Refresher – iPad Portfolio

I’m not going to get into the debate between using a more traditional print portfolio or using a device like the iPad or iPad 2 as your portfolio. Frankly, I believe that ship has already sailed and after several months using my new iPad as a portfolio, I can’t imagine going back to a printed portfolio.

However, getting your images to look their very best on the iPad is not as simple as it first seems. Like many photographers, I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 to manage my raw files and prepare them to be output fas JPEGs. Over the past few years I’ve developed several different “Export Presets” that I use depending upon how the final image will to be used, whether in print or on the web. After exporting several images using my presets and importing them into the iPad using iTunes, I found that not all my images looked as “crisp” on the iPad as they had in Lightroom on my MacBook.

Resolution
Part of the problem is physical. The iPad is not a MacBook and its 9.7″ (diagonal) screen is considerably smaller than the smallest MacBook Pro at 13.3″ (diagonal). The resolution of the iPad is a fixed 1024 x 768 at 132 pixels per inch which is considerably less than the MacBook Pro’s at 1280 x 800 at 101 pixels per inch. Given this physical limitation, your images will always look better on your MacBook than your iPad. However, there are a few things that you can do in Lightroom to even the playing field a bit.

Collection Sets and Virtual Copies
The first thing is to create a separate Lightroom “Collection Set” to hold your iPad images as shown below. I generally create a “Virtual Copy” of each image to go into my iPad portfolio and move these into a “Landscape” or “Portrait” (horizontal or vertical orientation) collection. I separate my images this way so that clients looking at my portfolios are not constantly rotating the iPad from horizontal to vertical and back when swiping though the images. Using virtual copies is also very important since you’ll need to process these images a bit differently than you would a print or web image.

iPad Collection Set with Landscape and Portrait Collections

Cropping for the iPad
The next thing you’ll want to do is crop each image using the iPad’s native 4:3 (1024 x 768) aspect ratio as shown below. If you’ve ever created images to be used in a “projected” PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, you’ll understand why this is so important. For presentations, you generally want your images displayed as large as possible on the projected screen. The iPad is no different, except you carry the screen with you.

Cropping for the iPad’s 4:3 Aspect Ratio

Once your image is cropped correctly there are two Lightroom settings that I’ve found to make a huge difference in how sharp and vivid your image looks when displayed on the iPad.

Noise Reduction & Sharpness
To obtain the sharpest image possible I use Lightroom 3’s “Sharpening – Narrow Edges (Scenic)” preset and set the “Luminance” slider in the “Noise Reduction” panel to zero (0). Since I’ll never display this image larger than 1024 x 768 I really don’t care if there is a little noise in the shadows. At this resolution it’s almost impossible to see the noise on screen.

Saturation
I rarely touch the “Saturation“ slider in Lightroom’s “Basic” panel and much prefer the affect that the “Vibrance” slider provides. For images meant to be displayed on the iPad however, I’ve found that setting the “Saturation“ slider to 10% seems to work best. I have no quantitative data to back this up but adding 10% saturation seems to make the images on my iPad more closely match those on my MacBook.

Exporting for the iPad
The final key I’ve found after hours of experimentation is to export your images sized to exactly fit the iPad’s native resolution as shown below. This prevents the iPad’s “Photos” application from resizing (and resampling) the images on the fly.

The difference in image sharpness as displayed on the iPad is significant and to confirm this I exported several “full-size” JPEGs taken with my 21 MP Canon 5D Mark II. Those 15 MB files looked softer and less vibrant than the 780KB files did exported using the settings below.

Conclusions
The Apple iPad and the new iPad 2 are incredible devices that change the way we think about personal computing. For a photographer that still meets with clients face-to-face (and if you think face-to-face is passe, you couldn’t be more wrong) it’s a very cost effective tool for presenting your ever changing portfolio, whether still or video. It’s also a whole lot of fun to play with (but don’t tell the kids).

Chisos Mountain Trails – It’s the Climb!

Like many places in Big Bend National Park, hiking the Chisos Mountains is not for the faint at heart.

