RB Design

Prints, Prints, and More Prints

2012-02-13T00:00:00-05:00

Over the last few weeks I have been producing more prints than I have in years. Some of them little 4x6 inch prints on generic photo paper. Some of them a little larger at 6x9 inches on all sort of fantastic paper produced by a lot of the high-end ink jet paper manufactuers. Most of the prints are not my images. They are for a couple of different projects I am helping a photographer buddy out with. I wanted to publish a couple of notes on the projects and printing in general. I will cover a lot of this in more detail soon.

First off I have to say that a significant amount of printing is purely paper testing in preparation for a giant print installation project. We have tested just about everything from almost every manufacturer that I have heard of. The range of ink jet papers available and the quality levels are overwhelming. I will post some reviews of my favoites soon. If you haven’t tested some new papers lately, do yourself a favor and get yourself some sample packs from a couple of manufacturers like Canson Infinity, Hahnemuhle, Harmon and Moab. Get the entire range. You may be surprised at some of the papers you didn’t think you would like. Even if they are not appropriate for every project or every image they might be perfect for one and something you wouldn’t have picked out of the blue with your standard go-to paper.

As you probably know I am in the process of procuring a new color calibration solution and am not quite through with that evaluation and selection process yet. When I am I will detail what I went with and why. In the meanwhile I decided to try some of the profiles provided by the paper manufacturers just to see if they were any good before wrestling with the monotonous job of producing my own custom profiles for every single paper that I wanted to test using my increasingly unreliable system. Much to my surprise every single profile with only one exception was very very good. Al least as good if not better than what I could have produced with my current system. I may even dare to say that they were critically good for the printer/paper combination that I was printing on. That printer happened to be an HP B9180 - I hate that printer for operational reasons but it does produced a reasonably nice print when it works.

The quality of the profiles produced across the three paper companies that I was testing could probably be used without reservation for most people. This is pretty good news compared to just a few short years ago. I would say with a couple of caveats that if you have a proper monitor profile, a printer that happens to be profiled by any of the paper companies I just mentioned, and a decent color managed print work-flow (including the ability to evaluate what is in gamma for the target output), that you should be able to produce exceptional output without breaking the bank on investing in a printer calibration solution yourself. I will get into some more details in the paper reviews. I myself have a decent monitor profile and happen to use Photoshop CS 5 for all of my print output.

On anther note even though I happen to personally prefer smallish prints that you hold in your hands, the upcoming print installation project that I keep using as an excuse for not posting frequently has a requirement for lots of big prints. After looking at the project from 363 different angles we have decided that it makes sense to produce all of the prints up to 24x36 inches in-house. The project also has a need to produce some gigantic prints that will be billboard sized - those will continue to be outsourced for numerous reasons. That means a new printer acquisition. I have been doing a lot of leg work to make sure that we select the right printer for our needs. I hope to share some of that evaluation and ultimately the selection with you as well. Obviously the big three are in the running for a 44” wide printer. HP, Canon, and of course Epson. I am 80% final on what that printer will be and the answer may surprise you.

The other thing coming down the road with this project and all it’s print production are a ton of small print production. Yep, not just the prints that will be officially part of the installation but some add-on’s. Namely the produciton of a book or catalog in a large number for “opening night” but also about a hundred or so sets of small portfilios that will be custom made and very elegantly presented for all of the major players in the facility where the installation is planned. As part of this I am thinking of running a contest here on the site that would help some lucky winner select, process, print, and produce this type of portfilio - with the printing and paper supplied by me. Let’s say a dozen images. Drop a comment if you would be interested in this kind of thing.

A Tiny Rant On Color

2012-02-05T00:00:00-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks I have posted a number of thoughts on color and color management. I have mentioned a couple of times that these are not to be interpreted as somehow prescirptive. I am not a some sort of color fascist that demands a particular regimen of color charts and dogmatic adherence to accuracy from start to finish as a goal above all others.

As I have already demonstrated tiny little adjustments not normally associated with changes to color in post can shift color around all over the map. Additionally, you may have deduced from the discussion on device profiles that in many ways reproducing “accurate” color can be an impossibility. We’ll get more into that a little down the road. The whole point of this series of post is to give some of you a pragmatic approach to controlling color and hopefully remove some anxiety that a lot of photographers have with digital color reproduction. This is all in the name of de-mystification of the techno-crap and helping you to achieve what you yourself consider pleasing and beautiful from start to finish.

Now for the rant part - it’s been a little while. You may recall a previous rant on the state of photography podcasts and how full of crap a lot of them can be. You may think that I go off the rails every time I come across inconsistancies in what is portrayed as photographic “how-to’s”, instructional material, descriptions of lighting, process, etc. I don’t. The relative frequency of how often I see this photo-hog-wash vs when I comment on it is about 0.0001%. From my perspective 95.9872% of everything out there is absolute bullshit.

Some of it has to be intentional - some of it is unexplainable. I am not talking about mistakes, mistakes and inaccuracies happen, they are part of the human condition. I am referring to the almost constant regurgitaiton of misleading and worse than useless drivel that for some reason seems to be entrenched in just about everything uttered, spoken, written, published, or commented on as related to how to get from point A to the finished photograph. Some of it is pretty darn subtle which is even more dangerous and misleading.

For today’s rant let us take a look at this recent testimonial from a commercial fashion photographer about his LEAF equipment and why it is so important to producing his images. No need to read the whole thing, you can if you want. Let’s just focus on the very first two sentences of the second paragraph. That would be the first thing uttered of the testimonial part - the first paragraph is just the introduciton of credentials to ensure we know who is “talking”.

“One of the most critical aspects in my work is ensuring that colors, textures and details remain accurate. They have to look like they do in real-life or I haven’t done my job right.” Now quickly scroll through the images that one would have to assume are somehow related to this “critical aspect”. I guess this would be what “accurate color” should look like, right? If you have a camera that displays different color characteristics it must somehow be not as accurate as the Leaf huh?

What’s even more amazing is that this camera is not only critically color accurate in the universe that we live in, it also appears to be critically accurate in the six other parallel universes where the attached photos where shot. You see each of those universes has completely different ways that color works. This is clear from the completely different way color is rendered in each and every one of the six example images. None of them being from the way color looks in our universe here. Obviouly we have to assume if the Leaf is so dead on accurate in those alternate universes that it must work just as well here with our colors to right? No need to demonstrate that part.

Okay, I am getting silly now. For those of you that don’t process my sarcasm well. The bottom line is that nowhere in any of the attached images is the singluar, critical characteristic of color accuracy in any way demonstrated or illustrated. Further more, neither is that almost as critical characteristic of “detail”. I am sure that the Leaf has both characteristics demonstrated in spades. The problem here is that the only thing demonstrated is completely un-accurate color and the gross elimination of real world detail brought to you completely by post production effects.

Are the images included attractive? Sure, it’s just that they have nothing at all to do with the characteristics of the equipment being extolled. More importantly they have even less to do with all of the other stuff that goes into achieving the goals of “accuate color, texture, and details”. The most important thing in obtaining the look of any of these images from a technical perpective is the post production treatment. I have no issue with that, I have a huge issue that is not stated.

I know this happens in every human endeavor. Hey I am a grown up. For some reason this level of poppy-cock seems to be even more pervasive on just about everything photographic. I swear that most of the processes, equipment, and techniques discussed in photo related information have little or nothing to do with the “example” photographs use as illustration.

End Rant

My Old 35mm Film Cameras

2012-01-23T00:00:00-05:00

Remember I went off on some sort of Olympus OM buying binge while I was at PhotoExpo in NYC? A reaction to the same-ole-same-ole depressing state of affairs with a lot of digital camera stuff at the show. Not one of them could be considered spot on 100% prime fucntional condition. They all work to a degree but the meters are generally off or not working at all. I actually use these things. I actually like them a lot. Maybe not quite as much as my Nikon 35mm film cameras but I do like them.

Here is a shot of my niece. Up close using a 50mm f1.4 wide open. The film was a complete unknown. It was a roll that came with one of the old cameras I purchased a while ago. Hard to tell how old it was. Consumer Fuji 200 film has had packaging about the same for a long long time. It might have changed a little here and there but I shoot Kodak so I am no expert on the minor variances on Fuji packaging. The film turned out to be in horrific condition. Speed and contrast were way lower than they should have been - much worse than my 10 year old Kodak Portra 400NC that I was using up a while ago. It also had a really bad layer of general fog which shows up as super grainy.

For all the film’s faults metered with a wonky meter it still delivered an image that I find attractive. Yes I am sure that it is in no way technically superior to a modern digicam but it still has a couple of things going for it. Things that are hard to come by with digital cameras. Let me count the ways…

A very pleasing and useful angle of view to focal length relationship for most purposes. Obviously due to the imaging area size. In this case that would be “full frame”. Neat term. This is one thing I don’t think will get fixed on digital cameras for a long time - if ever. It’s also one of the things that makes a 50mm so very wonderful on 35mm full frame. Not quire the same with a 25mm on Micro 4/3 or even 35mm on APC-C. The issue is that this angle of view vs focal length look pretty much just doesn’t look as good at the same subject distances for each and every focal length and therefore perspective throughout the range that I give a crap about. Moderately wide to moderately telephoto. By the time you get to focal lengths that you cannot tell, I don’t care. Not good for what I like to shoot. Crazy wide or crazy long.
My old film 35mm cameras ranging from Leica to Olympus to Nikon all have something great in common. Far far smaller with a fixed large aperture prime than the equivalent DSLR. Even a non-equivalent like my D7000 is much larger.
Simple and direct. Enought said.
Fantabulous viewfinders. Big, very big. You can actually see what is in focus and what is not. That’s hard to do in the D3 because of the kind of screen it is, specifically almost clear.
They feel good to hold and to use.
They look great but very unobtrusive. I have no issue carrying one around compared to a DSLR.

I guess these kinds of things are what I am really longing for in a compact digital camera. Nothing has delivered yet. Yes you can get some incredible performance from DSLR’s. Yes some of the compacts have some really neato features and movies. I still like the size, form factor, and most importantly the way images look on my 35mm film cameras better than I do any of my compact digicams. It has a lot to do with what I like to take pictures of and how I like to do it.

For me a 50mm lens coupled with an image capture device the size of a 35mm piece of film happens to be a combo that I find extremely rewarding. It has an almost magical ability to look wide or tele depending on how you use it. I probably wouldn’t care as much if I happened to shoot super wide at smallish apertures, nor would I care as much if I shot super-telephoto at large apertures. The basic look and basic kit might not be so far off.

Still Searching…

RAW Color Adjustments And Effects

2012-01-22T00:00:00-05:00

This is the next installment on color and color management. Last time I discussed color charts and ACR camera profiles. I may have given the impression that any old profile will do. Not the case but I wanted to focus more on how you might evaluate different profiles. I hope that you took away the message that evaluating them purely by looking at your screen is not a great idea. I also wanted to convey that that startig point is not the end all be all in the color in your image files.

This time I will focus a little more on some other variables affecting color in your images. Let’s start with exposure, brightness, contrast, and ajustments to these without messing with “color stuff”. These variables can and do have a huge effect on how you perceive color as well as on the actual image files both at the time of capture as well as tweaks in post processing.

I am not going to go into a disertation on exposure and ajustments and how they might actually impact the colors that come out of your RAW processor in the sence of twisted camera profiles. If you are intrested there are plenty of more scientificly oriented discussion on that. By and large I am going to discuss things that have a major impact where those kinds of effects are secondary from my point of view.

When post processing your images when you apply any of the adjustments that affect brighness or contrast you will end up wth gigantic shifts in the color of your images. When I use the term color I am talking about the aggrigate HSL value - hue saturation and luminance, not just the hue value or the saturation value but all three. In most cases adjusting brightness and contrast will potentally affect all three without ever touching any of the controls that you would usually associate with color like “saturation”. Let’s take a look at the D7000 color chart from last time.

For the rest of the conversation this is the image that I will be using. Enought words, here is what I am talking about. A simple curves ajustment that would probably not be considered extreme by most people…

Huge color difference in a lot of different ways. I plopped color samplers on a few of the color chart chips and left the info window open if you would like to inspect the HSL values yourself. The image is a full resolution screen image if you download it or open it in a new window. To save you some time all three values - the hue, the saturation, and the brightness are impacted to varying degrees with a simple RGB curves adjustment.

The degree of impact depends where on the curve those patches sit compared to where my curve is changed. In most cases the same will be true of most brighness contrast controls that you would use. Exposure, blackpoint, brighness, contrast, levels, you name it. In camera exposure can have similar effects in both actuall values and more importantly perceived colors. Most people would think that only the “B” values would chagnge with the hue and saturation staying the same. Not the case. What changes the most - a slightly different camera color profile or a typical contrast/curves ajustment? You tell me.

I did say “most cases” right. Here is an adjustment to brightness/exposure/contrast that is by and large isolated to only the brightness part of the colors, leaving the hue the same and affecting saturation a little bit less but still affecting it.

The difference is that I set the curves layer blending mode to luminosity. I have to say it again - this is not prescriptive - I am not saying that one is better than the other. It’s to show photographers what is going on with their images if they have not looked into it before. I know that most of you do not use Photoshop CS5. I am using it here for demonstration purposes and the ability to display some things like gamut differences. This “Luminosity” blending is actually the only available option when using a curves adjustment in Aperture 3 it’s called “Luminance”.

Here is a look at a similar curves adjustment using Aperture 3. Of course the images look nothing like each other becuase we started out at a completely different place. It does something similar to Photoshop curves with a blend mode of luminosity.

If you want something similar to the “normal” blending mode in Aperture 3 - all of the rest of the exposure and enhancement adjustment block controls seem to function in “normal” blending mode. The Aperture 3 levels adjustment has the option of either “RGB” or “Luminance”. Here is a similar adjustment as above using RGB mode of levels.

