Access Digital Photography

There are so many significant new features in Lightroom 3 that I’ll say it right out: If you have to make a living from your pictures or if it’s a serious hobby, you’d be stupid not to spend the $99 it takes to upgrade. Why? Because it adds that much more efficiency to the process of keeping track of, processing, and distributing your images. You’re in a field in which time is money…especially when it comes to the quality of your work.

First, a disclaimer: Though I’ve tested all of these improvements, I haven’t had the experience I’ve had with older versions. This blog is about a “first look” and my personal opinions as to what they seem to me to be. I really want you to comment if you disagree because we’ll both learn from the “interchange.” In fact, I always want you opinion on anything you read in this blog.

In the “What’s New” document that’s sent to the press, Adobe mentions thirteen significant new features. Here they are, only I’ve re-arranged them in the order that I’ve found them to be most important to me:

Perspective Correction Accelerated from Shoot to Finish.
Lens Correction
Lower Noise and Better Sharpening.
Exportable Video Slideshows with Music
Smarter Imports
Multi-image Print Layouts.
Natural Appearance Vignetting
Next-generation Image Processing

I haven’t had the time to cover these new features yet, so look for a new post in the “near future.”
Drag and Drop Online Publish Services
Easily Import and Organize Video Files
Create and Control Natural Grain
Convenient Tethered Capture
Flexible Watermarks

Lens and Perspective Correction: I don’t have special calibrations to include for the lenses I have, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how well Lightroom 3 turns corrects barrel distortion and fringing. The image below shows, from left to right, the original photo with the perspective distortion that occurs when the camera is not in parallel with the center of the subject, the Lightroom result of simply going to the Lens Correction Panel in the Develop module, clicking Manual, and interactively dragging sliders until you like what you see. Often, that “tilts” a part of the picture so that there is space in the frame. You can then scale the image up to crop that space out or…as shown here…you can right click on the image and choose to Edit in…Photoshop CS5. Then just make a Quick Selection of the empty space, expand the selection and feather it a bit to make sure there’s no gap, and choose Edit > Fill and tell it to use Content Aware in the resulting dialog. What you see on the right is the result: Magic.

Better processing: It will leave the old ones just as you were used to them, but if you choose Develop > Process > Settings, you’ll see the year of the original process is checked and you can check 2010 and immediately see the difference. If you don’t like it, just press Cmnd/Ctrl + Z and you’re instantly back to the original. I can’t show you the difference here on the Web…it’s too subtle for 72dpi sRGB repro. Take my word for it: you get a bit more dynamic range and image sharpness. So from now on, if I’m going to re-submit or re-interpret an image, I’ll probably re-set the processing to 2010, just to be technically “more acceptable” to a prospective agency or client.

Smarter Imports: This one has taken me some getting used to. I’m so used to the “old way” that I found the new Import interface more confusing when downloading my camera cards. One thing I do like, though, is that it defaults to converting your RAW files to DNG…something I’ve often forgotten to do. LR2 allowed you to do that, but it wasn’t the obvious default. It should be done because this format is open and will outlive all the specific camera and model formats.

The reason I find it more confusing is the very thing that Adobe thinks makes it more useful: There’s no longer a dialog, but an Import Mode that occurs when you click the Import button or insert a memory card, camera, or DVD containing photos. Here’s the screen shot:

What I really do like is the way the photos you’re about to import are shown. You can also choose the destination in your library by clicking an existing folder in the library or by choosing the desitnation from a menu at the right that lets you create a new folder in your Library…just as before. It’s great, but it does take a little “getting used to.

More Exportable Video Slideshows with Music: Rather than having to settle for a PDF slideshow that may not be “includable” as a PDF when you’re making a presentation or emailing the slideshow to someone who doesn’t have Adobe Reader installed, you can now choose to export it as a movie and you can now designate any compatible music file that’s on your computer as background music. Makes it easy to put slideshows on my iPad or into a mass mailing. These slideshows are compatible with both Adobe and Windows Media Players and with QuickTime. Unfortunately, this version of WordPress wouldn’t let me upload an MP4 file here, regardless of whether I chose the Browser or Flash uploaders. But LR doesn’t make a Flash slideshow, which is good news for movies you might want to have seen on an iPad or iPhone.

