Photo Thoughts

Blogger/Blogspot Now Supports Analytics

2012-01-11T22:54:00.002+11:00

Not really a photography blog, but I just found it today. Now I may be slow on this one, and probably did not really have a need to find it, I always embedded the java script into the template. But blogger now allows you to link to google analytics (and probably has done so for a long time.) I remember searching for this a few weeks ago as I was about to create a new blog and I didn't want to embed the code in the template again, I am sure it was not there. Anyway now it is...

Head on down to settings->other and you will see this listed

Set your tracking code in there, and you are ready to go.

Lightroom 4 Beta - Maps

2012-01-11T00:30:00.000+11:00

As a long time user of lightroom, since beta 1, it is with great excitement that I downloaded beta 4 (if you don't have it, run and get it now...http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/ ) Note it is a 400mb download... The 10 mins I have played with this, I like what I see, watch this blog for more features....

So the first thing I noticed when I opened it was maps... As someone who loves geo-tagging my images, this is pretty slick. As a long time supporter and fan of Jeffrey’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom (http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/gps) I can't help but feel for Jeffrey, adobe go and add a maps tag, which for many will be enough. Jeffrey's plugin for GPS geotagging is fantastic, it does a lot more than the support Adobe has added, but basically the new built in version gives you the following features:

Drag and drop images onto a map to geotag them
Drag and drop images into custom locations under saved locations
Track log support (have not tested this, don't have my GPS with me right now)
Summary display of maps (much like the interface of flickr) which shows you 10 images in this spot, 50 in that, etc. The maps tab uses google maps, so you get a much better resolution that flickr.
It also gives you the meta-data in the one spot, so you can add location, country, town, etc location on the one screen. (even title and caption, ie the metadata component from the library view)
As it utilises google maps, you have the ability to select hybrid, roads, etc views for your maps.

Features lacking from maps

Automatic population of metadata from the geocoded images. (eg ISO Country code, country, state/province, etc)

The Map Tab with some geocoded images.

Standard Road Map view in lightroom 4 beta

View for satellite allows you to change your view type

Full screen capture of new lightroom 4 mapping feature

So what can you do with GPS information
You can create geo-zones
Within lightroom maps you can create your own locations (found on the left hand side) this allows you to create a point of reference, so you can easily control what gets published.
You might for example create a location for your fav beach, that way you can just drag your whole day's worth of photos into this known location.

Location/GeoZone set up as non-private

Alternatively you might create a 20km zone around your home, so that you can geo-tag your photos with your home location, but you know that when they are published this GPS information will be stripped out. Don't worry, flickr allows you to set these zones up also, so if you inadvertently upload an image to flickr with your home's gps coordinates, it will not display it.

Location/GeoZone set up as private

Zoom out from your location and you can see that your location is configured

My fav beach location as a location on the map

500px.com a good alternative to flickr?

2011-11-09T11:00:00.000+11:00

Every now and then I find myself wondering what would make a good or better site to flickr.com to showcase my work. There are quite a few out there, and I won’t list them all, but there is ipernity.com, smugmug.com, shutterchance.com and zenfolio.com as examples of what I have looked into in the past. Are any of these worthy alternatives to flickr?

Don’t get me wrong, I love flickr.com, and the huge community of people that use it, it caters for all levels of people from the beginner to pro and I know that I have benefited from the huge amount of groups available.

But lately I find myself a little less impressed with the quality of images on flickr.com I often use www.fluidr.com to browse the day’s explore. As I scroll through the top 500 flickr photos I often wonder why certain photos are better than others. A lot of it is personal preference, and being such a big community, I guess it really is a great way to decide what really is popular.

So I came across www.500px.com/popular from a friend, and I was immediately impressed by the quality of images available there, it seems to have quite a few really talented people using it. Their mantra of only uploading your best shots seems to have taken hold. There still are a lot of general photos on the site, peoples cat’s and children are always cute, but not always amazing.

I love the layout, and the voting system. I like that you can like a photo, and I guess to a lesser extent the ability to dislike a photo (goes against the ‘if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all’). The ‘disable nude’ tick box is a godsend when you are checking out the latest popular photos on the train.

Pros

Layout - Love dark colours (selectable in settings (I know other sites are dark, only flickr is still white).
Voting - love the ability to vote for a photos, without it necessarily being one of your favorites.
Sharpening - It seems to do a little magic on your photos.
Re-size - all images are the same size.
Themes - it is great to be able to customise your look, for your portfolio. I chose ‘Dark Vogue’ as my theme. (paulsnow.500px.com)
Right Click - Is disabled (at least for me) and gives a “hey this is copyright Paul” message..

Cons

Original Size - I really miss the all sizes that flickr gives you. I love the ability to pixel peep on small objects within an image, eyes, stuff in the background, reflections in sunglasses, etc.
Categories - While I like the idea, and tags can give you more information, it can be a little limiting. If you had an abstract B&W travel photo, where do you put it :)
Collections - this is the same as sets in flickr. In flickr you might create a collection called portraits, and within it you might have 3 sets (models, friends and travel) of portraits of different people.
Friends and Family - while you may not like the names, the ability to have 3 groups of people was great in flickr. Public - open to all, Friends - hidden from your family and public and Family - where you put all those photos of uncle bill, that only your family would be interested in.
Cost - It is more expensive than flickr.
Cloud Storage - I noticed they are using cloud storage, not really sure if this is good or bad.
Download - I am not sure if you can store all your photos there, and then download them again later, in their originally uploaded form.

