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Into the shark’s eye

Ever since I first swam with sharks, I wanted to share that experience through my photography. And since I couldn’t bring the sharks into the studio, I brought the studio to the sharks. Watch a BTS video from my trip to South Africa below:

A couple of things made this possible: A solid underwater housing for my camera and the right lights. The housing was developed by a Japanese company. And I invented an underwater strobe system for which I now have four patents. It’s the most powerful underwater lighting setup in the world. I just went out and made it. All my assistants have gotten certified as divers, the same team, and they’ve followed me into the deep. We were all very glad that the sharks couldn’t care less about the lighting.

Today I’m shooting with the Phase One XF IQ3 80 MP system. I’ve now been shooting with Phase One camera systems for about eight or nine years, and over that time there have been a lot of changes – the camera body, the grip, the number of megapixels, the file sizes and speeds of autofocus. It’s great every time they release a new system. I love it. The gear keeps getting better, sharper and faster.

A great example of why using medium format is key: With sharks, everyone’s used to seeing that black eye, it personifies the monster, something that looks so soulless from far away. But recently when I zoomed into the images I’d taken, I was amazed. I could literally see the shark’s iris, see the eye in all its specificity – the same view that I see when I dive with them. It creates this connection, because you can see how almost human they are as they look at you. But no camera ever revealed that until I shot with the 80MP system. Maybe it was the light that was hitting it in a certain way, but it was like, ‘wow, there you go!’ A huge “wow moment.” The technology just delivered the experience in its true form. Something DSLR camera systems simply can’t do.

To get a great image, you need all the elements – lighting, detail, direction, color, composition, shadows … it’s how you use each of them that separates you from the next guy …

One of the big differences between my peers and me is that I do all my own post-production, and I don’t hand stuff off to retouchers – I never have, from the film days, right through when I jumped with both feet into digital around 2002. I love looking deeply into the image. Having that knowledge of post is a huge advantage because I know where I can take it.

I love Capture One Pro 9. Every tech I know uses it because of its workflow and speed. Plus, obviously if you’re working with Phase One gear, it’s the program designed to work with that camera system. I honestly don’t like shooting tethered, it’s like being a dog on a leash, but it is great to be able to look at the images on the screen; you can zoom in and make changes on the fly.

Converting the raw file is the foundation of the look – it’s how I put my fingerprint on the image. Later, I might spend two minutes in Photoshop. It comes down to the kind of detail you can get with Capture One Pro 9, detail in the blacks that you won’t get with Bridge, for example.

Commercial work is great, and I enjoy it, but there’s nothing that compares to working on your own projects. A lot of commercial photographers can forget that and get old and stale just chasing a check. It’s important to do want you love, essential to at least sometimes follow your passion. I wasn’t hired or paid to do the shark project. It was my own project that I was passionate about. It was very fulfilling.

For me, I’d say 90 percent of the time I’m shooting with Phase One; eight percent with my DLSR and two percent with my iPhone. For all my commercial jobs, I’m using Phase One gear. My clients are expecting the biggest file size they can get so they can crop in, or use the images for huge billboards with no loss of quality. When they see the camera, they’re often, like “woah, what is that?” So I spend some time explaining.

If I were to offer any advice to other photographers, I’d say that the most important thing is to shoot. Some people say, “Well, I’m a music photographer or a car photographer, so that’s what I shoot.” But I say, ‘If you’re a photographer, you’re a photographer – you shoot everything!’

Shoot constantly and hone your craft. Shoot things outside your usual subject matter and look back to how that might help you with your usual focus – you might discover ways to translate shooting something new with something you’ve always done. The only way to become a master is to have a camera in your hands on a daily basis.

Bottom line, I’d say, ‘Listen to your own gut.’

Michael Muller’s Sharks. Face-to-Face with the Ocean’s Endangered Predator, has just been published by Taschen. It’s a 334 page hardcover book with two amazing foldouts, filled with hundreds of images that show another side of an awesome creature — one that many have vilified and few have taken time to understand. Readers report being blown away by the details in these images, and we wanted to hear from Michael about this project, about his photography in general and what his advice to photographers seeking to master the craft.

Check out Michael’s website and Instagram:

http://www.mullerphoto.com/

https://www.instagram.com/michaelmuller7/

Phase One Partner of choice Samy’s Camera

Color tools for fashion imagery

Capture One Pro is extremely versatile. It’s always been a powerhouse when it comes to handling RAW images. With Capture One Pro 9, more powerful color tools have become available – so powerful that personally I’ve moved almost all of my color grading to Capture One Pro, versus Photoshop. In this post, I’m going to talk about how I use Capture One to achieve a desired look for fashion and portraits.

