I had the pleasure of testing the application during the past few weeks while it was still in beta and I really enjoyed it – well, most of it….

Given the rather low price of $19.99, this latest . . . → Read More: Nik Software releases Snapseed for the Mac – a first review]]>

In case you’ve missed this: Nik Software just announced the release of Snapseed for the Mac.

I had the pleasure of testing the application during the past few weeks while it was still in beta and I really enjoyed it – well, most of it….

Given the rather low price of $19.99, this latest software release from the creators of Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro targets the amateur photographers who cannot or do not want to spend $200 for “just” a plugin but still want their images to stand out from the crowd.

Here are my thoughts in two versions:

The (very) short version:

If you are a Mac user, love photography but have a tight budget you should consider Snapseed to bring your pictures to the next level. Snapseed has a very good black and white conversion tool quite similar to the Awarded winning Silver Efex Pro. This alone makes it worth to buy it.

The (rather) long version:

If you have been using Snapseed on the iPad you will have no problems at all getting comfortable with the user interface. The startup screen will provide you with a selection of “Basic Adjustments” and “Creative Adjustments”.

Main Screen:

If you are using a editing tool like iPhoto or even Lightroom or Aperture you might not need the “Basic Adjustment” panels as you pretty much can do the same modifications right in those applications except for one feature that users of the Nik plugin’s will like – Control Points.

Tune Image

The “Tune Image” screen provides you with the infamous “Control Points” that let you adjust brightness, contrast and saturation around resizable circles similar to what a layer mask in Photoshop would do:

Crop and Straighten

The next tool in the “Basic Adjustment” section is the “Crop and Straighten” tool that does just about what you would expect it to do. You can choose between preconfigured aspect ratios or crop it freely. The “Straighten” tool works pretty much like in Lightroom; you just draw a line along your crooked horizon and it will straighten it.

Details

The last item in the “Basic” section is called “Details” and takes care of Sharpness and Details. I did not find it useful at all as you have no control about what to sharpen or more important what NOT to sharpen. I don’t recommend using this as it will create noise in areas that you usually don’t want to sharpen – like the sky. The sharpening feature in Lightroom 3 is way better.

Now to the better part – the “Creative Adjustments”:

1. Black & White

As mentioned above, this feature alone makes it worth spending the money on Snapseed and is a light version of my favorite Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop plugin: Silver Efex Pro 2.
I call it the 2nd best black and white conversion tool available today (right after Silver Efex Pro) that provides you with brightness, contrast and grain sliders. The best feature, though is the “Color Filter” with red, orange, yellow and green filters that will blow your mind.
Here is a short explanation of the different filters and what they do to your black and white images: (Source: http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com)

• Red filter: Harsh reproduction, intense color deviation, strong cloud formation, good rendering of distance, even with haze.
• Orange filter: Similar effect as red filter, but not such harsh contrast and fewer color deviation effects.
• Yellow filter: Functions without color deviation.
• Green filter: Best for landscapes with a lot of forest and meadows. Creates a contrast between different shades of green.

2. Center Focus

This adjustment panel lets you control the vignetting and blurring effect on the edges of the image. I couldn’t find a good use for it and it doesn’t suit my personal style – you also have no control over feathering, roundness and midpoint of both the blur and vignetting features.

3. Drama

This panel consists of 3 sliders: Strength, Brightness and Saturation.
What this tool does is adding contrast and details to the picture but I couldn’t really find a good use of it as it tends to create haloes around the high contrast edges and adds noise. The effect is similar to the “Tonal Contrast” filter in Color Efex Pro 4 for those who are familiar with that tool but should be used with caution.

4. Frames

Have you ever seen me using frames for my photographs? Nope.

5. Grunge

My first impression was: NFW!
But then I started playing with different images and for certain type of landscape photographs and very subtle settings this might actually work if you like having textures in your pictures. In addition to textures, it also added some blur to the edges of the image that you can move and resize with a control-point but you do not have control over the how much blur to add.

6. Vintage

This tool is pretty much the same as Grunge but without the blurred edges and with more control over the strength of the filter. If you like adding textures to your images, this is the tool to use. If you keep the “Syle Strength” slider to very left and the “Saturation” slider to the very right with brightness in the middle you just get the desired textures (you have a choice of 4) added to the picture without any additional unwanted modifications.

7. Tilt Shift

Last but not least the tilt shift tool which is actually quite useful. I’ve done a few “fake tilt-shifts” in Photoshop lately and did the same in Snapseed and couldn’t really see a big difference expect for the time I spent in both application. You certainly have much more control in Photoshop but for a quick tilt-shift effect, Snapseed has become my tool of choice.

Summary:

I think Snapseed is much better suited for the Mac than for the iPad but this is my personal opinion. I see it as a perfect tool for the amateur photographer who doesn’t want to spend a huge amount of time and money to process his/her pictures in Photoshop and plugin’s like Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro. For myself, I can see me using it for quick tilt-shift effects, adding textures and even black and white conversions if I don’t want to spend time in Silver Efex.