Not Missed

Groups - While it would be good to have groups, so you can share your photos with like minded people, the broad categories (Abstract, B&W, Portrait, Film, Travel, Nude, Underwater, Food, etc.) are normally enough to group your photos.

Sames (I know this is not really a word)

Favorites - great to be able to add a photo you like, for later review.
Comments - great to have feedback from people.

No Opinion

Wall - reminds me a little too much of facebook, I guess there is similar functionality in flickr with your portfolio and peoples comments on how good you are.
Blog - I had seen this in ipernity.com many years ago, and I like the idea that a pro might blog about their photo exploits related to a shoot or life in general, but with wordpress.com and blogger.com I personally am a little blogged out.

Final Thought
Free to join (with limitations) why not check it out, if only to see some of the talented photographers out there. It may not replace flickr, but it definitely will be a place to showcase your best work.

Synology DS211j NAS

2011-09-18T23:37:00.001+10:00

So as all you know, when I review things, it is taken in terms of what I use it for, so with that in mind I introduce you to the Synology DS211j which in the words of their website is "Budget-friendly 2-bay NAS Server for Small Office and Home Use". And this is really what it is. The other option would be something like a HP ProLiant MicroServer. And use say freeNAS on it (maybe next time they have a deal for one at $199AUD.

My Requirements for a NAS

Must have/be:

Cheap

Reliable

Low power consumption

More than one drive bay... ie RAID 1

Encryption

Some sort of DLNA media server

Nice to have:

Bittorrent (for those linux distribution downloads)

Backup Client

The basics - So what does it look like

The Control Panel

Drop Down Main Apps

So how do I use it ?

So my desktop has a small 3 disk software raid 0 for performance in Windows7. (I won't get into a discussion about software vs hardware raid, nor a windows vs linux vs mac discussion). Given that this is raid 0, I don't want to lose any images, so I back up to the NAS drive on a frequent basis. Given that I stick with RAW's rather than DNG, nothing against DNG, but if you want to make changes in Lighroom, it is so much easier to transfer 3000 modified xpm's than it is to transfer 3,000 modified DNGs.

Synology then is setup with RAID 1, where the photos are stored, then backed up to external HDD (via built in USB) The photos folder is encrypted ( In a separate place I am converting my CD's to flac).

So I have a simple batch file that I use to backup my files, synology has a backup assistant, but I guess I am still a command-line geek at heart. I did use the synology backup agent for a while, but went back to robocopy, not because I didn't like the backup agent, more because the encrypted directories are not mounted on boot (obviously for security reasons) and I think once it started backing up to the directory that was not mounted, so it was not encrypted (this would only be a problem if you shut down your NAS).

RoboCopy is my Friend.

robocopy e:\catalogues z:\catalogues /mir /Z /xd *.lrdata /xd CaptureOne /W:5 /FFT

So what does this command line mean ?

e:\catalogues is my source folder
z:\catalogues is my destination folder
/mir means to mirror the first folder to the second one.
/Z means to do it in a network restartable mode
/xd *.lrdata exclude lightroom data directories (I can always rebuild my previews later)
/xd CaptureOne exclude the CaptureOne previews
/W:5 specify a 5 second re-try wait (rather than the default 30 seconds
/FFT Set the time synchronization lower, if you don't it will keep copying all files, as NTFS goes to a higher time precision that the synology unit.

Edit 22nd December
/MT means to run multiple threads, speeding up the copy process. You can also specify the number of threads you want to use with /MT:8 (where 8 is a number greater than 1)

Other Features

I don't use many of the other features, I do have the media server running, which sends all music and movies out. I installed the VPN add-on so I can connect my phone back to home when I am not there. That is pretty cool.

I tried out the wordpress, and other addon's but decided they were not for me, given my crappy internet connection.

Just don't put things in the /pictures folder, or it will index it, create thumbnails, etc...chews up 100% of your cpu when you accidentally dump a few thousand photos in that directory.

Oh it supports SMB/CIFS (windows) AFP (apple file protocol) and NFS (Network File System) so no probs connecting from any device.

The internal file system is EXT4, if you are familiar with linux, you will know what this is.

Closing thoughts

I should write better reviews, but if you are looking for a cheap, and easy to use NAS, to store your photos and other things, the synology is great. No complaints thus far.

Nissin Digital Di622 Mark II Flash (on Nikon) - Part 1

2011-04-18T19:01:00.001+10:00

So why would I buy a non-Nikon branded Flash for use with Nikon ? I know some of you will say, just buy the SB-400,600,700,800,900. Price I guess is the reasoning behind buying this one, I know that things are cheaper in asia and the US compared to Australia.

SB-900 : $850 AUD
SB-700 : $500 AUD
SB-400 : $150 AUD

Nissin Di622 MKII : $158 AUD (Delivered)

So lets look at the specs. (~~taken~~ stolen from the Nissin website)

Di622 MARK II for Nikon

D3X / D3s / D3 / D2Xs
D700
D300s / D300 / D200 / D90 / D80 / D70s / D70
D7000 / D3100 / D3000 / D5000 / D60 / D50 / D40X / D40

Power output (the higher the number the better)

Guide Number	SB 700	SB 900	Nissin Di622	Nissin Di622 MKII
ISO 100 ISO	28/92 (m/ft)	34/111.5 (m/ft)	44/145(m/ft)	44/145 (m/ft)
ISO 200 ISO	39/128 (m/ft)	48/157.5 (m/ft)	62/205 (m/ft)	62/205 (m/ft)

Test 1 - Get it out of the box, and put it on my camera

SB-600

Di622 MKII

Di622 MKI (This was an afterthought, I ran to get the old version to compare.)

