photoKandy Studios

One of the features in the new Lightroom 3 is a much-improved noise reduction algorithm. Lightroom 2’s version, to be blunt, sucked. It helped, to be sure, if you had nothing, and for minor adjustments it was okay. But when you started throwing ISO 3200 images at it, things degraded quickly, and you were pretty much assured of needing to use a third-party noise-reduction plugin (many of which are very good).

So when I upgraded to Lr3, I had to try the new noise-reduction, and frankly, was blown away. There are situations where the third-party plugins are better, but Lr3 is more than up to the task, as you’ll see in this post.

Note: Because Lightroom is non-destructive, and because noise-reduction algorithms tend to take some time to process, I find that Lr3 gets really, really fussy when you’ve turned the NR on beyond a few percent. Best to disable it if you’re doing other things, or you’re going to start tapping fingers on the desk really quickly. A few other features easily induce this behaviour as well (like distortion correction), so it’s not limited only to NR, but something I thought I’d pass on.

The Subject, and the Detail

After Lightroom 3

Focusing on the Eye

Eye: 100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Eye (Final): 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

Focusing on the Background

100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Final: 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

Focusing on the Fur

100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Final: 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

Final Version

Links

• Original (2601k)
• 37% (1427k)
• 67% (1102k)
• 100% (745k)
• Final (718k)

(With apologies to Ray Stevens fans, but the title is the furthest my creativity goes tonight.)
It was evening. The sun was getting low in the sky, and the light was quickly fading from the landscape. But the animals were out and about enjoying the fresh air, and me? I wanted some pictures! I had, after all, just bought a new lens for my recently purchased Olympus E-P1, and needed to play!
The lens happened to be the Panasonic 45-200 f/4 – f/5.6 m4/3rds lens, which you can get online for around $270. It happens to be a pretty good lens, too, though it can’t match my Canon EF 70-200 f/4 IS USM lens for image quality and sharpness. But it doesn’t have to – it’s lighter, smaller, and sometimes that’s just what one wants.



Anyway, the light was low, so that meant any images taken would be at high ISO. Normally I try to keep the ISO at or below 800 for the E-P1, but tonight, it was at 3200 quite frequently. And while it made for “noisy” images with a lot of missing detail, that high ISO let me capture some perfectly good images that work quite nicely as black and white captures. With more massaging, they might have even worked as color images, but it happened to be late, and I didn’t want to do that much work.
And so, being at such high ISO, I embraced the noise. For one thing, I rather like the E-P1’s noise – it’s very film-like to me, and I’ve yet to see any problems with banding on my particular camera. (Whereas my Canons will both band, though my XSi more frequently than my T1i.) So, while Lightroom will naturally reduce a little noise (and I could’ve gone all out and reduced it by quite a bit), I decided to turn off all noise reduction to enhance the noise. If you’re going to live at ISO 3200, you may as well have fun with it, right?
And with that, here’s four of the best from tonight – all of a squirrel doing his best to have his supper in peace, while I was doing my best to poke my lens where he felt it didn’t belong. (Oh, and btw: all are at ISO 3200, a focal length of 200mm, an aperture of 5.6, and close to a shutter speed of 1/200s.)

1. Shoot RAW

2. Overexpose

3. Spot Meter

4. Embrace the Noise

Okay, so this isn’t usually the place that most people go for pictures. But, for some reason, I like cemeteries, and today was a gloomy but warm day, and I just had to go wandering through a cemetery before I did other various errands. These were all taken with my Lensbaby Composer at f/2 using the double-glass optic.

I’ve stated in several places that I absolutely adore my EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM and my EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM lenses, and that my 50 f/1.8 is wickedly sharp, especially considering the price ($100). All of these lenses produce excellent color, sharpness, and contrast. And yet, I’ve fallen in love with another lens: my new LensBaby. This lens isn’t about sharpness, saturation, or contrast – at least not in the ways we think of now-a-days.
I’ve posted the results of my first experiments, and in that vein, here are some more results of experimentation. For all of these images, I used the double-glass optics with an aperture of f/2.

Note: Reposted because of a trigger-happy finger and a delete button. D’oh!

