63 — Review of the Colormunki and the i1XTreme

March 20, 2009 By 7 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #63 fea­tures a review of the Col­or­munki and the i1XTreme monitor/printer/projector pro­fil­ing sys­tems. These are hard­ware sys­tems that use a spec­tropho­tome­ter to mea­sure the color from hard­ware devices like mon­i­tors, print­ers, pro­jec­tors (and in the case of the i1XTreme, scan­ners and cam­eras as well). So many of us are print­ing from our homes, offices or home-offices and we want accu­rate colours from our RGB or CMYK print­ers. These hard­ware devices absolutely sim­plify this extremely con­fus­ing process and both prod­ucts come highly rec­om­mended. After the review, we ask Joe Brady of MAC­grou­pUS in a tele­phone inter­view, to clar­ify what we need to do in Photoshop’s print­ing dia­logue boxes to assure us of a good mon­i­tor to printer print. This is a com­mon area of con­fu­sion for many pho­tog­ra­phers try­ing to print on their own printers.

UPDATE — In the pod­cast I say that the Col­or­Munki is restricted to use on 3 mon­i­tors. This restric­tion has been lifted.

The ColorMunki

The Col­or­Munki

i1Xtreme

i1Xtreme

Photoshops dialogue boxes

Photoshop’s dia­logue boxes

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
col­or­munki
i1XTREME

Col­or­Munki sum­mary tuto­r­ial on Youtube
X-rite Eye One ( i1 ) 1 of 2 — Mon­i­tor Setup from colorHQ.com
X-rite Eye One ( i1 ) 2 of 2 — Mon­i­tor Adjust­ments from colorHQ.com
Pod­cast #62 — Mon­i­tor — printer cal­i­bra­tion (an intro­duc­tion) — Inter­view with Joe Brady
Pur­chase the col­or­Munki at B&H — Pur­chase the i1XTreme at B&H (what I reviewed) Pur­chase the i1 Photo at B&H (a good alter­na­tive if you don’t need the extra bells and whis­tles).
Joe Brady Photography

Link I for­got to men­tion — Just like there are bet­ter mon­i­tors for pho­tog­ra­phy, there are bet­ter print­ers with good print dri­vers that work well with the 2 sys­tems reviewed in this pod­cast. 2 rec­om­mended print­ers Epson R1900 and Epson R2880 at B&H

If you are still lurk­ing, feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to Steven K, benny, Lovin and SuzieQ who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography product reviews, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Photography.ca winning member images

March 7, 2009 By 4 Comments

For the past 2 months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko),‚ chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. The Eagle photo below by kentw was my choice for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing Kent’s photo as the ‘win­ner’ took about 3.5 hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many many many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so I’d like to include 3 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you haven’t joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Here’s the win­ning photo:

Eagles on the Mississippi by kentw

Eagles on the Mis­sis­sippi by kentw

Here are the 3 hon­ourable mentions:

A leaf in water by Michaelaw

A leaf in water by Michaelaw

From Exploring b/w thread by Mad Aussie

From ‘Explor­ing b/w thread’ by Mad Aussie

Shot of my dd...by ~Carla~

Shot of my dd…by ~Carla~

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

62 — Monitor — printer calibration — Interview with Joe Brady

March 3, 2009 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #62 fea­tures an intro­duc­tion into mon­i­tor cal­i­bra­tion and pro­fil­ing and printer cal­i­bra­tion and pro­fil­ing by way of an inter­view with Joe Brady of MAC­grou­pUS. Joe clears up many com­mon ques­tions that we have when it comes to mon­i­tor pro­fil­ing and tells us straight up why hard­ware devices that pro­file your mon­i­tor are vastly supe­rior to the pro­fil­ing soft­ware that comes with mon­i­tors. We talk about colour space, ICC pro­files and how (unfor­tu­nately) the aver­age pho­tog­ra­pher is using a bad mon­i­tor and a flawed work­flow to proof their work. The next pod­cast will fea­ture a full review of the col­or­munki and i1XTreme hard­ware pro­fil­ing devices gra­ciously loaned to me by MACgroupUS.

This image is just to illus­trate a point. On the left is an image off of an UNcal­i­brated Eizo Mon­i­tor. On the right is that same image on a mid-range mon­i­tor that I thought was some­what cal­i­brated. Side by side you can see how the Eizo has a greater tonal range and less of a cast. The results are WAY more dra­matic when you see the result­ing prints with your eyes. When you actu­ally cal­i­brate and pro­file the mon­i­tor using qual­ity cal­i­bra­tion hard­ware, you get the best (or close to the best) result that the par­tic­u­lar mon­i­tor can deliver. This usu­ally trans­lates to a wider tonal range with whites being whiter and blacks cast free as well, com­pared to the pre-calibrated monitor.

