Category: Computing

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.

 

This week Apple released new iMac’s, for people wanting a desktop computer they are very nice, though the bottom spec model is a little pricey, the high end models are well worth the money.

The new displays, 4K for the smaller model and 5K for the larger represent a significant improvement in display technology.

They also introduce for many what will be a new colour space.  Most monitors are sRGB, and while fine for most work, do not really cut the mustard for colour critical work for desktop publishing, photography and film.

For myself I use a high end NEC Reference Monitor that can output Adobe RGB, a far bigger colour space and about as good as you can get currently.

The new Mac’s though do not use sRGB or Adobe RGB but a colour space called DCI-P3, which while as big as Adobe RGB is shifted more into the Red’s and the greens are different.  Its a colour spaced by and for the movie industry and I can imaging lots of studio’s placing there orders immediately for these new computers that support this colour space natively.

For photographers then the new iMac’s are better then what we had before but we do need to consider we are not getting Adobe RGB.  If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription then you will find Photoshop supports DCI-P3 (labeled SMPTE) and it might be worthwhile if your getting one of these Mac’s to adopt DCI-P as your standard working space.

Personally I would recommend doing all your work in ProPhotoRGB, while your display cannot show it this has more colours then either Adobe RGB or DCI-P3)

 

Tonight I got fed up of waiting for Adobe to fix Lightroom so downgraded my Laptop to Adobe Lightroom v2015.1.1.  You can download it from here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/lightroom-downloads.html?PID=7252638

Its a simple task, uninstall the old version, download the main Lightroom v2015 then the update you want.  I then went though my Orkney images and completed my Panoramic’s light this one below:

I’ll be leaving this version on my Laptop now until Adobe issue a fix and I have tested it on my main machine, at least now I can finish up editing my Orkney photographs.

 

The shot above was take with my Leica while on board ship, as I came back to Scotland from the Orkney Islands.

Its a stitch from several images which I put together with Adobe Lightroom v2015.1, quite a nice photograph I hope you agree and a very good stitch done automatically via Lightroom.

I still have a number of photographs still to process from my Orkney trip including a number of panorama’s that still need stitching together and some HDR’s that need putting together.

These personal photographs have been on hold for the last few weeks while I finish up my final Wedding Photographs for customers.

But now its back to my own work.  Now I blogged early that Lightroom 2015.2 had been released and it had some issues.  Every time I tried to exit the program it would hang.  The fix I posted early was a work round that stopped that at least.  Well I also found another issue, you cannot create Pano’s from Leica DNG files, I do not if all RAW files are affected or if its just a DNG issue.

Well last night Adobe issued a fix, Lightroom 2015.2.1.  So I tested and the crashing is still there, in fact it crashed the first time I loaded it and the Pano function is still broken.

Now I had to produce some prints this week for a commercial shoot I had done earlier in the year, now I wanted to test printing from Lightroom on Apple’s latest OS, so as I have already upgraded my laptop, I created a new Lightroom catalogue containing these shots and fired up my laptop to print off the images.  Now it all worked fine, in fact not one crash, but I had not done the Adobe workaround on my laptop.

So I checked out a few forums and a number of people mentioned that if they created a new library referencing all there old photographs the new Library did not crash, so last night I gave it a try.  I created a whole new library referencing my existing photographs and guess what, no crash.

So Adobe; please, please , Please, just now fix the pano issue so I can finish up my Orkney Photographs.

 

• Tethering with Nikon & Leica cameras

Tethering Nikon & Leica cameras using Lightroom CC 2015/Lightroom 6 is not currently supported on El Capitan.

 Some customers are reporting crashes with Lightroom CC 2015.2/Lightroom 6.2

• If you are experiencing crashing, please try the following: