Access Digital Photography

Welcome to Access Digital Photography, a site for digital photographers hosted by award-winning photographers, and best-selling authors Ken Milburn and Doug Sahlin. Collectively we have more than 80 years of photography experience. That’s right, we’ve shot film. But we embrace the digital technology and our digital darkrooms. We’ve written books and articles on digital photography, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and other applications we use to edit our work.

About Our Site
As we write our magazine articles and books, we learn more information about digital photography, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Adobe Photoshop and the other applications we use to edit our work. We share the information with you on this site. We also feature software reviews, and reviews about digital cameras and lenses. To see a categorized list of posts we’ve already created, click the Sitemap link. You can also find specific information by entering a word or phrase in the Search box, which appears with each post, and on the Blog page. You can also view posts made in a specific category by clicking a link in the Categories section of the sidebar. We also have a photoblog where we post our most recent work. To learn more information about your hosts, click the About Us link. Our most recent posts about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop CS3, digital cameras, lens, product reviews, equipment reviews, articles about digital photography and so on are listed below this post. You can view previous posts by clicking a link in the Archives section of Click a link to visit the site.

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We also have a podcast called Pixelicious. The podcast features audio and video episodes about our favorite subjects: Lightroom, Photoshop, and digital photography. We’ll have a new episode for your listening, and viewing pleasure. Our goal is to become your authoritative resource for Lightroom, Photoshop, and digital photography. To view the latest episodes of our podcast, click the Pixelicious logo.

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Caspersen Beach happens to be one of the most beautiful vistas on the West Coast of Florida. It also happens to be 10 minutes away from my home. When I notice what looks like a good sunset brewing, I head out the door with camera in hand. On this particular day, it was cold and blustery with a thin fringe of cirrus clouds. I shot these images with a 17-35mm Tamron lens. It does have a birt of vignetting at the edges when you shoot at 17mm, but overall it’s a good lens. I combined two versions of each image in Photoshop to increase the dynamic range of the image. I used Andromeda’s Scatter Light filter to impart a dreamy look on the second image.

Sometimes the cards all fall into place. Right before sunset a puffy deck of clouds adorns the sky. If you happen to be at a pristine beach with a camera in hand, you can capture the wonderful sunset for posterity, which is just what I do whenever possible. The following image is a sunset at Caspersen Beach in Venice, Florida.

After tweaking the image in Photoshop, I opened it in Corel Painter X and used an oil brush to achieve the look in the following image.

Some people believe that the path to a good photograph is a camera that has a sensor that can capture a huge amount of megapixels. However, this is only partially true, because not all megapixels are created equal. If you remember back in the dark ages when photographers used film, there were different film formats. Each film format designated the size of the negative. Negative sizes ran the gamut from the miniscule 110 film, which was used in miniature cameras and had a negative about the size of your thumbnail to large format cameras with negatives as large as 8 x 10 inches. When you start with a larger negative, you can create a larger size print.

The same is true of digital cameras. The miniscule point and shoot cameras that fit in your shirt pocket, have small sensors. Digital SLR cameras have larger sensors, full-frame DSLRs even larger sensors, and medium format digital cameras have even bigger sensors. If you cram a lot of pixels onto a small sensor, and put the same number of pixels on a larger sensor, the pixels on the larger sensor are bigger. Therefore all things equal, you end up with better image quality when you enlarge images captured with the camera that has the larger sensor.

When you have a camera with a smaller sensor, a lot of circuitry is confined to a very small space. Therefore the smaller sensor is more susceptible to digital noise. The increase in digital noise becomes more apparent when you increase the sensor’s sensitivity to light by increasing the ISO. At low ISO settings, most point and shoot camera yield acceptable pictures. However, when you push the envelope and take photographs in low light situations at higher ISO ratings, digital noise becomes apparent, especially in the shadow areas of the image. The digital noise may not be noticeable when you create a 4 x 6 print of the image, but will be visible when you create an 8 x 10 print of the same image.

The Canon G10 has the smallest sensor of the lot and is capturing 34 megapixels per square centimeter. The EOS 50D digital SLR has a much larger sensor and is capturing 4.5 megapixels per square centimeter. Even though the cameras capture approximately the same number of megapixels, the 50D stores fewer megapixels per square centimeter, which means the pixels are bigger and will yield better image quality when printed at larger sizes. I’ve also included the first generation EOS 5D and the new EOS 5D MKll for comparison. Both cameras capture fewer pixels per square centimeter. The newer camera features a different CMOS chip with advanced circuitry to lower noise, which means you can produce stunning images even though the camera stores almost an extra megapixel per square centimeter.

I own a Canon G-10 and the original Canon EOS 5D. I use the G-10 as an everyday camera. I’m pleased with the image quality of the G-10, but never capture an image with an ISO higher than 200 because of the noise factor. I use the EOS 5D to photograph weddings and events. I’ve captured images in low light with ISO ratings as high as 1600. Yes, there is digital noise, but the image quality is still acceptable. I could not get the same results with the G-10. I’ve created 30 x 40 prints with images captured by my EOS 5D. The images are crisp and sharp, even when viewed from just a few inches away. Although the G-10 captures more megapixels than my EOS 5D, it would not be possible to create an acceptable print larger than 11 x 17.

Don’t get me wrong. Small point and shoot cameras do have their place. They’re smaller, easier to carry, and less noticeable when you’re in a crowd. It’s also easier to take a candid picture of people with a point and shoot camera. When you point a digital SLR with a long lens at someone you don’t know, they almost always turn the other way. I use my point and shoot Canon G-10 often and love the convenience the camera affords. But when I need to take photos for clients, or capture images I’m going to enlarge, I always use my digital SLR to ensure the best results.

This morning I attended an early meeting. After the meeting was over, I strolled downtown Venice with my Canon G10. I took some pictures and went on to my next meeting. I processed this image in Lightroom and used a develop preset to make the colors pop. Then I took the image into Painter X and used different auto-painting modes on the image. I finalized the images by adding some vibrant strokes of color with the appropriate brush.

p style=”text-align: left;”>Painter has been around for a long time. I’m been using it since version 4. But I never could come to grips with the application and create images that looked like paintings. That all changed with Corel Painter X. In Painter X you open the Underpainting palette and choose a style. You can also add an edge effect. The next step is to make a Quick Clone of the image. In the Auto Painting palette, enable Smart Stroke Painting, choose a Smart Brush from the Brushes palette and click the Play button. Corel Painter X adjusts the strokes of the Smart Brush to match the angles and curves of the shape you’re cloning. Here are two examples of images that were modified using Auto Painting in Corel X.

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The recent Photokina show in Cologne, Germany made numerous announcements that portend significant new trends in digital photography:

> More resolution with less noise

> More full-frame cameras at lower prices

> Movies from DSLRs and larger frame compacts

> Larger frame, interchangeable lens compact cameras

More resolution with less image noise

For 4/3d size sensor cameras, pixel count has increased from 10MB to 12. For APS-C size sensors, it has increased to nearly 15MB in some cameras (e.g. Pentax K20D, Canon 50D), and for full frame sensors to more than 20 MB (Canon 5D Mk II, 21MB, Sony A-900 24.6 MB)

More full-frame cameras at lower prices

Full frame cameras are becoming commonplace at under $3,000, even from the big names. The Sony A900 is 24.6MP full-frame with a CMOS sensor.  That is higher resolution than most medium-format sensors of a couple of years ago and even beats out the brand-new Canon 1Ds Mark III and 5D Mark II  (21Mp CMOS sensor) . The Sony will retail for $3,000 and has built-in image stabilization and dust removal, but no live-view and no hot-shoe. The hot-shoe’s no big deal because Sony’s hot shoes only work with Sony’s very expensive flashes, so thank heavens for the PC sockete. The Canon EOS 5D Mark II only has 3 ferwer megapixels and no image stabilization but does have a hot shoe and a very large audience of folks who own Canon lenses and who plan to keep their Canon DSLRs as back-up cameras that can use the same lenses. It’s about $2, 700 with no lens. Nikon’s D700 is full-frame, but only 12.1 MP for $3,000. At the same time, DSLRs with APS-C size sensors are giving us more megapixels (the Pentax K20D at 14.5 MP still holds the megapixel per buck record, but Canon’s new 50D has 15.1 and only sells for $600 more) and keeping the body price down to about half that of the three mentioned above.

Leica has also announced a new DSLR that is roughly the same size as most top-of-the-line full-frame DSLR cameras, but with 43-percent larger sensor and much more resolution (37MP). No price has been announced, but it will be definitely in the Hassleblad league.

Movies from DSLRs and larger frame compacts

Along with Live View, DSLRs are starting to offer very high-resolution movie making. This gives us a great new tool for expanding our ability to communicate with our cameras without having to buy and carry along a lot of extra gear. The first DSLR to shoot 24-frame HD movies is the Nikon D-90, shown below.

The new 4/3ds compacts (look elsewhere in this article) may be even more useful for this purpose because so many of them will be used by journalists. Sadly, the new Panasonic Micro 4/3ds camera does not shoot movies, though Panasonic has announced that there will be a movie mode next year. New storage cards are also being introduced that have super-high capacity and data transfer rates. That’s perfect timing for high-definition movie-making. Although these cameras don’t have microphones, it would be no big deal to sync up recording made with a pocket recorder.

Larger frame, interchangeable lens compact cameras

What we’ve been missing, so far, in digital photography that was considered essential in some fields (sports, entertainment, journalism) were professional-quality, interchangeable-lens camera’s without reflex viewfinders. Leica, Contax, and Nikon all made cameras that were considered classics in that era. The advantages are that they are much lighter, less obtrusive, and quieter than DSLRs. Loosing the pentaprism and mirror really cuts down the body size and makes it possible to make shorter, smaller diameter lenses that have the same focal lengths. So its fairly easy for the reporter or sports photographer who’s in a rush to carry at least of a couple of cameras with different lenses. That means using faster, smaller primary lenses that are likely to be sharper than zooms.

There are two different approaches to these new cameras. One is being pioneer by Leica with their newly-announced M8.2. The sensor size is roughly the same as a 4/3ds camera. Resolution is around 10MP and the camera has a rangefinder.

The big news comes from Panasonic, which uses Olympus’s 4/3d sensors and Olympus with the introduction of “Micro 4/3ds” camera’s. These are both interchangeable lens cameras and both have 12MP resolution. Both are just a hair larger than compact cameras that have roughly 1/10^th the sensor size and both use Olympus’ Live Mos sensors and have a pixel density of about 2.1MP/cm. So image quality should compare quite favorably with that of “semi-pro” DSLR cameras. The Olympus camera shoots movies. The Panasonic doesn’t, but has a super-high resolution LCD “reflex-like” viewfinder that everyone who’s used it raves about. It also comes in black and looks like a pro camera, so I’m expecting that it will be the one that makes a splash. It also comes in red. Oddly enough, if that makes it look more “amateur” perhaps it will be less subject to theft and less threatening to subjects. Here it is:

I became interested in this plug-in because I don’t yet own a 30MP digital camera, yet I really enjoy making very large prints for the simple reason that they have a lot of commercial appeal in fine-art venues. So far, I’ve been most successful at this by utilizing Fred Miranda’s SRI Pro plug-in, which is so excellent I would think it tough to beat…especially at anything close to the $24.95 that Fred charges for it. On the other hand, I’ve seldom been disappointed in Alien Skin’s products and I like their down-to-Earth and highly creative attitude. So I felt that I had to give BlowUp 2 a close look…It works with 16- and 32-bit files, as well as being able to take advantage of multi and multi-core processors. Since speed often equals productivity, this could be at least a good reason for considering it.

 First, I’m going to give you my initial impressions of the program and what I see as its most beneficial features. I’ll also show you examples of blow ups from small portions of images, so that you can compare them at 100% enlargement…even here on your monitor.

 BlowUp has recently become available as a “version 2.” What BlowUp 2 does that’s really promising is convert blown-up edges to vector geometrics…so there are never jaggies in the edges. This is true no matter what the magnification of the original resolution, so (at least, theoretically) you can gain edge sharpness even when making an enlargement that’s only 1.25 times the size of the original. Also, at least in theory, you can get very clean edges even when blowing up some very crummy, low-resolution web art. In the illustration below, you side two copies of an image of a lizard that has been enlarged 1.25 times. One the left is the Photoshop-only version, on the right, the default settings in BlowUp 2 for blowing up the same image to the same size. Both images were taken from a small portion of the image, so what you see is a small portion of a 14.5 MP image cropped to produce the exact dimensions seen here on screen.