To start things off, let’s have a look at the original RAW image of Chelsea in Capture One Pro:

Original image

Luma Curves

Firstly, the hair was a little dark in the shadows so I wanted to slightly bring out the detail without impacting the image dramatically, which is normallt what you would see using the shadow save slider.

Black tone Changes with Luma Curves

Using the Luma curve, I slightly brought up the shadows. The new Luma curve is great since it doesn’t affect saturation. I often use the curve eyedropper tool to pick out the areas on the histogram that I want to affect. In order to reduce the affected areas, don’t forget to lock down elements outside of the area that you are working with.

The change is subtle, but sometimes subtle changes are all you need

Skin tone uniformity

Our model, Chelsea, already has great skin tones. What we want to do is to bring the shadowed skin tones more in line with the well-lit skin tones. To do so, I jumped to Local Adjustments, created a new layer and named it “skin”. From there, I went to the Color Editor and selected the Skintone tab. Here, you want to grab the eyedropper and select an area of skin. I often turn on the “View selected color range” checkbox so I can see exactly which tones I am selecting.

Quick mask with skintone eyedropper

You will notice that we are only selecting her skin tones as the blue background is not showing. This is a great quick mask, however, we do not want to alter her lips. Therefore, I will typically throw a secondary mask on. Make sure you are on the skin adjustment layer and paint away.

More complex mask to remove lips

After writing the post I discovered that with the release of Capture One Pro 9.1. there is actually also a new feature making it possible to transform a color selection into a mask. The feature is called Create Mask from Selection and it would have been very helpful in this case. See more in this tutorial. From 2:30 onward.

Now that you have a great mask, you want to turn up the uniformity slider. This can be found in the Skintone tab, which will blend the tones nicely. Often, I find the tones a little red, so I’ll play with the hue rotation tool to achieve the desired skin tone.

Color Editor for subject isolation

For this particular image, I wasn’t a fan of the blue background. Having the “view the selected color range” check box on gave me the idea to eliminate the blue background. To do this, I used the Color Editor tool and selected a spot on the background with the eye dropper. Make sure to be under the Advanced tab.

You will notice the sampled color appearing in the list and now it’s ready to be adjusted. I pulled down the saturation to -100 to get rid of the blue all together. Moreover, I pulled up the lightness a bit, to brighten the background.

Removal of blue background with the Color Editor Tool

Color Balance Tool for shadows, midtones and highlights

Now that the image is at a good baseline, I played with the colour balance. With the Color Balance tool, you can shift the shadows, midtones and highlights independently on hue, saturation and luminosity.

You can do something sutble… (see below)

Or something drastic… (see below)

Drastic Shadow hue shift

For this particular image I wanted to add just a slight orange to the shadows so I dragged the circle over to the right. You will notice two curves on either side of the large circle. The left is for saturation, and the right is for luminosity. The notch on the circle identifies the hue. So, there are really two ways of approaching this; You can either play around with the small circle in the middle, or dial it with the notches to your liking.

Adjustment Layers for eyes

Furthermore, I noticed that the eyes could use a little light, so I jumped back into the adjustment layers and masked the eyes, turning up the shadow recovery just a bit..

Ahhhh, just right

For this example, I didn’t adjust the mis-tones or highlights, only the shadows.

Bring up the shadow in the eyes with the adjustment layer

The final result

And that’s basically it! It doesn’t seem like we’ve done much to this RAW file, but let’s review the before and after pictures below:

Final RAW conversion comparison

As you can see. we now have an image that is more isolated (removal if the blue background), with more consistent skin tones as well as a nice push to the warm tones in the shadows.

This RAW image is ready to be exported into photoshop for retouching.

I hope this quick tutorial helps you on your next portrait or fashion shoot.

How to apply lens correction without lens metadata

When using a DSLR camera or a Phase One camera, lens metadata information will automatically be added to the RAW file. From the lens metadata, Capture One Pro 9 will know if it is a supported lens and, in case it is, automatically apply lens corrections to the image.

When using an older manual lens, for instance via a simple adapter, or perhaps using a technical camera, there will be no metadata describing the lens.

Other data like the aperture used for the exposure of the image is also missed, so lens correction will not automatically take place.

Using a technical camera with lens movements makes it even more challenging when lens corrections need to be applied. Despite not having proper lens metadata in the RAW file, the Lens Tool in Capture One Pro 9 still has some options for applying lens corrections.

