Bimbo meetup @ Ipswich Japanese Gardens 30/10/2011

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Myself, Troy and Andrew met up earlier this morning for a macro shoot. I LOVE these gardens!!!

A big thanks To Troy for loaning me his MT-24EX setup - it's an awesome flash that I have fallen in love with.

I'm pretty happy with the shots, not entirely sharp on some of the Damselfly shots when viewed at 100%, even though they looked sharp on the LCD screen on my new 60D. Brightness and contrast aren't right on the LCD screen either - it appears much better than it really is when viewed on a calibrated monitor. Will need to fiddle with LCD brightness to make it more accurate so I can tell when I'm in the field if I've nailed the shot.

These shots had minor changes made to them in Canon's DPP - exposure, contrast where applicable (only a few shots) and the highlights slider (that's a pretty cool feature!). Some sharpness, pretty much +3 for nearly all of the images. I exported them to 16 bit tiff and JPEG, but haven't touched the tiff files. These were resized to 1024*623 in Photoshop CS2, some slight sharpening on the resizing via smart sharpen (22%) and converted to sRGB profile as I shoot only in Adobe RGB. That's it.

The set can be found on the link below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidpa...7628010318440/

This shot is my best of the day imho:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6225/...38e3bc16_o.jpg

Dave

[Octane (Humayun)]

They're getting jiggy wit' it.

Also, hooray for Digital Photo Professional.

Also, if you're shooting RAW, it doesn't matter what colour space you've got your system set to. As you've rightly pointed out, though, sRGB for web and Adobe RGB for everything else. Although, most professional printers accept sRGB these days.

Personally, I save all my PSDs in Adobe RGB and print from them.

H

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by Octane

They're getting jiggy wit' it.

Also, hooray for Digital Photo Professional.

Also, if you're shooting RAW, it doesn't matter what colour space you've got your system set to. As you've rightly pointed out, though, sRGB for web and Adobe RGB for everything else. Although, most professional printers accept sRGB these days.

Personally, I save all my PSDs in Adobe RGB and print from them.

H

Yes, I know that colour space doesn't matter if you're shooting RAW - since monitors and the web are sRGB though, I wanted the colours accurate for that, hence converting to sRGB :-)

I've never gotten into PSDs - proprietary format, I much prefer tiffs. Both are lossless. tiffs are slightly larger in file size, but the difference is minimal in most cases imho. Both support layers and are 16 bit files. Can't ask for much more than that.

I've always liked DPP, even though I have RAW therapee on this machine, and also Capture One Pro 5.x (can't remember the version). Phase one turned me off the product with their draconian licensing and I'll NEVER buy one of their products again, nor recommend them on that basis alone.

Dave

PS it seems you know my sister on facebook - it is a small world!

[Octane (Humayun)]

I'm not on spacebook.

I know her from IRC, from years ago.

H

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

ahhh...

Dave

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Lovely set there mate. You've bagged way more keepers that I did. Hope you enjoyed the use of the twinlight, coz that's the last time I'm shooting without it. Bloody cheap bracket I was testing. In the bin it goes.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

Lovely set there mate. You've bagged way more keepers that I did. Hope you enjoyed the use of the twinlight, coz that's the last time I'm shooting without it. Bloody cheap bracket I was testing. In the bin it goes.

:-( the bracket didn't look that bad to me, but then again I didn't use it. Was it creep movement (which is the worst)? Avoid the delta flip flash bracket - it's useless imho.

Yes, I enjoyed the MT-24EX - wonderful flash unit and I can see why they're popular now with macro shooters. I got a few things planned financially, so it's off my list in the interim, but I'll eventually get one of them. Where did you get the step down ring for the Sigma 150mm from?

I was really happy with yesterday's shoot - both of the Dragonflies just happened to land near me whilst I was setting up and were very patient.

Dave

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Originally Posted by dpastern

:-( the bracket didn't look that bad to me, but then again I didn't use it. Was it creep movement (which is the worst)? Avoid the delta flip flash bracket - it's useless imho.

Yes, I enjoyed the MT-24EX - wonderful flash unit and I can see why they're popular now with macro shooters. I got a few things planned financially, so it's off my list in the interim, but I'll eventually get one of them. Where did you get the step down ring for the Sigma 150mm from?

I was really happy with yesterday's shoot - both of the Dragonflies just happened to land near me whilst I was setting up and were very patient.

Dave

The joints in the bracket just weren't rigid enough and it slipped and flopped all over the place. Hard to keep the flash where I wanted it.

I just ordered the step down ring from Adorama with the flash. It's a genuine Canon part, so just wherever you get camera stuff I suppose. It's not just a step down ring, by the way, it's a special adapter for the MT-24EX heads.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Ah cool, thanks for the heads up

Dave

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Great shots Dave. Love that dragonfly.

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Great effort Dave and I hope the fiddly-dids didn't get in the way too much. It was a bit distracting for me waiting for one of them to fall into the water and you certainly kept them interested with the background facts.

Like Troy, you got way more keepers than I did as well. Still need a bit of work on my lighting to get back in the groove for the summer - guess that means more practice ahead

I hope you don't mind, but rather than start a new thread I thought I would drop my keepers in here for the record. Happy to move them if you want though! Most of these are crops from the original images - particularly the shield bug which was originally a portrait and the cockroach that was originally a landscape

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

that's an awesome set there Andrew! You nailed those Damselflies! I like the fly too, and the jumper and you easily win the cockroach image competition - I'm ashamed at my long deleted effort.

No, the kids were fine, I didn't mind at all. Was nice to have them along and as I said to Troy - it's nice to see kids getting out and away from the xbox/playstation and having a look at nature.

Dave

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Great set, Andrew. Got more than me too.