RF-Photography

As many know by now, Adobe has released the first public beta version of Lightroom 4.  For those not familiar, Lightroom is Adobe’s terrific Digital Asset Management/Image Editing application.  Each version has been stronger than the previous and LR4 is no different.  I’m going to cover a couple of the major changes in this article but won’t go into all of the new features. Lightroom 4 Overview, con't >>

Readers of this little piece of the web will know that I don’t typically write about my own projects. But for this one, I think I’m going to make an exception.

For a while I’ve been wanting to do a timelapse video of a hockey game. I wanted to see how it might come out. If it worked, the possibilities for combining timelapse, regular video and stills into a multimedia highlight package might be interesting. Sports Timelapse Experiment, con't >

This is going to be a quick one. For those who don’t have the Extended version of Photoshop or access to other video editing applications like Sony Vegas, Adobe Premier or Premier Elements, there are a few options that you can use and that are, wait for it…… FREE. And who doesn’t like free.

If you’re on the Windows platform, Virtuadub or Avidemux are two choices. I’ve some screen shots below to give you the basic workflow. On the Mac, Avidemux also works and you’ve got iMovie too (no screen shots for iMovie, I’m on Windows and an ABA – Anything But Apple guy).

Virtualdub, on its own, isn’t considered an editing application. There are; however, a ton of plugins (filters as they’re called) that give you a lot of the capabilities of higher end and expensive NLE software programs. Vdub can open a number of different video formats for editing but it’s biggest downfall is that it can only output to AVI. AVI is fine, there’s nothing wrong with it but some sites like Vimeo take longer to convert AVI files and AVI files tend to be larger than other formats (e.g., MP4) with similar quality levels. There’s a decent wiki for it and an active user forum.  The link above has a long list of filters and a bit of Googling will turn up links to plenty more.

Avidemux is a new one that I’ve only played around with a little bit. Someone asked me what options were available for doing timelapse on the Mac so I did a bit of Googling and found it. I’m not really familiar with it but can give a quick overview. It too is a free, open source application and it comes with a decent variety of built in filters. It doesn’t have as many as Vdub and there aren’t people developing filters for it like there are for Vdub. It too has a good wiki and an active user forum. It can open and render a wide variety of formats. Timelapse on a Budget, con't >

This is a follow up to the previous intro to timelapse photography and will discuss using HDR images as the input. I started a group on Vimeo for HDR timelapse and there’s some absolutely stunning work in the collection from some truly talented artists. I’d suggest checking out if you’re looking for some creative inspiration.  HDR timelapse is a very cool sub-genre of timelapse that I was first introduced to a little over a year ago by Walter Arnold of The Digital Mirage.  I haven’t decided yet whether to thank him or curse him for it.    I would really like to see him do some more of this kind of thing though because the clips I saw that got me interested in the technique were very good.

HDR timelapse isn’t any different from regular timelapse once the shooting and HDR merging/tonemapping is done. Where it ups the complexity level is in the shooting. In addition the regular intervalometer, you need an interval timer that will combine with bracketing to get your input images for HDR merging. Shooting Nikon, I’m fortunate that some Nikons have that functionality built in. Other camera makers don’t and getting it can be a bit tricky. The Promote Control mentioned in the previous tutorial will allow you to combine the two. If you’re a Nikon or Canon shooter, Chris Breeze of Breezebrowser fame has developed some software for shooting tethered to a laptop that allows you to combine interval timing and bracketing. The downside is, of course, that you have to be tethered which limits the usefulness of the application in some situations. Canon’s EOS Utility doesn’t offer the combined functionality, nor does shooting tethered via Lightroom v3.x. It’d be very cool if a smartphone app could be developed that would allow you to control the camera via an iPhone or Blackberry (or other smartphone) but still capture to the onboard memory card (sometimes I really do wish I could do programming…… well, no, not really).  When I used to shoot Canon I tried a couple third party intervalometers and while I could get them to combine with in camera AEB, it was kludgy at best.  Some of them top out at 99 shots before having to be reset so if you’re doing a 3 shot bracket, you only get 33 brackets before having to stop to reset the intervalometer.  I don’t believe something like the Canon TC 80N3 can be used to combined interval timing and AEB. HDR Timelapse Tutorial, con't >

I’m likely to slowly migrate most of what’s on my main website to the WordPress format and figured I’d start with this tutorial rather than putting it over there.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of timelapse shooting of late and have had some questions about the process so thought I’d put together a short tutorial. This isn’t going to go into extensive depth on video editing as that’s really beyond the scope of what I’m wanting to outline here.

Timelapse is the opposite of high speed photography. In high speed photography, you capture images at a very fast frame rate and when played back at a normal frame rate, the action appears slowed down. In timelapse, you’re effectively lapsing time or skipping time. You capture at a slower frame rate and when played back at a normal rate, action appears sped up. If you’ve seen, for example, a video of the progression of a flower bud coming into bloom, that’s timelapse. Timelapse Video Tutorial, con't >

HDR Darkroom is another relative newcomer to the HDR software scene. I say relative newcomer because it came to market after many of the well known apps like Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR and FDRTools.  I only became aware of it in the last couple months and decided to add it to the growing list of software apps in this series.

I should state upfront that after sending some questions to the folks who produce HDR Darkroom, they’ve provided me with a full version (sans watermark) and in return, I’m going to provide them with some samples to use on their web gallery at no cost.

Unlike many of the other applications coming out on the market, HDRDR is ‘just’ an HDR application.  It’s not trying to be all things to all people, which is a plus in my book.  They’re concentrating on one thing with HDRDR and concentrating on doing it well.  32 bit files can be saved either as Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr).  When saving JPEG files, there are no quality options.  The file is saved at full size and full quality.  Personally, I prefer this.

On opening the program, the GUI is clean and simple with a menu bar at the top and menu icons down the left.  This allows you to use whatever method you’re comfortable with to work.  Positioning your mouse over an icon brings up a description of what it is so you’re not working blind if you use the icons. HDR Darkroom Review, con't >