G1X: JPEG Variations

As promised by the weatherman, today was rainy, overcast and cooler than I wanted.  Instead of searching for a scene to turn into a work of art with my new G1X, I decided to test variations of its in-camera processing.  Normally, I prefer to shoot in RAW mode which means that each shot is considerably post processed in Photoshop following conversion from Canon’s RAW format in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).   There is no doubt in my mind that shooting RAW ultimately yields the best print – especially for me.  Even so, there are advantages, particularly in economy of time, to using the so-called Straight-Out-Of-Camera (SOOC) image. 

Although some still talk as though the Straight-Out-Of-Camera image is the only truth, SOOC is actually misleading.  Modern digital cameras include a number of image adjustments – sort of an internal Photoshop.  When shooting in JPEG (only) mode, the G1X allows adjustments in color saturation, contrast, sharpness and individual color adjustments to red, green, blue. There are also dynamic range adjustments to both highlights and shadows.   In addition, the G1X offers a number of effects such as HDR, B/W, Sepia, etc. which were not included in today’s testing.

I coaxed Hannah and her friend into posing even though it was still cool outside and quickly set up this attractive composition to include several colors and distances.  The sky, though, remained overcast with resulting soft lighting.  The first photo of this post was made with all “normal” settings in JPEG format shooting in Av mode at ISO 400.  That is, SOOC.

Here’s a shot with saturation, contrast, sharpness and red turned down one notch in the “My Colors” menu.  Such settings are sometimes recommended by photographers who do not use RAW format but still tweak the files in various photo editing software.  I was surprised to see so little variation between this image and the “normal” (first image shown) image.  The differences are visible in the full size files on my screen but probably are not so apparent here.  I don’t like this variation.

 

This shot is the near opposite of the above “turned down” image; call it the “turned up” image with contrast and sharpness turned up one notch but saturation normal and red still turned down one notch.  Looking at the “turned up” and “turned down” images, I hope the difference in contrast is apparent even if the difference in the other parameters is not.  I actually like this one but have a tendency to overdo both contrast and sharpness (and I’m not the only one!).

 

Next is a shot taken with all settings “normal” except that highlight and shadow recovery (Dynamic Range) have been forced to maximum.  I don’t like this one; it looks washed out with low contrast.  The problem (I think) was that the overcast sky prevented bright highlights and dark shadows from occurring in the first place.  When Dynamic Range Improvement was set to “Auto” the result(not shown) was essentially the same as a “normal” picture thus indicating that Dynamic Range Improvement was not significantly applied.  I need to test this feature further but, for now, my thinking is to be sure to use RAW image mode when highlights and shadows are strong.

My conclusion?  I’ll be leaving all the “My Colors” settings at “normal” with the possible exception of Red saturation.  If I’m to do post processing of image files then I might as well shoot in RAW to begin with.  This is a convenient conclusion because the “My Colors” adjustments do not apply when shooting in RAW+JPEG and most of my JPEG shots are produced via the RAW+JPEG combination.  If I were down to the last Gigabyte of the memory card and forced to switch to JPEG only then I’d set “My Colors” for Red turned down one notch and would also think about using Dynamic Range Improvement.  In such a case, I’d probably turn down the sharpness as well in anticipation of tweaking the JPEG file myself. 

Straight-Out-Of-Camera?  What are the camera settings?

PAW 9

 

This week’s PAW is an HDR image processed in Photomatix and further tweaked, then cropped in Photoshop.  It probably doesn’t look “HDR” – at least, I hope not.  The G12 was used in manual mode to get exposures at f4, ISO 400 and bracketed shutter speeds of 1.6, 6 and 0.4 seconds.   Manual mode was necessary because of the 1 second shutter speed limit in Av mode for G series cameras.  The scene is from the country store at Rural Life Museum that was shown in the previous post.