Using a 100% mechanical lens

In the first example, I have been using a 100% mechanical and manual lens on a Phase One Camera and the raw file does not contain any information on lens name, focal length or aperture. Therefore, I have to make some notes or simply use my smartphone to document the shoot.

When you load the image into Capture One Pro 9 and look at the Lens Tool, it will just show a Generic lens profile without any default corrections.

Image will show up with a generic lens profile as no lens metadata has been savned into the RAW file

The lens used for this image shows a bit of barrel distortion, as well as some chromatic aberration, so I want to correct these artifacts.

For this image, I was using an older Phase One 45mm TS f/3.5 lens, which is a lens supported by Capture One Pro 9. To select the lens profile, I will have to pick it from the ‘lens profile list’ under ‘Phase One lenses’:

After the right lens has been selected, the image will automatically be corrected for Chromatic Aberration and distortion. If I had been using a lens that was not supported in Capture One pro 9, I would still have the possibility to do a chromatic aberration correction. If you would like more details on how to do this, read the following blog post:

https://learn.captureone.com/fixing-chromatic-aberration-in-macro-images

Fixing distortion

When fixing distortion on a non-supported lens, you will have to try if either the Generic or the Generic pincushion lens model can fix it. For many lenses, you can actually bring down the distortion to a level where it is not noticeable any more, by using these generic lens profiles.

Furthermore, I will correct the keystone. Since this image has a dominant rectangle, I will use the Keystone’s cursor tool:

Next, I carefully place the four alignment circles on the corners of what I would like to be shown as a keystone free rectangle in the image.

To finish the image, I did a minor color adjustment on the blue sky with the Color editor.

Using a technical camera with lens movements

In the second example, I have been using a technical camera to create a keystone free image of a building by shifting the lens 5 mm up. I was using the Rodenstock ALPA HR Alpar 4.0 35mm lens; a lens that is supported in Capture One’s Lens Correction Tool.

Image and corresponding LCC reference image shot with a 35mm lens with 5mm shift up without any corrections

Even though the image was taken with lens movements, it is still possible to correct for light fall off, chromatic aberration and distortion, as long as Capture One Pro has the information about the lens movements and the aperture. The raw file does not contain any metadata information on the lens, the aperture or the movements of the lens, so I have to record this information, as mentioned previously.

In the lens correction tool, I do the following:

Select the lens used for the shot in the drop down menu
Enter the movements and aperture in the movements tab of the Lens Correction Tool
Apply LCC correction as explained in an earlier blogpost https://learn.captureone.com/3-easy-steps-fixing-sky-skin-tone-tool/

In this case, the movement is 5 mm up so I enter +5mm for Y shift.

Final image after LCC-, lens correction and a bot of Color Editor work

It can be a little more challenging to decide the sign for the movements when doing horizontal movements. Here, the rule is that if you stand in front of the camera, the lens movement to the left is “-“ and movement to the right is “+” – like on a classic XY coordinate system. But, if you mount the camera in portrait mode, you may lose track of the directions of the movements, as up and down shifts now should be interred as shifts in the Y direction.

A simple trick

Actually, there is a trick to determine the right sign (+ / -) when entering the movements:

Clone a variant of the LCC image and desaturate the image to get rid of any color variation
In the Lens Correction Tool, select the lens used for the image
Set the Light Fall-off compensation to 120%. The light fall-off compensation use the shift values to determine the right compensation
Use the Levels tool to increase the contrast by dragging the shadow slider. This is only to make it easier to see the effect of Light Fall-off compensation
Enter the Shift amount used for the image. If the image now appears with more even light distribution, you have entered the shift value in the right sign (+ / -)
Try the opposite just to verify that you actually did it correctly

In the above example, I am testing according to the description above, whether to use + or – in my movements. In this case, shift Y at = +8 leads to a much more even LCC file than if I entered -8, indicating that +8 is right.

Niels

3 steps to fix a blue sky using the Skin Tone tool

Capture One Pro 9 has a number of tools designed for working with images captured using a Technical Camera System. The Skin Tone tool in the Color Editor, however, is not one of them. This Tool is actually designed for improving the render of skin tones, ensuring that the skin is clean, smooth and pleasing. Surprisingly this tool also works extremely well for fixing variations in tone of a blue sky captured with a Technical Camera System.

The above image has been captured using an ALPA Technical Camera equipped with a Rodenstock ALPA HR Alpar 4.0/35mm lens and a Phase One IQ3 digital back. To avoid converging vertical lines in the building and to preserve all the details the camera system provides, I have shifted the lens up 8 mm while maintaining the camera is horizontally straight and perfectly level.

