Went to Sound Bites Grill, my favorite restaurant, to see some of my favorite musicians play and was not disappointed on either case. Food was great and the entertainment of Miller, Martin and Ki was stellar as usual.
And also as usual, even though I wasn’t working I brought my Lumix GX8 with the 20mm f1.7 lens to the party to try to push some features. The table I was at had a very tough view of the stage as far as the camera goes. Deep shadows in the corner and Sunlit rocks out the window behind. I thought I’d try the HDR setting to see how it would do. There are menu choices of bracketing by one, two or three stops but there’s also an automatic setting. Now there’s an additional part of this challenge we have moving people. I made a number of exposures with a few distorting features until I realized I needed to bump up the ISO to get faster shutter times and watch for moments ‘between the movements’ of the performers.
Finished image. But, what I’d like you to do is compare the two images below to see the difference.
Straight out of Camera – 20mm @1.7 ISO 1600 Aperture Priority with auto setting for HDR capture
SOOC – 20mm @ f1.8 400 ISO Aperture Priority
Call for some more experimentation but I think the camera HDR setting handled a very difficult scene extremely well. A little additional processing in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop could tweak the HDR image to be somewhat better in taming the saturation and working tones a bit but I’m happy.
“Wait a minute Bob I thought the HDR feature saves images as jpegs. How are you going to process the file in ACR??”
If you have the image highlighted in Adobe Bridge using CMD R (mac) or Ctrl R (pc) will open the jpeg image in Adobe Camera Raw allowing you to use those controls. Very handy!
I also captured some 4K video that I haven’t had time to process. That will have to wait for another post…
Last Saturday night I was on hand to photograph not one but two wonderful artists at Sound Bites Grill in Sedona, Arizona.
Part of my job there is to capture the musicians live on stage and create artwork for the Sound Bites Grill ‘Wall of Fame’. The other part of my gig is to create ‘straight’ photography images to help in promotion and things like press releases for when the artist returns for a future performance.
Here’s a description from his web site where you can check out his music. (I particularly like ‘Everlasting Desire’!) “Propulsive, melodic rock guitar in the hands of Grant Ferguson is a powerful reminder of the instrument’s glory days. Influenced by some of the great axe masters: Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, The Edge and others, Ferguson is pushing his all-instrumental sound toward a new rock vision.”
Grant Ferguson makin’ some beautiful sounds flow from his guitar. – Camera Lumix GX8
Live on stage at Sound Bites – Camera Lumix GH4
Grant captured with the new Lumix GX8. All images used the Lumix 35-100mm f2.8 lens
Following Grant’s set there was a break and we heard from Blues guitarist Leroy Miller.
A little about Leroy from his web site. Check his music (Try Over You from the self titled album) “Los Angeles blues sensation Leroy Miller has worked on countless recordings for music’s brightest stars like John Mayer, Macy Gray and Smash Mouth. Leroy has toured all over the world as a supporting act for bands such as Aerosmith and the Dave Mathews Band.”
Leroy Miller got the crowd up and dancing with his high energy rock guitar. Camera GX8
Leroy Miller – Camera Lumix GH4
Leroy Miller wailin’ it! Camera GH4
In putting the images together I make conversions to black and white for all of the press images. This guarantees the best look when printed on a press. If someone just converts a color image to grayscale the reproduction of the detail can get lost especially in newspaper reproduction. I often use Google’s NIK Silver FX Pro 2 for making the conversions. It gives me lots of options to make the Black & White have tones from light to dark without getting muddy or flat.
On this shoot I tried out the new Lumix GX8 for the first time under LED stage lights to see how it held up to the dark shadow areas and the lack of full spectrum in the stage lighting. I was impressed. While I would replace my GH4 camera with the GX8 I wouldn’t hesitate to use it as a back-up or grab it in a pinch. The quality of the images wouldn’t suffer one bit.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – I’ll show the Grant and Leroy’s ‘Wall of Fame’ images in a couple days.
Playing some more with the in-camera panorama stitching on the Lumix GX8 again… This time in the Village of Oak Creek with Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte as the stars of the show. I used the 20mm f1.7. This combo worked very well when keeping the lens pointed straight ahead. If you tilt the camera up there will be a bit of bending of the horizon.
