Mindaugas Grigas

GED Dancers

2012-01-31T22:06:00.000+01:00

One of not-so-usual jobs from last year- photo shoot for GED, a dance studio in Göteborg. Talent was their top-rated couple Dawid and Frida- Swedish champions on multiple occasions etc etc. These two can seriously dance! I had a chance to observe them training and it was hard to keep up with all the moves, not to mention that inner feeling of being a tree stump or a rock or whatever heavy bulky and lifeless thing when it comes to dancing.

Definitely worth going to see some dance competition when one comes to your town! And if it is Göteborg, you might even see photos made by me on GED's posters. That was the main intended use for the photos, thus all was shot on white seamless background.

Read more for the tech details and findings...

All prep work and reading up theory for shooting on white seamless came from Zack Arias. Now I am sure that what ever he says is true. Pay attention to all detail in his posts as those will pop up here or there.

In the end I had to use what was handy and available, so it was not all by the book. As always...

In my initial setup, before dancers came in, I had prepared a bed sheet (2x2 meters) and a 2x4 meter long linoleum flooring. All white. So I had 4 meters (over 13 feet) to position my dancers. And boy was I misjudging the horizontal space. 2 meters wide is in no way enough for two people pulling off a dance pose. Had to act quickly and duct taped together two bedsheets and used the linoleum in the short version. Final setup was like this:

By the way- no stands were used to hold the background. All of it is held by duct tape :) Kinda lame, but it worked really well! As background was overexposed by a couple of stops no wrinkles were visible in the end. The flat linoleum kept the floor flat and wrinkle free.

Biggest concern was the lack of space between subject and background. With only 2 meters at my disposal it was hard to avoid light spill from both the softboxes and the background.

The two Elinchrom BX 500 Ri studio lights with kit softboxes had enough power to pull this off. Using a small SB-800 (triggered with Elinchrom remote) as the main light was not an optimal solution. I had to wait for it to reload too often too long.

The setup worked out in the end. Still, going all by the book would have made life much easier. So, once again, read what ZA has to say about shooting on white seamless and make use of all the tips he is giving.

This definitely was a different type of job compared to my usual children photography. But it was great. I still remember how happily tired I was that Saturday. And I met a great dance couple, plus gained a ton of respect to what they do! Thanks to Jochen for inviting me to do the shoot!

M.

Seasons greetings

2011-12-23T23:48:00.001+01:00

Frosty xmas greetings to all friends! Hope you have a lovely coming year!

Not sure if I can take all credit for the picture... Lets call it a reproduction of natures artwork :)

Take care!
M.

Last wedding this year...

2011-10-09T21:49:00.000+02:00

And so, with my last congratulations to the newlyweds, I declare my wedding season over for this year. Nothing else planned, at least. However, you are more than welcome to come up with an unexpected winter wedding!

Meanwhile, a couple of moments from last session at a wedding in Germany.

Usual works applied to these pictures. All done in Bibble 5. A little bit of vignetting and on top of normal post processing I do all the time I added a little blue tone to the darks. That is done by dragging the blue histogram slider upwards just a little bit:

I do this adjustment in the final layer, so that it does not get messed up by vignette or anything else I would do to the colors in between.

Oh, also made use of the selective color adjustments for the first picture with the dress. Floor boards were way too yellow for this photo, so clicked in the color with color picker and reduced saturation a tad. Much better already!

The light was all natural through the pictures. Those were shot with Nikon 50mm 1.4 or the 18-70 kit lens I had from the early days.

As a bit of a side note- Bibble finally started to fix the stupidest thing in the software. Now custom tool tabs are in the pipeline! It is a bit of a geeky fix at the moment, but check out this post to see how to customize your tool tabs. There is a bunch of other neat features in the new release candidate. Waiting patiently for the final release!

Summertime fun!

2011-09-09T01:00:00.000+02:00

A lovely day spent with family Veitch! The kids were having a blast and were really hard to keep up with! Or is it just me getting old now... :)

So, here is a whole bunch of sunny summertime portraits of kids having fun.

Right before I left Mum suggested that Maya should go and take a nap... That idea was actively refused by crawling under the table and playing with a network cable... If that is not cute, I don't know what is :)

I think all of them were shot with Nikon 50mm 1.4 lens except for the third picture where Maya is running after bubbles. That one was taken with Nikon 70-700mm.

Only sunlight used in all of them. It was a tough day to shoot outside- small clouds were following one another through the sky and it was hard to keep up with the sun coming out and hiding again... The D70s is a bit sensitive to that much of a change in lighting so I had to be careful not to burn things when it was sunny and not to underexpose when it was cloudy 3 minutes later.

All processing done with Bibble 5 in what now has become my normal way of working. Minor adjustments, beefing up the colors and adding vignette.

Here is a before/after of one of the pictures:

Quite a good time to post these pictures- it is raining last weeks in Sweden. Nice to remember the sun was here once :)

A bit of summer romance

2011-07-22T13:12:00.009+02:00

What is a summer without a wedding?! Here are a couple of candid shots from a recent wedding in Sweden. Congrats to the newly weds one more time!

A few more weddings left this year. Hope I will be able to post those here!

Ah, yes- note to the photo geek:

All natural light;
First photo shot with Nikon 70-300/4,5-5,6G AF-S ED VR and second one with Nikon 50mm F1.4;
Only post-processing done was with Bibble 5.2.2: minor tweaking of levels/curves plus a vignette done in a similar way as in a previous post about portraits of baby Emmet. 'mgrigas.com' added with TypeWriter plugin.

//M.

Emmet

2011-06-18T10:37:00.001+02:00

Meet Emmet- the drooling, chewing happy five-month-old. A great kid and such an ease to work with! Was smiling for the whole hour while I was there.

As usual in the full post you will find some more details on the techie side of the pictures.

First the light- all from a window. The table Emmet sat on was right next to it. Some minor warm cast from a light bulb inside the room on the right side can be seen.

I was a bit adventurous when going to this shoot (read damn careless). I left all my lenses at home and only had the Nikon 50mm 1.4 that was on the camera. Well, it was the beloved lens at least, so I had a perfect opportunity to do one of the so popular 'creativity exercises' - limit myself to one focal length. Quite happy with the outcome, I must say!

Now to the post processing. All done in Bibble 5. As usual just playing with different areas; making some brighter, some darker. Here is one of the originals- straight out of camera with 0 as all other adjustments in Bibble.

There were five layers for this picture. First usual exposure adjustments, curves and a Heal/Clone layer to remove a couple of blemishes and something in the bottom left corner obscuring his arm.

Then added a new layer for vignette. I do it by simply masking the layer with curve region and inverting the selection, then play with the curve slider to make surroundings darker. This way I have full control over intensity and shape of vignette.

Afterwards two layers for enhancing darker and lighter areas. Similar to the way I worked with this portrait of a musician, just took it easy this time- after all, it is just a baby... So the darker areas are on his eyebrows, lips and parts of hair. Lighter only the eyes and just a bit.

Finally added noise reduction layer. Was shooting ISO 400, so 100% zoom showed some artifacts in shadow area. NoiseNinja also blurs the image just a bit, so it (sometimes) works as a good softening tool. Because of the softening effect, had to unmask the eyes, nose, lips, eyebrows and most important- the drool- to keep them sharp.

So there. This is how we roll.

I know earlier I promised to write more... It is coming... No more promises :)

Take care,

New members of the family- Emilia and A Nikon 50mm 1.4

2011-02-11T20:42:00.000+01:00

So it finally happened and maternity that I took pictures of materialized into a lovely daughter Emilia :) Now you know why I was gone for a month... So without further delays- here she is.

As this is a photo blog I will not go into details how cool this is- too hard to explain anyway. Let me just summarize briefly:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will however say that the Nikon 50mm 1.4 is one seriously brilliant lens! I got it for one reason - taking baby pictures. I don't recall removing it off my camera ever since December last year when I brought it home! As the matter of fact I have also removed my kit lens and the big 70-300 out of the backpack and stopped lugging them around all the time (free time that is...).

A 50mm 1.44 was my only lens for the first 5 years with an ancient Zenit camera! It is amazing how quickly I had forgotten what simplicity of a 50mm delivers! Missed it probably too :) So now I am running around with it like a little kid playing with shallow DOF and beautiful bokeh.

It is a bit too tight when using at home on a D70s (which is a DX camera) though... Really tempted to take a look at the 35mm 1.4 but its price gives me the creeps :)

So for now it will be an era of tight shots! Looking forward to this as there are quite a few baby shoots in the pipeline!

As for lighting of above photo - north facing window. Nothing more or less... Very basic processing with Bibble 5.

Now it is time for some diaper change :) Back in a week ;)

M.

Highlight recovery / portrait processing with Bibble 5

2011-01-07T06:08:00.083+01:00

Welcome to 2011 ;) First post of the year is made from half year old picture of Desiree Hermann. During Christmas vacation I was playing with one of the (technically) messed up pictures from that photo shoot. The picture is slightly overexposed. Not completely blown out, but not usable straight out of the camera. So I decided to have some practice with highlight recovery and play more with Bibbles layers and new feature of 5.2- layer opacity to try and add more depth to the portrait.

Here is a screenshot of the final image and how it all came together from the original RAW file (straight out of the camera, without even my default RAW settings for Bibble applied to it):

Click on the image to see it bigger!

Jump inside the post to read more details how I got to the final version of this photo. All in all I am seriously happy with what Bibble 5.2 delivered!

To start off I needed to fix the blown highlights (third photo). Therefore I pushed the highlight slider to 6 and reduced exposure by -0.3 to start with. Also added heal/clone layer to clean up a few minor blemishes and another layer to sort out purple color cast on the background (just desaturated the colors and masked top right white area).

