Book Review – Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 By Bruce Frasier and Jeff Schewe
Posted on January 7, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
If you want to be a serious digital photographer then Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is one of the books that you will need to study, learn, and live by. Camera Raw, the Photoshop plug-in, gives you precise control over image qualities like white balance, tones, color space, contrast, and saturation.
Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is the latest version of the book that was begun by Photoshop expert Bruce Frasier and is now carried on by his friend and business partner Jeff Schewe. It is contained in 365 pages divided into nine chapters.
Chapter 1, "Digital Camera Raw," focuses on Raw capture, its fundamental nature, advantages, and limitations. You will begin by learning what Raw Capture is, why you should use it, and just what is a digital negative? Chapter 2, "How Camera Raw Works," examines what "lies under the hood" of the Camera Raw plug-in. To use Camera Raw effectively, you must first understand what it offers and where its limitations are, as well as how you can overcome the limitations.
Chapter 3, "Raw System Overview," provides the 30,000 foot view of the whole digital raw system. Here the individual components are discussed in much more detail; not as much as in future chapters, but for now, this provides an overview of the workflow in general. The components are Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Digital Negatives.
Chapter 4, "Camera Raw Controls," examines the Camera Raw controls in detail. Here you will start by learning how to handle Camera Raw images one at a time and you will delve in-depth into what each control does and how best to work with them. They include the basic panel, the Tone Curve Panel, the Detail Panel, the HSL/Grayscale Panel, the Split Tone Panel, the Lens Correction Panel, the Calibrate Panel, and the Presets Panel. You will also examine the Camera Raw Flyout menu, the main Raw buttons, the Camera Raw toolbar, as well as other Camera Raw tools.
Chapter 5, "Hands-on Camera Raw," shows that knowing what each control does is only half the battle, the other half is knowing how the tools interact, and when and in which order to use them. Here you will learn about Camera Raw by getting in and working with it.
Chapter 6, "Adobe Bridge," explores briefly the history of file browser and its progression into Adobe Bridge and how Bridge under CS3 has become rather complex. Here Bridge is talked about in relation to the features that apply to digital photography and the Raw workflow. Topics include working with Bridge, Metadata, Keywords, and other tools such as Batch Rename, Cache, Collections, and Slideshow.
Chapter 7, "It's All About the Workflow," describes, that now, even though you understand many of the tools, you now need to learn how to perform the actual work of Raw processing. This can be described into five basic strategies; Image Ingestion, Image Verification, Preproduction, Production, and Post Production. This will put the Raw workflow into the big picture.
Chapter 8, "Mastering Metadata," examines the "data about data"; that is the information contained within the raw file. This EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) standard is the information that is provided by the camera manufacturers when you take a picture. Also examined is XMP which is Adobe's initiative to promote a standard for Metadata. It, like DNG, is an open standard to try to make digital become manufacture independent.
Chapter 9, "Exploiting Automation," shows that although, up till now, everything has been done on a one off basis, to be truly effective, you need to be able to automate as many of these processes as possible. Here you will learn how to "work smarter, not harder" by using automation.
Bottom line, if you are serious about digital imaging, you will work with Raw files from your Camera; usually DSLR, but many higher end point and shoot cameras are offering Raw capture abilities as well. If you want to learn how to work effectively with Raw files then you will need to study Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3. It is the standard on the topic.
Unfortunately to the world at large and certainly to the digital world Bruce Frasier lost his battle with lung cancer on December 16, 2006. Fortunately for us, his friend and business partner Jeff Schewe has taken up the reigns, and updated his classic book and made sure that his legacy lives on.
If you are not familiar with Jeff Schewe's work you can find him as a regular on many of the videos from the Luminous-Landscape, from his website, and as the Editor in Chief for PhotoshopNews. As an award winning advertising photographer and pioneer in the digital imaging field, I can think of no one more qualified or more respected to take up the banner for Bruce Frasier and keep his legacy alive.
If you are serious about digital imaging and working with Raw files, if you find that you want to be in control of your images, or if you want to squeeze every last pixel of quality from your image capture, then Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is an absolutely, positively, must-own.
