I’ve been meaning to have a go at doing a little planet for a while. Finally I got around to it with “Planet Catalunya”.
Quite pleased with that, I’m going to try a few more…
Category: Technique
Lightroom 2: what’s missing?
Someone always comes up with what they wanted to see – we want it all! But one thing I think I would have liked to see this time would be more advanced cropping, including some lens correction options. Specifically, being able to correct barrel/pincushion and trapezoid distortion would be most welcome. I was collecting together some photos earlier for a book, going back to older shots, with more basic lenses and the amount of times I had to get into Photoshop for simple lens fixing wasn’t funny. Maybe in 2.0 final?
Lighting and its importance.
As everyone knows, photography is 10% photographer, 10% equipment and 80% lighting (or something like that) proving again the 80-20 rule I suppose. Then again, lighting’s 80% can largely be answered by equipment or more precisely its correct application.
Anyway, the point is that there’s not much difference between shots with an SLR and a good compact if the lighting is good. (Not taking in to account responsiveness, speed and all that…) I’ve done this twice in the last few days, setting up a couple of 285HV’s with umbrellas in the first case and bounces off a low-ish white-ish ceiling in the second case. The shots from the 20D and the GX100 aren’t that easy to tell apart.
Trying out some lighting with my most reliable model
So, because all my friends are too chicken to pose for me, I decided I’d have to do a bit of tethered shooting to try some lighting out. This is a first time I’ve used EOS Capture on the Mac, and it’s quite workable. Pretty good, even, if I wanted to get effusive.
All these shots are variations on two 285HVs into silver umbrellas, one on each side, except for the obvious gelled background shot. Triggers are Gadget Infinity originals, which for the price you can’t argue with, but now I’ve got Pocket Wizards so I can combine my reliable model with reliable triggers.
SimCam: Film and Digital Camera Simulator
Photohead, which for some reason I’ve never noticed, have got The SimCam, in which you can play with the your exposure on a virtual camera. The (side) effects you can see include camera shake, depth of field, grain. Pity they didn’t include a page with all three of shutter speed, aperture and ISO. That’s a bit like digital camera manufacturers, isn’t it? Oh well…