This gave a very nice result already- a clean well exposed and smooth picture. Now I wanted to add a little more punch to it, therefore decided to add more contrast to highlight and shadow areas of this portrait.

I added two separate layers to control each of the extremes. In the screenshot above you see the curves adjustment I have made to the shadow layer. Adjust it to what ever feels right and then mask it. You can see the mask I applied to shadows in picture number two. Only those areas are affected and darkened by the curve adjustment. This masking bit took most effort, but it is quite cool to see the effect of this very small change to areas that form the face (cheek lines, nose and eyebrow shadows, hairline etc).

Afterwards did a similar thing to highlights (masking forehead, top of the nose, under her eyes, under lips etc) and fine-tuned everything by adjusting opacity on both layers plus reducing exposure on the main layer further down to -0.48.

Finally added last layer to brighten up the eyes just a little bit. Final image- number one - done!

Two things to think about here. First- a very similar effect is achieved by just creating a rather strong S curve on the main layer. It beefs up the shadows and highlights. But I find that selective adjustments with the help of layer masking give a much more subtle result, it allows you to have more control over shaping the portrait.

Second- normally one would use Photoshop or Gimp for this type of portrait post processing, but in reality this is completely possible within Bibble 5. As far as I'm concerned the only disadvantage Bibble has is lack of ability to smoothen out the mask (apply Blur filter on the mask or something similar) so you have to use various intensity/size brushes to paint smooth transitions yourself... But that effort compared to moving to another tool (Gimp in my case) to do these adjustments equals to nothing for me... It feels really good to have complete portrait processed with only one piece of software.

Oh, almost forgot, smacked my website address on the final image with TypeWriter plugin!

Cheers!
//M.

Happy holidays!

2010-12-24T07:00:00.004+01:00

This year was 3 times more productive than the previous ones (hooray for statistics, sounds cool but this is post number 30 this year:) ). That is if we measure by amount of posts I have written (the only directly measurable thing, I guess :) ). As for myself - it has been the most educational year EVER in all available senses.

Looking forward to next year and hoping to have more time for sharing what I've learned with you all!

Thanks for sticking around another year! Hope you have a ton of fun and great pictures and a very educational 2011 ;)

Cheers!
//M.

P.S. just to stick to it- one 60x60 softbox (from Elinchrom BX 500 Ri kit) straight in front of the teddies. 4 sec exposure to catch the candle light. Complete darkness besides that.

Now it is time for xmas :)

Acid morning rising over Göteborg (or my batch output settings for Bibble 5)

2010-12-17T09:36:00.099+01:00

Some shots from an early freezing morning walk. These were actually aimed to the west- the sun was rising behind my back. It was amazing to watch the purple glowing haze come down all over the city and then just disappear over the horizon... Not always the best action is with the sun :)

Jump into full post if you care about batch processing settings I have for Bibble 5. Some thoughts about Bibbles sharpening in there too. Otherwise, enjoy the view. I had great two hours on that hill with -10° C and Terra to keep me company (some running around with a dog is a good way to warm up :)).

One of the cool things about Bibble 5 is the ultra fast batch processing of pictures. It stamps on the signature onto a whole bunch of RAW files and spits out JPEGs in seconds. The speed is just amazing!

The normal settings I have for the images I post to this blog are these:

The JPEG quality is at 95% because anything below 90 might produce weird artifacts - for example strange ripples around smoke of the above chimneys. Here they are, processed with quality set to 83%:

This is kinda strange as in GIMP I always use 83% for web output and it works just fine. Well, I just assume it is a number and can definitely live with it (ooops, the file size is bigger too... amm... just another number?.. well, lets say it does not matter in this age of fiber optics...).

I also apply the signature preset which I created with the help of TypeWriter plugin (more on this coming with the rest of the plugin story soon).

Now we come to the interesting part - Sizing and Sharpening. To fit the blog layout, I want the pictures to be max 500 pixels wide, hence the settings for Sizing. The 'Normal' mode is slower but generates better quality. It is still fast like hell, so never even thought of using the Proof mode. Now lets add a bit of sharpening (OK, in other tools 70/0.6/0 is more than a bit). So here we are, simple as that.

BUT IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

You are more than welcome to beat me up in the comments of this post if I am doing something wrong, but I can't find the perfect settings to make my small-sized images sharp directly out of Bibble 5.

I was trying to do this with dozens of different output sharpening settings and I never see a result which I really like whole 100%. If you look at the above images more closely you will see that they are a bit fussy and they were processed with not so standard 200/0.8/0 sharpening settings! Now I have to mention that this is no issue for pictures with not too much detail, but here with all the small lamps and chimneys and windows of the plant... the output is just sad...

Did some more testing of this issue and I think it involves both sharpening and sizing.

First off, sharpening with radius of under 0.6 is worthless and gives a completely fussy picture. Having radius set to 0.6 means that my small street lamps are now blobish looking spots.

Next I thought of testing out Bibble 5 vs GIMP in regards to sharpening/sizing.

First image Bibble resizing + Bibble sharpening, second- Bibble resize + Gimp sharpening, third - Gimp + Gimp (both cases Gimp unsharp mask had 0.4/0.4/0 settings):

First lets acknowledge the truth- best looking details are in third picture.

Now the middle one, the one which was resized with Bibble and sharpened with Gimp, it looks... just as sad as the first one, the one completely processed with Bibble... Is it right to conclude then that the main chunk of fault should go to the sizing algorithm of Bibble 5? You tell me...

Say what you will, but I like to see the subtle details in the Gimp only version of this image. Maybe someone just browsing by will never notice this and there definitely is no issue when exporting full size images from Bibble 5 for print, but I am surely going to look into resizing my blog pictures with the Gimp until this is fixed within Bibble or I am taught a good lesson how to use Bibbles resizing/sharpening...

Full Gimp+Gimp version:

Well, this turned out into a late Friday night whining with Mindaugas :) Been a long week! Happy weekend to you all! ;)

M.

New Bibble 5.2 released just now!

2010-12-16T21:37:00.003+01:00

Great news today- Bibble labs have just released a '5.2 Release Candidate' version of their RAW photo editor. It is not the final version (not gone through full testing procedure as I understand), but I am already downloading it for a test ride on my laptop (paranoid to touch my workhorse PC just yet :) )!

A whole bunch of new features added. I have a hunch that I will especially enjoy enhanced selective editing - layer opacity and ability to copy/paste layers - to name a few. Read full details about this release on bibblelabs forum here or just download Bibble 5.2 from here.

Updates and more hands on comments inside the post!

Update 1 - Upgrade installation:
Smooth just about sums it up. On Fedora all I needed to do was download the .rpm package of Bibble 5.2 and run it. Afterwards started Bibble and it was the new 5.2 Release Candidate. All my previous settings were still there, including default RAW settings and color profiles.

Update 2 - first impressions:
If there was anything to complain about minor glitches with slow crop tool or other slider-related lagging in 5.1, all of it is gone. The interface just feels... right! Well done!

The 5.2 has very subtle makeup, like the font of layers window is smaller, the toggle view mode buttons are redesigned also. There is no more 'apply vignette to cropped area' check box. As promised, layer opacity is there! And it works :) However the layer masking is a bit messed up... if you resize the window while the mask is visible (a new brilliant 'show strokes' option keeps the mask visible) the mask does not really resize with the image... plus there is a weird cut off of the mask on top of some images! ooops...

I am sure (ammm... I hope...) folks at Bibble Labs are on this issue. Plus as this is a RC version there is nothing to complain about.

Can't put my finger on it, but it seems that my lats week complaints about resizing/sharpening might be not so valid for 5.2 any more. But that needs to be proved later on.

The RC version has not yet crashed on me after using it for 1 day... So all in all it seems that this already is a workable version and after final bug cleanup it will be one sweet upgrade!

Check out this forum at bibblelabs.com, all the folks that installed 5.2 RC1 are reporting bugs there. Most of the latest threads are labeled smth similar to "5.2 RC1" and those are the ones you are after. Leave your bug there too if you found any!

M.

Before and after of the Swamp Raider picture

2010-12-10T07:05:00.084+01:00

Thought I would outline the workflow of post processing the photo of my dog Terra, the one from the swamp weekend. Here are the four steps that I took to get to the final image starting with original file with only my default RAW settings applied:

Jump inside for details!

I started with adjusting the black point in all three RGB channels (to do that click the RGB dropdown menu in the Curves dialogue and select each color channel one by one; then drag and drop the black or white triangles in the corner of histogram to achieve the coloring effects). For Blue and Red I slightly pushed up the shadows triangle (that is why red and blue dashed lines are not ending up in the very corner of histogram window) and I moved the Green to the right side. Here is how the histogram of the Main Layer looks like:

This is probably the lowest amount of cross processing ever done :) But you are welcome to adjust to your tastes. It is all about playing with the different RGB channels to get to the look you like. Could start out with the default cross processing preset that comes with bibble. Check out the changes done to curves after it is applied. It is a good starting point to figure out what is what.

In addition to RGB tweak I increased the exposure a little. That sorted out the colors, but they needed a little more punch. So here I used Texa plugin. It is originaly designed to add textures on photos, but I used it to beef up the colors by using the 'Original' image twice. Created a new layer (with Bibble layers, not in Texa). Painted the layer mask on the dog, clicked invert mask button (this way the dog is not affected by the adjustments I am going to make on this layer). Normally you don't want your subject to be affected by this- go to Texa plugin, enable second layer within Texa, set the blending mode to Multiply and adjust opacity to fit your needs. In the end my Texa plugin window looked like so:

Here is a good moment to mention that Bibble 5.2 is going to have built-in layer opacity slider! Hooray! The layer blending mode has not been mentioned amongst the mirriade of new things coming in the next release, but I keep my hopes high that it will not take too long!

