aperturism

Fun with light

Sunday, June 12, 2011 5:43 pm posted in Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 5D Mark II, Indoor Photography, Long Exposure Photography

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a really long time and now is the chance. Wondering what this is…? A flashlight suspended with a thread from the ceiling and swung all over the place. Then the light’s path captured with the camera’s Bulb mode.

Picture Info: Shot with Canon 5D MII, 16-35mm F2.8 II. Camera triggered with remote switch to prevent vibration and shutter held open in Bulb mode. Post-processing done to ramp-up the Black channel in the picture and that’s pretty much it.

Had a home-made gel wrapped around the flashlight to get this color.

Thanks for stopping by.. 🙂

posted in Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 5D Mark II, Indoor Photography, Long Exposure Photography Tags: Light Painting

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Mugdha

Friday, June 3, 2011 8:45 pm posted in Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, Portrait

Things that aren’t planned very well in advance works absolutely fine for me, just like this last minute photoshoot of my friend’s daughter Mugdha.

I had fun all the way through this shoot. These shots are from a park near by the apartment complex i live. Mugdha never got tired running around places but made us(Me & her parents) tired quite soon. She was so much fun to shoot.

I used my Canon 85mm 1.8 on 5D Mark II. Here are the pictures..

Got a kid you want me to shoot?, Let me know.. Smoke signal, pigeons..all these would work but i would prefer an email.. 😉

Thanks for stopping by.. 🙂

posted in Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, Portrait Tags: 85mm 1.8mm, Canon 5D Mark II, Mugdha

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Beautifully blue

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 3:27 pm posted in Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 5D Mark II, Landscapes, Nature

My Singh-Ray Graduated ND(Neutral Density) filters as super awesome. The Singh-Ray 3-stop Hard stop Grad ND & 2-Stop Soft Grad ND have been added to my gear list recently and a day with breath-taking clouds is the right day to take it for a spin.

These pictures were shot at a forest preserve near my work. These filters doesn’t have any color shift and worth every buck spent.

For those who are curious what a Graduated ND filter does, here is the explanation. The Grad ND filter is a piece of glass which is graduated to Neutral density for one half and changes to clear glass abruptly or the soft way. The reason, when there is a defined horizon(like the 1st picture below, where you can see the transition between the land & sky) in a scene you can use Hard stop but when there isn’t a defined horizon, you end-up using soft stop filters. This grad ND filters are placed in front of the lens to fool the camera’s sensor.

These filters are a go to piece of gear for landscape photographers when including the bright sky in the picture. I handhold these filters in-front of the lens and trigger the camera with a remote switch(to prevent any vibrations).

Picture Info: Shot with Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f2.8 II, Singh-Ray 3-stop Hard stop Grad ND & 2-Stop Soft Grad ND. Software Used: Adobe LR3 for lens profile correction and CS5 for spot removal(I didn’t notice the dust on my lens while shooting).

Thanks for stopping by… 🙂

posted in Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 5D Mark II, Landscapes, Nature Tags: AdobeLightroom, Chicago, Singh-Ray Graduated ND

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It’s time to HDR indoors

Sunday, May 15, 2011 10:57 am posted in Canon 16-35mm, Canon 5D Mark II, HDR, Indoor Photography

I’ve shot HDR(High Dynamic Range) before but never till now with my 5D MkII and never indoors too. Well, not a bad way to spend the rainy weekend indoors.

If you are wondering what the hell HDR is, let me throw some light(!) on it. The camera for sure doesn’t see the scene like our eyes does. There are various different techniques to bring the effect just like our eyes see the scene, like using Grad ND filters or just plain post-processing the image or HDR.

For shooting HDR, All you need to make sure is the same aperture setting on your camera for all the pictures you are about to shoot. And start shooting pictures with different exposure setting within a range (-1 to +1, this should be easy to figure out from the camera’s dials). The shots have to be tripod mount unless you have a bionic arm.

All the above said works, if your are shooting a controlled environment like something indoors. You can always go onto, AEB(Auto Exposure Bracketing) which tells the camera to shoot pictures in a given range. Nikon does a better job where you can have upto 9 bracketed shots when the camera is set to AEB. The 5D MkII does 3 shots and most Canon does pretty much the same except for the 1D-series where you can get upto 7 bracketed images.

My inspiration on doing HDR is the HDR guru Trey Ratcliff. Each of his image has the ‘wow’ effect in it. I just admire his work.

I know this post is going more than the 1000 word limit, just to mention that i’m aware that there is lot of post-processing involved.. All i can say is.. “Hey..it’s just a different way of looking at the world and more about adding fun”

These bracketed images can be processed with Photomatix or HDR EFex Pro or Adobe CS5.

Here are the shots. And also here is how a single exposure(or a non-HDRed shot) looks like.

Picture Info: 9 shots ranging from -1.3 to +1.3 exposure range. Tripod mount. Post-Processing Info: Images combined with Photomatix, White balance corrected with Adobe LR3 and played with Contrast, brightness, Vibrance & Saturation with CS5.

HDR