Family, Photography and other misc news
Well it’s rare but occasionally modern vehicles do break down.
Our BMW GS developed a fault this morning making the attempted commute to work. It would die when we turned right.
Sounded like a broken ignition wire. We managed to get home again and I called BMW who are collecting the bike next week. So we are car users for a while.
Quick shout out for Astle BMW Grimsby and their bike service department who where very helpful this morning to sort me out.
Yesterday I popped into my local London Camera Exchange. The aim was to have another play with the Panasonic LF1 compact.
I had with me my Nikon V1 with 10mm (28mm equivalent) so I could compare sizes.
As was expected size wise the Panasonic won, its much smaller then the Nikon or the Fuji, its a real shirt pocket camera and one that you could easily carry all day every day. With its small sensor its not up to the quality of the Nikon 1 series or Fuji but then it does not try to be. With a good zoom lens its one of the better small compacts around.
As they had one in the store I also tried the Fuji X20. It seems better made then the X10, and the big issue I had with the X10 was the lack of information. When using the viewfinder you had no idea where it was focusing or what it was doing.
The new X20 fixes these issues with information displayed onto the optical viewfinder, even indicating whether it has locked focus and where. There are two issues with the Fuji, first the sensor is smaller then my Nikon V1 but much bigger then the Panasonic, and the view finder is only 85% representative of the actual image being taken so you must remember to frame looser.
The ergonomics were excellent much better than my Nikon and better than the Panasonic, it is much bigger than the Panasonic, in fact its the same size as my Nikon V1 with the 10mm (28mm effective field of view) lens fitted but it does have a decent fast zoom. Of course my Nikon has interchangeable lens and the lens are small and pocketable, the entire outfit of 10-100mm (28mm-300mm effective field of view) can be carried in a jacket pocket makes the outfit much more flexible but sometimes you just want to carry a single camera and lens. Its here that cameras like the Fuji X100s, X20 etc have many advantages, still I have not written off the Panasonic yet, its a camera that can be carried all the time and I would likely have it with me, even when I am carrying my Leica outfit as its so small. The lens range of 28-200mm also makes it very compelling despite the small sensor and low quality EVF.
Its also worth considering older cameras. The Panasonic retails at nearly £300, a second hand Panasonic GF1, EVF and 20mm f/1.7 can be had for that price.
Fuji’s first attempt at a professional Mirrorless camera was the X-Pro1, a good attempt, with nice body and controls, hybrid optical/EVF viewfinder. There was a lot to like, but let down somewhat by the autofocus and what some consider the limitations of the X-Trans sensor.
Today they announce the X-T1, a camera that looks like they have been paying close attention to what Olympus have been doing.
The new X-T1 has a lot of good features including weather sealing and what promises to be the best EVF yet, well spec’ed and a claimed 54 frames per second with no lost frames when the light levels drop (are you listening Sony). Some Mirrorless cameras with EVF’s drop to 10-20 fps making it impossible to capture fast moving action and the decisive moment.
In case your wondering an EVF needs to reach about 240 fps to match a optical viewfinder. I think we are about three years away, but once there I expect most low end SLR’s to drop the expensive mirror and go with the cheaper to manufacture EVF.
Check out Chris’s Blog for more info and thoughts
You are photographing an event, you catch a small moment in time.
Technically it’s not quite there but you include in the edits you send to the customer.
They love it, feel it captures the whole evening and it’s their most treasured image.
Another photographer looks at this final image and points out what a bad job you made of the photograph.
It’s highlights are blown – over exposed.
It’s subject is not quite in focus.
It’s suffering from camera shake.
You used too low an ISO, and it was shot wide open so the depth of field is too limited for the subject.
Basically he is saying its a bad image and shows you to be a bad photographer.
Who is right? Should the customer, have been shown a photo that they artistically love but is technically poor and may make some people think you are an inferior photographer?
Something to think about.
Once you have imported your photographs into a DAM (Digital Asset Management) Package, then to get the most from your photographs, especially if your a professional photographer who may need to lay there hands on a particular image months or even years later there are a number of key tasks to perform.
First is meta data, simple things like location files were shot, copyright information, basic key wording etc.
Then there is developing the files. The Adobe Camera RAW engine using process2012 is very powerful but the import process does tend to flatten your images resulting in RAW files that will not look anything like as good as out of camera jpegs.
I have a number presets to speed things up. First common meta data presents with my copyright information and some location presets for locations where I shoot a lot.
Then there are develop settings, some are camera specific, and also apply basic sharpening based on if they are Landscapes or People focused.
The key to really speeding things up though is to set these up with your import presets, thus as you can see above, when I import files from my Nikon D200, if the pictures are mainly landscapes I choose the D200-Landscape preset. This preset apples my basic landscape metadata and copyright information, it sets a backup hard drive destination so the files get backed up to a second disk during the import. It applies the develop preset I have configured for my Nikon D200’s and does some basic import sharpening optimised for Landscapes. It then ups the contrast and vibrance reduces the saturation slightly and brightens the shadows.
The Leica M8 presets similarly tweak contrast reduces red channel saturation and applies a tone curve.
Using these imports I can get to a position quickly where I just need to add some detail location information, final specific keywords, white balance and a slight tweak to the develop settings.
Well its taken some finding but I finally own a Leica 50mm Summilux ASPH Lens. A full frame f/1.4 50mm standard lens. I wanted the latest model but not at Leica new prices, I also wanted it boxed with a leather case.
One did appear a few months ago but we were in the middle of moving house and I just good not justify buying an expensive lens while purchasing a new home. Its taken another three months to find another one but finally I have one.
I have not done much with it yet, a few low light snaps of my lovely wife and the above shot at a local coffee shop. I am loving the out of focus details, and I look forward to trying it out in decent light and in the studio.
With its discounts available in America, many American Photoshop users are members of NAPP – The National Association of Photoshop Professionals. For those of us in the UK it’s not so good value.
Then there is Kelby Training. A great website full of excellent video training from some of the best Photographers and Photoshop trainers on the planet.
Well this week they announced the merger, so anyone who is a member of NAPP now gets full access to Kelby Training, and Kelby Training members get access to all the benefits of NAPP membership.
You can find out more at KelbyOne.
Saw this and thought it amusing. Apologies to all the none IT Geeks.
‘There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1’
Sorry but I liked it.
It’s quite some time since I spent a day in the studio so I am going to plan a session in early December. So if your a model feel free to get in contact.
There always seems to be a never ending list of job to be completed when moving house.
This weekend saw us finally empty the storage units, so all our things are in our new home.
We are now surrounded by boxes but we our gradually getting them unpacked.
Another big step this week was the assembly of my desk. Setting that up emptied several boxes so thing are moving a long nicely.
It was nice to edit my photographs using two monitors again but after calibrating my old Sony CRT I noticed it struggled to reach the appropriate brightness.
Looks like my decision to buy a new monitor for Christmas is justified.