Keep in mind when looking at these screenshots that you are seeing effects and not the actual colors in the file nor the colors as rendered on differing ouput mediums. What you are seeing is the colors converted through a particular algorithm/method (we’ll talk about this another day) rendered to whatever profile is associated with your screen. That profile whether it is accurate or not is in most cases going to be a smaller color space than the colors represented in your RAW file.

Just to reinforce this - let’s look at the colors that are not being represented anywhere near what the file contains based on the first image in the post.

You can compare that to the original out of gamut if you want to.

Last time I talked about color charts and camera RAW processing profiles I may have left you with the impression that they are not important or that I don’t use custom profiles. On the contrary they are pretty important and I do make use of custum ACR camera profiles extensively. I don’t blindly shoot an xrite colorchecker passport and use the bundled software to automatically generate a profile for every shot or every situation.

The fact is that I use the Adobe DNG camera profile editor with the colorchecker passport chart. The reason for this is that I do not want to use the default Adobe ACR curves that you must use with the colorchecker passport software. I don’t like them. Xrite makes some fabulous profiling tools but they are not cheap and I can get what I need using the Adobe tool. As you can see above minor tweaks that occur with most image post processing have much bigger effect than one or two point difference in hues at the RAW decode stage.

I cannot say it enough so here it goes again. You cannot judge a particular camera or profiles “quality” with a quick glance on your typical or even high quality monitor. You need to understand what you are looking at and how it relates to your chosen output medium. Hopefully by the end of this series of articles you will have a good gut feel for what is what in getting from a image file at capture to a final output that you find pleasing. That is the end goal after all. Not some acedemic exercise in color accuracy.

Kodak Moments

2012-01-20T00:00:00-05:00

I am not a big twitter person. Every once in a while I log in and checkout a couple of the people I follow. Mostly but not limited to photography related people and institutions. The big “news” for the last two days has been Kodak’s filing for bankruptcy. This is not really big news from my point of view. Who didn’t see this coming for a while now?

This is not the end of Kodak, in fact I am enthusiastic about Kodak and especially Kodak film. Maybe this is exactly what they needed to do to get some focus. As you know I still buy and use Kodak products almost exclusively when I shoot film. If you are a photographer you should try some. Even if you don’t shoot film on a regular basis I urge you to shoot a couple rolls a year. Not just to keep the products I love alive but also to enjoy the medium in a way that you may never have or just forgot about.

Today one of the trending twitter topics picked up by some major media outlets has been #KodakMoments. Extremely popular with thousands of tweets. I hope that a lot of the over-hyped death of Kodak stories actually bing some much needed awareness and promotion to some of their still great products.

Even if your livelyhood is made on digital. Even if you never see yourself becoming a film enthusiast, there is much to be said for casting off the shackles of computerized digi-cams and all that go with them - just for a day now and agian. Load up a really great old film camera - buy one - they are cheap. Shoot a roll of film. Have it developed, scanned, and printed. Get the prints back - experience the magic and the thrill of not seeing what you shot immediately, seeing them on paper.

I will leave you with this video I slapped together from really quick scans of film or prints for my daughter’s baby shower. Every single shot except for the two obvious cell phone pictures and a couple fuji instants near the end were shot on kodak film of one type or the other. I picked shots that were more casual snaps for the most part for the intended feel on purpose. Enjoy.

Cameras RAW Files and Color Management

2012-01-20T00:00:00-05:00

I mentioned yesterday that I still like my LX5 but was thinking about the X10 as a possible successor to it as my pocket camera. This must have been a little confusing as someone asked me if I thought it was “better”. You see they were considering either the LX5 or the X10 as an upgrade to their aging P&S. Honestly I do not think it is better. Not for a moment. I think it is different - and I think it is overpriced as compared to the LX5 or the Canon S100. You may have noticed that I casually mentioned that I hoped the price would come down. It will but I don’t know if it will before it is obsoleted with the X11 or whatever comes next.

The only two things that appeal to me in the X10 are the viewfinder (even though it’s not very good from most peoples reviews) and the mechanical zoom vs the motorized zoom. I hate motorized zoom. Too slow and fiddly. So really the decision process might go something more like this for regular people looking for a decent point and shoot.

Really portable = Canon S100
Really great value and arguably better image quality with great lens, great OIS, good speed, good movies = Panasonic LX5
Insanely persnickity about a viewfinder and mechanical zoom with no real concern for value equation = Fuji X10

Let’s face it they are all these point and shoots that take reasonable images. Not great but reasonable. If you happen to like the look of the output or the operational characteristics of one over the other that is probably the most important determining factor.

Liking the way an image actually looks is obviously paramount, this is photography isn’t it? There are many factors - a lot of them subjective - in determining the look of an image. A really important one all else being equal is color. On that note why don’t we kick off the whole discussion I keep bringing up about color and color management. I am going to deal with this piece by piece, step by step. Not as an end all be all how to but more just covering some bases that you may not have covered and as usual, inclucding some perspectives that are not the same old same old stuff you read all over the place. It’s not going to be anywhere near a dogmatic by the numbers recipe that must be followed.

Consider the following images. You can download them if you want. In fact you probably should. If your browser is not color managed you have to. If it is, make sure that the color mangement features are turned on. The following JPEGS are not sRGB. They are ProPhotoRGB color space. All of them started off as RAW files, were shot under the exact same conditions, and are WB neutralized to the same gray patch.

Exhibit A - Nikon D7000. Adobe ACR 6.6 w/ default profile.
Exhibit B - Nikon D7000. Adobe ACR 6.6 w/ custom profile.
Exhibit C - Panasonic LX5. Adobe ACR 6.6 w/ default profile.
Exhibit D - Panasonic LX5. Adobe ACR 6.6 w/ custom profile.

The custom profiles were created with Xrite ColorChecker Passport. I primarily bought this just for the cool little plastic cased standard color charts as all of my other ones were larger and beat up. Typically I use it more for evaluation of cameras/film and other esoteric things. Then I get a feel for what kind of things I am most likely going to change one way or another for my taste. For most things I shoot I defintely do not plant the thing in a frame and make a profile as a matter of practice.

A couple of things to note. First off are the colors really all that different? Between the default profiles and the custom built profiles? Between the cameras? Well they certainly aren’t night and day, are they? Which colors do you like better - your hard won super custom specials or the ACR defaults? The real question that needs to be asked is “what is going on here?”.

First off - Adobe as well as other RAW software processors probably go through a process of creating profiles similar to what the Xrite software just did. In fact the ACR profile editor does pretty much the same thing with a whole lot more control. Second they probably tweak those profiles by hand to achieve some desired effect and that tweaking’s intent is the same time after time, camera after camera. I can only guess at Adobe’s or any other software developer’s intent (which I will do but not right now).

What else is going on here? Let me answer that with a couple of screen shots. The reason for the scren shots is that although you may not see the exact colors I am seeing you will see what I am going to demostrate.

