HDR Photography | High Dynamic Range | Free Software

HDR. Some photographers love it others hate it. For me it all depends. 

I have to admit that HDR photography can go wrong very quickly and too many times it does. When folks discover HDR they tend to go overboard with the processing. So how is it done do you ask?

It is fairly simple with the help of software out there. All you need is a few images with different exposures. Using a tripod is recommended as you want your images to lign up. The next thing you need is a camera that allows manual exposure. Some most cameras on the market nowadays offer something called Bracketing. Bracketing automates the manual work for you. If your camera doesn't have it, no problem. All you need is a number of photos more than one at different exposures. For the example above I used 3 different shots. First one was underexposed by one stop, the second was overexposed by one stop and the third one was exposed properly. By combining all three I am able to get great detail, contrast and color from areas of my photo which is not possible with just one shot.

There are 3 popular choices out there to choose from but only one is free. First choice is Photoshop. If you have photoshop then great you can do this very easy.  (File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro). Your second choice is Photomatix. It's a great piece of software and it does an awesome job. However both photoshop and Photomatix cost money. Now on to the FREE option. Google Nik Collection. This is a plugin for Lightroom and Photoshop and very easy to use.

Go download Nik Collection and get out there and try it. If you guys need help leave me some comments and I will try to help.

Best Point and Shoot Camera

Sony RX100. That was easy.
A while back i decided I need a smaller camera to take with me on a hikes and other adventures where a full size DSLR with 5 different lenses was not a livable option. So like any other person I looked at the sub $200 price range cameras, thinking i can get something decent.

I bough the Nikon S7000 for a good deal. Costco and Amazon has it on sale for $199 so I figured id try it since i got it for 1/2 price. It lasted about 5 days before i decided to get rid of it. I sold it at what I paid for it just to get rid of it quick.

Pros:

• Small
• Light
• Wi-Fi/ NFC
• Long Range Zoom

Cons:

• No Raw photo ability
• Image Quality Bad
• Focus Bad
• Horrible video

In all honesty my 13MP camera on my Nexus 6 Phone produces better quality photos than this camera and I can even save them as RAW. I still don't know camera manufactures can claim 18mp on a camera yet when you zoom in on the image it looks like a mush. 

I wasn't ready to give up. I was just glad I was able to move on without taking a financial loss on the camera to move to something better.
While the Nikon S7000 was up for sale I was doing some detailed research. I needed something with a 1 inch sensor or better.  I was looking at Sony A6000, the  Canon G7x and Canon EOS M3. I had previously owned a Canon PowerShot G11 which wasn't that bad to be honest. From the Canon PowerShot G11 I had upgraded to a Canon EOS M which was fantastic.(except for slow  save in between photos, maybe my card was really slow.) The  Canon EOS M is a fantastic camera especially with the 22mm STM lens. I did the mistake a purchasing the adapter to be able to attach my canon lenses to the Canon EOS M. Once you do that its no longer portable. I was always thinking i should get this lens with me and this one .. and I was back to having a full bag. I repeated the same mistake when I had my Olympus OMD  E-M10. So this time i was looking for something small where i don't need nor can have accessories or lenses. That's what the big gun is for.

After a good few hours for research I have made my decision. Try the Sony RX100's. There are 4 versions out there and they have different prices. The Sony RX100, Sony RX100 II,  Sony RX100 III and  Sony RX100 IV

Here is my little Excel Comparison.

