I’ve been neglecting the process posts recently. The reason is simple, they take longer to put together, and I’ve been a little busier with other stuff. But let’s look at one of my recent photos, and how it was edited :)

This photo is from Arnhem in Netherlands, and is one of my very few photos taken with a fish eye lens.

Finished photo

Original photo

As you can see from the finished to original comparison, the 0EV exposure was quite dark. This was mostly due to very strong light of the bridge, and the camera of course compensated for that. Additionally, it was a little more distorted than I liked.

So as usually I started with all the exposures in Lightroom. Here I only partially removed the lens distortion and removed the chromatic aberations. From here I continued in Oloneo Photoengine.

All exposures

Tweaked in Lightroom

Right here you can see how different the image looked only with few tweak in Photoengine. I still needed to correct few things, so I loaded the result and all the original exposures into Photoshop. First I cropped the image, to get rid of most of the visible parts of the lens in the corners. Then I did the following edits:

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +2EV exposure, to brighten few areas around the horizon.
3. -2EV exposure, to darken the light on the bridge and the oversaturated green
4. merged copy, on which I retouched out the rest of the visible parts of the lens
5. brightened the ship from the +1EV
6. brightened the lights from the +2EV, to make them more visible
7. darkened the bridge pillar as it was too bright in the HDR, here I replaced it from the 0EV exposure
8. little bit of Color Efex Pro Contrast, to get more definition in the photo
9. little bit of Color Efex Tonal Contrast, to get more local contrast between objects in the photo
10. recovered few bright spot (result of Color Efex) from the -1EV exposure
11. once again repaired the bright light on the pillar from the -2EV

Merged in Oloneo

Finished in Photoshop

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

Which do you like more, this panorama, or the one I posted few days ago (which can be seen here). They were both taken during the same evening, from different corners of the Bratislava castle fortification.

Probably most will say that the older one is better, due to a very simple reason. The tower in this one is right behind the bridge, which makes for a little worse composition. But on the other side, this view gives a more 3D feel to the scene. One just can’t have everything in one shot :)

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2*3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 59mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 8.0s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.14159, 17.10270

A little continuation of yesterdays post :) This is (almost) all the stuff I shown you yesterday, put together into a usable form. From the Gitzo tripod, through the Sunwayfoto XB-44 ball head, to the universal L bracket.

I’m actually quite pleased how the L bracket fits to the Metabones adapter. It is of course not created specifically to it, but due to it’s versatility, to fit any camera, it fits also that quite nicely. It moves the camera even a little more to the back, but that in my opinion even helps the balance of the whole setup even more. The only problem I noticed, is, that I have to detach the remote when I wan to go into the vertical position. If it’s connected, I’m not able to close the clamp, due to the cable.

After the first day of use (I had some interior photoshoot today) I’m quite pleased with the purchase. Just will take some time to get use how differently everything is being tightened, compared to my old stuff. Still need much more experience to do a review for it :)

I don’t know why, but always when I order stuff, it all comes on the same day. It’s never like every day something, it’s all the same day :) But it’s always fun to get some new toys to play with, isn’t it :)

So today my new tripod and ball head arrived, with few more smaller things I needed to go with it. Since I’m switching from a Manfrotto attachment to a more traditional Arca Swiss attachment, I also had to get few extra plates and more :)

I plan to add reviews of everything over time (I need to try it out in work conditions first), but for now, here are some of the photo from the unboxing, and also an unboxing video. Some people tend to find unboxing videos worthless, but I disagree. Sometime it’s very hard to find out what everything is in the package, and a good unboxing video is a great help there. Like here, I needed a second quick release plate, and I could not find anywhere if there is one bundled with the ball head or isn’t.

This pile will be a nice replacement for my already very old Manfrotto 190XproB with the 496rc2 Compact Ball Head, which I used for the last 6-7 year. It still works nicely, only has to be tightened quite often, and has quite a few scrapes all over it :) So what all I got now? The new tripod is the Gitzo GT2542 4 section carbon tripod, from the Mountaineer series. To go with it, I got the Sunwayfoto XB-44 ball head with a replacemetn Sunwayfoto DLC-50 Knob/Lever Combo Clamp, a DPG-39 Universal Quick-Release Plate, DPL-01 Universal L-type Quick-Release Plate and the DMP-200L Multi-Purpose Rail Nodal Slide, all from Sunwayphoto. I hope I haven’t forgot anything while ordering it :)

So await reviews of all of this (together with the Sony a7R and the Metabones adapter) in the next weeks.

As I always say, it’s very nice to take photos in the early morning. Absolutely no people, and you can even take panoramas without anybody being in the way :) Not that I had a nice sunrise while in Amsterdam, but I did what I always do in that case. Try to do the most shooting during the blue hour, and include only very little from the sky.

This one was quite a big panorama, created from 5 tiles, each one from 4 exposures. You can see a work in progress shot on the side, from when I tone-mapped it in Oloneo Photoengine.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2×4, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8 , Focal length: 70mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 6s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 52.35841, 4.883135