The three applications that I played with are Pro HDR, TrueHDR, and HDRforFree. The Pro HDR application by eyeApps LLC is hands down the best of the three. TrueHDR by Pictional LLC came in second place and HDRforFree by Thinking Drone LLC… well… lets just say that it is completely worthless to the point that the developer should have to pay people to download it. Yes, it really is that bad.

Pro HDR and TrueHDR allow you to use the camera to take two pictures of the same scene; first you tap a bright area for it to adjust and take an image capturing the details in the highlights and then you tap a dark area and take an image capturing the details in the shadows. Then they both merge the photos together to create a single image with details across all areas. At that point you are done if you are using TrueHDR. However, if you’re using Pro HDR then you can make adjustments to the brightness, contrast, saturation, and warmth (i.e. color temperature). This is really nice to make some quick adjustments to the image prior to saving it. From there I opened the photo in Photoshop Mobile, made some small tweaks, and then saved the final image out.

Pro HDR merging images and adjusting image settings

Pro HDR got the top spot not only because you can make additional tweaks to the image after the merge but also because it produces much better quality than TrueHDR. The images from TrueHDR come out way over saturated and way to warm in regards to color temperature. Not only that but TrueHDR does not work at the full resolution of the images so you’re losing quality right from the start.

As for HDRforFree… there is a reason it is free. It is loaded with ads, only lets you work with a single image that was previously taken with the camera, and the results are complete flung-monkey-poo.

Let’s look at a few results…

Original Two Images

Pro HDR Result

Original Two Images

Pro HDR Result

TrueHDR Result

Note that the TrueHDR result above was generated using different originals than the Pro HDR result but they were taken at the same time from roughly the same position.

In conclusion… if you’ve got an iPhone and like to take photos with it, buying Pro HDR for $1.99 is well worth it!!

Get Pro HDR here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pro-hdr/id347104281?mt=8

Get TrueHDR here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/truehdr/id340741871?mt=8

Oh, and congrats to my little brother who just bought the house used in these examples this afternoon!!!

After receiving so much positive feedback on the image I took of the STS-130 launch, I have decided to release full size desktop wallpapers for anyone who would like to use it as such. Simply click one of the images below for the size that you want, right-click on the image once it appears, and then select “Set As Desktop Background…”. If it does not full your desktop completely because of a different resolution then you can edit your display settings and set the desktop image to center and the background color to black. Please note that these images cannot be printed and are for personal desktop wallpaper use only.

In addition to the wallpapers, I am selling 100 signed limited edition 16″x24″ canvases of this image for $300 each. For each canvas sold I am going to donate $100 to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation which was established in 1984 by the remaining members of the Mercury Seven Astronauts. The canvases will be printed by my friends at Artistic Photo Canvas whose quality goes unmatched in the canvas industry! The canvas will not have the black border or text along the bottom and will come signed and numbered with a Certificate of Authenticity.

To order a canvas, please contact me at terry@tkrphoto.com and I will provide you with the payment details.

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Before I dive into telling you about the workshop, I think it is important to give a little background information to put the rest of this review into context. When I first heard about the workshop I was a bit hesitant to go. For one, I’ve been creating HDR images for about three years now, have a solid HDR workflow put together that works great for me, and have been helping two companies that make HDR processing applications make them better. Not only that, but I myself teach an HDR photography workshop! But then I have never claimed to know everything there is to know about HDR photography and both Trey and Scott are very well known in the photography industry. Why would I not want to attend this workshop? So yesterday morning I picked Vanelli up at 5:30 am and we began heading towards Tampa to attend the workshop.

The workshop started with a quick introduction given by Scott Bourne and an overview of what the workshop was going to consist of. Then Trey took over and began his presentation on what HDR photography is. No wait… that statement does not even come close to explaining what it is that Trey talked about. He talked about HDR photography. He talked about color theory. He talked about the psychological principles behind art. He talked about the scientific principles behind how the human brain processes visual information. He talked about all sorts of things that just blew me away. I honestly cannot explain the full impact that his presentation had on me as an artist, as an engineer, and as a human being because it only started the internal process of reshaping the way I view the world around me. The last time I became this inspired was from Zack Arias‘ guest blog post on Scott Kelby’s blog.

After Trey completed his talk, Scott talked about what HDR photography is to him and how he uses it in his work. Then he gave a few tips to taking exposures for HDR processing and we all went out for the first shooting session of the workshop. The whole group went out to the seawall near the convention center and Trey discussed something. I really wish I could tell you what it was he talked about. You see, I don’t exactly know what he talked about. On the way out to the seawall I had one of my ADHD moments and got distracted. By the time I caught back up to the group he was done talking and everyone was off on their own shooting with him and Scott walking around answering questions. But at least I got the image below out of my ADHD moment…

Hillsborough Sheriff Truck – Ford Tough!

