PhotoWalkPro

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day here in Amsterdam and I got to spend a great day touring the city and shooting with my buddy Jeff Kelby.  Unfortunately his brother, Scott, was tied up all day at the Professional Imaging conference in Utrecht.  We will probably crash the conference for a little while today to check out all the action on the trade-show floor.  Scott has another full slate of classes so Jeff and I will be heading out for another day of site seeing and shooting as we set out on a quest for windmills. I have a couple of spots already scoped out just North of the city so we will see if the weather once again cooperates.  I just wish we were here in May or June.  I can only imagine how beautiful it must be when all of the flowers are blooming and the trees are green.  Nonetheless, it has been a fantastic trip, even with the cold temps and brisk winds.

Here’s a few photos from yesterday’s venture.  I’ll be sure to throw a few more up here on the blog tomorrow, that is unless we get snowed out.  Have a great Monday!

And what’s a trip to Amsterdam without some bike pictures?

After a long overnight flight I finally made it to Brussels.  After hooking up with my buddies, we headed out to Bruges Belgium for the day.  The weather wasn’t all that cooperative but we still had a great time walking the quaint streets of town, stopping to grab a few shots and eat some waffles (it’s a “when in Rome” kind of thing).  We are going to spend a little more time here tomorrow before hopping in the car for the drive to Amsterdam.  Hopefully the weather will be a little better and we will get a little sunshine and some blue skies.

I haven’t had much in the way of time to process any images, not that there are any great ones to be had from this first day of shooting.  Maybe I’ll play with some more in the tomorrow.  Have a great weekend and look for more (and hopefully better) images on Monday.

Photo by Wolfgang Staudt

Hey gang, I’m extremely excited because this afternoon I am hopping on a plane for Brussels to spend a few days shooting and hanging out with good friends.  We’ll be cruising from Brussels to Brugge in Northwestern Brussels.  From there we will hit the road again to Utrecht (just outside Amsterdam).  We will spend a few days roaming and shooting around the streets of Amsterdam before finally heading back home.  It’s been a while since I have been able to log some solid shooting time and I am really looking forward to filling some memory cards.  I am going to try and squeeze as much out of this trip as possible.

Due to my travels I will probably not be blogging on a regular schedule but I will try to keep the updates coming as often as possible. If you have any suggestions on shooting locations or must-see locations, please leave me a comment.

I recently downloaded the latest version of Topaz Labs’ Topaz Adjust 4 and I have to say that I am digging some of the new improvements to the plug-in.  The GUI (that’s Graphic User Interface for those of you that don’t speak-a da geek) has been greatly improved.  First take a look below at the ver. 3 interface.

You can see that, while functional, it lacked a certain organizational structure.  It also wasn’t very pretty with all those sliders just hanging out there at the bottom of the screen.  Now take a look at the new and improved ver. 4.

As you can see, everything is very well laid out and it has a much more polished look to it.  There are drop-down panels on the right side of the screen for all of the adjustment sliders and the presets have been totally re-done.  In ver. 3 there were small thumbnails of the image for each preset with a rendering of that effect on the image.  In the newest version, not only are there a lot more presets, there are no longer individual preview thumbnails.  Now when you mouse over a preset, it will display the effect on the small preview window above the preset list.  This is very reminiscent of the way that Lightroom displays its presets in the Develop Module.  I have been playing with some of the new presets including the HDR Settings.  They aren’t really HDR but they give a very similar look to the image.  Here’s a before and after shot using Topaz Adjust 4 with one of the HDR presets.

So here’s the good and the bad on this latest version.

The Good -

First off, if you have already purchased version 3, then the version 4 update is absolutely free.  How cool is that.  If you have yet to purchase it, it can be had for only $50 (if you are a NAPP member, you can get a discount off of that price by going to the NAPP Member Discount pages).  If you purchase before March 15, you can get 20% off the price by using the code on the Topaz Adjust website.  There’s even a free 30-day trial so you can play around with it and really decide if it’s worth your money. As long as I am listing the good, I think it’s worth noting that the plug-in is available for both Windows and Mac. I have to say that I have been a user of Adjust for some time and it is one of my all-time favorite Photoshop/Lightroom Plug-ins.

The Bad -

Unfortunately there are still a few bugs rolling around in the new version and I have been hearing of a few different problems from different people.  My issue is that it won’t open using the Topaz Fusion program from Lightroom (check out my review of Fusion here).  One of the great things I loved about Ver. 3 was being able to go to Adjust directly from Lightroom, but when I launch Fusion and select Adjust 4, it just kicks me right back to Lightroom.  If I open the plug-in from Photoshop I have no problems and everything works as it should.  Someone else told me that they were getting bizarre colors in the Adjust window when they used the plug-in with Lightroom.  One other person told me that Adjust had crashed their Photoshop 4 times when they tried to use the plug-in.  This kind of thing happens with a lot of new software releases and I expect that some bug-fixes will be rolling out fairly soon.