Here’s the original capture SOOC with a minus 2/3rds of a stop exposure adjustment to bring down the sky to a deeper blue. One of the benefits of being able to see what you camera is capturing I could tell that it was going to be a bit overexposed before shooting.
Here’s the finished image with a bit of post production. Darkened the road. Removed a couple vehicles. Increased saturation a little. Added some contrast with Google’s NIK Detail Enhancer. The only place I ran into a stitching evidence was after applying the Detail Enhancer the blue portions of the sky showed the beginnings of unwanted lines. Using a Layer Mask took care of that problem.
This image could easily print to 14 X 42 inches and probably larger if I wanted to work at it a bit and depending on what material I was printing on.
Last night I was at my local and the Lumix GX8 with a 20mm f1.7 lens was in my hand. Played with some presets. Shot RAW and jpeg.
And, since I wasn’t really thinking I never moved away from the 1.7 f stop. But, it’s pretty amazing what you can do in post to save an image. Just to make it a little tougher I used one of the saved jpegs with a deep BW setting to work with.
The first image is straight out of camera.
This is SOOC with a deep contrast BW setting from the camera
I opened the above jpeg in Adobe Camera Raw by highlighting the image in Adobe Bridge and pushing CMD R MAC, (CTRL R PC) This gives you all the controls or ACR although it doesn’t give you access to the RAW info of the file it allows you to use the adjustment tools.
In this case I added a good dose of clarity to add a bit of tooth to the image, opened up the shadows, knocked down the highlights and opened up the shadows just a bit with a curves bump. Both have an interesting feel but I feel the second one with just a touch more punch worked better.
I believe you need to look around before you can see. And, you need to spend time seeing before you can create a vision with your photography. This is a post about an exercise I did and ask people to do to expand their vision. There are many variations on forcing yourself to study an area until you’ve come close to exhausting the photographic possibilities. In this case the ‘assignment’ was to photograph this subject without moving more than 5 feet in any direction for a minimum of 30 minutes to an hour.
Having a capable camera with you at all times helps to define your vision. The low profile and light weight of the micro 4/3rds system makes it easy for me to be more creative. In this case various Lumix lenses and the Lumix GX8 were used in the capture…
Here are contact sheets from the shoot followed by some of my favorites from the shoot…
Contact sheet one images are SOOC (straight out of Camera)
Contact sheet 2
Contact sheet 3… There were about 4 plus contact sheets all together but you get the idea!
Below were a few of the images I worked up from the session followed by a Time-Lapse of the shoot.
Black and white turned this into a very graphic feel and tells the story of ‘Place’
Aerial view with fish eye lens
Mood piece with some NIK Color Pro 4 FX. Dreamy…
Then it was on to the story of the Knights.
Many other images were captured during the ‘assignment’ but these were the ones I thought I’d share.
Time-lapse showing the shoot shot with Lumix FZ1000 mounted on tripod capturing an image every three seconds. Processed in camera to MP4. Very cool feature!
Times are changing in image capture. In the latest cameras put out by Panasonic it’s easier than ever to capture action. 4K photo mode allows you to capture up to 30 frames per second video that allows you to pull 8 MP stills. There’s even one mode that allows you to capture 1 second of action, 30 frames, abefore you press the shutter. So you can see something start to happen and still get the moment! Lumix GX8 and Lumix G7. Check out this quick video for details…
For infrared conversion of my cameras I use LifePixel. Infrared allows you to put an older camera to use and opens up a new time time of day for productive image creation.
Fotopro tripods are well worth checking out. You can learn about the ones I use and recommend by clicking on the Fotopro Tripods link at the top of this page. If you want to see what other tripods might fit your needs check out the Fotopro.com website. Check back with me before you buy as a Fotopro Ambassador I’m able to get you discounted pricing including complementary continental USA shipping for my followers that you won’t find through retail outlets.
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Lightning, waterdroplets, sound, time-lapse, HDR sequences, smiles and much more control for your camera!
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