January 11, 2022

 

The Fuji worm invasion came after the film! In today’s video, I’ll show you how to fix it.

Fixing fuji worms LIghtroom vs Capture One

I want to tell you a story as we continue the LR vs C1 experiments because today I going to show more important ways to control details like the wormy artifacts sometimes caused by ISO noise.

I was starting photography in the late 90’s when I saved up for a Canon EOS 3. Oh I thought I was the coolest ever (hint, I was not)

I devoured the magazines. In those days we talked about fine-grain films like the new Portra 400, but words like worms and color noise were not topics. 1600 ISO was about the limit and it was noisy. Take it or leave it!

These days I’ll sit for hours and tinker with a formula for presets like Natural HDR 4 to get the best detail and tone from our files. Photographers that use presets actions and tools get better results. Because they see more without working harder.

35mm film was like having 10-20 megapixels.

This was me in the early 2000’s with my prized EOS 3.

Serious pros of the day said 35mm was not enough. Strangely they downgraded a few years later to the 6MP generation of digital SLR’s.

No matter. My EOS 3 cost $1000 without a lens and I used it for years, starting out my portrait and wedding work and being the official photographer at the local speedway. It had eye control focus, meaning it focused where you looked in the viewfinder. It did not detect the subject’s eyes like today’s cameras. It was just cool and it worked, some of the time.

Each Saturday I would go early to the speedway and pre-sell photos for 15 bucks. Then I would sit all night in the center field taking photos, playing with pans, and getting dusty. On Monday I developed 6-10 rolls of film, sort 4×6 prints, store the negatives and give the prints to my racers, hoping to profit about $200

That 35mm film with it’s noisy ISO 800 grain was what I had and I made it work and I learned a lot in that dusty center field.

But noisy was relative and more organic then. It was silver. These films were classic and looked beautiful. The formulas I’ve created in Filmist presets are more high-res than we had then, but they look great because they look like film.

PS: Download my FREE Filmist pack to get my noise presets and the film looks if you missed it. You’ll see what I mean about film color and detail.

Download Filmist mini here to get my free noise formula preset.

Today I think about the hurdles we had to get a good print and how many stages of noise and artifacts and dust and scratches could be introduced.

Today we pixel peep and panic over a little blip in a sensor or a little noise that as I showed in last weeks video is easy to clean up with good use of detail and grain tools

Watch my worms video and learn how to control detail.

I love doing testing. It’s experimenting like in this week’s video that help us understand more. It’s that hunt that results is tools like my presets and like Emulsion 3 and Lumist for Photoshop.

So this week I uploaded another video looking at more grain and noise. It’s a focus on Fuji files, but also another look at LR vs C1 and how it will handle noise regardless of what camera your worms and artifacts come from.

 

That’s all for this week. I’m hitting the streets looking for light like I found here and processed with Filmist. Come Monday I’ll be back to my experiments, working on formulas and ideas for next week’s email.

See you then, Gavin Seim

Fuji X100V ISO 800, Filmist process and Gavs detail preset
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May 25, 2012

by Gavin Seim: Sometime back I made a little pack of brush presets for Lightroom and it got download over 25,000 times. With the release of Lightroom 4 and it’s new develop tools, I decided it was time to revisit brushes. I started over and made a brand new pack of  free brush presets for LR4. There powerful new tools in LR4 brushes, including white balance, better softening, better tone control and more. If you still use LR2-3 check out the old brushes.

This FREE Essentials pack has six brush presets that cover, well the essentials. For some of you that may be enough. But for the rest..

 

..This time I went further. I made the The Elegance Brush Collection. A complete pack of more than 20 LR4 brushes that cover everything essentials to creative tools like the warming brush, a highlight brush, the HDR brush and lots more. A simple elegant, reasonably priced brush toolkit for those of us that want more and to support my work. You can see a complete list of all brushes and the first 6 that are in this free pack on the product page.

 

You can download the FREE essentials set below. As you do please share this post with others.

Download Elegance Brushes FREE Essentials Pack

Please share with a +Like, +1, Tweet or post.

Or Get the Complete Elegance Collection HERE

The Super Burn Brush: A bold darkening brush with deep shadow. All brushes are fully adjustable.
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July 18, 2011

by Gavin Seim. Spread the word. Because its’ time to raise the bar. I have a challenge to photographers everywhere. One that will teach us all something. I know this because I’ve started doing it. It’s addictive, educational and I plan to do it a lot more. Different expedience levels will accomplish different things, but everyone will learn something new.

When you’re done, come back post a link to your result. For those that would like, email me and I’ll even call you personally to critique and talk about the image for no charge.

