What is 'color correcting'?

I always get asked this question…

“What do you mean by ‘colour correct’?”

With my photography, I shoot in RAW, which is in essence, a Digital Negative. So just like the film days where you shot film negatives and processed from there, today we shoot in RAW. RAW is as the name suggests, RAW. Everything is unprocessed and has all the colour data there ready to tweak to your needs!

In-camera JPG’s do a fine job, but when you’re working professionally, you need to have control over every image and every scene has its subtle differences.

As an example, I thought I would briefly walk you through a photo I took of my cousin, his wife and his new born son.

I used in camera metering to meter this photo at ISO400, f/3.2, 1/250 shot at 165mm. It’s an ‘ok’ photo as it is, the histogram is showing I have managed to retain more or less all of the tonal detail, and it is ready for processing.

First thing is first!

White Balance… When I shot it, it was set to AutoWB, which chose a WB setting of 4650k. This is fine as it was actually a pretty cloudy day and the looked a bit grey in the scene. However for this photo, the intent was to create a warm autumn feel, hence why I chose the green/brown leaves as a backdrop.

So if I crank up the WB to say 6000k, it adds in more of a yellow tone which pumps up the image a bit more and gives it a very warm feel as opposed to the gloomy grey.

Although the image has all the tonal range, it looks a bit dark, so I would increase my exposure to +0.83 on the exposure slider.



You will see now on her sleeve, we are starting to lose detail as the sun is much harsher on that area than it is anywhere else in the image. Depending on your artistic eye and preference, you could leave it as blown out or recover it with the “Highlight” Slider. As a drastic example, I have reduce Highlights all the way down to -100 to show you can recover most of the detail in the blown out sleeve.



However, doing this flattens out the image a bit, so I will reduce “Highlights”, but not by -100. I have taken it down to -50.



I want to give the image a bit more pump so I will add a bit of contrast to +30, and here is the result of that.

As you can see the image is now looking much more punchy compared to where I first started.

Going back to white balance, as it became more noticeable when I added contrast, their skin tone looked too yellow. So I went back to White Balance to add in a touch of Pink Tint to make the skin look a bit more natural. I have taken it up to +18.

A brought up the Shadows and Blacks a touch and dropped the Whites a little also, added a touch of Clarity for Contrast detail. This is a general practice I do with all my images.

But as you can see from the before/afters, there is a massive change from subtle small tweaks with colour correcting.

This process has to be done with all images that I shoot and this is to ensure consistency throughout.

I hope after reading this it has painted a clearer picture with what is meant by “Colour Correcting” and I hope you feel the extra work involved is worth it for producing better results!

Nokia 1020 (41mp) vs Nikon D800 (36.3mp)

I would first like to start off by saying that this was by no means a scientific test. I just wanted to prove a point that megapixels do not matter.

A friend of mine recently got the new Nokia 1020 phone. This phone is famously sporting a 41mp camera!

If you think about it for second… 41mp! That’s a crazy amount of megapixels, let alone a crazy amount for a mobile phone! The average DSLR nowadays is ranging between 16-24mp on both crop and full frame. The Nikon D800 was making waves when it first came out with its incredible 36.3mp sensor.

I know it’s not a fair comparison and that no-one is really having troubles deciding between the two, but I did want to compare image quality of the Nokia 1020 against the Nikon D800, just for the hell of it!

I have only tested briefly with a random shot in my local town of Wimbledon. I only chose this spot as it was the most well-lit area in my local town.

Because the Nokia does not have any aperture controls and it is a fixed f/2.2, it cannot be a direct comparison once more as my Nikon D800 was fitted with a 24-70mm f/2.8. So I could not close down the Nokia’s aperture, nor open up the Nikon any further. In fact, to match the Nokia’s 1sec exposure as much as possible, I had close down the Nikon to f/3.5, and even at that I found I needed to reduce the exposure in LR a further -0.60 to match.

After white balancing the D800 as close as possible to the Nokia’s files and then matching the 1920x1080 crop, here are the final results.



There is a slight difference in angle as the Nokia was mounted on top of the Nikon D800.

Overall, at a glance, I don’t think many people will notice the difference.

Zoom in 1:1 and you’ll see that the Nikon is much sharper. However when zoomed out to fit the image on screen, I don’t think anyone would be able to separate the two in terms of sharpness.



The key difference between the two images is the Dynamic range. The entrance to the door way to Morrisons on the Nokia is almost completely blown out, whereas the Nikon has still retained some detail.

Likewise for the Christmas lights, as the Nokia has made the lights seem much brighter in comparison.

After pulling all the highlights down, I managed to pull back even more detail from the shop Windows in the D800 file, however the Nokia was just beyond recovery.



That is down to the fact I am working with a D800 Raw file against a Nokia JPG, however as standard, the RAW file is revealing far more detail than the Nokia, and the Nokia is a processed file which naturally should have highlights pulled down and shadows pushed up a bit.

Overall, I am very impressed with the Nokia 1020 and its photography abilities.

Ideally I would like to control its aperture settings so I could do longer exposures, as anything above 1sec was over exposing the image. However if the Nokia 1020 was my mobile phone and I just so happened to be out without my camera, I would be quite happy to whip out this Nokia for some Night Time Cityscapes.

After all, “The best camera is the one you have with you”.

REVIEW! Tony Northrup's - Stunning Digital Photography

Introduction

I stumbled across Tony Northrup’s Channel early last year and immediately subscribed to his channel after watching one of his videos.

