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Tips for shooting at high altitude

Two years ago when my friend told me that I needed to be careful, that flying would become an addiction, I laughed it off. Sure, hanging out the door of a helicopter was bound to be fun and exciting, but I didn’t think of it in such brusque terms like “addicting.” But like he predicted, much like acquiring my first quality Swiss timepiece, it became much more than just about flying. It became a wholly unique experience that revved my creative engine beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Adrenaline pumping, camera shutter clicking, propellers chopping… the fourth or fifth time I found myself high above the metropolis below, my friend’s words came back to me, putting a defeated grin on my face: I was addicted.

What ensued was focusing my business and efforts towards that which I loved, and feeding that addiction.

Much of what put food on the table and kept a roof over my head was, and continues to be, primarily my work as commercial videographer and filmmaker in San Francisco, CA. I loved my work, though this was much less exciting than being high above it all, I reminded myself that with every job I did that forced me to remain on terra firma, was one step closer to being back in the air again.

As time went on, I would set aside parts of my budget for marketing, and then re-segment that budget to allow for occasional hour-long flights over cities of my choice (wherever I happened to be when the “itch” came back). What I planned to do was technically marketing. Who said marketing couldn’t be fun?

My short term strategy

My short term strategy was to keep shooting from the air to get a rhythm and knack for shooting while airborne. Anyone can take decent photos while in the air, since it’s a perspective few see and therefore it is visually eye-catching even if the images aren’t particularly notable for any other reason. What takes practice, and what makes good images into great images, is communication with the pilot, knowing what settings are idea on your camera so as to assure your shots remain sharp, understanding when the best times to fly are, and predicting when the weather will produce the best quality light on the city of your choice.

My long term strategy

My long-term strategy was twofold. First, I wanted to build a large enough backlog of images so that my personal vault contained more and better options than anything found on the major stock sites. Why? Because in major metropolitan cities that are growing (such as both Seattle and San Francisco right now), Real Estate companies are constantly needing what is known as backplate photography, or images of an area that they can later Photoshop their building into for use on websites and advertising around a construction site. Second, being known as an aerial shooter would land me well-paid gigs to do what I love: photograph from the air.

My strategy has been paying off, with several brands high profile brands feeding us projects thanks to the images that I and my business partner produce through our creative agency, Planet Unicorn.

Up in the air with the XF 100MP Camera System

Because I’ve dedicated a lot of time to this, I get to make beautiful images for others, but once in a while I like to make something for myself. That was what I did when I took the XF 100MP Camera System over San Francisco to take the first 100 megapixel images of the city from the air as the sun set behind the Golden Gate.

When shooting from a helicopter, you absolutely want the doors off on your side of the chopper so that you have nothing separating you from the world below. That said, flying in general and especially when the doors are off activate some serious cardinal rules you have to follow:

Everything you bring up needs to be strapped securely to you.
Do not touch the central control stick, which the pilot is using to control the trajectory of the helicopter. That means you need to be constantly cognizant of where your arms and knees are, especially because of how cramped helicopters are (at least Robinson R44 or R22 helicopters, which are most common for this kind of work).
It’s cold in a helicopter, even during the summer. Wear a coat.
The microphone you use to communicate to your pilot is activated by being close to your mouth, so when you lean out the door with the mic pressed up to your lips, the loud whipping sound of the wind blows right into the mic, and therefore right into the ear of your pilot. If you’re going to lean out, move the mic away from your face.
Communicate constantly with your pilot. If you don’t tell him what you want, he can’t direct the helicopter into position. Odds are, your pilot isn’t a photographer so he’s not going to know what you’re looking for. Talk with him all the time, and even take a few minutes before you take off to go over what you’re looking for, and how you want him to fly. They are capable of going very fast, or hovering nearly motionless over a target.

This time of year, the sun sets very quickly and the light can go from gorgeous golden to dark blue and black, very quickly. San Francisco also doesn’t produce that much light at night, especially when compared to something like Time’s Square in New York, so even high ISO cameras can have a problem shooting once the sun falls behind the horizon. What that meant was that I needed to hit all three of my major targets within an hour, with the 15 minutes of flying between the airport and downtown taken into account.

