First try of exposure fusion with PTGui Pro

Massif des Maures landscape large view here

From version 7.7, PTGui supports exposure fusion. Exposure fusion is another method to create images from scenes with High Dynamic Range. As HDR photography, exposure fusion asks to take multiple exposures of the scene but with exposure fusion no HDR image is created and so there is no need for tone mapping. So it's more easy to produce images with a natural look.

The image above was created from 3 vertical frames with 3 exposures for each.
The 9 corresponding raw files were first processed in SilkyPix and the resulting tif files stitched with PTGui Pro version 7.8.
PTGui automatically recognized the multiple exposures for each frames and made a beautiful work while blending them. Also when stitching but it's not too difficult with this kind of images.
I spent hours looking for blending/stitching errors in the resulting file but couldn't find one. Just amazing !
At the end, i just had tu use PictureWindow Pro to make some very little tweaks to this resulting file and produce the final image.

Some will say that this image is not a good example because one exposure for each frame could be enough. That's not false and i've also made the same work with only 1 exposure. But when shooting i had to slightly underexpose to keep all the details in the lighted rocks. At proccessing time when working on the shadows areas i wanted to open them a little bit. As they were corresponding to the very left part of the histogram the the result was not so rich in colors and details than in the multi exposure files...

In first conclusion i would say that PTGui can make a very beautful work with exposure fusion and can save many time with avoiding manual blending of exposures.
In the landscape context it can be a very good tool but remeber it can't make impossible things when some parts of the scene are moving (branches in the wind...)
In my day job context, i think it will save me a great time when working on interiors shots.

In second conclusion, i invite you to compare the image above with the one just under these words. It was taken at the same place just one year before. You can see that the bush's colors are not the same. It's not due to processing, it's just because this year we had some rain late in the springtime. It's less photogenic but it's really better for the forest and can protect her (little) from the fires.

Nikon D700

Inside
Here it is, Nikon has just announced its new professional DSLR  the Nikon D700.
This new body is built around the new Nikon FX sensor and will be ready for sale in July.
For me this body is an answer (more than an answer) to the Canon 5D which was the first consumer DSLR with a full frame sensor. The D700 is not really a consumer camera but its french price should be under 3000 euros including VAT and it should be a robust, well designed, pleasant to use and powerfull tool. Just like the D200 and D300...

I didn't switch from the D200 to the D300 because i didn't see any interest in the 2 megapixels upgrade while staying with the DX format.

So, will i switch to the D700 ? I can't say no but that's not sure. Here is what i have in mind about this choice :

• In my work i don't need the high ISO capabilities provided by the FX sensor. I would prefer some low ISO for long exposures without filters.

• D200 images are 3872 pixels large and D700 images will be 4856 pixels large. The difference will be of 984 pixels (3.3 inches when printing at 300 dpi). Of course the FX sensor should produce some very clean files at normal ISO and they should be easily upsized.

• I think that Canon will soon increase the resolution of his entry level full frame DSLR and then Nikon will do the same one year later and things will go on...
  This megapixels race has started with digital photography and it was never a reason for me to wait for the next best one when i needed a camera upgrade. Today things are differents. During the past years, Canon was playing alone with 24x36mm sensors and today Nikon arrives. I think that things will move soon and i'm really not sure that an immediat 2 megapixels upgrade would really increase my printing possibilities.

I'm not ready to buy but... for some years i dream of a large and bright viewfinder. So i think i'll wait a few months to let them correct the first bugs, read some reviews, try a D700 and decide. :)

A very few words about color management

Colors and waves - Mediterranean seascape
One year ago, i've promised to write here something about color management and ...I'm re-thinking to that know.

An in depth explanation would be too technical for my basic english so i will just say that with digital imaging color management is the only way to control how a screen color will print and (if possible) how other peoples will see the colors you see on your screen. So :

• If you're a photographer, colors management helps you to produce the prints you want.
• If you publish images on the web, with color management you can have an idea of how your readers will see your colors.
• If you're just looking at photos on the web, with a color managed display you can see the colors and tones the photographer wants to show.

If you're interested by these few lines and want to know more, i recommend the 2 following links :

• One from Tom Niemann, easily understandable and focusing on monitor calibration.
• One from Norman Koren, more complete (monitors and printers) and more technical.

In conclusion i will just add that for some years, i profile my screens and printers with Datacolor products. I don't know if your screen is color managed so i can't know how you see my images but prints coming from my printers or from printing companies have the colors i want.

If you like HDR photography

It will be a short post today, i just wanted to share a beautiful blog i've just discovered. I'm not a big fan of HDR photography but some people are doing awesome work with it.
Hidyn Gems features daily some beautiful HDR images founded on the net. I've just spent one hour browsing the posts and it was a pleasure for my eyes :)

The image below is not an HDR one, it's just one i like from my most recent landscapes.

