Great deal on Luminar

If you have been looking at the Luminar software for macs and you were waiting for a great deal, now is the time to get it. For the next 10 days, you can get it for 50% off (that is 69 USD instead 139 USD) and you even get few bonuses with it (two ebooks, more presets and overlays). And even more, if you use the code “HDRSHOOTER” you will get it even additional 10 USD cheaper.

Head over to the Luminar website for more information and the offer.

TKActions V5

One of the tools I use in my photo editing is the TKActions panel from Tony Kuyper. It’s especially great for creating luminance masks and sharpening for web. And just few days ago, TKActions were updated with a completely new panel set, the TKActions V5. So if you do a lot of luminance masking, I would suggest checking it out. I will cover it more, in a few guides, but for now, check out the official page here.

You can see the panel in the screen-shot to the right. It’s quite big like this, but in reality its 5 separate panels, and you can only open the ones you need.

Late evening at the Burj Khalifa

I really like the photos I took in Dubai, so I regularly go through them, to see if I find one more to edit and share with you. For today I found another one of the Burj Khalifa.

I did not have the best setup when I took this. I used a wide angle lens, to take a vertorama, while using a table top tripod and having no panoramic head or tilt shift lens at hand. So if you look at the screen-shot to the right, you can see how much distortion there was when I combined the shot, and also how much I had to crop out to get the final shot. But with a bit of editing and tweaks, I ended up with a nice results.

This is a two shot vertorama, each shot from two exposures. The panorama was combined in PTgui (learn how in this guide) and finished in Photoshop.

You will notice here, there is a church tower in front of the Hungarian parliament. It would be better without it, but there is a small problem to that. There is a place, from where you can see the parliament without the tower. It’s directly from the Fishermans bastion. The problem there is, that it is a restaurant, that is mostly not accessible at all, or they allow entry to it only for a short time and close it quite early. In the years I have been visiting Budapest, I only got into the bastion once, and this is not one of the photos from that evening. But I still like it, and I hope you do so too :)

Yellow glow of the Hungarian parliament

If you ever been to Budapest, and every tried to take a photo of the Hungarian parliament building, you know how crazy strong the lights are compared to the surroundings. It just completely overpowers everything around it with the strong yellow glow. I really does take a bit of work to tone it back down again, so one doest not have the whole building overexposed.

For this photo I used two exposures, one for the base and a second at -2EV for the light. I edited both in Lightroom and blended together in Photoshop.

While I use a Sony camera mostly now, I also use a the Canon 5D mark II. And since the Magic Lantern firmware makes working with it so much better, today I will show you how to install Magic lantern, update and uninstall it. I will be showing all the steps on the 5D mark II, but there are same on other cameras.

For why to use Magic Lantern, check out this article, on what I like the most about it.

Also, be warned, as with all unofficial software, you install Magic Lantern at your own risk (but I still have not heard about any big problems with it).

How to install Magic Lantern

Magic lantern installation is in two parts. It a change in the camera that notes that it should use the firmware on the card, and it’s the files you have to copy to the card that are used.

So to install it, you will need a computer with a card reader, a fully charged camera and a memory cart to use. I seen suggestions to reset the camera to default settings and set to Manual mode before starting, but I never did this once and never had issues, but to be safe, you may do so.

So to install you must:

1. Download the version of Magic Lantern for the camera you need from the Magic Lantern website.
2. Check if you camera has the correct firmware version, as required by Magic Lantern. You may need to update it first before being able to install ML firmawre
3. Format the memory card using your camera.
4. Turn off your camera, remove the card and connect it to the computer using the card reader
5. Unpack the downloaded files you got into the root directory of the memory card



6. Put the card back into the camera and turn it on
7. Chose update firmware from the cameras menu, and wait


8. Once you see a prompt to restart your camera, turn it off, wait a few seconds and turn it back on


9. Now you can check the firmware version to see if its installed, and open the ML menu by pressing the trash button

If yo want to install the ML firmware on another card, just use the same steps, format the card, copy the files, put into the camera, turn on and update firmware with the new card.

How to update Magic Lantern

Updating Magic lantern is very easy, as you only need to update the files on the memory card. So you do the following:

1. Connect the card to your computer (what you see depends on the version, but it can be like this)



2. Remove the ML folder and all files, except the settings folder under ML folder (don’t delete the camera folders, the DCIM and MISC on Canon cameras)



3. Extract and copy the downloaded files, same as when you are installing the firmware for the first time.



4. Put the card into a camera that is off and turn it on. In a case that it wont turn on, turn it back off, remove the battery for few seconds and turn it back on.
Old version
New version

How to uninstall Magic Lantern

Remove from camera

To uninstall the firmware from the camera, you need to have a card with the ML firmware installed in the camera and the camera turned on. Then you need to:

1. Choose firmware in the menu
2. Choose to update the firmware
3. When prompted to restart the camera, do nothing. You will see a counter on the bottom of the screen, that counts down until the firmware will be uninstantiated.



 

4. Restart your camera, but not before the timer finished. Wait for it, until its done first.

Remove from card

To just remove the firmware from the memory cards you have to:

1. Choose to format the card inside the camera
2. In the confirmation menu you will see a message Format card, keep ML. You need to change this to Format card, remove ML. To do so, press the button noted inside the brackets []. Picture Style in my case.



 

3. Choose OK and confirm

And now you know how to install, update and uninstall Magic lantern firmware. For more, don’t forget to check out their official site here.

Free DxO OpticsPro 9

If you need editing software to work on you photos, and you don’t have much to spend, you can get a copy of DxO OpticsPro 9 completely free. Until the 28th of February, just go here, enter you email, and claim your copy.

Winter morning at the Charles bridge

I just got back from Prague about a hour ago, and thought I edit one of the photos I took for the blog. It was not that great of a weekend to take shots, as the weather was a bit awful. Not cold enough for there to be still snow, and no warm enoughs to have a spring feeling. It was mostly foggy, but not foggy enough for a great fog photos. But still foggy enough to not be able to get some nice views. You know how it is. Of course right around we were boarding the train back to Bratislava, the sky cleared and the sun showed up. It sometimes like this :)

But I got some shots on Saturday, especially early in the morning at the Charles bridge. My friends would not believe me that there would be people there at 5 am (the sunrise was at about 7.30) but once we arrived they saw it for themselves. Even funnier was, when a young man passing around us gave a question to one of my friends. What were we doing there so late? He presumably did not understand, that for us it was still early. For him, since he probably did not sleep at night, it was still late. But as you can see in the behind the camera shot on the side, it still was quite dark.

But to the photo. This one was taken right before sunrise. It was very cloudy, but it caught a hint of blue during the morning blue hour, and thats when I got this. This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom and edited in Photoshop.

As I mentioned, this weekend I’m in Prague, taking probably foggy photos. But as this year I want to stick again with regular daily updates, this one was scheduled the day before :)

Lighthouse in the blue

For today, I have for you a photo of the Lighthouse in Podersdorf am See. This is one of my favorite locations close by Bratislava, as it’s so unique to have a lighthouse in central Europe. And if you don’t go there in summer, you get a great view, with minimum of people around :)

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.