Links men­tioned in this podcast:

col­or­munki
i1XTREME
col­or­munki train­ing — Videos on using color munki along with color the­ory
Guess what it is thread

Assign­ments on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board:
March 2009 Photo Assign­ment — Wind
March 2009 — Assign­ment — pho­tograph­ing words — Wind

Thanks as always to Susan, Steven K, Jla­bel, Kent Wil­son and Tony who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

61 — What makes a Photo Great

February 9, 2009 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #61 talks about what makes a photo great. Given that most of us try hard to pro­duce the best pho­tographs we can, in this pod­cast we are try­ing to come up with the cri­te­ria needed to cre­ate great pho­tographs. I offer my per­sonal opin­ion on the mat­ter and I’d love to get com­ments telling me that I’m on to some­thing, or com­ments telling me that I’m full of it. These two pho­tographs below fit the bill for what I call great pho­tog­ra­phy. I dare you to chal­lenge me on these pho­tos, I dare you. This pod­cast is based on a sug­ges­tion from Mad Aussie in our forum. Many thanks Mad Aussie!

Afghan Girl — Steve McCurry

Melancholic Tulip - 1939 - Andre Kertesz

Melan­cholic Tulip — 1939 — Andre Kertesz

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
What makes a photo great? (Orig­i­nal thread that inspired this pod­cast)
Guess what it is thread
The image game
Marko’s Jan­u­ary 2009 pick for best mem­ber image
Nom­i­nate other member’s pho­tographs
Zen And The Art Of Motor­cy­cle Maintenance:an Inquiry Into Values

Assign­ments on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board:
Feb­ru­ary 2009 Photo Assign­ment — Love/Passion/Romance and Red should be a fea­ture
Febru­rary 2009 — Assign­ment — pho­tograph­ing words — Shadow
Febru­rary 2009 — Post pro­cess­ing assignment

Thanks as always to‚Susan and Benny who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

Portraits from the Plateau — Sylvain Grand’Maison

January 26, 2009 By 5 Comments

I took this shot for fel­low friend, art direc­tor and pod­caster Syl­vain Grand’Maison about a month ago. Syl­vain pro­duces an extremely suc­cess­ful French pod­cast here in Que­bec that fea­tures great pod­safe music,  great artists and does it all while drink­ing great beer and talk­ing about social media and podcasting.

Syl­vain needed some pho­tog­ra­phy done so we got together for a few hours and clicked the shut­ter. He specif­i­cally had a con­cept in mind and we focused mainly on his con­cept (can’t talk about it yet). After the shoot though, we also took some casual shots and many of them came out quite nice includ­ing this one.

Sylvain GrandMaison

Syl­vain Grand’Maison

Sylvain’s blond hair and eyes came out really well against this black back­ground and both he and I really dig this shot. In terms of light­ing, I used a Quan­tum flash in an umbrella at 45 degrees and a reflec­tor on the oppo­site site. I did a bit of soft­en­ing on his body and added some glow to his hair in post so that his face is the most strik­ing ele­ment in the shot. Exif data is 1/80 at F-7.0 ISO 400 at 75mm.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , ,

Portraits from the Plateau — Sylvain Grand’Maison

January 26, 2009 By 5 Comments

I took this shot for fel­low friend, art direc­tor and pod­caster Syl­vain Grand’Maison about a month ago. Syl­vain pro­duces an extremely suc­cess­ful French pod­cast here in Que­bec that fea­tures great pod­safe music,‚ great artists and does it all while drink­ing great beer and talk­ing about social media and podcasting.

Syl­vain needed some pho­tog­ra­phy done so we got together for a few hours and clicked the shut­ter. He specif­i­cally had a con­cept in mind and we focused mainly on his con­cept (can’t talk about it yet). After the shoot though, we also took some casual shots and many of them came out quite nice includ­ing this one.

Sylvain GrandMaison

Syl­vain Grand’Maison

Sylvain’s blond hair and eyes came out really well against this black back­ground and both he and I really dig this shot. In terms of light­ing, I used a Quan­tum flash in an umbrella at 45 degrees and a reflec­tor on the oppo­site site. I did a bit of soft­en­ing on his body and added some glow to his hair in post so that his face is the most strik­ing ele­ment in the shot. Exif data is 1/80 at F-7.0 ISO 400 at 75mm.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , ,

60 — Panning and the Weston Portrait — Interview with Laszlo of Montreal

January 20, 2009 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #60 fea­tures an inter­view with pho­tog­ra­pher Las­zlo of Mon­treal. In this inter­view, Las­zlo decon­structs a por­trait of Loblaws owner Galen Weston so that we may learn from it. In the inter­view he describes the var­i­ous tech­niques used to cre­ate this image includ­ing pan­ning, bal­anc­ing the flash and the ambi­ent light as well as his choice of shut­ter speed and envi­ron­ment for this image.