OK, back to the image - the last remaining thing was to decrease depth of feald. For that I used another layer and zBlur plugin with vignette set to this:

That turned out into the final image of Terra in the swamp :)

My signature is added with TypeWriter plugin within the batch process, while exporting to JPG. More on the Bibble 5 plugins really soon!

Cheers!
//M.

On-Line photo printing in Sweden

2010-12-03T06:08:00.001+01:00

Note: this one mostly applies to Sweden-based photographers... And is a nice find for myself.

A few days ago Frida and Pikki (I photographed them this summer) came over to order their wedding prints. And this really embarrasing thing happened- I could not upload the pictures to the printing companies web page... Then the lightning struck me- I have never done this since moving to Linux!

Some kind of Java plugin error... IcedTea it's called... This was all I was getting in my Chrome window...

Darned, the whole situation was just so ugly... I tried some other photo printing companies. Seemed like everyone was using Java for the photo upload interface...

Blah. After F&P left, I dived into the web for more detailed research. Came across Crimson lab in Stockholm. And what a lovely find that was!

More details inside the post.
For a change their website is clean and professional looking. It is easy to find the printing service you are looking for (normal photo paper prints/enlargements/canvas and others). Not a trace of ridiculous advertising and discounts, blinking all over the place.

They also have a very good section about color profiles for your monitor calibration and other general info about the printing process/print proofing which is explained in a very user friendly language.

Image upload is Flash based, so no issues with this under Linux. Works like it should. Quite easy to use too. It was a bit weird finding my way to individual image settings, but I would say that it's just the matter of doing it once, afterwards it is no big deal. Besides this, the interface is very smooth. Registration is painless as it is sowed into the upload process and happens only after you have finished setting up the prints. Sweet!

Another cool thing - you can order a test print before you buy anything else and make sure that what you see on your monitor is what you will get delivered on paper. My test print seems just a tad cooler than the image on screen. Now having in mind that I did calibrate my Eizo with a properly working Spyder 3 this does raise my eyebrow. It is not a huge difference or anything that non-pixel-peeper would notice, but still need to solve it. Or maybe just use a tungsten bulb in the room :)

All in all this little glitch with Java made me find a proper printing company. One software bug that I am glad to encounter :)

Cheers!
//M.

Maternity shoot

2010-11-26T07:41:00.001+01:00

A bit different maternity photo session - for the first time it is of my girlfriend Dalia! We are expecting a very unusual Christmas present this year!

After all the talks about photography at home (nagging out new gear) I could not afford not taking pictures of her, so here are some shots from the latest session we had.

The idea was to have 'white and light' maternity pictures and I think it worked out pretty well!

We could not miss the 'belly holding' shot too, with yours trully in there as well :)

Realy excited about our first addition to the family! I don't think I fully understand what's coming my way, but I am definitely getting a lot of practice with baby photography quite soon!

If you are interested in details on lighting setup and diagram, click the Read More link.

All of the above photos were made with my Elinchrom Bx 500 Ri kit plus Lastolites TriGrip difuser. I used 'double diffusion' for the color pictures, squeezing the TriGrip difuser in between subject and the softbox to make the light softer and more wrapping. The setup looked similar to this:

Spill of light on the background from the main softbox was lighting the right side of the background and to clean up small remaining shadows on the left I added a small pop from the second BX 500 Ri unit. It also lit left side of Dalias face a little. I guess there would be no need for the second softbox if I had the space to move back the main light far enough so that it had full and even coverage of the area.

The belly closeup shot was done with one softbox acting as a background and the other one double-diffused with a curtain (jep, a white curtain...) lighting almost on camera axis. I had the camera on a tripod right under the softbox. You can see the exact setup here:

I put the TriGrip underneath main light to fill in the shadows just a little bit. Same is function of the gold/silver skin of TriGrip that is laying on the floor. They both bounce back just a little bit of light, but that is all that is needed!

Post processing of all photos done in Bibble 5 as usual. Nothing fancy really, just some selective blurring of wrinkles on her shirt. The last photo obviously got BW conversion applied and some vignetting.

It is so great to get the lights set up correctly and have a close to finished image as soon as you open it on your PC! 'Get it right in camera' philosophy is paying off more and more with every photo shoot!

Now off to continue my work on the baby room...
//M.

How to crop in Bibble?

2010-11-19T08:04:00.002+01:00

It might sound like a funny question, but in all brutal honesty- it took a while to figure out the trick behind crop tool in Bibble 5. And so how do you crop in Bibble?

All you need to do is just press 'c' (or click the crop button ), select the area you want to keep in the photo and ... that's it. I had to take a break and come back to the crop issue before it struck me that there is no need to double-click or 'apply' or 'ok' my crop. The cropping was finalized right after the selection... And as soon as you switch to another tool (i.e. click the 'Pan & Zoom' button), Bibble will display the properly coropped photo. And even if you don't switch, your crop settings are already saved and active.

Today I've been working with Bibble for 4 months or so now and sometimes I still catch myself double-clicking in the crop area to apply my settings... Bibblelabs have surely eliminated a completely needless step, but it seems to be stuck in my head for good :D

While we are talking about different behaviour of buttons, 'View Mode' selector is also just a tad funky:

Here is an explanation of every button (copy/paste from Bibble on-line manual):

•    Toggle Full Screen Mode - Maximizes Bibble 5 and hides the top Window Title Bar.
•    Toggle Orientation - Switches between Landscape and Portrait layouts.
•    Image View Mode - Hides the Thumbnail Panel to make the Preview Panel as large as possible.
•    Standard Mode - Reveals both the Preview Panel and the Thumbnail Panel.
•    Thumbnail Mode - Hides the Preview Panel to allow quick browsing through many thumbnails.
•    Soft Proof Toggle - Enables or disables Soft Proofing, and allows the selection of a Soft Proof profile

'Click arround and get used' method works for View Mode quite well.

All in all there wasn't much effort required to get used to the tool when moving over to Bibble (I was using Capture NX from Nikon before switching to Linux). Usual couple of days of playing with new software and we were on our way to starting up a nice friendship! And come to think of it- I don't feel like going back.

//M.

Simple lighting setup with Elinchrom Bx 500 Ri

2010-11-12T07:55:00.000+01:00

Some weeks ago a good friend came visiting and one of the evenings we spent making a couple of portraits of her. She is a happy camper as you might notice :)

Half way into the photo session Terra felt she needed to investigate things

Terra is one curious dog. Nothing goes unnoticed at home...

For those curious how the pictures were taken- a chart of lighting setup and some more details on how the pictures happened inside the post.

Used the Bx 500 Ri kit with two small (60x60) softboxes from Elinchrom to light the whole thing. Backdrop was a white bed sheet hung on a bar used to hang clothes . To avoid light falloff while lighting the background from the side with just one strobe, I figured I could just as well light it from behind. So, I moved one of the Bx 500 Ri units to the back so that light coming from it would cover the whole bedsheet and juiced it up to have a nice white background. The other strobe was just to the side from the camera axis. And that's it- nice white background and soft light for a full length portrait.

If you think your photo studio is tight on space let me comfort you- here the shooting space width was around 1 meter... I used the 70-300 lens and went all the way back into another room to avoid seeing the sofa or TV which were on both sides of my view path. Not much luxury with space, but it worke.

As post-processing goes, nothing major was done here. In the picture with Terra a proper pixel-peeper would notice some wrinkles of the bedsheet visible (on the right side of the frame). I left them to illustrate how much postprocessing was required to cleanup these pics. Just default adjustments for curves and a little saturation added; plus background cleanup where needed (as it was just minor wrinkles to clean up, all I did was add a new layer, increase exposure for it and mask the wrinkles). In the first picture I additionally cloned the white background over the TV stand that was on the right side to add more space in the picture. All post processing performed in Bibble 5.

//M.

My default RAW settings for Bibble 5

2010-11-05T14:12:00.000+01:00

You can create a custom defined set of 'Default RAW settings' in Bibble 5. These default RAW settings are the ones that are automatically applied to every RAW file you open in Bibble for the first time.

If you are using Nikons software (similar goes for Canons, I guess...), your in-camera settings for sharpening, color saturation and the like will be reflected on screen immediately. Now what Bibble does is completely different. Seems that all you get from camera by default here is the pixel values and white balance, which in many cases looks nothing like the picture on your cameras LCD. It just turns out quite dull and boring actually.

The good thing is that a much better looking photo is just around the corner! Two things that I have been doing 99% of times after opening a new picture for editing was to first adjust curves to a slight 'S' and then increase saturation. So both of these adjustments were added to the Default RAW settings. The S curve as you see it down in the screenshot below, and saturation set to 15. When you adjust these settings, right-click on the picture thumbnail, choose Settings and then 'Save as RAW Default Settings...'.

Here are two versions of a photo of crayfish - original straight out of camera and after applying my default settings:

Obviously the exact settings need to be custom tailored for every photo. Usually saturation value goes down to 10 if it is a portrait I am working on or it could go up to 20 if it is a nature shot of some kind.

You might have noticed that in the above screenshot the Working Space is set to Adobe RGB. That is also included in my default kit, but this one is up for everyones own taste... Just like any other setting too. If you are doing any other adjustment to almost all of your pictures, might as well save it into your own defaults.

So once you are done with this, every picture you open up with Bibble will have the S curve and saturation applied. You can also revert to your defaults at any point by pressing Ctrl+R, in case you get carried away postprocessing and need to go back to square one :)

//M.

Swamp-raiding weekend

2010-10-31T17:27:00.000+01:00

Went for a doggy walk in the woods this weekend with hopes to take some autumn nature pictures at the same time too. Ended up in a small swamp crouching over an old rotten birch tree, trying to make a photo out of it. So I finally got to this:

Turned around and there was Terra, my swamp raider, staring and wondering what on earth I am up to for so long...