Lac des Escarcets - Provence

Photo stitching for high definition images

Provence waterfall

I've started stitching digital images when i was still shooting film. After scanning slides, i was stitching them manually with a basic photo editing software to produce panoramics landscapes.

With digital shooting stitching can still help for panos or to produce some high definition files.

How does it work ?

Imagine you are framing a shot with your DSLR and a 17 mm lens. If you use a longer lens, you can decompose the shot in more frames. Say 4 for example. But with the longer lens, you will capture more details in each shot and if you can stitch these shots together you will obtain a file with more pixels and most important, more details.

Here are some important points if you want to be able to stitch your shots and have a high quality result :

• Your shots must overlap.
  
• In most of cases, every shot should receive the same exposure. So set your camera on the manual mode.
  
• Your shots sould not include moving elements.
  
• For the best results, you should rotate you lens around an axis passing threw the entrance pupil of the lens to avoid parallax errors. So, you should use a sturdy tripod with a QTVR pano head.
  

About the last point : Today stitching softwares like PTGui can often stitch images even if they are suffering of parallax errors and you can shoot without a specific pano head and sometimes without tripod. But if you want to use some wide angle lenses or shoot a landscape with an important forgeground the software can fail and the pano head is the only real solution. And in all cases, the tripod will improve image sharpness ...

The waterfall photograph illustrating the top of this post was produced by stitching 9 D200 images taken with a 28 mm lens and for the forest image, i've stitched 4 D200 photos made with a 35 mm lens.
As usual, i shot in raw mode, raw files were converted to 48 bits tif files with SilkyPix and tif files were stitched with PTGui.


Provence forest

An overview of my photographer day job

As told in my profile, the most important part of my photographer day job is about corporate shooting for luxuous industries around Saint-Tropez.

What doest it mean ?

I work on hire for enterprises in the real resort market : villas, swimming pools makers, gardens makers, etc ...
For me it's an other way to make landscape photography but with other constraints. When i make natural landscapes "for me", i go where i decide to go and when i guess the light will be the best. When working on hire, it could be different. The clients have to work to prepare the villa or garden before the shooting session. I've a pre-defined appointment and when i come if the light is not the best, i have to make the job and produce good images anyway.

Another part of my job is to make paintings photographs for some painters. They use my images for their archives, to make their books, to send to galleries, to update their websites or to sell prints. I always love to see these artworks and making good photos is always a pleasant challenge.

For me and after many years, this job is still and always exciting but don't think i spend the most important part of my time shooting with my cameras. I also have to process, sort and backup all my raw files. Twenty years ago i was graduated as a software engineer and worked many years in this job. I think it really helps me in my photography work. Switching from film to digital was easy and color management is before all a computer thing ...

And as in any other job i have to make "public relations", to make invoices, to run after the money, to count the money and to pay taxes :)

That's about fine art photography

Parasol pines forest in Provence
Forêt de pins parasols en Provence
How could i define fine art photography ?
What is a fine art photograph ?
What fine art prints are ?

First, i think that with fine art photography, the term making a photograph is more correct than taking a photograph.
A fine art photograph must reflect the photographer vision before featuring the reality. When i'm in the field to make a photo, i know what i want her to look like before looking threw the viewfinder or pressing the shutter release. And that's not only about framing but also about colors and contrast rendition.
Making the photo just starts by beeing there and looking at the scene with my mind and heart.

When the camera has captured the scene, starts the second part of the making process.
In the digital darkroom, i develop the raw file to produce a digital image looking like the scene i have in mind. When done i make a first print at around 7x10". Then i check the print, eventualy make some file adjustments and print at 12x18". If this second print looks OK, i archive and backup the file, if not i continue with file adjustments ...

About photography, digital and printing equipement :

Making a fine art photograph can be very time consuming and a good equipement can avoid disappointments about image quality after a long work.

Lenses :
The lens realy makes the image that will be seen by the camera sensor. A good lens can ensure sharpness and can avoid distorsion, corners shading or artifacts like chromatic abberation.

Camera body :
A good viewfinder can realy help with framing and focus checking.
The sensor quality will permit (or not) to capture a raw file containing all the colors and luminosity informations about the scene. With a good sensor (and good settings) it's possible to have noise free shadows and respected highlights.

Computer screen and software :
The computer screen is a master piece during all the digital workflow. He shows me what i do when i adjust the image file. So it's realy important for me to have a perfectly calibrated and profiled screen. In the same way i only use fully color managed software.

Printers, papers ans inks :
Today all pro photo inkjet printers can deliver wondeful prints. Once more if some wants a print to look like what he has in mind or what he sees on a computer screen, he must use a fully color managed system. Profiles must be done for each paper / ink combinations.
Last thing : It's possible to make some very nice fine art prints with non archival papers and inks but in this case selling them can be a little more delicate ...

