Blues Clues

Yesterday I talked about shooting at a service at church Sunday night. With the new lighting came some new challenges. The image above was shot with an EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM lens on a 5D Mk II. The subject is Amanda, the wife of the Gathering's pastor. The new lighting includes eight stage cans with some of them gelled with blue or red. The red gelled lights add to the which floods while the blue gelled cans feather the light at the outside edge of the stage. It also casts an overwhelming blue light n anyone who is in its wake. Amanda is an example of that effect.

This next image is of Amanda being hit full force with the blue flood and is not pleasing at all. (Sorry Amanda, It's not you at all)

So what do we do if we want to make an image like this workable. There has to be something that works. There are a number of tools in Photoshop that can be used to adjust, remove, or change the color cast of an image. What I am looking to do though is work just in Lightroom to conquer some of these challenges. It looks like it was taken in daylight with tungsten whit balance and that is something we could use but that would effect the entire image and I don't want to do that. I just want to have Amanda look human and not like a Smurf.

One thing we can do with the local adjustment brush in Lightroom 2 is add color locally. Now we have to decide what color to use. Enter the color wheel:

Using color mixing is nothing new. Plato in 300+ B.C. discovered mixing two colors would generate a third, not that colors had not been used before but the mixing was new. This is all fine for color that is being put to paper, or stone as the case may be. Printers generally run in a CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) color space where as displays run in an RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) space. With paint, if you mix all the colors you end up with a brownish black pigment, on a display you get white (go figure!). So mixing is a two edged sword too much is bad and not enough is, well... Not enough!

To deal with the blue cast in the image of Amanda, there is really a good amount purple (a secondary color) in the hue. Follow across the color wheel brings us to a yellowish color. So what will this do when we add it to the already blue color. It doesn't completely cancel it out but that's not what we want it to do anyhow. It does tame it down to where we can make it more believable for the environment. Take a look at the end result below.

The scene retains the blue hue of the stage lighting but Amanda's skin tones are brought back. This actually took two applications in Lightroom but it does demonstrate the power in that fine application. If you look at the original image of Amanda in the background, the same treatment was done to her face and arms. I left her hair alone in that image as the light was hitting it a little different.

That will wrap up todays post. Sorry if it got a little techie but if you got this far, you must have been a little interested.

Cya... Doug

Lensbaby... Oh Baby!

Click image  for a larger view

Diversity is a wonderful teacher. This post is a case in point. The Blogger software has a new interface that is a little more "Windows"-ish. Improved functionality with images was a big plus in the new interface. The ability to upload many images and drop them in as you need them is wonderful. The fallacy here is upload. It is conditional, if you close the session Blogger dumps what you have not placed in a post.

This morning I uploaded two shots , leaving one in the "upload" que (or so I thought) and one placed in the post. I am now writing the post sitting here in Cincinnati, OH and the que is empty. Ok lesson learned. It was kind of a sucky shot with the Lensbaby anyway.

That sounds like a segue to the real post. Sunday night I was shooting a College & Career group at church called the Gathering. They have mad some changes in their meeting place. Stage, raised ceiling, stage lighting and some other improvements. I was interested in shooting with the new lighting as the previous was just about non-existent. I used three difference lenses for the shoot, an EF 16-35 f/2.8L USM, the EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM for longer shots and I took some time to experiment with the Lensbaby Composer.

I have not had a chance (ok, I probably have but have not taken advantage of it) to do much shooting with the Composer but when I have it had been totally fun shooting.

The opening image is untouched and one of the better shots I have taken in the limited time shooting with the Lensbaby. Using it is pulled on your creativity strings. You want to try something else with it. I caught myself spinning the exposure composition on the 5D Mk II and finally realized. (Duh!) Manual... All manual. You do have shutter-speed control but that kind of doesn't work so well when you have the camera set to Aperture priority. Set to manual all things work well. To adjust aperture, there are little plates that drop into the Composer to change the setting. There are eight of them ranging from f/2 to f/22.

Getting used to the Composer takes a little practice. You do not have a fixed focus point and it is manual focus so make sure you camera diopter is set accurately. I must admit that I have not taken the time to do the in depth diopter adjustment technique. There is no AF to fall back on so set it right before you go Lensbabying. Unless you have the lens pointed directly towards the front, you have to get a hang to where the focus point is. Like I say, practice!

