Richard & Caroline's Blog

I am a big fan of getting things right in camera, but I used to love experimenting in the darkroom.

Today we all have a darkroom at our finger tips with products like Gimp (Free), Adobe Elements, Apple’s iPhoto, Adobe Lightroom and lets not forget the big one, Photoshop.

Since the Beta was released I have been going over some of my old photographs and reprocessing them, trying to get my head round the new tools that Lightroom V4 brings to us.

I have used Lightroom since the early beta of V1, and have used it longer then I have Photoshop.  Every image I process goes through Lightroom but only a few go into Photoshop.

The above shots I reprocessed in LR4 and I took them in a different direction to how they were originally processed in LR3.

They may not be killer images but with each one I have learnt a lot.

Some of the film shots were very difficult images, with several of them I used a too contrasty film on a day that already had a lot of contrast.

For the portrait of Ashleigh; this was a simple shot with a small softbox to my left. I deliberately underexposed the natural light to make the full sun shining through the window look like late evening sunlight. Normally after minor exposure tweaks, adjusting the colour balance, and some sharpening, I would take this straight into Photoshop for the major editing. This image I did everything in Lightroom V4, and its produced a very pleasing and natural portrait.

Some people think I have a rather ridiculous Photography backup routine.

When out on site if away for more then a day I back up to the iPad, then backup to the computer when back to the office/home.  Files then get backed up to time machine (very useful if you have a Mac), then eventually moved off to an external hard disk, and also backed up to a Drobo and to a disk that is kept off site.

No matter what there should always be three copies of my files.

Well I don’t know how but last night I managed to delete my 2012 photograph directory off my main external hard drive while doing some extensive testing of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom V4.

Tonight to my horror, I discovered the fact.  I had also been efficient and deleted the early 2012 photographs of my Laptop to make some room and emptied the trash.

I had a copy off site and on the Drobo, but I still had that moment of panic!  I decided to not revert to the Drobo but try and recover the photographs from my Time Machine Backup.

Time Machine is an automatic backup program included with all Macs. Using this I was quickly able to recover all photographs except two shoots,  these had to be recovered from the Drobo.

So I can say my backup routine works, but I must remember to keep to my strict routine.  One of my backups did not have all the photographs on it, but luckily my routine ensures I always have more then one backup.

Remember; Backup, Backup and Backup.

Nikon have issued a service recall for the EN-EL15 Batteries, this is the battery found in the new D800, D800e, D7000 and the Nikon 1 V1.

More details here on how to identify if your battery is affected.

I having been playing with beta of Adobe Photoshop CS6 for a while now, but today it was officially announced and can be downloaded from them on the 7th May.

Kelby Training will be releasing a number of videos to help you get up to speed and there are a number of free webcasts showing what it can do.  Check some of them out here at Scott Kelby’s blog.

It was not long ago when if you wanted a 24MP camera you had to go medium format.  Then along came the D3X a seriously high resolution full frame digital SLR.

Well today Nikon brought that kind of resolution to the masses, with the new D3200.

Have to admit, not sure about 24MP for most casual users.  6MP is the most thats needed for most people but the megapixel race continues.  The D700 and D3(s) models showed you can get amazing results with lower pixel counts, but technology continues forward.

They also announced a new lens, the 28mm f/1.8, and its full frame.  Now to me wide angle for 35mm photography starts at 24mm, so Nikon if your listening can I have a D800 with your 24mm f/1.4 to test, pretty please?