The premise is this. Nearly every photographer I know needs to SLOW DOOWWN. I’ve encountered this in everyone from newbies, to some of the most experienced and award winning photographers in the world. We need to stop the clicking and start the thinking. the better image we make in camera the better piece of art we’ll have when we’re done. There I said it. And I’m included. I’ve on a mission to slow down.

One of my results of slowing down. I spent hours planning this single frame and I learned so much from it. Even the exposure is over 2hrs. Click the image to see the details in my journal.

So many images being are made, but there’s not enough thought about whats happening when we press the shutter. Anyone can take a “pic”. But not anyone can be a craftsman. It’s not to say everyone is making bad images. I just think we need a moment if silence. Silence from the clicking. Making great images is not about how many you take. It’s not about having so many to put on your blog that our eyes bleed when we read. It’s about real quality.

The 111 challenge is this.
Spend one hour in the field, planning and capturing a single composition. In camera. Planning and making that single scene.You can edit after, but at least one hour making that one image that achieves one goal. It’s not that every image needs to take an hour or more. But if you really do this, you will start thinking more about every image you make. No matter long long it takes.

No matter what genre you work in, you will benefit from this one. Slowing down and learning to see in one area teaches us to do it on others. It’s opened my eyes in every area of my work. You may not be able to execute this project at your next wedding. But will help your next wedding, or anything else.

What do you get? Mainly you get knowledge. Which is extremely valuable. Every time you take on this challenge, or take it further, it will open your eyes to new ideas. Plus you get to display the Pro Photo Show achievement badge on your site along with the resulting frame.

There’s no photographer that this will not help. I speak from experience when I say it’s amazing. Remember not to pick just any subject. You need a subject that’s inspiring. You need a plan and the right light and make it all happen. This will all take far more than an hour, but once you have the goal, spend at least that just composing and planning for the final image.

Once we master this, maybe we’ll plan a day long image setup. Also for anyone that finishes and wants it, email me and I’ll call you and give an honest one on one critique session on the image for no charge. So, do you have the discipline to take this on? I look forward to seeing what you learn… Gav

Some simple guidelines.

  • There’s no deadline. Think about your goal. Plan a trip or event worthy of this image.
  • You can’t spend a random hour. Spend it making the best image you’ve ever made.
  • You can spend MORE than one hour in the field making the image. Just not less.
  • Planning the excursion, subject or post edits do not count towards your hour.
  • Plan one composition. No spending an hour making random images hoping for success.
  • You can make test images, but only to help you refine the one image you’re after.
  • It can be HDR or bracketed if you like, but we just want to see one image in the end.
  • Take your time in post. It’s not part of the hour, but it’s relevant to a great image.
  • Take that one final image and post a link in the comments. Make sure it’s ONE image.
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April 6, 2011

I’ve worked hard to make Power Workflow the set of presets that sets the gold standard for LR presets. PW3 has been out for almost nine months now and has been a home run so far. Well 3.2 just went out, free for you PW3 owners. This update includes some new presets, including a few cool ones dealing specifically with dynamic range. There’s also lots of little tweaks to make the collection more powerful than ever. You can find a list of the changes in the Tips & Info page of the download.

If you own PW3 you should already have an email with your new download. You can simply delete the old ones and install the new. If you didn’t receive them, shoot me an note (effects@seimstudios.com) and I’ll hook you up. And if you don’t own PW3, you’re missing out. Give them a try and if you don’t like them, I’ll give your money back. I can tell you that’s something that happens very rarely.

Best… Gav

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October 24, 2009

HDR_Workshop_001-2

by Gavin Seim: I just hosted the first “Incredible HDR” (high dynamic range) photo workshop in Central Washington. It was an intimate three day class of six, with attendees from as far as London, so we had plenty of one on one time. The images they made were amazing. I’m really proud of the students and the creative results they produced during the workshop. We covered everything from how to capture HDR portraits, to final edits, controlling light and presentation.

I believe one of the most important parts of good HDR is knowing how to edit it. There’s a lot of really ugly HDR because photographers don’t understand what their dealing with and how to make something magical from it. Going further however I want to remind those playing with HDR that the rules of photography do not go away because a photo is HDR. Interesting subject matter, composition and attention to detail are all very important factors in a great image. The students at this workshop were from varied experience levels but I think every one of them got it and took home something valuable.

I’ll post a few images from students below as well as a few of my own I took during excursions. It seems every time I teach something, I learn something new myself. If you’re interested in learning more about my HDR workshops you can find info here on Seim Effects.

HDR_Workshop_003

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