Galen Weston by Laszlo

Galen Weston by Las­zlo — Click to enlarge

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Laszlo’s web­site
Laszlo’s Paul Anka por­trait
HDR Pod­cast #59

Assign­ments on the bul­letin board:
Jan­u­ary 2009 photo assign­ment — Warm and Cozy

Thanks as always to‚ Steven K,‚ Susan, Michael Van der Tol, landon9720, Yise­haq, Frank and Gary H who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

January 9, 2009 By 3 Comments
Calm image from a moving bus :)

Calm image from a mov­ing bus

Oh how this calm pho­to­graph is decep­tive! You’d think it was taken care­fully and leisurely and this is not at all the case. The truth is, is that it was taken through the win­dow of a bus mov­ing quickly down a rocky road. The only impor­tant thing done to this pho­to­graph in post was straight­en­ing as it was a good 25 degrees away from being ‘straight’. Exif data — F10 1/1250 ISO 640

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries

59 — HDR — High dynamic range photography — Interview with Joseph Cartright

December 23, 2008 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #59 talks about HDR (High dynamic range) pho­tog­ra­phy in an inter­view with fash­ion pho­tog­ra­pher and HDR instruc­tor Joseph Car­tright. In this pod­cast we dis­cuss how to cre­ate an HDR pho­to­graph and be warned, this is an inter­me­di­ate level pod­cast. That said, Joseph reviews many of the terms that con­fuse dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phers these days, so part of the pod­cast (espe­cially the begin­ning) reviews con­cepts rel­e­vant to all dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. In a nut­shell an HDR image is made of 2 or more shots where the same scene is pho­tographed with brack­eted expo­sures and then put together with soft­ware in order to extend the dynamic range (get addi­tional infor­ma­tion in the high­lights, mid­tones and shad­ows) of the scene.

Here’s a few terms as explained by Joseph that are good to absorb right away;
– Lat­i­tude — Refers to how much you can be ‘off’ of the cor­rect expo­sure and still have a usable image.
– Dynamic range — Refers to the usable range of data you can cap­ture between the high­lights and the shad­ows before you lose data. (If you over­ex­pose too much there is no data in the whites or high­lights and if you under­ex­pose too much there is no data in the blacks or shadows).

HDR photograph

HDR Image by Joseph Car­tright — Click to enlarge

HDR photograph

HDR Image by Trey Rat­cliff — Click to enlarge — Orig­i­nal image http://stuckincustoms.com/2008/12/14/my-five-favorites-from-vancouver/

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast and HDR ref­er­ences — Joseph Car­tright Pho­tog­ra­phy

Soft­ware:
Pho­tomatix — http://www.hdrsoft.com/
FDR tools — http://fdrtools.com/front_e.php
Soft­ware overview — http://wiki.panotools.org/HDR_Software_overview

Ref­er­ence Sites:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/siggraph/
http://www.hdrlabs.com/siggraph/index_files/Witte_HDRI_Tips_Tricks.pdf
http://www.creativepro.com/article/photo-murals-make-you-think-big-really-big
HDR tuto­r­ial by Trey Ratcliff

Assign­ments on the bul­letin board:
Decem­ber photo assign­ment — The Hol­i­days
Decem­ber assign­ment — Pho­tograph­ing words — Winter

Thanks as always to‚ Steven K,‚ Susan, EJC, Dan, JK and aophoto who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to Mark3351, Alex Ross rana, djKianoosh, Rikki, eroder, The_Camera_Poser and ben­ja­mind­i­caprio for join­ing our bul­letin board and post­ing a few times. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

Winter patterns

December 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Even though win­ter is uncom­fort­able in many ways for tak­ing pic­tures, win­ter offers lots of pho­to­graphic pos­si­bil­i­ties. Pat­terns of frost, ice and snow make inter­est­ing sub­jects and some­times give off an abstract feel. The tip of the day there­fore, is search for win­ter pat­terns! The shot below was taken dur­ing one of the first snow­storms in Mon­treal this year. I call this one Win­ter Zen.

Winter Zen

Win­ter Zen — by Marko Kulik

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: ,

58 — Lenses — the basics — Photography podcast

December 10, 2008 By 8 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #58 talks about lenses and what lenses new pho­tog­ra­phers should be look­ing to get. We talk about nor­mal lenses, wide angle lenses, tele­photo lenses, and we even touch on ded­i­cated macro lenses. A good lens is MUCH more impor­tant than a good cam­era because it is the lens that focuses the image. Put a cheap lens on a $1000–2000.00 cam­era and you’ve made a BAD over­all invest­ment and your images will suf­fer. Put a good $500‑1500.00 lens on a good cheap cam­era and you have made GOOD invest­ment. Thanks to danalive for sug­gest­ing this podcast.

Assorted lenses for photography

Assorted lenses for photography

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
dpreview.com
Macro on the cheap podcast

Thanks as always to‚ Steven K,‚ Susan, Michael Van der Tol and aophoto who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks also to Jes­llo, Gem, fallinto­col­ors, Ryan Mor­gan, spleisher, Marta, johnc24, bleaches,‚ mcnay55,‚ Matt2682, fan­gelico, Moghe­dian, danalive, kear­n­ey­ca­tion, mno­ble, ludovic slight­ly­im­per­fect, len, V-Town, outty, walasy, Ban­dit, and herr_andersson. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

More photography podcasts are coming!

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Just an FYI — More pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts are com­ing, I promise.

In fact I’m in the mid­dle of edit­ing one right now and have 2 sched­uled.
Per­sonal cir­cum­stances had halted pub­lish­ing pod­casts, but I’m now back on track.

Thanks for your patience every­one and for the many sup­port­ive emails that con­tinue to come in. — Marko

Filed Under: Photography blog entries
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