What is an Australian Landscape Photograph ??

Story to come, going to bed I’m knackered!

Photomatix tone mapping plugin for Photoshop

This is a photo I took in New Norcia the other month with photographers Mark Stothard, David Bettini and Greg Munyard. After seeing Marks photo of the old mansion in Trinidad I got all inspired to have a crack my own architectural photography. This was again tone mapped from a single image in photoshop with the photomatix plugin. I am really loving doing this on just the single images, I haven’t seemed to get too many noise issues, nothing Noise Ninja couldn’t fix anyway. This image was taken with the 5D mark II and my trusty Canon 50mm f/1.2 god I love that lens.

The International Pano Awards

The International Pano Awards are now open. Get your entries in now. This isn’t my photo comp, mine will be announced soon. There are some great prizes to be won so have a crack. If your not in it you won’t win it!!

How to Get a new Lens for Free

The time is 1.22am, Sunday morning, I can’t sleep. I have too many thoughts going through my head. One of them is this, a way to get something for free. My wife and I really think about our environment and the future we are creating for our kids. We struggle with the conflict of having a certain level of greenness (is that a word?? must be, spell check didn’t have a problem with it) and living with a certain degree of comfort. Lets face it, it is me who is the big consumer. I buy all the toys, need the latest gadgets and equipment etc. In the past couple of years we have been trying to reduce our power consumption at home and have achieved a pretty good level of saving that hasn’t been hard or meant that we miss out on anything. What amazes me is no one else we know tries these same simple things.

“TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS, STAND BY POWER, TV’s, COMPUTERS ETC, it isn’t that hard. People in our street have every frigg’n light wired to their house on every night, inside lights, outside lights, garden lights. WHY???? It should be part of our everyday living now, like wearing a bike helmet, not shooting an Elephant or taking no more than a dozen crabs. Why are we such a dumb bunch of lazy useless organisms that are hell bent on destroying the thing that keeps us alive. I feel it is my duty to try to make people aware and make people care for our kids very existence. Heavy sh1t I know but do we really care??

It is in our nature to be lazy, to think only of ourselves, to try and survive longer than the next bloke. To have the most money, the biggest house and god forbid the best camera and lenses. We will be doomed if we don’t change our ways now. So what I hope everyone reading this will do is get up off your computer chair and turn those bloody lights off, turn on your washing machine at 10pm, put the dishwasher on at the same time, turn off the tv and DVD player at the wall. Walk or ride your bike to the shops, recycle, have a compost bin and all those other things that aren’t hard to do. I challenge you to change your habits.

We only use an average of 9 units of electricity per day in our house and we forgo nothing. I would like to hear how many of you do the same. Wouldn’t it be great if our heros could be people that do something good for the planet like greenpeace, wwf and individuals like Steve Irwin. I guess they aren’t as cool to worship as Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and other disgusting roll models for our generation.

Now here is the cool part. You want that new lens??? of course you do. Can’t afford it?? of course you can’t. Why not?? because your probably paying too much on your electricity bill. TURN YOUR LIGHTS OFF, ETC, ETC, ETC. In a year you would have paid that sucker off in the savings you make. Thats it!!! Free lenses for everyone. I should have been an accountant! When you have finished making the changes necessary to never have to pay for camera gear again then have a look at how large multinational companies are F#~king up our world and our lives for the good of their shareholders. That will be the topic of my next sleepless night. There is so much we need to do to fix this stinking situation. It has to start at a grass roots level. Once you have made the changes, tell all your friends the secret of getting free stuff, and see if they care enough to do their bit for the planet. If they are still dragging their heels, make them feel bad about how they, by there actions, are stuffing up the future for you. And I don’t subscribe to the bullshit line, China is making more pollution that everyone so what chance do we have, we still per head of population pollute more than just about anyone else on the planet, how does that make you feel?

Phew, got that off my chest! Now I can go to sleep.

Tone Mapping

I have been bitten by the HDR bug, I mean everything can’t be Australian Landscapes, there has to be some people in there too. This is an image tone mapped in Photoshop thanks to the Photomatix plugin that comes with photomatix. This was a single image and it sort of came out how I wanted, that gritty illustrated look. I obviously have done some work in photoshop to further stylize the image. I plan on learning everything there is to know about Photomatix and will be making that my subject for the workshop on True North.

On that subject I hope you have booked. The last I heard there was only 30 spots left.

Canon Have Dropped Their Prices

Canon have just announced effective as of the 13th of November tomorrow, that they are having a price drop on a number of there Pro Canon camera and lens range . Below is a list of some of these new prices.Sweet times hey!!! Why wouldn’t you buy a 5D2 now! Cheap deals on Canon gear don’t come around very often.

Canon 5Dmk2 new price $3495.00
Canon 1DsMk3 new price $ 9800.00
Canon 16-35mm F2.8 series II new price $ 1945.00
Canon 24-70mm F2.8 new price $ 1760.00
Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS new price $ 2299.00

And there is a number of other lenses reduced, give Team Digital a ring for a super new price.