Test 1 - Conclusion

As you saw in the guide numbers, the Di622 is a more powerful flash unit, that said, I kind of expected the three images to look the same. Being such a simple test, I don't think I can make a conclusion based solely on this one. If I were, to make one, I would say that the SB-600 is better controlled than the Di622 in TTL mode. I guess I would like something in-between.

Test 2 - Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System)

Placed the light off to the left, in CLS mode, TTL, let the camera pick

Di622 MKII

SB-600

Di622 MKI - Does not support the Nikon Wireless Flash system CLS.

Test 2 Conclusion

Again we see the SB-600 light output being more carefully controlled when compared to the Di622 MKII. But it is too early to make a hard and fast conclusion :)

to be continued....

Lightroom 3 vs CaptureOne 6

2011-03-19T10:24:00.008+11:00

Every so often I get a mail from the guys at PhaseOne talking about CaptureOne. Why you ask ? Because I played briefly with version 4 or 5, not because I didn't like it, or thought it was not good, but because of time. We all lack time. The image professors blog got me thinking I really should try it out properly.

So what I thought I would do is post up my experiences with it. So the first thing I did was the totally unscientific test of open my ugly looking raw's in CaptureOne, Lightroom 3 and ViewNX2 and just save them as jpg's.

So taking some Nikon D700 NEF raw images I have conducted the following tests.

Test 1 - The idiot figures out how to save his raws as JPGs
(file sizes)

Image	ViewNX2	Lightroom 3	CaptureOne
DSC0004	7.5mb	7.8mb	10.9mb
DSC0008	10.9mb	11.4mb	14.4mb
DSC4834	6mb	5mb	5.1mb
DSC7119	7mb	5.6mb	5.6mb

Test 1 - Conclusion

So the above table shows us that on average Capture One's Images are the biggest, and can we deduce more quality in the image ?

Test 2 - The idiot looks at 100% ctop of the image and compares (very scientific)

So in the interest of sharing, here are some thumbnails of the images, so you an see what I am comparing, click on the image to see the full size. (the thumbnails are what has been produced by flickr, so take that at face value, and compare the originals)

Lightroom 3

Capture One

View NX2

Test 2 - Conclusion

To my eyes, the Lightroom 3 image looks the blandest of the three, the ViewNX maybe a little over saturated, and the CaptureOne looks a little on the bland side, more than being just in the middle of the other two. None of them produced the image I was looking for, but the ViewNX was a little more eye pleasing, more colours always make me feel like it is a better image.

CaptureOne compared to Lightroom 3 has a more richer colour in my mind. (C1 left LR3 right) But that said, these are the defaults it picked. In both applications, you can change the way your RAW is interpreted, I will post more about this later.

full size of the above

note: The differences in the above are not so pronounced, as the screen capture really destroyed the colour differences. So here are the links to the above photos individually..

Image	ViewNX2	Lightroom 3	CaptureOne
DSC4834	6mb	5mb	5.1mb

Image 2 - Taken at fashion week in Melbourne.

Lighroom 3 - Default - Exported to JPG

CaptureOne - Default - Processed to JPG

Usage

I guess the usage is subjective, I should leave this untill I really understand how Capture One works. I always use lightroom, so I am used to the way that works.

To me, at this point in time, capture one seems harder to use :) (but that is only because it took a while to figure out how to export my RAW to a JPG.)

Disclaimer

The images I picked were just example images.
I wanted to see what bland and non-interesting photos would look like when processed by all three applications.
I am not telling you what software you should buy, you should try them yourself, and make up your own mind, that is what trial versions are for.

The Basics

Changing the way the photo's colours are interpreted:
Lightroom -> Develop -> Camera Calibration
CaptureOne -> Colour Tool -> Base Characteristics

Lightroom	CaptureOne

To find these settings in Lightroom go to Develop as seen below

In Capture One pick this icon, as seen below

to be continued

Christmas Treats - Using Zoom with Slow Flash

2010-12-23T17:25:00.007+11:00

I was visiting my parents the other day and they were admiring their christmas lights on the tree. I don't bother with a christmas tree, nothing against it, but nothing to put under it :)

They were taking a photo of it which looked kinda dull. "How can we make the lights stand out" they asked.. Put it on a tripod, and slow down the shutter speed is the obvious choice, many would jump to.

Why not use the zoom and a slow flash, the oldest flash trick in the book (or at least one of them).

The technique is simple. Set your flash to rear (nikon) or 2nd curtain (canon) (sorry I don't know the terminology in other camera brands) and used one of these methods.

Method 1

Zoom in.
Focus.
As you press the trigger zoom out.
Enjoy the results.

Method 2

Zoom out.
Focus
As you press the trigger zoom in.
Enjoy the results.

Method 3

Focus.
As you press the trigger rotate the camera.
Enjoy the results.

Method 4

Focus.
Move the camera side to side, up and down, while pressing the trigger.
Enjoy the results.

Method 5

Any combination of the above.
Enjoy the results.

What could it look like

Example of Method 1

Example of Method 3

Now you don't only have to do this trick with trees, it works for parties as well.

We all dressed as santa and wandered around many of the pubs of Melbourne, no better way to celibrate christmas. I tend to use method 1 most of the time, the light trails I find are better, as seen below.

So what camera settings should I use ?

I used the following settings:

1/10 sec shutter speed
28-75mm lens
ISO for the trees was ISO 500, and santa was ISO 900 (it was on auto iso.. gotta love nikon)
Aperture was f4.5

So have a play, and see what you can come up with.

Merry Christmas everyone.. and Happy holidays to those of you whom do not celebrate christmas.

