Photo of the Week – Soccer

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I learned a little something about shooting sports photos last week and the tips paid off.  Instead of hacking around with shutter or aperature priority, I set my camera to manual mode, with the shutter speed around 1/1000 to 1/1600, the aperature at f/2.8, and the ISO to automatic on my Canon 7D with the 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens.  So as the clouds moved in and out (after all, I am in Seattle), the ISO would vary from 125 to around 400 and back.  So the photos varied a bit in noise level (hardly any at those ISOs) but I got the depth of field and stop action that I was looking for.  Post processing included setting the white balance, doing a bit with the shadows, and a (very little) bit of noise reduction – overall very good results.

Photo of the Week – HDR Imaging

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I went to the Kenmore Camera Expo on Sunday and sat in a session to learn about my new Canon EOS 7D.  While in there, I heard about high dynamic range (HDR) imaging.  After a bit of search on the Internet, I found this link which explains how to do HDR in Adobe Lightroom, my tool of choice for now.  The general operations in Lightroom are as follows:

  • Set recovery to 100%
  • Set fill light to 100%
  • Set contrast to 100%
  • Set clarity to 100%
  • Set vibrance to 100%
  • Reduce saturation but keep some color
  • Adjust the white balance
  • Drop the exposure
  • Bring up the blacks
  • Adjust the colors using the saturation sliders
  • Use the tone curve to boost up highlights and drop down shadows
  • Use noise reduction if needed with luminence and color at 30

Here’s an example of the results of this technique:

hdr-spaceneedle

This was shot with my previous body, the Canon XTi with my 17-85 walking around lens.

UPDATE: I just discovered Photomatix, a tool which does this.  I’m going to download it and give it a try.

Photo of the Week

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Admittedly a little edited, but I liked the result.  I’m experimenting with shooting in RAW instead of JPEG and this is one of the pictures I took.  I did a bit with the color afterwards to make the colors more vivid.  I especially like the effect on the windows behind the dragon.  This photo was shot in the international district in Seattle.

International District Dragon

GpsAssassin

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Wow, flashback from high school, but with a high tech twist – gpsAssassin for the iPhone. Looks like it could be a hit -a Facebook tie-in would make it even more popular, with news feed posts showing your status in the game.