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Escalator to Heaven

January 9, 2012 / Bruce posted in Impressions, Thoughts / No Comments

Sometimes I get lucky when taking pictures, and this I think is one of those times. I had just got on the escalator and my camera was still on, so I just placed the camera just below my knees, angled it up a bit, allowed it to focus and then fired off a shot. Since I only got one chance at it I think I got pretty lucky with the outcome. With just a little minor editing in Lightroom I was able to get this result.

I should tell you though, I had no idea what kind of image I was going to get. I was not looking through the view finder, just holding the camera in the approximate position and hoping I had it right. In fact on this image, I didn’t even think about the f/stop or shutter speed, I just took the shot.

One day my luck will run out, but in the mean time, I will enjoy the shots I get. It seems however, that my better shots are when I don’t look through the view finder – go figure!

Use the Right Equipment for Low Light Photography

March 9, 2011 / Bruce posted in Impressions, Thoughts / No Comments

I am simply blown away by the capability of today’s digital SLR’s. The ability to shoot at incredibly high ISO and still get a usable image is just astounding.

I have a Nikon D700 that I’ve paired with the Nikon 24-120 f/4G Lens. I’ve always heard that the D700 was an incredible performer in low light, but I never saw this in my camera until I “up’d” the quality of glass I was using. Now I see what others have been saying. Look at this image:

My step-daughter was performing in a opera at CSU this last Friday and I went to see her performance. I took my camera of course. Before the opera started, the lights were down low and shining on the stage. I adjusted settings on my camera until I was able to get a good image. This meant setting the ISO at 6400 because the light was incredibly low. There was definitely noise in the image, but with minor adjustments in Lightroom, I was able to subdue it. Once the opera started, they turned the lights up a bit and I was able to shoot at 3200 ISO.

This raises the question, does the lens affect the noise at higher ISO ranges? Based on what I have observed, I would have to say yes it does. The previous lens I used I could go up to 1600 ISO before the noise was too much to save the image. I wouldn’t have even tried shooting at 3200 or 6400 ISO. However, with the Nikon lens, I was able to shoot at 6400 ISO and still have a usable image and could probably have gone to 12800 ISO and still have been okay.

In situations such as the image above, you find that you cannot use a tripod and have to hand hold the camera. Because the light is low, you have to adjust the ISO to allow a reasonable shutter speed with your lens wide open. The lens I used has Nikon’s VR II vibration reduction technology which is said to allow hand holding up to four stops, which works really well but I don’t think I can get four stops with it (depends on the person and how steady they are). This VR technology in combination with the camera’s ISO capabilities pairs well for low light photography. For the above image, I used a focal length of 98mm, and a shutter speed of 1/50 sec. There is no way I would have got an image this good without the VR technology of the lens.

So when you’re out shooting a concert, indoor sports, a play, or an opera (as I was above), make sure you are using the best equipment available or be prepared to be disappointed in the results. It’s expensive, but the results are worth the expense!

Photomatix Pro 4 – Short Review

October 20, 2010 / Bruce posted in Impressions, Photomatix, Reviews / No Comments

Photomatix Pro version 4 has been available for about a month now, and I’ve been using it since it was in beta. Yes, even the beta version with all it’s bugs and quirks was better than version 3, and I dare say better than most of the competitors products. I have looked at and used a few of the competitors products, but my preference is still Photomatix. It is hands down the best HDR tool available and is the choice for most professional photographers.

I have written a couple of tutorial/references for Photomatix version 3 which are available on this site…

Exposure Fusion in Photomatix – A Reference

Tone Mapping in Photomatix – A Reference

Most of what is written in these references is still valid and applicable to version 4 as the basic controls did not change. However, there are a few new features worthy of mention.

Selective deghosting. ghosting occurs due to movement in the scene, either in the background such a leaves blowing in the wind, or in the scene itself such as people moving through the scene. In version 3, the automatic deghosting worked pretty well, but in some cases it would not remove all the ghosting from the scene. In version 4, the selective deghosting allows you to select the areas of concern and specify which image of the set to use for the deghosting. The results are well worth the upgrade. Oh, did I mention that the upgrade is free for owners of Photomatix Pro version 3! Well it is!
Improved noise reduction. one of the facts of life in HDR Photography is noise. When combining multiple images together noise becomes a factor especially in the darker images. Photomatix version 4 now addresses the noise issue upfront by applying noise reduction technology to the source images so that the resultant image has less noise. Very cool when you think about the time savings realized.
Thumbnail previews! this is one of my favorite additions to the new version. You can now scroll through the thumbnail previews and select the one that closely resembles the look you are after. It is then a short set of tweaking the settings for just the right look and your done. Also, if you create a preset and save it, Photomatix creates a thumbnail view of your preset for the next time you use the program. Very cool!

These are the most notable additions to the new version, but that is not all. There have also been some adjustments to existing functionality and additional improvements added. They even increased the speed which is a very big deal that we are all happy with. Creating HDR imagery takes time and any reduction in the time to create the image means more time available to shoot more images! Yea!

