Quick video tip up on the Digital Photo Experience today.
DPE - Quick Tip
Flash / No Flash
A few readers commented on my recent video discussing simple fill flash. The video did not contain no flash / flash images from the market. So, here they are. The camera settings are exactly the same for each shot but one has flash the other does not. The flash was a Canon 580 EX II pointed 90 degrees off the optical axis (straight up) with a Hanson Fong Skin Glow Bounce Card attached.
No flash
Flash
Although the flash is not pointed at the subject and the ceiling was well over 20' and gave little to no bounce the fill card did a great job directing light.
The shots are straight out of the camera and will, of course, never be much but a demo.
Fiat Lux!
Another Video Tip from Hal
A quick discussion of Situational Awareness or SA as it applies to the photographer.
Situational Awareness - DPE
Fiat Lux!
The HDR Flow
Space Invaders Anyone?
I was cleaning up my shots from Japan today and started to work an HDR project with a quick bracketed series of grab shots. I noticed the old "space invaders" character on the side of the building and decided to shoot it on the way to dinner. The three shots are below.
0 E.V.
-2 E.V.
+2 E.V.
Not the most inspiring shots as singles so I decided to try a couple different HDR methods. I first went from Lightroom to Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro. I tried to build a realistic image although I did bump up the Detail slider. The result is shown below.
Photoshop HDR Pro
Definitely better but I wanted to check and see what Photomatix Pro could do so I sent the images over and processed twice, once for realism and the other for grungy. The results are shown below.
Photomatix Pro Details Enhancer (realistic)
Photomatix Pro Details Enhancer (grungy)
Between the three I decided I liked the Photomatix Pro versions but neither really grabbed me. As I sometimes do I took the two TIFFs and sent them back to Photoshop as layers. After blending a few copies and desaturating the sky I ended up with this one.
Composite HDR after some basic Photoshop
To kick this one up just a bit more I went to Topaz Adjust and played around for a bit. The current version of the image is shown below. Not sure if it is finished or if I'll ever show it again but it was a good exercise.
Topaz Adjust
Well back to the studio. Just received four new backgrounds today and must hang them for immediate use tonight. I'm working a studio project over the next week and have seven shoots scheduled. The first will be tonight and should be a great time. The final result should be an iPad app ready in just a few short weeks.
Hope to see you soon here at Light or during the festival,
Fiat Lux!