What the… The above image is a screenshot of my screen. Can you see all the grey blobs where colors should be? Good because the actual colors of the screenshot are going to be way off. The important part are the gray blobs. This is a “proof” with gamut warning turned on which replaces color with gray gook as seen for any color that cannot be represented by the target proofing profile selected. The color profile I selected happens to be the profile for the monitor I am viewing. The monitor I happen to be using is a little larger in gamut in most areas than sRGB. Nowhere near AdobeRGB let alone ProPhotoRGB.

What this means is you cannot actually evaluate those colors with the gray blobs by looking at them on this monitor. Most likely you can’t on your monitor either. What a dilemma. Why the heck would we want those colors at all? They are very confusing if you can’t actually see them aren’t they. Ummm - yes. In fact my experience leads me to believe that even those color patches with a little bit of gray are highly suspect in terms of being represented well but that’s another story. If you manipulate your images to any degree, especially the color of them you definitely want to do it in a larger color space than you are targeting for a bunch of reasons but you might also always want to proof your images against a reasonable target profile like sRGB to see what they will actually look like depending on how you convert them to that profile. We will get into this a bit down the road but not today.

Here is another reason you may and I do mean may want those out of “screen gamut” colors. Take a look at this:

This is the gamut comparison with Blurb’s printing profile. Note that while it is worse in some color areas it can reproduce the actual yellows in the file better than we can see on this screen. Again remember than you cannot actually see that yellow on this monitor and most likely yours either. Blurb is not the greatest printing gamut either. Greatest as in widest. We’ll go more into that down the road as I make my way through different topics on color over the next couple of weeks. You may want to take a look at this convienient and free way of evaluating various color spaces and profiles to get a feel for what is going on between your image file, your screen, and your prints.

Here are a couple of things to take away from this. While all the numbers are great… Do you really need to shoot a color chart and generate a custom by the numbers profile every time you shoot? Do you really need to generate one at all? Do you somehow like the colors better - are they that different? I suspect that the tweaking done by Adobe are to make the colors a bit less nuclear in the primarys for a lot of reasons, maybe to make them more pleasing to some panel of experts. Pleasing is good but pleasing is very different for different tastes and different subjects. Maybe the tweaking was done as a good compromise across subjects as a starting point.

Also note that you cannot evaluate all the colors by looking at them on your monitor. Get an idea of what colors those are for your camera and your chosen RAW work-flow. If you really want to get into the nitty gritty here down load the JPEG files above and measure the numbers as in the HSL paying close attention to the Hue to compare how different the color is between the default profile and the custom profile. Better yet compare how different (similar) they are between two vastly different cameras. Me - I don’t bother shooting color charts to generate profiles by the numbers. I tweak my profiles to produce results that I find pleasing for the output I plan on producing. Especially for my chosen subject matter.

All of this is not intended to be prescriptive in any way. It is supposed to be illustrative, potentially educational, and absolutely get you thinking about important things like light, dynamic range and how an image actually looks on the intended display medium and not to worry too much about techno-crap. When you like or dislike the way colors look in an image it probably has far more to do with color relationships, gradation, and other factors rather than the actual hue. There are a couple of reference colors that are exceptions - skin being one. More on that another day with a focus on getting the output the way you want it consistenly. We had to start here at the begining with the color that is actually in your files and how to look at at them. Well at least how to tell if you cannot look at them.

One last thing until next time. Here are the same two color charts white balacned and processed by Aperture3’s RAW processor.

Nikon D7000 Aperture 3 default profile.
Panasonic LX5 Aperture 3 default profile.

I Still Like My LX5

2012-01-19T00:00:00-05:00

I still like my Panasonic LX5. This is strange, usually my initial excitement wears off with all of my digital cameras and I come to realize that they are not that much better than my old digital cameras. In fact I usually realize that I really like my film cameras better. Here is a brief summary of why I still like it. Will probably buy a Fuji X10 soon for a couple of reasons. Namely the viewfinder and the manual zoom combo off/on switch. I don’t really expect the images to chage much but we’ll see. I just want the hype to die down a little so it will come down to normal P&S prices.

The lens is really good. The Leica branding on it may be a marketing thing but the lens itself is no joke. Sharp, great contrast, unbelievable flare control sans hood. Very useful zoom range of 24mm to 90mm 35e. Oh and it’s fast at f 2.0.
Small enough that I actually take it with me everywhere.
Nice looking JPEGs. I use the JPEG 90% of the time. Useful RAW files. I shoot RAW+JPEG all the time even though I only occasionally use a RAW from the LX5.
Even being an old digital camera, the focus is quick in most situations. In fact this is the first digital P&S that I ever found acceptable in terms of speed. I don’t need FPS - I just want it to take the image when I say so… and then the next image. Panasonic knows what they are doing with the contrast detect thing.
Though I don’t use it much, the focus tracking is amazing. A special most that keeps track of the targeted subject within the frame. Almost magical. Surprised the crap out of me as I had written it off as useless without even trying it when I first got the camera.
Let’s not forget the optical image stabilization. Absolutely amazing. Better than my Nikons. I can shoot down to 1/4sec wide-ish. Easy.

Some random samples from recent snapshots. Just happened to have the LX5 with me - not any real projects or anything. The reason for these is not the image - it’s the circumstances. Checkout the EXIF if you want to. Incredible.

ISO 400 1/20s f 2.0

ISO 400 1/15s f 2.0

ISO 400 1/13s f 2.0

I just snapped these while helping another photographer with medium format digital on a shoot for a commercial job. Crazy I only used one hand. So - what could be better? There are a couple of things that are minor but overall a great little device and still worlds better than a cell phone camera.

Don’t like power zooms. Too slow and too fiddly even with the preset stop positions like the LX5 has. Hence my interest in the Fuji.
The little on camera flash sucks (actually all on camera flash sucks) and tends to over expose making things look all digital bad.
While I like the fact that you can put a viewfinder on it the one that is available makes me sea sick and has poor resolution. Really bad.
Bigger sensor. Not just for the noise, as that doesn’t bother me that much. I just want my images to look like they have some differentiation in depth of field at normal distances.

Pulling The Trigger

2012-01-18T00:00:00-05:00

Done, Well Not Quite

Okay so I have not posted anything remotely photo related since my new grand daughter was born. My excuse has been busy-ness, new years technology resolutions, etc. As I only spend time on this in my spare time, it could be years before I am done tweaking CSS visuals, Javascript nonsense, html, perfecting the hand-built conversion script, on and on.

The major infrastructure has been done since the last time I posted all that techno-babble. Since then I have been fooling around as just described. It’s not perfect. There are probably more than one or two glitches. To be candid I have been diddling with little stuff and keep adding it to my list. Time to just go live. The priorities will sort themselves at that point.

