No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. What you see above is Nikon gear and a LOT of it, courtesy of a friend (thanks Scott!) who had the whole kit basically sitting in a closet collecting dust. Yes, I know, sacreligious to let this much gear to sit idle, so your friends at CameraPorn have come to the rescue! Kit breakdown after the jump…
Continue reading ‘Nikon Gear CameraPorn? Hell Must Have Frozen Over…’
Lonely Bird - Before^
Brian Auer of Epic Edits recently posted a new project challenging his readers to post-process one of his photos, shown without post-processing above. Though I generally tend to sit back and watch rather than participate in blog projects, I decided to jump headfirst into this one because of the enjoyment I get from post-processing images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and to support Brian and his excellent photographry blog. I used Lightroom exclusively for the processing, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
Lonely Bird - ^After
For me, the big challenge to process this image was the washed-out colors and lack of contrast. To work with washed out colors, I originally tried to work with them, adjusting saturation and luminance, but I was not satisfied with the results I was getting. I decided to take another approach by using Lightroom’s grayscale conversion first. From there, the image was still seriously lacking in contrast. To work with that I used several adjustments including tweaks to Recovery, Fill Light and Blacks. At this point the image still wasn’t where i wanted it. I then used Lightroom’s targeted curves adjustment (ctrl+alt+shift+t on a pc or command+option+shift+t on a mac). I placed the target on the middle of the sky and dragged upwards, which increased the Lights within the Tone Curve Adjustment module to add contrast by brightening the sky.
At this point, I was fairly happy with the image’s overall contrast, but I felt it was still lacking a bit. I then used the Lens Correction tools within Lightroom to add a slight vignette to draw the eye into the picture, specifically where the bird is looking and there we were, basically done. I finished by straightening the horizon, applying mild sharpening and cloning out the buoys floating in the water.
Read Epic Edit’s “PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT: Edit My Photo”
So my first participation in a blog project on the books. I’d love to hear what you all think of the retouching job as well as your opinions on blog projects. Until next time…
Via Photo Business News & Forum via Imaging Insider, an excellent series of articles has been posted giving you almost all the information you would need to get started. As many of our readers know, chl and myself have recently done a bit of live music shooting and we LOVE IT. Its one of the most challenging and satisfying types of photography I’ve experienced.
Via PhotographyBlog, Adobe has released the v1.2 update for Lightroom. The release is mainly an update that fixes some Vista bugs and supplies RAW support for additional cameras including the Canon 40D, K100D and others. For the full release details and download visit the Adobe updates section. Also released, Adobe CameraRaw 4.2 and an update to Adobe’s DNG converter.
You may remember a few weeks back we directed you to part 1 of ThinkCamera.com’s Skin Retouching Master Class. As of yesterday all three parts have been completed and give an excellent step-by-step howto on magazine quality skin smoothing and retouching.
Via Crunchgear, SOny’s new Alpha DSLR has been officially announced at a $1400 proce point. Designed as a direct competitor to the Canon 40D and Nikon D300, the new Sony boasts some impressive features including a 12.2 MP Exmor sensor, 3-inch LCD, 11-point autofocus and more.
Crunchgear coverage
Offical Press Release
We all have them, whether it be rushing a shot, or leaving the tripod at home. Jim M. Goldstein has posted a breakdown of all his bad photography habits, and I would venture to guess that many of us share a lot of what he lists without even realizing.
The wonderful folks at Digital Photgraphy School have posted an excellent piece on the proper focusing techniques to use in landscape photography. Explained are not only the proper area of the frame to focus but also basic techniques and guidlines to follow for technically proficient landscape photos.
From OnTakingPictures via Thomas Hawk, photographer Bill Wadman goes into why he would take a quality lens and cheap camera over expensive camera and cheapie lens in any situation. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve had this conversation with people when they ask me for advice on what camera or lens to buy.
He is pretty much spot on with everything he is saying and this quote about says it all: “I saw a girl with a high-end Gitzo tripod, 5D body, and some crappy consumer level zoom lens on the front. Honestly, I almost pushed her over the edge.” …as you should have! Check it out here.
Found from our friends over at Digg, there’s an excellent post at Lifehacker that you really, really want to read if you own a Canon point an shoot. I won’t spoil everything, but the short of it is that there’s free, non-volatile, hacked firmware that can add tons and tons of useful features (RAW shooting, to top the list) to your kit. You really want to read this. Like now.
Via Photography Bay, it seems Canon’s German site posted some information for a short period of time, and though its in German, looks like 16 MP and due in June. We’ve been expecting an announcement around April 22nd or 24th from other rumors. More details as we get them. Check out the story and more screenshots here.
Update: Obviously nothing happened on either the 22nd or 24th… I’m not at all happy about it… I want my 5D Mark II dammit! We will of course keep you updated with any new developments.
Via Engadget, Crunchgear and DPReview… it seem some super code geniuses have dissected the just-released Nikon D3 firmware update and found some information that led them to believe that a 24.4 Megapixel camera, presumably the D3x is on the way.
