1000 words has a new “issue” up and one of the photographers featured is Boo Ritson. I had seen Ritson’s work before on magazine cover, but never had placed her name before. The cover was a portrait, but something wasn’t quite right. The not quite right part? The person had been totally painted, excepting the eyes.. skin, clothes, hair, all cover in a messy covering of paint. Very interesting, but can’t be fun for the models, or can it? You can see her work here at 1000 words (click on “Boo Ritson”).
Whilst perusing Scott Kelby’s blog this morning, I watched the video he had posted of the photographer Jill Enfield doing her thing out in the field. First you should watch the movie, since it’s quite interesting to see her working method and (somewhat) portable darkroom. Then, check out her website, the ones I pointing you to are her collodion prints which you can investigate here.
The movie below…
Seeking to conquer the challenge of improving dynamic range in a compact camera, the 9.29 megapixel, 7x zoom Ricoh CX1 gets reviewed at Trusted Reviews, where they were clearly impressed with the image quality:
The lens takes some of the credit, producing excellent corner-to-corner sharpness, with no distortion at any focal length and only a tiny hint of chromatic aberration in the corners of the frame at wide angle, but it is the sensor and image processor that deserve the accolades. The overall level of detail is superb, and colour rendition is pretty much perfect. The expanded dynamic range feature works extremely well, producing good shadow and highlight detail even in difficult high-contrast shots.
-Trusted Reviews
This is a camera I’ve been quite curious about as well, and reviews like this really don’t really quell that curiosity.
I totally missed this one a few days back, but Eric at Photography Bay has reviewed the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. The Rebel T1i may be (upper) entry level in price, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack impressive performance:
I think what you will take away from both of these comparisons is the fact that the Rebel T1i and Nikon D5000 perform extreme well at higher ISOs - better than what you would call either of their predecessors. Anyone in the market for a Canon Rebel T1i will not be disappointed in the noise suppression of which it is capable…You can shoot snapshots all day long with this camera at ISO 3200 and 6400 and get great family album prints in the 4×6 sizes.
-Photography Bay
There’s more to this camera than excellent ISO performance, so check out the review here.
Here’s a quick grab from a shoot at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate. I got a lot of really good shots while I was there including the one below. I normally don’t like green in photos, but the DP2 has a certain way with them that I quite like. This one has been given a bit of a boost in Sigma Photo Pro, and some vignette added in Photoshop. As always, it’s a lot more fun to see the original.
One of the best parts about shooting with the DP2 is that you get wonderful RAW files to work with in post. In the Sigma world, these files are given an .X3F extension, and typically are around 13mb in size. As we’ve mentioned, with the latest update to Lightroom (2.4) and Camera Raw (5.4), you can now edit these files without using Sigma Photo Pro, but I’ve gotten used to the Photo Pro workflow since getting the DP2, and usually prefer it’s results for the rough edits. For the real keepers, I’ll finish them up in Photoshop, to add toning and selective corrections.
For the most part the DP2 is very impressive with its dynamic range capabilities and manages both highlights and shadows quite well. Shooting in RAW provides further room, I’m finding a good deal of recoverable data in “blown highlights”, so like most DSLR cameras, I’m exposing more to the right, almost deliberately blowing just a bit of the highlights. Then in post you recover the highlights while giving yourself more room in the shadows where excessive fill would introduce more image noise.
To demonstrate this workflow, I’ve got an example from a recent trip to “The Mount”, where the author Edith Wharton resided in the early 1900’s. In this shot the relatively bright, but overcast sky got blown out. In this first shot, I took a screen grab of what happens when a file is first opened in Sigma’s Photo Pro. This drab preview looks quite similar to the view on camera’s LCD, and I assume it’s a JPEG preview of the actual RAW file.
My understanding is that photographer Robin Schwartz is an only child, and her daughter Amelia is an only child. It only seems natural that she appears to be a key point of focus for Schwartz in a good many photographs. As it also happens, Schwartz also has an affinity for animals, so a series like “Amelia’s World: Animal Affinity” turns out to be quite engaging.
Scott Kelby passes along a tip that I had accidentally discovered myself not too long ago over at the Photoshop Insider. The problem is sluggish JPEG exports from Lightroom, especially when exporting one large batch. The solution, as it turns out, and as Kelby explains, is you’ll get better results by breaking up your batch into 2 batches.
Photographer David Noton provides some advice on taking great travel portraits, heck, portraits in general. There’s a good bit of focus on something annoyingly important in all photographs, the background. Seems it’s just as important to keep in mind as your subject. Choose your compostion and lens accordingly. photo credit: Stuck in Customs
Clearly considered one of the front runners in the superzoom category, the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX1 offers copious shooting features, a 9.1 megapixel sensor, and yes that big 20x zoom. In a review at Camera Labs, the Sony offers much, but not much more than cheaper competitors, still:
Sony’s Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 is a powerful super-zoom camera with some pretty unique features that allow it to stand out from the crowd.
-Camera Labs
Don’t forget HD video, and that frame rate of 10 FPS, albeit for one glorious second.
