New G2 photo gallery + old b&w film gallery

[fjcbs]

Helllo!

To whom it may interest, I have some photos taken with my new G2 since last April
at http://pwp.netcabo.pt/francis.silva/photo/photo.html

This galleries are being updated as I take new photos.

There are also some old B&W film galleries.

Thanks ahead for your interest.

I sure would appreciate some comments and critique.

Best regards.

[Leighow]

FRANCISCO

You have some terrific shots here. Several of the flowers scenes look like kaleidoscopes.
But "this week's winner" is the still life with cherries. You must have tossed out a few dozen “seconds” before selecting these blemish-free targets. Very beautiful.

HOWIE

[fjcbs]

Thanks for the kind words, howie.

Well, lets just say those two where the only targets left!

I've been shooting some more and should include some new galleriesby the end of the month.

Best regards,
Francisco

[jinushaun]

Nice pictures!

I found the B&W to be the best. Call me old-fashioned, but many of your coloured images didn't seems to have the same impact that the B&W ones had. The flower images, for example, seemed too busy. There were so many things in the background that it kinda took away from the subject. Some of the shots should have been taken closer.

My favourite cat pic is the one with cat in the pot. It's so adorable!

The B&W landscapes were awesome. I especially liked the ones with the clouds. Your treescape photos were positively terrifying!

[fjcbs]

Thanks for your comments, Jinushaun.

B&w as always been my main subject but since I bought the G2 I've been trying to lean to shoot in color. I still have to find my way at it.
I also want to try to do some b&w with the G2 in a near future.

I have some misty treescapes taken recently with the G2. I’ll post them soon to a new gallery.

Since I bought the G2 I’ve hoped for a cloudy sky but no way… Always full clear blue or misty gray overcast. The only days with big fat clouds have been when I’m stuck inside the office! Well, I guess one has to work to buy all this new toys… and to earn some money to be able to dream for a Canon D60 or a Nikon D100 and a couple of nice lenses.

About the cat in the pot, that was some old pot we used to boil water to treat a very bad cold she had when we brought her home, about a year ago. Since then the pot as been in that table and she jumps inside when she feels like it!

[Don Ellis]

How did I miss this post?

You have some great shots, Francisco. Lovely stuff. Your G2 infrared shots are surprising and I would love to know how many shots and how much time it took you to get them. I've added that link to a tiny number of bookmarked G2 infrared galleries so I can mention it when people ask if it's possible. Not only possible, but beautiful.

Natasha is what? a blue-point Siamese? Certainly looks like Max, my blue-point companion for 14 years (long before my G1 or G2). Great shots... brought back memories.

And on, and on... good photography attractively displayed. As Howie said, the cherries are super. I'm glad I finally ran across your post.

Cheers,

Don

[fjcbs]

Thank you for your enthusiastic and encouraging words, Ron.

Well, about the infrareds, they were almost all taken in a couple of afternoons in a forest near Sintra - about 20 km from where I live here in Portugal.
Must have shoot between 50 to 100 images each day, including color.
I visit this place whenever I can for the quiet and the ambience of the forest.

The thing I find most annoying about infrareds with the G2 is the long exposure times (much longer than with the G1 I believe). It makes photographing trees (and plants/flowers) extremely difficult because they get all blurred out by the wind.
Another thing I'm still trying to discover is the right color balance to these infrared images. Well, maybe after I get more friendly with Photoshop's curves and levels...

I've been evaluating Breeze Brower and the galleries were generated with it and some templates altered by me.

You got it! Natasha is indeed a blue-point Siamese with some traces of Common European (she's not pure). She is a very independent cat and not very sociable. She bites after a couple of strokes!!!

Best regards,
Francisco

PS - Well, I was going to mention to you this web site I saw the other day with some amazing infrareds (and the others also) and then I didn't because I couldn't remember the address... the I clicked in the link to your homepage and there it was! That's why your name sounded so familiar...
Thanks again for your kind comments. I’m proud to read them coming from you.
Your site and your images have been quite inspiring and were the main reason I bought the Hoya 720 IR filter.

I’m still looking for one of those green fellows that keep showing in your photos, but till now no good luck

[Don Ellis]

fjcbs wrote:I’m still looking for one of those green fellows that keep showing in your photos, but till now no good luck

Hi Francisco,

Natasha didn't look quite slinky enough to be all Siamese but I wasn't going to mention any impure thoughts. She's beautiful (and bitchy, apparently).

Since our goal here is beauty and you're looking for ice greens, let me see if I can help. I don't have an infrared workflow on my website, so I'll just pencil in some thoughts here on image adjustment.

First big hint: RAW MODE and CUSTOM WHITE BALANCE.

Yes, I'm shouting. Shoot in RAW only. You will need the custom white balance abilities of BreezeBrowser (or other converter) to get good infrared photos. You lose this ability with JPG images.