Here Is What I Have Done For Readers

Please let me know how this all works for you in the real world. Maybe I will hold a contest and give something cool away for the reader that finds the biggest issue in February. Here goes:

Tag cloud and category list are gone. They just clutter up the place. Looking at stats, nobody uses that stuff. Here is what is actually used - post tags in the actual post - the stuff at the bottom that is a pretty good indicator of related topics. So tags stay and I have built a pretty good system going foward. I will clean up the existig tags imported from the Word~~crap~~press incrementally.
The old Wordpress search sucks. The new one is regular old google awesomeness. Try it - it works - it’s always there even when scrolling down a long winded post. Cool. I can actually find things on my own blog now. So can you.
If for whatever reason you made links anywhere in the universe to old posts they all still work.
FAST, really really really fast. For readers in the US response time should be immediate. Let me know elsewhere but I couldn’t stand using the WP admin interface on my own site. Not just because it sucks but because it was sloooooow and choked up errors frequently if there was any other traffic hitting the site. The site being broadcast via one of the most robust and fastest infrastructures in the known universe. If you are somewhere that it’s still slow - let me know and I may even cloudfront it. All setup, ready to go and tested.
Hopefully far far better on iPads, iPhones, etc. Check it out - narrow your browser window a bit and see how the content stays and the sidbar fluff goes. Zooming should also work better and more consistently. Cannot believe it but I am seeing a significant portion of traffic from mobile now.
Better, faster, stronger RSS feeds. Nuff said.
A brand new store. You asked for it - you got it. Yep a shopping cart. You can buy more than one thing at a time now. Check it out - it is the ‘eBooks’ link up top. Yes yes I know the styling does not match the site - yet. I built a tiny little store for electronic product delivery for someone else and it works great. I just chucked it in. I will get around to styling it. See now that is going to be an automatic priority because it’s bothering me. Oh, it even delivers an email to you with the download links. Much easier based on the number of people that send me an email saying… where’s my eBooks.
All the comments are still there, will all the right posts. Just where they were before. Well at least all of them since the last Worpress database/hack/comment disaster.

Starting Next Post - Photography Again

Thank you for your patience. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. I have so much built up that I want to share I don’t know where to start but here is what is comming up this month.

Color management. Lot’s of color management from capture to output. Remember my ongoing calibration frustrations? And months later same song and dance from Datacolor, my $600 color management system still deoesn’t work. There I named names. In any case I am through with it and have evaluated and selected a new solution. The results of my endeavors should be interesting to all. I have some product reviews and practical real world advice depending on what you want to achieve coming up after messing with things six ways from sunday.
You do I know I like my photographs on paper right? Lot’s of stuff on printing. Paper reiviews, color, printing services, printers, and special output. If you like prints you will love a lot of my agenda.
A little film stuff. I know I am one of the few but I love the stuff so I have to talk about it.
I do live in the real world so of course digital capture as well. Very much tied into the color management and printing topics that I just covered. Along with some of my love/hate relationships, at least the parts of them that might be relevant to all of you. I do still like my Panasonic LX5

I Am Officially A Grandfather

2011-12-12T00:00:00-05:00

My apologies for keeping away for so so very long. I guess it’s been about two weeks, that is like centuries in internet time. I do have a very good excuse. My oldest daughter gave birth to her very first child and my very first grandchild. Yes - I am a grandfather.

The new addition to the family is a 22 3/4” 8lb 10oz baby girl named Leela Andreyevna Khlistunova. Think she might have a tough time writing that in Kindergarden? Needless to say I have been a bit busy at the hospital, visits, etc. etc.

During the course of the last week and a half I did have a chance to make a few observations while taking photos of my new granddaughter - most of them related the Nikon D7000 and TTL flash. Not all of them good. While I do strive to use available light as my preference there are times when that just will not work out and flash is just a hair less ugly.

Here are a couple of things off the top of my head that I will be discussing at length in upcoming posts:

With all the vunder-computing, color-matrix-metering, hoop-de-do bullcrap it’s unbelievable that the Nikon TTL flash control consistently and hopelessly underexposes scenes with a lot of white in the frame. I kinda remember this is kinda what the whole automated, evaluative thing was for in the first place. Wasn’t it? Well after extensive in the field testing I’ll give some my guidelines for the D7000 depending on how you have the 300,000 parameters set. Hmmmm 300,000 parameters and compensation vs incident flash meter? Yes we will have to discuss that again.
Despite all of the things I have read from all of the on-line “experts” as well as Nikon that there is not really a difference between “TTL” and “TTL-BL” exposure in circumstances were ambient light does not contribute to the main subject’s exposure, that is complete and utter hogwash. At least it is with my particular D7000 and both my SB800’s. Maybe mine are somehow different - yeah right.
Digital skin tones continue to be horrible. At least they are “out of the can” on most JPEG settings and definitely on all the default RAW conversions in both Lightroom, ACR, and Aperture. I have mentioned this just a couple of times in the past right? Well I guess now that I am shooting people with the D7000 and digital vs film only for the first time in a while I will have to discuss some options for dealing with that in Aperture and if anyone cares ACR as well.
My current favored lighting gear is WAY too big and cumbersome for use in my daughter’s small apartment. I just ordered some gear that should alleviate that - cheap simple gear. I share some of that as well as how I am using it as well. Why do I need lighting gear? Because sometimes the light is just crappy and there just isn’t a decent bounce surface to be found. I spent less than a hundred bucks and should be able to get the results I am after. My order should get here any day now.

More Later

A Little Down On Digital Lately

2011-11-19T00:00:00-05:00

I have been a tad hard on digital imaging lately. I wanted to put that into context. The context is that I am a photographer and image maker first and foremost. For better or for worse we photographers are married to our tools and the people that make them. The reason I have been a little down on digital lately is because I am a heavy user of digital. I don’t sit away in my little corner of the universe isolated from all things digital - obviously. Not only am I a heavy user of digital capture devices and digital imaging processing software. I am a customer. Yes I have spent huge sums of money on digital imaging gear and post processing software and all that goes with it.

I consider it a right and a duty to point out the flaws and shortcomings of products I invest my money and more importantly my time and my images into. It is in that spirt that I cast dispersions on software and image capture devices that I use. The reason I choose film as a medium to compare it with is that happens to be the only other photographic medium out there with it’s own set of qualities, processes and procedures that are quickly being forgotten. Not all of those qualities, processes, and procedures are bad - a lot of them were very very good. I want my cake and I want to eat it to. I still use film where I feel it is appropriate. I use digital as well and want to see it become as refined as some of the things I have experienced with film.

You see I don’t want just more of the same with digital. I don’t want a continual improvement in ONLY the speed and “convenience” features. There are still terrible shortcomings that we all pretend are not there or become distracted from due to the next new thing that we didn’t want in the first place. Man the way highlights are rendered blow - they look like absolute shit - I guess I will have to either underexpose for the highlights and make it sorta look okay - or use fill flash - or do that goofy HDR crap until it gets more like film - I can live with it but it really sucks. Hey man look at the new camera - it shoots like 12 frames a second at like 25 bazillion pixels - I guess I can live with crappy ass highlight rendition for a bit longer…. On and on and on more of the same.