People Panoramas

2010-11-08T21:00:00.000+11:00

One of the biggest things for me that digital photography has brought about is the panoramic photo. Programs like Autostitch and photoshop make the creation of these panoramic photos a breeze. This idea went even further with the gigapan, a device for the lazy of us who want to create massive panoramic photos.

So what is the advantage of a panorama ? Wider than the lens you have, and more detail than the widest lens you have.

26 Photos can render something like this...

10 or less can achieve this..

Why not take a picture of a person using this method. I know I will not be the first person to do this nor the last, and I am sure comments will show up saying "Sir Edmund Panorama invented the people panoramic in 1297.... Don't copy his idea...". That said, here is the basic.

So why do this ? Well I had my 90mm lens on, and couldn't be bothered changing it, and I wanted the equivalent of say a 24mm shot, but with the creamy smooth bokeh of f2.8 @ 90mm

So starting at the critical AF point, in this case Peggy's face, I locked in the settings with the exposure and focus lock. Then proceeded to shoot down her body, and then filled in the sides.

As you want it to join based on the person, you do get some defects (due to overlapping the features), if you are lazy in photoshop (like I was above... her right ear, look at the hair)

For this to work, you really only need to ensure the model does not move when you are shooting them, once you move off to the sides, with a little manipulation in photoshop, you will not notice it. Well unless they move too far, and cover some of the background. Oh and don't forget to crop the image down to hide the overlapping images, unless you want to share the method with people like I have here. :)

So give it a try. I know I will try it more, and update this post with more examples, and a better explanation.

Giving Wordpress A Go

2010-09-18T14:50:00.003+10:00

Thought I might try wordpress for a while, see how it goes, if it is better I will stay there, else I will post it all back here :)

Just posted how to use the crop overlay tool... http://lightroombook.wordpress.com/

Samsung NX10

2010-06-05T22:02:00.018+10:00

Today at the Melbourne PMA I was able to get a 15 minute trial of the new Samsung NX10 (well new to me). If you don't know about this camera, it's specs are as follows:
* Fast AF speed
* 14.6Megapixels,
* APS-C
* CMOS sensor
* 3.0" AMOLED Screen

It was launched with, (which was also in the trial kit I had on loan)
* 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens
* 50-200mm telezoom
* 30mm F2 pancake lens (the 30mm had been removed from my kit due to a missing lens cap)

Part 1

During the PMA I was able to take the camera out of the expo for a 15 min trial, shooting with an SLR and shooting with this camera are quite different.

First Impressions:
* Light, very light.
* Fast AF (for a non AF-Module type SLR)
* Bust Mode - Wow it is amazing - 30ish frames in a second (or so)
* Small (as there is no mirror)
* Electronic viewfinder (I was not so impressed when I compare it to a traditional ones, but compared to other electronic viewfinders it was amazing)
* Rear screen was amazingly bright and colourful.
* No mirror :) I am used to seeing one, I don't just like to see the bare sensor there for me to touch (not that I would touch it, but you know what I mean)

The AF system is a lot different, it is pretty quick, I was impressed given that it did not have a standard AF module, based on the same way a point and shoot does it's AF.

The first shot was one of the 30 shots taken in burst mode.

It is not till you look at the full size version that you can see that Peggy is no really in focus. Something that I did not pick up at the time.

When you are at an exhibition, and cannot really play for very long (and it is raining) it is a little hard to think of creative shots.

While not the best photo in the world, it does give an idea of some of the creative ability. You can view full size if you wish.

Burst Mode
It was not till I got the photos home that I realised that bust mode is just a one second HD Video mode. The camera is capable of doing 720p video at 30 frames a second. The resulting images from burst mode are a resolution of 1472x976 which is a touch higher than 720p of 1280x720 and higher than WXGA 1366×768.

Ease Of Use
Shooting Nikon, you kind of get used to how your own camera works. I found the Samsung to be quite easy to use, the menus were simple, well structured, some of the menu items could be labeled differently (they were not wrong, just not what I expected)

Image Quality
I will reserve this for after today when I go back to play some more.

Part 2 - I am going back to play some more :)

to be continued....

Well I went again, but as I was late I did not get that much of a chance to play with it more.

I did notice the following.
* When in manual focus, and you start to focus, it zooms in the image to 100% so that you can get sharp focus.. Quite neat.
* I decided I don't like the electronic viewfinder, the back screen is beautiful though. It is ok, pretty good actually, I just didn't like it.
* I had a lot more success with it this time I played, but I didn't have time to get the images onto my own SD card, so that will be it for the review I am afraid.

PMA Melbourne 2010

2010-06-05T11:21:00.000+10:00

OK, so I went to PMA melbourne 2010, got to play with some new toys

Nikon 14-24mm
* Loved it.
* Fast AF
* Would I buy ? Yes. (If I could afford it)
* Would I recommend to others ? Yes.

Nikon 80-400
* Great lens
* Fast
* Good image quality.
* Can live without it.
* Would I buy ? No
* Would I recommend to others ? Yes

Nikon 105 Macro VR
* Great Lens
* Fast AF (much faster than my Tamron 90mm macro)
* Not sure if I got as close as I wanted.
* Would make a great portrait lens.
* Would I buy ? Yes.
* Would I recommend ? Yes.

Tamron 70-200 f2.8
* Painfully slow AF.
* Amazingly sharp images.
* Would I buy ? No.
* Would I recommend to others ? No.

