Year end notes…
- The most popular photography topics and buzz in 2007 were:
- Holga was a huge comeback! At some point in time, they were selling for close to $100 bucks on eBay!
- There was a huge buzz that will most likely continue in 2008 on HDR images – to a point that i am quite frankly sick of seeing them – Most of them are over done, and downright ugly. I am sure there are quite a few “I hate HDR” websites popping up already.
- Panaromic images were on the rise – i simply love the fact that panoramic images when viewed even in small – has a entirely different perspective than when an equivalent lens is used.
- There were a lot of discussions on Film vs. Digital -I must confess, i still like film. However, the latest crop of cameras and printers has just made them really obsolete. There simply is no reason to shoot film anymore – except for the sake of nostalgia (I still shoot Polaroids).
- Inkjet Printing has become a big market and fad – with top printers, and beautiful papers. Not only it has become a new trend, it is pretty much sucking up the wallets dry as well from expensive papers, expensive ink and expensive and large format printers!
- Black and White photography has come back! Other notables include use of RIP, workshops dedicated to B&W printing, Printer profiles, calibration and whole lot of discussions around color spaces, color profiles and every bit of confusion as well. Speaking of color – the most outspoken guru on the topic, Bruce Fraser is no more.
- Finally, being a Nikon user myself – i must say that Nikon is back in the game! Their latest generation of cameras is a big giant leap from its current generation cameras, forcing the competition to do the same or be left behind.
Lightroom ACR Calibration – Part 2
Well for starers, Up in the title you see “Lightroom” only because i see that it is the most popular topic on my blog. I also think, that people often stop by my site after googling the text and get linked to the site.
Being a dummy that i am – I have been sharing my ACR settings with the public. Let me first correct it – Those that are using my ACR settings – It is quite useless! Every camera is different and has a different color rendition. Using ACR is also dependent on various other factors such as ISO and white balance. The settings that i get from ACR calibration is very different from what someone else may get if they use the same ISO, White balance and other environmental factors. Read more
On White balance…
The Fine Tune WB allows one to tweak on 2 dimensions – horizontal, controlling color temperatures – blue through amber – think of low color temperatures (blue) to high (amber) and vertical – controlling tint (actually referred to by Nikon as equivalent to that of color compensating filters).
So, how do you this? The horizontal is quite easy – blue through amber is your regular color temperature settings – there are like a zillion sites out there that talk about this.
The vertical settings are actually actually quite useful for fluorescent lights to correct for color casts. Florescent lights are actually quite complex – the reason is that you get varied color temperatures from 3200 all the way to 6500 for different types of florescent lights – so, there really is no one setting that works for these kind of light sources. With certain florescent lights – you get green color cast while with some others, you might get a magenta color cast. Use this slider to correct those.
One last thing – If you have D300/D3 – you can set the camera in Live View, change WB settings and see how it impacts the image – very cool feature – go ahead and tweak horizontal or vertical settings and watch its effects in real time!
Note: Tint is actually not the right term to use to fix color casts (which is what this slider is used for) – Tint indicates values of color when mixed with white (while shades are values of color when mixed with black). However, Adobe RAW and Lightroom and several others now use tint in White balance to indicate “color casts”. Turning the slider towards green adds green, while moving it towards magenta adds magenta. Its as simple as that.
A good source of info on this topic are:
- http://strobist.blogspot.com/
- http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/
- http://www.rosco.com/includes/technotes/filters/Guide_to_Color_Filters.pdf
- http://www.rosco.com/includes/technotes/filters/FilterFacts_06.pdf
- http://www.cartoonindustries.com/tech/cam/di/wb.pdf
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