My goals were to get the Golden Gate Bridge, Sutro Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid with the new Bay Bridge as an ancillary goal I would plan to grab on the way towards the Golden Gate.

Thanks to careful planning and communication with my pilot, we got all of my goals done and without a hitch.

Once I get the images back home, part of my philosophy is to try and maintain as much of how the photo looked when I took it as possible, or at the very most, only accentuate that which it is. My favorite image from this shoot is of the Transamerica Pyramid in an image I call “Too Big to Fail.” The original…

Image in Capture One Pro 9

.. isn’t too different from the finished photo, with what little work I did only served to make the image more of itself. I like the blue, dark and somber tone. I think it adds a lot of power to the image.

Part of the fun that comes with shooting with 100 megapixels is zooming it to see all the amazing details in a building. For example, in this particular photo you can see how the building maintenance crew attaches and deploys their window washing system. It’s a look that you don’t often get to see, and I think this kind of stuff is fascinating.

This was my first time really diving into Capture One in some time. I had used it briefly a couple years ago when shooting with Phase on a landscape project, but I can’t say I really “processed” in the program, but spent most of my time in Lightroom and Photoshop. In this instance, Adobe did not allow for the processing of the 100 megapixel raw files, leaving me no choice but to conduct my post production in Capture One Pro 9.

I’m really glad this happened, because I’ve fallen in love with Capture One Pro 9.

The program is of course different to use than what I had come from, but after 10 or so minutes going through menus and reading up on it, I was quickly processing and producing images I was extremely excited to share. It was much easier to use than I remember, and fine tuning these photos was a breeze.

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I have to say, I’m really impressed with theXF 100MP Camera System and how it performed up there. I always bring a second camera up when I shoot just in case the first one fails, and sometimes specifically with a longer focal length lens for those close-up shots. In this case, I didn’t want to stop shooting with the XF. The images it was getting were super sharp, and the way the sensor sees the world is really something special. The whole time my backup camera stayed firmly in my lap, unused as I spend the full hour enjoying the XF. Even as the light rapidly faded, the XF 100MP Camera System remained the best camera for what I was shooting. I generally like to shoot wide anyway, and the 35mm f/2.8 did an excellent job of giving me the angle of view I most often seek.

The next time I go up with a Phase One, I want to do it in the early morning. There is some really amazing light that comes up with the rising sun, especially here in the City by the Bay and I want to see how the XF handles my city bathed in morning warmth.

Jaron Schneider,

Schneider Productions

A novel way to control color editing

There are few places in the world that feel as old and ancient as Australia’s Kimberley. Sitting in the far north of Western Australia, the Kimberley is renowned for its remarkable coastline, but inland is no less enchanting or intriguing as can be seen by this photograph taken in a ‘secret spot’.

Unlike more recent landscapes with their sharp points and naked cliffs, Australia’s landforms are softer and more weathered with a unique patina and a distinctive color palette. People who have never visited Australia often accuse photographers of ramping up the saturation slider in their photos, but once you have visited Australia’s outback, you quickly realize how vivid the colorful landscape can be.

On this particular morning, some distance south of Kununurra, it was 95 percent humidity on the ground. Of course, shooting from a Bell Ranger helicopter at altitude, it was very pleasant with the doors off and the wind in our hair. Well, it would have been in my hair if I weren’t almost bald!

However, the humidity reduced contrast and created a distant haze which softened the natural color and hid the variegated landscape. The challenge was to use Capture One Pro 9 to bring the scene back to life and what I experienced.

Color Balance vs. White Balance

Sometimes with scenes like this it can be challenging to get exactly the correct color balance – at least aesthetically. And there are a number of different approaches I use, depending on the challenge at hand.

There is white balance and then there’s color balance. They are different mathematically, but both can be used to set the overall color cast in an image.

