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Studio shoot with Nicki

Bas Pisa — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:01:37 +0000

It is almost Nicki’s birthday, so it was time to shoot some photo’s that we could use for the birthday cards as we do every year. And it is always a joy to see how much fun Nickita has while we do a studio shoot and the way she tries to act. She even suggests props we can use or she asks me if I like some of her poses. Sh has the most fun when she is trying different poses and starts to jump and twirl before the camera. I can’t deny that I am very curious about how the interaction will be next year. On the other hand I am hoping that the coming year will pass a little slower. I know that time flies when you are having fun but last year just flew by as a high speed train. Just a few more days and the little lady will be five years old. please go to the photo gallery to see the other photo’s of this studio shoot.

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Phantoms, first try outs

Bas Pisa — Fri, 17 May 2013 01:09:22 +0000

For a while I am walking with this idea in my head to create a book, a photo book of coarse. I already got a theme and some ideas on the type of photography. Below you will find an sample of the first test shots. var gallery_name = "Phantoms"; var gallery_count = 2; var description = "Fooling around with scale models again. Combining them with selfmade paper structures and using them to create a new world"; In the near future I will explain the whole idea, but for now you will have to do with some teasers, and a working title – Phantoms

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Various HDR shots 2012

Bas Pisa — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:59:24 +0000

Below you will find s0me HDR shots which I made on 2012 and I found whilst cleaning my archive. var gallery_name = "Various HDR 2012"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = "A few quick and dirty try-outs with HDR";

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Nicki Cam, vtech Kidizoom

Bas Pisa — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:54:00 +0000

This photo was made with Nicki her own camera,the Vtech Kidizoom, a kids camera which we gave to her a year ago. The Vtech Kidizoom keeps surprising me. Some times the quality is really far fetched, and some times you get a surprisingly good shot. The most important is the fact that my little girl seems to enjoy photopraphy.

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Monkey Town, New monkey photos

Bas Pisa — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:56:19 +0000

A day at the Apenheul in Apeldoorn is always a nice opportunity to shoot some nice monkey photos. Especially when there are newborn monkeys. Today we went with the kids and we had a wonderful day with many photo opportunities. Click on the monkey photo above to go to the gallery. There you will find more monkey photos. I especially like the ones with the little baby Squirrel monkeys. The small hands and the one where the mother is feeding her baby. I was able to make these with just a lot of patience and some good luck. All shot with my Canon 5D mkii and 24-70MM or 70-200MM lenses.

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Rodenstock Vario ND review

Bas Pisa — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:13:03 +0000

Thanks to cameraland.nl I got the opportunity to test the Rodenstock Vario ND filter, a variable neutral density filter. Last year I got my hands on the LCW Fader ND mkII for a test (click here to see the results). Personally I was not very impressed by the LCW Fader ND, not even by the mkII. My main concern was the ‘cross’ (cruciform or ‘X’) the would show while using a wide angle lens. It appeared on my Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 USM so I didn’t even bother to test the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 USM II. (See on the example of the cross issue on this page.) So I was hoping the Rodenstock Vario ND will perform better. First impression The first difference that I noticed was that the product description of the Rodenstock Vario ND was pretty clear on the ‘known’ issues with wide angle lenses. They even marked the filter with ‘max’ which is just next to the +5 marker. Anything beyond this max marker is not guaranteed to give good results. And they were right. If you ignore their warning you will get unexpected results as you will see in my tests. I didn’t really experience any issues with color shifts, so that is way better compared tot the LCW Fader ND mkII. With the lather I experienced color shifts on several occasions. The test With the filter from Rodenstock I decided to give it al full test. I tried it on almost every piece of glass that I own. This caused a few problems due to the fact that I got the 82mm version of the Rodenstock Vario ND for my test and most of my lenses have the 77mm thread. So I needed an adapter ring. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but this time

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Reading lights (night photography ideas)

Bas Pisa — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:35:13 +0000

One night my daughter came to the conclusion that I didn’t need to read to her but that she wanted to read for herself with her flashlight. Little girls grow up. I loved the scene so I decided to take a picture. The result surprised me due to the slow shutter (1/20 sec). There is a slight motion blur,but I loved the colours and the whole atmosphere so I decided to place it on the site. For me this is a nice example of night photograpy