That last thing I am going to say about the Lensbaby Composer is that it looks a little funky hanging on the front of the 5D Mk II but is sure is fun. It is definitely a conversation piece.

Take care... Doug

PhotoMagico Project

It's been busy, I took Earth Day off to enjoy some down time. Did pretty much nothing but couch potato with our dog Sniper. We must both be missing mom while she is in Maryland.

I have been working on and off on a project for our church. I took a bunch of shots during the Easter service and went through them. I was asked last week if I could put together a video of them. Of course I was on the road and it would have to wait until this week. So today, well if you look at the blog time it was actually yesterday I really got into it. Here is the YouTube version, I'll explain the process on the other side.

I used the 5D Mk II as I knew I was going to be shooting natural light. The lens of choice was the EF 28-105 f/4L IS USM. This is a great lens but the f/4 does limit some options when shooting indoors. Fortunately shooting at ISO 3200 and some at 6400, the noise slider in Lightroom took care of it. One thing I did do was shoot in RAW S1 which produces a 10 megapixel file rather than 23-28. That just makes it nicer all around. Less storage  space, less work while processing in Lightroom.

Once I had the files selected I exported them into a folder I have named FotoMagico after the slideshow program from Boinx software for the Mac. I really like this program. Once in PhotoMagico I just selected the images and dropped them on the timeline in the order I wanted using a default slide time of 4.2 seconds. This makes it easier later when you have to match the sound track. The programs weak spot is with the Ken Burns effect. Overall it does a great job on landscapes but it goes a little wonky with portrait oriented images. Then there are images that lead to the next slide and have to be positioned correctly to make it work. That was a little time consuming. With sequencing, timing, and transitions complete, I dropped the music and found the Ken Burns effect to be too large of movement for the sedate nature of the song. So another hour went into adjusting and testing those slides.

Finally I was off to Garage Band. For those in the Windows world, this is a program that comes with every Mac and has grown into quite a music editing application. Ok so its not ProTools or anything like that but it does a really good job. The music was dropped onto one track and an mp3 copy of the preachers sermon was on another. Looking at the preacher slides, I had 48.2 seconds to fill with speaking. I had to play with it a little so I added the Jesus Rap effect. Ok it is a little dorky but it was getting late and I was alone. The slide of the preacher is at 1 minute and 14 seconds and this is the point where I dropped the music track way down but still audible during the speaking. With the audio track complete, I just had to save it to iTunes, put it in a playlist that I set up for the project and then drop it on the single audio track in PhotoMagico.

Then the exporting began. One to an mov format, another to DVD and burn it in Toast. Those are each 814 MB. The really cool thing in PhotoMagico is it will save the format to YouTube and upload it for you. You do need a YouTube account but that is free.

Guess we will see how it goes over on Sunday as it will be shown to the church. Ug!

That is enough for now. Cya... Doug

Experimantal

Here is another image from the Maryland wet morning photo-drive. I think I just coined a new photo word. I am leaning towards making all of these images black and white because frankly, they have good composition and contrast, there just is no color in them from the drabness of the day. I was going to do a little dodge and burning on this image but the more I looked at it the more it stood on its own. All I did was a small levels adjustment and build a mild vignette.

The image is in its native crop and I got to thinking how it might look as square or in a 4:3 ratio. There are two layers  layers on the screen capture below labeled 4x1 and 1x1. These were created using the rectangle shape tool and set the constraints as shown in the second screen capture. These automatically go to their separate layers when created.

Now with the original image on the top layer you can go to Layer>Group with Previous to use the layer below to clip the layer above. You can also move your cursor over the line dividing the two layers while holding down the Option key noting the cursor turns to what I call the Ying-Yang scrubber and click.

Below is the rectangle options panel. I used proportional as I was not concerned with the final output size. Experiment with the other options id you like.

In the image below you can see where the original image is clipped to the 4x3 mask. What is nice about this it that up until now it is non-destructive. You can move the 4x3 layer around as well as transform its size.

Once you are satisfied with how the "soft crop" looks you can go ahead and commit to a final crop that removes data. It is time like that when I really enjoy lightroom.

