Surface Laptop

As you may know, I am quite a big fan of Surface products and own a Surface Pro 4. And today Microsoft announced a new laptop in the Surface line. It looks pretty nice, but actually the only thing I would like, is a Surface Pro in that beautiful blue color :). Still, it’s worth a look (official site here), as it show the way a lot of PC will go in the future.

Now if they would just start selling the Surface Dial and Surface Ergonomic keyboard in Europe, so I can finally get them.

The beacon of light over Paris

I did not want to share another Eiffel tower photo with you again, but I just had to share this one right away. As probably everyone, I always try to search for a different view of familiar subjects and this is something I have not seen before (maybe somebody did it before, I have not seen every photo of the Eiffel tower ever done :)). I planed to do this shot for a while, but I had to go back to Paris first.

In the end I had only one try, so I’m not completely happy with the composition here. I will have to redo the shot, with a bit wider composition to get more of the surroundings. Still, I think it makes for an interesting photo :)

This photo is put together from 14 exposures. I used three for the base of the photo and then additional 11 for the lights (I captured 40 in total). I took the base ones at a low ISO, to get a nice noise free base to work with. Then I bumped the ISO up until I got a fast enough exposure. I used the interferometer to take a shot every two seconds, for about two-three times the light went around the tower. In the end I blended them together as I would blend together star trails.

Terribly slow Lightroom

I really wonder how much testing does Adobe on their products before they release them. It just can’t be how slower Lightroom got after the latest updates. And I really need those due to the 5D mark IV support, so I can’t even downgrade. It’s really horrible, and I’m not even surprised that I already seen photographers mentioning wanting to move to different software solutions. If every edit that should be instant takes seconds, one looses so much time on every photo.

I really wish that Adobe would just stop adding new features for a year, and just optimize, optimize and optimize even more. If they continue on this path, I would be not surprise if they start loosing customers quite soon :/

I plan to get a new, quite powerful, PC soon, but if Lightroom is still slow on that one, I will be looking at something different. I just can’t afford waisting so much time just waiting on it to perform the basic operations. On my older i7 processor changing exposure on a photo, will go up to 8% usage when doing it in Photoshop, and 40% usage when doing it in Lightroom. That’s just not normal.

No people around the Eiffel tower

Today’s photo is another one taken by the Eiffel tower. I just love to take photos of it, and since I had only mostly night shots, now I’m adding a lot of day ones :). There are many views one can get up close, but most of them will have many people in them. But, if you walk around, there is a small park to the side of the tower, with a little pond in the middle. You can’t go close to the pond (which I would so like to, to get a nice reflection :)), but you still get quite a view, with only trees in the foreground. It just looks like the Eiffel tower is in the middle of a park, not in the middle of a city :)

This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom, edited in Photoshop.

Lens flares everywhere

I love using the 17mm tilt shift lens but it really can create a lot of lens flares. And with no way to shield it, it something one really has to take into account while taking photos. And it’s even works with a situation like todays photos, where one has lights all around. So as you can see from the comparison on the side, this one had quite a few of them. So how did I get rid of them?

Simple! That is if you know how to do it :) I describe the technique in the How to remove lens flares article. You take another photo with the hand in front of the light source, and then blend it with the original exposure. But what to do if there are so many lights? You do the same, but multiple times. First check the normal photo, to see all the flares. Shade one light, and take the photo again. Check which flares are not visible anymore. Continue with the next light, until you have a photo for every flare you need to remove.

They may be issues with some flares. In this photo, the leftmost light created a flare that was also over itself. So even when I shaded the light, I did not get a good enough exposure to blend with, as it missed the light rays coming from it. So in the end I did a bit of brushing. I took the background sky color, and painted in the areas around the light I wanted darker. When done, I blurred them, to soften the transition, and so hide where I painted.

And thats it.

A cold and windy evening view

It can be so cold when one stands on a bridge. And when it’s windy, it’s even worse. But it also has a positive side. The bridge was almost completely empty. But even so, I took only few photos, and went to a more warmer place (not that I did not catch a cold the day after and am now trying to get healthy for my next trip :)).

This is a two shot vertorama, with another 4 shots used to remove all the lens flares. Combined in Lightroom and edited in Photoshop. This is the evening view from the Bir-Hakeim bridge towards the Eiffel tower in Paris.

Yesterday’s photo

You may have noticed that the photo I posted yesterday changed for a bigger one few hours after I posted it. The reason is simple. I noticed only after I posted it, that it was a 3 shot vertorama, not a 2 shot one. So I went back and reedited the whole photo, to complete it. It felt strange before, as the composition was a bit of to what I remembered, and that was the problem :)

Early morning drivers in Paris

You may wonder why this time I only took photos with the Eiffel tower in Paris. And the reason is simple. I was staying on a cruise ship there, and as I had only a little time while in Paris, I only took photos close to the ship. And the most interesting thing in this area is of course the Eiffel tower :)

I took this shot early in the morning, right after they turned out the street lights. I really like how the contrast between the bright red lights of the passing cars worked out against the cold blue colors of the city. This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.