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Snowfun trick photography

Bas Pisa — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:23:36 +0000

The first shoot where I tried the floating concept (or should I say hovering?). My daughter and I had a lot of fun creating these trick photography photo’s. Wondering how we did it? – just place your mouse over the large image to see the un-edited version. After shooting we went straight home (to warm up and) to see the result. After a few tweaks in Adobe Lightroom we were both satisfied with the end result. The whole idea is that you support your subject with something that distincts from its surroundings, so in my case the green stool. This can be easily removed in an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop. Make sure you place your camera on a tripod and make the shot. Then remove the subject and the stool without altering the rest. So in the above example we needed to be careful not to leave footprints in the snow or bump against the sled. Take a second shot (without the little lady and stool) and in Photoshop you load both photos. Place the one with the subject in it on top of the other. Use your favorite tool to remove (erase) the green stool from the top image. And as if it’s magic you will see it disappear. (In other words the image in the back will show where the stool was. And because you used a tripod it will not differ from the top image. In my case I was careless and I needed also the remove the pulling rope which was tied to the sled. As you can notice I also had to created (draw) the missing parts of the black pants of Nicki otherwise her legs wouldn’t look natural. To top it off I also extended the scarf, and added shadow on the

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Floating

Bas Pisa — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:48:26 +0000

A while ago I have been working on an old concept. (I just realised that I also need to place those photos as well (will do tomorrow)) The concept is about floating, and in this particular case, it is my 4yrs old daughter who will be doing the floating (flying, hovering, or whatever you want to call it). Above you can hover with your mouse over the image and you will see the before and after versions My first edit was the one here on the right. After toying with it for a while I can to the conclusion it still needed a few things. So I kept fiddling until I came to the result here above. I especially like the movement that I added to the image. For this I used Adobe Photoshop and added radial blur to the wheels and motion blur to the background. When done I re-imported the photo into Adobe Lightroom so I could make the last adjustments. (vibrance, clarity, and whitebalance) As added bonus we also brought the slede. And this became the prop for the next shot, which you can see here on the left. We used the same technique as before. But more about that later on.

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New portraits of Nicki

Bas Pisa — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:06:12 +0000

I have uploaded a few portraits of Nickita our daughter. var gallery_name = "Portraits 2013"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = "Working with the 50 mm";

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New website released – Frozentimes v5.0

Bas Pisa — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:03:31 +0000

Today I went live with frozentimes.net version 5.0. A complete new look & feel. A new user interface. A new approach to blogging. A new gallery backend. I am hoping that by replacing the gallery backend the whole site will gain in performance (speed) and it will be easier for me to maintain the gallery and export photos from my library software to the website. Further more I felt like that the design was outdated. I went from a traditional way of presenting blog posts (top to bottom) to a magazine style. See the images below. I also added a new way to search. You now can search thru the articles and the photos. Or just the articles or just the photos. Change the mode by clicking the small icons next to the search button. () About navigation, there also a few things changed. You now can flip thru the pages with [shift][left arrow] and [shift][right arrow], you can use the same key combination for flipping thru the posts and the gallery pages. If you open the photos in large format you can flip thru them with just the arrow keys [arrow left], [arrow right]. I also decided to abandon my old ‘bumper’page. And I am sure I am going to miss it. For old times sake, I left it on the server (it can be found here) Leaves me to thank my ‘nerding’ buddy Jeroen for all the help and the advice whilst building this new template. I do hope you enjoy the new version, so please let me know your thoughts on the new design via the comments form at the bottom of this post.

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Consistent?

