Capture One – The Common Sense Photographer

You Don’t Take Enough Pictures

Posted on September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Recently watch this video from Capture One Pro where David Grover talks with Joe McNally about shooting at the Olympics. During the course of the discussion Joe mentions that he shot about 53,000 images during the 16 days of the Olympics. If you want to get the shot you have to take the shot. Interesting discussion on the trials of shooting a pandemic Olympics. Or you can just watch it so you can be amazed by the great images Joe always produces.

In the digital age we are so lucky to not have the costs of film and processing. You try dividing 53,000 images by 36 shots per role and you get a feel for the national debt. (Hint: 1473 rolls of film). Plus with digital you can always dial in the correct color balance.

Moral of the story is that if you are not taking a lot of pictures you should be.

Fujifilm Profiles

Posted on May 24, 2021June 9, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Recently while watching a webinar on Capture One Pro one of the attendees wished that he could adjust the order that the Fujifilm Simulations were listed when selecting the profile to use on an image.

The reasoning was that he wasn’t sure which simulation was the one he wanted to use on an image. I didn’t see a real need as I only use a couple of them and it easy just mouse over each simulation to see what it does to the image.

Given that the Auto simulation is the simulation that you have set in you Fujifilm camera, I rarely find that I need to look at more than two other simulations. In camera I tend to use STD which is PROVIA (STANDARD). The more I thought about it the more I realized that my default simulation works a lot of the time. What I did realize is that I change most when there is a lot of sky or no sky. When the sky make a big part of the image i tend to use CLASSIC CHROME while if there is little or no sky, I tend to stay with PROVIA or if the image calls for it I will crank it up with Velvia see previous post about that. Now on big sky images it is mostly personal preference but I tend to use CLASSIC CHROME for its more muted blues (with a hint of green) but if the sky isn’t necessarly the subject I’ll probably use PROVIA.

What I have found is that I’ve come to know the simulations by how they treat the blue parts of the image:

Classic Chrome is a more muted blue with a slightly green tint.
Standard has a nice rich blue without going overboard.
Velvia has a saturated blue with a slightly purple tint.

So as I look at the image I can decide on which simulation based on what I want the blue to do in the image. Then go right to simulation I want.

It takes some time to get used to what each simulation does to colors and contrast but once you do you can quickly dial in what you want. The same thing works for the black and white simulations (although those are all right together). If you want a dark sky go with the Red filter.

A Little Clarity

Posted on May 23, 2021May 23, 2021 by Jim Roberts

The recent upgrade to Capture One Pro (version 21.1.1 also 14.1.1) has added what they call Style Brushes. You can make your own style brushes plus there are a number of quite nice standard style brushes. Style brushes differ from Styles in that Styles takes over the whole layer. If you are on the background layer when you apply a style it may/will change setting of different effects. Style Brushes on the other hand are more specific. When you choose a style brush you get a new layer with no applied mask. You then brush in the style exactly where you want it to be.

You can create your own style brushes too. Posting on creating your own will have to wait. Today’s image was created using several standard style brushes plus one of my own (called Clarity Plus) that allows you to slowly brush clarity on to my image. I used it mostly along the line of blue on the right past the engine to the end of the wings on the left.

Style Brushes really do make you think differently about how you process your images. I’ve change my workflow because these are so easy to incorporate. More to come…

What The Image Demands

Posted on May 22, 2021May 22, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Sometimes images demand that you go outside your normal style, outside your comfort zone. And sometimes images demand that you just go in there and push the boundaries. To everyone who thinks this is too over the top saturated, yeah but I love it.

You ~~can~~ must be playful with you images.

Did You Know (A tail of images lost and gone forever.)

Posted on March 8, 2021March 8, 2021 by Jim Roberts

I went remote the other day and took my laptop along for the ride. As I did a lot of image making I took along a drive and created a new Capture One catalog for the trip. I didn’t do a lot of editing while on the move so when I got back I just copied the images to my at home storage location and then imported them into my main Capture One catalog.

When the images are already in the correct place you do not need to copy them anywhere so there is an option on the import to just add the images in their current location to the open catalog. This is real handy if you have already downloaded you images and do not need the import process to copy them from an external drive.