Lower Noise and Better Sharpening: I really like shooting at night, but at times all I get are images in which I need to bring up the mid-tones because bright lights can “fool” the camera’s meter. I put up with it because otherwise, I simply wouldn’t have the picture. I was astonished, though at how well LR3 brought out the mid-tones in this shot. Sure enough, there was a fair amount of noise (this was only an 8MP image at ISO 200 with an Oly SP 350…not exactly “state of the art”). I usually fix it with Topaz DeNoise because Topaz Adjust has made me such a fan of Topaz filters. So imagine my amazement when all I had to do to eliminate it completely in Lightroom 3 was drag the Noise slider about 1/3d of the way to the right. Not a smidge of noise and the original had been quite dark, which really made the image unacceptably “grainy”. What really surprised me even more was that the edges were still relatively sharp, especially considering the shot was hand-held at 1/20th second. My goodness! It actually looked like the lens had been image stabilized…which it wasn’t (can’t wait to get my hands on a Canon S 90, though). Here’s a portion of the shot at 100% enlargement. You be the judge.

Multi-image Print Layouts: The lovely thing here, for me, is being able to print file numbers, captions, or titles under the images and then print them to a file that I can then open in Photoshop and size and crop for my iPad. Makes it much easier to let a client or prospective print buyer choose a particular image when they’re looking at their proofs on the iPad…or anything else, for that matter. Unfortunately, you can only choose to have one textfield printed underneath, because it would be great if you could have the file name, title, and caption. But if I settle for the title, I’ll be able to use lightroom to find each image the client chooses by searching for its title, so it’s nearly as good. I also rank all the “keepers” with three or more stars, so there’s no confusing which one of the files with that title is actually the chosen one, even if there are virtual copies with different interpretations. The caption you see on the image below was added in the Print Module:

In Photoshop, you could then put frames around them if you wanted or, if you wanted to get fancy, just re-type the names in another font of another color…even put them right on top of the images. Then just select and copy them into another file and save them in the catalog folder that you’re going to sync with your iPad.

PS: There may be another way to do this kind of thing that I’m going to cover in another blog if I can ever get Office for Mac installed (nearly impossible if you’ve ever run a trial version of the software): That is, just exporting the “winner” images to a separate catalog and putting them into PowerPoint. You could then add titles and commentary by hand and export the whole slide show as individual photos. I’ll try that once I get the program installed. Because I tried their trial version first, I couldn’t install the licensed version. I’m sure there’s a solution somewhere. I’ll try to keep you posted. Meantime, if you know or you’ve tried it, please let me know how you solved the problem.

Natural Image Vignetting:

When you go to the Effects Panel you find a few more sliders that let you make the vignette more square or round, feather it to the extent you like, and change the location of the midpoint. In the image below, the composition was really improved by having the vignette make us focus on the flower when I couldn’t show what I wanted to include in the picture and still pay strict attention to the “rule of thirds.

Next Generation Image Processing: The program defaults to keeping the images as they were originally processed, but the newer version seems to add a bit more punch and sharpness. If you like, you can preview the difference and update it. It’s a subtle change, though, that you couldn’t very well see here on the web.

I haven’t yet done much with the remaining features, so I’ll save them for later. This blog’s getting more than a little long anyway.

What’s Missing: I’d really like to see some pre-sets for tone-mapping (single-image HDR processing) so that you could apply and compare several different settings to several virtual images non-destructively in Lightroom. You could then give yourself and your clients some powerful interpretative options when it comes to lighting, color interpretation and color values that, so far, can only be accomplished in a highly destructive way in Photoshop. To be fair, though, I have to say that I have no idea what it would take to do this as a practical matter. But BOY!, wouldn’t it be cool? Maybe a plug-in for Topaz Adjust would do the job?
Please Make Comments on this and any other blog you read or see on AccessDigitalPhotography or any of my other sites. If you have questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. If you know something I don’t, please let me and our readers know about that, too. It’s all about me making this site as useful to you as possible.

Please Make Comments on this and any other blog you read or see on AccessDigitalPhotography or any of my other sites. If you have questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. If you know something I don’t, please let me and our readers know about that, too. It’s all about me making this site as useful to you as possible.

Thanks for being here and have a great day. You’re always welcome back.