I think that will do it for today. Check back tomorrow to see if I am still here.

Cya... Doug

Work With What You Have

Being at recurrent training this week does not allow me much time for blogging but I have some images I can get up this week anyhow. Before I get going I hope everyone has made it or will make it under the wire for tax day. Speaking of that how about these Tax Day Tea Party events going on across the country. Personally I think it is very healthy for an electorate to be able to protest when they feel the government is out of bounds or is not representing their values and positions. Unfortunately the press has been less than enthusiastic about the events unlike some of the other activist events that have happened in the past. Hmm... Bias anyone?

Anyhow here we go with the photo-blog. The image above was really fun to work in Elements. I was on the plane to Wichita KS yesterday and was able to work it. The image was shot a couple of weeks ago when I was getting ready to leave Maryland and head back to Michigan. The weather was absolutely yucky with fog and some light rain. I wanted to get some water shots so I jumped onto Google Maps and scoped out where there might be some locations. I matched them up in my Garmin and headed out. It was just after sunrise even though you could not tell by the photo. I had reached a gated area on the road I was on and had to turn around. Ok Google Maps missed that one. As I was driving back I remembered one of Rick Sammon's 1o rules of photography. That being to look behind you.

The structure is a boat house at the end of a small pier. The fog and mist made the image really dull and flat even after booting Clarity in ACR, so I took a different tack on the image. Going old school with a slight sepia effect would give the image more interest than just the shot from camera.

Here is the process I took and ended up with about six layers to get the effect.

• Levels adjustment layer to set the shadows and highlights
  
• Slight S-curve in Curves establish a modest contrast.
  
• Added a solid color layer of an orangish brown and set the blending mode to Overlay and brought the opacity down to give the sepia effect.
  
• My final touch was to make a vignette for the aged effect. This was done my making a selection, feathering it by 120 pixels, Inverted, and filled with black. The the opacity was dropped real low until it looked good. But is just seamed to be missing something.
  
• On a seperate layer filled with a darker brown, I applied a fiber filter to it with a strong effect. As the fibers were too tight, Transforming the layer then stretching it out so the spacing looked right did the trick. I re-cropped the original image size to remove the excess fibers (makes the file smaller). Last was to set the blending mode to Overlay and drop the opacity down to where it looked right. Let there be aged film scratching.
• A couple more layers to make the virtual frame and the image was complete.

Below is the original image and it just goes to show you that even a drab image can be made to look interesting.

Thats going to do it for me today. I'll have to see if I can get something up tomorrow night, but no promises. It depends on how beat up I get in the simulator tomorrow.

Take care...

Doug

Calm Before the Storm

One more from a week ago when I was photographing the band for our churches college and young adult ministry called The Gathering. They took the show on the road so to speak and was doing a service at one of the local colleges. I was over before the service to see how the light would be and once again it was absolutely horrible. Dim room lit by bright background lights. Oh well high ISO and poorly lit faces for the most part. I was going to be able to use flash for a very short while so I had to nail down the shots I wanted very quickly.

The image above is from the pre-show set-up and everyone had taken off except Bob who is a fantastic guitar player. Without being amped Bob just was getting into the music very softly and when I saw this in my minds eye I knew it would make a great image. I shot it with the 5D2 with an EF 16-35 f/2.8L USM lens mounted. The specs are an ISO of 5000, 1/40 at f/4. Post was all done in Lightroom using corrected white balance (did I say the lighting was absolutely horrible), and some pulls on a gradients that dropped the exposure 2 stops on the top and 3.5 on the bottom. What a tool to modify the light to something that gives a sweet mood.

Speaking of Calm Before the Storm, we are heading out to Maryland this week for the expected arrival of grand baby number one. If I am a little sporadic here on the blog this week you will know why.

Take care and I'll cya... Hmm... some time in the next few days... Doug

Work Around

I have been wanting to get an image form last Sunday night up here all week. The problem I was having was the RAW files form the canon 5D Mk II can not be interpreted by Adobe Camera Raw below version 5.2. I have blogged about this before as I have the current version of Lightroom which will process the 5D2 RAW's but the CRW in CS3 does not. Let alone 4.6 that runs under Elements which I run on my PowerBook G4. So basically I have been hosed this week on processing the files. 