She ended up posing for the best picture of the day :)

On the way home found a tree that actually still had leaves on! A photo of some nice yellow blur came from that

I don't normally post-process my pictures so much, but the first two above got a bit abused with a couple of new plugins for Bibble I had installed recently. Various layer blending modes, different opacity settings, extra blur and even my website address added on to the photo directly in Bibble.

There is a whole community building plugins for Bibble 5, but it is quite scattered and unorganized... Already started writing about the plugins I use, so a separate article is coming soon as one of the Friday posts about photographers life with Linux.

By the way, the good old Nikon D70s is starting to fool around :( The DOF preview button closes the mirror, no matter what f number is set. Viewfinder goes pitch black as of today... And the auto focus misses sometimes completely in some weird manner... It's been almost 5 years now... Hope the new camera will be at least as good!

Weekend over. Back to life...
Cheers
//M.

Beefing up the hardware

2010-10-29T07:13:00.000+02:00

Last Friday I mentioned that I upgraded the hardware of my photo PC a bit. And it feels like such a good bit!

First it's the processing speed. Surely the 4 new cores feel like lightning compared to the old Intel Celeron driven laptop. Especially when using Bibble 5 as it can utilize all 4 of the cores, which means it is 4 times faster already. Batch processing will never be the same again :) Add 4GB of memory to that computing power and my relatively small NEFs from D70s are digested in under a second each (yes yes, depending on how heavy the post-work is)! That is 0.8s now compared to around 8s before! Obviously the new CPU helps reduce photo editing time as well because any change that I make to a picture in Bibble is instantly reflected on screen without no delay what so ever. Even layer masking (not one of Bibbles strongest points, imho) is much easier and workable now. That is a sweet deal right there.

In addition to the CPU power I got better storage. Now the PC is running on two mirrored hard drives which means that both are identical copies of each other, they hold exactly same information and if one HDD breaks down physically there is still the other one to work with. This mirroring into two hard drives is called RAID 1.

To solve potential software-failure-related data loss I do manual backups to an external USB HDD. I never bothered to find any software to do backups for me... Maybe I should. Will update if I ever get around to it. For now I just try to keep a clean and easy to maintain folder structure.

It did not work out to install the PC from the same USB memory stick as I used to install Fedora 13 on my laptop. This is more related to funky (incompetent) hardware (or me not knowing what I'm doing...). Maybe with time computers will get better in recognizing the USB drives at boot time. For now we deal with what we have and just burn ourselves a good old CD.

This was the second computer I installed Fedora 13 on. Again- no problems. As mentioned last week, there was an additional challenge to get the NVidia graphics adapter working 100% correctly, but just something I've never done before, not a bug or problem.

Now I feel comfortable enough to say- get your latest version of Fedora from here:

I can not realy put my finger on it, but it somehow feels good, this whole thing with moving away from Windows to open source. It will probably sound way too geeky, but I feel like home when I sit infront of my PC now :)

Cheers!
//M.

Slow crop in Bibble 5

2010-10-22T09:38:00.000+02:00

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that Bibble 5 interface was a bit slow and jerky when using the crop tool under Linux (Fedora 13 in my case). A bit more digging arround pointed to a newer version of Bibble that has this issue solved, so for those of you trying out RAW photo editing on Linux today, just be sure to install the latest version, get it directly from BibbleLabs download page and you should be fine.

Yes, I said 'should' once again. Because it did not help me whole 100%. I have learned that built-in graphics drivers for Linux are not that great (still better than the default delivered by M$! :p ) and that I need to install proper driver for the GeForce 8800 GTX (jep, I did upgrade my hardware a bit, so no more slow laptop! But that's a post for another Friday ;) ). The newer graphics cards from NVidia have good support for Linux. Just check out their homepage for details. Fedora users are able to install the drivers via Add/Remove Programs; Just search for NVidia.

After installing the latest version of NVidia drivers s**t realy hit the fan. Now all of the XWindows got hanging when I was using Bibble... Or even try to open a youtube page in the browser... Did not find anything specific for my graphics card, but gave a shot adding a parameter to the kernel settings:

pcie_aspm=0

Add the above to your kernel configuration in /boot/grub/grub.conf file.

No idea what this thingie does as I just found it on some forum as a suggestion to solve simmilar interminent crashes for a different NVidia card, but it surely worked for me! No more crashing no matter how hard I abuse the GeForce!

So Linux does have some buggers hanging loose still... I did need to poke around to get things smooth. In any case, I am happy all of that is over now and I can live happily ever after. Or wait... I can't print on-line any more like I used to...Nothing major, but some strange Java plugin failing... More on this next time.

Need some color in this gray n dull post... A shot of a lovely sunset this autumn:

Surely the photo was processed under Linux with Bibble 5 B-D Except for the watermark that was added with the GIMP... can't get the Bibble watermark plugin to work :(

Have fun ;)
//M.

When you screw that pooch...

2010-10-15T10:56:00.002+02:00

Dorit Chrysler was not the only concert I visited last week. Youngfuck and Leidi Misterie had a performance at Cafe Berlin on Thursday. The day I have learned that NOT always can you pull it off with just a kit lens and ambient light.

There were just a couple of small bulbs and a visual installation through out that dark cellar... So I ended up with some seriously "artistic" (read that how you wish...) pictures.

Youngfuck- shot over 40 frames from the same position before someone stepped in front of me:

And then my blurrastrophy with Leidi Misterie:

You know that feeling when you look at the pictures on a big monitor for the first time and start feeling your guts turn inside-out? That was exactly this time. Well, the bad result was visible even on the small LCD really, but I had to make sure...

Anyhow- lesson learned:
1. No more 'traveling light' to new places. Carry the flashes, be there early to have setup time;
2. Every f stop counts. The f3.5 to f4.5 of my kit lens is just not going to work (some times), no matter how many frames I shoot... Even setting sensitivity to ISO 1600 on a D70s (jep, I humiliated myself that much) will not save my ar**. Maybe a Nikkor 50mm f1.4? Or maybe I'm old enough for a D700 with 24-70 f2.8 on it?..

A talk related to messy pics is going on Zack Arias blog. Check out the comments of Blowing it on purpose post :) I do find it strange that he used those pics made by Paolo Roversi to ilustrate 'technically imperfect'... I guess there is some hard to explain fine line between a really cool and failed... I do think that some of my shots like the trumpet player from Bobastian or bass player from Kapten hurricane are artsy fartsy and not perfect in a perfect way :)

I don't get the same feel from the pics from this session at Cafe Berlin though...

Well, already had a better event with Leidi Misterie this Monday at Oceanen. Now just need to catch Youngfuck playing somewhere (where there is light maybe:) ).

Cheers,
//M.

ÄNTLIGEN MÅNDAG at Oceanen with Leidi Misterie and Goodland Trio

2010-10-12T22:19:00.001+02:00

Finished working on pics from yesterdays concert at Oceanen, Göteborg, where Leidi Misterie and Goodland Trio played some nice music.

Click here for remaining pictures from the evening on my homepage.

Phew, this time there was enough light! One huge stage light. And it was sort of neutral-yellowish color too. Much easier to work with, I must say.

Night ya all ;)
//M.

Dorit Chrysler in Göteborg

2010-10-12T09:58:00.000+02:00

Last friday Dorit Chrysler visited Göteborg. Folks got warmed up with some beer

and music by Johanna Nordström

Then with Dorit Chrysler on stage I got to see how a theremin works in real life. Now that is one funky contraption! And a funky and visual performance too! A couple of hundred years ago you could get burned for such moves ;-)

Another good night out!

As for the picture taking bit, this place was one of the more challenging... Two harsh beams of light- one blue the other red... Camera meter gone wild... At least the light was stable and was there. Pulled it off with the usual 18-70mm and D70s kit...

Cheers,
//M.

The missing piece of Linux puzzle - monitor calibration

2010-10-08T13:42:00.009+02:00

When preparing my photographic self for transition to Linux there was this one last thing that was bothering me - how on earth am I going to calibrate my monitor and will the gods of OSS accept my EIZO-labeled Spyder 3 colorimeter?! Well, worse case, I figured, I'll just find a windows laptop and fix myself an ICC profile on it; never tell anyone and live in shame for the rest of my days.

So, after I installed all of the other tools like Bibble and GIMP and Hugin, I got to work on the colors. First thing I do is plug in the USB cable of my Spyder 3. No whining or crying so far. Then look for some software for it... Initial googling around points to some strange command line tool - Argyll CMS it's called... At this point I am ready to take anything that goes as no page mentions support for Spyder 3 in a positive way. Go to Add/Remove Software in Fedora System menu, Search for argyll, select both packages and install.

Reading through Linux Photography... Doesn't sound promissing, but I still go for the test:
sudo ./dispcal -v -y l ./test

A root password later I can clearly see that my Spyder 3 is recognized by the system (because Argyll states the device name clearly). The main menu appears and I am ready to rock! This seriously made my day! I was so happy with this whole color calibration working out :D and now I can easily shout out so that anyone can hear it:

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR UNDER FEDORA 13 LINUX USING A SPYDER 3 CALORIMETER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a screenshot of my Spyder being abused by Argyll to prove it:

There! And don't let the lack of info be misleading. It does work and it works like a charm!

The whole process of creating an accurate ICC profile for your monitor is described by Linux Photography in here. Yes, a lot of reading, but it will also allow you to understand better the process behind creation of the ICC profile.

The only thing that I would like to add to above post from LP is that there is a strange bug in the tool and when it says 'Press any key to continue' it actually means pres Enter. Took a while to get there as I was hitting a spacebar and was being kicked out of the program for a couple of minutes :)

OK, hopefully by now you have an ICC profile file. You need to add it to Bibble, GIMP and set it as the default system profile for this monitor.

