I would also be very interested in a photoshop action to give more colour depth, I’m finding my images can be a bit flat unless the light is really good.

Thanks!

With regard to shooting brides in dimly lit churches, the first choice for weddings was always Vericolor negative film, ISO160 in 120 format plus a little flash to fill in. Its probably worth considering that you can pull detail out of a larger format that would be lost on a ’35MM’ DSLR.

Rather than having to make a huge investment hire the kit if the job justifies it.

Great post thanks for that it’s a great trick.

I also have a question and with your skills I’m sure you can answer, I have found this wedding photographer who pictures are really rich in colour and just wonderd how this might be crated?

Below is the link you can see he treats most his pictures in the same way.
http://www.simoncarrphotography.com/blog/

I really look forward to hearing from you.

Keep up the great work your blog is excellent

Paul

“My final thoughts… Well, I wish I had $100,000 or so to invest in a setup like this plus a nice array of lenses, a considerably faster computer and some travel money so I could come back with a handful of images worthy of Peter Lik.”

Had to laugh at this. I wish this too and perhaps if our lottery numbers come up we can go out and fulfill the wish.

i too wish nikon would have a modular option, sucks to have to buy a new camera every 3 to 4 years. i look at those with medium format and they have same camera but simply upgrade the digital back over the years.

i now have a better understanding of why some thing r so.

i think i’m still tempted to get the phaseone simply because theres a challenge in trying to get the most out of one capture as opposed to “cheating” with bracketed shots. cuz it can do more dynamic range than my nikon i feel i’m more likely to get better images with 16bit and 12 stop dynamic range. there are times when hdr is overkill and it seems too many ppl overdo it and i look at perter liks work and even though it does not have that HDR magic his images rival some of the best hdr pics i’ve seen. its like he is defining a true skill in using that phaseone which few know of.

when thinking about it, what i really need to do is get a red and a phase one into my hands, its very possible doing the auto HDR with the red may seal the deal for me as that does sound like candy to me, then on the flipside the pahseone would proably be simpler to setup, carry with and use. The red is huge and does not fit well in the hand from what i can tell. like u said its for video, but at same time its one hellueva camera and i wish nikon would have something in this league.

i tell ya i’m excited about the future 5 to 10 years from now, when maybe consumers will have access to this stuff are more reasonable prices. that being said rumor is d800 will be $3k which to me seems reasonable but i’m worried it may not offer iso 50. the canon eos5d i think it is, does iso 50, so i’m hoping nikon really comes on par with lower iso.

Being an avid HDR shooter myself, even with the Phase One, the dynamic range of a single capture is still not enough to capture extremely high dynamic range scenes, such as shooting into the sunset and still capturing shadow details on the dark side of objects. While it comes closer, shooting 3+ frames with 0.7 to 1 or more EV between them would still result in better HDR’s. I typically shoot 5 to 7 frames for each HDR, depending on how dynamic the scene is but may only use 3-4 frames from that bracket. I also find that SOME people shoot HDR brackets, but don’t push the limits of a single capture well enough. I’ve found that you can pull out considerable detail from a single 14bit file with a little effort.

The Phase One is a superb system and the advantage is the whole thing is modular enough that you can upgrade just the digital back later. (Something I wish DSLR’s would start doing.) As for the lenses, medium format lenses are typically very high quality and also tend to be quite large. Although they make “zoom” lenses, most are fixed focal lengths so framing does become a little bit of a challenge. The focal lengths as you know them are also very different. (The Schneider 55mm lens on the Phase One was roughly equivalent to about 24mm on my D300, or probably about 35mm on a FX body.) Of course, if you are buying into such a system, one expects lenses and other add-ons to be that expensive, thus the market allows for such prices.

Would their be a difference? Well besides the focal length being very different, assuming the focal length didn’t change, I suspect my 14-24 F2.8 would have performed very well, but still the overall performance of the Schneider lens was fantastic at the center of the frame. Their were still some distortions and some edge softness, but that is pretty much unavoidable with any lens and camera combination, especially in the “wide angle” lens range.

I agree, super-low ISO would be nice. I believe the D800 will have a lower ISO rating than previous Nikon’s which might help when it can be utilized. One thing I did notice about the 16bit files from the Phase One is the fact that very subtle gradations held up very well which tells me that the 16bit files do help.

The advantage of the RED is the fact that it CAN do video (pretty much what it’s designed for) and you can utilize a wide variety of lenses from different manufacturers with appropriate adapters. Clearly this works for them since they do not make or sell their own lenses, and it helps others get into the system at a lower price point overall because they can use what they already have with it. Obviously this would be nice to do with a Phase One, but since the lens isn’t designed to fit the sensor size, the imaging area wouldn’t be fully covered by the lenses. (I suppose some sort of adapter might make it work, but that would kill image quality and it would still have considerable falloff.)