Richard & Caroline's Blog

This weekend I tried out a new local studio and did some Portraits for a client.

Now shooting for a client in a strange studio is possibly not the best idea but I knew the owner and had used his previous studio, so had a good idea what to expect.

The shoot went well and the studio while still a work in progress has a great white infinity wall that is perfect for fashion and portraits.  I’ll certainly be using it again.

 

Updated 13th May 2012

Well I was hoping for an announcement from Leica at yesterdays press conference of a new S3 to replace their stunning S2 digital medium format camera and with the date being May 10th i.e. M10 I was hoping the M10 would be announced.

Currently the M9 and S2 are out of my price range but a new M10 and S3 may have made the old version drop enough to enable me to consider one.

Instead we get the M9 mono, and the updated large sensor compact the new X2.  The X2 does not interest me as it does not have a built in viewfinder but the M9 mono does.

Many people will ask why?

Surely a colour camera is better and you can convert to mono and use the colour channels to customise the image as you see fit.

Well actually a mono sensor has a number of advantages, with no demosaicing there is an increase in resolution, the base ISO can be higher and again less noise at higher ISO values as again there is no demosaicing.

Until now you had to spend $40000 for a PhaseOne Mono digital back for your medium format camera.

For black & white enthusiasts this could be an amazing camera, for those after the ultimate in quality this should produce the best yet black & white images from a digital small format full frame 35mm sensor.

Is it worth the money well, for some yes, those who want the ultimate in quality.  For those willing to sacrifice a little in quality then there are far more cheaper options available.

Would I buy one?  Well if money was no object then yes I have to admit I would.  I love Black & White and this is the closest a digital camera has yet come to producing that ‘real’ Black & White experience.

Unfortunately, while I can justify buying high end Nikon SLR’s every few years as I can make money from them, a Leica M Monochrom would be for personal work and I could not justify the expense.  Lets hope in five years time or so a new Leica MM comes out based on the M10 and I can pick up one up second hand.  Until then i’ll produce my monochrome images using Adobe Lightroom and Nik’s Silver Efex Pro.

Reviews available from the usual sources:

• Luminous Landscape
• Steve Huff
• Reid Reviews (Required subscription)

 

As well as putting the hours in learning Adobe Lightroom V4 I am now starting to learn whats new in CS6.  The above shot of Dani was done on a simple white background with some gel filters over the flash heads lighting the background.

All I have done in CS6 is clean up the background somewhat.  With the improvements in LR4 Photoshop is becoming less and less of a requirement but there are still aspects of retouching and cleaning up of an image that is faster and easier with Photoshop.

A few people seem surprised at the amount of work I put into learning about photography and post production, I mean with modern cameras all you need to do is press the button and the camera does the rest.

Well technique and knowledge can make a hugh difference between a technically ok image and a technically perfect image.

As well as developing your knowledge there is also developing your artistic side.  I would rather have a great artistic shot that is technically poor then a poor artistic shot that is technically great.

The last couple of months has seen me studying and practice hard.  My main focus has been Lightroom V4, learning its differences.  The new development engine has seen some major changes and needs a different approach.

Many would question the amount of effort I had put in but when I come back from a studio shoot or a wedding, I have hundreds of images to quickly evaluate, catalogue, keyword, and edit.  Knowing the program inside out may only save a few more seconds here and there on every image but after editing several images its time well worth spent.

If you want to efficiently edit your photographs and give the customer the quality of images they deserve in a fast and responsive manor, lean and fully understand your tools, the time will be well spent.

I am a big fan of getting things right in camera, but I used to love experimenting in the darkroom.

Today we all have a darkroom at our finger tips with products like Gimp (Free), Adobe Elements, Apple’s iPhoto, Adobe Lightroom and lets not forget the big one, Photoshop.

Since the Beta was released I have been going over some of my old photographs and reprocessing them, trying to get my head round the new tools that Lightroom V4 brings to us.

I have used Lightroom since the early beta of V1, and have used it longer then I have Photoshop.  Every image I process goes through Lightroom but only a few go into Photoshop.

The above shots I reprocessed in LR4 and I took them in a different direction to how they were originally processed in LR3.

They may not be killer images but with each one I have learnt a lot.

Some of the film shots were very difficult images, with several of them I used a too contrasty film on a day that already had a lot of contrast.

For the portrait of Ashleigh; this was a simple shot with a small softbox to my left. I deliberately underexposed the natural light to make the full sun shining through the window look like late evening sunlight. Normally after minor exposure tweaks, adjusting the colour balance, and some sharpening, I would take this straight into Photoshop for the major editing. This image I did everything in Lightroom V4, and its produced a very pleasing and natural portrait.