System->Preferences->Color Management
Select the active monitor, click the dropdown menu to select the profile and choose Other profile... Find the file you have just created with Argyll CMS. Done with system default.

Bibble should automatically find the system default profile. Note the word should. Even BibbleLabs say that it's well worth the hassle to point out the same file one more time for the tool, just to be sure.

GIMP will not even try to find the profile, so jump into Edit->Preferences->Color Management and point the Monitor Profile to the ICC you've created.

For browsing the calibrated internet I use Firefox. Install 'Color Management' extension and point it to your newly created monitor profile. Restart Firefox and all photos you see will be as real as they can be! You can now try it out by exporting a raw picture from Bibble to JPEG and opening it in Firefox. What you see in Bibble should be almost identical to what you see in Firefox.

Seems like we're done now! All colors calibrated, tools set up and ready to go!

Enjoy your accurate colors ;)
//M.

Stitching panoramas with Hugin under Linux

2010-10-01T16:46:00.001+02:00

If you are one of the panorama folks trying to move off to Linux, you'll surely like to try out Hugin panorama stitcher (it does work on other platforms too, so Win and Mac users could make use of it just as well!).

As you know I have migrated to Linux some weeks ago therefore I will only talk about Hugin on Fedora 13 and no other platform (all flavors of Linux act in a similar fashion). The only thing to get done before starting with Hugin is to install autopano-sift-C package. The trick to it is that it is not available in the standard repository of Fedora. So, first install RPM Fusion from here. After that is done you should be able to go to System->Administration->Add/Remove software and search for 'autopano'. Select the package, install. Now search for Hugin, select it, install. And now you are all set and ready to go! You can find Hugin under Applications->Graphics menu.

After starting up, you land in Assistant tab. This is all I used to create the above image out of 4 tiff files. So you click '1. Load images...' select all the files that should be included and click Open. For verification it should display how many images you have selected, what focal length was used and the crop factor.

Also button '2. Align...' becomes active. Click it and Hugin will pick up all the control points that will be used to stitch the pictures together. A new window opens up. Here the only thing needed for a quick startup is the Crop tab. Choose that and click Autocrop button. Worked great for me! If it fails for you just readjust manually.

Close the Align window and click button '3. Create panorama...'. Specify the output file name and click Save.

Congrats, you have just finished your very first Hugin panorama.

There are tons of more advanced options and possibilities in Hugin but more on those some other time!

A geek note- all 4 pictures taken hand-held with D70s and Nikkor 70-300 lens on an amazing evening in Swedish west coast.

Keep shooting!
//M.

Concert at Musikens Hus Göteborg

2010-09-25T13:28:00.001+02:00

Three local bands were playing in Musikens Hus Göteborg this Thursday.

The evening kicked off with Desiree Hermann:

Then followed by a wild and crazy act of Kapten Hurricane:

And finished off by Bobastian:

Great evening all in all. Lots of fun, good music and great people! Rest of the pictures from the concert are here.

For the geeky part- I am still shooting with D70s. All pictures were taken with Nikon 18-70 kit lens. No flash at all this time. As it was dark in there, all had to be shot ISO 800...

Raw processing done with Bibble 5 (still under Linux ;-) ). Not much of it actually. I messed up white balance, so that had to be fixed. Added strong vignetting to most of the pictures to clean off the cluttered background. I have made the personal discovery of Noise Ninja while working on these pics (it is built into Bibble 5). It is a really useful plugin when a dark cafe forces to use high ISO... More on that some other time.

Cheers!
//M.

Speeding up Bibble 5

2010-09-24T15:00:00.000+02:00

In case you are running on a system with slower hardware (like I am limping on Intel Celeron 1.86GHz with 2GB RAM) you might run into problems with Bibble while handling folders with large amounts of pictures in them (valid for both Linux and M$ Win). In some cases I even had the Preview generator hang right on the start and it never let go of the hanging preview generator even if I closed down Bibble and started from scratch again. It is useful for us slow folks to completely disable this feature.

In the main menu of Bibble 5 go to File->Preferences and choose Import and Cache from the side menu. Uncheck the box like so:

I have also changed the time cache is kept from 2 weeks to 2 days.

Now it takes a moment longer to open every image, but in general it is well worth it as Bibble never crashed after this change again.

By the way, last weeks post about moving to Linux from MS Win also is a good trick that speeds up Bibble performance. The startup time is almost nothing compared to what it was on M$! Yet another reason to migrate to open source ;-)

In all honesty, one glitch did pop up on Linux. When using crop tool in Bibble, it is hard to move around the selected area as it is not following the mouse smoothly. There are minor glitches when moving the Curves sliders too. Not sure yet if that is because of something in the default Fedora configuration or if it's something with Linux version of Bibble. More on this after I figure it out.

Cheers
M.

First photo workflow breath under Fedora 13 Linux

2010-09-17T22:46:00.002+02:00

Finally it happened- after just one and a half hour of work I have my Fedora Linux up and running with GIMP and Bibble as my tools for digital photo workflow. Yes, it is possible and yes, it does feel good!

Why Fedora? Because there are two flavors for us not willing to fiddle with tech details too much - Fedora and Ubuntu. And I like colors of Fedora better. OK- as serious as it gets- Fedora has been there for a few years longer than Ubuntu. Bigger community, more support, hopefully more stable.

I have not worked on a Linux machine for at least 5 years now... And (this is great news) there was no need to remember anything! Installing the system took no time at all and was as easy as clicking the Next button under M$.

Nowadays (if your computer supports booting from USB) you don't even need to burn a CD to get this working. Download the Live USB creator here. It will create a bootable memory stick from your ordinary USB stick. Reboot and off you go! The system should start up and become fully usable without the need to install - that's what Live CD means. It allows you to use a completely functioning computer without any installation at all. When you've made sure that you like it, just click Install to hard drive icon on your desktop and follow on screen instructions. It is a really quick and painless process.

One note for you who have never seen Linux before- root user is like administrator under win. You'll need to supply a password for that one during installation. Remember this password as you will need it every time you are installing new stuff on your machine.

Everything else is very much self explanatory. All software updates are delivered automatically afterwards so you don't have to worry about things getting old or staying buggy.

To install the GIMP just go to System->Administraion->Add/Remove Software. In the search box type GIMP and select the packages you want to add. Click apply button, wait till it's done and you have GIMP installed on your computer! Didn't even need to download it yourself ;-)

Bibble is not ported into Fedoras package list therefore you will have to go through the 'hassle' of downloading. Get it from Bibble Labs download page. Just run the package after downloading and it should install all by itself.

That's about it! You are now a proud owner of a Linux system and should be fully capable of managing your photo workflow on it!

Here is the first picture I've developed under Linux (from one lovely evening at the Swedish coast):

This is it for now. It is time for me to do more playing around with Fedora so I can write more stuff for you folks! Keep checking the Linux tag and enjoy being M$ free! It is easy and effortless nowadays!

//M.

Changing My Skin

2010-09-08T09:28:00.000+02:00

It is yet another post-vacation period - the time when all the stuff accumulated in my head through out vacation is being compiled and released out in the open. Relax, there is no need for you to take cover, but this time my actions are a bit more visible than what they normaly are.

Those of you that have been here before noticed already that it is all bright and shiny now. Jep- coming out of the shadows :)

Besides having a lighter skin here I've also removed all kinds of searches and links to various photo directories. They are meaningless (i.e. give none or close to none measurable effect and I don't care what you web marketing people say) as I've noticed so far so no need to clutter things up. Also no more adds from now on as there is no real financial gain from them too. Plus they are annoying :)

As for content there are a couple of new things coming up. I am planning to go crazy beyond webspace. Just tried out the trial version of Bibble 5 which made my day because it is a realy good tool that is workable. Got it's own ups and downs, but haven't they all? So, soon enough I will be moving everything over to some flavor of Linux and have my whole digital darkroom windows/mac free (reasons for this coming together with the flavor choice details). There will be tons of writing about the whole Linux/Bibble/Gimp stuff.

And it is not only on the blog that is changing - homepage got turned inside out completely too.

It is all concentrated on people photography now. Making portraits is something I was getting ready for. And now I am. You are allowed to call me barn/porträt fotograf i Göteborg as my utterly poor Swedish suggests :)

Anyhow, looking forward to see where this brings me. All new adventures will be covered here together with the tech stuff.

That's about it for now!
Keep on dreeming ;-)
//M.

Photoshoot of Désirée Hermann

2010-05-30T21:00:00.004+02:00

Last weekend took pictures of an aspiring singer/songwriter Désirée Hermann. Check out her music on myspace. In the mean time here are my two favorites from the shoot:

Both shot with Elinchrom BX 500 Ri kit. The first picture was lit with one softbox in front of her and lighting the background (a white bed sheet...) with the second Rotalux. Two takeaways: make sure the background is realy smooth; has no wrinkles and is not wavy... Otherwise you'll waste too much time cleaning it up in full lenght shots. Second- one light for background is ok, but just a little not enough to make it eavenly lit. Tried to fill in with SB-800 from the other side, but that flash is so weak compared to Elinchroms! You get used to a lot of power too quick :)

Second picture is just one softbox directly above her. To get more controll over light would be just great. A normal softbox spills light too much and I did have to do some make up work on the background to get it completely black. No big deal though, but obviously a gridded softbox goes on the ever growing wishlist.

Ah yes, shot with Nikon D70s and 70-300 VR (first pic) and 18-70 (second pic).

Have fun ;)
M.

New EL Skyport Speed!

2010-05-27T11:18:00.002+02:00

Just a couple of weeks since I got my new BX 500 Ri kit and Elinchrom release new version of their Skyports - the EL Skyport Speed.

