Photo Techniques - David Mathre Photography

Friday (29-April-2011) — Mexico

Gone to See Central America and the Panama Canal. Semester at Sea Spring 2011 Enrichment Voyage on the MV Explorer. Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop II with Michael Mariant. Day 3: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

A series of 12 telephoto images of a fisherman with the sun rising. The images were taken from deck 7 of the Semester at Sea MV Explorer while anchored off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -1.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/160 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -1.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -0.67 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -0.67 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -0.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized -0.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.33 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.00 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.00 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/640 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.67 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre) — Fisherman at Sunrise while at Anchor off Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 200, 300 mm, f/5.6, 1/640 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, (levels normalized +0.67 EV for exposure, cropped), Nik Define 2 (noise reduction), and converted to web with Photoshop CS5.

Wednesday (27-April-2011) — California, Mexico, and At Sea

Gone to See Central America and the Panama Canal. Semester at Sea Spring 2011 Enrichment Voyage. Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop II with Michael Mariant. Day 1: Depart San Diego; Travel to Ensenada, Mexico; Embarkation on the MV Explorer.

HDR composite of images of Sunrise over San Diego taken from my hotel room. Three images were taken with a Leica X1 camera (+2, 0, -2 EV) just as the sun started to show above the mountains to the east. The first image was processed with HDR Express, using its Artistic default. The second image was processed with Photomatix Pro using the Compressor Deep settings.

We left San Diego at about 11:00 by bus for Ensenada, Mexico. Once we arrived at the cruise line port we embarked on the MV Explorer to begin the Spring Enrichment Voyage to Central America and Panama Canal. It was good to see many friends from the Caribbean Enrichment Voyage and Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop I (UTPW-I) on board the ship.

After the ship departed Ensenada for Cabo San Lucas there was a small green flash at sunset. The image was taken with a Leica V-Lux 20 camera (200 mm equiv). This is a good omen for the Voyage!!!

San Diego Sunrise. Composite HDR Image taken with a Leica X1 (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/11, 1/13 sec +/- 2EV). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, HDR Express (Artistic), Topaz Denoise, and converted to jpg with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre)

San Diego Sunrise. Composite HDR Image taken with a Leica X1 (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/11, 1/13 sec +/- 2EV). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, Photomatix (Compressor Deep), and converted to jpg with Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre)

M/V Explorer Upper Mast. Image taken with a Leica X1 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/4.5, 1/125 sec). (David J Mathre)

Green Flash at Sunset over the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 20 camera (ISO 80, 49.2 mm, f/6.3, 1/200 sec). (David J Mathre)

[Posts will be limited while on the M/V Explorer due to narrow internet bandwidth.]

Tuesday (26-April-2011) — Arizona from the Air.

Transcontinental Flight: New Jersey to California.

Aerial View of Arizona and Grand Canyon National Park. Image taken from a commercial jet while flying to San Diego to meet my parents for the Semester at Sea Spring 2011 Enrichment Voyage.

Aerial View of Arizona and Grand Canyon National Park. Image taken with a Leica X1 (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/2.8, 1/1600 sec). (David J Mathre) — Aerial View of Arizona and Grand Canyon National Park. Image taken with a Leica X1 (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/2.8, 1/1600 sec).

Thursday (21-April-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey

Pink Flower — Macro and Wide Depth of Field. I used the pink flower from yesterday as an exercise to practice with a macro lens, flash, and Helicon Focus to get a macro image of a flower with an extreme depth of field in focus. Ten images of the flower were taken from rear focus to front focus by manually adjusting the focus distance on the lens. The raw images were processed with Capture One Pro, converted to 16 bit Tiff files, and then processed with Helicon Focus. Even though the lens was set at f/22, the actual focus plane was very narrow and thus needing several focus distances for Helicon Focus.

Pink Flower Macro and Helicon Focus Study. Image taken with a Nikon D3x, 200 mm f/4 macro lens, and SB-200R flash (ISO 100, 200 mm, f/22, 1/60 sec). Composite of 10 focus layers combined using Helicon Focus. (David J Mathre)

One-Year Ago (17-April-2010) — California

Gone to See America 2010. Big Sur Photography Workshop with Michael Mariant. Day 3: Big Sur & California Coastal Redwood Forest.

Digital Editing — Comparison of RAW Image Converters. Something a bit different. Today I am comparing 4 different programs that convert the RAW digital images acquired by my Nikon cameras. The RAW converters that I typically use include Adobe Camera Raw (ver 6.2), Nikon Capture NX2 (ver 2.2.6), Phase One Capture One Pro (ver 6.00), and DxO Optics Pro (ver 6). The programs were all run on Windows 7 (64 bit). The image was taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/16, 2.5 sec) on a tripod. The overall scene was beyond the dynamic range of the digital sensor. It was rather dark in the forest, thus the long exposure. The bit of sky visible is bright (and blown out). In the following days I will be comparing some HDR (high dynamic range) programs to process several images of the same scene taken at different exposures to try to compensate for the wide dynamic range.

Adobe Camera Raw. This is the program that Adobe uses to process RAW digital images for Photoshop and Lightroom. Camera Raw is only able to read some of the Nikon in camera settings. In recent versions they have included settings that simulate the Nikon Picture Control settings (Landscape, Vivid, etc). The current version of Camera Raw also now includes lens corrections for a wide variety of lenses including the lens that this image was taken.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Adobe Camera Raw: Adobe Standard, No Lens Correction. Wide Angle Looking up from a Coastal Redwood Forest. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 14 mm, f/16, 2.5 sec). Raw image converted using Adobe Camera Raw 6.2 default. (David J Mathre)