If you are currently using iPhoto to manage and edit your photographs, I highly recommend spending the $19.99 to add Snapseed to your workflow. What I hope Nik Software will do for the next release is to make it useable as a plugin for Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop plus as an external editor in iPhoto. As of now, you will have to use it as a standalone app.

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Yesterday, I posted a comparison on Google+ of the 2 new flagship cameras from Canon and Nikon – here:

Today, Nikon officially released the D4 and I was looking for one . . . → Read More: Is Nikon surpassing Canon in the race for the 2012 Olympic games?]]>

Why you will (most likely) not see many Canon EOS-1D X cameras at the Olympic Games and Formula 1 races this year.

Yesterday, I posted a comparison on Google+ of the 2 new flagship cameras from Canon and Nikon – here:

Today, Nikon officially released the D4 and I was looking for one particular spec with regards to autofocus:

11 focus points (five at center with an additional three to each side) are fully functional when lenses with a maximum aperture of f/8 are used. This enables very precise focus acquisition with sports photography and the like when super-telephoto NIKKOR lenses are used with a teleconverter (2.0x) at a combined aperture value of f/8.

Why do I mention that?
Well, here is what Canon specifies with regards to autofocus and aperture values in their spec-sheet for the EOS-1D X:
One to five cross-type AF points at f/2.8, 10 to 20 cross-type AF points at f/4, and 15 to 21 cross-type AF points at f/5.6.

Sounds all good, right?
But what this means is that lenses with an aperture smaller than f/5.6 will loose auto-focus. Most of portrait, landscape and studio photographers will not worry about this as they’re not using those kind of lenses but given the really fast frames per second specs, the great ISO performance this camera is made for wildlife and sports photographers who use very long lenses and extenders. As of today, every 1D body supported autofocus up to f/8:

List of EOS bodies that can AF at f/8
Source: Wikipedia

Canon EOS bodies that have a high density, high precision auto-focus sensor with 45 AF points are able to autofocus at maximum apertures of f/8.
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Canon EOS-1D Mark II N
Canon EOS-1Ds
Canon EOS-1D
Canon EOS-1V
Canon EOS 3
Although the upcoming Canon EOS-1D X, the replacement for both the 1D Mark IV and 1Ds Mark III, will have 61 AF points, it will not autofocus with any lenses or lens/extender combinations whose maximum aperture is smaller than f/5.6.

By using the 2x Extender, you’re loosing 2 f-stops of maximum aperture. This will make 3 of the most used Super Telephoto lenses unusable with the 2x extender:

- Canon EF 400mm f/4
- Canon EF 500mm f/4
- Canon EF 600mm f/4

The longest focal length with autofocus on the EOS-1D X will be 840mm by using the 1.4x extender on the 600mm f/4 compared to 1200mm on the previous 1D models by using the 2x extender on the same lens.

If you are a photographer working at those focal lengths, will you keep shooting Canon by not upgrading to the 1-D X or will you switch to Nikon?

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The first picture below shows the original RAW file . . . → Read More: A Different Kind of Infrared Photography Post-Processing including the Lightroom 3 preset]]>

I like shooting infrared pictures with my Leica M8 and the B+W Infrared Filter #092 which filters out light below 650 nm. Thanks to the range-finder concept of the Leica, I can still compose and focus the picture as I’m not looking through the lens.

The first picture below shows the original RAW file I got right out of camera with the typical Infrared look.

The picture below is the result of my new post-processing method in Lightroom 3.

That Lightroom 3 preset is now available for download right here

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How to focus a self portrait: I used a light-stand to place where I will be standing and adjusted it height to my . . . → Read More: Happy Halloween everyone!]]>

A self portrait shot with one light: Canon 580EX II in a Westcott Apollo Softbox on camera left (yeah.. where else?). Subject (me) between camera and soft box, hence the rim-light.

How to focus a self portrait:
I used a light-stand to place where I will be standing and adjusted it height to my eye-level and marked it’s position with a gaffers-tape on the ground. I then focussed on the very top end of the light-stand, moved it away and too it’s position.

I had a cable release in my hand – the camera was very close to me, so that was not an issue. Pressing the button on the remote triggered the shutter – done.

The teeth were a fairly easy Photoshop task – just Google for “Vampire Teeth in Photoshop” and you will find lots of tutorials on how to do it.

Any Questions/Comments – let me know.

Oh and yes, if you want to give me your vote, you can do so over at 500px

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On that particular evening in October last year, I noticed the great clouds in the sky right after . . . → Read More: Catch the light as long as it’s there]]>

During my daily commute to and from work, I drive along the east side of a nice lake in Central Switzerland which gives me the opportunity to shoot sunset landscapes whenever the light is great.