Tamron 28-300mm 3.5-6.3 OS
* Sharp
* AF was a little slow, and I had issues tracking movement.
* OS (VR) was good, shot at 300mm 1/50 hand held, no problems.
* Would I buy ? No
* Would I recommend to others ? Yes

Pixel TR-331 Flashgun TTL Trigger - First look

2010-01-28T15:05:00.007+11:00

Well I must admit I bought this on a whim. The inbuilt CLS of Nikon is probably more than I will ever need, and give me the flexibility to create pretty much any shot I would probably want to do.

I would often look at the pocket wizards and think how cool. Even many of the cheaper ebay wireless flash triggers would probably suit most people. Lost of strobists (I would not call myself one) shoot in manual, and never use iTTL or eTTL (except I guess for balanced light or high shutter speeds that these modes give you).

So let my first out say, I am not an expert this is just my first thoughts into them.

So I picked up the transmitter and two receivers from ebay. Plugged the transmitter into my D700, one receiver into my SB-600 and the other into my Nissin Di622 (great cheap alternative to Nikon flashes, if you don't need it all).

Pretty easy to use.. set one of them as the master and all subsequent receivers as slaves. I didn't bother to change the channel from the default of 1, as I know the 2.4gHz networks around me are up high (channel 11).

So I lined up the shot, pressed the trigger, and bam, both flashes fired. Set the camera in manual, shutter speed of 1/200, pressed the trigger, no problems.

So test 1, do they work ? yes they do..

Do I need to test them a lot more before I blog such information ? yes..

For more information, please see Pixel's website.. And watch this space.

http://www.pixelhk.com/en/prolist.asp?c_id=322

There are a few threads out there that say there are many problems with these devices. They were not around when I bought them, I hope I do not experience the problems that these guys did. I did get miss fires, but I was not really paying attention to what was going on.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157622664286875/page4/

http://www.insidetheviewfinder.com/pixel-tr-331-ttl-wireless-flash-trigger-part-ii/

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/12/first-look-pixel-tr-331-ttl-remote.html

Update 16th Feb 2010

Just talking out loud here people. What have I noticed.

Black/blank images, where the ttl message was not recieved by the flash units, or cut off to early, or fired too late. (resulting in a black frame). In most cases this was fixed by half pressing the trigger a second or two before taking the photo, and then it would communicate with the externals.
Flashes going to sleep, and not being woken up by the TTL signal.
Inconsistent light from the flashes, model in the same position, no changes in ambient light.
Flashes not firing at all. (normally when I have been talking to the model, and then pressing the button without the pre-press wakeup shutter press.

I don't know if I would want to rely on these little triggers, they are just to unreliable in my controlled studio testing. If I was shooting a wedding, and I was relying on them to fire off two flashes for that moment... I think I would be taking a big risk. I do not recommend these flashes.

I will use them more, after-all they cost a lot, and there are no refunds on ebay. If I find out the magic to get them to work consistently, I will certainly put up more information here, but for now stay away.

Lightroom 3 Beta - Time Lapse Movies

2009-12-23T23:30:00.003+11:00

Well I was blown away at how easy it is to convert a slide show to a movie, you just pick eport. Though it helps if you have a template to work with.

My first attempt was just using 39 photos I happened to take on an evening shoot. It is just 2 seconds long :)

My second attempt was a little more elaborate, 1343 images, shot 15 seconds apart, after the video was created in lightroom, I added the music and text in vegas video where I re-compressed it for transport to youtube.

For a little more information check out Sean's post on lightroom-news.com

http://lightroom-news.com/2009/10/28/direct-timelapse-video-export-from-lightroom/ it is where I got the template from. No point re-inventing the wheel :)

Lightroom 3 Beta - First Thoughts

2009-10-30T07:04:00.011+11:00

Well you may or may not have noticed that lightroom 3 has entered beta testing. There are quite a few changes, most of which are listed on the Adobe website. In my playing around with it I have noticed a few changes, the luminescence noise reduction slider is disabled for me (not sure why). Though, this is not really what I want to talk about. The three biggest changes that are exciting to me are the Import, Watermarks and the Publish Manager.

I'll start with the import manager, it has a funky new look to imports.

Import

For those of you familiar with lightroom, this is quite a big change.

Watermarks

I think this is the biggest change, so many people have been asking for this, and they have finally delivered it. You select where you want the watermark to go, type it in, and your done. There is also the option of adding an image based watermark, for now it is limited to jpg and png. I would suspect that the adobe based formats will be supported later ???

This watermark can be applied when you export or publish.

Publish

With the publish manager you set up a location you want to publish to, and I guess keep up to date. In this example the hard disk (but you could pick flickr). When you select the publish to hard disk, it wants you to create a location for you publishing to happen, in my case below I added a location on my local hdd, I also asked it to use my watermark on the output.

Once you have created this publish location, it appears in your lightroom library view, it is now just a case of dragging images into it, just like you would a collection.

Below is an example of me publishing two image, adding a third, and modifying the meta data on one of the published images. As you can see lightroom know what has been changed. Now there is no need to re-publish/export images that you have not changed. Great if you are publishing to a folder on your website (for example).

It has crashed a couple of times, and it does not import or upgrade your existing lightroom catalogues. Most functionality appears to have remained the same, in so far as I use it. The publish to me seems to be the biggest change, and with the added watermarks, lighroom 3 looks like it will be the best one yet.

Kogan 1080P HD Video Camera Review - Part 2

2009-10-29T10:33:00.009+11:00

ok, so I have been playing with this camera for a little while now (see part one), and I don't have any complaints about it thus far. One thing with video cameras, is the fact that I have to remind myself that I am not a cinemetographer and I am not using a RED camera, I am using a cheap $300aud camera.