This lens may not be specifically designed for movements when paired with a Full Frame 6×45 image sensor, as you find in the IQ3 digital back. However when the lens is stopped down to f/11 you find the best compromise between depth of field and, you can then get away with movements of approximately 8-9 mm without losing your image in the corners.

Image on the left is a capture directly out of the camera. It shows large color variations in the sky caused by the wide-angle technical camera lens. The image on the right is the same image processed using Capture One Pro 9 and applying the tools for technical cameras as well as the Skin Tone Tool.

To achieve perfect color render in images like the above, taken on a technical camera, the three steps below are required in addition to capturing the image:

1) Capture a Lens Cast Correction (LCC) reference image

2) Correction for Lens Cast (LCC)

3) Fixing minor color issues

1. Creating a LCC reference file

For Capture One Pro 9 to compensate for the strong color variations seen in the sky, a separate image of a translucent white reference plate needs to be captured.

Without changing the movements of the camera or the aperture, hold the translucent plate directly infront of the lens and make a capture. Typically you’ll need to change the exposure time equivalent to 2 f-stops to get a good exposure.

2) Correcting for Lens Cast

Lenses for Technical Cameras Systems take advantage of the fact that there’s no need for the mirror box which facilitates a normal camera’s prism, and therefore the lens can get much closer to the sensor. This is is a great advantage when designing a wide-angle lens as it allows them to be smaller and optically superior. However, with the lens so close to the sensor there is a significant challenge with the angle of incident light reaching a pixel. The angle of incident light can be quite extreme and exceed the normal range that the micro-lenses of each pixel are designed to accommodate.

In Capture One Pro 9 select the LCC reference file of the translucent white plate. From within the LCC tool in the Lens Tool tab, click “Create LCC”.

Straight out of the camera the images of the translucent white plate show color variations as well as light fall-off.

When you create the LCC make sure to tick the box for Dust Removal Information, as this will allow you to automatically fix minor dust spots in your final image.

Also tick the box for “Wide Angle Lens with Movements” as this will initiate additional calibration data needed for images taken with wide-angle lenses that include movements.

After the LCC calibration has been created, it is automatically applied to the selected image in order to verify the correction actually will be able to correct the image.

With all boxes checked the LCC reference image now shows a perfect grey image without color cast, dust spots or light fall-off.

To apply the LCC calibration information to the desired image, you simply select both the LCC reference image and the image of the building. Once selected, right-click on your desired file and from the menu options select “Apply LCC”.

The task of creating and applying LCC files can be done on multiple LCC files, just select all the translucent white reference files and select “Create LCC” from either the LCC Tool or from the right-click menu in the thumbnail browser. If all your images are organized by a number of exposures followed by a LCC reference image, followed by exposures and then LCC shots (and so on), you can properly batch-apply the LCC calibration information. Simply select all the images including the LCC reference image and select “Apply LCC” from the right-click menu in the Thumbnail browser.

With the LCC calibration information applied to the image, it immediately looks much better. The calibration has reduced most of the colorcast in the image but as I have applied movements to the lens, causing an steeper angle for the incident light on the sensor, the LCC calibration doesn’t fix the color variations perfectly.

3) Fixing the remaining color variation using the Skin Tone tool

To fix the blue sky I will be using the Skin Tone tool in the Color Editor. I could work on the whole image but as there are quite a bit of blue tones in the building I would rather work in a Local Adjustment mask, created from a color selection in the Color Editor. Doing so, I can modify the mask to only include the sky.

From the advanced tab I make a color pick on the blue sky. I click on the “View Selected Color Range” to verify that I’ve got the right selection.

Now when I know I have the right color range selected I can convert this selection to a Local Adjustments Mask. I do so by clicking on the three dots (tool options) in the Color Editor Menu line and select “Create Masked Layer from Selection”.

In the Local Adjustments Tool tab I can finally move into the Skin Tone tab in the Color Editor.

This tool is designed for improving skin tones using the Uniformity sliders; these are designed to even out differences in a subject’s skin. It’s a very specialized tool for specific use, however these sliders also work perfectly on the blue sky of this image. In this example I adjusted the Uniformity of the Hue to 100%, Saturation to 67% and Lightness just a tiny bit. This adjustment totally eliminates any color variation in the sky.

With the Adjustment sliders I can further tweak the color tone to my desired blue tone.

All the best,

Niels