Swing with LSU

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When my friend Jason wanted a photo of his pride and joy LSU golf club, I came up with this version of a swing.  For this effect, I used five layers in Photoshop and applied a bit of motion blur and distortion to four of the layers.  The four motion layers are each a rotated copy of the base layer.  The base layer was made by propping up the club and then cloning out the props.  This not the kind of thing that I usually do in Photoshop; in fact, I'm pretty weak on most Photoshop effects and trying to learn more about them.

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Photoshop CS5

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I'm upgrading Photoshop from CS4 to CS5 - received the software today. I've used Photoshop (not so expertly by any means) for a long time now. I think I got in on Version 4. My first thoughts today were about how much the packaging has changed. Not so long ago, Photoshop came in a much larger box with a large printed manual and many loose sheets of paper with special offers. This upgrade package was very light and consisted of a paper box containing one DVD. I expected to find, but did not find, a “Start Here” piece of paper. Finally, I just stuck the DVD in the reader and let it run; about 20 minutes later it was installed. Oh, don't throw away the small box that has the serial number on it!

For now, I'll be using the 32 bit version of CS5 in hopes that most of my plug-ins can be plugged in.

Strangely, the installation procedure did not automatically create a desktop shortcut but that was easily done from the Windows 7 Start Menu. On opening, the CS5 workspace looked about as expected. Clicking around a bit, there is a workspace named “Photography” so I selected that one.

Opening an old RAW file, Adobe Camera Raw seemed to work and to remember the previous settings for that file.

So far, so good. Now to change the defaults to my own preferences and begin installing those plug-ins.
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Blurring the Background using Photoshop

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As noted in previous postings, the G9 and similar digicams tend to produce photographs with deep depth of field whereas sometimes a blurry background helps to emphasize the subject. If the background is not sufficiently blurred in-camera then Photoshop or similar programs can be used to increase the blur.

This is the same photo of Hannah as previous shown except that Photoshop was used to increase the background blur. In the past, I’ve blurred the background in Photoshop by simply making a duplicate layer, blurring that entire layer and then creating a mask to hide or show the appropriate sections. More recently, I’m learning to use the Lens Blur Filter in Photoshop CS4 (Filter, Blur, Lens Blur in the menu). For this photo, I used an Alpha Channel to make a depth map and – tediously, I might add – attempted to paint a mask of varying distances. For web viewing, the result is OK but certainly not great.

An editing problem is differentiating the background from fine details such as Hannah’s hair. Differentiating fine details from the background is tedious and requires much patience. I tried several variations of selecting and masking. This cropped section illustrates the differences between rough (OK, impatient) masking and somewhat more careful masking.



I won’t even try to describe how to make the depth map but here are some links to instructions from others

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_9_1.htm

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_51/essay.html

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=102294

After using Photoshop to blur the background in pictures taken with my G9, I’ve resolved to use a different camera whenever the subject and scene call for a blurry background!
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George and Greg

My father-in-law was an imposing figure of a man. Born in tough times, a tough place and tough circumstances, at age 65 he was still a big, strong man. My son was just learning to walk. I was learning to use a 35mm single lens reflex camera and to process my own black-and-white photographs. On this day in 1975, all those factors aligned so that this moment was captured.

My camera was a Konica Autoreflex T2 and the lens was a Hexanon 52mm f1.8. I’m certain of this because it was the only camera and lens that I owned at the time. The film was Kodak Plus X and was probably developed in D-76. The print was, well, not very good until, years later, I scanned the original negative and processed the scan in Photoshop.

The Konica Autoreflex T2 had a semi-automatic exposure mode. First the shutter speed was set and then the camera automatically selected the aperture to match that speed. I don’t recall whether I used my Konica’s auto-exposure for this particular shot. Probably not, because the window is badly overexposed; the automatic exposure probably would have done a better job on the window but at the expense of the main subject. I probably pointed the camera down at the floor, got an exposure reading and set it manually. I’d like to think so anyway – even if I missed the best exposure setting.