Updates! : Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe has released updates for Lightroom and Camera Raw.  Lightroom 3.6 is available for download now as is Adobe Camera Raw 6.6  Keep your software up to date!

Quick Look : Easy-Go Speedlite Reflector and Pixel Wireless eTTL Kit

I took some time to do a quick review of a couple of products over the last couple of days.

The first is the Easy-Go Speedlite Reflector and mount.  I tried the unit with a 580 EX II, a Metz MB58 AF-2 and a Sigma DG Super.  To my disappointment, the unit does something that completely screws up the eTTL measurements resulting in underexposure by on average three stops.  Since each flash works fine on a variety of bodies in eTTL without the reflector, and multiple bodies and multiple flashes produce underexposed shots with the reflector, I have to say it's the reflector.  So, save the $60 for the reflector and mount and get a collapsible Gary Fong light dome.  It works flawlessly, gives wonderful soft light and doesn't mess up the eTTL flash.  The Easy-Go stuff feels cheap and earns 0 stars.

I also took time to check out the King eTTL Flash transmitter and receiver kit from Pixel Enterprise.  It's basically a clone of the acclaimed Pocket Wizard eTTL controllers.  There is a designated transmitter and receiver.  Both use two AA batteries.  The radio control is simple and effective and eTTL exposures are excellent.  The system offers three channels and three zones.  I won't be dumping my collection of Pocket Wizards, but if all you need is radio controlled remote eTTL solution for a single flash this kit is relatively inexpensive and works well.  And, since it is radio and not Infrared, it will work outside and in situations where there are other photographers discharging flash.  3 stars out of 5.

REVIEW : Westcott Speedlite Kits - Apollo Orb and Apollo Striplight

I tend to use studio flash in the studio, but sometimes a location shoot doesn't need 1000ws or bags of heavy kit.  I love my PocketWizard TT1 and TT5 units because I can simply get wireless TTL flash going with my Canon DSLRs.  This simplifies the use of speedlite driven modifiers  because I don't have to worry about flash splitters and the inconsistent function of IR based remote flash.  This past fall, Westcott released a series of modifiers designed to be lightweight, portable and to work with hot shoe based flashguns.

The Canon 580 EX II is a fine unit, although my preference are Metz 58 AF-2 units.  In either case they do the full eTTL thing readily.  Stringing cables is a pain and IR triggers don't always work when the flash is inside a box.

Setting up either the Orb or the Striplight is a piece of cake.  The kit includes a solid stand, a flash mount with tilt and umbrella mount, and the appropriate soft box and front scrim.  Simply erect the stand, and attach the flash mount.  Open the soft box, just like an umbrella and mount it to the stand.  Place your flash on the mount using whatever trigger you like, orienting the flash to fire into the box.  Put the scrim on using the velcro tabs.  That's it!.

The boxes are constructed with zipped sections to allow the stand to pass through the side of the box.  The orb is an octabox style and the strip light is a tall narrow style.  The Orb has one opening, the strip has two, for portrait and landscape orientations.

Using the Pocket Wizards, you maintain full eTTL flash capability and by adding the AC3 zone controller you can set multiple zones through the pocket wizards avoiding the need to use Canon's zone system that is dependent upon infrared.

Great exposures are a snap and with proper light placement you can get beautifully soft light where the flash is the dominant source or even outside as supporting light.  The really nice thing about the Westcott kits is how compact they are.  You could carry four of them in a generic gym bag from Walmart.

Of course you can use cabled connections for your TTL flashes if you so desire, although I avoid this due to the probability I will knock something expensive over when I trip on the cable.

Both Westcott kits retail for under $200 and you can sometimes find them on sale.  For the money, they are really well built, provide wonderful soft light and help you get more from your hot shoe flash.

Pictured are the Apollo Orb and the Apollo Strip Speedlite kits

Highly Recommended

Review : Leica X1

A photographer can always benefit from great gear, but great gear does not a great photographer make.  So it has been said often.  It's also said that a camera is just a tool to facilitate the making of images.  Yup I agree. But.  Take the little Leica X1 in hand, and you might start to think that this camera will make you a better photographer..  There IS something about a Leica.  Let's start at the beginning.

I have wanted a Leica rangefinder for years, but other priorities have always come first.  And, reality bites, but those other priorities still do.  I don't need a rangefinder.  I have excellent cameras already, be they of the 35mm variety or medium format.  I stopped shooting in the mid eighties and came back with the advent of good digital came back ten years ago  Back in the eighties, through the kindness of a friend by name of Victor Grape, I was able to shoot for myself and on some jobs with a Leica M4-P with motor winder and a 35mm lens.  It was brilliant then, and I have since wanted that feeling again

I've looked around at used M8, M8.2 and M9 digital rangefinders, but timing is not good.  I've just had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the X1 and I am seriously impressed.

Many folks talk about how Apple starts the experience with incredible packaging.  Well Apple could be looking to Leica for tips.  The X1 arrives in a simple, large silver box with a black rectangle holding a wireframe of the X1 in white.  Pull the tab and lift the lid, and unlike other boxes it falls away to the rear.  So do the front and the sides revealing what looks like a black jewelry box.  Lifting the hinged top reveals a grey box with the Leica logo in the top corner.  The box is heavy card with a subtle pinstripe.  The front panel of the box swings down revealing two drawers.  The top drawer holds the manuals, and unlike the manuals for most every fixed lens autofocus, these are beautifully printed, extremely complete and easy to read.  The bottom drawer holds cables, a pouch, strap and the power adapter with international slide on tips and of course the battery.  There has been criticism that the power adapter doesn't have fold away prongs, but this is an American conceit since the prongs for the UK are so sizeable, they won't be folding anywhere.  Rather than force the owner to source plug adapters when travelling, Leica has you covered.

Upon opening the small grey box, the X1 s revealed cradled in foam.  It looks like the M9 with clean simple lines, minus the viewfinder of course.  Given the substantial weight of the complete package the weight of the X1 is a surprise, particularly if you have handled the M9.  It is refreshingly lightweight and fits the hand very well.

Installing the battery and SDHC card is pretty much the same process as with any compact camera although the latch required more deliberate action.  You won't be opening the battery door by accident.  Many compact cameras have a ring around the shutter release that controls zoom.  In the case of the X1 it offers single shot, continuous (2fps Jpeg only) and self timer.  The dial on the right controls aperture offering A for automatic settings, plus the range from f2.8 to f16 on the 24mm Elmarit lens.  Unlike the majority of compacts, the X1 uses an APS-C sized sensor, so that 24mm lens provides a field of view like a 35mm on a 35mm film camera.  This is the classic rangefinder focal length.

The dial to the left is the shutter speed selector with A for automatic and a range of 1/2000 to 1 second.  There is no bulb option.  When the shutter dial and aperture dial are set to A, the camera operates in fully automatic exposure mode.  Placing the shutter dial in A and manipulating the aperture setting gives you aperture preferred.  Setting the aperture dial to A and manipulating the shutter speed dial gives you shutter speed preferred.  Manipulating both dials off auto gives you full manual.  There is a hot shoe with pinouts for Leica flashes.  On the left is a circular raised area that acts as the release and enclosure for the built in flash.  The flash is small and not particularly powerful but gets the job done when needed.  The camera sports an ISO range from 100 to 3200 with excellent noise control as well as auto ISO for those who like that sort of thing.