I had a strategy that put a bunch of files on a thumb drive and I was going to hang out at the Apple store and process a few of the files in CS4 which runs CRW 5.2. The problem has been that the days have been long and I have not been able to get down to the Apple store. So right now I am not at all happy with Adobe.

 

Apple to the rescue. I loaded the files onto the laptop and when finder opened I was pleased that OS version 10.5.6 had the thumbnails on the window. Hmmm? I wondered if iPhoto would read the files. So I selected the above image and pulled it into iPhoto. There it was in all its glory. I tried to make some adjustments to the image but kept on deleting the adjustments. It just looks so good right from the camera. So there it is. It was very dark at the venue so I had to push the ISO up to 6400. I was looking through an EF 28-135 f4 IS lens and the rest of the specs are an aperture of f/4 and a shutter speed of 1/200th second. This is a great lens but the f/4 is a bit slow. This image just would not have been possible on the 40D with this little of noise.

Finally I wanted to have a little fun with the image so I dropped a Posterize filter to make the lighting a little edgy. That filter uses gradations of light to define its edges so the silhouetted drum set maintained its original tonality.

I still have class in the morning and then a drive up to GR so it's off to La La Land.

Injoy your weekend and I'll be back Monday... Doug

Equipment That Works

This is the battery grip for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR. It will house two Lithium-Ion batteries or a pack of six AA batteries. This makes it nice if I am ever out where I can not charge the Lithiums and can pick up some AA's. If you are unfamiliar with a battery grip it not only allows you to hold the camera in a portrait orientation, there are shutter speed, AF/AE lock and focus point election right on the grip. Your thumb can still reach the aperture dial albeit just a little further than in the landscape orientation.

Honestly I have never shot with a camera with a battery grip and I found it a bit awkward this past weekend on two different shoots. I can definitely see the advantages of having the grip though. First there is the battery part of two batteries for twice the duration of shooting. The inherent problem is that there is now twice the battery cost. The other benefit is that of stability. Holding the camera as you would in a normal landscape mode allows a better grip on the camera. This is most handy when I shoot Joe McNally style. And what is that you ask... It has to do with focusing with your left or right eye. In my case I am able to use either eye without any problem. Here is the YouTube video if your are interested.

Of course what is a camera without a means to mount it to a tri-pod. As I have the Really Right Stuff BH-40 LR II ball head mounted to an Enduro carbon fiber tri-pod I needed to pick up an L-bracket for the 5D2. The head an bracket are shown below.

The really cool thing about a ball head and quick release mount with an L-bracket is that changing orientation is just one motion away. Open the clamp, flip the camera, and close the clamp and its done. Sweet! The downer news its this stuff is a bit pricey when you think of what it is made out of. Not saying its not strong and well built, but it is aluminum after all. I consider it one of those areas where you pay for it once and you will have it for a long time.

I have had this set-up on my 40D and it is outstanding so I am looking forward to using this set-up on the 5D2.

I gotta get going so have a great day... Doug

When the Light is Right

I am deep into some training this week and my time is not as flexible as usual but I wanted to get something up this morning.

This is one more image of a young lady that was at last Saturday's competition. She had just finished praying with her piano accompanist and turned toward the people sitting in the room. There was a large window to her left and the light was soft and fell across her face very nicely. I was standing across the room with my EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens. I was running in Aperture priority so I could shoot on the fly without thinking too hard. I was running from room to room and ran in auto white balance which I do not normally do but it seamed like each room had a different temperature of light. Hooray for RAW and ACR for the fix.

Hope you enjoy the pic but I am off and running.

Cya... Doug

I Had to Do It!

I had driven to Columbus so I brought my gear bag with the 5D2 and an assortment of lenses. It was really cold and while I was not prepared to do outdoor shooting I did get an opportunity to shoot a band at a local restaurant/lounge called Hoggies. I had shot this band with my G9 about a year ago and with the really really bad high ISO images the G9 produces I could only turn to an artsy image. With the 5D2 in ˙and it would be interesting to see how I could get the images.

