Wallace Koopmans Artlog

All of these shots except the apple were done with the Pentax SMC A 28mm lens on the Pentax K10D.  For the apple I used the SMC A 70-210 F4.  The 28mm on my APSC cameras gives an equivalent field of view as a 42mm lens would on 35mm film, which lies somewhere between the 35mm of many film point and shoots and the 50mm “normal” prime that came with many film SLR’s.   Once in lightroom I played around with the images trying to get a film like look based on other shots I took that day with the Pentax MV and 400 ISO film.  Between using the older glass and the processing I think I created images that look like they could have come from a film point and shoot camera which was my intent.  The preset can be downloaded by right clicking on the link and selecting save as.  Wkoopmans Colour Film P&S template  One of the problems with creating this preset is adding the grain.  Lightroom added the ability to introduce grain to an image with Lightroom 3 but it is a simple solution that works best with black and white film.  The grain of colour film is more complex with different amounts of colour mottling that Lightroom has no answer for.

A reader Dave asked me how I created the high key look of a particular image so rather than going into a wordy explanation I thought I would do it visually, I am a photographer after all.

The image asked about was this one and how I modified it to get that particular look.

The first thing I did was to decrease the colour temperature of the image by 450 degrees to make the image cooler.

This is the result of that change.

The next thing to be done was to add a slight green tint also to modify the overall colour and feel of the image.

 I then increased the exposure about 1 stop.  This is could be done at the time of capture as well but in this case I had a properly exposed image to begin with.

The last step was to desaturate the image and add a small amount of fill light which opens up the shadow side of the tree giving a flatter yet more silvery final image.

Of course any one or more of these parameters could be treated differently and while I like presets for convenience I also believe it’s necessary to treat each image individually to get the best look.

I wanted to evaluate the noise reduction abilities of the upcoming Lightroom 3 release and to create profiles for my Pentax K-7.  So I set up a small scene to photograph and used an AF540FGZ flash in wireless mode to light it.  I increased the ISO from 200 to 6400 in one stop increments while adjusting the flash output.  There was some variation in illumination however this is more of a preliminary test and I adjusted levels in Lightroom to somewhat compensate.   You can click on an individual thumbnail to see the full resolution jpeg generated through Lightroom, however the files are limited to 2Mb.

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

I make no claims about any of the products used but am merely sharing my own testing.