Bas Pisa — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:38:08 +0000

What do you mean taking photo’s on a consistent basis. Just noticed that we took almost the same amount of photos per year of our daughter with exception of the first year. Just funny to notice. (See print screen from my lightroom libary. 5th year just started)

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HDR in Spain

Bas Pisa — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 13:00:24 +0000

During my last travel to Andalusia (Spain) I made a lot of HDR shots, all of them were shot without tripod. I knew it was a risk, but it worked out fine for me. With the current versions of Photomatix and Adobe Photoshop (and probably many others) you can correct the horizontal and vertical shifts automatically, and you have the option to reduce ghosting artifacts (moving people, tree branches and other objects) So all those hand-shaken images are still useful. And of course some of the HDR’s are ‘single’ HDRi’s. Click here for the gallery

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Spanish landscapes and ruins.

Bas Pisa — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 11:38:52 +0000

Landscapes and Ruins is what I titled this post. While we traveld through Andalusia (South of Spain) we saw so many beautiful landscapes, and ruins. Many houses were abandoned and left to the force of nature, which created wonderful ruins in very nice landscapes. I had this visual in my head about a landscape that looked like a patchwork. I had lots of near opportunities but most of the landscapes were ‘poluted’ with industy, highways, or modern farms. Luckily we encountered a few spots that we nice and clean, and ‘colorful as patchwork’. We visited ‘El Torcal’, a nature reserve with unusual limestone rock formations. A lovely place to hike with your camera. And even our 3 year old daughter was able to do the short route (1,5 km) which took us about 90 minutes (in stead of the 45 minutes which the guide told us) Nice scenery and lots of good spots. I shot a lot of panorama’s and HDR images. And regardless of the extra time it took us we had a beautiful hike. (And junior had her backpack filled with nice rocks she wanted to add to her collection.) ‘El Chorro’ is a small village that is know for the gorge that has been dammed in 1920. Famous for its dangerous walkway which at the moment is only accessible by experienced climbers. The whole area has some nice views and was worth a visit. We also visited the area around Ronda a wonderful medieval ‘white’ city from the Moorish period, and we ‘discovered’ a old castle ruin that was ‘somewhat’ accessible for the public. So click on the Photos to see the whole gallery. (there are two galleries (clicking here for the landscapes or here for the ruins))

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Tigers and butterflies

Bas Pisa — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 10:09:16 +0000

Visiting a butterfly garden or a zoo is something we always like to see on our itinerary. While we were in Spain this summer we were lucky to be able to visit both. We went to Mariposario de Benalmadena, a nice butterfly parc that claims to be the largest in Europe but I doubt that. Nevertheless we were able to photograph some beautiful species. Most of the time I tried to capture (with my camera) the “Morpho peleides”. This seems to me one of the more difficult species to photograph. The top of its wings is blue but you will only be able to see that while it is flying. (Or when he just lands or takes off) It took me a while to get the shot you see here. Unfortunately its not tag sharp but I will keep trying in any future butterfly garden. We also went to Selwo Marina, a marine parc with sea lions and dolphins. A beautiful show but for the rest it was just an average parc. Bioparc Fuengirola on the other hand was a wonderful zoo. They had beautiful tigers and many other animals all worth to photograph and the whole parc looked spic ‘n span. The area where they kept the tigers was very nice arranged, and gave ‘the photographer’ nice opportunities for even better shots. Click here to see the other photo’s.

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Alhambra, Grananda, Spain

Bas Pisa — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 23:05:32 +0000

The Alhambra, or officially “Al Calat Alhambra” – The red fortress. A beautiful Moorish fortress/palace-city located in Andalusia (Spain). We went there on our last travel and we were lucky that we were able to purchase entrance tickets (we did not realize we had to reserve them upfront due to the limitations of the number of visitors per day by Unesco World Heritage). We did the whole tour, so that includes Alcazaba, Nasrid Palaces, Generalife, Palace of Charles V and the Bath of the Mosque. We walked 5 kilometers, and what really surprised me was that our 3 years old daughter Nicki almost did the whole walk on her own, trying to spot princesses and knights in shining armor. I have to say; “What a wonderful place!” we walked around looking left and right, not knowing what to photograph. I tried to prepare before we left the hotel. And oh man what did I feel like an amateur when I discovered that I misplaced my 24-70mm lens. By doing so I left it in the hotel safe and brought my 100mm Macro lens instead. What a bummer. So all photos were taken with my DSLR were with the 16-35mm lens. The other photos were shot with my G12 so I was lucky we brought that one as well. But a good lesson for future trips. With the Canon 5D mark II is shot mostly HDR images, and a few panorama’s (and a few with a little bit of both) For me the Alhambra was the ideal place to use HDR. The warm colors and the many shadows were the perfect setting to experiment with the high dynamic range technic. Just check the gallery and see for yourself.

