Category: Photography

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Thats another Christmas over – no photography

Well thats another Christmas over.  We had a great Christmas here in the new home.  Being in the countryside with lots of space meant we could hold dinner parties for close friends, and have a very quiet Christmas day with just ourselves and the parents; then on boxing day we had the wider family round, so we were surrounded by family, brothers and sisters, children and dogs.

Door Frame

A lovely Christmas and surprisingly no photography, well none until today.  I did a quick studio test experimenting on what different apertures and depth of field from the Leica Summicron 35mm had on the skin of a model.  I intend on getting hold of a Summilux 50mm and repeating the test.  I have an image in my mind that I intend on creating next year which requires a certain amount of natural blur to soften the image, and I would like to get it in camera and not have to fake it in Photoshop.

I like the way Leica Summicron can render out of focus areas as in the example above of the stone door frame of Lincoln Cathedral, and the Summilux should be even better.

The hardest part of all of this is finding a mint condition Summilux 50mm, as new they are outside my budget.

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The New Mac Pro – Photographers and Video/Film Editors Dream Machine

It has been a long wait but finally Apple released the new Mac Pro today.  Despite what people may tell you this is not a standard PC and no you cannot build one for $1000 despite what some people are claiming.

Macbook Air -top

The high speed standard 265 GB SSD and processor come to more then that and then there is the EEC memory and the twin workstation class video cards.  No this is a workstation and if you spec up a similar class of workstation from Dell or HP you will see that this is a well priced and well spec’ed machine.

Of course you may be asking will I be getting one.  Well when I get round to next upgrading my cameras I will definitely need more horse power in the photography processing department.

So I see my future desktop needs either being met with a high spec MacBook Pro/Air or a maxed out Mac Mini.  We will have to see what updates are planned.  A Mac Mini is a little low spec’ed in the graphics department but processor and memory is a good choice.  A high end MacBook Pro is close to the price of a low end Mac Pro so I will not say never.

Difficult choice, if only Apple would produce a Mac Mini with decent graphics.

RAW FIle with Extensive Editing
RAW FIle with Extensive Editing

Still until then i’ll keep looking at the Mac Pro and dreaming.

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Profiling Reminder

Profiling and Trending

Just a reminder, as my machine reminded me today, do regularly re-profile your displays.  Also remember to use your display for at least a few minutes to let it warm up before profiling as the colours can change in the first five or ten minutes until your monitor as fully warmed up.

I tend to re-profile every four weeks and my profiling software reminds me automatically when I need to get it done.

Why profile well check out one of my previous blogs https://brown-family.org.uk/profiles-screen/

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Adobe Lightroom V5.3 available today

Adobe SiteI have had a busy day today working at home (loving the new monitor).  While I had the little Adobe reminder at the top of my screen it was not until tonight I checked to see what it was all about.  Well it turns out Adobe Lightroom V5.3 is out today.  Seems to be mainly new camera support so nothing new it actually interest me but good to see anyway.

Adobe Update

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Lens Bokeh – Colour or Black & White

Bokeh
Bokeh

Its a very cliched idea, using the characteristics of a fast lens with good bokeh to make an image.

The light was good, the scene ok, nice but not spectacular, the white railings disappearing into the distance is what interested me.

I thought wide open with a blurred background it would make an interesting image.  The colour was not something I thought about and after looking at the colour image afterwards I thought the black & white image may make a stronger image.

Southwold Pier - BWNow I am not sure, i’ll leave it to the view to decide.

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Waiting

20131209-172603.jpg
Landscape Photographers often revisit the same spot time after time in the hope of the right light at the right time.

There are a couple of photographs now that I have been trying to take at Southwold. One from under the pier late in the day with the pier legs illuminated by the late sun and another from the end of the pier as the sun set with the light house shining its beacon.

Once again I was slightly disappointed, tide and light did not arrive together, but we did get a nice sunset which I managed to committed to film.

Still another reason to visit Southwold next year.

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Powercuts

Well after the power cut at my home village earlier in the week giving me lots of fun with Lightroom, we had another bigger power cut this evening taking out a lot of Lincoln and the surrounding area.

Film Scans in LR4
Film Scans in LR4

It made me think about our modern reliance on power and so tonight I packed my Hasselblad bag with some medium format film and am going to try and shoot some film for the next few days.

The down side is that I will not be able to share the images, well at least not for a few months with you on this site as it takes me a while to finish a roll of film, get it developed and scanned and published.

So i’ll also take my Leica M8 for some fun shots.

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Editing – sorting the wheat from the chaff

If I am shooting fixed subjects like landscapes or buildings then is likely to only be a few shots of each scene. When shooting wildlife or people then I can end up with a thousand or more images to have to sort through.Lightroom editing

Well the first job is to get those image on to internal hard disk of my computer. I then import and copy them into the local Lightroom. The import also copied the files to an external disk. Once the majority of the editing is complete the Lightroom files get moved to external disk. By this time Apple’s time machine will also have a copy on its disk so I’ll havE several copies before the memory cards get wiped and I also clear down the local hard disk for the next set of images.

Something to remember with Adobe Lightroom V5 is that you can create something called a smart preview. This enables you to edit and image but not actually have the image with you, great for when your out and a about but wanting to get some work done on an old MacBook Air with only a small SSD inside.

So you now have a thousand or so images sat in Lightroom, how do you quickly find the great ones. Well there are several ways but I find it a lot easier if I use two monitors, one set to grid view and the other set to loupe.  This enables you to flick through the your images in grid view but evaluate them properly.

I also tend to group similar photographs together, you can then just pick a couple of good ones that ones that are very similar.

I also find its good to do an edit close to taking the photographs but also go back over your old work and look again at the ones you did not select.  To often you can chose photographs because of the amount of effort it took to capture and not based on the content.  Time can be a good equaliser.

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Diagnosing Adobe Lightroom Issues

KeyboardAfter the fun of yesterday I thought I would blog a few notes on diagnosing start-up issues with Adobe Lightroom V5.

First step is to see if its your catalogue where the problem lies or with the app or plug-in.  Try opening another catalogue, or if that does not work then create a new catalogue.  Option-Click on the Adobe Lightroom icon and when it launches it will prompt you to open an existing catalogue or create a new one.

Yesterday I could create a new catalogue but once I had closed the catalogue it would not re-open.

Once you have ruled out the catalogue which is unlikely you can try resetting your preferences.

The following is direct from Adobe’s website:

Reset your preferences

To reset your preferences, do the following:

  1. Quit Lightroom.
  2. Navigate to the preferences file:
    • Mac OS: /Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Lightroom5.plist
    • Windows 7, 8: C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences\Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefs
  3. Drag the preferences file to the Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac OS).

Recent versions of Mac OS have hidden the Library folder under the user account so a quick way of getting there is to press Command-Shift-G then in the box type:

~/Library

This will take you to your library folder where you can find and delete the preferences file.

This fixed many issues in Adobe Lightroom V4 and V5 but it did not fix mine.

The next step is to disable your plug-ins, you might wonder how if Adobe Lightroom is hanging on startup but if you remember to hold the Option key as you click on the application icon, create a new catalogue then once in disable your plug-ins.

If this fixes your issue you can then start up a plug-in at a time, shutting down Lightroom and restarting each time until you find the plug-in that causes the issue.

You can then replace the plug-in which should fix the issue.