Fire at Essex photography club sparks plea for help
Posted on January 7, 2008 - Filed Under Digital, Photo | Leave a Comment
Basildon Photographic Society has issued an appeal for help after fire destroyed its meeting place and damaged equipment worth around £5,000.
The Essex-based club had held weekly meetings at a local scout hut until it was destroyed by fire last summer.
Heat and smoke destroyed equipment including studio lighting and a projector.
‘We have managed to find ourselves a temporary building and – as we are run entirely on subs and voluntary fees – we are struggling to replace damaged equipment and redecorate our new premises,’ said the club’s vice chairman Darren Chaplin.
Chaplin is hoping local companies will come forward to supply the club with around 30 folding chairs, paint, plasterboard and a door.
The club plans to hold weekly meetings in a bid to encourage local people to ‘engage in discussions and practical sessions and competitions to improve the art of photography’.
Anyone who can help should contact Darren Chaplin on 07977 173556.
Museum and Gallery Listings
Posted on January 4, 2008 - Filed Under Art, Culture, News | Leave a Comment
ART
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.
JOEL SHAPIRO: NEW SCULPTURE Joel Shapiro's latest show is exquisite: a focused, perfect arrangement of just under a dozen sculptures filling Pace Wildenstein in Chelsea. This may well be the artist's best effort in years. The work may look old-fashioned to some, with its attention to relationships between abstraction and representation, its choice of weighty materials (wood and bronze) and its heroic scale. The pieces may even be reminiscent of David Smith's, specifically his final Cubi series of monumental geometric sculptures made of stainless-steel cubes and prisms. Certainly Mr. Smith opened up a space for abstract sculpture in which Mr. Shapiro works.
But Mr. Shapiro is very much his own artist, with his own style and set of aesthetic concerns, chief among them the striving for a sense of compositional balance between opposites. His sculptures are compact yet fluidly elegant; rapturously open yet contained; full of life yet inert; majestic yet humble. Several seem to defy gravity, with the arrangements of the cubes, prisms and rectangles surging into the air. The works can also be brightly colored or lovingly hand-finished, the surface of the bronze sculptures made to resemble wood. They are like scaffolding crossed with a bouquet of flowers. (Through Jan. 19, Pace Wildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, 212-989-4258, pacewildenstein.com.) BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Museums
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: GILDED LIONS AND JEWELED HORSES: THE SYNAGOGUE TO THE CAROUSEL, through March 23. Skills and motifs used in sacred art resurface in a surprisingly secular place: the carousel. In this exhibition, models of elaborate wooden synagogues and photographs of Jewish cemeteries with intricately carved gravestones in Eastern Europe are alongside paper cuts, which look like giant, precision-cut snowflakes mounted on colored paper. The lineage from synagogue to carousel is made explicit in a display that juxtaposes carved Torah arks with carousel horses fashioned in the baroque Coney Island Style. The show reveals a vibrant Jewish visual culture, where Judaism is often seen as text-oriented. It is also a great immigrant story in which skills learned in the shtetls of Europe made their way to the New World and, for a brief moment, flourished. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040, folkartmuseum.org. (Martha Schwendener)
★ ASIA SOCIETY: THE ARTS OF KASHMIR,, through Jan. 6. Set in the Himalayas amid Afghanistan, China and India, Kashmir underwent constant cultural fermentation, taking influences in, sending them out. Sacred to Hinduism, home to early Buddhism and a favored retreat of Muslim rulers, it was forever either struggling to sustain social balance or heading into conflict. This perpetual play of opposites produced, through molding and friction, some of the most beautiful art in the world. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Holland Cotter)
ASIA SOCIETY: ZHANG HUAN: ALTERED STATES, through Jan. 20. The Chinese artist Zhang Huan, the subject of this small, midcareer survey, is best known for the early, often poetic, sometimes sensationally masochistic performance work he did in the 1990s, which can only be seen in videos and photographs now. The objects in this show, which include giant fragments of Buddhist sculptures made from copper sheets and incense ash, are products of his new workshop-style studio in Shanghai. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Cotter)
BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS: THE WORLD OUTSIDE: A SURVEY EXHIBITION 1991-2007, through Jan. 27. A product of the Cuban avant-garde of the late 80s and now a resident of Santo Domingo, Quisqueya Henríquez has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in North and South America. In her clever, ideologically pointed sculptures, installations, collages and videos, she aims to deconstruct prejudicial stereotypes about the arts and cultures of Latin America. 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania, (718) 681-6000, bronxmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)