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New travel photo’s online

Bas Pisa — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:42:37 +0000

Finally I found the time to go trough my travel photo’s of the last 5 years…. Shame on me for letting it slip so long. But they are finally here. Below you’ll find some samples. (each photo represents a gallery, so when you click on it you see the rest) Roma, Firenze, Pisa Vienna, Luzern, Strasbourgh Cyprus, Curacao, La Palma

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Butterflies in Artis Zoo

Bas Pisa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:29:53 +0000

We went to Artis, the Amsterdam zoo which has a wonderful butterfly garden. For me it was the second time I photographed butterflies in Artis, so this time I was a little bit better prepared. Unfortunately this time there were a lot of kids (school class) who were running around chasing the butterflies in stead of just looking at them. The one you see on the left is a glass butterfly with wonderful transparant wings like glass windows. I do not know the names of the other ones but that will be something to remember for the next visit. I selected just four photos, because those were the only ones that I think were worth publishing. var gallery_name = "Butterflies 2012 Artis"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = "";

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GoPro HD Hero 2 Motorsport edition

Bas Pisa — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:24:33 +0000

Finally (with the help of my mom, and an early birthday present) I managed to get my GoPro HD Hero 2 sports camera. I went for the motorsport edition due to the fact it contains the suction cup which I want to use for inside the car. I also bought the GoPro Ride, a mount for on the steer of my bike (and of course on the bike of my daughter. We already had some fun testing the camera. I mounted the camera to her bike helmet with some additional pivot arms and connectors to extend the distance and pointed the cam to her face. With this setup she was running around the house. This gave us some nice footage. But that is the fun part. So what is my first impression; I did some testing with time-lapse, straight out of the box. As soon as I got back in my car (after leaving the store) I placed the cam to my windscreen with the suction cup and set the camera to time-lapse (without reading the manual). All looked well and I managed to get a very nice time-lapse of my ride back home. The only mistake I made (by not reading the manual) was that I forgot to flip the image, so I recorded everything up-side down. Something which i could easily correct with the software provided by GoPro. The camera itself is very tiny. Which I think is the whole idea behind it. This makes it very easy to attach it to a helmet or other locations or parts. And the whole beauty of the product is that you can buy literally almost any mount to attach your camera. If not from GoPro itself, you will be able to find a 3rd party product that will fulfill your

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B&W or Color, what to choose

Bas Pisa — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:31:12 +0000

Have been playing around with Adobe Photoshop to get a new look and feel for my next project. And am still not convinced what road to follow. Feel free to let me know what you like best. Color or the old fashion Black and White? Just leave a comment. Click on the photos to see more (I also included the originals so you see what was changed) [Canon G12, with flash]

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Drifting Ice 2012 (Kruiend ijs)

Bas Pisa — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:40:53 +0000

Today we went to Hindeloopen, a little village close to the coast of the IJsselmeer (a big lake (former sea)) Although most of the ice has melted over the last days there is still a lot left on the IJsselmeer. And the south west wind has made it drifting towards the coast of Hindeloopen. Some of the piles were six meters high. This is a pretty unique scenery for The Netherlands so you can imagine that it attracted a huge crowd. We also went to see these wonders of nature and I have to say it was a pretty amazing sight. Despite the cold and the crowd I still managed to shoot a few nice decent photos. See below for an example and click on this link to go to the gallery to see more. [Canon 5D mk2, 24-70mm, Flash 580ex mk2]

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Another experiment – Virtual 3D

Bas Pisa — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:08:10 +0000

Been playing with something else, virtual 3D images. What you basically do is take a photograph, cut it in to several layers and use Adobe After Effect to create a ‘fake’ 3D effect. By doing so you get a movie file instead of a photo. Click on the play button below to see an example. I rather call it a 3D cutout because I think it is a better description for the end result. Anyhow I like the effect a lot and more will follow.