Ken Milburn, photographer/author

This blog is about different types of digital cameras and new options that they offer for making us more flexible and creative. This information comes from a variety of press releases and on-line reviews…not hands on testing. These are just my ideas as to what’s worth having and doing it with what appears to me to be the best bargain it its category.

We’re beginning to see some important technological changes in digital cameras that I think will lead to their being more versatile, convenient, and have more creative possibilities. Before you read my observations, though, let me make it clear that I haven’t done any hands-on testing of any of the cameras I’m writing about. I’ll certainly do that, though, as soon as I can get my hands on one or all of them.

Pocket camera: Canon S90

It’s black, so less likely to be noticed and it’s very small size and lack of an electronic viewfinder make it look “amateurish.” The lens collapses into the body and there are no grips or bumps, so the camera fits really nicely into a shirt pocket.

But the fact that it has amazing software and a larger sensor than any other compact produces images that appear close in quality with some of the APS-C sized DSLRs. And it shoots RAW, so you get about 4 more stops of brightness data than if you were just shooting JPEG.

A compact camera is the best way to get great DoF in low light or macros. You can’t get great blurred backgrounds when you want to fix attention on the subject (as in most portraits and flower photos. However, Alien Skin’s Bokeh plug-in will fix that brilliantly in post when shallow is needed.

Despite the fact that you have to use the huge (3”), bright, hi-def (461,000 pixel) LCD to frame the photos, it works very well in even bright light. You could always put a Hoodman hood or Loupe on it, too…and they don’t cost all that much ($40-$80). With the high res screen, it would be about as good as it can get and be great for shooting movies. It even shoots 640×480 movie clips. Great for when you want to show people how to do something or to make little “stock movies” whilst running around shooting other things and don’t have time to do it with your larger camera.

Since one of the primary uses for a compact is “anonymous” reportage, the S90’s nearly unheard of f/2 lens and ISO 80-3200 sensitivity make it ideal. Since the second most important use comes from “spontaneous macros,” it’s also good to know that you can be in sharp focus as close as two inches from the subject.

I’d really like a camera just like this that was waterproof so I could shoot underwater and in really crappy weather. At least, this one has available an underwater housing. It has a settings ring around the lens, so you can change settings without taking your eyes from the screen. So you could “bracket” scene settings while shooting without taking your eye off the LCD . It also has a fill flash setting. Widest lens opening is f/2.0 zoomed all the way in (great for Sunset scenes). Largest sensor in a compact and CCD sensor and not “overpushed” resolution make for exceptional image quality for a compact…good enough for most commercial purposes. On line test shots at dpreview.com show very amazing noise levels at ISO settings up to 3,200 thanks to great in-camera noise reduction.

Cons: no external flash xcept w/ remote, no viewfinder, LCD doesn’t swing and tilt. Can’t zoom while shooting movies, no remote,

Suggestions: Get a Hoodman. Include HDR and panorama stitching.

Mirror-Free Interchangeable Lens Hybrid Camera

The leaders in this category have been using the 4/3 sensor, ostensibly in order to keep the size of the camera as small as possible. I have, in fact, a Panasonic Lumix G1 that I adore and its tilt and swivel LCD screen is something that every digital camera should have.

Then along comes Samsung with their NX10. Although it has a 60% larger APS-C sensor, it’s actually slightly smaller than the Panasonic EVF cameras and it’s half the price of the top of the line Panasonic and also shoots movies. It is about 40% smaller than the typical DSLR with a sensor of the same size. This makes them a total joy to “run around town” with…especially if you want to use two cameras, but with different lenses.

For $700 with the kit lens, this camera is a way better deal than the higher-end compacts that have SLR-styling with an electronic viewfinder. You do get to see most of the info that a conventional DSLR shows only on it’s LCD, including a choice of grid lines…including that for the Rule of Thirds. Can be had with an f/2 20mm pancake, and the two most common kit zoom focal lengths. There are also 18-200mm superzoom, a 20mm pancake and a 60mm primary on their way. on their way. There’s also an adapter that lets you use your APS-C Samsung and Pentax camera lenses, too.

This camera uses the same 14.6MP Pentax sensor as my favorite APS-C size DSLR, the Pentax K-7. These cameras are great for shooting movies because their large sensors allow for DoF control and they have live view, so you can see exactly what’s happening when the scene is running…and you can do that either through the viewfinder or the camera’s LCD. Big advantage in being able to see what you’re going to get before you shoot.