I have also been hard on Apple Aperture 3 for more than a month - no love. Understand that I am also one of it’s biggest proponents. Just because I think ACR has come into it’s own in the last year or two doesn’t have me shouting Lightroom from the rooftops (I know Lightroom very very well - most of my images are cataloged in both via referenced images). In the spirit of Thanksgiving - here in the US I am going to write only positive posts regarding digital and specifically Aperture 3 over the next week or so. Starting with Aperture 3 RAW processing that I have taken more than a few pot shots at over the last month. I will also chuck in some quick and dirty tutorials on the finer points of Aperture 3 adjustments along the way…

Happy Thanksgiving.

Nikon D7000 Preset News and Updates

2011-11-17T00:00:00-05:00

There have been quite a few people that have been participating in the beta version of my D7000 Picture Control Presets for Aperture 3. More than I expected with all the caveats that I put out there. A few of them have written me with comments and critique - I plan on incorporating that critique into updates if possible and if it does not conflict with other peoples results…

What is surprising is that a bunch of people that shoot other Nikon cameras have asked me if the work with those models - like the D3, the D700, etc. The short answer is maybe. The long answer is that most Nikons that have “Picture Control” share similar characteristics in terms of their Aperture 3 RAW process so in general the D7000 presets provide something more in the neighborhood of Nikon NX2 picture control settings than the default Aperture 3 processing. Having said that I have been working on and off with a Nikon D3s shooter to get a little more precise as to what is different. The presets are definitely not as close as the D7000 but do get it closer. If there is interest I may also offer a D3s version of the presets. Please let me know.

One last note on Aperture 3 presets and actually presets in general. As you may have guessed I don’t rely on Aperture 3 for all of my post processing. Not even close. I shoot and have shot with many many cameras ranging from Hasselblad H2’s to Sigma’s to Nikons. In many cases I use Aperture 3 only for it’s work-flow and organizational capabilities. The UI is extremely fluid compared to other solutions but I rarely use it for the final image produced in terms of post processing. Is it good enough? Yes maybe in a lot of cases. Especially for delivering a ton of images. Is it good enough or comprehensive enough for delivering the ONE image - ummmmm. Not so much.

What this results in is me working with a bunch of RAW processors - Capture One in some cases, NX2 obviously, Hasselblad Phocus (although since Hasselblads new found openness with Adobe in October - ACR6 is actually BETTER for H4D files than Phocus), and of course the ubiquitous Adobe Camera RAW in various versions and flavors. ACR has gotten so much better over the years that in a lot of cases it meets or exceeds some manufacturer’s RAW processing software - as I just mentioned the latest development.

What does this have to do with presets? Well I have a bunch of presets that I use that some of you might be interested in. I shoot film - I love the way film looks. What kind of presets might you guess I have spent considerable effort on? Presets that mimic the look of some of my favorite film. Portra, Ektar, Kodachrome, Astia, etc. The way I have gone about this is not the way you may think. Most of my preset effort has been in the form of ACR DNG camera profiles with some add-ons on top of that. I have been playing with these ever since the beta of DNG camera profile became available…

I have also sort of mimicked these DNG profiles in Aperture as much as possible - which is not the same but good enough for a visual impression. Here is the question - are any of you interested in the DNG profiles for film simulation? How about the not quite as good Aperture 3 presets that correspond to those? The DNG profiles are camera specific so they will only work for Nikon and any other cameras that I develop them for. The Aperture 3 presets are not really that specific. Let me know if you are interested in these - I don’t want to go through the considerable effort of packaging them in a friendly form if I am the only one that likes the way film renders color.

[poll id=”31”]

A Word About Photo Gear

2011-11-13T00:00:00-05:00

Look at the state of that…

What we have here is a Photoflex light disk - I am sure along the way you have all seen these. They fold down to about 1/4 the full size. I went to use this particular one this morning and this is what I found. My vague recollection is that I used it about 3 months ago and nothing really bad happened to it while I was shooting. there may have been a tiny bit of light mist that day. It definitely was cloudy. I was shooting indoors that day and the exposure to the elements consisted of a trip from my trunk and back. I can tell you that none of my other gear suffered and it definitely was not soaking wet when I put it back with all my other crap.

I have had this particular disk along with 2 60” disks for about 8 years. Up until this they were all pretty decent and not even dirty. The sparkly sides of all of them is beginning to flake off where they get creased as they are folded but that’s it. I never really thought about it before but these are definitely NOT the way to go if you do any kind of shooting or transportation that risks the slightest bit of moisture due to the steel frame that seems to disintegrate with any tiny bit of dampness.

I used to use California Sunbounce reflectors but about 5 of them got mislaid somewhere along the way. They are CRAZY expensive but I have shot with them in the rain, by the ocean, in the surf and can tell you personally they are 100 times more durable and have some other nice handling features as well. I guess I will have to save my pennies to replace them.

One other thing that you cannot see in the images - it also warped severely so it’s not even flat anymore. Hmmm - I don’t even want to speculate how that is related to moisture.

Really Funny Stuff - Must Read

2011-11-11T00:00:00-05:00

Sorry for the foul mood and negativity of my last two posts - that is what dealing with the government does to me. On a lighter note but still on topic relative to not only the last two posts but a lot of the subtext in more than a few of my posts. Here are a few posts that you have to read, if these don’t make you chuckle, I don’t know what would. File this under funny because you know it’s true.

On this post you can skip the mildly pedantic preface where the author (whom I really like) tries to explain how he has never been affected by biases of his generation. Go directly to the end where you will find a faux forum discussion on one of HCB’s famous photographs. Hilarious.

Forum Discussion on an HCB image.

Here are some imagined comments on various famous icons of photography and their photographs.

Inspired comedy.

Enjoy

Look Ma - I Learned Me Some Photoshop

2011-11-11T00:00:00-05:00

Shoot me now. I have to comment on this. I have no self-control at all. Forgive me. Continuing the train of thought regarding the state of commercial photography, I submit for your evaluation this steaming pile of meaninglessness. Again - I am not in anyway attacking the individual that produced these. He is a commercial photographer and I have to assume that he must make a living - hence he is producing this dog-doo with a targeted purpose in mind in order to sell his services and pay his rent, etc. I am attacking the consumers - not the purveyors of the non-sense.

Let me limit the conversation to the first image. Hmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Okay then - I don’t even know where to start. I only have questions - not questions of the good kind. Only questions of the bad kind. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE photographs that actually cause me to question things - especially question myself. That is NOT the kind of questions that this provokes. More like…

Yes we all know how to make composites. It seems that this image is some sort of statement about making really really bad composites while demonstrating the skill to make decent composites at the same time. Sort of like using techniques gleaned from PhotoShopDisasters in a creative way. Fantastic. Forking great. I really hope this doesn’t become tooooo popular.
Is this for the purpose of some sort of children’s book? You know like the “where’s Waldo” type or the “what’s different between these two pictures” type. Only this one you have to pick out the really bad composites and then the reasonable parts of the bad composite like some sort of game?
Is the society that I am a part of so visually retarded that this makes any commercial or artistic sense at all?
Is this a joke? Like the kind you did when you were a teenager with your drunken buddies - “I’ll bet you I can convince Ted this is an actual photograph - he is soooooo plastered”
How the hell did I just step in dog crap on my front lawn even though I don’t own a dog?

