Friday, November 26, 2021

Post Processing and Workflow Bootcamp - Lightroom and Photoshop NEW DATE - Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 December 2021

 

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Post Processing and Workflow Bootcamp - Lightroom and Photoshop

NEW DATE - Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 December 2021

Hi Mark,

I am pleased to advise the new dates for the next Post-processing Bootcamp are now finalized.

Bookings are now open.

It will be held at the re-opened Caboolture HUB. It's a great facility with plenty of space for all our laptops and gear.

Lots of amazing new features in the recent release of Lightroom Classic so it is a great time to come along.

If your catalog and photos are in a mess then this workshop will get you back on track.

This workshop is designed for the beginner to fast track entry into the world of Lightroom and Photoshop but still caters to the more experienced user wanting to hone their skills and learn new tips and tricks.

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Some comments from past participants:

Chris Holland wrote: 
This was such a useful weekend... I'm still in mental overload, but excited about putting into practice so many of the ideas that I absorbed. Thanks to Mark and the rest of the group for making it all so worthwhile. There wasn't one unanswered question!!

Anne Reid wrote: 
Was a great weekend, yes it was a great venue. Easy parking, close to shops and beach for the lunch time breather. Must mention the great teacher and the surprises we all received with some of the things we learnt.

Heather Streatfield wrote: 
Am feeling especially inspired after my photography Bootcamp this weekend. Alarm set for 3.45am, it's time to drag this butt out of bed for a summer sunrise!

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Here is a rundown of what to expect over the weekend.

Phototrek - 7:00am Saturday

We will all be photographing together in the surrounding area and this shoot will provide most of the imagery for the weekend's processing tuition. You will be working from scratch on images from your own camera, far preferable than working on supplied images which may have totally different characteristics than your own.

Morning Tea

Session 1

This session covers the basics of Adobe Bridge/Lightroom Library and Camera Raw/Lightroom Develop and de-mystifying the connections of both with Photoshop. Mark will show you how best to transfer your images to your computer and some convenient protocols for folder naming and storage. We will look at the benefits of utilising Adobe Lightroom exclusively for this process.

1:00pm Lunch (BYO or purchase nearby) will split session 1

Session 2

This session will cover image adjustment and enhancement in Camera Raw / Lightroom and look at a number of techniques to speed up the post-processing workflow. We will look at the various adjustment modules and tools which will become the backbone of your image processing.

Adobe Lightroom Splash

Session 3 - 10:00am Sunday

We will start to get into some of the new user friendly aspects of Photoshop and really begin to make a difference to our RAW files to produce images with that "Wow" factor. We'll look at the best way to set up your tool panels and optimise your workspace to suit your style and needs. You will explore the different tools available in Photoshop and how and when to use them.

11:00am Morning Tea

Session 4

To help speed up the workflow process we will begin to incorporate plug-ins, presets, actions and scripts. As well as providing you with many ready to use presets, Mark will guide you through the process of creating your own actions to speed up processes that you find yourself doing more often. 
You'll learn how to create stunning, unique and interesting backgrounds for your "studio" portraits and much more.

1:00pm Lunch (BYO or purchase nearby) will split session 4

Session 5

By this session you will have a new understanding of presets, actions, scripts, plug-ins, batch processing, curves, layers, masks, resolution, filters and many more terms.This session will put your new found knowledge and skills to work and consolidate what you have learned into a smooth and efficient workflow. We will also look at the basics of some of the hot topics of digital photography such as HDR (High Dynamic Range), Panorama stitching and more.

If you have any special or problem files you wish to work on please bring them along (time permitting).

All the details can be found on the website here -> Brisbane

Hope you can make it along.

Cheers, 
Mark

Questions? Please give me a call on 0459 221678 or shoot me an email.

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Lightroom Develop Module

Wildlife, Reptiles and Frogs - Summer 2021 Collection Saturday 4 December 2021

 

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Wildlife, Reptiles and Frogs - Summer 2021 Collection

Saturday 4 December 2021

Hi Mark,

This is a special opportunity to see and photograph some amazing reptiles, frogs, birds and mammals. Some of these have not been presented at a workshop before.

Many are all but impossible to photograph in the wild without a BBC Wildlife budget.

