Sunset in Lumut

A superb place for watching the sun go down is the town of Lumut in Perak. I shot this one fine evening in last year with the Canon 40D paired with the EF 85mm f/1.2 L II.


Original: Here's the original from the RAW file (def conversion using LR). When I was there, I remember vividly the scene as more vibrant, more 'explosively orange' and more 'feel'.

The above original file lacks punch. For landscape photos, nothing sucks the life out of it more than the lack of punch or 'omphh'. The real scene was more vivid, more vibrant and much more dramatic. The sea was glittering from the last rays of the setting sun and the sky was literally on fire!

So, to perserve that vision and making a landscape shot, a little help was need ... just a little from Light Room.




Sunset in Lumut : The sky was on fire!
(Canon 40D, RAW, 1/50, f/5.6, ISO 100 with EF 85mm f/1.2L II)


The original was tweaked in LR: +1/3 Exposure, a touch of fillight to POP up the middle parts of the scene (literally) LOL, blacks +7 to counter the fill light in the shadows and dark areas, some clarity, vibrance and saturation to taste. 3 application of graduated filter, one from the bottom up to the horizon to bring out the sparkle in the sea (exposure +), one from the top left and one from the top right, to add a little -exposure and a little drama to 'frame' the scene. And a little luminance noise reduction, cause even at ISO 100, there was noticeble noise in the back gound area.




100% Crop: The 40D (aided by the superb 85mm 1.2) is good, very very good actually. Even with this difficult scene, the fine details of the boat was preserved. I bet with a little more 'PS' in CS2, even more details can be extracted. But that's defeating the purpose ... maybe.

Shoe Laces - Magic with Lightroom 2.4

We did a trip back in Dec 08 to China, a two week trip. It was an R&R trip and the plan was to do a bit of 'travel' between Shenzen and Guangzou, with a day trip to Hong Kong. With lots of 'in between hotel travel' expected, and loads of walk around, and also with stepig AirAsia's strict weight limit, I went for the two weeks trip without the notebook. Relying only on 10Gb of CF cards, I decided to shoot only JPGs.

In a way, shooting JPGs is very much like shooting 'Slide' film in the good old days. Slides and Jpgs have very limited exposure lattitude. The exposure and White Balance (especially) have to be close to 100% correct. Overexpose the image, and the highlights are lost forever. Under expose, and the blacks are gone. Get the white balance wrong, and the correct colors for the scene can never come back.

In that sense, it was quite a good way, a really good way to learn 'old skool' photography, and at the same time, get really 'intimate' with you camera.

Anyway, I digress. LOL ...

Below is an Original Jpg, shot with my 40D.

Shoe Laces - Original Jpg : Underexposed is an Understatement.
Shooting information:
Canon 40D
Program AE (This mode is pretty good for a 'general walk around mode'. Its a compromise between being stuck either at a shutter speed or aperture that can't work).
Evaluative Metering (1/13 @ f/4, ISO640)
Tokina 12-24 f/4
Standard Picture Styles


Shoe Laces : Taking a walk in China, the best way to see the sights and hear the sounds.

The above is tweeked in LR 2.4. Exposure is increased 2/3 of a stop, recovery is at +7, and fill Light at 36 (quite high). Brightness is also increased by +21. What's interesting with LR 2.4 are the two new tools, the graduated filter and the adjustment brush. The graduated filter is used to retain the top right part of the photos, where there dark sky is accented by the flare from the street lamp. and the Adjustment brush is used to bring back the floor detail on the lower right corner of the photo (this part was completely blown after the Exposure and Brightness Adjustments).

Vibrance and Clarity ... adjust to taste, with some luminosity NR (quite a lot) thrown in.

Overall, this photo is a good representation of our 'major' activity for the two weeks in China. There were loads of walking ... and shoe lace tying ... but it was all worth it. I love the place. And i'd go back there again for another 'tour', perhaps a longer stay will be nicer still.

It also goes to show, that Light Room is a photographers best friend when it comes to making quick 'digital dark room' type adjustments. For those times when layered edits are needed, there's Photoshop CS, but that's a whole different ball game!

Frogs and Bird

Lens : Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM
Settings : Pattern, 135mm 1/125s@f/5.0, ISO1600 (Auto)
Body : 5DmkII
Comments : An impromtu walk in Bird Park resulted in this photo. I like it, for the shallow DOF, the contrast between the bright side on the left and the darker shadows on the right. The bird (pidgeon) was there for a while, lined up quite nicely with the two stone frogs.

Original RAW (sRaw1) file converted using LR. Exposure +.19; subtle fillight added and Contrast reduced from +25(default) to +18. The original was a tad darker and the contrast a little too high. I think the pattern metering was fooled by the nearest frog. Metering was left to the Canon's own devices, with priority given to the focus point selected on the nearest frog and as the Canon rendered the frog a middle gray even though it was sunlit.