More photos from the pizza night

Merv has uploaded his photos from the pizza night with descriptions and all. Check out his blog, he wants to get more than 500 hits in a day. The link is in the side bar. Please everyone have a look and fullfill his lifetime ambition. He said there would be a beer in it for me!!!

Michaels Impressions of the 7D in Video Mode

Hi all

I had the opportunity to road test the new Canon 7D DSLR courtesy of
Ben from Team Digital in Perth and I would like to share some of my
thoughts on the camera in video mode.

Firstly can I say that Christian arrived at work on Monday last week
and said “Ben has given us the 7D to have a play with”…… “I’m
taking it back on Wednesday” Great. I’ve got two days to come up with
a review which will be worth reading. The pressure was on and the
conditions here at home were pretty ordinary. No clouds and windy. But
in essence I wasn’t there to dazzle anyone with amazing footage, my
main objective was to have a play and see if I liked it. I certainly
didn’t have a good crack with the camera so I apologise for the lack
of in depth analysis.

My first impressions were that it looked like a 5D but seemed a little
more solid. The menu function and most of the buttons seemed similar
with the exception of the on off button, live view button and the
record button. I found myself constantly pressing the quick control
button on the back of the camera to start recording only to realise I
hadn’t started anything and missed the shot. I’m a bit slow on the
uptake but I eventually got it together.

I was excited to try out the 50fps option and shot a number of scenes
with this option and couldn’t wait to get back to the office to
download the footage and watch beautiful smooth slow motion footage.
If you bought this camera primarily for this option you would probably
be pretty annoyed by this time. The 50fps option was complete rubbish.
Ok thats a bit harsh. The raw footage plays in fast mo when it is
played back in quicktime. You have to convert the footage using Cinema
Tools to 30fps, 25fps, 24fps to get it playing how you would expect it
to play. The footage is recorded in the lower quality 1280 x 720 which
looks average along side the full HD footage. I cant see the point of
this option when you should always been wanting to shoot in the
highest resolution possible depending I guess where your footage will
be displayed. The slow mo it produces is cool but at the expense of
quality. I prefer to slow down my high res footage by a small amount
using Optical Flow retiming in Compressor.

After deciding the 50fps option was not exactly a brilliant option I
decide to shoot using the 25fps and 24fps mode. I must say I had a bit
more luck in these mode and without the time to shoot a 5D along side
the 7D, the footage looked remarkably like the 5D’s and I could not
really identify any differences in the absence of a proper set up
test. I was also interested to compare the footage between the 24fps
and 25fps mode. I was under the impression that the 24fps frame rate
would give a more filmic look to the footage as it’s the frame rate of
film. I imagined the footage would be a lot softer in 24fps but the
opposite occurred which blew me away. Once again my footage didn’t
give me a great chance to make a definitive observation on this but
this is how it appeared. The depth of field seemed greater on the 7D
which would make sense due to the APS-C sensor being a lot smaller
than the full frame sensor of the 5D.

Most of the footage I shoot is generally landscapes and I generally
require the widest lens I can find. With the 7D and it’s 1.6x crop
sensor you find that you cant get a very wide field of view which is
the biggest issue for me with what I do. This however is a great
option for people such as wildlife photographers who can always do
with a little extra zoom with their footage. Too much Zoom can also
be a real problem for these cameras as they are so light and are
effected by the wind and handshake quite dramatically.

In summary the 7D was not ground breaking for me as I already have a
5D. If I didn’t have a 5D I would consider the 7D as it is only
marginally lower in quality to the 5D with the added bonus of the
50fps Slow Mo option and lets face it, most of the work produced these
days is viewed on a computer so who really needs large format quality.
The frame rates of 24p and 25p give you a bit more flexibility as you
don’t have to convert the footage to PAL broadcast rate of 25fps like
you have to from the 5D’s 30fps. An upgrade for the 5D in the future
will fix this problem also so the 5D will have 24fps and 25fps.

I think the only determining factor between the two cameras is price.
If you don’t want to or cant afford to spend the coin on a 5D then get
a 7D. If moneys not the issue get a 5D as I don’t believe the 50fps,
24fps and 25fps is a deal breaker and I’m sure with future 5d upgrades
these options will become available. The cameras are so similar and
both worth the investment and if I had my choice I’d get the NEW
1DMK4!!!!!!!!!!! Ha Ha…… Nah not really I’m happy with my 5D.

Mike Fletcher

True North Rotto Sojourn Half Full

Hi all

It only took 8 hours to fill half of the spots for the Rotto adventure, I would say by this afternoon it will be history. If you were wanting to come don’t delay, if you miss out you will be kicking yourself. Was told it cost $80 to get to Rotto on a stinking ferry, this is no stinking ferry, it is a weapon of mass photography!! See you sailors on the cocktail deck!! I’ll be the one in the captains uniform, Love Boat Style!!