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Something new – a cinemagraph

Bas Pisa — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:17:24 +0000

Been playing with something new – cinemagraphs, a photo with a litte bit extra. Cinemagraphs are photographs with a subtle moving element in it. Originally the idea was created by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. On their website you will find some very beautiful examples (http://cinemagraphs.com). For me this was the first tryout and I still see many hurdles to take before I get the image that I want. But hey practice makes perfect. Just let me know what you think of this one.

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North Sea Jazz Festival 2011 (Prince, Snoop Dogg, and more)

Bas Pisa — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:00:11 +0000

North Sea Jazz Festival, July 10th 2011. It was five years ago when I went to the North Sea Jazz Festival for the last time. So I was happy when I got invited by my mate. I looked forward to all the good music and the opportunity to take some nice shots Most of all I loved the fact that Prince was doing a full show. It was many years ago that I saw a live performance by Prince, so just that, was already worth a visit. But also the other artists that we saw were more then just entertaining. It all started with the preparation of my camera kit. What to bring, and where to put it. This year they only allowed compact camera’s or camera’s with fixed lenses. Personally i do not see the reasoning behind this. If you look at the quality and options of the modern compact camera’s. Some of them can easily compete with some ‘not so old’ DSLR’s. But anyways, I decided to take my Canon 5D Mark I body with a 50mm prime lens. (the smallest configuration), and my Canon G12. I gave my 70-200mm lens to my mate, who putted it in his bag. The check at the entrance was though but I was terrible lucky that the doorkeepers were paying attention to some visitors that started a discussion. So they let me pass without a real check. So we were inside. We enjoyed Raphael Saadiq, Tea for 3 (with Dave Douglas, Enrico Rava and Avishai Cohen), and of course Snoop Dogg, one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Nowhere we were bothered whilst taking pictures. Below some examples of the shots, I was able to take. var gallery_name = "North Sea Jazz 2011"; var gallery_count = 6; var description = "North

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Studioshoot with Nicki

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:44:35 +0000

A year has passed and I thought it would be fun to re-shoot a studio session I did with Nickita, my daughter, a year ago. Unfortunately we were not able to let her wear the same dress (little girls grow fast), but at least I was able to use the same props. The biggest difference I noticed was the fact that she was more aware of what we were doing. At moments this resulted in her playing a role as she was acting. Another side effect was that it was even harder to keep her attention. There were moments she wanted to walk away to start playing with her toys. So we had to dose the amount of time we were actually shooting. With a little help of mom we managed to get the required shot (for her birthday card). Below there are a few more shot made during the shoot. If you want to see more just click on one of the photos to go to the gallery. var gallery_name = "Studio 2011"; var gallery_count = 6; var description = "";

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Canon E1 Hand strap, the manual

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:07:29 +0000

Ever wondered how to attach your Canon E1 hand strap? I did. Luckily I found this little manual a while ago. (sorry can’t remember where I found it, otherwise I would have credited it). I discovered that I did it all wrong, and with the help of the pictures I managed to do it the right way, which gave me a more secure feeling. At the end it is your (expensive) body that hangs on a thread. Keeps me wondering why I never received instructions with the product……

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Pretty in pink

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:30:55 +0000

[Canon 5D Mark I, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L USM Macro, 2 Speedlight flashes] Click here the see the complete gallery

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Mini models

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:27:06 +0000

I have been playing again with my little puppets. I still have this idea in my head, but it doesn’t seem to come out the way that I imagine. So I keep fooling around and I am sure that at the end I will get the image from my head to the screen. Last autumn my daughter found a branch in the forest with a little mushroom attached to it. We took it home, and I could borrow it from her to take some shots. Again I tried to get the setting right and hoped I could get the picture from my brain to the screen. And I am pretty pleased with the end result. The light comes from my desk-lamp (halogen light) and the blue background is a blue piece of carton. So no fancy stuff in the actual setup. The photos are shot with my 100mm macro lens and the Canon 5D Mark I. var gallery_name = "New Models 2011"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = ""; In Adobe Lightroom is adjusted the saturation and the blacks to get a bit more spice. Again I do like the end result but it is still not the same picture that lives in my head. So I will keep trying and am sure I will get there in the end.

