Tricky to start talking about these without heading into the land of Geek. Lets suffice to say that there are a variety of profiles that camera makers produce which can be applied to a photo that produce very different effects.
If I had to choose one word to describe these then it would be ‘flavours’.
For example with Nikon cameras ‘Vivid’ is awesome for a hyper saturated effect best appreciated with flowers and plants. D2X Mode One is (so I am told) better suited to better skin tones (according to Nanolou). ‘Landscape’ should be self explanatory as should ‘Portrait’.
Lightroom includes Adobe’s approximations of these profiles by default and selects the appropriate ones depending upon the camera used to take the photo. So a Canon user will get their profiles and a Pentax only the Pentax ones. Capture NX obviously has Nikon’s profiles built in directly by Nikon.
Still, it is tricky to choose which is the best and to quote again from Nanolou “Eye pleasing color is not the same as accurate skin tones”.
Below are two identical images. One uses ‘Camera Standard’ and the other ‘Camera Vivid’.
Vivid is more ‘Vivid’ (indeed it is!) than the ‘Standard’ Profile. The trouble to anyone looking at this is that the sRGB (GEEEEEEEKKKK ALERT!!!!!) profile used to display images on the web is crap with Greens so it is not hugely more vivid but only slightly on this web site. Still, hopefully the point is made. On my monitor at home the vivid profile is far more vivid with radically stronger greens and higher contrast.
However is the ‘Vivid’ necessarily better? Fortunately I do not have to worry about skin tones with this image but recently I had about 150 photos of people in various shades of colour temperature and found myself suddenly faced with a real challenge. Is ‘accurate’ better than ‘pleasing’?
Having a limited budget we needed to use what we could find and period interiors were always going to be tricky. The Tithe Barn has a cross shaped construction and we occupied one of the wings from the main hall of the building to film the scene with the dastardly Sheriff.
Photos were hard, having only one flash meant that nearly everything resulted in huge shadows. I need to buy some more lighting allowing me illuminate more angles but it’s money money money as usual. Still, despite this, I did get some nice images. The sun was shining through the slits in the barn which made for some dramatic contrasts.
The three images of Harry are identical. I experimented with one converted to monochrome and another with an Unsharp Mask.
Here is another video of Sir Cedric … The Brave. This one is also older and his character has evolved quite a bit since then. However it’s pure comedy!
This weekend of the 24th of July was the annual War and Peace Show in Beltring, Kent, England.
The show is an annual mega fest for militaria, living history, and re-enactment groups. There are a wide range of groups from First World War groups to Vietnam and modern groups. The turn out here is massive and it is the worlds largest event of its kind with people coming from many different countries each year.
It has had some bad press in the past from Hack Journalists but the level of detail and dedication which the re-enactors display is amazing and there is a definite feeling of having wandered into another dimension or possibly another time. Very hot and dusty though.
Working at a well presented scientific establishment I always expect everyone to be very normal, very professional and very well behaved, unlike myself it seems. So I was most pleased to discover that a colleague occupies some of his spare time in a local HardCore Punk band named 13 Gauge. This was hardcore Punk with a liberal sloshing of Metal stirred in but I enjoyed watching them play at a small venue in Oxford. I was told I could have a free reign with my camera and once again got valuable experience through a great invitation. It was a small gig but the people there were enjoying themselves and the atmosphere felt good.
Lighting was grim so it was High ISO tastic but Hardcore Punk is high ISO music (i.e. LOTS of grain and distortion and anger) so you can happily throw out all the rules and do what the hell you like.
We finally got out and shot the first scene of the Raven’s Wing yesterday. Several hours wearing chain mail was very hard but everyone really worked hard.
Here are some photos:-
Light in the woods was hard as there was never quite enough to allow for a fast shutter speed so 80% of everything I took was blurred. This is increasingly frustrating and I keep wondering if money spent of better equipment is the simple way to resolve this. More bad workmen blame their tools … The D80 is not good enough at high ISO to produce low noise photos so I am stuck until I can upgrade and find something else to complain about.
I forgot to add the teaser trailer too. Here it is at Vimeo:- (!)
Wandering into town on the 1st May I happened upon a group of street performers/artists/twits/practising Thespians.
They were causing some degree of amusement and lots of people were generally stopping to stare. They had a few people evidently pretending to be onlookers who were in on the act though.
After my experiences of photographing the Morris Dances and a friends comments that Morris Dancer photos ONLY EVER consist of images of funny hats I wanted to try and get something different. It quickly became apparent that taking photos of people taking photos was more interesting.
I miss the days of Netscape composer… In other words my knowledge of web design in completely obsolete and frankly it is looking as though it will stay that way. However the vexed issue of a nice online portfolio is still very much an issue.
I have been using DeviantArt for a few years now. Partly it is nice just to look through and see the amazing art that lots of people seem to be doing (depressing as well) but it had taken on the role as a Portfolio of sorts. However it is not to tidy and DeviantArt is frankly a social networking site driven by creative content. However they also offer a portfolio service which I decided to try out.
It is http://maxvonseibold.darkfolio.com/ . The site proved very easy to setup and upload content to. There are however a limited number of photos and text that can be posted. Despite this, it is simple and a nice way to have something to hand if anyone asks to see your stuff…
I am now having a play with the Airtight Simple Viewer This was a product I was seriously looking at, however now that Lightroom seems to offer an integrated wizard to The Simple Viewer, I could well be going down the Flash web gallery route …
Most of these were taken whilst attending a location photography course
in Oxford. The course did not really deliver what I had hoped and had zero focus
on any technical aspects.
Despite this, it was good for getting into environments I am not comfortable in,
namely people I do not know.
To a certain degree, a decently sized SLR says ‘photographer’ to people so they
label you differently and probably do not mind. Especially as I do not look corporate
or official in any way.
Despite this, directly taking a photo of someone you do not know without asking
is tricky. If I did ask them then that would change the whole dynamic of the moment.
The technical answer is simple Get a better Zoom or Telephoto and get the
shots from a further distance …
The creative one is better though. Go and ask them and just see what happens. It
is still fairly spontaneous.
So desperate to only display photos which I want to look AMAZING. This is causing several problems, the main one being that this somewhat arrogant criteria means that I have no photos to display.
Also its buggering up the bladder of creativity (or is it a gland?).
So … I will display anything and stop being a toff
We explored this old quarry and concrete works several years ago when you could just wander right in as there was not gate. Sadly this is no longer the case but I am glad I got the chance. This is probably my first ever foray into the world of filters for a camera. No expenses Lee filters here. No, I just stuck an eyepiece from my Laser Protection Goggles over the lens of my Instamatic Fuji and conjured instant apocalyptic beauty, simple, spontaneous and good fun.
I visited Christchurch Cathedral (where some of Harry Potter was filmed (the Great Hall)) a few days ago hoping to improve on my last visit with my newly obtained tripod. Upon entry I was promptly told “No Tripods” in case I try to sell the images. A trifle stingy in my opinion.
By leaning sideways against a large pillar to stabilise myself as best I could I took this image which I liked and got a reasonable exposure.
I edited the RAW files in RawTherapee and also got my system using a colour profile for my Nikon D80. Sadly in Linux there seems to be no way to set a specific profile for my screen. …
