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Archive of ‘Technology’ category

Photography, Portrait, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Creating Vignettes in Lightroom – Tech Thursday

Wisconsin State Capitol at dusk - ©TimeLine Media

When Adobe Lightroom first came on the scene, it added the ability to create vignettes. I saw many photos with the darkened corners. It was not until I installed the beta of the program that I saw why! This look stems from the technical deficiencies of old cameras. Some larger format cameras or older lenses were not as precise with their ability to transmit light to the edges.

Post Processing

Wisconsin State Capitol at dusk - ©TimeLine Media
Wisconsin State Capitol at dusk – ©TimeLine Media

Now, every image editing app from Instagram to Snapseed has a way to purposefully add vignettes to your photos. I saw a demonstration where Parker J. Pfister had extreme uses of vignettes in his photos that brought the darkness in much farther into the frame. Some of the darkening did not even follow a light fall-off pattern that an old lens would produce, but the images were stunning. The reason that this works is that your eye will be attracted to the brightest thing in the frame first.

Event Portrait - ©TimeLine Media
Event Portrait – ©TimeLine Media

In most cases, you will want the brightest part of the frame to be your subjects face if you are photographing a person. Sometimes it will be an object in the foreground that you would like to emphasize over the background. Adding a vignette is very easy in the Effects panel of Lightroom 5. After you make your crop, the Post-Crop Vignetting tool is used to darken the corners, and you can set how far into the frame you would like to darken. You can also set how much you would like the vignette to darken, and how dramatic a drop off you want that to happen. Be cautious that you do not over do it! Over darkening of these edges where it becomes too obvious can make it distracting for your viewers taking away from the overall impact of the image.

Studio Portrait - ©TimeLine Media
Studio Portrait – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Fuji X100s – Exposure bracketing

HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media

In delving through the manual of the Fuji X100s camera, I found bracketing operations in a menu. Previously, I have posted about the drive mode for making panoramas where the camera will continuously make images while guiding you to pan the camera to create super wide panorama photos. In that same menu, you also have access to create bracketed exposures!

Menu Exploring

I did not realize that this camera at first because there was not a dedicated function button for this, and it was not present in the Quick-access menu. It was only when really looking that I found this which really makes this a useful mode. Just like other ways of working with this camera, it is also much easier to setup this mode, and implement in taking photos. There are some limitations compared with the DSLR but for the trade off in size, it is worth it for light traveling.

Fuji X100s exposure bracket setup
Fuji X100s exposure bracketing setup
Fuji X100s exposure compensation dial
Fuji X100s exposure compensation dial

If you click the Drive button, you can select the AE bracket icon, and you can select from three different options – whether to have the exposures 1.0, 2/3, or 1/3 stop apart. This is similar to the tick marks along the exposure line on the Nikon DSLR setup. I set my exposure brackets to be 1.0 stops apart. One of the limitations of the X100 compared to the Nikon in terms of bracketing, is that you are limited to only 3 exposures per shutter release. This makes it more difficult to make a larger set if you are hand-holding, which I do not recommend anytime you are trying to make these!

Bracketing Images

To make more bracket images, I make use of the exposure compensation dial. This button which is easier to use than on DSLRs, allows you to change the exposure up to -2 or +2 around the metered settings in the camera. When on a tripod, you can set the X100s to make bracketed exposures, then set the camera to -2 with the exposure compensation dial. Then make the 3 exposures around +2, and finally, turn off the bracketed exposures to just a single exposure mode. Move the dial back to 0, and take the metered exposure. This should give you a set of 7 exposures of the same scene all 1 stop apart. It is a lot more complicated to do so, but it will get the job done quickly even with this small camera! Here are some examples from a walk around the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media
HDR – National Cathedral – ©TimeLine Media
HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media
HDR – National Cathedral – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Event, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Brain Games – Fisheye Lenses

Brain Games at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media

Tysons Corner Center

There was a very nice installation at Tysons Corner Center a few weekends ago. The display was very photo-centric and unique much like a lot of the content by National Geographic. Brain Games is a new show on the Nat Geo channel that describes how our brain interprets the visual data gathered by our eyes. If you watch this show, the demonstrations are mind-bending in the way that they show how our mind will digest information. Sometimes, there will be blind spots, sometimes the mind will fill in missing areas of information with its own data, not unlike “content aware” options in Adobe Photoshop.

Brain Games at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Brain Games at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media

To go along with this show, the display had 4 different setups that made for some great illusions when captured on camera. There were rooms that were setup upside down, some with drastically sized furniture that would change the size of people in the frame, and some used mirrors to trick the eye into interpreting the scene. I do not have any photos from my camera on the setup since the camera position was very integral in getting the effect correct. I tried in a few frames, but it did not work as well as their setup – a credit to the designers and builders of the display! So after getting some standard photos of the display and the crowd that was taking part in the demonstrations, I decided I need to get some sort of strange – brain bending angles to the photos.

Fisheye Photography

This is where the fisheye lens comes in. I rarely uses these on shoots. When you first get a fisheye, you will use it constantly for a week, then you struggle to find an appropriate time to use it, especially for client work. The extreme wide angle distortion makes it difficult to use with people, and architecture photography would be too unrealistic with these lenses. If you shoot weddings, there will likely be a handful of times during a ceremony or the reception where it would be nice to get an overall view of the venues with the fisheye. The one I have is the 16mm Nikkor lens which is not the best performing lens, and has not been updated with a new model in quite some time.

Nikon 16mm Fisheye Lens
Nikon 16mm Fisheye Lens

Although there are lots of people in these photos, I had the camera on a tripod to get blurred motion from people moving through the display. It depicts more of the drama and action while keeping all of the elements of the display sharp. In Lightroom, you can straighten the bulbous curves in the frame using the Lens Corrections panel in the Develop Module. I try both the corrected and the uncorrected versions before deciding on a final version. It really depends on what is at the edges of the frame as to which is the best for the photo. Corrected frames will really stretch the edges which is not as bad for structures as it is for having people in those areas. I am happy with how this came out, and now have Brain Games on the TV watch list!

Brain Games at Tysons Corner Center - ©TimeLine Media
Brain Games at Tysons Corner Center – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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