with it as soon as Gerhard Joren (who took it) send it to me. Until then enjoy these shots.

Click each for a full resolution version.

I was thinking it would be bigger. a whopping 500g piece of glass could have been heavier. It’s pretty short and very fat somehow - gives a very cool impression - big opening that tell you I’M BRIGHT.

Alright, another shot at F2.5 and a shutter speed of 1/3200s. A friend holding a reflector to even out the light a bit. The widest I could go was F2 - so here goes another shot at F2.

(This one is not perfectly focused, it’s kind of hard at F2 - hard training lays ahead)

I will try hard the coming days to find other things to photograph and hopefully I’ll be back with some nice pics.

Lenses used: 12-24, 30mm, 70mm, 70-200 + DP1 (16,5mm)

Hopefully some smart guys at Sigma can fix this in the next edition of the Mac version of SPP, maybe release some open source? :D. 

And Yes, I’m aware that I say “These are SD pictures..” when it’s DP1 images. I do correct myself without really knowing. :P Forgive me. 

Another wedding session, and I’m happy to announce that DP1 is a great b camera! :D Linn had hers with her all the time (she assist me) and she took quite a few really nice shots. I used mine as well and I got more keepers from the DP1 (compared to amount of shots taken) than with the SD14. More time to think? I think one or two of Linns are among these too.

My workflow has slightly changed and looks like the following. I make the basic adjustments from SD14 and DP1 RAW in SPP 2.5 Windows. After adjustments are done I import all into a new project in Apple Aperture.

In Aperture I use the new plugin called Viveza to further adjust certain spots - add light to face or simply to enhance black and white images. I also use Aperture to dodge and burn, crop and straighten, add vignetting and my little watermark. I don’t apply vignetting to all but to many shots. So don’t judge lenses because of my images. hehe..

During all this I also add stars to my favorites, this I later use when publishing to the couple and the very best here on my website. I ended up with 44 images in this post and 133 to the couple, I started with about 300 from SPP and around 700 in total from field..

The two above shots are DP1

DP1

There is all in all 44 images in this post. Click each image to view the full size image. Remember that this is copyrighted material.

DP1

DP1

DP1

DP1

Linns shot, 10-20mm

DP1

DP1

DP1

DP1

About a week ago I received the much awaited (at least by me) close up lens made by Sigma. I must say that I was happily surprised about the little leather box that came with the lens! Soooo retro and beautifully crafted! WELL DONE SIGMA! Now, is the lens as good as the box it came in? :D

I’ve read numerous threads over at dpreview on different solutions and I’ve seen magnificent macro shots with all sorts of filters - some good, some not so good. Now, when the Sigma AML-1 was announced I was a bit surprised on the closest distance which is 20cm - not very Macro on a 28mm lens is it?! :D and in order to show you just how close 20cm is and what it feels like - I made this little video. If you watch it on Youtube then you can see it in higher resolution. Embedded is low res.

The lens is very bright - not sure you loose any light. Can’t really see any difference in shutter speeds and the lens says nothing about it. You can’t focus to infinity with it on - but it’s made for closeups so it’s not really a problem. OOF becomes BEAUTIFUL! Especially welcome when you’re making movies. Along with the extremely sharp lens and sensor it becomes almost unreal. Take a look at the shot of Linn, click it and the full version will load. It’s so so detailed. If the DP1 only had MORE resolution when making movies!! :D

The AML-1 as a slight negative distortion in corners - The opposite to the type of distortion we’re used to with normal lenses. But it’s not noticeable in day to day images. The picture below shows the effect, look at the window and you’ll understand what I mean.

Conclusion. I should have had TWO lenses or even three and stacked them, that would probably give very nice macros. Right now you don’t get close enough for that type of photography with only one lens. For movies and portraits such as the ones above it’s a wonderful solution and gives you new views - plus that the extreme OOF is perfect for videos.

Btw, the lens / filter itself is very very well made and NO CA can be found. At least not in any of my photos so far. Contrast and sharpnes are really top notch.

The 120-300 is wonderful to work with. So fast and easy to handhold. It’s very well balanced together with the SD14 body.

Most shot at ISO400 and ISO800. Manual mode. Directly from SPP3.2 mac. I must say it’s tricky with sunset in background like this, not sure where to put the WB - it looks good in many different ways. :)  click to view as 1500×1000px. I realized now that the black and white shots has a bluish tint. (except one) My fault. :)

I alternated between three different PS plugins to get the look that I wanted or simply to blow out the white background. The ones used most (for white background) is Viveza, the secondly most used is AlienSkin Exposure and the third used for one or two shots is Nik Color Efex Pro.

All shots are here presented in full resolution. Two shots have been slightly cropped. The rest have been left as is.

Click each for full size view. Enjoy!

Yes, it’s me (above and below).

There is more to come.
Click below for some more from this very session.