So the bottom line is that you might want to wait a little longer to upgrade to this version (like until they have some of these bugs ironed out) but that aside, it is a plug-in that you will certainly want to have in your bag of tricks.  And did I happen to mention that it’s also compatible with Photoshop Elements, Aperture, and iPhoto?

Yesterday my buddy Scott Kelby brought his Photoshop CS4 for Digital Photographers seminar to the Washington DC Convention Center.  It was a packed house as 800 Photoshop users of all levels packed in to the classroom do watch Scott do what he does best, teach Photoshop.  I had the pleasure of sitting in on the first half of the day and, even though I have seen much of what Scott was teaching, he still managed to squeeze in some new trick and tips that I had never seen before.

The morning kicked off with Scott’s revised 7-Point System for Camera Raw.  If you are familiar with his book of the same name, you know that it was written for CS3 and taught the 7 techniques to make photos look better using Photoshop.  Now in CS4, most, if not all of the 7 steps can be performed using the latest version of Camera Raw.

The second session was all about portrait retouching and it was excellent as usual.  Not only did Scott cover all the finer points of retouching (eyes, skin, face sculpting, etc.) but more importantly the reasons for the retouch.  Scott’s belief is that you don’t retouch a person to make them into someone they aren’t, rather to represent the way you see them in person, not under the microscope of the portrait shoot.  If you haven’t been to one of his retouch classes and you are a people photographer, you definitely need to check it out.

Unfortunately I had to leave mid-day so I didn’t get a chance to catch the afternoon session but I know that everyone that stayed got their money’s worth.  I can definitely say that it was a great primer for Photoshop World and I am more excited than ever to get to Orlando at the end of the month.  Hopefully I will see you there as well.

Last week I received a question from a reader about shooting IR photos with their digital camera.  The question was, do they need to get their camera converted to IR to get good results?  The problem is that there aren’t any definitive answers for this one.  It’s possible to shoot IR with your unaltered digital camera but it will be a different experience than shooting with a converted camera.

Digital cameras are extremely sensitive to infrared light.  The fact is that they are so sensitive that camera manufacturers put an IR blocking filter in front of the sensor to cut down on the effects of IR on your images.  This is also known as a hot mirror or IR cut filter.  The filter doesn’t completely eliminate all IR light so by using an IR pass filter, you can still achieve a good result but your exposures will be extremely long in duration.  For example, take a look at this IR image I shot at Great Falls, VA.

The shot was made on an unaltered digital SLR.  Using an 87 IR pass filter, I had to raise the ISO to 640 and shot wide-open at f/2.8 for 30 seconds to get a decent image.  The long exposure is a result of the IR blocking filter trying to filter out the IR light.  The pass filter, on the other hand, is only letting through IR while blocking visible light.  This push and pull is the reason for the extended exposure times.  The other problem with this method is that you risk added noise in the image due to the long exposure times.

You other alternative is to get your camera altered by having the blocking filter removed and having a pass filter installed in its place.  There are multiple advantages to this option.  The first is that, since the filter is installed in front of the sensor, you will be able to see perfectly through the viewfinder when shooting.  If you are using a filter in front of your lens on a non-converted camera, you will have to set up the shot and focus prior to putting on the filter.  This is because the IR filter is so dark that you won’t be able to see through it.  Another advantage to using the converted camera is that it let’s you use fairly normal exposure times and settings, much like you would with a regular DSLR.  In the example below made with a converted camera, the ISO was set to 200 and the camera was set to f/16 at 1/60 of a second.  This makes it possible to shoot IR images without the trouble of lugging around a tripod.

The problem with the converted camera is that you can’t use it for regular photography.  Once it’s converted you will only be able to use it for shooting IR images, which is why so many photographers have their spare cameras converted.  If you choose to use a filter on your unaltered camera, you can always use your camera to take regular images by just removing the filter.

So how much will it cost to start shooting IR?  Well, a filter like the 87, 89B, or the R72 will run anywhere from $85 to $150, depending on the size of the filter (you need to get one that will fit the thread diameter for the lens you want to use).  If you want to go with the converted camera, you will pay around $350 for the filter and conversion service (prices are dependent on the type of camera you are getting converted).  Conversion isn’t just for DSLR cameras either.  You can have older point-n-shoot cameras altered as well.  My choice for conversions is Life Pixel but there are others out there that are doing the same type of work.

Which ever method you choose, I am sure that once you start shooting in the IR spectrum, you will be forever hooked.