Author: Richard

Hasselblad V System with 80mm Lens and Fuji Velva Film 50 ISO

Quite a while ago now a CMOS medium format sensor was announced.  It attacted some attention as it would bring down the price of digital Medium format cameras.

I use a Hasselblad V System medium format camera and so far have always used to film due to cost.

Today I spotted an announcement from Hasselblad of a new dedicated digital back for the V series, the CFV-50c, at 11,000 euro’s. whilst still not cheap its getting there.  Maybe in five years I can get one secondhand.

Tethered shooting is not something I do a lot, but it does have its uses, especially in controlled environments where you have time constraints to get the shot.

It used to be you had to have dedicated software for tethering, normally from your camera manufacture, and it not work well with your normal workflow.

Now tethering is built into Lightroom.  Its simple to start, just plug in your camera, launch Lightroom and go to File, Tethered Capture, and Start Tethered Capture.

You can define a preset so your photographs get the processing you want, so in this example they got my Black & White treatment plus a tone and import sharpening for people.

You can see you camera settings on the tether tool bar and even trigger you camera.  I have in the past setup the camera to photograph birds in the garden and remote controlled my laptop to trigger the capture using the iPad.

Now a days this is old hat with most modern cameras with live view coming with an iPhone or iPad app.

The reason I had another go this weekend was that I wanted to test something I had read about on Scott Kelby’s website, using tethered shooting with Lightroom Mobile on the iPad.

The laptop and camera were setup for tethering and I also setup a target collection that was synchronised with Lightroom Mobile.

The theory was I could shoot and the photographs would appear on the iPad in Lightroom mobile which could be assessed by the client.  In practice it was close but no cigar!  The photos came into Lightroom but there was no way that I could find to get them into the collection that was being synchronised with Lightroom mobile, I had to stop shooting briefly, highlight the shots I wanted to be on the iPad and press the ‘B’ key to add them manually to the collection. Only then would they get synchronised across.

The process was also required the internet, as the photographs once on the laptop where then synchronised to Adobe’s cloud then back down to the iPad.  A local network option would be nice.

I often wax lyrical about golden light and the great light we have in the Autumn and Spring, well last night while I was in Yoga class the light through the window was just fantastic.

The day had been glorious and hot but there was thunderstorms forecast for the evening.

While I was in Yoga class and unable to take advantage the sky turned black while the hills turned a bright golden hue that was truly dramatic.

I bet as I am free tomorrow the light will not be like this.

Having a number of cameras ranging from Large Format, Medium Format, and smaller, I try to choose the camera that is right for the purpose.  Travelling with a camera does place limits on what you can do.  When travelling by car there is no real limit and on some of my trips to remote Scottish Islands I have taken the Large Format for landscape, the SLR and long lens for wildlife, then my Leica M as a carry everywhere camera.

We often go on holiday on the motorcycle and so on these occasions little cameras like the Nikon Series One the V1 are all we carry.

Quite often its the weight and size of the camera that drives what we carry.

This weekend was the Waddington Air show.  Its been many years since I have been, there always seems something else that I need to do, but luckily the last three places U have lived have been near the major flight paths so this has enabled me to grab the odd shot from home.

On Saturday the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight flew over, so on Sunday I made sure I was ready with my Nikon D200 and 70-200mm telephoto zoom.

The weather was somewhat overcast but I managed to get a shot of them.

As always the show ends with a display from the Red Arrows, this is a shot from back in 2009, its a bit of a cheats shot as it is actually a composite.  Once again the weather was not good, so I pasted the Red Arrows onto a background with better weather and once of them in the distance.

 

Last week I mentioned common keyboard shortcuts that I use with Adobe Photoshop, today I thought I would share some of the common keyboard shortcuts I use with Adobe Lightroom.

Open Catalogue…Command-Shift-O (for Command use Ctrl for Windows users)

Grid View…G

Loupe View…E

Compare…C

Survey…N

Show/Hide Toolbar…T

Show/Hide Side bars…Tab

Full Screen Preview…F (note this is new for Lightroom and caught me out)

Next Screen Mode…Shift-F (in older versions this was F)

Add to Quick Collection…B

Group into Stack…Command-G

Flag…P

UnFlag…U

Reject…X

Star Rating…1 or 2,3,4,5

Develop Mode…D

White Balance…W