The thing you must remember is that after you are done ingesting the images and are ready to go back to importing the images from the camera SD card you need to change back to the method you use for copying the images off your SD to their in computer location.

If you don’t remember that then the next time you import your images they will stay on you SD card and the catalog will think they will always be in that location. I forgot that step the other day after taking images of a soon to be dead flower in my front yard. I did the import, left the SD card in the slot and happily processes the good images.

Later i took the SD card out of the slot put it back in my camera and formatted it. The images that I thought had been downloaded had not been and the next time I opened my main catalog the images were marked as offline which is 100% true now that I think about it but perplexed me at the time. I ended up losing the images.

When attached to your computer the SD card looks just like another disk drive and Capture One will happily use it as such. One thing I’m rather surprised about is that Capture One does not seem to have overall presets for the import process. Not that would have saved me. For the next 30 days please find me in the corner wearing my dunce cap.

Capturing The Grid

Posted on January 14, 2021January 14, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Using the “Rule of Thirds” or other constructs to ensure your image is balanced and working towards where the eye goes first in a image is a way to improve your images or at least verify the image against a standard grid.

I was watching a webinar yesterday and the presenter didn’t know that the Crop Tool in Capture One could display a “Rule of Thirds” or other grids as an overlay on an image. You can also show the grid at anytime by clicking on the Grid Icon on the Toolbar at the of the Capture One workspace.

So at any point in time you can show the currently configured grid by just clicking on the icon. You can also set up to display the current grid every time you select the crop tool. This will allow you to crop and position an image to a pleasing position. You turn on the grid in the crop tool by checking the Show Grid While Cropping checkbox in the Crop tool.

The Grid tool controls which of three different grids Capture One provides displays when activated. The most common and adjustable one is the Rectangular grid. The Long Edge and Short Edge values determine how many lines in each direction. The 3×3 pattern is your standard Rule of Thirds. You can make any number of grids with this option although at some point you may have more lines than image if you get carried away. Similar to the Rectangular grid is the Golden Ratio grid with I won’t go into much here other than to say it a center weighted 3×3 grid.

You can change the color of the grid so if you are working on an image with one predominate color you can find something that you can actually see. Follow Crop keeps the grid contained in the area of the crop. The image with the rectangular overlay looks like this.

The other option is the Fibonacci Spiral which is starts with a small square and doubles the size of the square over and over 1×1, 2×2, 4×4 etc. Which gives a spiral which that can be used to move from the subject of the image around and around as the eye would go.

The Clockwise and Mirror checkboxes are used to determine which quarter of the image the spiral starts on.

So Capture One has the tools to aid you in balancing your image that can come in handy. I usually have the 3×3 Rectangular grid set when I crop. It doesn’t hurt to see where things line up but remember you are the image maker and if you want to place the subject of the image somewhere other than what some rules says, go ahead and do it. If you are trying for balance the Grid Tool just might help.

Avatar

Posted on December 16, 2020December 16, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Fujifilm X-Trans images stand up to some pretty hard conditions. Low light, high ISO, Strange color balances.

Avatar :: Fujifilm X-T2 XF 18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS ISO 3200 F5 1/20 seconds 21.4mm

Taken while on queue for Flight of Passage in Pandora Animal Kingdom Walt Disney World. Considering that this was taken thru a glass wall of a Pandorian avatar floating in a tank of liquid, it came out really well. Processed in Capture One Pro 21.

Looking Up

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Jim Roberts

At the beginning of August I was out shooting the almost full moon. It was a clear night and I did get good images using my standard exposure set up for moon shoots. If you want to get good images of the moon start with a medium aperture like F8 and shutter speed of 1/250. Try the lowest ISO you can get way with. You have to shoot in manual mode. A tripod will help but if you are using the Fujinon XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR you can probably get a good image like the one below handheld using the OIS. The photo was shot with the Fujinon XF1.4X TC WR tele-converter for a reach of 560mm.

As it happened Jupiter and Saturn were also visible that night. The moon would pass in front of the planets later in the evening. On a lark I pointed my camera in the direction of Saturn not expecting to get much as the viewfinder was not sensitive enough to pick up the small amount of light from that planet.

