Today just a small tip that every studio shooter can do.
Often we try to keep softboxes and lights out of the image, but sometimes it’s just plain “cool” to include them. So next time you do a shoot, just try to include the lightsource.
Today some images from a workshop with Marie.
And indeed, ALL these shots are normally done within 1 workshop…
Also want to participate and learn to shoot like this (and more)…?
Check out www.photography-workshops.eu
A little while ago Topaz contacted me if I wanted to play with their soon to be released Clarity plugin. I have to be totally honest that I always had a weak spot for Topaz, they really have some cool filters and I know a lot of my friends also use Topaz.
Now one of the things I love about NIK/Google is tonal contrast and when I was told that if I loved that one I would LOVE Clarity I could not wait. By the way you also don’t have to wait anymore because Topaz has just released the plugin, if you follow this link you can get it (and you support the blog)
Well Topaz didn’t exaggerated, Clarity is like Tonal contrast on steroids, wow.
The layout of the plugin is very functional and when you start the plugin it won’t take you long to start playing with it and getting some awesome results, when diving more deeply in the possibilities I’m sure that you will be just as enthusiastic as me.
The first controls you will start to play with are the contrast sliders, with these sliders you can target certain areas and manipulate their appearance, but this is just the start, when you go further into the plugin you will very quickly see the HSL sliders, for people not familiar with this term it’s actually the Hue, Saturation and Luminance settings panel, meaning you can control colors not only by saturation but also by their hue and brightness (luminance), this is a very cool thing to have in a plugin like this because in fact it can prevent certain problems you could get on more extreme settings (which I did not encounter yet).
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After the review of the Petri 50mm 1.7 a lot of people emailed me about how much they loved me doing these small reviews on very cheap lenses, so I promise there will be more but for today some more images with that super cheap 50mm 1.7 Petri lens.
These images were shot during a workshop with Marie, all natural light wide open.
As mentioned in the review it’s a mixed feeling I have with this lens, the images can be very sharp (even wide open) but the contrast is “weird” and the colors are “funky” but to be honest this is also why I love the lens so much. Do remember that I buy these lenses for their imperfections, if I want a perfect image I will mount the Zeiss 24-70 f2.8 or one of the modern Sony/Minolta lenses, these lenses however give you image “character”. Well at least I think so 😀