The front panel holds the lens, which extends when powered on (you must remove the cap when turning the camera on), the Leica logo and a small LED that provides focus assist.  The right side holds an elegant door that provides access to the USB port and the mini HDMI connection.  Beside the battery door on the bottom is a standard ¼-20 tripod fitting

The rear of the camera holds a bright LCD display with 230k dots.  This is much less than the density found on other cameras, but in practical use, it is more than sufficient to check images or use the menus.  There is a rotary wheel upper right to be used for manual focus and this is much more intuitive than you might originally think.  Below it is the popular four way rocker/wheel/button arrangement.  The centre button activates the menu system and acts as the Ok button.  Top is exposure compensation labeled EV+-.  Right is for flash settings.  There are Auto, Auto w Red Eye, Forced On, Forced On with Red Eye, Slow Sync, Slow Sync with Red Eye and Studio.  The last option enables the flash to fire just enough to trigger studio strobes.  While I would not have gone looking for this in a compact camera of pocket size, I was very pleased to discover it.  Kind of fun to have this tiny creature trigger all my strobes.  Bottom allows you to select AF, AF with macro and MF or manual focus.  The left button selects between 2s and 12s for the self timer but only acts if the switch on the camera top is set for self timer.

Left of the screen are five buttons.  The are Play, Focus/Delete, WB, ISO and Info.  They do what you expect them to do.  I liked the focus selection allowing you to move quickly from spot focus to 11 zones including high speed modes very simply.  Initial releases of the camera provoked anger with the speed of focus found in the 1.x versions of the firmware.  My unit has the current v2.0 firmware and while not screaming fast, it's quick enough but tends to hunt in low light as it is contrast based.  If your intent is to use this camera for fast action, it's not the right choice for you.  The manual focus option does provide a scale on the display so you can preset a hyper focal distance focus model by aperture.  I miss this on most digital cameras and it does simplify street shooting.  Couple this with a nearly silent shutter release and it's really just brilliant.

The X1 is assembled from components in Germany by Leica.  So it's not some stuck together thing from somewhere with the Leica logo stuck on.

The big draw of the camera is the Elmarit 24/2.8 lens.  While some folks stroke out at the cost of the X1 ($2100 CDN at time of writing) this is still less than the 24/2.8 Elmarit for the M9.  So it's not the same piece of glass but it is, in my use, the sharpest and most accurate piece of glass on any compact or micro four thirds camera I have ever tried.  Since I work part time in a camera store, I get opportunity to try out lots of kit, and this lens is just marvelous.  I did specific comparisons with the 20mm lens on the Lumix GF-1 I have had for a while and there really is no comparison.  The Lumix lens is very good.  Until you compare it to the Leica.  The Leica's incredible tonal range and colour fidelity makes the otherwise very good Panasonic glass look like it came off the bottom of a Coke bottle.

In my use I have shot at a variety of ISO settings and am very impressed with the quality at high ISO settings.   The auto white balance is decent but not perfect, although under studio CFLs rated at 5500K, it performed very well and a corrected image made of the Colorchecker Passport was indistinguishable from the automatic setting.

One thing that is a niggling annoyance is that the camera can capture in Jpeg and Jpeg Fine, or add DNG images as well.  There is no option for DNG on its own, which takes up space unnecessarily for me as I make the habit to shoot everything in RAW.  Not a big deal.  When you register the camera with Leica, you get a download of Adobe Lightroom so handling the files is a piece of cake.  I particularly like Leica's decision to go with the open DNG format for its RAW storage.

The menu system should be seen by all other digital camera manufacturers, particularly, oh EVERY point and shoot vendor.  unlike the multicoloured, multilayered, designed by the psychotic menu systems found in other cameras, there is ONE layer to the X1 menu.  It is four screens long.  You simply scroll and then click.  Twice.  No more than that.  Brilliant.

Pros

Incredibile lens, great menu system, silent use, awesome add-on optical finder, innovative popup flash, tough construction

Cons

Expensive.

I give it five out of five.

How to get great audio for your video projects

As they used to say in the movies, "it's a trap!"  Getting good audio in your video projects shouldn't be that tough but it often is.  While many consumer and prosumer level cameras have external microphone inputs, they are often of dubious quality and only work with high impedance (short cable length and noisy) microphones.  Pro grade video cameras have balanced low impedance inputs of the XLR format allowing for long cable runs and superior noise control.  Fortunately there is a solution for the rest of us. Now I won't tell you this is a simple process, because it isn't, but it will give you great audio.  Do record audio with your video camera.  AND do record audio with a separate audio recorder.  For less than the price of a bolt on XLR input, low to high impedance, mic converter, you can get an amazing audio recorder and it is the Zoom H4N.

The Zoom H4N (pictured) is a brilliant piece of kit.  In addition to really excellent stereo microphones it also has two XLR mic inputs, as well as line input capability.  It has integrated meters and level controls.  It can mount on a tripod or on a mic stand.  The internal mics have excellent directional control and you can put a windscreen over the tops of the mics to reduce wind noise if needs be.  The unit can record in uncompressed WAV or compressed MP3 file formats and stores content on standard SDHC memory cards.

So here is a simple workflow that anyone can use.

1.  Set up your video camera as you wish, tripod or handheld

2.  Position the Zoom appropriately if using the built in mics, or if using external mics, plug them in and run them out to your sources (i.e. a "stand-up" style interviewer)

3.  Start the recorder and the video camera, synchronization is nice but not critical

4.  Use a clapper, or hand clap or other sharp noise to put a spike in the audio track for the Zoom and the video camera's audio track

5.  Complete your recording(s) as necessary

6.  Now import your footage to your computer as you normally would and copy the audio files from the Zoom's card to your computer as well

7.  Launch your movie editing software and import the content from your video camera onto a track/timeline/project whichever your software uses

8.  Import the audio track from the Zoom onto a separate track

9.  Now select the content from the video camera and separate the audio and video tracks.  This is a pretty common function in most all editing apps, so you can delete the audio, or add a voiceover or otherwise manipulate the audio

10.  View both your audio tracks as waveforms, and adjust them so the "spike" you recorded earlier is aligned.  You might have an editing tool that performs audio alignment automatically (Final Cut Pro X does this wonderfully), but if not the spike is very helpful.  If you can expand the waveform track to spread it out, this becomes much easier

11.  Once aligned, play the project, if your alignment is solid, you will hear only "one" audio track, not two, although it may sound a little thicker than the originals did due to small delay

12.  If the project looks right, meaning the lips are in sync with the audio, you are finished moving tracks in the timeline

13.  Mute the entire audio track that came from the video camera and play the project.  If you are happy with the outcome, delete the muted track to prevent it coming back by accident

14.  Link the audio and video tracks together and do your editing, cutting, rippling, adding titles, whatever you need to do

15.  You're done.  It's not like using a mixing desk and big screen editing decks, but it is a LOT better than using the built-in mics on the video camera or trying to get good audio out of crappy high impedance microphones plugged into the questionable audio stage of a consumer video camera.

Quick Look : Lumix DMC-TS3

I've had a few people ask me about beach friendly cameras, or ski friendly cameras or water friendly cameras over the last couple of weeks. After a couple of questions I determine that they are really talking about water and shock resistant point and shoots and not a proper underwater camera like a Nikonos. (this is where those who think I am dissing non-Nikonos users send me hate mail or rude comments). I have taking the time to look at many that are available now and while I wont name the ones I dont like, I will name one that I think pretty highly of and that is the DMC-TS3 from Lumix (Panasonic).

Despite my distaste for silly naming conventions, I will refer to the camera as the TS3.

Since the lens is the most important part of the camera to me, I want to start by praising the DC VARIO ELMAR and if sounds like a Leica lens, it is. Its a 28mm equivalent lens so a decent wide angle field of view with aspherical elements. The lens offers 4.6x of optical zoom. It also has digital zoom but friends dont let friends use digital zoom.  

Rated at 12.1 megapixels, the camera produces sharp images that enlarge well without a lot of pixelation. Low light performance is decent and the full HD video is very good. The built in flash is like most point and shoots, good for closer distances with that DMV license look, lousy for distance.

The camera has a built in GPS. You can actually see your location on the back screen in addition to geotagging your photos. GPS is a love or hate thing with most people but I like the geotagging capability.