The LensBaby Composer is the third iteration of the LensBaby concept – a lens that you can tilt to achieve all sorts of creative effects. You can drop in different optics – from double-glass optics (relatively sharp), to plastic optics (think lomo), and even pinhole or fisheye optics. Needless to say the variation you can get out of this is amazing, as long as you’re willing to experiment.
I bought my Composer on Saturday, and so I haven’t had a lot of time to play, but of course, it was a new toy, so I had to play a bit. It was really cold & windy outside, so instead I coerced my puppy stuffed animal to pose for me:

 

Ease of Use

Here’s a quick & dirty reason why you shouldn’t just delete pictures – at least not before you’ve given some thought as to how you could salvage them:

First off, let me say this: isn’t this little guy adorable? And yet the picture is obviously a “mistake” – accidentally taken with far too long an exposure, blurred, moving, etc.

My first instinct was to delete the picture.

Then a thought flitted into my head… “maybe I can do something interesting with it…”

And so I tried, and here’s the result:

 Face of an Angel (1/2 second at f/7.1, ISO 400, 116mm)

I don’t know about you, but I think it was one of the best from the shoot. There’s just something so… beautiful… innocent… intangible about the image that I have fallen in love with it.

And, it was a perfect example for this quick lesson: before you delete a picture, think about what you could do to save it. Unless it’s a picture of the lens cap, chance are you can do something with it!

Until next time, keep writing with light!

When a gaggle of geese visits you every few months, you tend to get familiar with them – as much as they will allow, of course. But this year there’s something different in the midst of this gaggle:

“Something Different”

I’m not sure if this is an albino Canada Goose, or if it is a Snow Goose. Either way, it is strange seeing this white goose amongst all the other geese. Even more interesting is that this goose is tolerated in the group.

“Looking for Food”

It’s not obvious from these two images, though, that this bird is injured. This poor thing walks with a limp – not sure if he has a broken or simply malformed leg, but it is painful to watch him try to walk. He gets around enough to eat and such, and his wings look normal, so he can probably fly okay, but still, it is sad to see, especially when he is such a beautiful bird.

The next couple of images have nothing to do with this white goose; just some friendly geese from the same gaggle:

“Taking Flight”

These geese took flight as I was photographing the other white goose. This was the only decent photo I got before they were all behind the tree. The lead goose’s head was, in reality, already behind the leaves, but a little post-processing work, and you get to see the whole thing!

“Enjoying the Evening”

More like “watching me”, but there’s just something pleasant about this goose and the scene. He’s not really that far away from the rest of the geese; but he was on the outer edges of the pack just standing there with his eye on me. After a few more pics, I hurried on to my car – it was cold out! –, but he apparently didn’t mind the temperature. Must be all those feathers!

On a totally different note, I get to go down to St. Louis this weekend and visit family and get to see my two nephews… they are going to be so fun to chase around with my camera!!!! Here’s hoping for some great pics…

The Golden Hour is a fantastic time to take pictures – the light is amazing, and you get all these wonderful colors that just don’t happen when the sun is directly above you. But say you took those fantastic pictures and did a bit more with them after the fact?

First off, I love, love, love the Hodda Blue/Yellow split tone (available for free for LightRoom here). The first six in this post all use the preset at some point in their processing (along with the usual adjustment of levels, crops, and any spot removal needed…)

These first three are insect photos that I happen to like a lot. They were taken just before the golden hour really set in, so in reality everything was nice and green —- using the preset here happened to isolate the subject better by turning the green into a more “purple” background. It also gave the images a look not typically seen in nature photography – wherein the colors here aren’t really representative of the real thing.

The images above were taken just prior to the golden hour; the ones that follow were taken right in the midst. Here the split toning makes for some striking images:

The image below didn’t use the blue/yellow preset. Instead it used a lot of presets (including: WOW Gradient P09, Focus > Snow Detail, and Blue/Red Cross), but I like the effect:

And for the final image – sunset with silhouette trees, the image was spectacular without any processing. In fact, I almost let it go online without any processing. And then I got to playing, and when I used the ADB AGFA Cross Process preset, along with some vignettes, and some additional saturation / vibrance adjustments, this came out. I’m in love:

My last post on this blog was about the golden hour, so this makes two in a row about that subject. But it is an important time of day – the colors are just so gorgeous. But even though the image might be perfect before you do any real work on it, don’t let it stop you from trying things out. You might just find an effect you really, really like (like I did).