★ BROOKLYN MUSEUM: INFINITE ISLAND: CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART, through Jan. 27. This large show, with 45 artists and a collective of designers, photographers and architects from the Dominican Republic adding to the count, fills two floors of temporary exhibition space, and care has been given to the selection. Organized by Tumelo Moshaka, associate curator of exhibitions at Brooklyn, it's an in-house job, a labor of love, though an uneven one. Too much work treads ground already covered by other art over the years. But what's good is really good, and the very existence of a show about identity politics, out of mainstream fashion in 2007, is cause for serious reflection. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Cotter)
★ FRICK COLLECTION: GABRIEL DE SAINT-AUBIN, through Jan. 27. One of 18th-century France's greatest draftsmen, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew all the time and everywhere he went. He usually worked small, and in many cases you need one of the magnifying glasses provided at the museum to fully appreciate the subtlety and detail. Nevertheless, he had tremendous range. Whether conjuring epic visions of Ancient Roman history or recording intimate views of domestic quietude, he produced works of nonstop graphic liveliness, extraordinary sensuousness and hypersensitive alertness to perceptual reality. 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, frick.org. (Johnson)
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: FOTO: MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1945, through Jan. 13. This exhibition is the art historical equivalent of the ultimate real estate dream: You open an unfamiliar door in your apartment and voilà there's an extra room you never knew about. In this case the room is full of the work of scores of mostly unfamiliar photographers who put the medium through its paces in interwar Central Europe. Learning about them gives modern photography up to and including the experiments of the early 1980s a whole new layout. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Roberta Smith)
★ GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: RICHARD PRINCE: SPIRITUAL AMERICA, through Jan. 9. This retrospective of one of contemporary art's inveterate bad boys looks more beautiful in the museum's rotunda than it probably should. Covering nearly 30 years, it includes photographs of photographs; joke paintings; car hoods; and parodies of de Kooning's Women paintings that have undergone a sex change. It shows a body of work in which the supposed end-game of appropriation has fueled a constantly changing and developing aesthetic that exposes and wryly celebrates the dark and tawdry side of this country's inner life. (See above.) (Smith)
INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GERDA TARO AND THIS IS WAR! ROBERT CAPA AT WORK, through Jan. 6. There are a number of narratives running through these shows, from the story of two young people who fled Nazi Germany to the rediscovery of Taro's career and the development of Capa as the greatest war photographer in the world (in the view of Picture Post magazine). Accompanied by a book written by Richard Whelan, the show delves into questions about Capa's famous photograph Death of a Loyalist Militiaman and the tricky relationship between truth and fiction in war photography. The show also examines how technological developments in warfare, photography and magazine printing led to a new era of photojournalism during the 1930s and 40s. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at West 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, icp.org. (Martha Schwendener)
JAPAN SOCIETY: MAKING A HOME: JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN NEW YORK, through Jan. 13. This is the first significant group show at Japan Society since Takashi Murakami's 2005 Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. While it includes emerging artists like Misaki Kawai and Hiroshi Sunairi, the show carves out room for midcareer and long-established artists. Yayoi Kusama is not in the show, but her influence is especially palpable in a series of connected installations that make the most of Japan Society's dark, airless galleries, transforming them into hypnotically introspective environments. 333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155, japansociety.org. (Karen Rosenberg)