Overall the fit and finish is really nice without a plasticky feel. The camera is readily available in orange, red and blue. Compared to the other water/shock protected cameras in the price range, I like the Lumix a lot more.

4 stars out of 5.

iPhone : Great panoramas with Microsoft Photosynth

 Photosynth has been around for a while, as a sort of skunkworks project from some really clever folks at Microsoft.  Photosynth on the PC allows you to do some pretty cool photo tricks and the app has been enhanced to facilitate posting images to Bing as a sort of share your work scenario.  Those are not the things that excited me however.  What is wicked cool is how simple the iPhone app makes the creation of panoramas. Now certainly you can create panoramas with your DSLR both manually or with a glut of obscenely expensive tools.  You could also go with the Gigapan system that programmatically uses servos and information you program in to create incredible panoramic images.  (I like the tech, but not the perpetual license to use your images).

But as I am prone to say, perhaps at the risk of babble, "the best camera is the one you have with you", and I, like many of you, always have my iPhone and with the 4S, the camera is pretty decent.  Photosynth for iPhone does many things but most importantly it makes creating panoramas scary simple.

Launch the app and you follow the process to capture images and then stitch them together.  There are tips sites as well but I found the app so simple and so powerful that I am doing panoramas a lot, certainly not all good, but lots because it is so simple and fun.  Putting the 4S in one of the little cases with a tripod mount and you are set to make some pretty darn nice images.  At the time of this posting, Photosynth is free.  If you have an iPhone, have ever fired up the camera and would like to try making panoramas without getting a solid headache or spending a fortune on added kit, get this app.

5 out of 5

Quick Look : Fujifilm X10

I had a 30 minute hands-on with the new X10 yesterday. I really wanted to like this camera. Really. I had loved the feel and fit of the X100 but ended up returning it because of poor focus, incomprehensible menus and a jog/dial/wheel that was so sensitive I spent more time getting back to where I wanted to be than actually getting there the first time. I also felt the camera was very expensive given the fixed focal length lens. Hence I was hopeful that the X10 would maintain the fit and feel but have learned from the X100 since it has been out for a while and gone through some firmware updates.

The X10 does not feel as "comfortable" as the X100, although this is very subjective. I prefer the optical vs the hybrid viewfinder, but it is not nearly as bright as I might have liked and the linkage to the zoom is not readily apparent. The camera is unlocked by rotating the zoom ring. As the ring is very narrow, those with larger digits (like me) may find that the ring is not easily grippable and your fingers often intrude into the viewfinder area. The ring is stiff to rotate and while I have no data to draw lifecycle conclusions, I am concerned that the zoom is also the on/off switch.

I really like the zoom range on the camera which covers something on the order of 28-112 relative to a full frame. I found this reminiscent of the wonderful old Minolta CLE kit, albeit that had three primes instead of a zoom. Images captured were very sharp and Fuji has been smart imho by not over saturating the megapixel loading, keeping it at 12.0 and offering decent low light. Capture is RAW and/or JPEG, but I could only work with the Jpegs because I did not have time to install Silkypix to do the RAW conversion.

I had no issues with the autofocus when the lens was at the wide end of the zoom range. Sadly not so at the telephoto end of the range. A slow moving subject (man walking) gave two out of focus images out of three, reminiscent of the focus problems encountered by many X100 users (including myself).

The battery is a tiny entity similar to some of the Fujifilm point and shoots. I was hoping for a decent sized battery so I could carry the camera with me all the time without worrying about power and recharging. I fear that with this teeny battery this won't be the case. Battery drain was observable in the short eval time as I burned through a number of test images, about 50% with the built-in flash.

The settings wheel is as sensitive and lacking in feedback as on the X100. The menu system is nominally better (similar to the improvements that came with the firmware updates on the X100) but still requires too many clicks and moves to get to the things that I would want to get to quickly. I won't say incomprehensible but would still encourage Fujifilm to hire a good UI person.

In summary, the images are really nice when they are in focus, the zoom range is great for a rangefinder style camera, but it's not enough of an improvement from the X100 for me, despite a more realistic price point. That said, having to spend a disproportionately high amount of money for a lens hood and a filter mounting ring is intentional pocket picking by Fuji and these products should cease being used as a cash grab and instead be bundled with the device. Hopefully Fujifilm will make the menus more usable via firmware updates.

As the young folks say. your mileage may vary, but I still don't have a viewfinder oriented rangefinder camera that I like and can afford. So count me underwhelmed.

2.5 stars out of 5

Should you use a UV filter to "protect" your lens?

I hope you have heard of Scott Bourne.  He is, in my opinion, a great photography.  He's successful, strong-willed and stands by his positions.  Posted on Oct 31st was this a href="http://photofocus.com/2011/10/31/the-problem-with-using-filters-on-your-camera-lenses/"missive/a on using filters on your camera lenses.  I'm afraid that despite my enormous respect for Mr. Bourne, I have to disagree. Sort of.

Full disclosure; I work part time in a camera store for my own pleasure and to help aspiring photographers with their questions.  It's not for the enormous pay.  I do recommend filters to lens customers in pretty much every situation.  Let me tell you why, in consideration of Mr. Bourne's comments. Mr. Bourne argues several points, and he is factually correct but I think that these are not yes or no scenarios.

1.  Filters can cause flare and loss of contrast.  Yes.  Please see the response section.

2.  Filters can cause vignetting on wide angle lenses.  Some can.  See the response section.

3.  There is a wide gamut of filter quality.  Oh yes there is!  See,, well you know where to look.

4.  UV filter sales are a means of padding the sale.   Sometimes but not always, engage bullshit detector when buying and see below.

5.  Lens hoods provide nearly equivalent protection as a filter would.  Yes, but please note the use of the term "nearly"  See below.

6.  A filter does not reduce cleaning requirements.  True, but with explanation.

The Aforethreatened Response Section

1.  Junk filters WILL cause flare and WILL cause contrast degradation.  Mr. Bourne is insufficiently adamant on this point.  A $20 disc of dubious optical quality, with no multi coating will reduce your image quality.  To avoid this, if you do choose to buy a UV filter, buy a good one.  It will not be cheap.  I have used B+W filters for over 30 years and have NEVER had an issue with one.  I have also bought some other brands and am not so fervent in my support of those vendors.  In fairness, I have had good success with Tiffen filters made in the USA when I could not get what I wanted from B+W.  Tiffen uses a unique manufacturing process that is frequently maligned by people who don't do research before opening their giant gobs, but that is where your BS detector should be used.

2.  Ask the sales person if the filter will cause vignetting on the lens you are buying it for.  If you get that cocked doggy head look, smile and leave because this person lacks the necessary skills to make a difference for you.  If the sales person says no, ask him or her to put the filter on a lens and show you (stop the lens down, engage the depth of field preview and point at a bright source.  Do the same thing with the lens wide open.  Remember that many lenses vignette slightly when wide open naturally.  Look for thin filter rings back to front, or those specifically indicating a narrow ring or for wide angle use.  Again, great success with B+W and also remember that with ultra-wides you won't have a filter option at all because of curvature of the front element.

3.  You actually do get what you pay for with good filters.  And with crap filters.  Go figure.  Better filters will use optical glass, will be coated to prevent internal reflection and ghosting and will be mounted in brass rings to avoid having them bind to the lens threads.  Screw an aluminum ring filter to a lens thread that is aluminum and tighten.  Now hunt around for a thirty year old filter wrench because you're going to need that to get the filter off, because as Mr. Bourne suggests, stacking filters is not a good idea and there are filters other than UV that you will want to use such as a Neutral Density or Polarizer.  Good filters will also prevent dust and grit from coming between the filter and lens.  Crap filters do a poor job of filtering crap.  Surprise!

