Now I moved so much away from my initial setup that I feel that I will show you a picture or two of what my current setup actually looks like. Woohoo! I will post some in the comments section.  The above shot is slightly cleaned up – the gold surface was slightly scratched and some dents so I repainted the middle reflection and the bottom left - but other than that it’s the original photo – I’m now very satisfied with how reflections works – and if I change ring reflections still look beautiful. I must say that the pure IQ that the Sigma SD15 gives is extremely high. I’ve been looking at other photographers works with jewelry and once you go closer it just doesn’t look good. This shot is available in full size as well. A bit too full really. :)

This time I didn’t use anything else than LR3 and PS5. The only thing left now is to continue with OOF – and see where I should stop before text is readable. This shot is ISO50, 105mm, f11, 1/160s.

Final capture for day four: We had a long talk today, me and the jewelry guy. He wanted the text within each ring to be unreadable so we decided that taking each text away using PS would take way to long, but using a wider aperture could work instead. I had to move the light quite a bit (I used lowest power at f20 on those last shots) and now I had to use  a semitransparent white circular reflector in-between the softbox and the “set” . I finally got a working F8. I could go all the way down to f5.6 but then it was hard to see anything exept one or two diamonds in focus.

I also wrapped the whole sets bottom in golden reflective material – and it seams to work pretty nicely. There is a 3000px version of the below image.

Slightly older part, posted this morning: Today I wanted to try something real and off went Linns ring. I told her to clean it carefully because of all the dirt seen by the mighty 105mm Sigma lens. But wow, we didn’t expect this much scratches to be there – and thanks to photoshop and my great painting skills I was able to partly save her ring. :)

This time I added the Sigma 530 DG, snooted from the right – and the big softbox as always from the top, slightly tilted so that I can reach with the Sigma SD15. Developed using Sigma Photo Pro 4.1 using vivid color mode.

After:

Before:

Also, here’s another shot, another ring, this time a fake one – just trying different ways to reflect. This time I’m holding a long hard, white paper above the ring, infront of the flash. Creates a light, pretty OK looking thingi. And don’t look too close on this one, at 100% size it looks horrible!! Sooo much dirt. (although I didn’t upload the full size of this one).

Alright, it’s not really day two, but at least it’s first shot! I dealed a little with it in Photoshop and will play more with reflections to get the right feel (but not in Photoshop, but on the set). What do you think? It’s ISO50. I think I will get more black in the corners of the ring, like a black frame somehow. Also it’s a little too tilted. :) But that’s not the important part right now.

Right now, I only play with fake rings – will get the real stuff when it’s time for the real deal. About 200 of them.

Light from above, two paper reflectors on the side. Elinchrom Quadra. Sigma SD15, Sigma 70mm.

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.

Sigma Photo pro Original

Silkypix Original

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”.

Picture taken with Sigma 18-50ex macro.

Original, full quality.

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.

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).

Continuing from Part 2.

So the time has come for the final post in this series of my forced jpeg experience. I do feel silly about the whole thing really – User of Foveon equipped Sigmas since 2002 and still haven’t learned anything about modern modes such as the JPEG mode. :) Remember though that the very first Sigma was the SD9 and it didn’t even produce any JPG’s, only RAW. Perhaps that says something about my old fashioned work flow?

Back to the session. I selected a small number of shots using the following settings, actually I never changed once settled.

SD14, studio JPEG only workflow in camera settings: Contrast: +0.8, Sharpness +0.4, Saturation +0.1, Color space: sRGB. And Fluorescent white balance.

I might add that if you wanna be cool and take nice shots of someone in a Studio and show the person what he / she looks like on the LCD then this work flow works nicely – even if you shoot RAW – BUT be prepared to change back to some other WB, like flash or daylight. Perhaps with one of the shots using a grey card visual in a shot and color pick wb for the rest of the shots. Perhaps Bob has something to say about this? I know you use Fluorescent WB a lot!

Now, first I think you wanna see something from the day:

Some collected shots from day 2.

50% magnification.

100% magnification.

200% magnification. Do you see me?

It’s no RAW but it’s really nice to see how well the JPEG engine is working. I can’t let you have these are full sized downloads mostly because they’re not aware of their sudden fame but these crops still shows what I’m talking about. I’m sure they will resize and print nicely large.

The second day I had some time before the first customer arrived and I had a slight different light setup. I wouldn’t cry if I had these as RAW, would sure be nice too see how good I could make them look. Still, for a normal person, these looks nice enough.

Some others jpgs, straight out with no adjustments made.

All in all I now know that my SD14 can do jpegs and they will be perfectly usable if there is a studio occasion where speed as a must. And yes, light areas will clip much sooner then with a RAW, so you need to lighten your subject more carefully. Or agree that blown out areas can be cool if in the right spot. :) I’m totally not used to that but will live.