This first image of the band was using the EF 16-35 f/2.8L USM lens 1/10 second at f/4 with an ISO 0f 6400 and a focal length of 35 mm. Locking in on the lead singer tended to blur the others in the band as they were moving around a good bit. The other problem I had going on here was the band had no front lighting what so ever. Add to that the bright wall lighting in the background and there you have it. Big time lighting issues.

Here are a couple more images from that night.

This one is at 1/15 second f/2.8 ISO 6400 with the EF 50 mm f/1.4

This again is with the EF 50 mm f/1.4 only at 1/15 second f/2.8 ISO 6400 

This one is clearly the winner with the little guy banging around on the drums. The specs on this shot were still on the EF 50 mm f/1.4 shot at 1/15 second, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

That was all last Wednesday but could not get to the images until I got home and could fire the RAW's up in Lightroom due to the previously mentioned hose job by Adobe. I am still looking forward having the office done so I can upgrade to CS4 and be done with this mess. It would also be nice if Adobe would put put the Mac version of Elements 7.0 so I could put it on my PowerBook G4. The time will come!

Hey, it's time to spend so couch time with my dear wife so I am outta here!

Cya... Doug

What to do when you are bored.

So what are we looking at here. I will tell you it is a macro and that 

it was shot at 1/50 of a second at f/2.0 with an ISO of 1000. 

The rest you can figure out or just read on.

There are many things we can find to do at any give time in the day. This is day four of sitting in class all day trying to gain those nuggets of information to enhance my performance as a pilot. When the day is done it is off to the hotel, eat, and either off to the bar to shoot the breeze with "the guys", or back to the room. The first option is really no option at all for this kid, I would much prefer to expand my knowledge base in photography or work with images than do the bar scene.

Evening in my hotel room is a great time to snipe the blogs and post something up for myself. However there-in-lies the problem. With a photo blog, I generally like to get something photographically to post. The G9 is great for some things (low ISO) but it is not totally open to pushing the creativity envelope. As I knew I was going to be in Columbus all week and I drove down, that afforded me the opportunity to bring my gear bag with the 5D2 in tow.

So to answer the question raise on the title of this post. You can stay in your room and find something to shoot macro of. I took my EF 50 f/1.4 lens and stuck it to a 36 mm extension tube and mounted it on the 5d2. The small world is full of giant subjects so it does not take long to find something to shoot. If you look at the image below you will see what was shot to create the image above. It is the base and standard of the lamp on the desk in my room.

It looks a little lame in the white balance area. I had to shoot jpegs as Adobe is not letting me get ACR 2.2 for Elements (which is what I run on my PowerBook G4) and you guessed it, ACR 2.2 supports the 5D2. Now when I am back at the house Lightroom 2.2 supports the 5D2 but CS3 does not. This is not a big deal because I can send a file to CS3 from LR with the LR changes which are actually ACR 2.2. Oh well, I am debating on getting CS4 and that would eliminate the issue all together.

To close for the day, just remember, there is always something that is wanting to get photographed.

Take care... Doug

Office Update: Phase II Complete

After thirteen years in primer and florescent lighting, the paint and tungsten lights definitely giver the office a different look. Evelyn says the battleship gray looks better than white primer but it's not for her. Actually it is a neutral gray . I will certainly have to run my Huey to re-calibrate my monitors though.

Here is a shot of the track lighting. It looks like a lot but they are mostly 50 watt halogens it with a few 75 watt fixtures dropped in. All told its about 800 watts of juice to light the office now. Once I get the work space set up I will have to reset some of them. They are all floods except one 75 watt units as that will focus on the keyboard from a distance. The one nice thing about track lighting is that you are not stuck with you have. You can change things up as often as you want.

Thats it for my office project until next week when I hope to get a good handle on Phase III. The building of the work platform. But right now I am spending time in Columbus OH for a week of recurrent training.

Take care all... Doug

Success

I am just certain you all are wondering if I messed something up on the 5D Mk II firmware update last night. Yes and No. I simply forgot to press the SET button to initiate the update (silly me!) and the screen times out just like it was supposed to.

So all is well in Canon land.

Cya later... Doug

More Low Light

I was able to take the 5D Mk II to the evening ministry for the college and career at our church Sunday night. The event is in a really dark hall that just is all wrong photographically. I had previously taken some shots here a couple of months back but used a pair of 580 EX II flash speed lights.

