Waking Life by Canon DSLR Challenge


10-APR-2007

If you don't understand the significance of the title, do a youtube search.

Canon EOS 10D
1/13s f/2.0 at 135.0mm iso800 hide exif

other sizes: small medium original auto

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jnconradie		15-Apr-2007 10:33
Thanks for the explanations, Victor. Always a lot for me to learn from you - and thus really appreciated. Compliments and regards. jnconradie

Canon DSLR Challenge		15-Apr-2007 10:13
Thanks for the explanation, really professionally and thoughtfully done. Very impressive... with 135mm, and that shutter speed you did a fabulous job in capturing the action. Full marks.. ~ Regards Melbob

Victor Engel		14-Apr-2007 23:47
I do have a very steady hand (I was not using a tripod). But I think most of the crispness you notice may be the processing. The most important elements of the processing were surface blur, smart blur, and poster edges, although there was more to it than that. The poster edges filter "draws" lines where there are areas of high contrast. So part of the workflow involves getting the picture to the right local contrast prior to running the poster edges filter. The poster edges filter then has a built-in posterization feature. With posterization, a source image can be made into a crisp one. Since I was shooting for this effect at the time, I wasn't really worried too much about crisp focus, since I knew post processing would take care of it. For comparison, here is the uncropped, unprocessed original. This is just loaded from raw using unadjusted RAW defaults (NOT the auto settings). Notice, for example, the viola player's left hand. She's in the midst of a vibrato. That comes across only slightly after post-processing. With the Bob software, I would have drawn most of the lines using vectors. I didn't do that, preferring to let the poster edges filter place the edges automatically based on my processing before applying that filter. -- Victor

Canon DSLR Challenge		14-Apr-2007 17:13
I love the colouring of this Victor, especially the violin tonings and highlights. Yes, the 10D and lens combo together with the musician theme is a 'give-away'. How did you manage such a crisp capture with that shutter speed? Great composition. ~ Regards Melbob

Canon DSLR Challenge		14-Apr-2007 00:41
Victor - When I first looked at it I just had a hunch. You just popped into my head and I wrote the comment. I know you like to shoot musicians and I thought you might be the "kind of a guy" that would like that movie (I loved it) and title a pic after it. I might have done the same, if I'd thought of it. Honest, only then I looked at the EXIF info and thought I had a pretty good hunch. The 10D, 135mm f.2 (I recall you have one of those), low light, etc. I would have thought it was you even without the EXIF, tho. BTW, very cool image. Good job! -mikey

Canon DSLR Challenge		13-Apr-2007 22:52
Yes, Mikey, this is mine. How could you tell? This project turned out to be more ambitious than I expected, so what I entered is only a portion of the intended picture. The person you see here is one of the members of the Tosca Strings quartet that is seen near the beginning of the movie. They are one of my favorite groups. Besides their wonderful music, I love the way they seemingly communicate with each other via ESP, exchanging glances at each other throughout their playing. The venue where they were playing was one of the most challenging (look at the EXIF) I've ever had to deal with. Besides extremely low light, the subjects' faces were frequently hidden behind each other, their music stands or the piano. Consequently, I was going to make a collage in this style. I discovered, unfortunately, too late, that it's probably better to make the collage first, then apply these artistic effects, rather than the other way around. To be true to the movie style, I really should have Bob software and animate the picture as well. I'm not doing either, but I hope I come close to approximating the style in the movie. -- Victor

Canon DSLR Challenge		13-Apr-2007 21:03
I like it too. It would have worked for the "movie" challenge, as well. Victor? -mikey

Canon DSLR Challenge		13-Apr-2007 15:12
I like this. The color and line add great eye appeal to the image, IMO. shu