I'm realy not a technology addict but all this stuff is here to produce prints featuring with the most fidelity and the best quality what i have in mind.

Fine art prints of the image above are for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Jump into a high definition image

Powered by Zoomify

Zoomify is a friendly tool for photographers and web designers. It gives a free and easy way to show some zoomable high definition images on any website or blog.
I think it can be very useful for a digital photographer because it permits to show all the details in an original image file without the need of diplaying the full size picture and so without giving anybody the possibility to stole the high resolution file.

If you want to try Zoomify, just download it from Zoomify website. You will obtain a special Flash viewer and the Zoomify executable software.
Just run the software, open the image you want to work with and that's all. Zoomify will split the image in many tiles saved in a special folder and produce an html template. You can test the result on your own computer by opening the template in your web browser.
To publish it on your website, you need :

• To upload the Flash viewer and the tiles folder on your website.
• To design an html page (or a blog post) with some of the template code.

The image above is available for sale as a fine art print in my Etsy shop.

Just a few things

On Sunday i had my first sale on Etsy. Someone bought a 45x30cm fine art print of this sunflowers field landscape.

I've just updated the Useful Tools links list on the right column of this blog with one new link.

• Zoomify provides a nice and free tool to make zoomable web images. Very simple, this tool permits to show some high definition images on the net. I think i will soon show some here and probably implement it in my panoramic images gallery on patmo.net.
  

Pixels, dpi, ppi. Where is the image size ?

Lac des Escarcets, panoramic landscape

With digital photography, some are a little bit confused with images sizes in dpi, ppi, pixels or inches (or cm).

First, in my mind the only real unit for digital image size is the pixel.
Second, dpi and ppi are same things : dpi is for dots per inch and ppi is for pixels per inch.

Printing at 300 dpi means you will use 300 image's pixel to print one inch of paper.
So if you want to print a photo at 300 dpi on a 10 inches wide paper your photo must be 3000 pixels wide (10x300=3000).

The original file for the picture above has 7155x2385 pixels. If i print it at 300 dpi i'll have a print of 23.85x7.95 inches or 60.58x20.19 cm. If i print it at 200 dpi i'll have a print of 35.78x11.93 inches or 90.87x30.29 cm.

If someone tells you I want your images at 300 dpi, it's incomplete. He must tell you the needed print size (in inches or cm).

During the last years, most of the DSLRs gave 6 Mega Pixels images : 2000x3000 pixels.
At 300 dpi, this image can be printed on a 16.93x25.4 cm page.
If a magazine wants to print it on a full 20x30 cm page, he has to solutions.

• printing at 254 dpi instead of 300 dpi.
• increasing the file size by software to obtain a 3543x2362 pixels image.

Autumn photo story

I took this photo in november 2004 and since it's one of my bestsellers in many artshows.
It shows an horizontal chestnut tree trunk. In fact the tree has two trunks this one and an other vertical.

I wanted to show the entire trunk with this kind of bow covered with lichens and moss in the foreground. I choosed a wide angle lens and turned around the tree looking for the best place. As i needed a great DOF, i had to use a very small aperture and so, a slow shutter speed. After a few minutes searching i didn't found a place to put my tripod and frame as i wanted. So i fold the tripod's legs and "locked" them with some little stoned into a hole in the trunk. The shot was finaly done with this setup and using a remote controler.

PTGui Pro : first impressions

For now more than one month i stitch all my panoramic photos with PTGui Pro.
The software is still in beta state and versions are updated very often so i won't write here a real full review but just give my firsts impressions.

About normal (not HDR) images :

• The control points generator seems to be more accurate.
• Blending is very good in most of the cases but sometimes using smartblend as a plugin can improve the result.
• Speed and memory management are very nice. I could stitch some huge panos on an old HP Vectra with Pentium III and 384 MB of RAM.
• I've noticed a little bug with Vertical lines control points but it's not a real issue and i think it will be corrected in a future update.

The HDR side :

As told in a previous post, i'm not a HDR fan. But HDR management beeing one of the biggest improvement of PTGui Pro, i've tested it with some landscapes in difficult light conditions.
So here is what i can say :

• PTGui makes a very good work to identify and align the different exposures of the same shot.
• I've noticed some kinds of dark halos in some parts of the resulting HDR files. This problem does'nt show when i combine the same source files in Photomatix Pro. In the PTGui versions history i read they fixed this bug but i didn't verify.
• The Tone Mapping tool is too basic in my mind and the preview is too small. I find very hard to obtain results having a natural look.

Conclusion :

For me PTGui Pro was the natural update for PTGui to compete with AutoPano Pro and every panoramic photographer will enjoy its simple interface and the quality of the resulting files. For me there is no doubt that the HDR functions will be improved in the future updates.