4.  Cheap UV filters are padding.  They are very cheap and have high margin.  Better quality UV filters actually create value for you, and also have lower margin to the reseller.  Engage the BS detector and turn the sensitivity up and you'll decide for yourself.

5.  Lens hoods are in my opinion a mandatory item, both for protection and for flare reduction.  I have personally had a hornet detonate on the filter I had on a Minoita 200/2.8 back in 1986.  Since I am not an entomologist, I don't know what passes for blood in these guys, and I'm pretty sure this is a rare event, but whatever that goop was, it stripped the multi coating right off the front face of that filter.  The filter was effectively destroyed, but that lens was not.  Since I was still not making money back then, I had saved a long time for that lens and to have had to pay service for a new front element would have been killer.  Remember that service people are specialist so if anything goes in for service in the DSLR world you are looking at $200 minimum before parts.  Something to think about.

6.  So instead of blowing, wiping and using fluid on that front element, now you are having to do it on a significantly less expensive filter.  Cleaning is part of the workflow in photography.  Personally I'd rather be cleaning the front of a relatively inexpensive filter rather than the front element of an expensive lens.  It's possible to pick up grit or detritus in your brush or microfiber cloth.  I'd rather risk wrecking the filter than my front element.

Ultimately the decision whether or not to use a filter is yours.  You could favour Mr. Bourne's position.  He is an accomplished photographer with decades of experience.  You could favour my position.   I'm not as accomplished and certainly not as well known.  You could also take input from a variety of sources and make your own choice, which by the way is what I would prefer you do.  But please, if you do decide to use filters of any type, and UV filters as protection particularly, buy good stuff.  It does make a difference in your success.

Cheers,

Ross

Preliminary Review of the Nikon 1

I have recently had opportunity to get hands on with the two new Nikon 1 cameras.  I also had opportunity to take the V1 into the field and thought it might be interesting to share my experiences.   The Nikon 1 cameras were announced this fall, and fit into the category often referred to as "bridge cameras".  I'm not a fan of buzzwords but these devices do fit between fast and relatively inexpensive point and shoot digital cameras and the ostensibly more complex DSLR ranges.  Other cameras in this group include the viewfinder equipped but non-interchangeable lens models like the Canon G12 and Nikon 7100 as well as the micro four thirds mirror-less offerings from Lumix, Samsung and Olympus.

The primary differentiator from a technical perspective in the bridge cameras is sensor size.  As most all serious and mostly serious photographer's know, the megapixel race is very much an oxymoron, as high megapixels alone do not a better image make.  We see plenty of high MP point and shoots whose sensors are smaller than the fingernail on your little finger.  Even in the DSLR world we encounter the arguments between crop sensor and full frame.  So let's try to move beyond that in this review.

Simply, the sensors in the Nikon 1 family are larger than the viewfinder point and shoots and smaller than the sensors in the micro four-thirds offerings.  Nikon has been pragmatic in megapixel count in what they refer to as the CX sensor with a rating of 12 megapixels.  As anyone who has done much printing knows, this is going to deliver very good prints up to 16x20 all things being equal.  The crop factor on the sensor is about 2.7x so greater than the micro four-thirds factor of 2x.  The example I used for most of the review is the V1 with the 10mm f2.8 "pancake" style prime lens.  Thus this would look like about a 27mm on a full frame 35mm.  Field practice says this is pretty much bang on correct.

I liked the faster aperture on this lens, but think that the advertised two lens kit combining the 10-30mm and the 30-110mm would be more practical for most users, even given their relative slow f3.5-5.6 and f3.8-5.6 apertures respectively.

While I had opportunity to handle both the J1 and the V1, I chose to focus my time on the V1 for two primary reasons.  First, it has a viewfinder and I am past the point of fatigue of trying to compose images on glaring LCD back displays and second, it feels like a proper Nikon.  And by proper Nikon, I mean like an old F2 Photomic, heavy and solid.  Indeed the first thing I thought of when I saw the V1 was its mnemonic trigger to a 688 class attack submarine, where the viewfinder hump reminds of the conning tower.  You can feel the solidity of the body and despite its small size and my medium-large hands, I never felt like I was juggling a slippery blob of plastic.

Autofocus is fast and very precise, with plenty of AF markers appearing in the viewfinder.  I worked to use the camera as a general buyer might, not as I would look at a camera, and I was able to get to making nice images very quickly.  The shutter release is relatively crisp and is not at all spongy./p pThere are two primary still modes, what I call normal, and what Nikon calls Smart Photo Selector.  I was shooting geese taking a break during fall migration and despite reflections, moving geese, wind, blowing rushes and for me at least, I couldn't see any significant difference.   Motion snapshot is very different and actually pretty cool.  It's a sad fact that although most digital cameras do some kind of video, most users NEVER even try it.  If you've ever seen the magical newspaper in the Harry Potter films, you've got an idea of what motion snapshot looks like.  If another company has done this, well I missed it, but I really like the idea and the implementation that Nikon has delivered.  And as noted, the camera does record Full HD 1080p video, with the capability to also capture stills while capturing video.  This is user oriented by having a separate start/stop button for video, independent of the shutter release.  You do have to select video as the capture format via the dial on the back to do videos, but the simultaneous still shooting is as easy as you could hope it to be.

The lenses on the Nikon 1 are interchangeable and use the same style counter-clockwise bayonet as found on Nikon DSLRs, but looking similar is not being the same, so any hopes or dreams of using your autofocus Nikkor lenses from your DSLR bag on the Nikon 1 isn't happening.  Lens choices are limited as this is a very new release.  As I write this, customers can select from the following;

10mm /2.8

10-30mm f3.5 - 5.6

10-110mm f3.8 - 5.6

10-100mm f4.5 - 5.6

Lens barrels are available in Black, White, Silver and Red for all but the 10-100 which is black only.  Enthusiasts can get the 10mm and 10-30mm in pink as well.  I've been hands-on with the black 10mm and the white 10-30mm and the finishes are excellent, smooth, shiny and hard.  Since by now you are wondering, the J1 is available in all five colours, while the V1 follows the Henry Ford school of colour theory.

The V1 comes with a Nikon EN-EL15 battery and charger.  It took just over 2.5 hours to bring a battery to full power from legs in the air dead.  There are accessories available including a quick charger and AC adapter for power.  The V1 has a removable cover that allows for the use of common mount accessories including a stereo microphone, a GPS tagger and a flash.  Also coming is the FT1 adapter that will permit the mounting of select Nikkor-F mount old manual lenses.  I think of the old and beloved 105mm f2.5 mounted to the front of a V1 and dream.

On the left side of the camera is a pop-open door that reveals a USB/composite video connector and a Mini-HDMI connector.  The USB jack is of the 4 pin mini variety which will be a minor pain when you lose the cable and need to buy a replacement.  Space is an issue, but micro USB would have been a nicer and more readily available choice.  The HDMI cable is not included in the box.  Looking down on the top, you see the removable and easily lost multi-function cover, the conning tower hump of the electronic viewfinder, a recessed on/off switch, the shutter release and the video start stop.  The right side is free of doors and buttons and the bottom has the battery/memory card doorway and a standard ¼-20 tripod mount.  Looking from the front is the lens (obviously) with the lens release button on your right, a finger rail on your left, L/R microphones and an IR receiver.  Viewing the back the electronic viewfinder is centre top with the very bright and sharp LCD display immediately below.  Upper right holds the F function button and the zoom / point selection rocker.  What is less clear is that the rocker is where you adjust aperture in A (aperture priority) mode or shutter speed in S (shutter priority) mode.  It actually works very well and is really usable but could benefit from better labelling.  Middle right has a rubbery thumb pad on the left and the primary mode selector dial on the right.  Modes are as noted above, Motion Snapshot, Smart Selector, Program Auto and Video.  The detents on the wheel are positive, but I would really like some kind of lock to prevent inadvertent setting changes.  Bottom right has the now common rocker wheel surrounded by four buttons.  The buttons are clockwise from upper left DISP, controlling information on the displays, Play, to view content, Trash, and MENU.  Placed at the centre of the buttons is the now common rotary wheel / rocker switch.  Starting top and going clockwise on the V1 the rocker positions are AE-L/AF-L then exposure compensation, then AF (type) then self timer.  These are different from the generic options on other cameras and are I think nice recognition of the buying audience intent.  My only frustration with the wheel / rocker is similar to my thoughts on the wheel/rocker on the Fuji X100.  It is easily mishandled, is overly sensitive and does not provide sufficient tactile response.  It was the first part of the overall UI experience that made me a bit nuts.  Centered in the wheel is the expected OK button.

