Monday, January 28, 2013

Review of the Focus in Paradise Nov-2012 Workshop in Kauai

Plantations Gardens

The Focus in Paradise Photography Workshop in November 2012 was held at the beautiful Plantation Gardens Restaurant at the Kiahuna Plantation Resort in Poipu, Kauai.  The restaurant was the original plantation house of the Koloa Sugar Plantation dating to 1930 and the location of Hawaii's oldest sugar plantation founded in 1835.
We had the use of the entire house for the workshop!






In this workshop we partitioned the training into two distinct days: Day-1 was all about the fundamentals of digital photography and Day-2 was focused on portraiture photography.  In the Fundamentals class, we explored all of the controls on the typical DSLR camera.  With those understood, we headed to the National Tropical Botanical Gardens up the road to use our new skills in shooting the beautiful flora growing there.






Flowers on Kauai are among the most beautiful in the world.  This Cannon Ball flower was captured with a hovering bee looking for nectar.  Note the excellent use of selective focus and minimizing the depth-of-field to throw the background out-of-focus.







The island of Kauai has a large variety of Heliconia.  In this image, the green leaves provide a nice background and the red flowers are perfectly framed by the unopened stocks.  A little post-processing we studied in class brings out the brilliance of the flowers that are sometimes shaded by the lush surrounding foliage.






We finished Day-1 with a sunset shoot from the south shore of Poipu.  In the Fall, the sunrise and sunset can both be seen from the south side of the island.  A sunset shoot is the perfect opportunity to practice using ND Graduated Filters to help control the wide dynamic range of light that occurs as the sun is setting.  Additional work with post-processing tools learned in the workshop can produce stunning results.







In the Day-2 workshop we studied how to use natural and artificial lighting sources and the how the square-law affects the intensity of light as you move it away from the subject.  We built a portable portrait studio in the plantation house's sitting room and each student was able to shoot with a radio trigger on their camera controlling the lighting system.  We shot both people and objects with great results.  This doll, hand-made by one of the workshop students was a well behaved portrait model for us.





Overall the class enjoyed our first portrait photography workshop and we are looking forward to the next one at our February 23rd & 24th, 2013 workshop in Monterey, California.  We will return to this beautiful plantation house for our next Kauai photography workshop on May 9th & 10th, 2013.




Happy shooting,

Focus In Paradise

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Shoot RAW + JPEG to Improve Your Editing


We are often asked why photographers should shoot RAW and JPEG files at the same time.  Remember that a RAW file is the unmodified image capture from the camera containing up to 4.4 billion colors while a JPEG file has been processed by the camera to reduce the file size and contains up to 16.7 million colors.   The JPEG file is anywhere from 75% to 95% smaller than the RAW file.  Many of today's new cameras from advanced point-and-shoot to DSLR cameras have the capability to create both files simultaneously and you will find for every photographer who shoots both formats, one who won't consider it. This holds true for professional, advanced amateurs and hobby photographers.

Shooting both formats can be very useful to a photographer who is just starting to shoot in the RAW format.  The image displayed on the camera's LCD is a JPEG image that has been processed by the camera from the RAW capture. The camera uses its own post-processing engine and the settings you have chosen in the camera for processing the JPEG image.  On Canon cameras these settings are called Picture Styles while on Nikon cameras they are called Picture Controls.  These settings modify how much brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness are applied to the original captured image in producing the JPEG file.  Select these Picture Styles/Controls carefully as the settings for a portrait produce significantly different results than settings for a vivid landscape.  When evaluating your image on the back of the camera, you are seeing the potential that can be achieved from future post-processing of the RAW file.  Of course post-processing of a RAW file can produce a result that is far better than any in-camera JPEG could be, so for highest picture quality begin your editing with a RAW image while referring to the JPEG as a guide.

During post-processing, having a properly exposed JPEG available to evaluate your RAW file processing results can be very helpful in learning and understanding what each adjustment in your editing software does to the RAW image.  In creating a quality picture, the RAW file provides the maximum pixel information available for post-processing which is why we generally don't edit JPEG files.  Additionally, since RAW files generally cannot be viewed without photography editing software, many professional photographers use the JPEG image to send to their clients for evaluation and selection prior to processing the RAW files. That way they only have to work on the images the client likes resulting in a large time savings.

Considering that these JPEG files may be sent to others, there are two additional in-camera settings you should also be sure to select prior to image capture: JPEG pixel size and JPEG compression level.  Most cameras provide a small, medium, and large option for pixel size and low, medium, and high levels for compression.  A small pixel size and high (1:16) compression will result in the smallest file size - convenient for sending by email. However, for the greatest image quality you would want to select a large pixel size and low (1:4) compression.

When shooting RAW + JPEG two file types are written to your camera's memory card.  The complaint often heard is having two files of the same image takes up too much disk space. While this is somewhat accurate (since JPEG files consume another 5% to 25% of the size of a RAW file), some options are available to you to manage the required storage.  In lieu of purchasing larger disk drives, any of the following can be implemented.
  • When loading images onto your computer you can keep both file types to assist in your processing skills.  You then delete the JPEG files after you finish your post-processing.
  • After loading the RAW + JPEG files on your computer, do not re-format your memory card.  Label the card to match your file system information and store it in a safe place. Then you can delete the JPEGs  from your computer. You will be able to review your raw processing against the images on the card by re-inserting them in the camera or connecting them to the computer via a USB port.  After  the keepers are marked, the rejects are deleted from your hard disk, and after you have post-processed the desired files, you can re-format the card for future use.
  • Keep both RAW and JPEG images on your computer and delete them when you are comfortable you are done with the JPEGs or you need more disk space.  Setting up a reminder to review your image files once a month will help in your hard disk management. Reviewing the remaining JPEGs after one month will allow you to re-evaluate images you have not processed and make the decision to keep the JPEG or delete it along with the RAW file.  A periodic review of your images is a good thing to do anyway!
An image from an in-camera generated JPEG will always look better on your computer monitor than an initial unedited RAW image, making the JPEG image a better indicator of what might be possible with skilled post-processing of the RAW image.  If you are not shooting RAW + JPEG and it is available on your camera, we suggest you give it a try.  Use one of the suggestions above if memory storage is an issue and get started.  See if it will assist in selecting your keeper images and in your processing accuracy to achieve the final image as your remember it at the time of capture.

Happy Shooting,

Alan and Roger