Commercial image making can be fantastic - I have seen it. I swear, back just a decade or two. You know back when we could actually communicate in full sentences. Back when we all sort of understood that something like organized anarchists was a ridiculous concept and donning attire that identified you as some sort of violent criminal was not all that productive and was the polar opposite of what actual violent criminals would do.

I swear there was good commercial imaging - I know that some of you will say that the image did it’s job because I payed attention to it. Trust me - I will forget it ever existed by about noon tomorrow or sooner. Where as something like this….

I can remember for decades.

Film Friday

2011-11-11T00:00:00-05:00

Just got around to looking at some shots testing my first roll of Ektar 100 from a while back - yes yes I am slow and loose track of things easily. Thought I would leave you with this for the weekend. Just happened to be shooting my D7000 as a “known quantity” while seeing what stupid things I can do with Ektar 100 in 35mm. Like most of you I have this strange sort of anxiety about shooting “important” things with something you never used before. Like usual I just shot some stupid stuff about 3 feet from my front door. Hey at least I gathered the energy to go outside.

So here is the Ektar 100 with NOTHING done to it. I scanned it myself at a stupidly high resolution and can assure you that this is a neutral scan. Heck I didn’t even sharpen it. Nothing. Well I did set the black point in the scanner software to something reasonable. Shot with a Nikon FE and 60’s vintage Nikkor 50mm f1.4.

Ta….Daaaaaa. Here is the D7000 version with a similar contrast curve and black point (you should see it before that).

What the hell happened to my color - why the heck did I point my camera over here in the first place. Maybe If I use NX2 and set the WB to daylight and the picture control to vivid it might help things a bit. Why not.

No dice. Maybe if I use ACR6 and jack up the contrast and vibrance like everyone does on every single image. And also use a vivid camera profile. Maybe it will get better. Here we go, hold on to your hats - this will make it look good.

Hmmmm. Maybe film does look good - sometimes. I know there are a few of you that somehow are think that this is some sort of trick or that I have somehow not done what I “should” have to the D7000 image. Addressing the first - No tricks, no there was no filter on the film camera - NONE, not even a UV or 1A - Nothin’. I wish I were patient enough to actually shoot these on different days with the EXACT same light and water/wind conditions with the EXACT same boats. If I were I would put that patience to far far more nefarious purposes that hoodwinking a couple of people that film actually looks great. Or maybe I am not telling the truth about what I did in Photoshop to the film image - hmmmmm - I cross my heart - no tricky-ness. If I were going to resort to that - I would be a whole lot more tricky.

As to not treating the D7000 image properly - Yea I could make it look better. Screw it why bother. I could play around in Color EFEX Pro 8 different ways. Heck I could spend a year figuring out how to render it better. Why bother. There was pink in the sky - now it’s gone in the D7000 images - see the color of the sunlight in the film - still golden but the clouds and sky had a pinkish purplish hue against a very set of cool shadows. Why did the D7000 not see this? I have no idea but this is not just “bad scanning” or “bad film”. I notice this type of thing with the way digital renders scenes with wildly varying color temps of light in the same frame constantly. If I were a landscape guy this would drive me nuts trying to figure out how to get the whole warm/cool contrast and color back into images. Personally I am more concerned with how much more work digital capture is in making skin look great (color and texture).

Photography - The (Depressing) State of the Union

2011-11-10T00:00:00-05:00

It’s a bit chilly here in Maryland today. Leaves are falling off the trees, meaning winter is coming. I hate the winter. Oh, I also had to go to the DMV today. I guess that this particular combination of things has me in a rather foul mood so please take the following ramble understanding that I mean no harm or ill will towards any particular individual. Take it more as a bad mood fueled take on things I find baffling as a whole.

Case #1 - Randomly chosen bunch of images from a randomly chosen “fashion” photographer but fairly representative of poppycock crapped out as a matter of course. Take a look here.

Anything here that is some extremely refined craftsmanship and masterful treatment of the medium? Nope.
Any great “moments” - Yes there can and are really really great moments in a lot of commercial fashion work. Yes they may have been “staged” but they are really really great. Any here? Nope.
Any story? Any story whatsoever - overt, banal, cliched, or even in-your-face-explicit story? Nope? How ‘bout a subtle story that is a little open ended - the best kind? Nope. How about a story with lots of subtext with a few different interpretations - this happens with really great and cleaver photographers every once in a while - Not here.
Okay how ‘bout a workman like treatment of the fashion that does a good workman like job of showing off the fashion? Well unless this really is some sort of limited market joined at the shoulder siamese twin fashion house I am not aware of, or maybe militants in leotard specialty outfitter ummmm Nope.
I think a few of these are even composted onto the background at first glance. Is this sort of like a “look ma, I learned how to do whacky stuff that has no point in photoshop” kind of thing, I am just not getting it. Interesting? No. Creative? Ummm No - unless you are one of those really really liberal types that believes everyone in every action including taking a crap is somehow “creative”. Visually or intellectually informative in any way? Not really.

And you wonder why I don’t really want much to do with commercial photography or the fashion market any more? In my tiny little limited mind photography has become not photography in any of the ways that give me any kind of pleasure - it’s more like a mutated form of the show Jack Ass where people sit around and think of increasingly stupid shit they can do that has no point. At least Jack Ass is funny.

Fine Art Photography - Pah, Really

2011-11-10T00:00:00-05:00

Every wonder why I am so brutal when mentioning the contemporary “art” community? Here it the reason. It’s also why I hold suspect anyone that likes to use the meaningless term “fine art” prefixed to photography. This is not to say that anyone who does sucks - I know plenty of people that use that prefix that are really really good. I still make fun of them - mostly my friends. I do this in truth to illuminate myself as to their particular thought process and the best answer I can come up with is that some a$$hole did it and now people feel that they have to use it to somehow make sure everyone knows that they don’t have somehow inferior photography in contrast to “fine art”. Nobody said these words to me but that is my own para-meaning-phrase of what explanations I have been given in nicer words during quite sober conversations.

Okay so here is exhibit A:

Oooops, sorry that was some out of focus trees I shot to see what the out of focus rendition was for an old lens I grabbed on eBay. Here is exhibit A:

Sorry - that was a bush in my front yard while testing focus calibration for a camera… Here it is - here is the really really fine fine art of all arts.

You see that last one is so damn fine art that it just sold for $4,338,500. Yep, I praise the photographer, he is freaking amazing. For him and his circle jerk of art buddies to be so full of shit in order to convince someone that this is somehow so rarefied - so insightful - so… valuable as to be worth north of FOUR MILLION DOLLARS. Now that is art. I am talking about the full of shit part not the image. In fact this group of art that gets to define what is art and how more better it is than say the previous two images is actually performance art of sorts - either that or they have become so very full of shit that they actually believe that somehow their vision and ability are so so amazing that this crock of nonsense is actually worth many many many many times what people that actually make stuff earn in a year.