I have not read the manual that comes with the camera, I use it like most people do, out of the box. I have found it to be light (perhaps too light and my hand shakes, so probably not such a good combination); it is plasticy (if there was such a word) but this is not really a negative; and it is easy to use.

Further use, and I have discovered the following about the camera.

The HD 1080p mode is only ~~1440x1080~~ 1920x1080 @ 29.9 f/s - I always think HD 1080p is 1920x1080, that is probably my fault for not checking the specs properly, so watch that. - After contacting the wonderful Kogan support, they got back to me straight away, it was a case that I was not using the latest quicktime drivers, one updated, 1920x1080 is there.

The 720p mode is 1280x720 @ 29.9 f/s - That is what I expected. Though it talks about 60 f/s, but I haven't figured out how to run at this high frame rate.
The image stabilizer that it talks about seems to be disabled all the time, cannot turn it on. Though it seems to turn on when you use the digital zoom (but I have not verified this.) I guess this is a case where I should read the manual.
If it is dark, it does not try to do high ISO, like the Canon I have used before, so dark images are dark, and fairly noise free (So loss of image rather than noise).
The night mode seems less fluid than non-night mode, I guess it is doing image processing and appears to have a lower frame rate (unverified).

More tests are required for me to full give you the lowdown.

Here are some more videos I made to test the camera.

Video 1 - Kogan HD @ 720p versus the Nikon D90

I did this test to get an idea of image quality, there is a slight difference between the two.

.	Kogan HD	Nikon D90
Resolution	1280x720	1280x720
Frame Rate	29.9	24.9
ISO	AUTO	AUTO
Aperture	AUTO*	f2.5
Focus	AUTO	Manual
Support	on the ground	hand held

* The auto aperture, I would guess for the small sensor size would be about f11 or more.

Video 2 - Night mode - Turning the light on and off

Video 3 - Non Night Mode, turning the light on and off

to be continued....

Kogan 1080P HD Video Camera Review - Part 1

2009-10-15T15:16:00.008+11:00

I know this is not really what I would post about, but I picked up a Kogan HD video camera. Been thinking about it for a while, cheap HD video camera.

Kogan's website is where you want to go if you want one of your own.

I am not going to go through the specs, you can see them on the website.

Pros:

Cheap
1080p
Records onto an SD card.
Light
It actually came with the HDMI cable to plug it into a HD TV.. (Nice one!)
Built in Light (High intensity LED at the front)

Cons:

Cheap
Suffers from rolling shutter issues. (though a lot less than my Nikon D90)
No viewfinder
You have to open the screen to turn it on, even when you plug a USB cable in.
Low Light situations.
Built in Light, it kind of just shines in your eyes, annoying :)

Cons (when you factor in the price compared to other HD video cameras) :

None

So I only just got it, and only started playing with it.

So I walked around the city with it, I kind of feel guilty recording videos in the city, I am not a tourist. I will make a proper video for part 2, and post it up, but for now if you want to see a video of me standing at the curb filming a tram go past, here it is. :)

So what do I think ?
If you want a cheap HD video camera, this is pretty good, I know there are a few more coming out these days, from bigger names, that are, I guess getting closer to this price, but for the price it is pretty good. Image quality, well 1080p is always going to be better than your old VHS video camera, isn't it ?

Having used the Nikon D90 for most of my video playing, and the Canon HF11 for some serious stuff (my sisters wedding) I would have to say that this camera is close. I have not tried it at night, but I have heard it is terrible. But I must say I was very disappointed in the canon HD camera, thank god for noise reduction in Adobe After Effects.

The microphone in this is built into the screen, so when the screen is open, it faces forward, I guess too bad if you are filming yourself.

As I mentioned in the cons, the built in light is bright, only works up close, it frightened my rabbits when I tried to film them at home :)

It comes with an 8gig kingston SD Card, and also the HDMI cable.

It is so simple to use.. The control dial has three options, setup, camera and video modes. You open the screen to turn it on (there is also a power button to turn it off, that is hidden by the screen). There is no fancy automatic opening lens cover, it is a slider that you move to open. The battery is small, and I am not sure how long it lasts (I will reveal in part 2). It records it's movies in .MOV format, I am not sure if this is quicktime h264 (I will find out for part 2).

So far so good.

So do I like it ?
Yes.

Would I recommend it ?
Yes... As long as you accept that it is only a $299AUD video camera, and accept that....

What is the image quality like ?
Good. (if you factor in the price, fantastic)

So what does it look like ?
I will take some pictures when I get home, but for now, here is one from them from the manufacturers website.

to be continued.... Part 2

Tamron AF 28-75mm 1:2.8 (IF) MACRO A09 - Review

2009-08-03T16:36:00.002+10:00

I bought this lens earlier in the year, wanting a good range, fast lens mainly for portrait photos. 28-75mm is a good range for portrait on a crop'd body (Nikon D90) and a normal range on a full frame, such as the D700, D3.

So six months on, I have been fairly happy with this lens, it is the Build In Motor (BIM) version of it. It's AF was fast, though a little quirky, and slow in low light.

I love the images I get from it, sharp and in focus.

What I don't like about this lens is it's performance in low light on the D700. Now some of you might argue that I should not be putting such a lens on the D700, it is an injustice. All that aside, it is a great lens optically for the full frame sensor.

A search of the net found a plethora of people complaining about this lens on Nikon D700 bodies, not not so many on Canon, Pentax, etc. It leads me to believe that this is just an issue with the D700 (and perhaps D3) and this lens.

I really love the image quality of this lens, really satisfied with it's sharpness. What I hate about it is the slowness of Auto-focus.