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105mm L, Adobe Lightroom 2, Adobe Photoshop CS3

After the shooting session was over we went back into the classroom for more learning. Trey gave a free flow presentation which I found to be pretty awesome. He put a slide show of his images on the screen and then talked about them as they rotated through the gallery. It was very informative in that it gave a lot of insight into the way he thinks, the way he sees the world, and the way he goes about capturing the exposures for his images. I got more out of the free flow style presentation then I would have looking at bullet points in a PowerPoint slide. Once Trey’s presentation was done, Scott did the same thing with his images. Again, very inspirational and insightful.

The rest of the workshop consisted of Trey walking us through his HDR workflow using Photomatix Pro and Adobe Photoshop on a few different images, a second shooting session, and a Q&A session at the end. As he went through his workflow he talked out loud so that we could basically hear what he was thinking, what decisions he was making about how to process the image, and how he went about doing it. Interesting enough, his workflow is very similar to mine except I use different techniques in Adobe Photoshop to accomplish the same thing and I also incorporate Adobe Photoshop Lightroom into my workflow. His workflow shows that good HDR photography does not rely on top notch Adobe Photoshop skills and massive amount of photo manipulation. So long as you know about layer masking then you’ve already got the core of his workflow figured out. I do have to admit that I got the effect you see in the sky of the Sheriff Truck image above from him. I’ve seen that effect used by other people before but I never thought to apply it to the sky in an HDR photo. So I added the “Treyburst” effect as he calls it to my HDR processing toolbox.

Due to my past experience with HDR photography I really didn’t learn anything new in regards to HDR techniques. That being said, I must say that I am very glad that I went to this workshop and I highly recommend it to every photographer and artist of any skill level. The insight and knowledge that Trey and Scott cover will give you so much to think about and will result in you starting to see the world in a completely different light.

Don’t forget, if you purchase Photomatix Pro you can use the code tkrphoto15 for a discount!

After talking to a few people who know a thing or two about lighting gear and weighing my options I decided to order an AleinBees Vegabond II Portable Power System, a few B800 head units, their 22″ High Output Beauty Dish, a LS3900 Light Stand, and the new 86″ White Parabolic Light Modifier with the various covers and attachments for it. The price on this gear really isn’t bad in comparison to other gear on the market and I’ve seen some great results from AlienBees gear. So I felt pretty confident ordering it without having a whole lot of personal experience with it.

Everything except for the PLM came in today (it is on back order until the end of January) so I spent the evening playing with the new toys. Here are my initial thoughts on each of the things that I received today…

Shipping & Handling

All the gear was individually boxed for the most part. The two boxes for the B800 head units were taped together using some series packing tape. So in all it was 4 boxes total. One of the B800 boxes was punctured during shipping and due to the puncture location the reflector for the unit was slightly dented. While it is a small dent I still expect the gear that I order to arrive in pristine condition. A 50 cent piece of bubble wrap could have prevented the damage if they had packed it better. So now I will be emailing AlienBees customer service and requesting a new one. Besides that all the other gear arrived in perfect condition with no damage.

Update 1-7-2010: AlienBees is sending me a new reflector free of charge to replace the dented one. Their customer service was very helpful and nice.

Update 1-11-2010: I received the new reflector double wrapped in bubble-wrap today. Perfect condition. Another point for Paul C. Buff, Inc.’s customer service!

Vegabond II Portable Power System

The Vegabond II is essentially a battery pack with a pure sine wave inverter attached to it. Now the term pure sine wave inverter is a bit of a misnomer since there really is no such thing as an inverter that can convert a DC source to a pure (i.e. perfect) sine wave. You can filter the heck out of the square wave that is generated off the initial stage of the inverter to get it pretty close to pure but at some level of granularity you will still see artifacts from the square wave. Ok, all engineering anal retentivity aside, the final sine wave that is applied to the head units is clean enough to operate the units without fear of damaging them or getting substandard performance out of them.

The Vegabond II does have a little weight to it but it’s really not bad. It weighs about the same as two B800 head units and the two lights stands they sit on. It has a padded shoulder strap and is completely contained within a soft sided bag. It came with an instruction manual, cord to plug it into a wall AC power outlet, and a connector that is used to connect the inverter to a car battery so that if the internal battery dies while on location, you can still shoot assuming a car is close at hand.

The Vegabond II requires you to leave it plugged in whenever you aren’t using it so that the battery does not become completely drained as you will lose total charge and performance from it doing so. I plugged it in as soon as I pulled it out of the box and was met with a high pitched squeal from the inverter. Anyone who has ever been around serious electronics in a lab knows that I am talking about. It was easily noticeable in the same room but from the next room over it could not be heard. After a short time it went away but then the battery was almost fully charged when it arrived. I do not know if that high pitch noise will be present while charging all the time… that remains to be seen.