But even more exciting is that BlowUp is not just for sharpening when re-sizing. You can also use it to automatically sharpen images for their specific output media: You can batch resize a whole collection of images for a given display size on the web. You can sharpen for your specific inkjet paper. You can minimize JPEG compression artifacts so that their “noisiness” isn’t distracting from the sharpness of your images.

Now, you might think it would be a major pain to have to do all the calculations for all these different possibilities. In fact, all you have to do to get really good results is click some clearly labeled presets or drag some sliders for an instant preview. There are two dialogs in the interface and here they are, just so you can see how easy and how versatile this sizing and sharpening utility is:

The settings tab, above, does most of the work for you. You can click a paper size, then choose from printer types and paper surfaces. BlowUp 2 then does the essential calculations for you. If you really want to tweak beyond that point, click the Controls tab, shown below. The preview window is live, so if you adjust siders, you can see exactly what they do to the image.

This blog is here to give you an idea of what a very slick and handy tool can do for you, not to give you a tutorial on how to use it. Fact is, the electronic manual and the videos are so clean and easy to read, I’d recommend using the manual instead anyway.

I surf the Net for inspiration and new techniques. I found one technique that changed a nice photo into something abstract. To view a video tutorial showing how to use the technique and convert the steps into an action, click the following link:
Pixelicious Podcast: Episode 32.

The latest technology taunts photographers with more megapixels, anti-dust technology, live-view, and so on. Pentax, Nikon, and Sony have been upping the ante for about a year. Now Canon’s joined the fray with an updated EOS 5D. The new Canon EOS 5D MKll features integrated sensor cleaning, 21-megapixel captures, live-view, a 3-inch monitor, and much more. I own the first iteration of the 5D. Do I want its big brother? You betcha. I’m sure a lot of other photographers who own the EOS 5D feel the same way. So what do you do when you’re on a budget and can’t afford or don’t want to keep your trusty two-year old EOS 5D, or for that matter, any piece of old gear that you’ve replaced? Can you say eBay?

When my trusty Minolta 35mm camera died, I grudgingly made the switch to digital. After researching what was on the market, I decided to purchase a Canon EOS 10D and bought a couple of EF lenses. I was very happy with the camera except for the amount of time it took the camera to power on. Then along came the EOS 20D. When I read the spec sheet and noticed the start up time had been reduced, I wanted one. So I shopped for the best deal I could find and bought one. But I couldn’t afford and didn’t need two digital SLR bodies. I put the 10D up for auction on eBay. A week later, the camera sold for seventy percent of what I paid for it. Not bad considering I’d used the camera for a year.

I grew to love the 20D. It was a great camera, took sharp pictures, and the camera powered up almost instantly. But I shoot landscapes. Therefore I use a wide angle focal lengths a lot. The Focal Length Multiplier for the 20D is 1.6, which means a 20mm wide angle lens acts like a 32mm lens on the 20D. Almost a year after I purchased the 20D, Canon introduced the 5D, which has a full-frame sensor; no focal length multiplier. I wanted one in the worst way, but balked at spending that much money. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted one. Finally I succumbed to my desire, found the best deal from a reputable online camera store and bought one. I put my 20D up for auction the Saturday after my 5D was delivered. Again I recouped almost seventy percent of my investment after using the camera for a year. It was amazing to watch interested bidders battle each other, driving the selling price of the camera higher and higher. eBay’s is the busiest online auction site; a great place to sell photo gear you’re no longer using.

Now I’m in a quandary. I want the new 5D MKll and I also want to keep my trusty 5D as a backup camera when I shoot weddings. It would also be useful to shoot events with two cameras with different lenses mounted. Even though the list price of the 5D MKll is about $700 less than the original 5D, the economy and sky-rocketing gas prices is causing most Americans — including me — to become very frugal. But the new 5D won’t be available until November. That gives me two and a half months to come up with the money. You can bet I’ll be putting the gear I don’t use frequently up for auction on eBay. My goal is to sell enough to pay cash for the new 5D MKll when it’s available.  In fact, I’m putting one lens up for auction on Sunday.