Activating the menus is simple but it's definitely a case of RTFM, as the menu options are different depending upon the capture mode.  An associate was cursing the inability to set ISO anywhere, not realizing that it is only settable when in normal or motion snapshot modes.  I do admit that one button push, plus scrolls, presses and clicks just to set ISO is a pain to me as well.  I do give Nikon credit for creating multiple auto ISO modes that limit the ISO auto-adjust ranges.  In my testing, after forcing high and low ISOs I found the Auto ISO 100-400 group to suit every shot as I was outside and without flash.

Not having a flash, or more specifically, the 1 Flash that works on the V1 (yes that snippet is accurate in both contexts), was a bit of a drag, and unlike the ostrich head flash on the J1, the flash for the V1 is quite sizeable.  Hopefully those flashes will be available shortly along with the other lenses.

The camera captures in JPEG at three quality levels and in three sizes.  It also captures in Nikon's RAW format NEF in three size levels.  Since I ALWAYS shoot in RAW, many of the shots I took in my test were captured in the best RAW format.  I switched partway through to RAW + JPEG Fine and I'm happy I did.  This is because although the RAW format is NEF, the current Adobe Raw converter v6.5 doesn't support this camera.  I expect it will be a couple of months before an Adobe RAW interpreter for Nikon 1 NEF format appears.  For me, this is a major pain in the ass.  I despise JPEG's make it up as it goes along compression.  Nikon does include View NX2 software as well as a simple movie maker with the camera.  I installed View NX2 on the MacBook Air I am writing this review on and was able to look at the NEF images after being disappointed to see that neither Lightroom nor Aperture had any idea what to do with them.  View NX2 allows for conversion from NEF to either JPEG or TIFF but my experience was very negative since every attempt to convert NEF to 16bit TIFF failed completely.

Comparing shots at ISO 100 and ISO 400 (photo on the right) shows that the camera holds together nicely and even images at ISO 800 are good.  The small size of the sensor becomes evident at ISO 1600 and noise is very visible at ISO 3200 (photo on the left). i have to give Nikon credit though.  I have also shot a Lumix GF-1 that has a bigger sensor but whose low light performance is not as good as that of the Nikon.  Nikon worked hard to optimize low light handling in its DSLRs and they appear to have done a really nice job in the V1.

The J1 and V1 models are available now with the J1 with 10-30mm zoom going for about $650 in Canada and the V1 with 10/2.8 going for $950.  YMMV when it comes to pricing.

I give the V1 3.5 stars out of 5.  Point and shoot ability suffers without any integral flash, menus are not particularly intuitive and it is in my opinion priced high by $200.  I'd say the same "price too high" thing about the J1 and by the same amount.  The J1 was not used at all extensively in this test, but I did not like the plasticky feel of it at all.  Lens quality is great for the purpose and exposure control is really nice.

ADDED November 14, 2011

Digital Camera Raw Update released through Apple software update this past weekend includes converters for the Nikon 1 line including the J1 and the V1 and provides support to Aperture and iPhoto.  Adobe has not yet released an update to ACR or the DNG converter but they are usually pretty quick once one update set is out.

A Couple of Weekends with the H4D-40 and H4D-50 from Hasselblad

Many years ago my friend and mentor Tony Gonsalves helped me expand my photographic expertise into medium format.  I had been shooting 35mm almost entirely with some very limited 4x5 work (on an aged Speed Graphic - that I borrowed and wish I had bought).  Tony helped me make the decision to go medium format for some of my pro work.  At the time I wanted to go Hasselblad, but income and use cases led me to start off with a Mamiya RZ-67 with 110mm and 55mm lenses, AE prism and motor winder.  It was a monster, really studio oriented and requiring a stable and heavy tripod.  But those 6x7 transparencies just made me smile, they were so sharp and so beautiful.  Later after selling the RZ to put some money together to buy our first house. I did get a 'Blad, a 500CM with an 80mm lens, but it did not last.  As wonderful as the images were, Tony was right that although I loved the square format to look at and to compose with, I was always cropping when it came time to print.  Thus that original decision to go 6x7 was the right one for the time.

A couple of decades have passed and I want to get into medium format again, this time in digital of course.  After doing some research, I decided to rent the H4D for a couple of scheduled shoots to see if it would work for me.  I chose to start with Hasselblad because they were more readily available for weekend rental.  The new Mamiya/Leaf/PhaseOne units are limited in availability but the Canadian distributor has been really pleasant to work with.  With Pentax being sold, I've decided for the moment not to spend time looking at that line.

The first weekend I was able to book the H4D-40, but it was already committed for the second weekend so I arranged to rent the H4D-50 for that event.  I will separate the reviews, because they are different in image management, although the framework, body and lenses are the same.

I picked up the H4D-40 and was surprised by the weight, pleasantly surprised I mean.  I am no weightlifter but I did not find the H4D with the 80mm lens unpleasant to handhold for multiple shots and hanging it around my neck was not painful, something I was loathe to do with the RZ.

Independent analysis shows the new HC and HCD lenses give up no quality to the older Hasselblad lenses and as you would expect (and I want) they all have leaf shutters for agility in flash synchronization.  I could not find fault with the images I was able to create from a technical perspective, but it took me a bit to get out of the 35mm shooting style and back to a more thoughtful approach.  The H4d can capture an image roughly every 1.1 seconds.  if you are looking for the motor blast of a D3X, you will not find it here.  Then again, you won't get a 40 megapixel image with 16 bit depth out of the D3X, so think of the Hasselblad as a different type of camera for a different type of work.

The viewfinder is bright and crisp and the autofocus is accurate and quick.  It is not quick like a Canon 7D, but in the shots I was making, i did not feel I was losing anything from the longer time to achieve focus.  The display on the back of the "back" (I so much want to say magazine) is bright and lovely to look at.  Current pixel definition is pretty low but there is a firmware update coming in December 2011 that will bring the functionality of the H4D-60 to the H4d-40 and H4D-50.  Given that the bodies look identical I called Hasselblad to ask if one could buy an H4D-31 and buy the H4D-60 digital back at a later time.  The technical sales representative I spoke with told me that the digital backs are matched to the bodies and are not available separately.  Since the backs do come off and you can attach them via adapter to a view camera, this sounds goofy to me, and I have not yet gotten a lucid explanation for this decision.  This one negative removed the H4D-31 from consideration for me as the firmware update for the back will not be released for that model and it smells too much like lock-in to make me comfortable.

The shutter is precise but that large mirror makes a lot of noise going up and down and it does make vibration.  You can set the delay between mirror movement and shutter actuation and I found the default a little too shot for handheld work.  Long exposures on tripod were best served by the mirror up function.  Speaking of tripod I used the same Gitzo Basalt Series 3 legs and head that I used for the 5D MkII with full video kit and it was excellent with the Hasselblad.

