Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Quick RAW photo conversion

As a Canon user, I use Canon's free software Digital Photo Professional for quick RAW photo convertion.

It's really easy and efficient, here is my workflow:

- Select your pictures in DPP
- Click Batch convert
- Choose the folder you want the pictures to land in
- Always select TIFF 16bit - this is way better than 8bit and any jpeg!
- Select Output Resolution (here is a quick tip: choose 72dpi if your picture is for the web, 300dpi, if it's for print and 400dpi if you're printing in a photo lab)
- Choose the file name

I use Digital Photo Professional for the corrections in White Balance and the exposition of +/-2 f-stops. For everything else I use Photoshop.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Grey Card Camera Calibration

Ever wondered how to calibrate your camera with a Grey Card? Here is an easy way.

Remeber that there is no "standard white", that's why it's always better to calibrate using a grey card which reflects exactly 18% of the light.

1. Select your ISO - changing the ISO will ruin the calibration, so rember to calibrate each time you change the ISO!

2. Switch to Manual exposure.

3. Set the correct exposition as metered from the grey card. Make sure that the frame is fully filled by the grey card. Use spot metering.

4. Place the card at a 45 degree angle to both the light and your camera.

5. You may have to switch to Manual focus, Autofocus will not work as there are no contrasts to "catch on". Take the picture as slight out-of-focus.

6. The histogram should be a narrow stripe in the middle of the scale.

7. Set custom white balance.

8. After setting the custom white balance as the grey card take another picture of the card - see the difference?

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Bubu, a wonderful store in Warsaw

On my recent trip t Warsaw I discovered a real hidden gem - a store with hand made jewellery called bubu. It's located in an old district of Warsaw - Powisle, on Solec Street.

The store is really charecterful with dark green walls and picture frames full of original hand-made jewellery. Each piece is unique, so you can be sure noone else will wear the same thing as you!

The owner of the store told me that very soon (probably before Christmas) bubu will have an Internet store, which I'm really looking forward to! I will stay tuned for that and will let you know once the store is live.

I'm really looking forward to wearing some of the pieces, I can already hear my friends asking "wow, where did you get those earings?". Really bubu's jewellery is something special!

Their website address is: http://2xbu.com/ and you can also find them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bubu.store

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Turn a Room into a Camera Obscura

Last weekend we decided to turn one of our rooms into a Camera Obscura. Who would have thought - it actually worked and it was not just an optical illusion!

The room was completely dark and we put some black material to cover all holes such as those under the door. We covered the window with black tape in which we made a small hole. At the beginning a tiny one and the we enlarged it to the size of a small coin.

The effect was quite surprising - we could really see the reflection of the reality outside on the floor of the room. Upside-down, of course!

We then took some pictures with a digital camera, tripod, long exposure. We were putting diffrent items on the floor so that we could see the reflection on them. Its was quite a creative process and definately more fun than making a camera obscura from a shoe box!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Halloween party

Well done to everyone for organising some fantastic Halloween events here on Sunday! Around 280 people followed a special family trail round some of the park’s supposed haunted spots and the evening, over 100 people joined mini ghost-hunts! What a great day! Next year we'll join the event again for sure and bring more friends with us:)