We normally associate white balance with capture and this is often the first adjustment we make to a raw file. White balance is set with two sliders – a yellow/blue slider called Kelvin (for color temperature) and a magenta/green slider called Tint.

In comparison, color balance is something we use to adjust an already processed file and it is set using a combination of red, green and blue channels. I usually think of color balance as something I do to an already processed file, rather than a raw file, but within Capture One Pro 9 you have both options for your raw files.

Sometimes I find it easier to use one or the other in order to achieve the desired output when processing my raw files. However, it doesn’t really matter which one you use, as long as you like the result.

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Correct Settings

All cameras can be set to record an auto white balance at the time of capture (the setting is called ‘Shot’ in Capture One Pro 9) and more often than not, the result is spot on. However, ‘accurate’ color balance and ‘aesthetically pleasing’ color balance can be two completely different things.

I struggled with the white balance in this image. What I remember are the strong yellows of the grasses and the rich reds of the rock faces. Neither are present in the raw file exactly as I wanted them and nor could I solve my problem with either the white balance or the color balance tools.

Of course, it is theoretically possible with both controls, but I simply struggled to find exactly the right combination, even with a correctly calibrated Eizo ColourEdge monitor.

Then I remembered an approach I learnt many years ago in Photoshop – and no doubt pre-press operators used it before Photoshop even existed. The technique uses the Levels tool to adjust each of the three color channels (R, G and B) independently.

When you look at the Levels dialog box in Capture One Pro 9, you’ll see four options: RGB, Red, Green and Blue. Normally we work in RGB because this is a combination of all three color channels. When you make an adjustment in RGB mode, you are effectively changing all three layers together.

An alternative technique is to change the channels independently. My approach is to open each color channel and drag the white point and black points in to the edge of the histogram – you can see what I have done in the diagram here:

With the white and black points positioned correctly, I often find I have a very good color balance, or at least a good start. Next I grab the mid-point on each of the channels and drag it to the left or right to control the color balance.

Don’t ask me why this approach works. And don’t let the Capture One programmers read this either because they have spent years refining their color and white balance dialog boxes to essentially do this more easily! However, after trying the other controls for quite some time, I found this approach gave me exactly the colour balance I wanted.

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PODAS In Kununurra

I guess this proves the point that there are often several different ways to achieve the same or a very similar result in Capture One Pro 9.

Once happy with the color balance, I used six Local Adjustment layers to darken down the sky, add a touch more red to the mountains in the background and create a highlight on the central hills.

Would you like to visit this location? Along with Christian Fletcher and Tony Hewitt, I will be leading a week long PODAS workshop based in Kununurra this May, and it includes a couple of helicopter flights, one of them over this area. And you can be shooting it with the new Phase One XF 100 MP system as well!

The PODAS, from 23-29 May 2016, also includes in-depth instruction on using Capture One Pro 9 and general post-production.

Learn more about Podas

What’s new in Capture One Pro 9.1?

It’s not that long ago Capture One Pro 9 was released, but that doesn’t mean we have been sitting on our hands. Last week we released Capture One Pro 9.1 with new features and improvements on existing features.

What’s more, this is a completely FREE upgrade if you already have version 9, whether that be a subscription or a license.

Download free 30-day trial of Capture One Pro 9.1

New Uniformity Controls

Capture One Pro 9.1’s Color Editor is an incredible tool and really worth getting to know inside out. The Skin Tone tab has additional controls for correcting uneven skin tones. Previously there was a single Uniformity slider that could be used to even out the color of skin tones.

Now that has been split into three sliders for individual connection of Hue, Saturation and Lightness.

Try it out!

New Features for Tethered Capture in Capture One Pro 9.1

If you regularly shoot tethered to Capture One Pro 9, we have made a couple of changes to improve stability and workflow. If you use a Canon camera, we have changed the tethering engine to a Phase One developed system that is not reliant on the SDK provided by Canon.

On the surface it doesn’t look like much has changed, but you will find increased performance and stability. For some cameras, 30% faster.

For any of you capturing tethered, the Next Capture Adjustments tool has been split into five different categories.

