Testing colors

Lightroom is awesome for quick testing of color adjustments (split tones, faux cross process etc.). Doing same things in Photoshop is much slower while it provides more ways for fine tuning the results with masks, opacity changes and so on. I spent some time to make this 3x2 photos .PSD file for testing different color toning combinations and collecting different tweaks under one file. Each color/contrast change effect is organized as own layer group and file can be always updated by dragging/creating more layer groups to it. This was good sandbox approach to test new color tonings as the result can be seen immediately for 6 different images.

Ahtolaiset

Ahti. From the editorial shoot for Nina Lahtinen's clothes in Espoo forest. This was done at the early autumn time. While scouting locations before starting the shoot, we were momentarily lost in woods. Never venture into woods without map & compass... :)

Travel photo editing

I wanted to play around with iPad image editing apps during summer vacation to test how they work with camera kit. Usual scenario when you travel without laptop and need to do some image editing. Some quick notes for couple of the well known image editing iPad apps.

Photoshop Express

This is quite far from real desktop Photoshop if compared by number of features, but can you really complain as it can be freely installed to your Ipad.

Photogene

Good number of tools and possible to undo multiple steps. App comes with presets for retro or other effects if you are in search for quick effects to spice your photos. What I liked in Photogene was the way to allow resizing image before sending it to mail/service and ability to view camera Exif & IPTC metada. Editing the IPTC metadata was also possible.

Photoforge 2

UI with rolling list of editing commands didn't felt as intuitive to use as UIs from other editing apps. But support for layers and blending modes gave this app more of real Photoshop feel. Seeing editing history as thumbnails was another bonus as was the possibility for real 1:1 zooming of photos.

Snapseeed

I liked the gesture based editing controls & tools selections but lack of zoom & limited undo options lowered little bit overall value. With latest updates, crop tool got the much needed aspect ratio selections but resize seems to be still missing.

With one or two of these apps you can do all the needed basic image edits and lot more while not having access to full Photoshop or similar software. Editing photos with iPad was fun & easy but works best when you only need to tweak just few images. Retouching tens or hundreds of images especially in detailed level is something where you still need desktop with bigger display & mouse/drawing pad for precise brush/mask control.

I was going to test few other apps but drifted away by playing Plants vs Zombies HD and other games with Ipad...

Steampunk

Visited yesterday Ofelia market. One guest from the event with steampunk styled hat.

 

Steampunk glamour fashion show.

Focus breathing

Handheld photos made from around 2 meter distance @ 200mm (AF-S 70-200VRII left & AF-D 80-200 right). Because of heavy focus breathing (change of focal lenght by focus distance) of new AF-S 70-200/f2.8 VRII you get lot less than 200mm FOV when focusing close to minimum focus distances (1.4-2m) :/  By reviews I wasn't sure how big drawback this would be in real use, but now after using the 70-200VRII some times at studio, it feels annoying. For headshots, you need to sometimes crop final image while older 80-200 would have delivered tightly framed shot. 70-200 with this trait is still fantastic lens and VRII makes it awesome for low light shooting. Would I have ever noticed this without internet reviews? Probably not :) Ignorance is bliss.

Studio session with flowers

From the first studio shoot with D700. Taken with AF-D 85mm/f1.4. 85mm with FX-body feels little bit too short for this kind of tighly framed headshots. So I need to start using more of my longer lenses (100mm macro & 70-200mm) for studio photography.

Ghostbusters

Fun shoot with Hell's Inc. Ghostbusters Finland. This was taken at studio using gridded SB-800 as key light and Pro-7b with gridded softbox as kicker. Smoke from smoke machine.


We had plan to take the photos on location but weather turned out really bad so we ended up taking most of the photos in studio.


One from outdoors. Group's costumes raised some interest with the locals :)