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Insects 2011

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:40:06 +0000

I have been cleaning up my archive and found some shots I made last summer. I made some close-ups in the garden while i was enjoying the nice weather. This was the first summer that we had wasps in our garden. Normally I am happy when this little bug(ger) stays away, but this time I was glad that I could make some shots. (it is a wonderful creature after all). All shots were taken with my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L USM Macro and my Canon 5D mark I We also went to the zoo (Artis in Amsterdam) where we visited the butterfly garden. This is paradise for the close-up fans. Sometimes the butterflies even land on your shoulder, which can be frustrating and wonderful at the same time. (You have a nice close-up view but it is impossible to take a nice shot) We went together with Nicki, my daughter, so it was not really possible to concentrate on the pictures, so this is definitely a place to go back to (when i am alone)

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Autumn

Bas Pisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:53:19 +0000

Change of the seasons, always a good moment to go outside with your camera. [Canon 5D Mark II - Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM - Canon Speedlite 580EX II with diffuser]

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Old fashion flowers

Bas Pisa — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:00:14 +0000

Just some experimenting within Lightroom. I did like the result so I wanted to share them here, click on the photos to see a larger version. var gallery_name = "Oldfashion Flowers"; var gallery_count = 5; var description = "";

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Waterdrops, new setup

Bas Pisa — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:57:28 +0000

I just realized that I never published anything about my new water drop setup. So here it is. I have been busting my head for a long time on how to get around the issue of spending way too much money on an expensive drip installation and an electric trigger system. And finally I saw the light. I needed a medical drip. So I started my search on the net and it took me a while to realize that it was a quest with no end. III asked around if someone knew somebody that had access to medical supplies. But no luck. var gallery_name = "Waterdrops Sept 2010"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = ""; Finally I found a website here in Holland that would sell drips to private an address. But only the drip system and not the bags that you need to fill up with liquid. I decided that I would figure something out and ordered two sets. When I received the package I opened it as soon as possible and examined the system. Never paid any attention to stuff like this so did not know what to expect. Luckily one end had a thick sharp end, and I figured that I would be able to push this thru the cap of a lemonade bottle. And so I did. I filled the bottle with water and found out that it was not working. I took a while to realize that I needed an extra hole in the other end of the bottle to let air in. And guess what, I had a system that produced drips that I could regulate. So still no trigger system. I decided to go with the old fashion system – good luck. See below for my first umbrella drops. Next phase will

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Black and White or HDR?

Bas Pisa — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:05:56 +0000

Love black and white? Equally love HDR? Why not combine the two techniques? I have been playing with the idea for a while and I thought it was time to show the result. So basically you have two ways to approach this. (In this example I used a single shot HDR.) 1) Make a HDR of the original and then edit that to black and white 2) Make a black and white edit of the original(s) and turn that to HDR. In this example I went for option one. Just because that way I only had to produce one black and white edit instead of three. To be honest I can’t tell the differences in result between the two options but that is for a later moment to try out. See below for the results. (click on the images for the larger versions) I love the way how you get the detail back when you use HDR. Just compare the trees from the original edits with the HDR edit (both B&W and color version). Make sure you get your transformation to B&W correct. I personally am a lazy bastard and have a preset that I use in Silver Efex Pro from NikSoft. (one of my favorite tools) It also gives you the old fashion look by adding the original film grain (based on type of film). I also like to add extra drama to the image during the B&W transformation. Just play with contrast , levels, etc… var gallery_name = "Black and White Rooster"; var gallery_count = 4; var description = "";

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Mini test – Noise Reduction Software