On the H4D the battery is the grip, hence calling the battery a battery grip is not a misnomer.  I found instances of others complaining about the battery life.  In a session where I was shooting a blue heron and some geese (albeit from too far away) I made about 140 images from a fully charged state and the battery was at about 70% when I got back to the studio.  Two days later I walked around for about six hours with the camera turned on and although my image count was low (about 80) the battery was still in decent shape.  That said I would still recommend getting a second battery grip or the AC powered grip for studio work.

I found the controls easy to use and I was able to work without chimping the controls pretty quickly.  The LCD display on the top of the grip is nowhere near as elegant as what we see in digital SLRs.  A non-photographer friend said it look like a 90s vintage calculator.  I think that is a bit harsh but the display is definitely behind the times comparatively speaking.  The in viewfinder display is really easy to use and provides good information.  There is a distinctive lack of autofocus areas compared to the traditional DSLR, but I did try the TrueFocus function that allows for tilt and yaw automatic adjustment when you are doing close up work and to me it was simple and effective.

The H4D uses CF cards and Hasselblad recommends the use of reasonably fast cards.  I bought a brand new Class 10 Transcend 32GB card to use as I have them in other cameras and have never had a single issue with them.  I chose 32GB because with RAW only images taking up between 40 and 50 megabytes per, enthusiastic shooting would fill a smaller card very fast indeed..

To my disappointment, I ran into problems with the card.  Inserting the brand new card into the H4D-40 prompted me to format the card, so I accepted and did so.  Or tried to.  Several times.  I pulled a card out of the 7D and the Hasselblad wanted to format it, so I clicked accept and it all worked fine.  I pulled the card and put it back in the 7D and reformatted it for Canon.  I then took the new card that the H4D could not format and formatted it in a 5D MkII to test the card itself.  It worked fine. so I put it back in the Hasselblad and followed the prompts to format it again and to my surprise and pleasure it worked fine.  I still cannot identify why the H4D could not format a brand new card but could readily reformat any card that had been formatted on any other camera.  I tried this with a variety of cards from Lexar and Sandisk ranging from 4GB to 16GB and all were formattable in the Hasselblad, but of course all had been previously formatted in a different camera.

I was surprised to discover that this $20k piece of kit had a pop-up flash.  When I showed this to a peer of similar vintage he seemed to think he was experiencing some kind of flashback.  It seemed goofy to me too.  However I did grab a couple of shots of a fellow photographer who was wearing a ball cap and by using the little pop-up flash I was able to prevent raccooning and to put a little catchlight in his eye.  The Hasselblad can trigger studio strobes of course and the built in hotshot will work fine with most wireless triggers.  It also takes a Metz SCA adapter so you can connect it to any Metz flash that leverages SCA mounts for TTL flash.  I suspect I will go the Pocket Wizard route in the studio since I already have that investment made and don't yet have a use case where I need a really powerful on/near camera TTL flash.

The sensor is protected by a glass panel on the digital back so you will have to work to damage it and the panel makes keeping things clean easy.  Note though that when you change lenses, you are opening up a hole the size of a soup tin and that means lot of room for crap to fly in and deposit itself on the giant mirror or focusing screen.  Since the unit is by design modular, you will develop a more proactive dust control workflow than you might have on your DSLR.

I used Adobe Lightroom 3.4.1 and 3.5RC to process the images from the camera.  I did not connect the camera directly to the computer or test the H4D-40 in tethered mode.  Lightroom was able to process and import the proprietary RAW format without problem and once I had backed up the original RAW files, I did the import and convert to DNG that is my normal workflow.  Editing was just like dealing with any other digital image, other than the incredible sharpness and nominally flatter depth of field you experience with medium format.  Adobe Camera Raw can also handle the Hasselblad native RAW format if you are current on it.  I have not yet had time to try this with Apple's Aperture.

Hasselblad has their own software called Phocus and it looks and behaves like Lightroom but has some Hasselblad specific functions such as lens management.  I downloaded the most recent version of Phocus from the Hasselblad site and installed it on the Mac Pro.  If you've used Lightroom or ACR, you can already use Phocus.  What is absolutely amazing is that Phocus can also read other vendor's RAW files and is completely free.  Anyone can download it and use it and I must give credit to the nice people at Hasselblad, it's really pretty darn good software.  Lightroom is in my regular workflow and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Lightroom's lens correction function does have entries for the Hasselblad HC and HCD lenses.  Unlike applying the corrections to DSLR lenses where you can actually see the correction happen, with the Hasselblad lenses the changes are much more subtle.

For my second rental weekend, the H4D-40 was not available, so I went with the H4D-50.  So that's a 50 megapixel image, which contrary to popular myth does not produce a 50mb file.  The native Hasselblad RAW files averaged 75mb each, so in the matter of memory cards, size matters.

First impressions were that the two cameras are identical and they are, except for the back and the crop factor.  Hasselblad states that the crop factor on the 40 is 1.3x and 1.1x on the 50.  You see what you get in the viewfinder so it's pretty much a non-issue except for the minor magnification difference and the finder guides, and of course the RAW file size.  For the record, average file size from the 40 was 57mb, certainly not to be sneezed at.

In addition to the 80/2.8 I also rented the 35/3.5.  This is a BIG lens with a 95mm filter diameter.  And as you would hope, it's wonderful.  Think of the beauty you can get from a fast and sharp 35mm on a full frame DSLR and now imagine that crisper, sharper and having more tonal range.  With very flat light, and a great display, you can absolutely see the difference between 14bit depth on a great DSLR and 16bit depth on the Hasselblad.  Where I really saw the difference was in the increased tonal range in the blacks.

I used my Sekonic DR758 to take spot readings in a landscape scene and found 7 stops of difference between whitest white and blackest black.  I have attended numerous seminars where the presenter asserts that top line DSLRs can handle between 5 and 6 stops of difference before something has to give.  Zoomed in on the monitor in Lightroom much closer than you would ever go in a print, you can see how that larger sensor really delivers that extra tonal range.

Fortuitously we saw a moose not far off the road on the weekend and pulled over (along with what seemed to be about 200 other photographers) to make images.  Mr. Moose was completely non-plussed by all the humans and the clatter of shutters and the yowling of children and gave 20 minutes of his time before ambling off into high reeds.  Many of the photogs had long lenses with them and cohort Darren snared a beautiful image on his Nikon with his 200/2.8.  I had the 'glad with the 80/2.8 which maps pretty much to a 55mm on a full frame DSLR.  I was also less willing than Darren to go swamping with my rental kit so my vantage points were not as good as those he attained.  So I photographed Mr. Moose using leaves on trees as a frame, and as you can expect, while the image is nice, Mr. Moose takes up about 1/8th of the total frame.

Once I got home, I imported the files from the card to Lightroom, converting to DNG in the process as is my normal workflow.  I then sorted through the shots of El Moose and after vicious discards was left with a couple worth working on.  I used the tools in Lightroom to do basic tuning, first adding the lens profile for the 80/2.8 which makes incremental improvements and then using the crop tool to excise nearly 80% of the original image.

I am an admitted fan of Nik Software, and ran through my usual workflow with Sharpener Pro, Dfine and the new ColorEfex Pro 4 (it's awesome, separate post to follow).  I often use Viveza 2 to do local control point colour adjustments but didn't really have to change much of anything.  Despite aggressive cropping, the image came out to being really good to my eye and I printed it on the Epson 4900 with Epson Ultra Premium Lustre at 13x19.  At this size, it compares very favourably to a full frame print of the same size from the very excellent Canon 5D Mk II.  That's with 80% of the original cropped away.

I also had good opportunity to shoot in low flat light in the forest, mostly using the 35mm/3.5 and came away  very impressed with the quality of the shadow detail, particularly in complex detail subjects such as pre-Cambrian rock faces and surface mosses.  I did find the 50-800 ISO range limiting on the H4D-50 compared to the 100-1600 ISO range on the H4D-40 in this shooting use case and would have liked that extra ISO stop as a potential choice.  I only made one exposure at 50 ISO over the course of the day (a waterfall) and although my only comparison has been somewhat superficial, comparing it to the 100 ISO version on the 27" reviewing display, did not call out any significant differences.

