Today I will show you a program I like to use when I quickly need to compress my photos. I don’t use it for the photos I post daily, as those are compressed very little, but I use it all the time for the blog parts, like the slide-show, or thumbnails, or when I need to send a lot of previews at once.

So here is the program I use. It’s called Caesium Image Compressor. It’s a free program, that even includes a portable version, so you don’t even have to install it. It can be downloaded from Caesium’s site here.

The interface gives you a lot of buttons, but I actually use only three things. I set the quality in the bottom left, choose same folder as input in the bottom right and hit compress. It will automatically add _compressed to the new file name, so this makes it were quick to work with.

And here are two comparisons of the results (view full size by clicking on them). Both are compressed from a 100% jpg to a 80% quality in Caesium. You can see the respective file sizes under them.

1.36 MB

284 KB

1.12 MB

239 KB

Btw. to get the same file size when using the Photoshop save for web dialog, I had to lower the quality to 45-50%.

A little change to all the photos I took from under it :). It was actually lucky that I went to the bridge on last Friday, as it was a state holiday, so much fewer cars on the bridge, so much less shaking. Like that I even got longer exposures without any problems, which is usually quite hard from there.

This is another one from my recent trend of doing more panoramic shots. I didn’t even use a panoramic head. You actually don’t need one all the time. If what you are shooting is far enough, or you have a uniform area close to you (road, pavement) where it easily can be blended, you can just do a panorama without it. You don’t even have to be that exact :) Here on the side you can see how this photo looked like put together, before all the needed cropping and correction.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2*3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 5.0s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13725, 17.10951

Let’s go back to Amsterdam for today, with a new photo. This is of course a very often seen sight in Amsterdam, canals and bikes. You get this on every single street. The amount of bikes there is just crazy :)

This is a HDR from 4 exposure, created in Oloneo Photoengine. The red part in front, is from a car (or bike, I don’t remember anymore) that passed by while I was taking the shot.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 4, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 70mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 25s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 52.36622, 4.882865

Radian 2

Some of you may remember my Radian time-lapse device review from some long time ago, and a lot of you asked at that time, where you can get one. As it was a Kickstarter campaign, it was a little harder to purchase one afterwards, but right not, Alpine Labs introduced Radian 2 in a new Kicstarter campaign. So right now is the best time to order one, at a promotional price :)

For those who don’t know what a Radian is, it’s a motion time lapse device, that controls the shutter of your camera and rotates the camera after each shot. This is used to create rotating movement in time lapse videos.

Radian 2 expands on this idea, by adding wireless control through iOS or Android, support for advanced time lapsing, and support for sliders. You can even synchronize up to thee radians, to get a pan, tilt and slide movement at once.

To get more info about the Radian 2, please check out their Kicstarter page here.

Green all the way

I tried something completely different yesterday, when compared to my normal city shots. And from the experience, I found out two things :) First is that composing while really zoomed in is so strange for me, when I compare it to my usual wide angle stuff. The telephoto creates such a different perspective compression, that the result is just different. I’ve been just using it too little while doing my standard ultra wide shots, and probably it’s time to change that :)

Secondly, I found out, that getting a sharp photo with my current tripod when zoomed in to 150-200mm is almost impossible even in a little breeze. Again, I should have noticed this earlier, but since I used it so little, I never really did. But it’s funny, as I just this week decided to get a new tripod, and will probably order it in the next few day :)

Todays photo, is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom, and sharpened in Photoshop. The only edits I did, was to add a lot of contrast, warmer white balance and a little clarity. Photo taken in the South Morava in Czech republic.

Technique: Lightroom edit, Number of exposures: 1, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS II, Focal length: 170mm, Aperture: 13, Middle exposure time: 1/5s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.97406, 17.05052

I post a lot of behind the scenes shots, from taking photos and from editing, on my Facebook page. So if you like to see them, feel free to follow me there :)

I been really taking a lot more panoramas lately. This one was quite a funny one, as it was taken from a docked pontoon ship, while the Danube was crazy fast around it. Surprisingly, it was quite stable, and I only got shifts between the exposures, not so much in the exposures them-selfs. Also this was the first time I blended moving water together, and I hope no one will notice where the seam is :)

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2*5, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 38mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 8.0s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13725, 17.10951