Three shots using HDR function on the SD14 (bracketing +1.7) - then using Bracketeer to bring them together. I haven’t bought the software yet so there is a big sign saying “Demo mode” in Swedish. :)

Trying to embed using “high video quality” but can’t so please click here and also click “watch in high quality” - if not it’s not worth watching. :D

Recorded with DP1 and in the end there is a “stop motion” part recorded with my SD14 + 50mm lens. Did not use any magic resizing just directly imported and edited using Final Cut Pro.

This one is saved as “double size” = 18.5MP res. Click to open each picture in full size. (or more)

I went to this very place with my Danish friends recently (SUG meeting) but felt the urge to go back and see if sunset would give some better pictures. To be honest, last time I was mostly shooting video with the DP1 and had no real time to think about stills. :D  Anyways these are two new shots taken with the DP1 handheld and with ND Grad 121P filter. Plus one more at my flickr account.

You need to resize (upscale) your shoot first. This is good to do because of two reasons. First. Protect the 320×212 data that you have - try directly to make the data embedded into a bigger file. That way it’s easier to deal with your shot in Final Cut or Adobe Premiere or any other software that you like to use. Less risk of loosing data due to re-compression.

The second reason is that by rescaling with “super resolution” you will take advantage of the fact that the scale algorithms reads more frames in order to upscale and therefore you squeeze more detail than what each frame originally had. This is something no other software that I know of does by default. I usually upscale to DV PAL or NTSC resolution. Easier to work with standard numbers. :)

Before posting to web I use Adobe flash converter and a high bitrate. Mostly to end up with a small file that I can send to viddler without another re-compression.

Filmed with the Dp1 of course. :)

These are all taken with the Sigma Dp1. If you wonder why you can’t see the SD14 display in this clip, that’s because I looked exposure by using AEL (because sunlight was very strong at the moment) and therefore the LCD will not show.

Somehow the movie became squeezed, not sure when or how. hehe

When I bought my mini cokin A (amature) holder then I bought some filters at the same time. All ND’s were sold so I had to buy some colorful ones instead. One was called tobacco or coffee grad - can’t remember what word they used. Both works. :) And I have done several black and whites with it on and it works great. One cool thing is also that when you put camera into black and white mode (jpeg) and use a filter such as this you get really nice nice results directly out of the camera. Feels cool too when you aim as you see the result directly on the LCD.

Direct output from camera using filter and black and white mode: (ISO800)

I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a beta of the next SPP 2.x and for those of you being irritated of green corners I can now tell you that green corners are now only a bad memory! :D I could only test the PC version but it ran extremely quick under vm-ware, actually much faster than my Mac version of SPP3.1. I did try some SD14 files and especially reds are now better. But this article will concentrate on DP1 images.

I thought that my photos from Elmia foto video 2008 could be used for this preview and at the same time you can see what I do in SPP and maybe learn something about processing. In every image there is important data inside. Exposure, ISO, White balance as well as processing. All kinds of situations ranging from high iso mixed light to long exposures in tricky situations. And as an extra bonus - studio shots! Continue to read this article.

First some studio shots. Something fun here is that the photographer (Jonas Jensen) uses a Mamiya with PhaseOne P30+ and lens always set to F22. The DP1 can only go as far as F11 so we had a problem (scene was way to bright). I could run around and change the light every time - big job with four active flashes - or could I make use of the fact that it’s a central type shutter? I set the camera at 1/640 f9 and to my surprise picture came out perfectly exposed! So - no longer do I have to think about x-sync and slow shutter times in studio environment.

All these images are screen dumps and have not seen photoshop. Hopefully they’re in correct sRGB. You can’t judge sharpness if the loupe is not seen in the SPP screen shot. Remember, these images comes from a Beta version of Sigma Photo Pro and might look different in the final version. (probably only to the better if possible)

1/640 at f8 and ISO200 (gives slightly wider dynamic range). Note how clean this shot is, no tendency for colored corners. I’m very pleased with skintones too. Pretty amazing really.

Different sources of red and pink hitting this model. test shot before. I love the way DP1 handles red.

1/640 at f8 - a close look at 100% eye lash. Note how much sharpness is applied. :)

Here I played with different WB. Sunlight WB gives slightly different colors and works well in some situations and skin-tones. Worth a try if you have a problematic shot. I use Sunlight WB when shooting because it look the best on the LCD. (important when showing, I often change to flash WB back in SPP)

This shot came out under exposed and I have like three different versions that I like in different ways of this shot. (stronger reds etc) but this is one of the less dramatic.

Skin tones with the new SPP are all very nice looking. The flash wb is not perfect thou and I have to compensate some with the color wheel. Not a big problem but probably fixable.

Pretty cool uhu? :D Not much to say here, open it up and enjoy. Once more I settled with Sunlight WB creating more dramatic red.

Little bit fixed crop from above image. Different adjustments done. Click for full size.

Peter Walström, a photographer and friend posing for me.

The Danish photographer Jonas Jensen who also is responsible for the light setup in all studio shots. Very cool guy. (and very good at his profession)

Martin - note sharpness on magnified area.

Picture to show setup a little bit. :) Can you guess the flash brand used? Model: Martin Widén.

Martin Widén sitting and Jonas Jensen testing the PhaseOne P30+ back on a Mamiya 645 body. Amazing quality from that combo. I’d like a PhaseOne back on my DP1. haha

Per Holmén - Testing light. Note loupe.

Iso400 in a very tricky situation. Auto white balance used. (I had no idea what lasers and UV light would be). I used a mini mini fourpod on a table. 1s.

Same as above. ISO400 - 1s

Laser beam directly into the camera during long exposure - 3.2s - using ISO100. Look at those colors! Amazing feeling to open up. Auto WB used.

2.5s at ISO100. How would a bayern camera do in UV light situation like this?

ISO800 at 0.8s - When shoting ISo800 I always saturate some. It brings back lost color and you don’t really see a great difference compared to lower ISO’s. Admit it’s nice looking ISO800! :D

2s exposure. Underexposed shot saved. F4 is sharp. Loupe showing 100%

Mixed light at ISO400. This guy wanted to see how bokeh was seen using a half person at F4. It was very tricky light and I had a hard time deciding WB setting. I could have gone for a bit higher exposure and burn windows in backgrund. Loupe showing 100% magnification. Hand held.

ISO800 taken by unknown at the stand. Could be myself but I have no clear memory. Light was terrible but came out ok.

ISO800, hand held. Note how Highlight slider is down -2 in order to restore lost data in the beer glass. I sometimes wish that that slider would go all the way down to -3. There is so much highlight detail at higher ISO and sometimes you need to restore.

Pär Holmén - 0.5s - The built-in flash used with long shutter - (fill light)

This shot was a bit boring in color so I changed to monochrome white balance. I wish I had that option in the Dp1 as well with new options of ISO1600 and ISO3200 (in mono mode). Would greatly improve the usage of the DP1.

Not sure I got WB right here but it shows how well a long exposure (0.3s) in mixed light works. It’s extremly sharp (f4) and I think I’ll put this one in the next raw pack. Auto WB.

Nothing important, but note that the loup is set to +++ (highest magnification, and I guess that’s 200%) - this picture would look wonderfully sharp at very big size.

Juha in the sunset. Evening light is tricky and I’m not sure I got this one perfect. Works for now. ND grad used.

Photographer Jonas Jensen - with one of his bad faces! :D ND grad filter used.

You find it at www.sigma-sd14.com/

The Red has a sensor-size of 24.4×13.7 mm and DP1 has 20.7 x 13.8 mm. (see comparison) This means that the Red sensor is slightly wider (as in 16:9) than the Foveon equipped DP1. This makes them very similar - the depth of an actual movie using a f4 lens at 28mm would look more or less the same (at least at extremely small size).

Now, what would happen if the next Sigma SLR would have the DP1s movie mode AND with higher resolution. Wouldn’t that be a real killer?! (plus mic in etc) :D

I’m even sure that the Dp1 will get much improved movie mode with time. Sigma is known for good firmware upgrades (at least on the SD14) and hopefully this will continue with the Dp1.

Link to Red.com
Here’s a small little video showing depth from Dp1. :)

Could this be called the DP1 factor?

One way to use WB

Another way same road..

Göteborg by rain

Just a little something before I go to bed. ND filter + DP1 used.

Works great! :D Perfect lens protector too. Just the metal plate needed looks cool enough to have on full time.

Sigma will come out with a easy to use solution within SPP itself or by firmware, until then we can do it our self’s in Photoshop (or other software such as Gimp).

I’m sure that a nice day BEFORE sunset would make very cool videos like this. It’s so simple. :)

I decided to make new test.
I turned off the LCD, turned on full AF and put on the external view finder. In order to take as many shots as possible I also turned on continues mode. Three pictures was taken each time. (95% of the time). ISO100 used on the first 400 - then ISO400 after that. I restarted the camera 30 times in a row to make test more real. I shot some indoor and some out door. It does take some energy to take as many shots as I did. :D In one day.

Result:
RAW files: 250 (2.97GB)
JPEG Full size: 236 (577MB)
JPEG Med size: 172 (108MB)
JPEG Low size: 218 (72MB)
Movies: 3 (total 60MB > 4min)
Sound file: 1
——————————
Total: 880

In short: LCD off - AF on - Continues mode on.
Using LCD on maybe 30-40 shots. MF used on about 20 shots.

Alright. I took a deep look into my growing DP1 video library and made a music video out of it. Upsized to 640×480.m4v (which is the iPhone format). Some quality is still lost but I think you get a feeling for what the DP1 can do. It’s not a HD killer cam - but useful! :D - Also remember that DP1 video format is 320×240 to begin with I made it bigger using Final Cut.

Play with Viddler.
Play with Youtube.
Download original file. 30MB - 2:45 min
You might need iTunes, Quicktime or VLC to play this.

Found this while reading a post on Dpreview. Oh, How much I want one of these! Click here to go to their site. (in Korean)