The best days are the days I get to pick up my camera and spend time with my son.
Or maybe I meant to pick up my son and spend time with my camera? Either way, today was a good day for that.
Blog
Focus
Magenta
Processed this sucker in the Lightroom 3 Beta, which I’m liking okay, but being a beta it’s got ups and downs. using the new tech is a definite plus, seen in this image, I’m using the new crop vignette effect and I’m liking it about a million times more than the LR2 post crop vignette; you even get a choice on Highlight priority and colour priority where the darkness bleeds in or over depending on if you want the tonality of the corners to remain (tending to saturate the corners), or to keep the colours consistent (which could darken highlights unwontedly.
If you don’t already own lightroom, the Beta is an interesting way to try it out – it may not be as smooth as the final product – but it’s free for you to use until April 2010. You can download the trial here and give the developers your feedback on the forums. I use LR on maybe 90% of the images I post here… actually let me revise that, I use Lightroom on 100% of images here, I only go into Photoshop on 10% of them.
One setback I’m finding is that the technology of software is certainly surpassing the capabilities of my current machine, to the point that I often have to shut down periphery programs like iTunes, Firefox, and other random bits just so I can process in a hassle free environment… time to upgrade? Do you have 2-grand to spare?
where we are
Taken at Dow’s Lake, this is a 5 image vertical pano taken with the Canon new 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS lens. The reason for the pano is simple, at a fixed 100mm I couldn’t get a clear shot of this tree without including lots of other trees and distracting foreground elements. So I got in a bit closer, set my exposure (in Manual) and panned straight up overlapping about half way through each shot (I probably could have gotten away with less overlap).
Stitching photos together used to be inaccurate and often led to more fails than success (though that’s photography for you right?) – but with Photoshop CS3 and, I hear, CS4 stitching is spot-on, nearly perfect if you give the program enough to work with.
It’s also a great way to boost the resolution of your image. Want that fancy new 20MP camera? Me too, but I’ve only got eight – but three shots together (taken closer to the subject) will give me quite a bit more than 20MP right? get even closer to the subject as shoot 5 images and I’m rocking the 40MP medium format resolution. SWEET!
I also heard Adobe Photoshop Elements has not integrated photomerge/panorama/stitching into it’s software package so really you have no excuse to not experiment. Remember; shoot in manual mode and manual focus so things aren’t changing in the scene all the time; just rotate on an axis so you don’t shift the image (a tripod is best), overlap the images so there are elements from the previous frame into the next one. Merge and ENJOY!
There’s also some cool tricks which you can ‘cheat’ your shallow depth of field – but that’s for another time.
Soliloquy of Chaos
This’ll probably be my last post from the fall workshop, maybe not my last from Fall, but that weekend is SOOOOO over now.
The Place We Dwell
So I got a new toy today. The Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS, sold my regular Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro in favour of adding an “IS” and “L” for about twice the price: Lucky me.
One of the benefits of this Macro, aside from the IS which is supposed to give stabilization up to 4 stops, is the 12 blade aperture; That’ll make the backgrounds creamy and smooth (it’s better bokeh). After walking around a bit today I figured I can get a decent hand-held shot at about 1/60th of a second – probably need more like 1/125th or so if I was going for a true 1x macro shot (you need about an extra stop from the standard 1:1 rule when you’re going for enlargement in photos).
Still, Macro photography is best on a tripod – though the option to hand-hold is pleasant, and my main use for this lens, portraiture, will surely benefit greatly.