THE JEWISH MUSEUM: CAMILLE PISSARRO: IMPRESSIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY, through Feb. 3. This exhibition contains few out-and-out masterpieces, but it does give us a rare look at the radical philosophies behind paintings that to a modern eye appear harmlessly bourgeois. For Pissarro, an anarchist and a Jew (albeit a secular one) in 19th-century France, Impressionism was about much more than the fleeting effects of light. It was about labor, the elimination of hierarchies and an idealized balance between urban and rural life. Pissarro emerges from this exhibition as an artist who never quite resolved the conflict between labor and sensation, but whose subtly anti-authoritarian stance propelled painting into the next century. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, (212) 423-3200, jewishmuseum.org. (Rosenberg)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND OTHER MODERN WORKS: THE MURIEL KALLIS STEINBERG NEWMAN COLLECTION, through Feb. 3. One of the Met's most significant gifts of midcentury art, promised in 1980 and finalized last year, is taut and rich, reflective of a passionately discerning eye. Nearly everything is a standout, not just the rare de Kooning and the substantial Pollock, or works by Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Claes Oldenburg and Jules Olitski. Max Ernst's portrait of Gala Eluard; sculptures by Giacometti and Jacques Lipchitz; paintings by Alfred Leslie and Mark Tobey; and a collage by Anne Ryan radiate an almost brazen self-sufficiency. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: THE AGE OF REMBRANDT: DUTCH PAINTING IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, through Jan. 6. The Met has long advertised itself as a grand art multiplex, a cluster of several separate world-class museums under a single roof. And we get a demonstration in this display of its entire 17th-century Dutch painting collection: 228 pictures, of which roughly a third are usually on view at any time, and some never. In addition to the Rembrandts, there are five Vermeers, nearly a dozen Frans Halses, and the list goes on in an inventory of breathtaking scope and depth. How to package it? The Met has come up with a theme, and a perfect one for our time: money. The work has been sorted not by artists names or dates, but by the names and dates of the collectors who bought and gave the paintings to the museum. This is the history of the Dutch Golden Age according to the American Gilded Age. (See above.) (Cotter)
★ METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: BRIDGING EAST AND WEST: THE CHINESE DIASPORA AND LIN YUTANG, through Feb. 10. Focused on a single modern family art collection, this show weaves like a DNA strand through the Met's Chinese painting galleries. The 40 examples of painting and calligraphy belonged to the writer and scholar Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his descendants, who have divided their time between China and the West. Accumulated over years, the collection has the casual logic of a household photo album, with evidence of shared habits, tastes and temperaments, and of personal interchange between generations. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Cotter)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: DEPTH OF FIELD, through March 23. The Met's recently acquired large-scale photographs finally have some room to breathe in the new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, a high-ceilinged, gray-carpeted sanctuary on the second floor. Curators at MoMA need not worry: The inaugural installation (a sampler rather than a thematic slice) is dominated by white, mostly male Europeans and heavily weighted with references to history and landscape painting. Despite its limitations, Depth of Field is not a bad debut. We can also expect more from future installations, which will explore themes like photography about photography. (See above.) (Rosenberg)
★ THE MET: ETERNAL ANCESTORS: THE ART OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN RELIQUARY, through March 2. Sure to be one of the sleepers of the fall art season, this beautiful show has a universal theme: life as a cosmic journey homeward, with parental spirits, embodied in charismatic materials and images, counseling and chiding us every step of the way. European, Asian and African reliquaries sit side by side in the first gallery; then some of the world's greatest Fang and Kota sculptures take over and sweep through to the end. (See above.) (Cotter)
Source: www.nytimes.com
A Noble Christmas
Posted on January 3, 2008 - Filed Under Photo | Leave a Comment
Planet Earth Daily Photo will be resting until January the First, 2008 (MMVIII). Thanks to all contributors, commentators and visitors over the last seven months. Please send in your global submissions ready for the New Year.
Thanks to Elliott for this seasonal shot. Peace, Rich
“Blenheim Palace was built at the start of the 18th century by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough; paid for by the nation as a gift to him in return for his brilliant military triumph against the French. His descendent, Winston Churchill was born here in 1874 in a small room just behind this grand entrance. During December the palace is beautifully decorated for Christmas in the ‘grand’ style. Well worth a visit”. Taken by Elliott
Police seize films from photo enthusiast; Photographer insists his ‘street photography’ pics in Hull were legal; Humberside Police investigate as photographer files complaint
Posted on January 2, 2008 - Filed Under Digital, Photo | Leave a Comment
Police have seized films from an amateur photographer, accusing him of obtaining photographs of possibly sensitive material in Hull city centre.
Photo enthusiast Steve Carroll has lodged an official complaint against Humberside Police after the incident on 1 December.
