(click on the image for a larger view – the cluster of buildings in the distance is Shinjuku.)

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 - 3 exposures tonemapped with Photomatix

This was taken from the “Sky Deck” of the Mori Tower at Roppongi Hills - if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it on any clear day you are in Tokyo. You have an almost 360° view of the city and it really gives you a sense of scale and scope; and you are outside with the wind blowing, so it is very different from the enclosed observation decks and high rise or office building views throughout the city. If it’s a really clear day, you can see Mt. Fuji.

This is for Budget Trouble‘s photo meme/blog post called Show Me Japan. Jump over and take a look at the other entries by clicking the link above or  here.

This is the main thing I love about living up high: I’ve become a real sky watcher. I’ve always loved looking at the sky (who doesn’t, really?), but I can’t say I was such a keen observer of the sky until I really got into photography in a serious way.

As your eye become more trained, little changes in light levels begin to leap out at you and you begin to see opportunities that exist for very short periods of time; there is a lot of carpe diem in the process or you miss an opportunity you might never have again.

I highly doubt, for example, that I will ever look out my window and see this again:

Giant cloud looms

So, this evening was, again, a dash for the tripod and the right lens with an excited cat weaving between the legs of the tripod and tripping me up (eager because he’s been alone all day and he thinks we are now playing a “chase-the-tripod-legs” game) in order to get a shot of one little patch of light almost directly above the towers that now flank Tokyo Station’s Yaesu Exit (click on photo for a better view):

Not quite night, as the city lights come on and daylight seeps through the clouds...

For the technically curious: 3 exposures at ISO 200; 30mm, f/11 taken with a Canon 50D and a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM (a kick-ass lens for the cost).

And this, by the way, is my lovely assistant:

Sumi the Russian Blue gawks - his usual "Who, me...?" stare

]]> http://blog.tokyololas.com/tokyo-dark-light/feed/ 4 http://blog.tokyololas.com/testing-a-vimeo-embed/ http://blog.tokyololas.com/testing-a-vimeo-embed/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:58:26 +0000 Laura http://blog.tokyololas.com/?p=707 As I mentioned recently, due to a change at my hosting provider, I ended up switching my self-hosted WordPress.org blog over to a WordPress.com blog. The transfer itself was very smooth and easy using the great built-in function in WordPress.com, which copied over all my posts and custom CSS (although it did not do as well with some images, but that’s a separate story).

However,  because I am quite used to the freedom of a self-hosted WordPress.org blog (I administer several), I was a bit surprised to learn about some of the limitations of WordPress.com. In particular, the ability to post JavaScript or embed Flash, etc..

Realistically, I completely understand why Automattic places such limitations on users: just like Steve Jobs and his stance on the stability of Flash, they want to control the environment and ensure that everything functions smoothly across a shared platform.

So, as I get used to my new home on WordPress.com, I still need to test out a few things: one of them is embedding Vimeo videos, so that’s today’s post. I don’t produce that many videos (I’m obviously much more focussed on DSLRs than video cameras), but I am still on the fence between YouTube and Vimeo: I like the interface of the latter, but, obviously, the former is much more widely used and, therefore, means more people are likely to see a video and there is better compatibility with other services (iPhone/smart phones being one: you have to sign up for Vimeo’s paying service in order to be able to switch on mobile versions of your videos).

Anyway, today’s test of a Vimeo embed – this is 15 minutes of cloud movement after a typhoon condensed into 2 minutes. It was shot last year with a Canon iVis HF21 HD video camera on a tripod (from my balcony):

(turn off the sound if you don’t like techno…)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Embedding the video is really easy – WordPress.com’s instructions are here. However, oddly enough, they neglect to mention that the URL/Video ID can be pasted into either the “visual” WYSIWYG post-writing window or the HTML post-writing window.

Tokyo International Forum interior

Despite the meltdown of the global economy and a general slowing of business everywhere, 2009 has been a busy one for tokyololas so far (which may or may not explain why I have left a photo of a weird looking poodle at the top of this blog FOREVER).

Anyway, the other day, I was having a very brief email exchange about processing black & white digital photos and I was explaining why I really like to use HDR/tonemapping for black and white photos, particularly black and white photos of sky/clouds.

Two caveats up front: I don’t really care whether or not the process is called “HDR” or “Tonemapping”, so I will refer to it as HDR going forward; AND I don’t really care whether or not people like or don’t like “HDR”. I will agree that there is A LOT of very badly done “HDR” floating around the internet, but, beyond that, whether or not one likes the more extreme, cartoonish-looking HDR is a matter of personal preference or if you are not a fan of the Stuck in Customs style, again, that is a matter of personal preference.

I have certainly dabbled in a range of “HDR” styles just to get a feel for the process and see what can/cannot be done; and I have certainly produced a few HDR shots that I now abhor, but I am glad I did do them as a kind of experimentation because I now have a very strong sense of what I like and don’t like. As I said above, it is all a matter of personal taste and even when I find myself not particularly liking someone else’s vision, I do understand the time and effort that went into producing the end result.

These days, I tend to only do HDR for sky shots or architecture, and I MUCH prefer a more “True Tone HDR” style. In other words, I want the HDR element of the processing to be very subtle or even indiscernible. I have also found that a lot of digital black and white photos I see online are quite flat and lack the range of blacks that can be found in a nice black and white film photo.

This observation and dissatisfaction led me to start experimenting with HDR for black and white shooting and processing. I say “shooting” here because I almost always know before I take the shot that I am going for a black and white end product and, of course, if you are going to do decent HDR, you need to decide up front so you can do the multi-exposures (yes, of course, I know it is possible to do HDR from 1 shot, but I never do, so it is always a decision I make at the point of shooting).

This is not really a tutorial, so if you have no idea what any of this means, and, more important, you want to know, you might want to do some additional reading: stuck in customs HDR tutorial, Naturescapes.net HDR Landscapes Tutorial, Wikipedia HDR page, and Photomatix (the software I use to process/tonemap the images).

Personally, I like to keep things simple, so my approach to HDR is simple: no tripod – just a fast lens (I own two tripods, including a very handsome carbon fibre model, but I rarely carry it out and about with me and most often use it on my balcony or out back at night), 3 exposures using the AEB feature of my camera (-2/0/+2), upload to Lightroom, process in Photomatix, final adjustments in Lightroom (usually minor or none), export the final image. The whole thing from selecting AEB to exporting the final image can be done in less than 10 minutes. I know doing more than 3 exposures can yield even better results, but that would then require a tripod 100% of the time and would involve more fiddling with exposures on the spot (fine on a nice summer day, but not something I’d want to spend time doing when it is below zero outside). Two things I have not included above: shoot in RAW (I assume that anyone who owns a half-decent DSLR is shooting RAW – if you’re not, you should be and you’ll need to in order to do HDR), shoot on ISO 100 if possible or 200 if you must (any higher and you’ll most likely end up with noise in your final image).

Now, the results. The first shot below shows the base image (the “correct” exposure of the scene) converted to black and white – pretty flat, no?

Here is the HDR/tonemapped version:

Much better range of light and, what’s incredible, is that you can actually see a patch of what seems to be precipitation under the cloud (which is not at all visible in the base image). Now, if you want to have more fun, you can do other things with the image. For example, here is the actual final image that I ended up posting to Flickr – it was desaturated in Lightroom and there was some adjustment in terms of blue/green tones (again, clicking on the image will give you a better view):

Back to black and white – here are a few other examples of how I use the above process to get a final image I am happy with:

Palais Garnier -Opéra de Paris

Notre Dame de Paris (Notre Dame Cathedral) interior

intense sky over Harumi