As noted above, Hasselblad has their own image management and editing software called Phocus, which in addition to looking like an earlier version of Lightroom is both easy to use and free.  The recent Lightroom update to 3.5 provides excellent Hasselblad lens profiles and RAW support so if you are already a Lightroom user, Phocus is a bit of a duplication.  However if you use other tools and want to work with your digital images prior to using them in the other tools which may or may not natively support Hasselblad RAW, then it's worth your time to download and install focus.

So to the conclusion.  Is the system expensive?  Yes.  It costs more than the Mamiya and Pentax systems for the basic kit (although the H4D-31 is very price competitive).  The lenses are more expensive, the accessories are more expensive and the backs are matched to the body so moving up or down in megapixels is not trivial.  That said, I have decided on the H4D-40.  The images are beautiful, the lenses are amazingly sharp, the usability index is very high.  The firmware changes for the backs committed for December 2011 close the loop on a couple of "wish it did"s.  It is eminently suited for handheld work and isn't a tripod or studio only camera, although it is superb in both scenarios.  My ancient 500CM was smaller, but I am getting a lot in the relatively compact body of the H4D.  All the lenses have leaf shutters, a priority A checkbox for me, and there are lots of lenses to choose from, with range from 28mm to 300mm including two zooms.  As much as I think I could use the 35-90, the price point is well past my reach and I could likely buy a macro and the standard 80mm for about the same money.  I'm putting together the shopping list (that first step, before collecting the money) and it looks like this;

H4D-40 w 80/2.8

28/4

300/4.5

1.7x Teleconverter

Remote release

Second battery

26mm extension tube

SCA3902 TTL flash adapter

I expect to generate revenue over the next several years to fund back the purchase, but even if I fail in that, I will have achieved my primary goal of getting to digital medium format and an alternate approach to digital imaging.

Getting Your Colour Balance Right Fast with Expo Disc

I've now done a lot of simple shoots and two major shoots using the Expo Disc.  At first glance, I was very skeptical of this pearlescent piece of plastic in a metal ring but the proof, as my granny used to say, is in the pudding.

Most all, or certainly all the ones I've seen, digital cameras have rich white balance controls.  Twenty five years ago, I would use a Minolta Color Meter III for critical film shoots to ensure I was going to get colours that were "correct".  With digital, white balance is much simpler to achieve but many folks don't ever switch off auto.  That's too bad but a topic for a different post.

What I want to talk about here is building a custom white balance for your shoot.  It's really easy.

1.  Set your camera exposure properly for the light from the sky, and take a photo of a Kodak 18% grey card.  Oops.  Don't have one handy, or a grey popup reflector in your bag?  That's the point of the Expo Disc.

So here's how it works.

1.  Put the Expo Disc on to the end of your lens.  You can just hold it there or buy the size that fits the largest diameter filter ring you will typically use.

2.  Turn autofocus off

3.  Point the camera towards your light source with the disc on (like the sky for example) and take a photo allowing your camera to manage exposure.

4.  Go into your camera's menu settings and choose Custom White Balance and select it.  It will ask you if you want it to use the current image, meaning that greyish white thing you just shot.  Select yes.

5.  Now that the white balance has been recordedm, make sure your white balance is set to use Custom.  Use this white balance until the end of your shoot or the light changes, such as from cloudy overcast to bright sun.

That's it.  While it surely is more work than leaving everything on auto or even picking one of the presets for white balance, you will be getting the right white balance for the light where you are.

Now why bother?  Although we can do amazing things in our digital post processing, the closer to a great image we are when we start, the better we are when we end.  Having taken the 60 seconds to do this for my cameras prior to shoots, when I load the images into my editor, I have found that my editing time is less, and that I have to do a lot less tweaking.  And while I believe that the automatic white balance in my cameras is pretty darn accurate, I have shot the same subject at the same time with custom white balance and with auto white balance and for me, i prefer the custom.  Your mileage may vary, but if you want to get a really great white balance, the Expo Disc gets the job done well and with consistency.

Keep making photographs

Ross

Creating a Profile for your Camera for Lightroom and Photoshop

In an earlier post, I wrote about using the Color Munki system to create display and print profiles so you can get accurate colour for editing and printing.  One step I've added that is more subtle is to create a profile for each of my DSLR cameras.  It's pretty simple to do and relatively inexpensive.

When I do product shots, it's really important that the product colours are right.  One way to do this is to use a colour meter and make a custom white balance and that works pretty well in fact.  An alternative is to build a profile for your camera to use in your editor.  The way I do this is to use the ColorChecker Passport from X-Rite.

The process is very quick.  Shoot a picture of the ColorChecker Passport Classic Target in RAW and then bring it into your computer and convert it to DNG format.  Then launch the ColorChecker Passport Camera Calibration software and drop the image onto the tool.  It auto discovers the ColorChecker in the image and creates a custom profile for your camera.  You can then load that profile in Lightroom or Photoshop to streamline your workflow.  You still have all the creative control, but you are starting with the image set up to match your camera's RAW output's colour balance.  I found that it was pretty close to the Canon Standard setting in Lightroom for the 5D Mk II, but there were differences.  I like to include the ColorChecker Passport Classic Target and White Balance Target in the first image in a studio series or when I have time to do so.  That way, I know at least where I am starting from.  Please note that like other custom white balance tools, the profile you create is accurate for the light you are using when you take the image including the Color Checker Passport.  If the light changes substantially or you change your source, you'll need a new profile.  Also if you use studio lights as opposed to studio flash, remember that the colour temperature of these lights changes over time.

Not expensive and while not an absolute requirement, you will be able to really get the image from your camera to be interpreted correctly.  Even you only shoot JPEGs, the ColourChecker Passport can really help you get the white balance correct.

Canon Pixma Pro 9000 Mk II - Getting the Red Out REDUX - Color Munki is the Key

A while back I posted about using the Canon Photoprint software or letting the printer manage the colour to get accurate (or less red) prints from the Canon Pixma Pro 9000 series.  Those solutions were cheap.  This one is not but I think it is worth the investment if you want accurate prints (and an accurate display for that matter).

X-rite makes the Color Munki Photo system.  I call it a system, they don't but it really does work that way.  Color Munki provides three key services.  First, it creates a calibration for your monitor.  Second it creates an ICC profile for the paper of your choice on your printer.  Third it allows you to match your display profile with your printer profile.

Display Profiling

There are many display profilers out there.  Most want you to adjust brightness and contrast before starting but many displays give you very limited control over these settings.  Most use some kind of colour banding and intelligent eye to create a display profile.  I used the Huey Pro for years and it was pretty good, except I could never get my Dell 30" display to match my Dell 24" display which was really annoying because they are side by side.  I lived with it but was mostly unhappy with the difference between what I saw on the screen and what came back from the lab.  The Color Munki takes things a step further by doing colorimetry.  The very first time I ran the display calibration, both monitors resulted in identical representations of the same image.  Finally I was seeing what I would get from a professional printer and I was also seeing the same thing on the two displays.  The process is fast, incredibly simple and as I calibrate my displays every two weeks, extraordinarily consistent.  I noticed a very sharp difference between the Huey Pro calibrations and the Color Munki calibrations.  Color Munki for the win!

Printer Profiling

To really get the best out of your printer, inks and papers, you need a proper profile.  Paper vendors provide ICC profiles for their paper that you can download and while it looks like a pain to do this for every paper you might use, it's a big part of getting an amazing image.  Most of the pros I talk to who do print themselves prefer the Epson printers.  The images are incredible, but my own experience is that the print head clogs up if you aren't using it all the time, cleaning it is very difficult and involves disassembly and may not help.  After dumpstering an Epson R1800 because its head was clogged and discovering loads of complaints about even the current devices, I went Canon.