Oh and the 18-50 2.8 ex did a magnificent job. It’s no prime but delivered nice, crisp contrasty shots. Also, I never really had any problems with batteries, I brought way to many with me. Good as backup but not really needed. I used six batteries in 8h of shooting using battery pack. Perhaps the smaller file size gave some extra juice?

Please feel free to comment and share your own images and experience. Or just ask a question or two.

Continuing from Part 1.

With shaky legs and really only one thing really working reliably, my new lens 18-50 2.8 Macro. I went to the studio again.

Now, this second time I got help from another photographer. Again. Felt like bambi on thin ice and I was happy not to be alone in case I fell. There was actually more things than just JPEG’s that worried me. Battery was one and I brought eight fully charged batteries and the grip, to be on the safe side. Also, this time I was supposed to actually work with customers and bring in some great shots that would sell. But, with the other photographer as main, or backup. Not sure what the deal was, it overall felt safe.

Here comes the very first shots, with custom WB and one using fluorescent wb. Using the custom white balance just didn’t work. Probably because of colored light in background or something, not sure. But it all looked yellow except perhaps the last, which had a magenta tint instead.

Very first test shots with Carl (yes, we do have the same name). He suggested that I would do as he on his Canon, use Fluorescent WB - but I said that this is a Sigma, very different and needs to set custom WB using grey card. (and yes, he used some colored filter for the background light)

After just a few shots I felt like – what am I doing here?!!! Desperately I started to test my options. Settings for saturation, contrast, sharpness and of course WB settings.

Incandescent WB Hmm.. perhaps this bluish tone would work if I added lots of yellow?! Strange but a bit "cool" looking. Nha, this is a RAW camera - this is childish!

At least Carl got some really Swedish eyes!! :D At this point I already had given up and I continued just for fun. Carl was a fun guy and we had a great time together. And we talked about what other cameras I could use – a cheap Canon D450 would probably be inexpensive and do the trick.

But shame to those who give up! I by mistake (probably) switch over to fluorescent wb.

Fluorescent WB

I suddenly realized, especially with those last three pictures that although they had a slight magenta tone on his lips they overall looked really good. From this moment it was all about setting up contrast and saturation correctly and I felt for the first time that there was hope!

100% crop from in-camera jpeg using studio strobes and Fluorescent WB. (from one of the above shots). Also wordpress adds it's mark by re-compressing the original jpg.

Get ready for part three. Would this work in reality? With REAL people?

Continue reading part 3!

EDIT: First test was actually about an hour just before opening time. Peter, the photographer on these pictures was kind and showed me how things worked in his studio. This was the first of September.

I’ve been working in one of the model studios here in Gothenburg. The kind of studio where anyone can come, get pro make up and pro photographed. I went there in the hope that they would have some pro-gear for me – No, I had to use my own gear. That would be SD14. Well, that’s cool if I can sit down with each RAW (I saw a potential problem directly, what software did they use?!) but in a studio such as this – Raw is not an option and spend time with each shot is not an option either.

So I was, to be honest, scared how my SD14 would take this. I asked to have a couple of hours in the studio together with another photographer to see if my gear could cope with the work flow. Each shot had to be perfectly made in camera (lightning, contrast, colors, framing) – no adjustments would be made before showing customer. Would you agree to anything like this if you owned a SD14? I wouldn’t, but I was VERY curious and I came with a bag full of lenses (thinking that what I lack in out-off-camera IQ I got in cool looking gear). Oh well.

Day one I tried with WB card and fighting with internal settings for saturation, contrast, sharpness and so on.. (stuff I never really looked at before). Owning an SD since 2002 I NEVER took a jpg for anything else than pure test. I was very dissatisfied, and my grey-card didn’t make me happy. Stuff looked too warm and not very appealing.

Jpeg shots straight out of SD14, no adjustments made in LR. WB card used except on photos with odd color tone. Those have flash, cloudy, incandescent WB settings. Had to see what was possible.

I came home from day one with lots of shots on my CF – but nothing looked really good. I had to readjust colors on most shots using iphoto or Lightroom. I was really not feeling good and I was thinking about buying some cheap Canon / Nikon just to be able to do shoots like this one.

About a week later the owner of the studio called me, asking if I thought I could work one day. I needed the money, prayed and said Yes, no problem. I’ll do it.

Continue reading part 2..

Second batch from the session with my students only this time I involved a little bit more photoshop. All these are available as big size (around 4573 x 3048px = 14MP) in this flickr set they’re all developed using Sigma Photo Pro 2.5 for PC and later post processed on a Mac.

But there is many more images to be developed, I might put out a few more.