Tamron suggested I send it back to them for repair, so I will. But for now, if you are looking for a 28-75mm-ish lens, try to get the screw drive, or wait for a newer version of this lens (if you are going to shoot in low light)

to be continued.

Nikon D90 vs Nikon D700

2009-07-18T16:25:00.006+10:00

As I play more I will update this blog.

So you might be asking yourself, which to get, Nikon D90 or D700. Well you have probaly done your research, and you know all the differences, but it does not tell you the sorts of things you might actually use.. Sure the D700 has an FX sensor, and the D90 has a crop, but they are pretty much identical in terms of the number of pixels. So how do they fare. Well from using it I have noticed the following.

D90 does autofocus without leaving live view, D700 drops out of live view, drops mirror, does AF and back into live view.
When viewing photos, the D90 back wheel cycles throught the photos, I haven't figured out if I can turn that on with the D700.
D700 is heaver, and feels stronger.
D700 has a better sounding shutter I think :)
The toggle button thing on the back (up/down left/right) I found to be better on the D90, I keep pressing up by accedent on the D700.
The photos do look better on the D700, that is my first impression of using it, that is not based on scientific research, just how it feels. Better exposure and colours.
Better higher iso on the D700, but I think that may only be because of the larger sensor.
AF feels a little faster on non-nikon lenses in the D700.
The modes on the D700 are only pro modes.. Program, Apeture priority, Speed priority and Manual.. No sceens :D
The D700 can add your copyright message into your raws..
The D90 only has JPG and 12bit NEF compressed. The D700 have more options, 12/14 bit, compressed, lossless, uncompressed.
D90 used SD cards, the D700 uses compact flash. (but you knew that from your research)
to be continued...

So far.. Will the average person notice the difference ? - No..

Will a pro notice the difference ? - Yes, definately.

Should I upgrade my D90 to a D700 ? - Probably not, unless you are a pro.

Edit 18th July 2009

Having spent the day with it yesterday, I found it (in daylight) not to be much better than the D90, a little dissapointing. I also found that using it in capture NX2 and lighroom to be different, there are definate bands to noise in high iso photos when processed in lightroom. Makes me wonder if nikon are cooking their raw files a lot more than they are with the D90.

Adobe Lightroom - ALTernate Editing

2009-07-15T14:04:00.001+10:00

Here is a quick simple trick you can use in Adobe lightroom. Press the ALT button (I am not sure what it is on MAC) and it changes the way you use the sliders.

For example

Zoom into your photo, where you want to sharpen.
Keep pressing the alt button, and move the radius button.
See a greyscale preview of what it is actually doing..

How cool.. I will post some screen shots in my next post.

Quick Photoshop Tip

2009-05-27T20:34:00.009+10:00

My most popular photo on flickr is of this Korean girl jumping in the air. I am not sure why it is the most popular one, but it is. To be honest, it is out of focus, there is a bit of movement blur and the colour are not that fantastic. Subject or composition wise it is not a bad photo.

I happened across this girl, running onto the sand, jumping, and running back to the umbrella with her friends. I thought what a great photo, I should take it. Got my camera ready, she ran out (for a last time) and jumped, one shot, and this is it.

Trick 1 - Adobe Lightroom - Develop Black Slider

Normally I would just slide up the black slider in Light room to improve the contrast, which it does to a certain extent. So in this case I slid it up by 48. (I must admit it looks much better on my colour calibrated monitor... hmmmm)

So as you can see the picture looks much improved over the previous version.

Trick 2 - Adobe Photoshop - Multiply

Being the hack at photoshop I am, I always look for quick wins. So in this case I just duplicated the image, and set the layer blend mode to multiply, and adjusted the opacity to a level that made the image look better, in this case 75%. (I must admit it looks much better on my colour calibrated monitor... hmmmm)

Or compare the three side by side.

So here are the two images, the original on flickr, and the modified one on ipernity.

Hmmm you know, I might take this down, as the more I look at it, the modified one looks too dark.. Sigh.. I guess the conversion from RAW to JPG made it darker, when I look at it here, it looks so much better than it does in this blog.

Coming Soon

2009-05-15T07:50:00.004+10:00

I thought I would add a coming soon section to my blog listing the things I am planning to add over the next little while.

Reviews
* Aputure shutter release timer for Nikon D90
* Phottix shutter release timer for Nikon D80
* Nikon 50mm f1.4
* Tamron 28-75mm f2.8
* Tamron 17-50mm f2.8
* SB-400 Part 1
* SB-600 Part 2
* Fancer Tripod part 2
* Gosget GPS

Mini-Tutorials
* More lightroom stuff.
* More photoshop stuff.

Mini Tutorial - Adobe Lighroom Graduated Filter

2009-04-14T10:50:00.008+10:00

Here is a mini tutorial on the graduated filter in the develop module of adobe lightroom.

After taking the original image, and applying some de-saturation to make it look darker and more stylistic I felt it was lacking something. I could have applied a standard vignette to darken the boarders and it would have looked ok. (actually I did and it was ok, nothing special) What this photo needed was dark storm clouds that were not actually there on the day :)

I could have, used the develop brushes to paint the sky a lower exposure level, but that would have probably not looked so good. So I used the graduated filter of lightroom. Found in the develop module, when you select it, it expands out like this.

When you select the filter, you click and drag onto your image to create the filter. You can see the three lines, the top is the extreme dark, the bottom is normal, and the middle, well is the middle and that is where the dot is. The dot being where you control the filter.

You will have to play around with it, I was always getting the direction wrong. You can rotate it, and it applies a graduated filter to your image.

So in the above example it went from very dark to normal in half the image, something you would not get from a real graduated density filter on your lens.

