Photography, White Balance and Colour Profiling

Posted on April 12, 2019 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

I wrote this out for a friend of mine and thought I should post it here as well. Back in 2010 we wrote a post on Photography and Colour Management, and this is complementary to that post.

When it comes to colour digital photography, many photographers are aware of white balance. If you’re not, this Wikipedia article on Colour Balance explains it well. The essential element is that the human eye sees subjectively (our eyes receive energy as light and our brains interpret what that energy means) whereas digital cameras see objectively. The human perspective is highly adaptable, so no matter where or when we find ourselves, if we see something white, we recognize it as white, no matter what colour it actually is. Cameras can’t do that. If you’re shooting .jpg images you select a white balance setting on the camera – daylight or incandescent or even auto – and the camera’s software shifts the information captured so that white looks, well, white. If you’re shooting RAW, the images captured have no integral white balance and one must be assigned during raw conversion.

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Focus Stacking for Landscape Photography

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

We’re certainly not the first to entertain this idea, but while most people associate focus stacking with macro photography (at really high magnifications one’s depth of field (DoF) can be 0.05mm, or less) focus stacking can have value in architectural and landscape photography, even product photography as well. It’s something I’ve only recently tried so I thought I’d share some experiences.

For any image there’s one point (at most) in the frame that is in exact focus. Depth of field is the range of distances within any particular image that appear to be in focus. We’re not going to weigh you down with the details, like Circles of Confusion, Scheimpflug principle, etc. There’s more than enough information on that available on the web.

Focus stacking is a process whereby one takes a series of images with different points of focus and then uses software to choose sections of each image to create a composite image. Here’s an example:

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A Quick Lightroom Tip

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

I’ve been using Lightroom since the first Beta, but never claimed to know everything. In fact I learned something new today. As I’m sure you do, I often shoot 2-3 exposures in series and then pick the best one of them once I have them in the Lr library. I’ve been opening the Library module in Grid view, selecting the 2 or 3 images, pressing C for Compare view, zooming in, determining which is best and rejecting the other(s), then pressing G to go back to Grid view, selecting the next pair, etc. I don’t often use the filmstrip at the bottom, but I happened to have it open today. What I discovered is this:

Start in Grid view and select two (or more) images for comparison. Press C to go to Compare view, and the two selected images are shown in the filmstrip below. Choose one of the images and X (reject) the other. Now, while in Compare view, click on the frame (not the image) of the next image to be compared in the filmstrip at the bottom and Lr will automatically select the image beside it for comparison. If you have more than two images to compare you can hold down the Shift or Ctrl key to select the next file(s). Compare, choose one, X the others, then press on the frame of the next image to compare in the bottom filmstrip… It’s a lot faster than going back and forth between Compare and Grid views.