Through these videos, I discovered that he has also written a book titled, “How to Create: Stunning Digital Photography”.

The book caught my interest as he does offer excellent free tutorials and information on YouTube; I wanted to see what else was on offer within the book.

Basic Information

Website: http://www.northrup.org

eBook:

Paperback: $24.99

Number of Pages:

Puchase from: Amazon.com

Overview When you first get into photography, you set yourself on a long path ahead as there are various types of photography available to you. The beauty of this book is that it gives you an insight of all the popular forms of Photography. Within this one book, Tony Northrup not only helps you through the basics of taking a photo; such as exposure and composition, he also explores the various types of photography out there; such as landscapes, nature and macro.

Those are only a few topics to name that feature within this book.

Table of Contents

(Insert Table of Contents)

Formats

The book comes in an eBook and Paperback format. The eBook is currently priced at (Insert Price), and the Paperback is priced a little more at (Insert Price).

For obvious reasons, the price increase is due to the cost to produce the book; however it’s important to know that you are still entitled to an eBook download with the paperback purchase.

For all the visual and auditory learners, they also include videos to go along with the written information within each chapter. This is true for both paperback and eBook.

With the power of new technology, it is now possible to embed videos into the eBook. I found this a fantastic way of visually reviewing what I had just read, as it is a lot easier to make sense of something once you see what is being described to you.

The videos are also available to you if you have the paperback version with the use of QR codes and URL’s.

Bonuses

• 3hrs of Video - As mentioned before, the eBook and paperback version both include access to 3hrs worth of video footage which compliments the written content to help readers visualize scenarios.

• Support – Purchasing this book also gives you access to Tony Northrups photography groups where he, and his co-author Chelsea, provide further support and advice along with other photographers within the community

• Free eBook Updates – The eBook occasionally updates with new information, and these updates are free. So you won’t be seeing a vol.2 to this book anytime soon, as the information would just be updated via eBook.

Review

I had the opportunity to review both the eBook and paperback versions of the book, and even though I am a man of the digital age, I somewhat preferred the paperback version. The layout was much more intuitive as any images that were being discussed within the paperback book was also laid out in front of you on the same page, whereas the eBook you would have thumbnails to hit on the left which would open up a slideshow to review the images.

However, on the other hand, at times I preferred the eBook as it was easier to reference the videos that were embedded with a simple press of a button, rather than being using a smart phone or laptop to review the videos.

Regardless of the format chosen to read this book, the information inside is great! There is information in here which can help photographers at all levels, as Tony does touch on many different topics.

Nitpicks

As briefly mentioned earlier, the eBook was a little less intuitive to navigate through.

When you’re scrolling through the eBook, you might hit a point where the paragraph asks you to reference a gallery, and then you may have to scroll back up to find the gallery.

As an example, I have taken a screenshot for “Figure 2-3”.

Conclusion

With the vast amounts of information and various types of photography out in this world, it would be impossible to cover all the topics within one book. However, Tony has managed to cover a large number of topics already and the book is still being updated with new information.

Tony also covers topics such as Weddings, HDR, and Macro, and by reading this book; you will not become an expert in these fields. There are workshops and other materials out there dedicated to these topics. However, the information provided definitely gives you a head start as Tony does explain things in an non-intimidating manner which makes the information a lot easier to digest.

At the price this book is being sold for against the amount of knowledge that is shared within it across a large number of topics, you cannot argue this book is beneficial to someone just starting out in photography.

I started my photography life just under 2yrs ago now, and I have picked up new information and new techniques throughout various chapters of this book!

If you choose to purchase this book, and you can’t decide between the paperback and eBook, I unfortunately cannot help you in this decision. All I can say is that I had the opportunity to review both paperback and eBook, and I preferred reading the paperback due to its layout, however I kept picking up my iPad and reading on my iPhone whilst I was on the go.

The book was a great read, with valuable information inside, all nicely organised and presented too you in a very easy to digest way from beginning to end. I would highly recommend this book to anyone starting out in photography.

INSPIRATION! David Hobby – The Strobist with DRTV! ¦ Wednesdays with Leo

The latest video to be released by the DRTV team is their “Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge” with David Hobby.

David Hobby is the author for his blog, Strobist.com. The blog has an on-line monthly readership of over 300,000 photographers from 175 countries, and was named one of the "25 Best Blogs of 2010" by Time Magazine.

The DRTV team set David off with a Buzz Lightyear Camera and 3 Family Jewels Fuq 690 Flashes and a list of 5 locations with 5 subjects.



The video is an entertaining watch as always! However, what I really wanted to share with you guys today is David Hobby’s blog about his experience with the DRTV team.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog as it goes into more detail about the challenges he came up against.

The video is 23min of smiles, laughter and fun, but there is always more to the story, and David Hobby fills in what we didn’t see in his blog.

He describes each obstacle he came across from his own perspective and discusses his actual thought processes throughout.

The video we see David saying “Oh wow” when the snakes are revealed, however his reaction was somewhat toned down for YouTube.

“OhHolySh!tThatOneIsACobra” – David Hobby

Throughout the blog post he is also grading his own work and it’s very humbling to see that he’s being open and honest when critiquing his own performance with these challenges.

So I strongly recommend if you enjoyed the video from DRTV that you take some time to read the Behind the Scenes Blog from the man himself, David Hobby!