Imsticking's Leica D-Lux 4 Blog

I post it here and it sticks.
 

I am the Highway

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I am the Highway - 5.10mm at f/2, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/500

Saturday's plan was to include a healthy dose of street photography in London, and I was heading firstly to Mayfair to have a look at the impressive Leica Camera store, and then the plan was to make my way to Camden Town for a look around, but mainly to catch the exciting bustle of Camden Market on camera. That whole plan including a meet up with someone afterwards deteriorated when I saw the system case for the Leica X1 in store. Even though I have a D-Lux 4, it fits inside the X1's system case great. If you want to learn more about the camera the system case was designed for, Steve Huff has a very comprehensive review of the Leica X1, with a ton of images.
 
All was not lost because I had an awesome new camera case! What sealed the deal for me was the magnet quick access flap. No plastic clips or metal levers to wrestle with when you quickly need to get at something in the case, you just pull the flap away from the side of the case, releasing it from the magnets built into the side of the case. 
 
I did get to take a few images on my way to the store, and thought I'd post a few of them in the coming days. Also I have a brand new Silver Efex Pro preset to share with you (at the bottom of this post). If you're new to Silver Efex Pro, take a look at some of the 12 videos available at the Nik Lessons section of Nik Software's website.
 
The photograph above was taken outside Green Park Underground station on Piccadilly. I had my back to the actual workers busy tearing up the tar, as we Londoner's all know they love to do. They guy who was "helping" AKA standing and watching while the other bloke did all the work, seemed quite happy to have his photograph taken. If the D-Lux's 4 write speed was faster, I may have actually caught him on camera. I do have him on camera, just not smiling like a cheshire cat.
 
I used the Kodak Tri-X 400TX Pro film type in Silver Efex Pro, making no changes at all, and then applied a split toner with a pure white paper hue. 
 
Post production inspiration was provided by Audioslave's "I am the Highway" ♫.
 

Click here to download:
Highway TriX 400TX Pro.sep (4 KB)

Filed under  //   Leica   London   Presets   monochrome   photography   street  
May 16 2010
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Waiting for Alice

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Waiting for Alice - 5.10mm at f/2, ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/10 second

I actually really enjoy being inside old theatres and cinemas. There's something about the way they used to present entertainment that has somehow gotten lost in the modernisation of the world. It's not just the way they used to look, but also it's the size. I like the small venues. A lot of people find them quaint, and well, I'm no exception. It would be really cool to go around photographing them. In particular, the ones that haven't changed for many decades. There is actually one right here in my town, Palace Cinema. It's so small, I've often thought it to be nothing but a fire hazard. I've been told it's quite an experience, and well worth a visit. I'm sure I'll go one day. 
 
One of the most memorable small cinema experiences I had was in Boston, where the the floor was actually flat and the entire seat is mounted tilting backwards, so that it's easier to see the screen over the heads in front of you. Anyway, I'd love to take more photographs of the interior's of small theatres and cinemas. They have character, I suppose, is what I'm trying to say.
 
I was lucky enough to find myself in a small theatre in London recently and managed to take a few photographs without getting thrown out. Always a minor achievement (I'm joking, I've never been thrown out of anything. Section 44's are another story). 
 
I took this photograph with my Leica D-Lux 4 (of course). This is the RAW file conversion to a TIFF. I often use the Capture One 5 PRO's  "Soft image sharpening 2" preset, but for this image I wanted a smoother look, so I applied none. I then used Silver Efex Pro. I pulled the Structure right down to -98% and boosted the shadows a little. I shot this with a high ISO: 1600, so after applying the Kodak 100 TMAX Pro film type, I bumped the Grain Per Pixel up full to 500 and set it to Soft, just to minimise the usual graining effect you get with film caused by luminance noise, because there's plenty already from shooting with a high ISO. For toning I used Copper Tone Preset 10 with all the default settings, no changes there. As you can probably tell, it's a very light toner. There is also a slight vignette of -21%. I thought I'd include the Silver Efex Pro preset I created while processing this image. You can download it from the link below, and then go wild!
 
 
 

Click here to download:
Kopa 100 TMAX Pro.sep (4 KB)

Filed under  //   Leica   London   Presets   monochrome  
May 13 2010
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Waterfall, Nothing Can Harm Me At All.

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Waterfall, Nothing Can Harm Me At All - 5.9mm at f/8, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/10 sec.

The weather has been pretty miserable this weekend. I was really looking forward to spending most of Saturday up in London engaging in some street photography. I haven't dedicated a full day to photographing London for a while, and it's starting to bug me a little. I love discovering new places now since taking up photography. In the past, I didn't. Venturing into some alien territory was not something I ever looked forward to, or chose to position myself in. Taking photographs seems to have made that anxiety slowly diminish to the point where I actually get excited thinking about what unknown scene may be waiting for my to discover and capture. 
 
Determined to creating something new this weekend, I ventured out to what I thought was a public park. It turns out it's a massive garden of an old age home. There seems to be a lot of running water around the area where I live. This little stream is right at the bottom of the garden and has at least 4 little bridges built for crossing it. Some have clearly been there since the dawn of bridge building.*
 
I've decided to actually make the Silver Efex Pro preset file, that I created during post processing, available for download with this image. I'm not sure if it's going to work, as I'm not hosting this blog myself, so Posterous may not support random file types, unlike uploading image and video files. Hopefully there'll be a link at the bottom of this post to the .sep file that you can import to Silver Efex Pro and edit or apply as is.
 
Processing details are as follows: after the usual M9-ification, and a Contrast bump of 10% in Capture One 5 Pro, I pulled it into Silver Efex Pro and increased the Structure up to 42%.  I applied the Ilford FP4 Plus 125 film type without any modifications to the preset values for Grain. I very seldom modify the Sensitivity or Tone Curve of an image. It's a split tone with a very strong vignette of Amount  -48%, Size 96%,  and a Circle shape.
 
This photograph was shot with my Leica D-Lux 4.
 
* calling this a guesstimate is being too kind.
 
 

Click here to download:
Ilfordfalls_Holga_FP4+_125.sep (4 KB)

Filed under  //   Leica   Presets   monochrome   photography  
May 9 2010
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