My Dimage A1 seems to be dead

When i was shooting film i used a few Minolta cameras. As i early moved to digital, i switched to a Nikon only equipment for my work but i also bought some Canon point and shoot and some Minolta bridge cameras.
The first of theses DSLR like was a Dimage 7i. I sold it in 2003 to buy a Dimage A1. This one had a few things i liked : A very good and sharp 28-200 lens, an AS system, a more robust body and a better buffer for RAW shooting.
The Dimage 7 and A where some small and light cameras delivering some nice pics at 100 ISO, i used to always have one of them with me. With them i captured some nature shots i still like and sell and i also used them to play and shoot with my 3 years old daughter.
Last week i went for a few days van trip with my wife and daughter, i took the A1 with its bag thinking to catch some nice family candids. When i switched on the camera the viewfinder and LCD where black and the light metering system indicated 13 seconds at f2.8. I changed the battery, removed the card, nothing to do, the viewfinder was still black and trying to shoot a white bright scene gave me a black picture.
For me it seems to be a dead sensor.
I'll try to send it to the French Sony support service, i think they can replace the sensor for free if the problem is due to oxydation. If they don't, i'll sell my last Minolta gear : a 5600 HSD flash.

PTGui Pro : PTGui's answer to AutoPano Pro

PTGui started its life a few years ago as a GUI (Graphic User Interface) for Panorama Tools.
In the first versions i used, i had to set all control points by hand, and file processing was a little slow.
While taking age, PTGui was realy improved : files processing was greatly increased and the software offers now a few tools for an automatic detection of control points. The last stable version (6.03) is one of the most powerful tools for stiching panoramic images.

Near one year ago, a french developper launched Autopano Pro who's is in my mind the only real competitor of PTGui. AutoPano is easy to use and produces some images of high quality with a big plus for some photographers : it handles HDR.

I'm not an HDR fan but sometimes it can be useful to combine different exposures to avoid highlights clipping and noisy shadows so i was surprised that PTGui didn't seem to do anything in the HDR way.
It's done now, i discovered this morning on the PTGui website that PTGui Pro will be soon released and will support HDR.

If you like panoramic photos, you can check mines on patmo.net.

SilkyPix a nice raw converter

As said in other posts, i always shoot raw to keep all the data my camera can capture. So the raw converter is a big key of my post processing workflow and choising the good software is very important. For more than one year i process all my raw files with SilkyPix.
It can process the raw files from near all digital cameras and if i'm not wrong from some digital backs. I mostly use some Nikon DSLR but i also have some cameras of other brands and it's nice to be able to use always the same tool for raw conversion.
SilkyPix has near all the functions someone can hope from a raw converter and the resulting files are of a very high quality.

White balance can be set to many predefined options or processed by SilkyPix. In all the cases it can be manually tuned in many ways.

Color rendition can also be tuned by editing color curves and/or use some predefined models. Still about colors, the software has a nice tool to make some selective fine tunings.

Same thing for tone and contrast : you can choose some predefined settings and/or edit it by tuning the tone curve or using some sliders to change contrast, gamma and black level.

SilkyPix also have many options for sharpening and noise reduction and it's not so hard to obtain some very clear and detailed photos.

So, what's wrong :
The highlights recovery tool is not of an easy use. It's better you don't overexpose your photos.
I think it's missing an easy tool to push up the shadows like the DLightening tool of Nikon Capture.
I'd like to be able to compare side by side two versions of the same raw file processed with different parameters.

Sigma 10-20 and Nikon DSLRs

With digital photography and APS sized sensors, it can be difficult to find a nice wide angle zoom lense.
For near one year i use the Sigma 10-20 EX with my Nikon DSLRs.
Around 10 mm i retrieve the framings i loved with my wide angle lenses when i was shooting 24x36 mm films.
Some reviews told this lens was suffering of a strong shading but it's really not an issue on mine. I never noticed this although printing big frames.
Sharpness is good, the lens feels robust and the HSM focusing is very nice.
In my mind the only default is that some landscapes sometimes show a strong distorsion in their upper right angle.

A few words about white balance

I've just published on patmo.net one new article about white balance giving some precisions about color temperature, white balance adjustment and a few tips to avoid some common problems in digital photography.

As this article is published in french, english readers can try some automatic translation with google or babelfish.

About my Nikon cameras

I have owned (and still own some) many cameras of many brands : Olympus, Minolta, Nikon ...
Today, i almost always use two Nikon DSLRs : Nikon D100 and D200. These cameras seem to be done for fitting my hands, i love their ergonomics where the good thing is always under the good finger. AF is awesome and metering very acurate.

Today for a landscape photographer shooting raw, each camera brand can deliver some very nice files with enough quality to enable very large prints. So my choice is done on ergonomics, reliability and viewfinder. Some people shooting JPEG in low light with high ISO could have other criteria ...