Cons: I want to see one of these with a full-frame sensor and a tilt/swivel LCD. The LCD isn’t articulated. That makes the camera slimmer, but what you loose is on-the-run image composition flexibility. Damn! No image stabilization in the sensor. No weather-proofing. Only brackets in ½ or 1/3 step increments. Wake up folks! We really need 2-stop steps these days. No option for an external mic.

I wish Pentax would do a 25MP full-frame (35mm) sensor camera with an electronic viewfinder and articulated backlit LCD screen.

APS-C DSLR Cameras

These are pretty much the industry standard for serious amateurs, and the majority of media, event, and stock pros. All the current models in this category act and behave better than 35mm film cameras and can easily give you good enough images for gallery prints of landscapes. If you’re “moving up” to a full frame camera, you’ll still find lots of advantage in keeping these as your second camera or to use in potentially “unsafe” situations. Most full frame cameras cost 2-4 times as much.

Picking the best camera in this category is largely a matter of personal preferences and prejudices. Nikon and Canon lead the pack in terms of sales and this alone gives them some real advantages: A broader range of models, assurance that they’ll keep up with or lead the technology, and dealers even in some of the more remote places on Earth. Besides, they’re what most of the pros have “voted on,” so they inspire confidence in a lot of clients.

If you’re on a budget, though, and want the most “bang for the buck,” my vote is for the Pentax K7. It’s the only camera anywhere near its approximately $950 kit price that has a magnesium alloy weather-sealed body. That can mean a lot when you’re traveling…as I always am these days. It’s also been upgraded to an outstanding Live View mode that features options for a grid, contrast autofocus detection, colored areas to show blown out highlights and shadows and a histogram. Those are all features that I’ve learned to crave because they give me lots more to go on when deciding how I want to shoot an image. There’s also a built-in electronic level function, so you can spend a lot less time in Lightroom “straightening” the horizon and loosing image definition in the process. There’s also automatic in-camera merging of multi-frame HDR images as well as a very nice setting for capturing highlights and shadows that would otherwise be blown out. Frankly, in many situations a single frame image may be the best way to do it anyway because you don’t have to worry about registering multiple images that you’ve hand-held or in which there’ve been moving objects (think traffic in city scapes and sports photography). There’s amazingly good tone-mapping software that can do the job quickly in post production (Photoshop CS5, Photomatix, Topaz Adjust) and you have a LOT more creative control than you’d ever have time to think about “in camera”.

Jumping back to bracketed HDR images: The K7 can shoot a 5 frames per second…nearly twice the sequence speed of all but the very most expensive cameras in this category. Not only are you more likely to “capture the moment” in an action sequence, you can shoot a bracketed sequence for HDR with much lower chance of moving the camera in the process. If HDR is your thing (as it is mine much of the time) here’s a really important thing to note: You can bracket up to 5 shots at up to two stops apart!

Finally, there’s a feature that only appears in three brands of cameras (Olympus, Pentax, and Sony) that I don’t want to have to do without if I can avoid it: In camera image stabilization. I’ve been very pleased with how well my Pentax K-7 handles that…and I work in a country where a tripod can be an invitation to theft if you’re working alone. Some manufacturers are reluctant to include this feature because they make a LOT of money charging extra for stabilization in individual lenses. With these cameras, you’ve got it no matter what lens you use. If you have image-stabilized lenses that fit the mount, you can turn it off in camera and on in the lens…or vice-versa, so there’s certainly nothing to loose.

Almost all the brands of DSLR cameras (and all the brands of hybrids) are including movie-making capabilities in their most recent models, but not all let you focus and zoom while shooting, include the highest resolution and wide-screen options, or have the capabiity of plugging in an external stereo mike. I’m really anxious to do some live podcasts…so that’s a big deal for me. I can’t wait to get my hands on one. Shooting movies with very long lenses with limited depth of field and with fish-eye lenses makes for creative imaging that just can’t be done with your everyday movie camera. Using a large sensor means getting incredible quality.

I wish this camera had a tilt/swivel LCD, but it does have a 3” super-hi res LCD that’s reported to be fairly easy to see in daylight. That’s really important when you’re using it to shoot movies because you can’t do it through the viewfinder (as you can with the hybrids mentioned above).