	RX100 I	RX100 II	RX100 III	RX100 IV
Price	399	499	749	949
Wi-Fi NFC	NO	YES	YES	YES
Hot Shoe	NO	YES	NO	NO
Flip UP Screen	NO	YES	YES	YES
f1.8-4.9 28-100mm	YES	YES	NO	NO
f1.8-2.8 24-70mm	NO	NO	YES	YES
Electronic View Finder	NO	NO	YES	YES
4k Video	NO	NO	NO	YES
1080p	NO	YES	YES	YES
Integrated ND Filter	NO	NO	NO	YES
Slow Motion Video	NO	NO	NO	YES

I decided I'd be happy with any of them on the lowest budget. I don't really shoot a lot of video even though it would be nice to be able to do slow motion video. Anyway I decided to go look local for a used one. Craigslist was my first option. There were 2 on there for sale. One looked a little dinged up Ver 2 and the guy was asking 400 and the other was a Ver 1 and the guy was asking 300 with a case and some cables and a spare battery. I started the negotiations with the both of them. It's not really a good deal unless i get some $$ off the asking price. I managed to get the Ver 1 for $250. Not a bad deal. It looked like it was well taken care of so, $150 less than retail  with a spare battery and a cable to hook it up to the iPad.. .. score.

As soon as i took possession of the camera i immediately took it out for a photo-shoot to see how it holds up to my Nikon D610. I have to say the results were impressive.

This is a long exposure with the RX100  6 seconds, F5.0, ISO 80

Click to see full resolution.

After that I decided to push this little gem. I was covering an event this weekend and I put the camera against my Nikon D7000 and my Nikon D610. Again I was pleasantly surprised.

At 3200 ISO the Sony was performing superior to the Nikon D7000

pixieset.com

As a photographer sometimes you have the need to for the clients to preview and select which images they like and have them edited for them. Before this discovery, i used to put the photos on www.dropbox.com or www.flickr.com and send the link to the customer and i would tell them to email my the file names of the photos they chose.

Now i have found a much easier way of doing this. www.pixieset.com offers you the ability to upload the photos to a collection. Share the collection with your client, and they can select their favorites right that and save them with just their email address. No no need to writhe them down, or copy and paste them to an email. That makes it so much easier for your client.

There is also an advantage for you. It's not big but it helps save time. The website allows you to copy the list of file names and you can just paste it into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 and have all the selected photos right there all selected for you. I know it saves me quite a few minutes of looking thought my LightRoom for that file name and them moving it to a selected folder before editing the photos.

I'm sharing this with you guys because it had been a life saver for me. I'm sure there are quite a few of you out there like me. A hobbit photographer that doesn't make a lot of money off photography and would like to some professional tools without braking a bank.  I only have the free version but it's been great so far. Two thing I wish i could do that would make this more awesome, one is to have private galleries where you can just share via email with a select people and two, is to build my website around this.

If anyone of you are wondering, no I'm not getting paid by pixieset to make this post.
Check out my PixieSet : http://monkifoto.pixieset.com/

Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 14-42mm lens

If you don't know about slickdeals.com you should check it out and add it to your favorites.
On a December sleepless night in Seattle I was killing time watching Netflix and playing on my tablet. When I get a notification form my slickdeals app that the Reconditioned Olympus OM-D E-M10 is on sale for $300 + tax and shipping. Regular price for the camera everywhere i looked . $549. So i figured why not, I can always return it.

I submitted the order at 2am. At 6am i get an email that the camera shipped and it will be delivered in 2 days. I'm excited.
The entire time I was waiting for the camera i was comparing it on the internet with other mirror-less cameras.

It seemed like an OK camera if you just look at specs, until i got it. It turned out to be a fantastic camera. I was thinking i can sell my girlfriends Nikon D7000 and give her this one. I even picked up an Fotasy Nikon to Micro Four Thirds adapter for it to work with Nikon lenses.

The photos with the kit lens were fantastic. They were sharp, vibrant. See the photos below. These were shot a 1/15th of a second ISO 1250

Here is a photo shot with the Fotasy Nikon to Micro Four Thirds adapter and Tokina 100mm Macro lens at ISO 5000. Focus peaking feature of this camera helps out quite a bit when you are using other lenses with the adapter on this camera. The other thing that is a plus, the camera image stabilization is on the sensor itself and not the lens, which means that any lens you use whit this camera will be stabilized which will result in sharper photos altogether.

