Category: Computing

This weekend is the Lincoln Christmas Market.  If you have to commute into and out of Lincoln be prepared for a long wait.  Even if like me and my wife you commute on a motorcycle it can take you a while to get in and out of the city.

Today I took my little Leica M8 into the city to shoot few street scenes.  They were then imported into my iPad; I edited the Jpegs in Lightroom Mobile.

As an experiment I set the aperture to f/5.6 to give me a bit of depth of field, the ISO to 640 to give me a reasonable shutter speed and prefocused to about 4 meters.  Then as views appeared I took a shot.

Most were rejected but a few had a bit of interest.  It was also a useful test of Lightroom Mobile and how I could integrate it into my usual workflow.

The above shot was a test of two things.  The first was my pre focusing technique, I selected the focus and aperture first then as the scene developed I raised the camera to my eye and took a single shot.  Fast and unobserved.

Refocusing and using the zone focusing technique is very fast but does take practice, and is something that I am not that good at.

The second test was me working on my mobile workflow.

After taking this and a few other photographs, I took the memory card and imported it into my old iPad2.  I had shot RAW & JPG (DNG and Black & White JPG), I then used Lightroom Mobile to drop the contrast and reduce the highlights of the JPG and boost the shadows.

For a JPG its not a bad shot.

When I am out and about shooting, it can range from a day in the studio, to a couple weeks on a remote Scottish Island with limited internet.

With such wide subject matter and locations, I am always reconsidering my equipment.

I have often discussed the cameras, but with the release of the latest Microsoft Surface and Apple’s iPad Pro I thought I would reassess my mobile computing needs.

My output is generally large prints or digital files for customers, or output to the web.

If your just outputting to the web I have proved that any camera (shooting jpg and RAW), you can load the jpg files into any old iPad and with products like Adobe’s and Snapseed apps for the iOS you can edit and produce pretty good output to the web and do some quite complex editing.

I have taken trips for a week or more and just used the iPad as a back up device and to upload the odd edited jpg to the web, but for serious work you always end up having to use a laptop or desktop.  This means if your packing an iPad you have to wait till you are back home or at the office.

This is where many feel the Microsoft Surface or Surface Book is the perfect compromise; but I currently feel if your going to go that far you might as well just pack an Apple MacBook Air and have the advantage of Mac OS.

Lets not forget though, if your into social media, or promoting your business via social media, getting the jpg onto your iPad, a quick edit then upload , it is a fast way to work.

The iPad Pro is now out and a lot of people are asking me should they get it?

With many of these things, we want the toys but we do not ask each what problem is it that we want it to solve.

The Apple iPad Pro and Microsoft’s surface are all trying to bridge the gap between the modern tablet and the laptop.

From a photographers point of view I don’t think the iPad Pro is any better then say a normal iPad.  Until software like Lightroom Mobile supports a RAW import driven workflow you are still tied to using a full blown computer.

You can tether with a laptop using programs such as CamRanger which supports Canon and Nikon cameras but you are stuck with a jpeg workflow.

At the moment I see the iPad Pro as being something for graphic artists.  The pencil is very clever and people who have to draw will love it.

The keyboard while nice is still in someways an afterthought.  For some functions you can use the keyboard but others are touch only and you have to move your hands off the keyboard to touch the screen.  The iPad and the Microsoft Surface both suffer from this but at least the Surface is a full blown laptop and can use the full version of Lightroom so work with a RAW workflow, but the Surface does seem to have issues with its USB ports and people report issues with tethering, a normal laptop is possibly better.

 

Apart from Leica’s first digital M, the M8 range, all of Leica’s professional cameras have been 14-bit, but it was with some surprise that the new Leica Monochrom (246) is just 12-bit.

As you can imagine the forums are not happy, so one of Leica’s top beta testers set out to prove Leica was wrong and that this decision from Leica would make the images worse.

Well it turns out that 12 bits for a single Channel image just using luminosity i.e a Black & White only sensor may not an issue.

Testing is showing up some issues when using very high ISO; areas of black are developing pattens when the image is rotated in Lightroom, but testers are saying this is a RAW convert issue and not a 12 vers 14-bit issue and that Adobe should be able to fix this.

I think for now the jury is still out, though I have to admit the output from the new Monochrom does look stunning.

A review of the new Monochrom can be read here.

 

As I have commented on my blog, the recent update to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has caused me a few issues and reading the forums I am not the only one.

The big issues was the crashing, not good and in that condition it should have never shipped but at least they got a fix out and after updating plus creating a new catalogue (database) at least I had a stable version.

The next issue for me was panorama’s.  Being able to create them direct in Lightroom instead of a round trip to Photoshop made life quicker and easier, but if your Leica shooter then this stopped working.  I did wonder if it was just me as I could not find any mention on the forums about this one, but I suppose there are not many Leica users shooting panorama’s.  I submitted a bug report at the weekend and Adobe quickly got back to me to confirm that they had broken this too.

With issues for Leica users and Nikon users in the latest versions for those of use who use the latest Mac OS with tethering now also broken its not been a good release for Adobe.

For many pros that shoot very high numbers of images in a single shoot the change to the import dialogue is also not liked.  While change is often disliked its the fact they removed the ‘move’ feature and the card auto eject feature that has upset the most people.

For me the import is not too bad, I am getting my head around it and its better since I discovered the Command Import option.

I already knew about the Option (Alt for Windows users) Import and Export options; which when you hold down the ‘Option’ key you get to Import or Export Catalogues, but if you use ‘Option’ Import you get a different import screen with the options no longer hidden.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/24/toshiba-divestiture-sony-idUSL3N12O03A20151024

It hit the business news sites on Saturday that Toshiba may be selling their sensor business to Sony.

If you read the blogs you will hear that Sony design and manufacture sensors for Nikon and others.  Well maybe the lower end cameras use Sony designs but the higher end models are Nikon designs manufactured by a number of different contracting fabs.

The majority of Nikon sensors are made by Sony but Toshiba also manufacture sensors for Nikon.  This will certainly strengthen Sony’s position and weaken Nikon’s.

Sony are really the pushing the envelope with their cameras.  Olympus, Fuji and Sony are coming up with some of the most interesting cameras of late.

For people who do a lot of post production there are good reasons why Canon and Nikon digital SLR’s or Medium Format; or dare I suggest as a Leica fan, a Leica, are the cameras to go for.

Better dynamic range and more importantly 14-bit RAW files are the key.  Try editing a 8 bit jpg and you will soon end up with a posterised image if you go to far.

Olympus are not too bad, but Fuji has issues with its X-Trans sensor and Sony have only had 12 bit RAW files, not good enough for many professional photographers.

Well its now all change, the latest Sony is being released with 14 bit RAW and a firmware update is coming to give this ability to some of their older cameras.