Observations…
As a photographer – I am often looking at all things or possibly everything subconsciously from the eyes of a photographer….
- I recently watched the movie Alice in Wonderland with my kids. As a photographer – this is a wonderful movie – visually and technically compelling – keeping your eyes glued throughout the movie. I did however notice a few things – The images are very surrealistic and have a texture less smoothness quality to them – neither a cartoon type nor a photographic style. What particularly interested me in the movie was the extreme shallow depth of field and how distracting it somehow was to me – especially in 3D. In the initial parts of the movie when Alice is partying on the lawn/garden, the trees and everything else behind during several close up portrait shots were all completely out of focus. This however – makes the 3D characters jump out of the screens….but In real life – We don’t have blurry backgrounds do we? The plot and details on why this may be is possibly explained here (I think it may have to do with shooting the movie in 2D – and then converting it into 3D in post processing may have something to do with why – its not that evident in Avatar which was shot entirely in 3D).
- During the Oscars red carpet event yesterday – I realized that I more interested in following how the photographers shot the celebrities. Frankly – I was kinda disappointed. Almost every photographer was using flash on camera with no diffusers or any special gadgets. I noticed one photographer using a stofen like diffuser and one using a bracket (not sure what make – it looked like solid aluminum brackets). I was able to pick out the flash on the bracket – it was a SB-800 with the 5th battery compartment. The flashes alone were going pop-pop unlimited, and while they were going – One could see a lot of shadows from by bare eyes…I am sure the photos have plenty of shadows as well….In short – I was surprised at how low tech, 19th century these “pro” photographers were….
Thoughts for this week
Well, I recently taught a workshop on HDR at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. One of the things that i was asked about was what camera was best suited for this work? Read more
Skin tones…
Lightroom (LR) plays a significant part of my work flow. A few years ago, I had tried the approach of using Nikon’s Capture for the process of RAW conversion, however since LR 2 came out, I have given up on using Capture. I choose LR for its DAM capabilities and the batch processing capabilities (and most importantly usability and speed factors). In any case, since its version 2 release, LR has had major changes in its RAW conversion capabilities – especially since it started using DNG profiles.
I however admit I have never been happy with ACR’s (LR) conversion of NEF images - especially when it comes to skin tones. In my quest to find a better conversion for my new D700 – I recently tried several converters – RAW converter, dcraw, Perfect RAW, Capture One, View NX/Capture NX2 & RAW therapee (via Parallels on Mac). Read more
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By N2H
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