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You will have an amazing opportunity to photograph tame native wildlife at a private breeder’s collection. Some of the native wildlife species that we will photograph (depending on availability on the day) include, but not limited to:

Tessellated & or Crowned Stick Insects
Emerald spotted Tree Frog
Barking Gecko
Granite Belt Leaf-tailed Gecko
Granite Belt Cunningham’s Skink
Northern Bluetongue
Pink tongued Skink
Sth. Angle headed Dragon
Coastal Bearded Dragon
Sand Goanna
Saltwater Crocodile
Rough scaled Python
Black headed Python
Green Tree Snake
Long nosed Potoroo
Ringtail Possum
Tawny Frogmouth
Barking Owl

You'll be shooting in lovely rainforest environment utilising a number of natural displays where, you'll get to shoot all manner of snakes, lizards, birds and mammals. We'll have strobes, soft-boxes and LED lighting on hand to help you achieve amazing images. The lighting equipment provided is fully compatible with any DSLR or mirrorless camera. We'll have you up to speed shooting with outdoor studio lighting in no time.

If you have any special requests please let me know and we'll see if they can be made available.

Click here for all the details and to book:

Hope you can make it along.

Cheers,

Mark

Live, Laugh, Photograph

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Sunday, January 3, 2021

AF-S NIKKOR 300MM F/4E PF ED VR AF-S Tested - Updated

 

AF-S NIKKOR 300MM F/4E PF ED VR AF-S 

Tested - UPDATE - LOVE IT!!


Back in October 2018 the good folks at Nikon (thanks Tony) loaned me an AF-S NIKKOR 300MM F/4E PF ED VR AF-S lens to try out.

The timing was great as I was heading  north to run my North Queensland Bird and Nature Photography workshop with Dick Jenkin and, from what I had read, this lens held a lot of promise.


To cut a long story short, I bought one on my return. It still remains the lens that is usually sitting on my camera ready for action. I have since purchased the Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR Lens which is also a beauty but for lightweight convenience, the 300 remains in front.



So, a bit about this lens.

The first thing you notice is its size and weight. For a 300mm lens its small and very light coming in at around .7kg. In fact its lighter than a 24-70 f/2.8 zoom and almost identical in size. So, it fits very easily into a camera bag.

The lens comes with all the usual things we expect these days like VR (vibration reduction) with normal and sport modes. You can also limit the focus to 3m to infinity which speeds up focusing on more distant subjects. And it has instant manual focus override, always nice to have when you need to tweak the focus manually.

The lens has Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) lens elements as well as Nano-crystal coatings and fluorine coating on the front element to repel water, grease etc. But the real secret to this lenses' performance is a PF (Phase Fresnel) lens element. This element does some magic mumbo jumbo to keep the weight down and reduce chromatic aberration. The lens also has Nikon's SWM (Silent Wave focus Motor) for ultra quick and quiet auto-focus.

The filter thread is 77mm which is the same as Nikon's 24-70, 16-35, 70-200 and probably quite a few others. So your existing polarising or ND filters will screw straight on.

So that all sounds wonderful but how does it perform in the real word?

It is sharp! Very sharp and from edge to edge. I couldn't discern any noticeable fall off towards the edges of my images. I tested the lens on a Nikon D850, a Nikon Z7, a Z6 and more recently a Z7II  and combined with the resolution of those camera the results were outstanding.

My primary target during the test has been birds, both stationery and in flight. I have been rewarded with superb fine feather detail and excellent auto focus capturing birds in flight.

It is an f4 lens so there is a 1 stop light penalty when compared to a 300 f/2.8 but the light weight and the brilliant high ISO performance of modern cameras makes the 1 stop almost meaningless. The light weight will appeal to travellers who constantly hold their breath when checking in at airline counters and also to people who are finding the heavy weight of big primes or zooms is getting more difficult to handle. The light weight also makes this lens so easy to wield when photographing birds in flight or other moving subjects.

You can check out more details and pricing from Camera Pro here.

Well that pretty much covers it so here are some sample images with the settings used for each.





Amazon Parrot
Nikon D850 Nikkor 300 f/4 PF
1/800s @ f/4 ISO 720

King Parrot
Nikon Z7 Nikkor 300 f/4 PF
1/320s @ f/4 ISO 560
Brown Honeyeater
Nikon Z7 Nikkor 300 f/4 PF with 1.4tcIII
1/320s @ f/5.6 ISO 1800

Juvenile Male King Parrot
Nikon Z7II Nikkor 300 f/4 PF with 1.4tcIII and SB910 Speedlight
1/60s @ f/5.6 ISO64