Wednesday 30 November 2011

Implied nude

I carefully composed and edited this shot to give the (false) impression the model was nude.

Lighting was from a flashgun firing into a sheet of paper to soften the light.

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/1000, ISO 400

Train Gubbins HDR

One could successfully argue that this shot is messy and poorly composed, but I quite like it nonetheless.

FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, ISO 200

Saturday 26 November 2011

Tilted statue

I'm borrowing Bob Latham's 45mm TS-E lens at the moment with the intention of trying some portraits with it soon. In the absence of a model, I thought I'd try a statue!

I took a series of 5 bracketed shots on the 1DsII and chose three of them to merge into an HDR. I wasn't happy with the grey-look of the statue so I used the adjustment brush in Lightroom (with help from the auto-mask option) to lighten the statue. The pre-Lightroom adjust (but post HDR) version is below for comparison!

Notice how the horizontal tilt on the lens has rendered the left hand side of the shot out of focus, but a plane of sharp focus has extended to the background on the right hand side.

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, f/4 @ 45 mm, ISO 100

Pre-Lightroom adjustments:


Thursday 24 November 2011

Lights!

I'm impressed with the quality of the output of the X100 at ISO 3200. I've added a little noise reduction in Lightroom, but to be honest, quality was impressive straight out of camera! This was handheld with a slow shutter speed.
FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/2 @ 23 mm, 1/17, ISO 3200, No Flash

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Trains and Courage!

A couple of snaps with the X100 this lunchtime. First is an HDR of two images.

FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/210, ISO 200


FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/2.8 @ 23 mm, 1/450, ISO 400

Sunday 20 November 2011

Desaturated Stare

HDR capture to deliberately introduce slight halos, then selective saturation and de-saturation to obtain the unusual colour balance.

FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, ISO 400

Saturday 19 November 2011

Tilt-shift HDR vertical panorama!

So - how many obscure techniques can I chuck in one shot?

Firstly its taken with a newly-borrowed 45mm TS-E lens kindly loaned from Bob Latham when the 90mm TS-E I had previously was sold! I tilted the lens to the left to shift the plane of focus.

I also used the shift facility to move the lens up and down and stitched the (bracketed and HDR'd) shots together in PS Elements!

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, f/5 @ 45 mm ISO 200

Friday 18 November 2011

Lou against the sky

On camera flash, dropped ambient exposure a touch to darken the background.





FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/250, ISO 400, Flash

Thursday 17 November 2011

Improvised lighting with the X100 for a portrait of Lou

I really could have done with my Canon DSLR + off-camera flash guns or Lencarta lights for this shot. However, I had my Fuji X100, the little EF-20 gun and a Canon off-camera cord that happens to work with the Fuji.

I tried direct flash and the lighting was horrid and harsh with deep shadows cast on the wall behind. I couldn't really mix flash and ambient because the background lighting was so low.

Solution? Tape a sheet of A4 paper around the flashgun and use that to soften the light. Lighting softness is dependent on the effective size of the light - by bouncing off the paper, the light gets softer. As you'll see in future posts I could position the light to get different effects as well!

The result is some nice soft shadows around the nose and on the background. I removed some of the saturation to give a colder feel to the shot.

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/1000, ISO 400, Flash

Botched modifier:


Wednesday 16 November 2011

HDR Portrait

Picture of Lou - fusion of two exposures in Photomatix with a vignette added in Lightroom.

FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/80, ISO 400

Monday 14 November 2011

Leaf detail

Taken on the Fuji X100 in Macro mode with the external flashgun EF-20.

Manually set ISO / shutter / aperture to kill any ambient light. Removed some twigs and used a sharpness gradient to further blur the right hand side.

The resolution of the X100 + it's prime lens is incredible - so much detail!

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/8 @ 23 mm, 1/250, ISO 200, Flash

Sunday 13 November 2011

Salcey Forest Cottage HDR

Three shots using the bracketing facility on the X100. Combined in Photomatix.

FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mmISO 400

Saturday 12 November 2011

Smokey the Loudest Purring Cat

Guinness Record Breaking Smokey came to Northampton today!

http://www.smokeythepurringcat.com/

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/105, ISO 800, No Flash

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Miniature Tenerife

With this shot I tried to fake the tilt-miniature effect using gradient blurs in photoshop + a little saturation upping!

Again, probably wants viewing full-size, but is supposed to look like a model.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III, f/5.6 @ 40 mm, 1/640, ISO 100

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Tilt-shift lens for fake miniatures and dad!

My friend, Bob (see http://www.boblatham-photography.net ) has kindly sent me a 90mm TS-E (Tilt / Shift) lens to play with.

The lens allows you to tilt the front element to change the plane of focus (either to drastically increase or decrease depth of field) and a shift facility which is especially useful in capturing architecture whilst keeping parallel lines looking parallel.

The lens rotates and this combined with tilting the lens can give some interesting selective focus effects which I intend to try on portraiture.

Anyhow, one effect you can achieve with a tilted lens is to make real-life scenes look like models. Todays pic is not a great example of this - taken at night in miserable weather & a fairly boring subject, but it hints at what is possible. The blurring of the top and bottom of the frame (made possible with the tilt) gives the effect.

Probably best to click and see large to get the full effect, although I intend to take some more convincing examples soon.

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, f/5 @ 90 mm, 2s, ISO 100


Although I was keen to post something about the TS-E, the above shot is not the most exciting on the planet so I thought I'd add a portrait of my father taken at the New Forest last month. It is cropped from the full frame and was taken on the X100.


FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/2.8 @ 23 mm, 1/125, ISO 500, Flash

Monday 7 November 2011

Firework manipulation

I decided to have some fun with a shot I took of some fireworks. I extracted the colour from the black, copied it on to several layers and rotated the contents of the layers seperately to make this pattern:



This was the original image:

Canon EOS-1D Mark III, f/9 @ 40 mm, 1.3s, ISO 100, No Flash

Saturday 5 November 2011

Fireworks!

Canon 1DMKIII on tripod, 17-40L.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III, f/9 @ 40 mm, 2s, ISO 100

Canon EOS-1D Mark III, f/9 @ 26 mm, 2s, ISO 100


Canon EOS-1D Mark III, f/10 @ 40 mm, 1s, ISO 100


Panoramic Pond

Taken at Summer Leas in Northants using the panorama facility on the X100. A few grads added in photoshop to darken the sky and right hand side while lightening the left.

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/5.6 @ 23 mm, 1/210, ISO 200, No Flash

Thursday 3 November 2011

Chanel and Niece

Simple setup here - one large octabox close-in to subject gives a diffuse window-like light. We had little space to work in so I extended the black background in Photoshop to balance the composition and applied 'creamtone' preset in lightroom to convert to a warm monochrome.

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, f/11 @ 85 mm, 1/200, ISO 100

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Old Photo of the Pier

In this shot I tried to emulate an old colour-photo by using the 'yesteryear 1' preset which uses split toning to adjust the colours and adds a little vignette. To emphasize the effect further I added some grain.

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/5.6 @ 23 mm, 1/125, ISO 320, No Flash

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Tame deer up-close!

Well, I never thought I'd be photographing a deer this close with a wide-angle lens!


FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/2.8 @ 23 mm, 1/125, ISO 800, Flash