I can’t blame the artist or circle jerk of mental masturbators that is the modern art community for this. I wish I could but they are just retarded or opportunistic and predatory. I blame the people with the money that actually spend it in such a foolish way thus perpetuating the asinine thought process and culture. I don’t care if the print took 5 years for the “artist” to painstakingly paint pixel by pixel with his pecker the image is not worth that. This kind of thought process is idiotic. I would have rather seen the bidder spend his money on a week long drug fueled, 100 whore a night, bender to end all benders rather than this kind of true waste.

Nikon D7000 Presets For Aperture 3

2011-11-09T00:00:00-05:00

Okay, okay - I changed my mind again. I took a new and different approach that will probably make nobody happy but here goes. Consider this a beta test with updates most likely to follow. For now I am not going to promote these presets anywhere but on this post. They are far far far from perfect as I explained here. There are too many variables to make a one size fits all set of presets and to make them perfect they are too hard and complicated to use - hence why bother with a preset in the first place.

Here is what I decided on for this beta - Closely match the contrast/gamma of the Nikon Picture Controls AND add just a couple of color adjustments that are designed to give the overall impression of Nikon color rather than match each and every hue in every lighting condition. To that end the color adjustments I chose to deal with are rather asymmetric - some picture are different than others in terms of what color adjustments they are designed to deal with. Specifically Landscape and Vivid do things that may cause issues on images that really are not appropriate for Landscape and Vivid while Neutral, Portrait, and standard omit the potentially problematic adjustments.

If you are curious - all of the presets manipulate blues to a certain extent over a fairly broad range. This is one of the most noticeable differences in Nikon color vs. Aperture 3 color. Instead of matching hue, saturation, and luminance exactly as NX2 does I went with an approach that will hopefully be a reasonable balance across all images as opposed to matching the blues exactly and causing hideous split color problems in certain conditions. I took the safe way out. The Landscape and Vivid presets also deal with another nagging Aperture 3 problem with Nikon NEF files. The Yellow/Green merge. In a lot of circumstances this is virtually impossible to deal with a one size fits all preset. Again I took the safe way out. There is a certain hue that I consider the tipping point after looking at 1000’s of images. That is the hue that I decided to manipulate independently of pure yellow. After playing around with it and testing it on 100’s of images it seems to be a reasonable compromise for most situations where Aperture 3’s treatment would be not so pretty. I left this out of the standard, portrait, and neutral for reasons I will not bore you with.

If you decide that you want these presets please understand that I consider these the first beta release. I will be depending on your specific feedback with things you would like to see in future updates. Until I consider them final please keep the download link so that you can obtain free updates as I incorporate suggestions for refinements. If you do have suggestions for improvements and refinements please leave them in comments on this post. They do not have to be technical just a reasonable description of what you are seeing and what you would like to be different.

Here goes…

Remember - after the transaction please use the link “return to merchant” in order to download the presets.

Only $4.99 - With Free Updates!

Available Light Workshop - Brain Dump

2011-11-04T00:00:00-04:00

So a couple of dozen people from all over the map have mentioned that they might be interested in an available light workshop and there were a few inquisitive souls that just had to know what that might be like. I guess the answer is really up to what people would be interested in as my agenda might last a week or a month or longer. That might be a little inconvenient and just a bit grueling for most non-fanatics.

Here is a bit of a brain dump of what kind of things I would guess might be interesting and useful from my perspective. Instead of getting all artsy-fartsy and acedemic in the syllibus I’ll just use some humor to get the rough outline down and hopefully get some feedback from you. Of course I would actually organize this into something a bit more coherent for the real thing.

Using the light modifiers already built into your environment both indoors and outdoors. AKA - why sunlit concrete is your friend.
What is open shade and using it to the best effect. Identifying the good open shade, the bad, and the ugly.
All about windows. North light, diffused sunlight, and bounced sunligt.
All about rooms - this is the sequel to all about windows. Rooms matter. The size, the color, and most importantly where you situate your subject in them. A special section on corners - all rooms have corners that make for fantastic background effects.
Beating mid-day sun into submission. AKA Great light without ugly itty-bitty blue colored on-camera fill-flash. Oh and also without reflectors that will drive you nuts even in a mild breeze.
Why grass is your enemy and some things you might want to think about in vanquishing it.
Okay, okay - reflectors can be useful. Here are a few ways to use them and here are a couple of improvisations for the finantially ummm… prudent.
Some really good reasons you want to use manual mode and something other than matrix/pattern metering.
Special bonus - everyone is supplied with a manual SLR, wide aperture lens, and one roll of 36exposure Kodak Portra (processing included) to shoot however they want during the workshop - or not and some examples of the joy of shooting color negative film with various effects.

Of course I will supply either pro or semi-pro models. Hair + MUA (model calibre depends on price tolorance but all will probably know more than the average bear on directing models and will look good in front of the camera). I am thinking a two day week-end agenda with a discussion in the morning, lots of time and opportunity to work vairous scenes with models. Dinner and discussion with image review in the evening.

Comments? - questions? - suggestions?

[poll id=”30”]

Aperture 3 Nikon D7000 Presets - The Saga Continues

2011-11-04T00:00:00-04:00

Okay - so I have been screwing around with the presets that I envisioned releasing to all of you Aperture 3 users for months. In case you think that I have been slacking off here - think different. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot release a product that I feel comfortable with. Namely a product that I would find acceptable as a consumer if I was expecting a quick and easy way to duplicate Nikon NX2 or OOC JPEG Picture Control settings.

It has nothing to do with me not understanding the differences in gamma/contrast - saturation - or more importantly color (HSL values) rendered by Nikon NX2 vs Aperture 2 - I have been messing with this since Aperture V1 when the differences were HUGE on the Nikon D2 series of cameras. Since then it has gotten a lot “better” but with smaller degrees of the same nagging issues. The problem with packaging a canned solution is that there are too many variables to make a product that is easy to use, makes any sense, saves time and produces results that are close enough for me to be comfortable with.

I have sliced this many many different ways and the color adjustments are highly dependent on the color of the light, WB settings when taking the image, and the scene. Matching a color target under one set of conditions is not going to cut it in real world use. Breaking up the presets with a bunch of “if this” then use preset X and preset Y otherwise do something different is too complicated to be of much use. It’s trying to duplicate what I do with my NEF files depending on too many variables - it’s easier to just do it yourself visually rather than dealing with interpreting the conditions and wading through a few dozen preset combinations.

So… I give up. No one set of “standard, vivid, neutral, portrait, and landscape” presets is going to produce accurate and acceptable results under diverse real world shooting conditions.

About the only thing that might at all be interesting to you as a consolation prize is the gamma/contrast curves that I use to match Nikon Picture controls - unfortunately this only goes half way. If anyone is interested in just the gamma/contrast/saturation presets without the color I will go through the trouble of posting them for purchase for like a buck or something (need to pay for bandwidth somehow…) please let me know - and sorry I cannot move this particular mountain…

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