Rottnest on True North

Pizza Night and Big Announcement

Hi all, well the inaugural Blog party pizza night was last night and we had a great crowd turn up to chow down on some mighty fine pizzas. I want to thank everyone for coming and making it a fun night. It was good to see everyone again and Mark really enjoyed meeting you all too. It is just the start of all the adventures. Hope you can come to the True North Rotto workshop as it is going to be a hell of a day out. Will post the details of this special day this week, for those of you who came last night and want to book a spot on the boat for the 26th of January let Mark know, he will direct you to the Northstar girls who will take your booking. For those of you who couldn’t make it last night the deal is this, a day cruise on True North to Rotto, 4 speakers including Tony Hewitt, Nick Rains, Glen Cowans and myself, lunch with the chance there will be a heli on board to take some aerial pics. We will get off on to the beach, take a few sunset pics then get back on for a slow cruise back to Freo by 8pm. It is going to be magic. There are probably only 80 spots left so get in quick. Oh and the price, $250 per person. Now that is a bargain. Drinks and Heli flights are extra as you would expect.
Anyway here are some pics from last night. Cheers

Shades does work

Hi guys, see Ben’s post on the discussion about Shades. It does work if you use it right. I knew if Les Walkling recommended it it would be worthwhile. The guy is a genius and those who doubt him just need to go to one of his workshops. He is god when it comes to colour management. You better believe it.

I would love to get him back for another workshop, hands up those who would be keen to come along.

Thanks to Ben from Team Digital for showing us the light or should that be showing us how to dim the light

Photomatix 3.2

Another attempt at photomatix. This time there was only one image but processed with different exposures in camera raw. These different images were then put through the Detail Enhancer. It is a pretty cool way to create a HDR look with only one image.

Shades for imacs

Benny from Team Digital told me about some freeware you can get for your imacs that allows you to set a much lower brightness level so they can be used in a correct colour workflow. Have a look at the TD blog here It comes endorsed by the great Les Walkling so it must be good.

more macro tests

This is a bottle of plonk that was lying around at the studio/jam room. One of Michaels musical muts left this bottle of sherry for me to sticky tape a flower to it. Shot the label and merged it with another pic. Cut out with Fluid mask 3. This time I did get some green reflection from the backdrop. Have to work a solution for that. Not a brilliant compilation but was more to show off the macro capabilities and the 7D. Below is a crop to show this is a pretty sharp lens. I like it!!!

7D and 100mm Macro Test

Benny at Team Digital was kind enough to loan us a 7D and the new 100mm Macro so I thought I would give it a crack. I shot this image against a new green backdrop that I purchased from the boys at Team Digital, my first green screen shots. It was a piece of cake cutting this out in Fluid Mask 3 and now I can drop it on to any backdrop I like. I was super impressed with both camera and lens even though I shot this in jpeg. It would be better again in RAW with that ability to tweak to a higher degree. The 7D felt good to use and was not a big jump from the 5d. Now I am not an expert on the camera after only playing with it for 30 mins but all indications so far are pretty good. Here is a view of the setup in my studio.

Baron Gorge

This was the result of 5 images blended in photomatix 3.2 and then tweaked in photoshop. I don’t know why I use this program as I like to crunch the blacks and that goes against what photomatix does, to give you detail in those blacks. I think this program must work better with higher contrast scenes. Still it is fun mucking around with it. If anyone out there has some brilliant tips on how best to use this program share it with us all. Lets see some of your best pics produced with it.

Back to the Backlog

I am slowly getting my life back after some of the workshops and big jobs are finishing up. I have decided to go back to processing images from my trip to the Eastern States. This one of Magnetic Island was run through Photomatix 3.2 and ended up ok. I had some serious issues with some weird pixels in the highlights. Had to pull out all my photoshop tricks to put this one through to the next level. I used Noise Ninja, Gaussian blurs, motion blurs, lots of layer adjustments, mid tone contrast tricks the whole lot. Probably the hardest I have worked for a long time. Still some issues to sort out but that will have to be for another day.

Off to Port Hedland tomorrow to run a 2 day photoshop workshop. If it goes well I might do a similar workshop in Perth or some other exotic location.

Don’t forget the pizza night at Marks place on Friday the 6th. If you want to come you need to email him mark@northstarcruises.com.au. He has a special announcement to make you won’t want to miss. It may already be full, he will let you know.

A few items for Sale

From Ryan Epstein

A Brand new Nikon D5000 with 18-55mm VR kit, I’m asking for $1100. Box hasn’t even been opened and camera has not been used. Call Ryan on 0430013503 or email ryan@ryanepstein.com SOLD, SOLD, SOLD

From the Mighty Tommy Putt, the man/girl in the pink feather boa

Epson 3800 A2 plus colour inkjet printer for sale. Hard used. Comes with pack of quality paper also. Pick up only – Brighton, Victoria. Investment $1500 (RRP $1995).
Call Tom on 0419 138 298 or email tom@tomputt.com

From James Knight Smith

I am selling my Canon 24-70 lens. I have had this lens for a couple of years and its in very good condition. I have the original box (not in the photo) for the lens and I’m also including the lens hood and soft lens case. I’m asking $1450.00.

Email me at jknightsmith@gmail.com if you are interested.

Mongers Lake

This is one of the images from a recent shoot with Mark, David and Greggie. We all went in different directions and all have a different spin on the same subject. I only did this up as I am working on a new tutorial for the photoshop workshop I am running in Port Hedland this weekend. It would be pretty cool to have a land yacht on this lake as it is huge.