Pentax has also taken the lead in giving you the option to shoot RAW in either their own proprietary format or in Adobe DNG…a universal format that will never go out of style. Guess which one I chose.

APS-C size sensors don’t give you as much cropping leeway as full frame cameras and some advertising clients tend to look for a pro with a full frame camera because they want the self-assurance that image resolution can be more or less as good as possible. I remember “back in the old days” when I used to haul out a case of Hassleblads to give art directors confidence, then shot with my Nikon to make sure I captured the model’s spontaneity.

35mm Full Frame Camera

There are several things, IMHO, that make a modern full-frame camera an eventually must-have item: Way better low-light performance due to the larger sensor and the ability to make incredibly high-resolution movies. Besides, you usually get 50-100% more pixels and they don’t have to be nearly so close together. So you get higher definition and less noise. Clients like them because they’re “assured” of getting the highest quality image. There’s also a lot of appeal in the idea of being able to shop for a whole army of used lenses at incredibly low prices.

Trouble is, the full frame camera I want hasn’t appeared yet. Sony has one with higher resolution than any other full frame camera (25 vs. 21MP), but it’s low-noise performance isn’t rated much better than that of many APS-C sensor cameras. Furthermore, it doesn’t even shoot movies. It does have in-body IS…so far, a unique thing in the full frame field.

The best alternative, so far, is the Canon 5D Mark II. It gets a way better low-noise rating at high ISOs AND it shoots hi-def movies and has a microphone input.

But what I’m really waiting for is for Pentax to do a full-frame hybrid. Then I can have a hi-def camera that makes great movies and has built in IS and has full time live-view. But PLEASE , Pentax, put a tilt/swivel LCD on the back of it. Without the mirror and the prism, you can probably also beat Sony’s price and we won’t have to put up with that annoying flash hot-shoe, either. Or…Canon or Nikon will try to beat the other to the competitive punch by doing exactly that. IMHO, that will be the beginning of the end for conventional DSLR cameras. Bet I get a lot of “hate mail” for making that statement, though.

I’ve been working a lot at my desk lately, and every once in a while I just get a little sitr-crazy. Besides, I start feeling like I’ve got to get out and shoot. Sometimes, there’s just no place to go and no way to get there. Here’s the result of the last time that happened:

Trouble is, the neighborhood I’m renting my Panama City apartment in is a long way from most of the places I want to go. So lately I’ve been taking the local Diablo Rojo (Red Devil) buses. I’ll do another blog on them alone, soon. But they’re old school buses that only charge 25-cents to go anywhere they go. Beats the begonias out of cab fares. Trouble is, they tend to be full of underpaid people who’d love the chance to steal a camera. So I take along my trusty Olypus SP-350, which I’ve hung onto for years because it’s quite tiny, has all the right adjustments, and shoot RAW. And, it’s 8MP…enough definition to get me a nice 16×20 print…especially with a little help from Genuine Fractals and a good noise reduction filter. That’s if I don’t crank the ISO up over 200, mind you. Best of all, I can shove it into my front pants pocket where it’s invisible and I can protect it. Even when it can be seen, it doesn’t look nearly as valuable as a DSLR.

Lately, I’ve been discovering that, even in low light and with the help of some tone-mapping and artistic special effects, it can be a lot of fun to shoot strange things from strange angle, even when the ISO has to be cranked up, to “very grainy” and then turn them in to artsy abstracts that don’t look much like photographs at all. You saw one of those images at the top of this blog. That was made by just putting the shot through Topaz Adjusts’ “I feel Lucky” changes until I got something I liked.

The image below was made by I first combining two images using Photoshop’s Layer Blend Modes,  then experimenting with the Filter Gallery and combining artistic filters until I liked what I got.:

You don’t really need third-party filters to play with these ideas. I talk about them a lot because you can see the results quickly and the processes they employ would take a lot of time to do by hand. But don’t forget that there are lots of art filters and other effects built into Photoshop. Combine those with HDR techniques and layer Blend Modes and Lightroom presets and the possibilities become nearly endless.

The best part is, many times these treatments will create a mood or felling that’s much more like the experience of being there than what the more standard and literal techniques capture. After all, our minds are constantly “interpreting” what our eyes see.

Please feel free to leave comments and questions. I love to help and I love your help. Who knows, you may even give me an idea or two.