On that particular evening in October last year, I noticed the great clouds in the sky right after I exited the garage at the office. After a few minutes of driving the light went from good to spectacular and I was very lucky to be at the exact right spot at the right time. I noticed that sailing boat lit by the setting sun while everything around it was in shadow and I stopped immediately – still obeying the traffic rules, of course – ran out of the car grabbed my camera that luckily had the 70-200 on it and started shooting. I literally had only a few seconds before the light was gone.

That’s one of the reasons why I always have my camera gear with me.

Shot at 5:59:02pm

Shot at 5:59:23pm

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I was walking the dog that evening and only brought my fast 50 with me (translation: . . . → Read More: Heavy Machinery or how to kill the autofocus of the Canon 50mm f/1.4]]>

The light or better the remainder of the light was awesome and the sky was about to explode – which it actually did just a couple of minutes after I took those pictures but more of that later.

I was walking the dog that evening and only brought my fast 50 with me (translation: Canon 50mm f/1.4) – no tripod of course. The light level was so low I had to shoot fully open at f/1.4 and ISO 6400 to get a shutter speed of 1/40. To create a wide-angle panorama with a 50mm I shot a total of 17 frames and stitched it together using Photoshop CS5.

I adjusted the white-balance to reduce the color temperature even more – (I shot in the tungsten setting as always for night photography – and used the built-in noise-reduction of Lightroom 3 on the 17 RAW files before exporting them to smaller JPG’s to process in Photoshop. I do this most of the time for big panoramas to save time and to see if it actually works – it doesn’t all the time and that’s a optimistic statement.
I can still process the full-res RAW’s the same way later if I want to – I didn’t feel like for that one as I’m generally not patient enough to wait 4 hours.

It was a fairly quick process in Photoshop – thanks to the small JPG’s. After I cropped the produced panorama I created a black-white layer using the awesome Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software using a green filter and blended it using the Soft Light option to get more drama.

15 minutes after I took that shot a really bad rainstorm hit the area (and me without rain-protection), almost killing my 50mm lens. My Canon 5D Mark II is weather sealed but I forgot that the 50 was not. I usually don’t mind the rain and keep shooting but the autofocus in the lens stopped working after a few minutes – that was the last time I shot with that lens in the rain, btw.

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It has so many different faces based on the time of the day and the weather. It can be very crowded during the day especially over the Holiday season but folks tend to disappear very quickly after the . . . → Read More: City Pier, Naples FL]]>

The pier in Naples, Florida is one of my favorite subjects when photographing in that area.

It has so many different faces based on the time of the day and the weather. It can be very crowded during the day especially over the Holiday season but folks tend to disappear very quickly after the Sun has set – even photographers with pro-gear and tripods were leaving the area BEFORE the magic light started to create its awesome show. I was literally alone on the pier and enjoyed the spectacular view just for myself.

The best days to photograph are the ones with heavy overcast skies and if you’re lucky the clouds break right after or around sunset.

I created a dedicated gallery on my Portfolio Site and more will be added as I have many unprocessed pictures of the area in my library.
Here just some random outtakes:

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There is no better time for shooting urban landscapes at or around civil and nautical twilight. That’s the time of the day when the brightness of the sky balances well with the artificial light from buildings, street-lamps and car lights . . . → Read More: The Speed of Light]]>

I really enjoy shooting city scenes after the sun goes down.

The Twilight Zones:

There is no better time for shooting urban landscapes at or around civil and nautical twilight. That’s the time of the day when the brightness of the sky balances well with the artificial light from buildings, street-lamps and car lights resulting in beautiful dark blue skies. Once you hit astronomical twilight you do not have enough light in the sky to match the city lights and it turns black.

The rule for the different twilight zones is based on the solar elevation angle, which is the position of the geometric center of the sun relative to the horizon. (Source: Wikipedia).

A much easier method to define the twilight zones for a given day is the $1.99 iPhone app Darkness, one of my most used apps and prominently located on page 1 on my iPhone.

White-Balance:

After the sun goes down, I always switch my white-balance to tungsten as the artificial lights in the streets and buildings are of a very warm color. Most of the time, I have to cool it down even more in post-processing to get the pavement to a neutral gray. The side effect is that the sky turns into a very saturated blue without boosting any vibrance sliders.

The photograph below was shot on November 8, 2010 at 17:47 MET which, for that day, was Civil Twilight.

Gear and more:

You do not need expensive cameras and lenses to create photographs like the one above but you need a sturdy tripod because of the long exposures as you want to close-down your aperture to get as much depth of field as possible resulting nice starburst effects. My rule of thumb is to shoot at or around f/16 but I closed down my lens down to f/22 for that picture to get the longest possible exposure (13 seconds) to extend the light-trails of the cars driving by. You’re loosing a bit of sharpness at f/22 but that was ok for me here.

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