Nikon D200
Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 with Nikkor TC17
500mm, 1/100 Sec at f/4.8, ISO1000
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom V5.4
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.9.3
Nikon’s D810 Announcement
I was thinking of blogging about the new D800/D800E replacement, the D810 but many other sites have done it far better reviews, but I did have a few thoughts about it.
See Thom Hogan site for a good review.
The big thing about this update is that they have dropped from two versions to one. With the new D810 we get a none AA filtered D800E with the improvements we saw in the D4S.
With a sensor at 36 MP it’s going to be rare moiré shows up; in fact I hardly ever see it on my 10 MP non AA Leica M8 plus we now have tools in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to deal with this.
Will I be getting this? Well maybe, though I might see if I can now pick up a late model D800 but either will have to wait until I have upgraded my computers. At 36 MP these cameras need computers with lots of horsepower and RAM to cope well and process your images speedily. My late model 2008 MacBookPro is not really up to that.
Ideally I would still love a D800 body with the D4 sensor, a great blend of size, ergonomics and manageable RAW files, but Nikon seem to have forgotten the old D700 user base.
For those of you lamenting no increase in MP from 36, do remember the new 56 MP sensor is still not ready, maybe the D900 in a year or two will have this and computer and memory/harddisk manufactures will rejoice as we all upgrade our computers again.
Adobe Photoshop Shortcuts
I love command line shortcuts and most apps have keyboard shortcuts to speed up your work flow.
Most people know that Command-S ( Ctrl-S for Windows) saves a document and is much faster then taking your hands off the keyboard to reach for the mouse/trackpad.
Here are a few common ones I use when editing documents in Photoshop.
New…Command-N (for Command use Ctrl for Windows users)
Open…Command-O
Save…Command-S
Undo…Command-Z
Step Back…Shift-Command-Z
Copy…Command-C
Free Transform…Command-T
New Layer…Shift-Command-N
Layer via Copy…Command-J (feels like my most often used command)
Merge Visible to new Layer…Shift-Option-Commamd-E (Option is Alt in Windows)
Lasso Tool…L
Spot Healing Brush…J (Toggle to different heal brushes Shift-J)
Brush…B
Some of these options are also programmed into my Wacom Tablet and Pen to speed up my work flow. The key is to just find a few things you do a lot and then learn the shortcut for them, its amazing how much time you can fine yourself saving.
So why did Adobe install another copy of Photoshop on my Laptop
With the recent Adobe updates, I find I now have three copies of Photoshop on my laptop, which with its limited disk space, is an issue. You think you would get option to replace or keep both in case you have lots of plugins.
With Adobe CC we were promised regular updates instead of the traditional release cycle of eighteen to twenty four months, instead we seem to have had this big new version dumped on our machines.
A lot bloggers are commenting on this, some of the best comments I saw was from Scott Kelby on his blog. It turns out we have had a lot of updates but there has not been much of a song and a dance about them.
Lightroom – So what did we get in Lightroom V5?
Heres the gist straight from Adobe’s release notes:
New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.5
- Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II
- Fujifilm FinePix S1
- Nikon 1 J4
- Nikon 1 S2
- Nikon 1 V3
- Olympus OM-D E-M10
- Panasonic DMC-GH4
- Pentax 645Z
- Samsung NX3000
- Sony DSC-RX100 III
- Sony A7S (ILCE-7S)
- Sony Alpha SLT-A77 II (ILCA-77M2)
New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.5
| Mount | Name |
| Canon | Sigma 50m F1.4 DG HSM A014 |
| Canon | Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014 |
| Canon | Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B0163 |
| Fujifilm | Fujifilm Tele Conversion Lens TCL-X100 |
| Nikon | Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f3.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM |
| Nikon | Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR |
| Nikon | Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014 |
| Nikon | Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014 |
| Nikon | Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B016N |
| Nikon | Tamron SP 150-600mm F5-6.3 Di VC USD A011N |
| Pentax | Sigma 30mm F.14 DC HSM A013 |
| Sigma | Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014 |
| Sigma | Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014 |
| Sony Alpha | Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013 |
| Sony Alpha | Sony Alpha 28-75mm F2.8 SAM |
Bugs Corrected in Lightroom5.5
- Improved responsiveness in Develop module while Lightroom mobile sync is occurring.
- Custom Develop module default settings were not syncing correctly to Lightroom mobile.
- Initial rendition in Develop would sometimes appear posterized.
- Undo function failed and applied a preset instead.
- Scaling looked inaccurate when scaling to 200% in Windows.
- Manual slideshows sometimes did not advance to the next slide as expected.
- Aspect ratio changed when modifying the crop rectangle and when rotating the crop
- Image flips between portrait and landscape after switching orientation while shooting tethered with Leica S cameras.