Main advantages according to Elinchrom are:
- Improved housing, battery drawer and switches;
- Improved integrated Hot-shoe with screw lock;
- 1/250 sync speed.

The first two should fix the main whining about these transmitters/receivers. If the buttons/switches are working as they should, I don't see a single problem with them any more. Even though my copies of transmitters and receiver I have for the SB-800 hot shoe flash are working totaly fine, there are people complaining about the buttons not functioning as they should. From my part, the only issue I have is the receivers on/off switch sensitivity... Might not even notice how you switch it off... Seems to be solved in the new version by putting the button lower then the rest of surface:

These seem also to be backwards compatible with BX 500 Ri that I already have and other current Elinchrom heads, so if I ever get arround to upgrading to these transmitters, there should be no problems with current equipment.

The reason I'm not jumping in my seat regarding the high speed sync is that I have no issues with it even today with my D70s... But folks with other cameras sure should appreciate this feature.

Check out the remaining details at Elinchrom product page.

Have fun ;)
M.

NOTE: images in this post are from Elinchrom page, not my photographs.

True Or Not

2010-05-25T13:08:00.004+02:00

Pictures from Johanna Nordströms 'True Or Not' album release concert now available. Great bunch of people, great music, good times! Thanks for all the fun!

Mostly used available light- two insanely powerfull stage lights that were there, crosslighting the whole place with harsh unbarable light. Sometimes added a bit of bounced fill with SB-800 (had a low white ceiling at my disposal). The usual D70s with 18-70 kit lens. The event took place on a boat, so it was seriously tight there. Lesson learned- 18mm is not enough in places like these!

//M.

Old 50mm f/1.8 manual Nikkor on my D70s

2010-04-25T17:34:00.000+02:00

During the years of marriage to D70s I've completely forgotten my old 50mm 1.8 Nikkor lens that is gathering dust together with Nikon FM2.

Figured I might as well try it on the digital camera. Here is the result:

So, yes, it is possible to use an old Nikkor lens on a new(er) digital camera. There are a few buts though.

First- manual focus is a killer. Very hard to get it right wiht small and dark D70s viewfinder. I even started thinking I might need glasses... Well, anyway, manual focus while taking pictures of moving subjects is nothing I miss.

Second- no metering. You have to bother and play setting up the exposure manualy.

Have to be fair- once you do get the borring manual stuff right the picture is great!

BTW, the light is just dinner table lamp. It created quite deep shadows so I put a Lastolite TriFlip silver reflector to bounce some light back into eye sockets.

Feel like putting the new Nikon AF-S 50/1,4 G on my xmas wish list :)

Cheers,
M.

Who needs heavy artillery anyway... :)

2010-04-21T10:57:00.003+02:00

Came across Michelle Moore blog. Found it quite interesting.

And also, to counterweight my happines of getting more artificial light, read her article on using natural light here.

Her composition story is good too! Funny comment about mums and cropping off top of the head... Had quite a few of these discussions myself :) Maybe it's juts the photographers that like it?

Keep shooting!
//M.

.

Heavy artillery - Elinchrom BX 500 Ri

2010-04-17T15:52:00.003+02:00

It's almost a week since my first ever propper studio lights have arived and now when the initial excitement is over, it's about time to write about the Elinchrom EL 20751KIT Style 500/500 BXRi To Go Kit.

It is amazing how much difference working with these lights makes! Knowing that I'm coming from one Nikon SB-800 background, you should not be surprized these Elinchroms made a whole world of difference for me.

Jump inside the post for first samples.

Obviously, first to suffer were my closest ones- girlfriend and dog... :)

The dog got borred in just about no time:

This picture is cross-lit by both Portalite 60x60 softboxes that came with the kit- one camera right at about 45 degree angle, the other one facing the first, so they are firing into each other.

The dog is gone. Time to bother girlfriend!

Tried to light her in a high-key fashion... Lights are at 45 degrees both sides of the camera. White bed cover, white wall in the background. The background did not get completely white so I used the SB-800 with Skyport trigger to do the dirty work. That wasn't realy enough; in the far left top corner there still was a bit of shadow, but total time of post processing was less than two minutes- completely acceptable if you ask me.

A few dozens of shots later I started feeling boredom coming through the lens... The shoot was over :)

The only one left to bother- yours truly! Made a dark and groosome self portrait. One of the Elinchroms with softbox above my head, pointing downwords. Here I'm sitting on a chair in the middle of living room. There was some light spill on to the wall behind me, but it was very minor and, again, a couple of clicks in PP fixed it in no time (just levels, no cloning).

Hope these samples illustrate correctly why I am so happy with this purchase :)

Update with more samples:
- A portrait of a friend I made with this kit;
- Maternity photo session lit with BX 500 Ri kit;

Cheers
M.

Get those collors right- calibrate your monitor!

2010-02-20T21:46:00.001+01:00

Or as it was in my case- get a proper monitor in the first place.

When working on Leidi misterie photo I had this strange feeling that something was not right with the colors as I did play arround with white balance a bit. So I took the photo to a lab and printed it. Good thing I did! Here is what it looked in the first place:

Too yellow you think? It seemed perfectly fine on my LG laptop monitor (if she doesn't look yellow to you, read on and go find your monitor dealer :) ).

Jump into the post to see how I calibrated the colors on my laptop.

I didn't really... I tried! But it went completely wrong. For starters I got myself a Spyder 2 calibrator which in theory works with laptop monitors too. In reality it messed up the color profile so badly I couldn't recognize any of my pictures any more. Back to the shop.

A chat with a friendly sales person later I was going home with my brand new Eizo FlexScan S2232W.

It came bundled with a calibrator and software. As I understand it is a Spyder3 with Eizo label on it.

Installed on Win Vista without any problems at all. The software takes a while to startup on my aging laptop though (everything freezes for some seconds after login). After calibration I compared the default profile with calibrated one- not much difference, so if you're not too picky you can skip that part.

Was it worth it? Every single penny! There is so much more detail in the pictures now! And when I print my pictures, they look almost the same on paper as they do on screen!

//M.

Leidi Misterie shoot

2010-02-18T23:17:00.007+01:00

I feel that it is about time to write down how the portrait of Leidi misterie was created. I am really happy about the final outcome of this session. It was a quite a journey before we got to this:

On this photoshoot we worked together with a Gothenburg based make up artist Josefin - Nordic Beauty.

Tech details of combining two pictures and changing background with the GIMP - inside the post.

The whole thing as you can see is two pictures. A flower which I shot while on vacation in Lithuania (mothers garden... :) ) and Leidi misterie.

The original pictures look like this:

The flower is all natural light. It was shot with the same D40 and macro filters as the bugs in this previous post.

Leidi misterie is lit by two SB-800 flashes. One of them inside a shoot-through umbrella, right outside the picture above her head, the other fired directly into the sealing on the right side. To kill the rest of shadows I used a reflector on the left side (not a reflector, but the thing to put over the car dashboard on a sunny day :) it does bounce the light!). Lights triggered with Elinchromes.

I was standing on two soft seats above her, trying not to fall... It was hard to keep from laughing in that awkward position... we pulled off one good shot :)

One mistake here- the background. It was very hard to clean up while postprocessing. It would have saved me some hours if I used the green one like the pros do... Now we shot on whatever was available. Afterwards I used layer mask in the GIMP to remove the unwanted areas. To get a starting point of the mask, I made a copy of the image, then used Colors->Thershold... tool.

It turns the picture into black and white. Afterwards all you need to do is copy it into the layer mask of the original photo and clean up till it looks something like this:

The above mask is not only completed by painting, but also Gausian Blur was applied to it to smoothen the edges.

To cast a shadow I created a new completely black layer and applied the same mask to it, then moved the mask slightly to the left and reduced layer opacity to arround 30%.

Eventually the flower was too brigh/saturated so I added another white layer and masked it where needed.

All layers together look like this:

In between there was some fiddling with colors/curves, a little bit of cloning... The usual stuff.
All in all, this picture was definitely worth the effort!
Have fun!
//M.

Nature in winter

2010-01-17T20:41:00.005+01:00

Some winter pictures are in order this seriously cold year. Above woodpecker shot with Nikon 70-300 VR through the kitchen window (yes it was that cold, not me being lazy or anything...).

Still excited about my 70-300, btw. A whole lot to learn (build some muscle maybe?) before I manage to hold it still even with vibration reduction on...

More cold pictures inside the post!

Some bugger left footpints in the snow. All kinds of creatures come by the house looking for food.

Some dry grass and a field covered with snow. Want more vacation in the middle of nowhere!

The three last images were made with my kit lens (18-70) and D70s which still works fine when it's under -20 Celcius.

Have fun!

//M.

Macros with a Nikon D40 kit

2009-10-01T12:29:00.009+02:00

These last couple of rainy days got me thinking about the summer (jeah, it didn't take long to miss it:) ).

Digging through vacation photos found these macros I took with my dads Nikon D40. It had the kit lens, the 18-55 one, and some no-brand macro filters attached to it.

Really liked this small camera. It has almost no weight (I guess I am doing unfair comparison to my stuffed backpack), so having it with me all the time did not require any effort at all. Now I feel like going Ken Rockwell on you... :)

More bugs and butterflies inside the post!

Jep, if you're on a budget, a couple of macro filters will give you a lot! And I would never call their quality bad...

Still, the summer was nice and warm :)

New member of the crew - Nikon 70-300/4,5-5,6G AF-S ED VR

2009-10-01T11:51:00.017+02:00

Yes! Finally - diving into the world of long lenses, shallow DOF and getting close to things I could not reach before!

Sample images from this lens (shot with my good old Nikon D70s) and some more thoughts inside the post.

Lets start with the sample pictures of autumn colors/critters:

Sharpness - check.

Nice colors - check.

