Autumn in Berlin

Today HDR photo showing Bundestag in Berlin.

Dahab in photos - slideshow

Today I decided to upload slideshow of photos I took recently in Dahab, Egypt. I recommend playing it in HD in full-screen mode. Hope you like them.

They are mainly landscape shots. Also I have some interesting plans for the next week. I hope to write next post about sharpening and write a tutorial on batch features in Photomatix, so stay tuned :)

St. Jorge's Castle

Today HDR photo from Lisbon showing walls of St. Jorge's Castle.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon 24-105L f/4 IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/11.0
ISO: 400
Number of exposures: 3

Golden Hour

Another HDR landscape photo from Dahab. As you probably have noticed I'm a great fan of golden hour. This time I was shooting near its ending. This photo would be much better if there were any clouds but unfortunately in Egypt they are not so common... still I like golden tones in the sky and on the water surface.

Desert again

The photo above is HDR photo shot in Dahab, near Blue Hole dive site. I hope it doesn't scream HDR despite using quite strong settings in Photomatix Pro 4.2.

Day turning into the night

Usually I don't submit sequences of images but this time I decided it's worth doing. All photos were taken in exactly same location. Difference between them was about 5 - 10 minutes. They show nice transition of late afternoon into the night. It's nice to see how completely different they are despite sharing location.

 

Does Photomatix convert photos to JPEGs? No, it DOES NOT

Another landscape photo taken in Dahab. Hope you like it!

Today I decided to write about common misconception. Many people believe that Photomatix Pro internally converts RAW images to JPEG files, so they suggest doing it manually. However, the truth is that Photomatix doesn't do such a thing. Here is a link to the Photomatix FAQs.
And here is the excerpt from it:

"Question: Is is true that Photomatix converts RAWs to JPEGs for internal processing?
Answer: No. Photomatix does not convert RAWs files to JPEG for internal processing, and never did it. It would not make sense to do this anyway, given that converting to JPEG would result in quality loss and moreover would add processing time.
When you load RAW files in Photomatix, the files are converted in linear space into an uncompressed image with 16 bits per color channel, i.e. 48 bits per pixel.
The only moment Photomatix converts to JPEG is when you want to save the image created by Photomatix and choose to save it as JPEG. This applies to a tonemapped or fused image created by Photomatix, and not to the original image you loaded."

So, I prefer to convert to TIFFs instead or sometimes I let Photomatix read the RAW directly.

New wallpaper - Dahab

Today I uploaded new wallpaper to the Wallpapers section: the above photo. I took it in Dahab, Egypt. There was some really angry sky over the mountains and I was really lucky to be there. Hope you like it :)

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 USM
Focal length: 10 mm
Aperture: f/16.0
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 3

Resting lioness

Today photo of a lioness taken in the Warsaw ZOO. Canon 70-300L again proves it quality - the sharpness is fantastic :)

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 70-300L IS USM
Focal length: 300 mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1/400 s
ISO: 100

Cabo da Roca

I took this photo in Cabo da Roca, near Sintra in Portugal and processed it with Photomatix Pro 4.2. As you can see I took it with Canon 50D not 5D MK II. The truth is I use both cameras and always have both with me. Most of the time I have telezoom lens attached to one of them and wide-angle lens to the other. I don't need to switch lenses that often what saves me time and also protects sensor from dust and other dirt.

BTW I'm also present on Facebook so be sure to follow me there as I upload even more photos there. There are a number of other sites and portals on which I have accounts - be sure to check them in the About me section.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 10 mm
Aperture: f/10.0
Shutter speed: 1/250 s (for "normal" exposure)
ISO: 400
Number of exposures: 3