So, if you have Lightroom, and like to play with presets, here are some great sites to get you going:

• http://www.profiphotos.com/blog/en/category/downloads/
• http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=33
• http://prophotoshow.net/seim_effects/category/free-lightroom-presets/
• And the mother-load: http://www.prophotoshow.net/blog/2007/11/09/lightroom-presets-the-ultimate-free-list/

Technical Note: all the above except the last image were taken with the Canon EF 24-70mm L USM lens + UV Filter + Circular Polarizer. The final image was taken using the Canon EF 70-200mm L USM IS lens + UV Filter. Neither lens is cheap, but if you shoot Canon and can get either one of these lenses, you won’t regret it. Aside from being great to build arm strength, they deliver fantastic image quality and ease of use. That said, you can get great image quality with less expensive lenses – so don’t let lens-lust stop you.

Oh, and one more final note – if you don’t have a polarizing filter yet, get one. UV filters can be of questionable value, but a polarizer can do things to colors and reflections that would be hard (if not impossible) to duplicate in Photoshop. You can lose 1 – 2 stops of light when using them, but the results are well worth it. (Just don’t get the cheapie $15 ones. Get something that’s in the $50+ range.)

So – until next time, keep writing with light… (especially the golden kind!)

Sometimes the best nature pictures can come at the end of the day, when all the day creatures and plants start wrapping up their daily duties and preparing for the oncoming night, and while the nocturnal creatures and plants begin to make plans for the next several hours of darkness.

The remains of the day also happens to give some absolutely fantastic light in which to shoot – warm tones, golden hues – hence the term “golden hour”. And “hour” is about right, give or take a few minutes, depending on the season and where you live.

   

Even though each of the photos above have been post-processed to evoke a certain mood or feeling, they were all taken within the same one hour span prior to the sun fully setting. That the sun is low in the sky creates dramatic shadows, but at the same time warms the colors significantly. Most photographers are in love with this kind of light, for good reason – it’s beautiful, before and after post-processing gets applied.

You may also notice that in every one of the above shots, I’m shooting towards the sun. You don’t have to do this, obviously, but in the case of the top-left image, doing so created a very strong backlight effect on the plant. It also lent itself well towards the long shadows in the lower two images. Though you can’t really tell it, the sun was behind the silo in the upper-right image, making it really simple to come up with a striking silhouette, and lending a golden hue to the sky.

You can do all sorts of things with the light the golden hour creates. Depending on what you are shooting, though, you may need to increase your ISO, open your aperture, or bring a tripod. The sun may be out, but the amount of light getting into your camera is no where near that generated at high noon. Of course, the reverse can easily apply if you’re aiming directly at the setting sun and aiming to create silhouettes; drop your ISO to 100 and you’ll still have shutter speeds hovering around 1/500 to 1/1600. But for anything more than a silhouette, you’ll need to increase your ISO and open your aperture to let as much light in as possible if you plan on hand-holding (and don’t forget the inverse focal length rule – and having image stabilization really helps here!). If you have a tripod, on the other hand, keep your ISO as low as you can, and set your aperture for your desired effect, and go at it. No matter how you shoot during the golden hour, you’ll have a blast, I guarantee it!

P.S. If you’re not a night owl, but a morning person instead, the same rules apply to the rising sun. You’ll get fantastic golden light with dramatic shadows during the early morning hours. On the other hand, if neither the morning or evening are your cup of tea, you can still make great pictures, but I tell ya – you’re missing something special!

Until next time, keep on writing with light!

Because you never know what might be around that you’ll think makes a really cool picture. Case in point this little, tiny spider on the windshield of my car, after having gone grocery shopping – I had one chance (the light was about to turn green), and my little point-and-shoot that can do a macro focus at 1cm did the job perfectly. One thing it did pick up a tad too well was the dirt on the windshield – which means my car needs a wash (which it got – see last post).

And in case you’re wondering – the spider is on the outside of the car – which is why I could think enough to take the picture. It also helped that he was absolutely tiny (far smaller than this picture lets on). As to his well being after the light turned green, I can’t say – all I know is he was no longer attached to the car after the light turned green. (Poor little guy!)