Here are some photos of my dinner, first day i got the camera. These were shot JPG. Usually I shoot everything in RAW but, I forgot to set the camera to shoot RAW and out of the box it only shoots JPG. These were shot at 1/30th of a second at ISO800.

 

 

The only other camera I have considered besides this one was the Sony A6000. The Sony has a 24 megapixel sensor where this one has only 16 megapixels. Obviously we all want the best that's out there. However given the price that I paid for this camera compared to the Sony, i think this camera is fantastic. There were other things that i loved about this camera compared to the Sony. Most of those things are related to the controls on the camera. The fact that the camera has dials to adjust setting in manual mode for me is a huge plus. Coming from my DSLR I can't just Point an Shoot anymore. It just makes the experience so boring. 

In conclusion I highly recommend this camera if you are on a budget, if you want manual controls or if you want to use other lenses and still keep the IS feature.

MONKIFOTO score: 4/5

Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 VC Broken

It's been a long time since I have posted anything on my blog. But that's because i have been out taking pictures and keeping busy with Instagram. ig:@monkifoto 


About a year ago I purchased one the best lenses in my collection. That was the Tamron SP 70-200MM F/2.8 DI VC USD . In December I took a 6 day trip to Los Angeles. In my entire life i have never gotten around to visiting this place. I had imagined this great metropolis and i wanted to see it. My significant other and I, decided to go spend the Christmas vacation visiting southern California and to see as much as we can and see her family.

On December 22nd landed in LAX at 1pm, and we got our rental and we were off to the races. First stop, Santa Monica. It's very close. We drove up and down the coast and ended up spending a good part of the day at Pacific Park and Santa Monica Pier. Really fun place.

We walked around Santa Monica for an hour and came back to the pier right in time for the sunset. Let me tell you this was a crazy sun set. I have never seen anything this red and strong.

 One of the folks on the beach was telling us that the sunsets in CA are so amazing due to the smog in the air. I don't know what to believe. I believe i'm too lazy right now to do the research and will forget to finish this post.

While we were having this romantic amazing time, watching the sunset... more exactly me running around taking photos and my girlfriend helping me or snapping photos with her iPhone, something bad happened. My amazing wonderful Tamron stopped focusing. I'm not sure what happened. I think dust may have gotten in the lens and jammed the focusing system. I wasn't using my usual Manfrotto 290 tripod which was in the car and the car was parked too far away, i would miss the sunset by the time i got back. So i was shooting hand held and towards the end I ended up using my Manfrotto Mini Tripod which i carry in my bag all the time. This probably how sand got in my lens. I was too close to the ground and the wind was blowing, i was almost in the water.


For the rest of the trip i was forced to shoot in manual mode. It really wasn't a problem the Nikon D610 makes it easy to get perfect focus in manual mode, and this was a great opportunity for me to learn to manual focus properly. For the rest of the trip I took about 1600 photos. Some with this lens some even with my new Kenko 2.0X PRO 300 Teleconverter  which is exactly the same as Tamron SP Auto Focus 2x Pro Teleconverter . These teleconvertors, offer auto focus, just not with the Tamron 70-200. I don't know why, it works with all my other lenses.  I digress.

I got home on the 27th, and the first thing I did, was to call them and made sure that my lens qualified for the 6 years warranty. On the 28th my lens was off to Tamron for repair.. after spending $87 for regular shipping at the UPS store to insure the lens for $1600, and having it packaged properly.

I purchased the lens used from Midwest Photo Exchange store on Amazon. When i bought the lens I didn't know about the fact that Tamron only offers warranty for lenses purchased through authorized dealers. I was very relieved to find out the MPEX was one of the dealers.

Tamron sent me an email as soon as they received my lens and they promised 3 days return. Sure enough 3 days later my lens was in the mail on the way to my house after it was thoroughly cleaned and inspected. I was very happy to have my baby back.

I am so happy with this lens and the service that Tamron Provided, that I sold my Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro  and decided  to purchase the Tamron SP 24-70mm Di VC .

The sigma is a FANTASTIC lens for the price. I just want to have the VC.