B800 Head Units

I decided to go with the B800’s because I was told by multiple people that the B400 is not powerful enough to be used as a main light and the B1600 was a bit too powerful unless you do a lot of shooting outdoors in direct sunlight and you want to overpower the sun. I will eventually want to pick up a B1600 just for that reason but for the first set I decided to just get two B800’s. The housing is made out of a high-impact Lexan polycarbonate which AlienBees makes sure to say is the same stuff bullet-proof glass is made out of. This doesn’t mean that the housing if bullet-proof though. It is however light and feels pretty tough to me. I think the housing could take a pretty strong hit (like having a light stand tip over and the housing hit concrete) but I am not about to test that theory!!

The front of the unit has four holding fingers that surround the modeling lamp and flashtube. These are retracted using the antennae on the top of the unit and are used to hold various attachments on the head unit. Another important thing to note is the way umbrella’s and other attachments are mounted to the unit. The reflector has a hold in it and the stem of the umbrella goes through the reflector and into the mounting hole on the top of the unit. For holding a standard umbrella I think this will work fine but for the size and weight of the 86″ PLM I think I am going to have to find a different solution for mounting it to the head unit.

The back of the unit has the cord hookups, the power switch, and the power setting slider. The output of the unit is variable over a stepless 5 f-stop range from full power down to 1/32nd of the total power. There are marks that show the various settings for the different power levels.

Additionally, each head unit comes with a 15′ power cord, a 15′ sync cord, a modeling lamp (i.e. light bulb), and the 7-inch reflector.

22″ High Output Beauty Dish

Its big, its light, and it produces one hell of a light beam! The beauty dish is made out of aluminum and is extremely light weight. At first I thought I had to assemble it myself since it came in pieces but then I found out that I have to assemble it each and every time I want to use it! The inner light blocker doesn’t attach to the beauty dish itself like they do for most beauty dish designs that I’ve seen. Instead, the beauty dish has a hole in it much like the 7-inch reflectors do so that after the beauty dish is mounted to the head unit you slide the light blocker stem through the hole and into the head unit mounting hole. While this does allow you to easily adjust the position of the light blocker, its really annoying that the beauty dish isn’t just a single unit that you can easily store and throw on quickly when you want to use it.

The beauty dish comes with a diffusion stock that basically turns it into a high output circular softbox. The problem is that the elastic around the diffusion stock was so tight it took two people to put it on the beauty dish and when taking it off we broke the elastic. What the heck! They really need to loosen the elastic up a little bit and maybe even upgrade the elastic to something a little more tough. We were being careful and it just snapped because it was just too tight. This is another thing I will be writing to their customer service about.

Update 1-7-2010: AlienBees is sending me a new diffuser stock free of charge to replace the broken one. Their customer service said that they are not supposed to be that tight so mine must have been defective from the factory.

Update 1-11-2010: I received the new diffuser stock today. It is considerably more loose than the first one I received. This one is good to go.

As for the light output of the beauty dish… oh yeah… it puts out some light! I think this thing will be great for some high key studio work or some longer distance field work. Mounted on a B800 I bet this sucker can throw a beam of light at least 15 to 20 feet.

Overall Thoughts

I am a little annoyed that one thing came damaged and another broke pretty easily but both of these things are pretty small items. The reflector dent isn’t going to affect anything. The diffusion stock for the beauty dish will have to be replaced though. The Vegabond II looks pretty rugged but the B800’s don’t appear to be as tough as one might think. Don’t get me wrong… they are solid… but I am not quite sure they can hold up to the same amount of abuse as some other head units I have seen. But for $275 brand new… who can beat that price for a head unit that has a very good reputation from a company that has an even better reputation?

And the best part about them… written right on the back panel…. “Made in the USA“!

After I use this gear a bit more I will make a follow up post with anything new I discover and my opinions on the quality of light that the B800’s produce. But just for fun I shot a quick self portrait using a single B800 and the 22″ HO Beauty Dish. The result isn’t bad for a one light shot with no experience using the gear but I really wish the beauty dish added a bit more beauty to the subject then it did!!

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105mm L Lens, AlienBees B800 + 22″ Beauty Dish

Update 1-11-2010: As my updates have shown, I think it is safe to say that their customer service is pretty good. They were quick to respond and immediately solved the problem without any hassle.

]]> http://www.tkrphoto.com/2010/01/alienbees-gear-initial-thoughts/feed/ 6 http://www.tkrphoto.com/2010/01/alternative-modeling/ http://www.tkrphoto.com/2010/01/alternative-modeling/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:54:11 +0000 Terry Reinert http://www.tkrphoto.com/?p=1503 ]]> http://www.tkrphoto.com/2010/01/alternative-modeling/feed/ 1