Chisos Mountain Climb – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/14 for 1/15th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

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Chisos Mountain Sunset

Chisos Mountain Sunset – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 50mm, f/14 for 2 seconds at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

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Using a Gray Card for White Balance

Bill had a great question about my One Light Product Photography post yesterday so I thought I’d share my “not so secret” method for achieving correct white balance for all my product photography.

How many times have you been shooting where the colors look great on your camera’s LCD but seem a little off in Lightroom? You can spend hours tweaking the white balance and HSL sliders in Lightroom’s develop module trying to get your on-screen image to look like you remember it or you can buy a WhiBal gray card from the folks at Michael Tapes Design and solve this problem in just a few seconds.

Fixing your white balance in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 using a WhiBal gray card is as simple as clicking the White Balance Selector tool (eye-dropper) in the “Basic” panel of the “Develop Module” and then clicking on the neutral gray area of the WhiBal gray card in your image. The Temp and Tint sliders in the Basic panel will adjust to make the selected color neutral, resulting in the correct white balance for these lighting conditions. The final step is to “sync” the white balance for all the other images taken in the same lighting conditions.

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One Light Product Photography

In this business, few jobs take more imagination than product photography. Bringing an inanimate object to life through still photography takes skill, patience and a keen eye for detail. Making a customer’s product look both desirable and valuable is part science and part art and in its own way, is every bit as difficult as portrait photography. Especially if the product being photographed is not in and of itself “beautiful” or spectacular.

In the industries where I work, few products are “high tech”, shiny or sexy. Most are functional, utilitarian and quite honestly, lifeless. Most are made from forged or cast metal which is generally dark gray or black and soaks up light like a sponge or from machined metals which are bright and highly reflective which masks any detail when lit. What many think of as “industrial machinery” is often the the most difficult thing to photograph effectively.

So when the folks from The Truth About Guns (TTAG) asked me to photograph firearms for their online magazine I was both intrigued by the challenge and thankful for work that didn’t require miles and miles of driving with gasoline at $4.00 per gallon. Little did I know at the beginning just how detailed this work would become and how much I would have to learn about these “products” to be able to photograph them safely and effectively.

Kimber Custom II Series 1911 Pistol – Sugar Land, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on manual using an EF 24-105m f/4L IS USM lens tripod mounted. Lighting was provided by natural light through a 1-stop diffuser and with a single 580EX II with a soft-box for fill and highlight. Post capture processing was done n Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

One Big Light and One Small Light
The first big decision I made was to abandon my normal studio lighting setup and to photograph these firearms outside, using a combination of diffused natural light and fill flash. I did this for safety reasons and for convenience, since my studio space is limited and some of the rifles I would be photographing would be too large to light properly inside.

When working with any firearm, safety is always rule number one. My training had taught me to treat every firearm as loaded and ready to fire and since I would be using “props” including loaded magazines and live ammunition, working outside seemed a safer approach. From a lighting perspective, I knew I needed an area that was both large and open but somewhat sheltered from the elements.

I wanted to keep my setup simple and portable so I created a shooting table from a piece of particle-board on top of two saw horses. I taped down some white background paper for a work surface and setup a Lastolite Skylite Kit using the diffused sunlight as my main light. For fill and highlight I used a single Canon 580EX II speedlite shot through a 24″ Lastolite EzyBox Hotshoe. Since I would be working very close to the strobe I used a Canon OC-E3 TTL sync cord but shot everything in manual, controlling the flash from the camera’s LCD screen.

Making it All Look Good
The biggest challenge in photographing small products is in setting up the scene to look interesting without it becoming too “crowded”. To accomplish the this I went to my local sporting goods store and bought the latest issue of every firearm and hunting magazine I could find. I wasn’t “cheating” here folks, I was doing research to see what types of images and lighting technique other photographers had used. I was also looking for ideas on background colors, textures and associated objects that could be used. I settled on a simple 16″ x 16″ tile ($2.99 at Home Depot) made to look like textured marble for the background or base. I chose a gun case made from “Cordura” nylon and a box of live ammunition for my “props” in the scene as shown below.