Both of these photos were taken with the 5D Mk II and an EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM lens mounted to it. This first image specs are at 1/2 sec, f/4.0, ISO 4000 at 24 mm. The light you see illuminating the ceiling in the foreground is from a large monitor to the camera right. Other than that only the stage lighting (for what it's worth) is providing the rest of the room illumination.

In this image I was standing behind the last row of seats to the right of the crowd. You can see the lens is racked out to its full 105 capability. Keep in mind here there was absolutely no front lighting on Joe while he was giving the message. The specs on this image are 1/60 sec, f/4.0 ISO 12800 at 105 mm. Thats right ISO 12800 or what Canon calls H1 for some weird reason. Yes there was some noise in this photo and I did work it a little. Here is the full disclosure:

• First I popped it into Noise Ninja and used the default analyzed settings. That did a real nice job on attaching the noise. I did not do any sharpening as it was for this post on the web. If I would have I probably would have tried the high pass filter to sharpen a copy layer and set the blending mode to overlay. Yes I could use smart sharpen, unsharp mask, or in full PS gone to LAB or channels and sharpened their. But I didn't.
  
• Where the image needed some help was on the right bongo. There were a number of specular spots on the wood and it detracted so judicious use of the spot healing tool was in order.
• The people in the Gathering image being put up on the screen was way washed out. A simple tracing and color fill made them look a little more natural.

Just those three things and this is what remains. Not too bad in a pinch.

Cya tomorrow... Doug

Canon 5D Mark II Part II

Ok, so I said earlier this week that I would put up another image from our trip to Maryland and subsequently Washington DC. This is the Jefferson Memorial shot from across the Tidal Basin. We had wanted to get a picture of the Lincoln Memorial and Reflection Pond with the Washington Monument reflection but it was a bit cold and there was absolutely no parking anywhere close to Honest Abe. We did fins a parking spot that I pulled into and did not realize it was the one at the park by the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. Sweeeet!

Of course I did not bring my tri-pod. Why should I, it was only night time? Anyhow the rail by the basin would have to do. So this would a good test of the 5D Mark II. I mounted my EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM lens, set the ISO up to 6400, threw the aperture up to f/2.8, dialed in 1/40 of a second base on the meter, cranked the lens out to 200 mm and fired away.  (Holy over verb usage Batman). There was a whole lot of dark in this picture because... Well... It was dark outside. What this camera does though is this; When the 40D would blow out the black and produce no data, this 5D MkII says wait just one minute, I can see stuff there. What all that data does is make a 21 megapixel sensor produce a 28.1 MB file in this case. Yikes! I think the people at Drobo might be getting a call in the next couple of months.

The real head rush on this whole night time adventure was when I was walking back to the car. There was another photog with camera mounted on tripod. I stopped to talk and when I mentioned why we had stopped to take some low lights with the 5D Mark II, he said, "I can tell by the strap." Que gloating! All in good fun and before my brother-in-law can say so, I know... It's still just a Canon.

Take care all... Doug

One note on the image above. Even though the ISO was at 6400 which is spectacular, the noise produced is similar to ISO 800 on the 40D so I did run it through Noise Ninja which removed the noise with no problem.

First Out of the Box

I was totally stoked to take the 5D Mark II out for a low light spin when we were out in the DC area the week before Christmas. Just today I was able get the images downloaded of the card into Lightroom. The ADD in me wanted to work with each image as it was downloading but I had to resist and wait for the one that was to be. How could I resist the American flag flying on the United States Capital building. What a majestic site it is. This image represents (literally) you and me, it is the center point of our form of government. Like it or not, like the people in it or not, it might not be the best form to have but it is second to none on this planet.

The camera specs are an ISO of 3200 at 1/15 second hand held using an EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM lens at a focal distance of 95 mm. As you can see form the screen captures below, the noise at ISO 3200 is minimal but then nonexistent when run through noise ninja. BTW these captures were when the image was zoomed in Photoshop to 200%. Nice... Really nice.

You may have to click on the image to actually see the difference. I have some of the Jefferson Memorial shot at 6400 and I will try to get that up tomorrow.

That's it for today. Cya... Doug