Masking Unmanageable Hair

Also in This Edition

• A1 II's 199 MP image vs. Samsung S23 Ultra's 200MP image
• Kenya Photo Safari II is open for registration!
• The usual announcements
• Viewer Mail
• Geeking with Gary - EV charging networks are the wrong idea

Creating Photoshop masks for highly detailed objects has always been a challenge.  In the past I had a few techniques that worked pretty well, but if your goal is to add a dark background behind your subject the shortcomings of those techniques start to show.

Very quickly, here are the techniques I've used and their strengths and weaknesses:

The Inverse Square Law - Have I been lying all these years?

Also in this issue:

• Kenya Trip Report
• Next Time in CameraCraft Magazine
• Upcoming Seminars
• In the Pipeline

The Inverse Square Law

Imagine you brought a gun into space, and fired a bullet.  Newton’s first law of motion says that bullet will travel forever in the same speed and direction, unless hindered by something like spacedust or diverted by the gravitational pull of a planet or star.  (You would also go flying backward when you fired the bullet, but that’s a subject for another time.)

Photons work the same way.  They keep going full strength until impeded.  That’s why the light from the sun isn’t attenuated by the time it hits the earth.

My parents, taken with a point-and-shoot with
pop-up flash.  Under these conditions, if the subjects
are different distances away, only one will be exposed correctly.

And yet for years I’ve been teaching photography students about the Inverse Square Law, which states that the light gets weaker the further away it gets from the light source.  (And I gave several examples proving this law, like the image of my parents on the right!)  Have I been peddling a lie all of these years? 

The answer is both yes and no.  People experience the inverse square law all the time, especially back in the days when cameras had pop-up flashes and people used it as the sole source of light in a dark room.  (See example.)  Here, if there are multiple people in the shot, it’s important that all subjects are the same distance from the flash, for if the distances are different, only one of them will be illuminated “properly” – the rest will be too dark.  

Saving Lives in Uganda

 

Children’s ward in the National Hospital, Kampala.

Dr. Benjamin Warf, Professor
of Neosurgery, Harvard 
Medical School

Our story begins more than 20 years ago, when Dr. Benjamin Warf, a University of Kentucky professor and a renowned authority on diseases of the brain and spinal cords of young infants, left his academic position in the U.S. to practice medicine in Uganda.  His father had been a missionary there; and Ben felt his life calling was to do medical missionary work. 

He also founded a hospital with the help of CURE International, a charitable organization which builds children's hospitals worldwide. Most of them are orthopedic, but Ben was a neurosurgeon for children.  And this would be the first and so far only dedicated hospital to children's neurosurgery in the developing world.

Dr. Moses Ochora, 
Pediatrician at Mbarara
University of Science and
Technology, CONRIM-U
project investigator

While there Dr. Warf discovered a strong correlation between the Hydrocephalus (“Water on the Brain”) cases he was seeing in infants there, and an infection early in life.  These infections also seemed to correlate to instances of Neonatal Sepsis (a severe infection in the first month of life).  He began doing studies.

Four 600mm lenses

So here I was, preparing to lead a photo safari in Africa, when David Kilpatrick, editor of Cameracraft magazine, sent me a message: “I’m going to write an article about several different lenses, including the Sigma 150-600mm EF lens (Canon mount) with converter, and adapting this Canon fit kit to Sony”, he says.  “Good timing”, I said, “I’m going to be testing two 600mm lenses while in Africa.  Why don’t we do a comparison?”

So we started planning.  I arranged for a loan of two additional lenses for testing, making a total of 4 lenses on my side of the pond.  The four lenses were:

     1. The Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Lens (Sony mount) – the 10x range appealed to me for the Africa trip, since it meant I wouldn’t have to change lenses much and risk getting dirt on the sensor.  Price: $1,920 USD.

      2.  The Sony RX10 IV, my favorite travel camera since it has an incredible 24-600mm (35mm equivalent) lens permanently attached to the lightweight body.  It achieves this portability by employing a small, 1”-type sensor.  Price: $1,698.

      3. The Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens, Price: $1,898 

      4. Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS Lens, which costs a mere $12,998 (!) 