Bas Pisa — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:11:00 +0000

I was looking for a good noise reduction tool. When I looked on the internet it was not clear to me what would be the best program, so I did some testing. My main goal is to reduce most of the noise without the use of all the fancy settings. Personally I do not hate some noise in my pictures. Probably because I own a Canon 5D which doesn’t generate much noise at all. But the main reason why I’m looking for noise reduction software has to do with HDR. When I generate a HDR image I always get more noise in my images then I wished for. So I am in need of some good noise reduction tool Don’t expect too much of this mini test. Basically what I did was the following, I opened the original photo with the appropriate program or plug-in (within Adobe Photoshop CS4). If the program or plug-in had an automatic setting I used that. If not I only used the most basic adjustments/settings to get a decent result. Maybe I am just lazy, but hey I don’t want to spend my precious time with reducing noise. So the image on the top left is a crop of the original HDR file. (the un-cropped image can be found in the following article Curacao misty water HDR). The other images are the results of one of the following tools:

Noise Ninja 2.2.1 (Stand Alone)
Noise Ware 2.6 (Stand Alone)
Noise Ware 4.2 (Photoshop plug-in)
Photoshop CS4 (Stand Alone)
Lightroom 3 (Stand Alone)
NikSoft Dfine 2 (Photoshop plug-in)
Neat Image Pro 6.0 (Stand Alone)
Topaz Denoise 4(Photoshop plug-in)

The most important thing for me is that I don’t loose any important details in the photo, so that is one of the things I based my conclusion

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Water drops

Bas Pisa — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:10:32 +0000

Another experiment that I have been working on, water drops. This is still a huge challenge for me. I keep doing something wrong. The results I get are alright but that is where it ends. I have been reading many tutorials and this has improved the results but I am still not satisfied. There is always something (little) that prevents me of getting the result that I want. For example, when you look at the pictures in this gallery you will see little white spots in the water. These are little air bubbles that were sticking to the bottom of my glass bowl. And I couldn’t find a way to get rid of them. I do realize, after reading a few more tuts, that I need to use the duration of the flash as exposure time and not the actual exposure time from the camera. So this will be something to play with. I also know now that you don’t need to light the actual water drop but that you need to use the reflection of the light. All little things that you need to be aware of… Will be continued….

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Flower close-ups

Bas Pisa — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:38:44 +0000

Flowers and Close-up. A nice and relaxing subject…. It is just a way to work and test my close-up objectives and try to improve my Macro skills a wee bit. During spring and summertime we have some nice flowers in the garden which are good subjects to play with. And over and over again i keep getting surprised by the beautiful images you get when you crawl into the heart of flowers. When I bought my first macro lens (Canon 100mm f/2.8) I started with photographing flowers, and now with the Canon MP-E 65mm in my possession it is even more intriguing to see the wonders of mother nature. In this article just a few examples. Most of the time I am looking for the tiny flowers opposite to the larges species. Just because it is more of a challenge for me to work with these. var gallery_name = "Flowers April 2010"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = ""; What I do know for sure is that there will follow more flower photographs in the future, due to the fact it is so much fun to do. Just click on the photo’s to see the larger versions.

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Flowerdrops continued …

Bas Pisa — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:28:59 +0000

More experiments with drops of water on flower petals. Or as I like to call them ‘Flowerdrops’. Don’t ask me why but I love to play with this concept. For starters it is fun to do, and I can learn a lot while trying to beat the problems that I will encounter. It gives me the opportunity too play with several aspects of photography, think about; Close-up shooting, light setup , composition, and color. So in a very tiny space I can work with all these different factors. Just see it as my mini studio on the dinner table in the kitchen. The only thing that you need to remember is to keep your flowers fresh…

Close-up shooting: Static objects, so no moving bugs and other influences from mother nature
Light setup: You can use small flashed and little pieces of paper, so no big studio lights and soft boxes.
Composition: It is very important to set the right position, (otherwise the water drop will not show the image of the flowers in the background) So I need to think about composition which is a nice challenge. But also possible because of the small setting
Color: Most flowers are very colorful, which gives me the opportunity to play with these colors, and the small setting gives me the freedom to easily change backgrounds.