And the DOF is as shallow as it should be, fixing the background for you. Though I've learned that you need to be really careful with it, especially if you have such long-nosed subjects as below... I managed to focus on her nose most of the time, leaving the eyes not sharp enough.

Just love it how long lenses separate subject from the background!

This picture of Terra, my dog, is completely uncropped. I have not done any vignette removal on it in post processing; it was shot wide open at f5.6/300mm. Now you tell me if the measurebators whining about 70-300 vignette are worth listening to... Sure, if you take a picture of someone with blue sky in the background, you might see vignetting... But usually you will also be able to stop down to f8 to remove it ;)

As for reaching far away objects - the millimeters speak for themselves. Below two pictures of a bird at 70 and 300mm, 70 being as far as I could go before getting the new lens (yes, 70mm is the small one in the corner... sheesh... :) ).

BTW, this bird was really funny, pretending to fly or blow-drying himself for quite a while there :)

VR

Is a really neat feature! 70-300 is first ever lens I have used with VR in it. It is really cool and does it's job like it should (according to it's name :)). Below picture of weird colored mushroom was taken in dark woods with shutter speed of 1/20 at 220mm zoom. Jeah, I need to practice holding this long beast, but without VR there would be no mushroom today...

Tripod

This is probably going to be an issue. My tripods ball head (Manfrotto 486RC2) does not seem to be able to cope with the weight :( After composing, fastening the lock and letting go of the camera, it slides down a few millimeters, making quite a big difference in the viewfinder, especially on 300mm zoom. Be prepared for new investment here :)

Summary

If you have not yet came to the conclusion- I love the lens. Jep, probably if I'd tried the big bro 70-200 f2.8 I would love that one more, but for the fraction of the cost, my newest toy does miracles!

I'll update this post with more new pictures as they come.

Cheers!

Down below will be links to new posts where you can find pictures made with this lens
Nature in winter

Snowy stone in Säveåns nature reserve.

The Ballad Of The Broken Birdie Records

2009-06-26T21:05:00.010+02:00

Leidi misterie made a cover of The Ballad Of The Broken Birdie Records by Múm and I got the great privilege to make a picture for the song.

As there was no chance at all to find a crying jackdaw (or any other black bird to that matter), it was clear from the start that this is going to take a lot more post processing than usual.

Jump inside to read how I hunted down the bird and how the image came together.

First off I needed to get a picture of the bird. And just my luck, the day I set myself out hunting was the day all of the birds in Gothenburg were on vacation... For two hours I could not even see a single crow or jackdaw or anything similar. Not until it came to me, that I need to go to the dirtiest place in town- the central station :) So, the birds were there, but I could never reach them with my kit 18-70 Nikkor lens. At that time new train rolled to the station... The front was all covered in mosquitoes and the bird fiesta started. They were pecking that train without bothering that there was some guy with a camera just one meter away...

Here is the picture I picked out of about 30 shots:

Now all that was missing was a nice background. It took me two weeks of waiting until I saw the perfect sky for this shot. It was almost dark then and the clouds looked just perfect.

All was here. Time to glue things together. Cutting out the bird is easy, all you need is patience. Selected it with as much detail as I could manage, copied it into the cloud picture, put it on the fence. Now making the bird cry was something I've never done before. Internet saved me once again- found a great tutorial on drawing tears by Globator.

Afterwards the whole image looked just a bit fuzzy, so I over-sharpened (using unsharp mask) the birds body only, making the eye, tear and feathers be more contrasty and standing out of the image.

And we're done. I finally heavily post processed an image :) It was used as background for the song on youtube.

Carrying your gear

2009-03-29T20:47:00.015+02:00

If you are looking for something to carry around your DSLR (tripod and laptop?!) every day- a backpack is all you should think of (according to me :) ).

After some searching couple of years back I picked a LowePro Vertex 200 AW. A tank in other words. Here it is with my Manfrotto tripod attached to it.

Put short- I had it with me almost every day ever since I bought it. That means a lot already, but if you're still curious, jump in to the full post to see more details on the backpack.

Like I said before- it's like a tank- big, spacious and sturdy. I don't have too much equipment, so everything fits in perfectly well and there still is room for a lunchbox and a Nikkor 70-200 (some time in far future maybe?! :) ). Anyhow, today it fits all of my filters, DIY grid spots, batteries, chargers, flash and the good old D70s kit.

It has gazilions of small pockets to hold the small stuff like memory cards, remote etc.

And with the help of removable tripod holder I can carry around my tripod on it too (like in first picture). It is also possible to attach the tripod to any of the sides of the backpack, though in that case it feels out of balance. One minus is that you need to always unhook the tripod to get inside... Well, win some, loose some... I carry the tripod in hand after initial unpack anyway.

Best feature of all- this baby is weather (water) proof! I was out in pouring rain for 2 hours and it did not manage to soke through! The zippers are covered with latex and all of the material is holiding back the water quite well. In case the rain gets out of hand and you are nuts enough not to go home yet, there is a rain cover hidden on the bottom.

If there is still strength left in those shoulders you can even squeeze a big laptop into the backpack. Then the whole package is about 10Kg, but still it is quite comfy after you get all the straps adjusted according to yourself.

The major cons of Vertex 200 are similar as pros- it's size and weight. It is hard to take it with you while flying in smaller planes, also it is a bit heavy in its own weight.

Never the less, I still have it with me almost every day, walking like a turtle, carrying my whole life with me :)

McNallys new book is almost here!

2009-03-17T15:43:00.012+01:00

Joy to the world! Sitting here and waiting for a new notification mail from the on-line bookstore.

The new book by Joe McNally - The Hot Shoe Diaries - is already listed and going to be sold for about 250 SEK here in Sweden. Shame there is no waiting list, but there is notification possibility. Waiting... Waiting...

Having in mind that his previous book - The Moment It Clicks - has set really high standards for this type of stuff, I really do have high hopes for the new book.

Update on 29th of march. Still no book! It was on sale, got order confirmation and then cancelation! Gah... :( Same happened with another bookstore! Arming myself with patience and continuing to wait... wait...

Calendar spring...

2009-03-12T16:39:00.004+01:00

...does not mean anything to nature here in Sweden... Snowing again today. Still better than last year though! In the photo below- 17th of March 2008...

Textures

2009-03-01T17:45:00.004+01:00

Any weather is good weather; any light is good light, apparently. Today the sky was all muddy and overcast, creating perfect light to look for details.

A couple of shots from an open air museum (Forngården) in Trollhättan, exploring old wood and brick textures.

I hear clever people say "Go out and take lots of pictures"...

Crashing Icicles

2009-02-08T20:30:00.005+01:00

Upcoming spring is a good time for icicles to grow. And take pictures of them.

This one is shot with the SB-800 + Full CTO gell fired directly into the ice from above.

Also learned a valuable lesson today- never put stuff in you pockets! Before prepparing the next shot I've put my flash together with the remote trigger into my lower pocket. Then kneeled down to the cammera and heard something sliding down the icy slope... Jep- my SB-800 was on it's way to a 3 meter cliff, pulling EL-Skyport receiver with it... I was so afraid to go and fetch it after the crash, that just tried firing the flash with the test button from the transmitter. And it worked! Beleive it or not- it still works! Hail Nikons hardcore build quality! ;)

Made in...

2009-01-17T10:18:00.011+01:00

Good long vacation back home- doing nothing more but the good stuff: eat, sleep, take pictures. And enjoy the best peace and quiet nature can offer!

More wilderness pictures and technical details on the above image after the jump!

-----------------------
The first attempt I had at this shot was in complete darkness, so I tried using a flash light to light-paint the house making it at least a bit visible. Made probably dozen of those pictures never liked one of them... So just left the idea until this beautiful moonlit night came. -20C outside with moonlight really does have it's own charm! And I did not need any more fill light- I had a perfectly good moon hanging exactly where I wanted it. Remembered what Joe McNally said in his book about the dark windows, but could not turn the lights on as long exposure time would have burned the windows, so I used natural candles. Works really well. 30 second exposure added the fairytale look to the image. It is a perfect place to grow up I tell you!

My Nikon seems to take the cold quite fine. I have two batteries for these extreme cold days. One is always in the pocket close to the skin. The first one freezes in 20-30 minutes. I guess it takes longer first time as the camera is still warm too. Afterwards I have to switch batteries every 10-15 minutes... Well, depends on how cold it is.

Enough babbling, forest is pretty back home:

All good things are over some time. Vacation too. Going back West! Harbour in Riga was different this time- all frozen as the rest of Baltic countries. Still looking good though!

Welcome back to life in 2009! ;)

Remote Flash at the Sea

2008-12-05T19:44:00.007+01:00

Another walk with David after working hours (way after...). This time we were hanging out on the west coast of Sweden, having Lysekil night lights right in front of us. Came across this view with old peer poles in foreground:

Again a perfect time to pull out a wireless flash. And this time as David was here we had two SB-800 units to play with!

Click the link for the result and details!

So, one of the SB-800 was triggered via my Skyport. The other was set to the SU-4 Manual mode and triggered by the first one flashing. Camera on tripod, both of us become VALs and here it is:

Did not put any gels on the flashes in order to keep the light colder than the city, this way the old wood stands out much better.

A bit more life to the ghostly silhouettes, added their own reflections on the water and done.

Enjoy!

OK, a few days of digestion and here is the final image:

White background for red chilli peppers

2008-11-28T22:08:00.009+01:00

While picking these hotties up in the grocery store it hit me that I could practice on them before they become food.

One Nikon SB-800 flash, a Lastolite shoot through umbrella, white sheet of paper, two chairs and some string later:

Setup is hiding inside the post!

It was really cool to get this done with just one flash. Though light reflections on the pepper are unavoidable in this case... Tried playing with a polarizer a little, but that did not really help. Wonder if it would be possible to ditch the reflections if there would be two light sources on both sides of the chillies... That's something for the future!

Here is how the setup looked like:

Naturally, there were strings visible in the original image. Cloned them out with The GIMP. Also the background did not get completely burned out in some places, but it wasn't visible on my monitor...

And jeah... My GF thought I was nuts when I started putting it all up in the living room :)

Cheers!

Flashing the boats

2008-11-24T13:14:00.010+01:00

A nice sunday evening walk. Weather was great, -5°C chill, not a single cloud in the sky. And here it was- a perfect opportunity to use the off-camera flash on something else, not a human!

To be honest, I made this shot about a month ago for the first time. But then did not have my gear with me, so it was an ugly hand held mess of noise from my mobile.

Knowing the destination of our doggy walk, I rigged up this time. Sun went down, tower lights lit up... It was time to freeze the hands off!

Set the camera on the tripod, on the shoreline. Set up for propper exposure (a few clicks using manual mode and you see if it's fine in the LCD). Composed the shot. And here it is, with two silhouettes in the water...

Had to light them up somehow. Full CTO gel on to the SB-800. Set to manual 1/2 power, triggered with the still propperly working (right back at ya PW users! :p ) Elichrom Skyports. Remote fired the camera with Nikon ML-L3 radio trigger. The first test shot showed there was not enough light on the boats and the boulders on the shore had some light spill on them.

One more time. Full power on the flash, holding it with one hand above my head, using the other hand as a GOBO to cover light spill on the rocks and triggering the camera with my third hand... Oh wait... Have only two of them... It's great to have a girlfriend when you run out of hands :) It was actually her pushing the button.

Here is how the setup looked like in the end:
And this produced the first shot of the post...

The only thing I missed in this whole gig was warm gloves... It took only 5 minutes or so, but my fingers were about to fall off... Next buy is propper heating equipment, not a new lens :)

And jeah, some day, when I have as many SB-8/900s as Joe has, I will try and light up the wooden peer in the background... And maybe the bridge too!

Cheers!

When the Swedish night gets long and dark...

2008-10-26T15:10:00.009+01:00

There is nothing else you can do but fool arround! And that's what we did the other week after figuring out that hotel where we stayed apparently had an IT type spook haunting it...

All these ghost talks triggered Davids imagination which lead to experiments with long exposures.

Some test shots and we decided to shoot on 20 second exposure, first 10 seconds we sit pretending to drink coffee then quickly get out of the frame, that way exposing the scene for another 10 seconds without us in it, making ourselves transparent. Here is the original result:

We used 2 sets of coffee cups. One was always on the table, the other we held in hands and took with us when leaving the frame.

The ghosts were there, but the mood was missing. I needed to make it look like those old long exposure shots. So, here is the result after just a few minutes of post processing:

Well, D and myself had a good time.

Cheers to the night shift girls in Hällsnäs! :)

Extra Light

2008-09-30T21:14:00.015+02:00

Time to start lighting things in the cool strobist off camera flash way?

The first thing in the list- light itself. After reading loads of babble on the internet, I figured that the reasonable thing to do here is to go for SB-800 (nowadays being replaced by it's big cool bro SB-900). Worse case I could use it on my D70s with all the iTTL functions from Nikon, best case it is so flexible and light that I would not mind carrying it around in the back pack all the time.

So, the baby arrived. Powered it up with four Energizer 2500mAh rechargeables. While the batteries are still rather new they last for about 300-400 shots, depending on how much output is needed. Setting it up as a remote wireles flash is no big deal and does not need to cost you anything extra. Use the built-in camera flash to trigger it. For D70s the settings are:

flash:set to remote slave/channel 3/group A
camera:CSM Menu/19 Flash Mode/Commander Mode/TTL or manual (depends on your taste)

I have no idea about other camera (like D90, D300, D700 etc.) settings, but you surely can use the off-camera flash in this manner with all Nikons that are above D70 except for the pro cameras that have no built-in flash that is used as a trigger.

There are two really annoying things about this way of triggering your remote flash.

First, if you use it in bright daylight it might not fire. Which is quite frustrating and makes you loose some shots that could've been really good... Also while working outside you have to make sure that the flash sensor 'eye' is facing the camera, otherwise it will most probably not fire even on a cloudy day.

Indoors this setup would be great, because one way or another the light form on camera flash bounces from all the walls and hits the sensor. Inside ambient light is usually not so bright to interfere with this process too. But there still is the second downside to using this setup and it is catchlight from the on camera flash... Gahhh... It's always there in peoples eyes. Waste time with Photoshop? No thanks! So I ended up covering it with my hand. Imagine preparing the shot, adjusting the camera and then quickly covering the flash to hide the catchlights... And then the same thing again... And still having to keep in mind that there is that damn light sensor on the other flash if you're outside... That was more than enough for me.

Radio triggers it is! Again lots of time browsing. Pocket Wizard seems to be called the industry standard. I bet there is a darn good reason for that (reliability is the one named most). But one transceiver costs 1/3 more that Elinchromes Skyport transmitter and receiver put together (at least in Sweden)! So the choice was kinda easy :)

Got the whole Skyport Universal Set and it looked really good, all kinds of cables in it- apparently all I would ever need. Well no! There is no PC-mono cable included and that one is the one you need to connect the receiver to SB-800. Ghhh... One horrible evening of sitting around toys and not being able to play with them, then quickly back to the shop day after.

So in the end, here is how the whole setup looks like (picture taken under tungsten/daylight mix with a mobile phone...:) )

Plug the cable into your flash and receiver, set the flash to manual and adjust the power/zoom. Put the transmiter into hotshoe of your camera and you're good to go (channel/group settings for triggers are in the manual; read it; the default works too). The flash will be triggered every time you press the shutter release button. If you want to change to the rear/front sync just do it the same way as you would for the built in flash.

With Elinchrome radio triggers life became much easier. No worries about where your flash is as long as it lights the things you need in the way you need it. I have not tried testing at how far distance it would still be reliable, but I have not had the real need for it so far and as for the distances I work at, EL-Skyport does it's job like a charm.

If you found some comments about their antennas and the fact that they seem flimsy, those are true. But it stopped bothering me now and even thought both transmitter and receiver are in my backpack all the time, I did not manage to brake them yet.

Otherwise they do their job perfectly and as expected. The only times I had the flash not fire were when it wasn't recycled yet... Nothing to do with the triggers.

All in all there is possibility to buy cheaper stuff (3rd party flash, eBay triggers and others that naturally lose quality with price...), but if you are looking into the above gadgets and wonder if they work together- yes they do. And yes, it is worth getting that flash off your camera!

//M.

Lighting J in Berlin

2008-09-15T12:19:00.016+02:00

Jörgen is a good fella. We work together as geeks. While doing some work in Berlin this summer we could not miss our chance to create his portrait, showing his huge interest in history. Where else if not Berlin?..

So, we picked the biggest site of them all. At the time we arrived the sun was all the way up. Seemed quite boring. Managed to talk the guys to grab a beer while we wait for some better backlight. Could not wait long enough, but you can already see the sun shining through the back of the gate.

Trusty old VAL David was holding a bare SB-800 to the left of the camera, a bit above J's eye level. The flash was triggered by on-camera flash of D70s. I sinned and did not note the settings, but those don't really matter too much. The background was underexposed by a few stops and J got blasted with correct amount of light, making him stand out in the picture, having the bright light of the future in front of him, with knowledge of history behind :)

Good luck with the timing again. The place was crowded and we managed to squeeze a shot when there were no people in the frame, except for one lady with baby right under his left arm. Was easy to remove her with The Gimp. Otherwise there was no hard PP done on the image, slight adjustments for the clouds that got a tad burned even with under exposure and that's it.

Triggering off camera flash with the small built-in of D70s might be unreliable sometimes, especially when it's really bright outside. But more on this issue in the future!

//M.

Main sources of education

2008-09-13T12:06:00.007+02:00

Here is the main batch of links for ya. I've learned a lot from these guys. There is a lot of stuff to read, but most of it is worth it!

The main dude- Joe McNally and his blog. What he does amazes me all the time. Good source of inspiration. And he finds really neat ways of using Nikon (and other) lights. And the amount of them in some cases! Respect!

Legendary strobist.com. Read him. Do your best and use the tips in real life. Worth it 100%.

Chase Jarvis. The new star in my horizon.

Not too long ago came across Planet Neil. Good stuff on using minimal amount of artificial lights.

The above ones can be visited daily... A guy has to have his heroes... :)
Dave Black updates his page monthly. Very god pictures with all tech details you need.

These next two... ammm... Remember the "read with grain of salt" thing? Well, go to your shop and get a new bag of salt.

Lighting Technique Forum (and others) on dpreview.com. Loads of BS as in most forums, but if you have some time to waste, you might find some nice stuff there.

And the all time web photo contraversy Ken Rockwell. If you need aditional info on your Nikon (and nowadays he reviews Canon too) gear, you'll find it on his website, but don't forget the salt you bought the other day... Cz you might end up reading some rant about what a waste of time TV is :)

//M.

Kickoff

2008-09-13T11:49:00.003+02:00

Well, this whole blog idea is the big news for today... Really feel that I need some place to share some thoughts and "give back" to the comunity.

Most of what I've learned so far photography wise is coming from all the great people posting their thoughts on the internet. Check the "Links" category to get some hints on websites worth visiting.

The "giving back" thing... It's Chase Jarvis that started this mess for me...

Will try to write down all the goods I come across or learn on my way to becoming a better photographer. Hope this will help at least someone looking for info and trying to understand the complexity of simple light.

Don't know if it's worth reading? The answer for myself was always in the pictures created by the babbler. Look at my photos on mgrigas.com and make up your own mind if this blog is worth your time.

Keep reading, enjoy!

//M.