Trekking in Nepal

 Back in 1994 me and my "Let's teach an aerobics class during lunchtime – it'll be FUN!" friends from JPL decided to go trekking in the Himalayas, and asked me to join them.  Sounds great, but anyone who knows me knows that my body was never genetically engineered for exercise.  The trip would entail hiking up and down the mountains of Nepal where there are no vehicles, no electricity, and no communication with the outside world.  Of particular note to photographers is there would be no place to get / charge batteries and no place to buy film.   (Yes, FILM.  See above about this being 1994.)  So my über-modern Maxxum 9000 stayed home, opting instead for two less power-hungry cameras: The Minolta SR-T 101, which can take pictures with no batteries at all, and the Yashica T4, a lightweight point-and-shoot with Zeiss T* optics.  And lots of Fujicolor color negative film.  I took two lenses for the Minolta – the 28-85, and a 50mm f/1.4 for low light shots.  (As always, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

What is "Unsharp Mask", anyway?

Also in this issue:

• Just read it, OK?

What in the World is "Unsharp Mask"?

I just finished giving the seminar in Kansas City, KS - what fun that was!!  People came from several states away to attend, which is always gratifying.  A few days before that I gave a lecture to a local photo club on Wireless Flash, with the goal of getting people to be less intimidated by this very useful technique.

Gave a talk at the Digital Dimensions and Beyond photo club in Kansas City, KS.

During the seminar's segment on Photoshop I received an unusual amount of good questions regarding the most unintuitive name ever given to an editing tool: "Unsharp Mask".  

What is it??  How was its name derived?  And how does it work?

Photographing the Northern lights

Also in this Edition

• Viewer Mail
• The Usual Announcements
• Personal Appearances
• Next Time in Cameracraft

Photographing the Northern Lights

I receive a lot of requests around Aurora Borealis season asking for tips for photographing the Northern Lights.  I usually tell them that it's no different from doing any other kind of long exposures - but you have to do a few extra things to make it look the way it looked to your eyes.

1) Shoot RAW.  This is because RAW files are more maleable that .jpgs, plus it's almost impossible to know what white balance setting to use.  When you shoot RAW you can determine the white balance when you open the file.  (As always, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

Why I Don't Recommend the Leica Monochrom Cameras

In This Issue

• Why I Don't Recommend the Leica Monochrom Cameras
• Photography Isn't Art
• Announcements of Upcoming Events (Seminars, Safari, Cameracraft Magazine)
• My New Competition
• Live Streaming with the Sony A7 IV
• Geeking with Gary (google URL shortener depreciation)

Let's get right to it then, shall we?

Why I Don't Recommend the Leica Monochrom Cameras

One of the attendees of the Plymouth seminar in April had one of Leica's B&W Monochrom(e) cameras, which promised much higher image quality because there was no RGB layer on top of the sensor, completely eliminating the need for the demosiacing step that adds color to the image.  He was very proud of his acquisition.  During the seminar I explained why I would never recommend one (and would never use one myself).  Sure, it takes you back to the days of shooting B&W film, and sure, the promise of better quality images is quite appealing (even if it's only a theoretical advantage), but ultimately you give up a lot of control over how your final image is rendered.

Then I showed the attendees some examples of what you can get if you start with a color image and use Photoshop's Channel Mixer to control how individual colors get rendered to specific shades of grey (click on any image to view larger and sharper):

Normally green and red will render as the same shade of grey when shot in B&W mode; using Photoshop's Channel Mixer lets you dictate how certain colors will translate to which shade of grey.

This last imagae was made in a B&W darkroom, starting with a color negative and using two different colored filters in the enlarger to influence how certain colors would render.

Basic 2-light portrait setup

Also in this issue:

• Rescuing out-of-focus images
• Next time in Cameracraft
• New ebooks and updates
• More!

Basic 2-Light Portrait Setup

I've blogged about a lot of things, but I don't think I've ever demonstrated a basic two-light portrait setup.  This is for a series of pictures of middle school students I did back in April:

And here's the simple two-flash setup: 

A month on the Road

You haven't heard from me in awhile.  It's been a whirlwind - first our cat Oliver died after being with us for 12 years (tribute here), then I conducted my first seminar in five years in Plymouth, Massachusetts at the end of April, then the next day we took the motor home on a month-long cross-country trip to California to visit my brothers and the West coast grandkids.  Two days after that trip ended my granddaughter's Bat Mitzvah happened in Boston (and my wife did a lot of the baking in those two days!)

I'll share some pictures and some captions.  Nothing award winning here or anything...  (As usual, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

Overpowering the Sun with a Global Shutter

Sony A9 III 1/80,000th of a second, outdoors on a bright day with wireless flash.

Behind the Scenes shot of the above.  Who needs a studio anymore?

Also In This Issue:

• Brief comparison between Adobe, DxO, and Topaz Noise Reduction tools
• Books in the Pipeline
• Seminars and Photo Safari!  
• More Travel Photos

But first, some announcements.