Category: Computing

Yesterday Adobe released Lightroom CC 2015.6.  The big news for Leica users is support for the new Leica M-D, the screen-less Leica M (Type 240) based camera.

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2016/06/lightroom-cc-2015-6-now-available.html?sdid=R726NVN2

This release for Creative Cloud members include the new Guided Upright feature.

It’s designed to easily straighten images, fix horizons, and reduce or eliminate the keystone effect in buildings.
I’ll be testing it with a few Lincoln Cathedral shots to see if it affects corner resolution adversely.

I was rebuilding my old eight year old laptop, fresh format and clean install of just the apps I use.  i.e. Mail, Internet Browser, Spreadsheet, Dropbox, iTunes with a few favourite tunes and of course Adobe Lightroom, GPS4Cam (adds GPS data to RAW files), and SD Formatter for when those pesky SD cards start to play up or run slow.

Now having a MacPro desktop for the heavy lifting, e.g. heavy Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop work, batch scanning etc, I don’t need a lot on my laptop.

In fact my last few trips out I have even managed with the iPad Pro 9.7 especially if shooting with a Leica or Hasselbald with the PhaseOne digital back; with their none propriety RAW files.

I’ll be replacing my laptop within the next two years, its likely this my 2008 Macbook Pro will become part of my HiFi system.  I may just buy Caroline a new laptop and have her old one as its more then capable.

Out of fun I checked out the spec of Apple’s latest MacBook and compared it to mine.  Now the current 12 inch MacBook while great for a portable road warrior who needs internet and email plus Microsoft Office, is under-spec in the ports department, having only one.

A photographers laptop, may need power, usb for tethering or memory card reader (remember not all professional cameras use SD Cards), external hard drive for backup etc

1. Power
2. Tethering or Card Reader
3. External Hard drive for Lightroom Catalogue or Files
4. External Hard drive for Backup
5. External Monitor or Projector

So your talking about five ports, my current laptop with Video out, Firewire, power, 2 USB manages this easily.  The new MacBook would need a hub so even more cables etc to carry.  Not an issue if your docking it in an office but a pain when travelling.

But ignoring the port issue which I am sure they will address with another model what about power.  As you know Moore’s Law (yes I know its not a law just an observation) says computers double in power every eighteen to twenty-four months.  So I decided to check out the geek bench scores of the current 12 inch MacBook.  It is in fact twice as powerful as my current MacBook Pro but not as powerful as Caroline’s MacBook Pro Retina.

Its given me a few thoughts, lower end laptop but with more ports may be the way I go.

 

Its one week now till Photoshop World and it will be interesting if Adobe let us know whats coming for Lightroom and for the Creative Cloud Photographers Package.

Generally Adobe have been excellent at involving photographers in piloting new features and getting feed back, until the recent disaster with the new import module that they rolled out without consultation but quickly removed again.

So looking forward to seeing some new features.  I would love to see preferences like metadata, locations, developer settings etc, sync’ed to the cloud.

So when on a laptop using a temp catalogue you still have all your settings.  Having to update a preset on one computer then either doing again on another or copying (on a Mac) from ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom from one computer to another is a bit of a pain.  I might automate it with a scripts and Dropbox one of these days.

Also allowing multiple catalogues to sync with the cloud instead of just one would also be cool.

I had noticed that I had a lot of old applications on my laptop that I no longer used including a couple of versions of Photoshop and Lightroom.

So I ran a couple of backups, then formatted my internal SSD and booted from the OS X install disk I had created.

With Adobe Creative Cloud and Apples iCloud rebuilding and getting your computer back up and running after a clean build is getting easier and easier.

Grab any digital SLR, power it on and your instantly ready to shoot.

With mirrorless that is not always the case.  Recently I saw an interesting video on Youtube looking at startup times for the Leica M 240 series.

Its often said format in camera, and the video demonstrated that a card formatted in camera compared to a memory card formatted on a computer made quite a difference to start up time.  So first rule format in camera.  If you have to format on the computer, download SD Formatter which will do it correctly.

So above is the original image which I produced the two prints from.

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Its virtually impossible to see the differences of software correction at this size and even on the two prints it was hard to spot.  The only difference immediately obvious is a slight composition change caused by the corrected verticals. 

 It’s in the corners that you can see the most difference. The noise and software correction has lowered the resolution making them look a touch softer. 

I made two A4 prints and I invited a few people to choose which they preferred. 

The score was four to one with one undecided.  The majority all preferred the uncorrected print. For myself I also preferred the uncorrected print. This test is a little unfair as in reality I would usually post process an image in between these two extremes but it has given me much to think about. 

I also recommend that you occasionally print some of your work. We get too fixated on our images on the screen, wanting noise free perfection and viewing the images at 100%, 200% or even 400%.

It’s often only when you get a print in your hand you realize how good your photograph really is. 

I like cameras that produce real RAW files, just the data please – thats what I want from my camera.  Admittedly its getting harder as more and more companies include adjustments into their RAW files.

My Leica M8 and the latest Leica M (Type 240) allow adjustments but when you import the images into a product like Adobe Lightroom all these types of adjustment like lens adjustment, noise adjustment etc are all optional and are off by default.  This means you can customise as you want.

You may question why you may not want these adjustments, well any of these adjustments will reduce resolution and can cause smearing, especially at the edges.

With Leica M glass, you can get issues with the edges, these old designs work well with film but digital likes the light-rays appears perpendicular to the sensor.  A little adjustment is sometimes necessary but its nice with the Leica M cameras to have the choice.

Interestingly testing has shown that the Leica SL does apply a little correction to M glass that cannot be turned off.  This is a same as the design team for the Leica M have really shown how it should be done.

In case your interested the above image has all adjustments including noise switched off.  It was taken with an old CCD Leica M8 at 640 ISO and a slow lens set to f/5.6 to give a bit of depth of field.  This has resulted in a noisy image and one which resulted in a shutter speed of only 1/8 second.

Once of the joys of small mirrorless cameras is that with no large flapping mirrors you can shoot with quite slow shutter speeds, though 1/8 of a second and no image stabilisation is pushing it.