The final product

Mini Tutorial - Lightroom Develop Brushes

2009-04-14T09:59:00.009+10:00

Lightroom Develop Brushes snuck into lightroom, I had not noticed them till a friend of mine really pimp'd up one of his photos using them. I assumed he had spent the time in photoshop, so when he said he did it in lightroom, I was quite surprised.

When you click on the brush, it will expand out a tab like this.

Example 1 - International Pillow Fight day.
It was international pillow fight day, and my friends and I had gone down to photograph the event in Melbourne. I got quite a few good shots that day, this is an example of one, that looked ok, but not great. Black and white and a little lightroom trickery will make it pop.

I am not one for long winded explanations, I think a picture tells 1000 words.. So here is the before, with brushes showed, and the result.

So as you can see from the above photo, I used many adjustment brushes (as seen by the dots), when you move your mouse over one, you can see in red (the second photo) where you have painted, ie the mask. So what did I do ?

1a) Converted it to a high contrast black and white, high key was my goal.
1b) I did tweak the black settings in the develop panel, and the brightness too.
2) Using the brush, I painted various places on her face to increase the brightness, and exposure, as for example I wanted her teeth to be very white, and I wanted the shadow on her left eye to reduce (the eyer under her hand)
3) Once I had painted the places with the brush, I took it into photoshop to add the watermark, and hence the third image.

So that is a quick example of what the adjustment brushes can to.

Some other things you could do with the adjustment brushes.
* Shilluettes - Make them blacker by dropping the exposure on the object.
* Portraits - bring down the exposure, or push it up as I did.
* Children - Boost the saturation on the main subjects clothes.
* Portraits - Reduce the clarity on parts of someone to hide imperfections.

There is no end to what you can do :)

If you would like to inspect the larger version you can.

Quick Photshop Tip - Improve the contrast.

2009-04-13T15:03:00.006+10:00

I am not what you would call an expert in photoshop, in fact I tend to just use lighroom, but I found this little trick when I was playing around with photos, that I thought I would share with you guys.

Here is a random shot that I took while out one day. It is not a great shot, but it is good at illustrating the subtle difference in this method. This method works great for portraits..

Take this guy on his jetski.

After the quick change in photoshop, it looks like this.

As you can see the difference is very subtle, but it is not a bad change to make. Maybe not worth doing, but if it gets you playing around more in photoshop, it can't be all bad. :)

Steps
1) Open the image in photoshop.
2) Duplicate the later.
3) De-saturate the image. (don't worry if your image becomes black and white, that is the idea.
4) On the second layer, change the blend mode to Luminosity

You are done.. it is that easy.

I don't have any technical explanation as to what it does, luminosity is defined as brilliance by the wiktionary so by changing to black and white, and then blending on brilliance, I can only assume that it does a nice job of effecting the highlights, and saturation.

So give it a try, you might find it gives your photo something that you think is missing. I find it works well on people..

till next time.

New Blog

2009-04-07T10:20:00.003+10:00

To all those people who follow my blog, I have started a new blog in the hope to showcase some of my photos. Well those I deem good enough to show :)

So if you want check it out http://snowed-under-productions.blogspot.com/

As with all my stuff, it will increase over time.

Photo Thoughts

Blogger/Blogspot Now Supports Analytics

Lightroom 4 Beta - Maps

500px.com a good alternative to flickr?

Synology DS211j NAS

My Requirements for a NAS

Must have/be: Cheap Reliable Low power consumption More than one drive bay... ie RAID 1 Encryption Some sort of DLNA media server Nice to have: Bittorrent (for those linux distribution downloads) Backup Client

The basics - So what does it look like

The Control Panel

Drop Down Main Apps

So how do I use it ?

RoboCopy is my Friend.

Other Features

Closing thoughts

Nissin Digital Di622 Mark II Flash (on Nikon) - Part 1

Test 1 - Get it out of the box, and put it on my camera

SB-600

Di622 MKII

Di622 MKI (This was an afterthought, I ran to get the old version to compare.)

Test 1 - Conclusion

Test 2 - Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System)

Di622 MKII

SB-600

Di622 MKI - Does not support the Nikon Wireless Flash system CLS.

Test 2 Conclusion

Lightroom 3 vs CaptureOne 6

Test 1 - The idiot figures out how to save his raws as JPGs (file sizes)

Test 1 - Conclusion

Test 2 - The idiot looks at 100% ctop of the image and compares (very scientific)

Test 2 - Conclusion

Usage

Disclaimer

The Basics

Christmas Treats - Using Zoom with Slow Flash

People Panoramas

Giving Wordpress A Go

Samsung NX10

PMA Melbourne 2010

Pixel TR-331 Flashgun TTL Trigger - First look

Lightroom 3 Beta - Time Lapse Movies

Lightroom 3 Beta - First Thoughts

Kogan 1080P HD Video Camera Review - Part 2

Kogan 1080P HD Video Camera Review - Part 1

Tamron AF 28-75mm 1:2.8 (IF) MACRO A09 - Review

Nikon D90 vs Nikon D700

Adobe Lightroom - ALTernate Editing

Quick Photoshop Tip

Coming Soon

Mini Tutorial - Adobe Lighroom Graduated Filter

Mini Tutorial - Lightroom Develop Brushes

Quick Photshop Tip - Improve the contrast.

New Blog

Must have/be:

Cheap

Reliable

Low power consumption

More than one drive bay... ie RAID 1

Encryption

Some sort of DLNA media server

Nice to have:

Bittorrent (for those linux distribution downloads)

Backup Client

Test 1 - The idiot figures out how to save his raws as JPGs
(file sizes)