The graphic above was displayed in place of the image in a series of pictures I imported from Canon 5D Mark II. This kept me puzzled for a while until I remembered that I had switched from RAW to sRAW because I knew I would not need the full 21 Megapixels. I did a test by taking a picture at each RAW setting, and it turned out that sRAW1 and sRAW2 are unsupported by Apple in Aperture. This apparently goes for all other Canon cameras with the sRAW option too.

I am posting this because others might be wondering why they get this lovely burgundy rectangle instead of their images. My first thought was that the images were corrupted, but the images open just fine in Photoshop.

I have not been able to verify if Lightroom supports sRAW. If you know, please drop a comment below!

I think this idea is really great, but also quite disturbing. It should make you think one more time what you can do to personalize an image before taking it.

When I first heard about this camera at Siggraph, I thought the camera was a little more advanced, and that it contained a GPS allowing it to seek out an image taken from the location you are at, at more or less the same time of day in the past.

Fooled by marketing – again

A lot of people believe that their camera phone is actually a camera. They assume that a mobile phone with 3.2 megapixels and a Carl Zeiss lens is a great camera.

Film based cameras compared to digital cameras

I think it is fair to compare an analogue and a digital Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. I also think it is fair to compare an analogue and a digital compact camera. But very few (if any) camera phones hold any comparison to any of the above. Camera phones can at best be compared to the cheapest and crappiest digital compact cameras.

If we continue the comparison of modern cameras to analogue cameras, I would say that todays camera phones compare in image quality to analogue disposable cameras. Even though camera phones like Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson K800i have specifications that look great on paper, the images you can take with them do not look great on paper.

How can so many people be fooled so easily?

I believe most people with camera phones are a little like digital compact camera users: The pictures are mostly viewed on cellphones or relatively small home computer screens and they are rarely printed in large scales. The users never inspect the images in Photoshop or any other image processing program (have you seen the quality of the blue channel of a camera phone image?).

So all in all, people are happy with crappy images – until the day they take a picture that they really like and wish they could have made a big nice print out of it…

I am often asked about a good book for learning Photoshop, so here it is once and for all.
My experience with Photoshop is professionally as a designer from version 4 and up since 1996, and before that as an amateur since version 2 in 1992.

When I got Adobe Photoshop for Photographers at work a while back, I did not think I would learn anything from it, but after looking through it I found there were quite a few techniques and improvements that had skipped my attention with each upgrade throughout the years.

The book focuses on photography, but it should not be skipped by new users for that reason. It also teaches the necessary basics, and who doesn’t have a digital camera lying around these days..
With this in mind, my recommendation goes not only to novices, but also to all others who think they know this huge program in and out.

Personal experience

A colleague and I did a large project involving green screen photography last year, and here are a few words about what we learned from that experience.

There are quite a few sites with blue- and green screen tips and tutorials out there, but most concentrate on video, which is a little different from photography. Whether you should choose green screen or blue screen is much debated, but there seems to be a general understanding that green is better for photographing people since it is further from skin color.

The green screen

The whole point of the green screen is to get an image with a background that’s easy to erase afterwards. If you´re on a budget, you can probably achieve this by painting a wall in the right color, but to avoid reflections you’d be better off using fabric. The background should be large enough to give the photographer some freedom of movement.

Lighting

Using separate lights for the background and the models gives more control over the lighting. The background should be lit evenly and not too brightly. Position the model as far from the background as possible to avoid spill light from the background on the model and shadows from the model on the background. Use barn doors or black screens to further protect the model from spill light from the background. A hair- or separation light hitting the model from the back also helps reduce green spill light.

Casting

Hiring professional models saves a lot of time and frustration, and ensures a better result. This is time consuming work, and a trained model helps getting it right the first time

Styling

The model should obviously not be wearing anything green, but this is less crucial for photo than for video as long as the color is not next to the background. Avoiding loose hair, curls, higly reflective or semi-transparent fabrics and furs etc. will make post production much easier.

Shooting

A photographer will always be tempted to compose the image in camera, but in this case that’s not a good idea. It’s important to allow for a little air on all sides of the model to make the pictures more flexible to work with later. You can always cut off half the head in Photoshop, but painting it in because it was cropped in camera is far trickier…

The photographer should avoid using selective focus. Objects that are out of focus get blended with the background, which makes it really difficult to separate them afterwards. Use an aperture small enough to ensure sufficient depth-of-field to get the entire model in focus, including contour lines. If you absolutely must have selective focus, I would recommend faking it in photoshop afterwards instead.

The image should be slightly overexposed rather than underexposed, but this goes for all digital photography. By shooting in the RAW format, you will be able to tune the white balance losslessly in your RAW editor of choice afterwards.

Stay tuned

Check back for a follow up on keying and color adjustment!

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