In conclusion. Buy Tamron. Their lenses are amazing. As good if not better than Nikon in certain aspects. The price is better and who can argue with 6 years warranty.

Thank you Tamron

If you are wondering why my photos look so faded, its not because of the lens. I just like this look. It's a washed out faded/ filmish look to them. Personal preference. 

Professional Portraits

Recently I have been getting quite a few requests for these new professional portraits. With all the professional sites out there people are looking for better portraits. Your Facebook photo is no longer acceptable on LinkedIn 

The days of the studio background portraits are gone. The new generation of professionals are looking for something to set themselves apart from available pool of talent out there. There is no better way of doing that than standing out, being different and remember-able with a new portrait photo.

As you can see for this example, I talked to the client and asked what exactly she was looking for. She wanted something more than a passport photo. She wanted to be pictured in the working environment. We scheduled the shoot couple of days later. Luckily the weather was beautiful that day so we decided to start outside. We found a park near by the office building and picked a spot under the shadow of a tree.  Perfect lighting.

Thirty minutes later we were off into the office building looking for a conference room. I used 2 shoot through umbrellas and 2 Youngnuo flashes to light up the room.Shooting in the conference rooms becomes tricky if they have lots of windows. You have to watch your reflections.

Tools of the trade

• 2 Yongnuo YN-560 II Speedlight Flash
• Two CowboyStudio 7 feet Photography Light Stands
• 2 Interfit Photographic INT390 33-Inch Translucent Umbrella Lighting
• Yongnuo Rf-602 2.4ghz Wireless Flash Speedlight Trigger with 2 Receivers
• Tamron SP 70-200MM F/2.8 DI VC USD for Nikon
• Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro Aspherical Large Aperture

Verdavanti

A marijuana grower/distributor in Washington asked for my photography services. I was hired to get photos of the products to be used in promotional materials along with their website. This was and awesome gig. I got to play with all my toys and I got something out of it. This was not the fist paid gig, but it was more fun than the rest. It was challenging.  

First off i must begin by saying i know nothing of Marijuana. I know it's legal in Washington and Colorado and that the smell of the Marijuana smoke makes me sick.  With that in mind I was excited. The challenge, how to photograph plants. What is the right lens? What is the right lighting?

Here comes the breakdown. 

Lighting Set Up

For almost all of the shoot i have used to 2 lights(strobes $120) 2 stand($60) s and 2 umbrellas($40) and triggers ($50). This is the cheapest Strobist kit you can put together. Its portable and it's not bad. If you don't know what a strobist is, check out David Hobby's

Strobist.com  for more information. He is a great photographer, DIYer and budget photographer that has great ideas and reviews. 

• 2 Yongnuo YN-560 II Speedlight Flash for Canon and Nikon. GN58.
• CowboyStudio Set of Two 7 feet Photography Light Stands with Cases
• 2 Interfit Photographic INT390 33-Inch Translucent Umbrella Lighting
• Yongnuo Rf-602 2.4ghz Wireless Flash Speedlight Trigger with 2 Receivers

Lenses

For the product shots  

• Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro
• Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF
• Tamron SP 70-200MM F/2.8 DI VC USD for Nikon
• Rokinon 8mm Ultra Wide F/3.5 Fisheye Lens

Also for the product in the jars I used a light tent.

LimoStudio 25" x 25" Square Light Box Tent with 4 x Backdrops

There are other things that I didn't include here because it seems like it was too much. But at some point in the photo shoot i pulled the plants out of the growing light and used the white inside of my LimoStudio 43" 5-in-1, Reflector as a background and shot the plants in the pots. So ya a $15 dollar thing can be used for many purposes.

This was a great experience and I'd love to do it again. And if you get a change you should get out there and challenge yourself and take some great photos.

If you like my photos follow me on instagram. +monkifoto  @monkifoto

If you are interested in the products I just photographed, check out their website.

Verdavanti - Pacific Northwest's Premier Cannabis Grower

www.verdavanti.com/