As a reference on my site, I would like you to take a quick look at two galleries: Infrared Variations and Infrared Bali.

The difference is time and experience, although they were all shot in RAW.

Infrared Variations were batch converted "as shot" from RAW to TIF in BreezeBrowser, while the Infrared Bali photos were converted individually with a custom white balance set for each picture. If I had used the batch "as shot" method, the Bali photos would be coming out purple as well with no lovely greens.

Another nice thing about RAW is that I still have the negatives and could go back to the "variations" shots and recovert them. But like a shark, I tend to keep moving forward, so I've left them as they are; first, because most people are getting the same purples and I can use them as an example, and, second, because I'm not willing to redo 55 pictures -- 11 shots + 4 variations each.

"The Peak" gallery photos were also batch converted before my custom-white-balance awakening, but because they're grayscaled and quadtoned, it's not so noticeable.

A word on converting to Grayscale -- DON'T. At least not directly. There are a variety of ways to achieve grayscale images, but a fast and better way is to do the following in Photoshop...

1. Choose Image, Mode, Lab
2. Select Lightness from Channels Palette (things will go grayscale at this point).
3. Choose Image, Mode, Grayscale

And there you are. To tone them, you'll need to then do "Image, Mode, Duotone" (for duo-, tri- and quadtones).

Which brings up another reason I'm not willing to redo the "variations" shots: I converted all to grayscale the normal way and did the four variations on each photo -- and then discovered the Lightness channel method the next morning. So I sat down and did them all again. Twice was enough.

One last comment: setting your white balance is not a precise science and allows for a lot of slop. Don't worry too much about it: Just don't pick an absolute white. Look for something about 18% gray. If you've got a cloud, don't go for the big, white, fluffy center -- click on the medium gray edge. Click on concrete. Click on a medium-light plant. You can play around and see the changes in BreezeBrowser (maybe other programs, I don't know).

Here's to your getting some greens. I like them well enough that I'm reluctant to grayscale them.

Cheers,

Don

Last big hint: RAW MODE and CUSTOM WHITE BALANCE. (You get older, you get redundant -- but it's worth repeating.)

And I sympathize with the very much longer exposure times of the G2 infrared shots. Sometimes I think I should go out and buy a second G1 and put it in a safe as a spare.

[fjcbs]

Hello again Don,

I'm shooting only in RAW mode since I got the 1Gb Microdrive (on the same day I got the IR filter...).

Funny you mention the custom white balance. I found it only last Saturday in BreezeBrowser and it seemed to do a lot of difference to some images - you're absolutely right about where to take the reading.
I’m going to do some testing and fiddling with my old RAW files.

Another thing I found in your images is the smooth colors and gradients, and an absolute lack of noise. My IR images were almost all shot at f/8 to maximize DOF but since then I learned that that is not necessary because the G1/G2 lens has plenty of DOF at smaller apertures.
I may be wrong here in terms of infrared photography because of the shift in the focal plane caused by shooting in another wavelength…
[After writing this paragraph I returned to your images to check your aperture settings and found you used f/7 almost always! Should I stand corrected? …]

Shooting at f/8 caused most of my exposures to jump to about 8-15 seconds and that creates noise and hot pixels show up (camera gets hot).

Last week I stumbled at a very instructive article at Luminous Landscape about Duotones/Tritones/Quadtones. I haven’t had the time to try it but that’s one thing in my agenda for sure. After looking at your examples I can see it works for real.

I guess your phrase resumes it very well: “The difference is time and experience”.
I still have to learn a lot, spend ‘time’ at it and gain ‘experience’. I’ve been reading many articles and forums – mostly at Luminous Landscape, Fred Miranda’s, Outback Photography and Digital Darkroom.
Next thing is to take photographs to apply all the learning… at the digital darkroom!

Thanks for the advise and this nice talk.
I’ll try it soon in some of those “old” RAW infrareds and will keep you posted.

Best regards,
Francisco

PS - almost forgot to comment on your "redoing" the same thing again to all those images...
I keep doing it to old images, mostly to those I like the most... I did several times (in a smaller scale) to my infrareds... I guess I'm going to do it again

Have fun!

[Don Ellis]

fjcbs wrote:[After writing this paragraph I returned to your images to check your aperture settings and found you used f/7 almost always! Should I stand corrected? …]

Just a quick note because I'm off for a meeting, but I think you misread or mistyped. Nearly all of my infrared photos are f2.0 and f2.2. Nothing in the f7 or f8 range.

Best regards,

Don, as in Don, not Ron

[fjcbs]

Hi Don,

Sorry about that typo with your name

Silly me, I was reading the focal length, not the aperture value!
So that means my thoughts were right about the aperture not needing to be so small since at a focal of 7mm with f2.0 everything looks in focus (at least in infrared...).

Best regards,
Francisco