This means the ICC profile, Orientation, Metadata, Styles and all other settings can be individually set. Live View is also rotatable now and follows the Orientation setting in this tool. Particularly handy if you are capturing in Portrait orientation.

Library Refactor

Again, it won’t look like much has changed on the surface but the Library (the database that takes care of Catalogs and Sessions) has been completely refactored for higher performance and reliability.

Improved TIFF File Handling

If you are managing your TIFF assets in Capture One Pro 9.1, if any of those have alpha channels or layers, they can be properly displayed in the viewer.

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Lots of new Shortcuts and Workflow improvements

Simple commands that have not previously been available as a shortcut have now been added to the improved Keyboard shortcuts editor. These include actions such as Inverting a Local Adjustment Mask or Resetting the Capture Counter.

A useful new workflow addition has been added too. Select By in the Edit menu means that selecting certain images in a collection is simply achieved from this menu or by enabling any of those commands with shortcuts.

This gives an impressively quick way of selecting all Five Star rated image in a collection.

You will also find by right-clicking on any image in the browser that it is possible to create albums automatically based on a Rating, Color Tag or Sequence ID from a Phase One XF camera.

Therefore, selecting a whole collection of images with different ratings and color tags, and choosing one of those options, will automatically create the right albums. A huge time saver at the end of a shoot.

Keyword Export Restrictions

If you manage your keywords within multiple lists, on export you can now restrict which keywords from which lists will be applied to the exported images.

This is very useful if you need to Keyword images for different uses, especially within stock agencies.

More Integration with the Phase One XF camera

The latest feature update for the Phase One XF camera added a number of Sequence tools for Capture. For example, for Focus Stacking and HDR capture. These can be easily filtered in Capture One Pro 9.1 and tools mentioned such as album creation above make them easier to manage. See video about the latest feature update:

For a summary of all the new features, watch the What’s new in Capture One Pro 9.1 video on our Youtube channel

You can also join me and Drew Altdoerffer for a webinar on Capture One Pro 9.1 so we can give you a run down of the new features and how it interacts with the XF camera. Sign up.

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Best regards,

David

On location with the XF 50MP Camera System

I’ve been shooting medium format for quite some time, but it was rare to shoot with a bigger system outside of the studio. I’d been eager to test a medium format system like the XF 50MP Camera System and compare the usability to my DSLR. So when Red Bull surfer Casper Steinfath called me up and asked if I wanted to join him for a session in Cold Hawaii, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get my hands on an XF 50MP system and give it a try.

I had been shooting Phase One DF+ in the past, but was given the opportunity to test the new XF 50MP Camera System through my local partner. The 50MP CMOS system gave me the ISO flexibility I would need for the cloudy days and handheld shooting. The subject matter having an element of action, hand holding and fast shutter speeds would be a firm requirement.

First, the XF Camera System was a completely different experience than the older DF+. I was a bit weary about taking out a system I had never used before and I unfortunately had little time to test it. My past experience with medium format always seemed to exaggerate the challenges in my workflow. However the XF Camera System was very intuitive and just worked straight out of the box. My last worry was then shooting handheld only having daylight to rely on, but the auto focus of this system is really a leg up on the competition, it was fast and precise, and I had no problem with getting my images sharp, regardless of the subject or action.

As you can see, we were actually quite lucky with the weather and got a beautiful mixture of sun and cloud formations as a perfect backdrop for the days shoot, a rarity here in Denmark! Because of the unexpected sun, however, I got a chance to put the amazing dynamic range of the system to the test and shoot some backlit shots that I would probably never had even attempted with my DSLR. I was beyond pleased with the result. The amount of detail, the amount of information captured in the highlights and shadows, it was all unlike anything I had seen before.

In general, the system performed beyond my expectation. I shot for the whole day without worrying about batteries and got the results I was hoping for. And, at the end of the day, the files are so flexible in Capture One Pro I was able to push and push and push until I got exactly what I wanted. No sacrifice, no regrets, just sharp detail rich images from a good days shoot. Not bad for a quick and easy test.