I brought the images into Capture One and did my normal processing on the moon image which came to my liking. For those of you wanting to take images of the moon try doing it just before the full moon as the shadows give definition. I then turned my attention to the frame with what I hoped contained Saturn. I did see something in the frame. I ended up opening up the exposure by over two stops but there, small but visible was Saturn and her rings.

You know that Saturn has rings and you can find it any night it’s in the sky but unless you look closer you just don’t see the rings. As I pulled up the exposure and saw the rings it was like I was discovering it for the first time. Made my day.

Color Balances

Posted on September 4, 2020September 4, 2020 by Jim Roberts

They painted the castle in The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. I’m not a big fan of the paint colors. The colors they ended up with just seem to be out of balance for me. They have a saturated purple for the turrets, and saturated grey for the base, and then an almost pink but not quite color on the body of the castle. It’s mostly the pink that I find unbalanced. The purple and pink almost fit into a Triadic color scheme but doesn’t quite work as there should be a green with those two colors to make it Triadic.

Castle with Very Small Dragon Fujifilm X-T2 F9 1/280s ISO 200 18mm

When you are creating an image in studio and especially with model you have lots of leeway with you color grading. When you are documenting an place that is designed to be seen with a standard color you need to be more accurate with you color representation. You can go wrong if you push the white balance the wrong way or if you over saturate the colors. This building just seems to me to be out of balance from a color standpoint.

Spires Fujifilm X-T2 F8 1/750s ISO 200 18mm

I could make the pinkish color more pink and at a good saturation but with Capture One Color Editor but it wouldn’t be true to the actual colors and that is where I feel the actual building colors are out of balance. And you can’t go around overriding the Disney experts.

As I was doing some research into the colors I decided to look to see what the colors of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland are. They basically just duplicated what they had before in Anaheim, CA It seems that the colors were painted with about the same pallet they used to upgrade the castle in 2019. The difference is the pinks are much more pink. Maybe something got lost in translation.

The new color scheme to me is to dark. It diminishes the scale of the castle. Something you always need to keep mind as you process your color images. just as a image with a tilted horizon is out of balance, a color scheme can be out of balance too. For good instruction on color and color grading watch this video by Joanna Kustra

White Balance And The Mostly Ignored Tint Slider

Posted on July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Setting the white balance of an image is more than just if it needs to be warmed up or cooled down. The image may also have a green to magenta tint to it. Watch a Youtube video of someone processing an image. If it’s not a moody night image then the presenter will almost invariably say the image needs to be warmed up a bit. This is especially true if the image has a human in it. For some reason cameras seem to prefer a slight cyan coloration to skin.

Changing the white balance of an image (in raw format please) is straight forward. Find the white balance eyedropper in your image editing weapon of choice and click on an area that should be a neutral gray. The image is evaluated and a change to the Temperature/Kelvin slider is adjusted to remove an incorrect color balance. You can also just pick from the drop down to tell it what kind of balance you want. Daylight, Tungsten or a number of other choiced based on the camera you used.

While most adjustments seemed to be made to the color temperature of an image you also need to be aware of the tint of the image. And what you say is the tint? The tint is for adjusting the green to magenta color cast of the image.

You probably don’t pay a lot of attention to the Tint Slider but it does change when white balance is adjusted and anytime you might want to reduce a green or purple cast to you image. One example would be if someone was sitting next to a large green plant there may be a green cast on their face.

The following image was shot off a bridge where the light was rather interesting. It was shot mid-morning at 10:24 am so the sun was getting pretty high in the sky. Not a golden hour shot at all. I have my Fujifilm X-T2 camera set to auto white balance so it was interesting to see what white balance it used.

Here is the white balance as dictated by the camera.

You will notice that the camera gave this a tint of 14.7. The scale for tint is -50 to +50 with the minus side going towards green and the plus side going towards magenta.

And with the white balance set to daylight.

You can see that there is a purplish color cast with the as shot balance and you will notice that tint is 14.7 which is moving the tint towards the magenta. When we adjust to daylight the tint goes down to 2.1 and we don’t have the shadows being rather purple.

There is nothing wrong with adjusting the white balance Kelvin slider to warm or cool your images to what pleases your eye, just remember you can also adjust the tint for the same reasons.