If you keep the above in mind you will be able to create nice pictures. For me it is looking for that little bit extra. And I do realize that I still have many roads in front of me. var gallery_name = "Flowerdrops 2010"; var gallery_count = 3; var description = "";

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Curacao misty water HDR

Bas Pisa — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:13:04 +0000

While visiting Curacao during our holiday, I had the perfect opportunity to experiment with long exposures and try to get the misty water effect. An effect of which I am a huge fan. I also wanted to combine this effect with another effect, HDR. So I needed long exposures and at least three of them for each photo. Before we left I have been thinking about buying a variable ND filter, but after reading many reviews on the internet, and learning that the Fader ND from Light Craft Workshop wouldn’t work with most of my Canon lenses and the Singh-Ray was way above my budget, I decided that I should be able to do without. I have to say that I wished I had more cash to buy the Singh-Ray filter, because I did miss it. An on the other hand, the people a Light Craft were telling me that they were working on a new version of their filter, but I didn’t know if that would fix my problems (showing a black cross on wide angle Canon lenses) and it would not ship before our departure date so that was no option. So I had my tripod set on the beach and tried to block some light with my Cokin ND filters. Unfortunately they have a purple color cast so I didn’t try to combine two of these (which will intensify the color cast). You can adjust the white balance to minimize the color cast but you can only do so much. So I ended up with only one Cokin ND8 filter and at the end I achieved 30 seconds for the +2 stop shot on the smallest aperture. But only 2,5 seconds for the -2 stop shots. And 2,5 seconds is just too short for the nice misty

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HDR Quarantine house Curacao

Bas Pisa — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:51:25 +0000

We went on a holiday to Curacao and there I found an old quarantine house on the edge of a cliff it was an abandoned building with rotten floors, but the light was beautiful, so a nice situation for some HDR shots. I was the only person at the location, probably due to the extreme temperature during the day. I love the way how the color of the light is effected when the HDR technique is used, especially the shot on the left is a good example of what i am talking about. All shots are three shots (-2, 0, +2 stops) combined in Photomatix. I know it is not standard to have such huge color shift but when you play a bit in Photomatix it is an option at least. In in some situation I just love the effect. I used a tripod for all the indoor shots. Most shots taken without tripod failed miserably, just because of the simple fact that it is almost impossible to combine a good HDR is you don’t use a steady base. Also outside where is enough light to achieve a faster shutter speed it is recommended to use your tripod. Personally I always mess it up and keep thinking that I will survive without. Dumb thought!. I hope I will learn eventually (LOL). I always try to get the best result from Photomatix without the need to do more adjustments in Photoshop or Lightroom. Some of the photos in this series needed small corrections because I used a width angle lens and I don’t like the curved lines. But that was basically it. Want to see more? Just click on one of the photos and you will be taken to the gallery where you will find more from this serries.

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Natural macros

Bas Pisa — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:50:07 +0000

I was lucky today. I stood on the balcony and saw a Small White butterfly. It was relaxing in the sun on the glass border of the balcony. I walked upstarts to get my camera with the MP-E 65mm Macro lens and Macro flash. It gave me about 15 minutes to work with it. Unfortunately it was very hard to use the flash on the glass background, and too dark to work with the MP-E 65mm without flash. So I had to improvise. I disconnected the flash from the lens and used it handheld, this gave me the opportunity to move the flash to the back and control the light that way. Personally I am very pleased with the result. Just click on the image to go to the gallery to see more. Later that day, still my gear on the kitchen table, I noticed a few bugs in the garden. All I want to say is I just love to phoograph bugs in their natrual habitat, but that it is hell to do so especially with the Canon MP-E 65mm. For me it is like a bug-hunt and it give me extra credits if I succeed without any animal unfriendly tricks. After reading a very good tutorial (I won’t share the link here) about how to control bugs for macro shots I have to say that I agree in the comments that were placed on this tutorial. You just do not control bugs, if you don’t have to. And if you have enough experience and skill there is no need for this. The guy wrote about freezing insects, using vinegar, using sticky tape and more. I think that the pictures in this article prove that there is no need for bug control. And that it is more then possible

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