by Gavin Seim: Dynamic range is a big deal in photography and I’ve been making a point to study it over the past few years. Last week I joined Kerry Garrison on the CameraDojo podcast, for a new episode on HDR. In fact however, it’s not just a discussion of traditional HDR, but on all things dynamic range. It’s always fun guesting on other shows (not to mention a lot less work) and I think we pulled together something good here.
Thanks to Kerry for having me. Head over to CameraDojo to give it a listen. Then stay tuned because there’s also a brand new PPS Roundtable coming real soon.
by Gavin Seim: So I wrote a few articles recently over on my Seim Effects site about editing faster and managing better, and I felt they were worthy of a mention here on PPS. If you want to edit your images faster or have ever questioned the way you manage LR catalogs take a peek and you might just get something new. Enjoy… Gav
Super Workflow: The 7 Steps to Photo Editing Awesomeness: This is an outline of pretty much everything I’ve learned about the flow of fast editing with a step by step look at how to work more efficiently. It’s geared towards LR users, but applies to most any editing workflow.
by Gavin Seim: I’ll be talking more about Lightroom soon, but I wanted to make a quick post about what I found most significant in LR3. It’s the processing. It may go unnoticed at a glance, but is so much better, that by itself makes LR3 worth the upgrade. This first example shows an ISO 50,000 image from a 1D MKIV, showing just how impressive the new noise reduction and processing in LR3 is (not to mention the camera). I did this in LR3 by simply switching it back and forth from new to old process version (in the camera calibration settings).
Next is a lower 640 ISO example. For this one I actually processed the first in LR2 itself and the other in LR3. While not so obvious (click for the large version) it shows the subtle quality of not just the noise reduction, the the quality of how the file is being processed. Notice in the large version how the LR3 version feels more organic, almost film like in quality. I love it and you can be sure I’m getting under the hood in LR3 to see what’s possible for workshops and my Seim Effects presets.
Two After the Storm. Mentioned on this episode, Gavin caught this image using his E-PL1 with a 20mm 1.7 lens. The detail and quality would be easily adaptable for a 30-40 inch canvas. Processing was done using LR and the Pickles Preset from Color Fantasies.
Today’s Host... Gavin Seim. This week Gavin look at news, the new rangefinder, Photo CS5, stolen images, education and studying, focus ideas and more.
by Gavin Seim. Updated 06/23/12: It’s been a common debate, though much less so as pro’s learn that RAW is a no brainier. I deal with both the JPEG and RAW side quite often because the tools I make on Seim Effects. I’ve seen the value of RAW and once you do there’s no going back. Some photographers that still use JPEG, use a reason like… “I nail my exposure, so there’s no reason for me to use RAW”. I think when this happens it’s one of two things.
Showmanship. For some, I think showing everyone how spot on your exposure comes out is a great way to show off when making a presentation. OK I get that, we all like to show our proficiency, but I’d rather not toss away quality on my clients images to get expert points on the minds of my peers.
The most common reason however. I think some still have a mental block about RAW and don’t want to address it. I remember being in that spot years back. Somehow the larger files size and RAW data seems daunting. In reality it was not big deal at all. I know because I went thru it. If you’re in this camp just move beyond it and you’ll be glad you did.
This idea is simple and that’s why this article will be short. JPEG tosses out information that you might need later in order to make a smaller file. It keeps that the camera “thinks” it needs. RAW keeps it all. And with today’s direct RAW editing and localized adjustments using software like Lightroom, the power of using RAW data has become crystal clear. Let’s skip the banter however and settle this. I could make up a bunch of examples for you, but this one photo proves my reasoning, so I’ll keep this short.
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1: Here is an outdoor wedding scene from a 5D MK2 unedited other than being cropped. Yes it’s a bit under exposed, but had it been correctly exposed I would have lost even more detail in the sky area. Now at a glace, this photo seems like no matter what we do it will be pretty bland. Lets look.