Here’s a basic summary of Photomatix Pro 4 features: Tone mapping and exposure fusion methods are now accessible from the same area allowing you to switch back and forth before deciding on which method is best for your image, there are two methods available for tone mapping and six methods for exposure blending, semi-manual or automatic deghosting, 16 bit support, tone mapping a single 8 bit image, alignment tool, batch processing, and full support for both Mac and Windows environments.

If you are contemplating HDR photography, or you are into HDR photography, I highly recommend getting Photomatix Pro version 4. If you are purchasing for the first time use code “HDRPhotoZone” to receive a 15% discount off the already amazing price of just $99. If you already have version 3, what are you waiting for? Here’s the link: Photomatix Pro 4

Hometown Project – #23

September 16, 2010 / Bruce posted in Hometown Project - 2010, Impressions, Thoughts / No Comments

Reservoir Road Fire

This hometown project is taking a little different view than normal, because sometimes it is when bad things happen that you really find out how good it is to live here. Fire is one of the elements that we in Colorado seem to deal with a lot, and this one was just a little too close to home.

This has been a particularly bad year for fires in Colorado. Just when they thought they had the Boulder Fourmile fire under control, the Reservoir Road fire started. This image was taken on Sunday evening after the fire had been burning for about 9-10 hours.

Reservoir Road Fire

This image was shot from over 6 miles away using a 500mm lens. Getting in closer was not possible due to the evacuations and road closures. (click on the image for a larger view)

As of today, this fire is about 40% contained and there are over 500 people working on it. It has destroyed two homes, numerous out buildings, and over 600 acres of forested land. The fire fighting efforts are hampered by the steep and difficult terrain, but they are making progress. Residents of the evacuated areas were allowed to go home yesterday and many just were overwhelmed with what was left of their property.

Support from all over the community came pouring in to help out those evacuated, and the support the fire fighting efforts. The local church across the road from where I live opened its doors to provide shelter for the evacuees and a staging area for news crews. There were many donations of food, water, and other supplies from all over the community. Yes, Loveland truely is a great place to live. People really care about one another here and it really shows when disaster strikes. I’m sure the same can be said of any city or town, but this week, Loveland residents stepped up to the need and took care of their own.

This fire was started by one of the area residents burning debris Sunday morning. The fire quickly got out of hand and is still burning today. Last word was it was unclear if charges would be filed. This is a sad situation for everyone involved, and for many, it brings an unhappy ending.

Classic Cars & Trucks

August 22, 2010 / Bruce posted in Impressions, Thoughts / No Comments

Car Show at Fatso's Diner

If you have been following my flickr postings, or looking at my featured galleries on my web site, you might have noticed that I have been taking a lot of pictures of classic cars and trucks. Why? Simple, I really like the classics. I even like the street rods and would like to own one, but there’s no way I could even think about affording one. Let alone taking care of it. So I settle for the only way that I can afford to own one, in pictures! I’ve taken a number of pictures of the classics over the past few months and I’m getting quite a collection.

When I take a picture of a classic car or truck, I usually try to talk with the owner and get the story. The other night I was talking with the owner of a ’52 Ford pickup (the picture didn’t come out) and learned that he had owned the vehicle for 20 years, and it had the original motor and transmission! It was a beautiful red truck, but taking the picture at night with a flash caused the paint to take on a pinkish color – not good. I’m sure I will come across this truck again and will photograph it under more favorable light.

The owners of these vehicles love to talk about them and have pictures taken of the vehicles. I’ve never come across one yet that said no, no pictures, but then again, I offer them a free print. So they can own the vehicles, I can take the pictures, and my collection is a whole lot easier to take care of! Ah, the simple pleasures in life!

There’s a new kid on the block

July 13, 2010 / Bruce posted in Impressions, Reviews / 3 Comments

Oloneo Software released the first public beta of PhotoEngine HDR software today. On first look, this software is going to challenge the heavy weight contenders and carve out a sizeable chunk of the HDR pie. For those of you interested in doing HDR images, you should check out this new player. It comes in a nice user friendly package and is very easy and intuitive to use.

You can down load the beta one software here. Just be patient, the web site is a little slow to load due to the video embedded in the home page (bad web page design).

Processed entirely in PhotoEngine Beta 1 Software

The sofware touts a lot of features, most notably it’s speed and lack of halos (a common problem with HDR images – some haloing can be seen in the image above because I really pushed the detail in the image which causes a halo effect – if I were switch to advanced tone mapping I could control this somewhat, but for this image I stayed in the local tone mapping option). It comes right out of the starting blocks with raw image support for over 300 cameras including Adobe’s DNG format! It also sports real time non destructive editing – you see the changes as you are moving the sliders. This makes editing and fine tuning your image a snap! With the color editing tools and photo toning, I was able to take a raw image straight out of the camera into PhotoEngine, tweak it and adjust it to my liking and save it as a tiff image that didn’t require any additional post processing! Talk about a time saver, and this is beta one software! I can hardly wait for the release version and I’m hopeful they will address some of the features it is lacking, like ghosting removal, presets, and sharpening just to name a few.

Anyway, check it out for yourself. I’m pretty sure you’ll be blown away by what this software can do!

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