Keeping it Clean
The second biggest challenge is in making sure the product being photographed is absolutely spotless with no fingerprints, no dust and no hair in the image. This becomes a real chore with firearms which are always lubricated with oil so that they function properly. Rather than keep wiping off each new fingerprint I decided to field strip the gun and clean each piece separately which is how I came up with the idea for this next shot. I had to learn the proper disassembly techniques for this handgun (the included instructions were horrible) but thankfully the Internet is a wonderful resource to have these days.

After I had all the parts oil-free, clean and dry I reassembled the firearm with no lubricant and took several different shots from various angles using different props. I used a clean microfiber cloth and an old lens brush to remove any dirt, lint or dust from the weapon as I “posed” it for each shot. I also decided that the “exploded view” of the disassembled gun looked very cool in B&W and adopted this as one of my signature shots for each firearm I photograph.

Soft But Hard Light
I had a certain “look” that I wanted for these shots and knew that this would require very soft, diffused lighting with clean and crisp highlights. Using diffused sunlight along with fill flash was a perfect combination to create an almost “high key” (portrait style) lighting on the scene. My fill flash settings were usually in the 1/8 to 1/4 power range, just enough to add some highlights without loosing too much contrast in the shadows.

Post Capture Processing
Every product shot requires significant post capture processing and photographing firearms is no exception. Luckily, between Adobe Lightroom 3’s develop module and Photoshop CS5’s content-aware retouching tools, this doesn’t have to take hours and hours.

• My first step is to choose an image that is tack sharp and well exposed and to set the proper white balance for the overall scene. A gray card is the best tool use for this.

• My next step is to increase the images contrast using Lightroom’s ToneCurve settings and by adding significant sharpness using the Detail settings. The goal is to add definition to the handgun’s lines and highlights without creating digital noise in the background.

• My next step is to export the image to Adobe Photoshop CS5 and to use the Content Aware Spot Healing Brush to clean up the surfaces of the objects, removing any dust, dirt or fingerprints.

• The final step is to clone the background layer and sharpen it using the High-Pass Filter settings and then blend the layer into the background by selecting the Overlay mode. This adds an “edgy” quality to the images and brings out much of the texture and details in the firearm.

Conclusions
I’m fairly pleased with these results and with the overall look these techniques brought out in the Kimber Custom II Series 1911 pistol. For you gun enthusiasts out there please visit the TTAG web site for more information on this gun or for gun related news. For those of you interested in product photography I hope post this gives you a small feel for what’s involved in creating a nice product shot without spending a fortune.

Inside Santa Elena Canyon

Looking north from the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon after a (very) hot hike up and down the steep cliffs of this beautiful slot canyon.

Photographer’s Notes
Here’s another image taken in bright sunlight (to illuminate the canyon) using a 2-stop, soft, graduated neutral density filter with no major adjustments in post-capture processing. More proof that with the right in-camera techniques, you don’t need to rely upon HDR techniques or exposure blending to obtain an acceptable image.

I was able to balance the exposure in this high-contrast scene by onmetering for the shadows and then hand-holding my graduated neutral density filter to “block” the sunlit side of the canyon and prevent it from being completely blown out. This technique of “fooling your camera’s meter” is old school but works very well in high-contrast landscape situations like this.

Inside Santa Elena Canyon – Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 20mm, f/16 for 1/8th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

The Wall

If you listen to the national news you might get the impression that the border between the US and Mexico is one very large and flat expanse of territory inhabited by little more than cactus and rattlesnake. Nothing could be farther from the truth in the Mexican mountains leading to the Rio Grande river near Lajitas, Texas.

The elevation difference between the Mexican side of the border and our’s is a good 400 foot drop straight down into Santa Elena Canyon making it all but impassible. There are few trails running along this unique geology between our two countries and the climb down looks treacherous indeed.

There may not be a fence between the US and Mexico along this stretch of the border but nature has provided a wall grander than anything man could build.

The Wall – Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, Texas
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 30mm, f/16 for 1/40th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.
Click on the image above for a larger version.