Cityscape and Panorama

I was also asked to take a Cityscape and a Panorama.

I took the Cityscape as a HDR Image, this allowed me to get a clearer image, which I could use the HDR Toner for.

I took my panorama in the studio, I was trying to hand stitch it together but couldn't achieve it, so I used the automate button within Photoshop, which created a better Panorama than what I could achieve.

Because Panoramas have large file sizes, I am unable to upload it.

Studio

I was required to go into the studio and take some product and studio shots.

After playing with the lighting for a few hours, I managed to get the lighting I needed and decided to take pictures of a MacBook Pro.

I enjoyed taking these photographs and setting up the camera to do so.

HDR Images

So I have talked about HDR images a little bit, I have now gone out and taken my own photo's. 

I was required to take 2 in the daytime and 2 in the night time.

With the Night time shots, it was fairly difficult to get them I realised after I had shot them, that you need to set the exposure to a low exposure in order to capture a clearer Images.

Anyway the photo's I took came out looking okay.

I saved these 3 times over, once as a PNG, once as a JPEG and the original RAW file.

Stop Frame Animation

What is stop frame animation?

Stop frame animation is a technique used in animation which brings objects to life on the screen. This is done by moving the object frame by frame and filming at every increment. When all the frames are shown in a sequence it will show movement of the object. You can use a whole range of objects to perform stop frame animation, as long as they can be handled and repositioned easily.


How to do it?

Stop motion animation can be thought of as a series of still photographs. Objects or puppets are moved and filmed frame by frame to stimulate movement. Films such as King Kong and Star Wars made heavy use of stop motion animation using miniatures and puppets. This was the only way to bring objects that cannot move by themselves to life on screen.

Equipment needed?

When using stop frame you can use a DSLR so long as it has live view. Early DSLR's did not have live view, a feature where the camera can provide a video stream of the image through the lens. So, the studio had to use a secondary video camera to provide the video assist.

In 2007, Canon and Nikon introduced DSLR's with live view. Since then DSLRs have been used to capture most of the professional quality stop motion that you see.

My own example

RAW and JPEG

What are they?

RAW is an uncompressed image, you can set a camera to take a picture in RAW format, which will produce an uncompressed image, when taking a picture in RAW ensure you have a large memory card inside the camera as they take up a fair amount of space per image.

JPEG is a compressed image, by default camera's use this, it is the most common format for image files, when you take a picture in JPEG rather than RAW you receive a compressed image before you even have done any editing!

Most camera will allow you to shoot in RAW and JPEG, meaning you will receive one uncompressed image and one compressed image.

What is the main difference between them?

The difference between them is that RAW is uncompressed pure image, so you get exactly what you see through the viewfinder, JPEG you receive a compressed file to save on file size.

When you edit an already compressed image and continue to compressed it even further the image will then start to distort and pixelate. Taking images in RAW you have the complete uncompressed version of the photograph. 

Due to file size of RAW if you plan on using the image on the web you will have to compress it, It's not wise to use RAW images on a webpage because the length of time it will take for the image to load.

When you use RAW and then open the photograph in photoshop you automatically get to use the RAW editor, which allows you to change settings within the image until you get the picture you was hoping for.

This is the RAW Editor you can change all sorts in this to create the perfect image that you are looking for.

In this example you can see that I have change the vibrance of the image to make it more realistic, i've also exposed the image less, allowing less light in, meaning that glare from the sun hasn't cause a problem.

There isn't a set way to use the RAW editor just play with it until the picture suits.

You are able to do this with JPEG as well, however you will be editing and then saving a already compressed image. It's also quite time consuming doing this with a JPEG as you have to go to Image>Adjustments and then select which option you want, as where the RAW editor gives it all in one window.

You can shoot in RAW and JPEG which is handy if you are tethered to a computer the JPEG image will download a lot faster than what a RAW file would. So if you are tethered to a computer once you shoot the image, you are able to view the JPEG image on your screen more or less straight away. Using this method will allow you to see the image on a bigger screen.

How do I shoot in RAW?

This all comes down to the camera you are using, however you should be aware that different camera brands will save there RAW files in different formats, Canon save there images as a CR2 file, Nikon saves them as a NEF file and Samsung save there's SRW file. They are all the same thing however Photoshop won't open some files in the editor, but the camera manufacturer will have software.

Changing your camera settings to shoot in raw is simple you need to find the menu which looks similar to... 

High Dyanmic Range

High Dynamic Range (HDR), often explained as "seeing more like the human eye". HDR images combine several shots of the same image, over different exposures. Instead of the traditional one shot photography. The final result of a HDR image has more detail of shadows and highlights, and all the stuff between.

When I was shooting HDR images, I used a Canon camera, and shot in RAW this allowed me to get a uncompressed image, having a uncompressed image allows you to use the RAW editor for the images, however when you create a HDR using RAW you end up with a HDR Editor, this allows you to edit the photo to what you want it too look like.

I took a whole range of photo's most at daytime, a few at night time. The problem with the night time photo's is the exposure, when attempting to get a picture of something with lights in you have to set your exposure very very low, whilst still remembering you have to go 2 above and 2 below. I ended up with some very interesting HDR images from it.

I had to upload them as jpg's eventually, so that have been compressed a little bit.

Images

As I said in a previous post about going into the studio and taking photographs I now have these photographs to put on the blog.

Overall there wasn't many images we could use due to playing with set ups and trying to get lighting correct, however this very fun to do indeed.