Lightroom - Black and White

 Image: 5D Mk III, 70-200f/4L IS, 150mm at f/11, 1/125th sec, tripod.
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Making black and white images with Lightroom is very easy and pretty effective, the hard part is choosing the right image to use.

Fortunately, Lightroom has made it so easy to make B and W images, its just a button press away, after normal processing; curves, shadows and highlights, etc.. go to the adjustments tab and just select B & W, then all that's left to do is slide the color bars, for example, to darken or lighten a blue sky just slide the blue slider to get the right effect, remember, contrast is your friend in a B and W image.

White balance can also be used to brighten are darken the image and split tone will add warmth or coolness to your image, the great thing about Lightroom is this wont effect the original image. I will usually make a virtual copy of the color image to create my B and W image from so I have it to compare.

Things to look out for; ghosting around high contrast areas and banding in solid colors when you go to extremes with the sliders, ghosting can usually be fixed with PS, but banding requires backing off on the slider.

There are also a lot of black and white presets out there on the web, do a search and you will find loads of free presets you can download, including these from Adobe, no need to pay for presets there are lots of free ones on the web and tutorials on how to make and install your own, see this link.

Ross

Images In Light

When to use AI Servo focus

  Image: 5D Mk III, EF 70-200 f/4L IS, 200mm at f/4, 1/500 sec.

Image: 5D Mk III, EF 70-200 f/4L IS, 200mm at f/4, 1/640 sec.

Image: 5D Mk III, EF 70-200 f/4L IS, 75mm at f/4, 1/800 sec.

I love to photograph Ducky, she is an energetic fast moving subject that loves to please,
so I set my camera up special for her ; ), its the same as if I was doing a sporting event or shooting wildlife in Yellowstone.

AI servo mode was made for moving subjects; in aperture priority, focus set to AI servo, drive set to high speed, ISO 100 and with my EF 70-200f/4L IS lens set to wide open at f/4, where I know its very sharp and has the depth of field to cover her eyes to ears, that also allows for a fast shutter speed on a sunny day, if its over cast I may use auto ISO, but if its sunny its ISO 100. I also aim for a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 sec, so a lot of the time I'm in auto ISO.

Zoomed in I use pretty much the center focus point for this type of shoot and keep it trained on her eyes at all times, zooming out as she moves towards me, refocus shoot, repeat, its pretty simple really and the auto focus of the 5D Mk III does the rest.

In menu settings: Case 6 (for subjects that change speed and move erratically), first image priority, manual AF point selection.

One thing about the 5D Mk III is, its auto focus is incredibly accurate and fast, with a little practice, it becomes second nature.

Ross

Images In Light

Published With National Geographic

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Full page on the first tab of the book shown below

Its always nice to be published, but when your image is picked up by National Geographic and I get to bill them, its a sweet feeling. I am very happy to be published with one of the world's leading publications, the book will have 50,000 copies in print.

Ross

Images In Light

Perspective

Image: 5D Mk III, EF 24-70 f2.8L II, 30mm f/11, 1/30 sec, tripod.

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Image: 5D Mk III, EF 24-70 f2.8L II, 41mm f/16, 1/10 sec, tripod.

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In trying to show the perspective of this mitten in Arches National Park, getting down low and not shooting to wide proved to be the right method, shooting ultra wide would have shown the entire valley in perspective but shooting moderately wide and getting down low seemed the best approach for showing the massive rock mitten of Courthouse Rock.

Moving back further away put the rock in its context of the surrounding valley, 41mm gave me the perspective I was looking for with out having to much sky in the image and still retaining enough foreground interest.

Ross 

Images In Light

Canon 70D, suprise dual pixel AF speed technology

Dual pixel AF, amazing AF speed in Live view, this is what we have been waiting for in live view auto focus.

Why you ask? well remember when you take that point and shoot camera and try to take a picture and it searches and waits and then finally takes the shot? well here is the cure.

This chip used in a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) like the EOS M2 will be great for having a fast and small camera that uses my existing camera lenses.

Canon has been looking for this answer for a while and this could put them back on top.

Some interesting video footage from The Imaging Resource here







Hands on the 70D at Tech Radar
Hands on the 70D at DP Review

The Digital Picture review

Review at EPhotoZine 

Review at PhotographyBlog

Order it here: Canon 70D


Ross

Images In Light