- Fixed issue with Fujifilm X-T1 raw images appearing too bright at high ISO settings when using Dynamic Range 200% and 400%. Unfortunately, this fix may affect the appearance of existing images captured with this combination of settings. It is recommended that you (1) purge the Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog, and (2) review images shot at ISO settings higher than 1600 for unexpected brightness changes.
- Fixed image quality issue (noisy result) when applying spot healing to floating-point (HDR) images.
- Fixed issue with reading lossless compressed Nikon raw files (NEF files) from the camera models listed below. Previously, some images could be read but would appear as random noise, whereas attempting to open others would result in an error dialog. You will need to purge your Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog.
- Nikon D1
- Nikon D1H
- Nikon D1X
- Nikon D2H
- Nikon D2Hs
- Nikon D2X
- Nikon D2Xs
- Nikon D100
- Nikon D200
Adobe CC 2014 now released
Last week we had lots of Adobe updates and along with the updates CC2014 was announced, so I promptly downloaded the new Photoshop and gave it a quick test from a studio shoot I did a couple of weeks ago.
I only used the features I am used to so did not notice any major changes yet but i’ll be giving it a better test later.
We also had Adobe Lightroom V5.5 and updates to Lightroom Mobile with is now being available for iPhone users.
Day Trip to Whitby
So what else have we been up to. Well last week to have a break from all the work we had been doing at home we had a quick blast up the east coast and over the Humberbridge to Scarborough and Whitby.
It was a great day and despite the weather forecast for rain we managed to miss the bad weather, though we did have to ford across some flooded roads, but what better way then on a BMW GS motorcycle.
I took the little Nikon V1 with me and grabbed the odd shot with the 30-110mm lens (90-300mm.
Lincolnshire Show 2014
This week its the Lincolnshire Show, one of the UK’s largest agricultural shows. In the main ring we had all the usual displays from show jumping, motorcycling displays and even a parachute display team.
Its always fun to look round the livestock tents, we had a good look round the rare breeds and especially the chickens as we hope to get some this year.
One the best places to visit is the tent of the Lincolnshire Beekeepers Association, we hope to join them soon once we have the bee hives up and running.
They even had a live demonstration of beekeeping. We had a good look round the show hive which has the frames all behind glass so you can see the bees up close working in their natural environment, and we played spot the queen and spot the drone. The queen is larger then the rest and has attendants, the drones which are the males are the large bees that do not do anything. As a few commented like most males!
The weather forecast was a little uncertain so I packed a waterproof in my ruck sack and for the photography carried my little Nikon V1 with the 10mm (28mm field of view) lens which performed quite nicely.
Whisby Babies
So what else have we been up to on our week off. Well we fitted some trips out and one of them was to Whisby Nature Reserve as previously mentioned.
The highlights of the day was definitely the Grebe family, but there was plenty of other action to see. The Black Headed Gulls were breeding on a number of the islands and occasional glimpses of the chicks could be seen with our spotting scope and long lens equipped SLR.
One of the surprises was this Oystercatcher, I saw my first many years ago on the Isle of Skye but since they I have gotten a lot more interested in birdwatching and have spotted the odd one in Lincolnshire.
We had a family of Mute Swans who did not seemed too bothered by the dive-bombing seagulls when they got a bit close the the gull chicks hiding on the islands.
One thing we never have a shortage of in Lincolnshire is as well as the gulls is the Canada Goose and many of there young were visible.
A pair of Tufted Duck’s were also to be seen, only one pair and I could not spot any young.
But the highlight of the day was definitely the Grebe family. The male worked very hard catching fish and bringing them back to the young and the female, only taking the odd fish for himself.
Altogether a great days photography.
Quilt Show
So the last two weeks has been a bit blogging light, so what have we been up to?
Well its been a mix of trips to things we enjoy, Quilt Shows, Fabric shops, a small motorcycle tour as well as lots of work done back at home.
We started the holiday with a trip to the quilt show held at Spalding in Lincolnshire. As is usual at events like this there are no photography rules to prevent people stealing the copyright of some of the quilt designs but there are still opportunities for a few photographs.
While Caroline went round the stalls I practices my candid photography, getting a few nice shots in the process. Camera of choice was my little Leica M8 with the Summicron 35mm lens, which on the Leica M8 is a 46mm field of view.
No Blog Wednesday
As you may have noticed its been a bit quiet on the blog front this week. We have been on holiday so its been up and the east coast and round North Yorkshire on the Motorcycle.
We ended up in Whitby and enjoyed ourselves immensely, somehow we managed to miss the bad weather though we did have to ford some rather deeply flooded roads at times, but thats the fun of owning a GS, you can generally get anywhere.