Carroll said that the officers objected to him photographing ‘sensitive buildings’, one later adding that people had been anxious about his use of the camera.
Carroll told the officers he was entitled to take pictures in a public place.
‘All the shots were of people. I took shots of people crossing the road, the seller, two youths drinking from beer cans, people walking in the street and so on,’ said Carroll who told us he was making his first attempt at ‘street photography’.
He admits a few of his shots were taken candidly, adding: ‘I did not take any photographs of children. I took most of the photographs openly, not trying to disguise the fact that I was photographing.’
Humberside Police seized two films containing the shots Carroll had taken. At the time of writing they had yet to return the films to the photographer.
A spokeswoman for the force told : ‘Camera film was seized by Humberside Police following a complaint from members of the public about photos being taken in the area of Prospect Centre, Hull.
‘An investigation is now underway and we are aware of complaints made by the man [Steve Carroll] which will be thoroughly investigated.’
The spokeswoman refused to comment further in light of the ongoing investigation.
The Stop/Search record form issued by the police states the reason for the stop as ‘obtaining photos of poss [sic] sensitive material’, according to a copy of the form supplied to us by the photographer.
Police did not carry out a search.
Carroll who lives in Sittingbourne, Kent had been visiting relatives in Hull at the time of the incident.
‘A little while previously I had seen an inspiring selection of ‘street photography’ presented at Maidstone Camera Club where I have been a member for nearly 30 years,’ he said.
‘I decided to have a go at street photography myself and in late November purchased a Voigtländer [Bessa] R4A with 21mm lens specifically for the purpose. This is a small and fairly unobtrusive camera.’
Sigma 18-200mm lens for Nikon
Posted on January 1, 2008 - Filed Under Digital | Leave a Comment
Sigma 18-200mm lens for Nikon : We got news from Sigma Japan. Sigma is pleased to announce the launch of the new Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC for Nikon. This high zoom ration lens, designed exclusively for digital SLR cameras, covers wide angle to telephoto. The built-in motor is capable of auto focusing with all Nikon DSLR cameras. Two SLD (Special Low Dispersion) lenses and two Aspherical glass elements provide excellent correction for all types of aberration. Sigma’s super multi-layer coating reduces flare and ghosting and provides high image quality throughout the zoom range. The compact and lightweight construction of 70mm (2.8”) in diameter, 75.6mm (3.0”) in length and 395g (13.9oz) makes it ideal for field work.
Sigma 18-200mm DC lens – Circular polarizing filters
The Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC for Nikon lens has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm (17.7”) and a maximum magnification of 1:4.4. An inner focusing system also eliminates front lens rotation, making the lens particularly suitable for using the petal lens hood and circular polarizing filters. A zoom lock switch mechanism is provided to prevent the lens from creeping due to its own weight.
Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC for Nikon – Compact and lightweight
The built-in motor is capable of auto focusing with all Nikon DSLR cameras. Compact and lightweight construction of 70mm (2.8”) in diameter, 75.6mm (3.0”) in length and weighing just 395g (13.9oz). SLD lens and Aspherical glass elements provides high image quality through entire zoom range. Sigma’s super multi-layer coating reduces flare and ghosting.
Sigma 18-200mm lens specifications
• Lens Construction: 15 Elements 13 Groups
• Angle of View: 76.5° – 8.1°
• Number of blades: 7pcs
• Minimum Aperture: f/22
• Minimum Focusing Distance: 45cm (17.7”)
• Maximum Magnification: 1:4.4
• Filter Size: Φ62mm
• Lens Hood: Petal-type hood
• Dimensions: Φ70mm(2.8”)x75.6mm(3.0”)
• Weight: 395g (13.9oz)
About Sigma
After nearly 40 years of pioneering new and better ways to capture and portray the ordinary – and extraordinary – Sigma is still creating new avenues of expression with innovative designs and enhancements in zoom and non-zoom lenses and single lens reflex cameras. As one of the first manufacturers to successfully introduce the interchangeable lens, Sigma’s well-earned reputation for originality, innovation and leadership is your guarantee of the world’s most advanced line of photographic products. Products you and millions of photographers worldwide turn to when quality, reliability and professional results count most.