I started with the Pixma Pro 9000.  When two of my cameras were stolen and I had to replace them, I took advantage of Canon rebate programs and got a 9000 Mk II and a 9500 Mk II.  The difference is substantial.  The 9000 Mk II prints very quickly and uses dye based inks.  The 9500 Mk II takes much longer to produce output and uses pigment based inks called LUCIA.  It has more ink tanks and is ideal for archive quality black and white images.  That's not to say that the 9000 Mk II doesn't do a good job on black and white but the 9500 Mk II really is a rock star in this regard.

If I use only Canon ink and Canon paper, I can let the printer manage colour and get pretty darn good output.  But I wanted to use different papers and whenever I let Colorsync on the Mac manage colour, my prints would be too red even with the vendor supplied ICC profile.  As you can imagine, this ticked me off something fierce.  Bring on the Color Munki.

The creation of a printer profile is not quick and consumes two sheets of the paper you want to build a profile for.  The first pass the software produces a series of stripes (see figure) that you then scan over with the Color Munki colorimeter.  It then constructs a second special print page that you print and scan as in the first step.  Once complete you have a custom profile for your printer and that particular paper type.

To see if it actually made a difference I took the same image and made three prints on the Canon Pixma Pro 9000 Mk II.  Image #1 was printed from Adobe Lightroom and I let the printer manage colour, printing on Canon Glossy Photo Paper.  It was a nice print.  Image #2 was printed from Adobe Lightroom and I used the paper profile supplied by Canon and let Colorsync manage the colour.  Colorsync is the profile manager in OS X on the Macintosh.  I don't do Windows but I am sure that there is a similar ICC service on that platform.  The image was sharp but WAY too red.  Absolute crap.  Image #3 was printed from Adobe Lightroom using the ICC profile created by Color Munki for that same paper on that printer.  The image was awesome.  It looked better overall than letting the printer manage colour by enough of an edge that I would do things this way always. and so much better than what image 2 looked like, you would swear someone has spilled red ink all over the second image in comparison.

I'm not alone in finding issues letting Colorsync manage colour on Canon Pixma Pro printers.  Plenty of complaints on the internets.  For me, that problem is now solved.  I've built profiles for Ilford Pearl and Hahnemulle Rag and love the output.  Inkpress advises to use the Canon profiles and their metallic gloss is stunning using the Color Munki profile.

Matching Printer and Display

You get what you see.  Nuff said.

The Color Munki Photo was not cheap, in the $500 range.  If you don't need or want to calibrate your printer (you like the images you get, and using ICC profiles doesn't give you junk) maybe it's overkill for you.  If you want want display profiling there are less expensive alternatives but having owned the Huey Pro and tried a friend's Spyder 3, I think that I would go Color Munki regardless.  If you do want to make your own profiles for your paper and your printer, the Color Munki is the tool you want and need.

Conclusion

I recommend it highly and also recommend other tools from x-rite like the Color Checker Passport.  My prints are beautiful and accurately represent what I get out of my editing tools.  One of the side benefits is that instead of thousands of images languishing on the hard drives or in a web portfolio, some of them also now reside on my walls and in the homes of friends and family.  My buddy Bryan told me that he heard over 95% of photographers never print anything.  I think that's a shame and nothing encourages you to print your photographs like a great print.

Useful one handed reflectors

I've tried a zillion different portable reflectors.  Or at least five.

I recently found the Lastolite Triflip.  Like many reflector kits, it is based around a flexible frame that starts with a diffusion scrim with zippered reflectors, white, silver gold and black.  Like other reflectors, the Triflip comes with a stand clamp, and folds up into a transportable flat package, roughly 12 inches in diameter.

The big differences are twofold.  The Triflip is roughly triangular in shape with a robust handgrip at the "point".  If you've eve tried to handhold a reflector in one hand and the camera in the other, you know how awkward the larger round reflectors can be.  The Lastolite Triflip is completely different.  You can not only mount to a lightstand but also handhold the reflector and exercise excellent control of the reflected light.

When decent multi kits exist from a variety of fune vendors, we all have choices open to us.  Since I shoot mostly on my own, and often am in situations where stands are inappropriate, this kit is really ideal.

Sell price is roughly $150 but I hit a sale and got the kit for $120.  While I haven't discarded my other multi-reflectors, I carry the Triflip clipped to my vest, or daybag everywhere.  For me at least, the key to useful kit it that it is kit you use.

Geotagging your photos - effectively and inexpensively with Geotag Photos Pro

With the advent of decent cameras in smartphones that also include GPS devices, it's become popular generically to start geotagging your photos.  That's all well and good and transparent if you have an iPhone 4 for example, but what if you have a DSLR or Compact Digital without a built-in GPS?

There are certainly options available in your favourite photo retailer that mount in the hot shoe and with only a bit of arm twisting and a bunch of money, you can now geotag photos you make on your better camera.  Sorry, too expensive and too much of a kludge.

I use an iPhone 4 and an iPad, both of which have GPS built in, so I went looking for a Geotagging app that ran on either platform, was fast and simple to use, and could handle large volumes of photos without needing days.  Fortunately most iDevelopers understand that to get people to buy your good apps, it pays to do a Lite version that may be feature limited to get the hook set.  So that's the route I went.  I searched for apps that had lite and paid versions with the plan to try the lites and then buy the one I liked best.

First thing I discovered is that there are a lot of these apps.  Second thing I discovered is that most of them are difficult to use, have bad UI, or require you to dislocate bones to make them work.  I won't dis any of those app builders by name, but I didn't go forward with their products.

I recently spent the day with my friend Bryan, owner / operator of Daytripper Photo, on a trip up to the Wye Marsh near Midland, Ontario.  Over the course of the day I shot over 350 images, with my usual ratio of junk this to keepers.  But befire I pulled them in to Lightroom and or Aperture, I wanted to have them geotagged.

In my testing, I settled on Geotag Photos Pro from TappyTaps.  The program is so simple and so effective.  Here's how it works.

1.  When you are ready to start shooting, launch the app and create a new trip and start recording the GPS locations.  All it takes is a one button press and a name for the trip.  You can control how often the GPS updates the log file from the preferences.  I chose 15 minutes in this case and it didn't do any real damage to battery life on the iPhone.

2.  Forget about the app.  Go shoot photos.  For however long you like.

3.  Once your photo shoot is over, stop the recording of the GPS log and let it upload to the website.

4.  Your workflow for managing your photos may vary, but I will share mine.  I load the CF card into the reader and copy all the RAW images to a dated folder in a directory for each camera on a Drobo.  Backup of original photos complete.

5.  I duplicate the directory in case something goes wrong wth the geotagging.  It never has but paranoia is offset by cheap disk space.

6.  I use the offline version of the Geotag Photos Pro application on my Mac Pro, but there is a web client if you prefer that.  I download the trip file and point it at the directory containing the copy of the RAW files.  It updates the geotag information in the EXIF data without issue and very quickly.

7.  I import the updated photos into Lightroom and or Aperture.  Lately I have been using Lightroom more, but it really doesn't matter.  Use the photo management product you like.  If it shows EXIF data, you will see your geotag info.  Now I have originals, backups and library references to my photos, with unaltered originals, geotagged originals, DNGs in Lightroom and native Canon CR2 in Aperture.  Like I said, disk space is cheap.  It also helps me have multiple copies because let's say I've deleted things in the past that I have later regretted.  Or made edits to JPEGs forgetting that JPEG edits are destructive.  You may be much smarter than I.  Or less paranoid about data loss.  PS all the data on Drobo1 is backed up daily to Drobo2 and my photo libraries get backed up to Crashplan every night.  Better safe than sorry.

There are lots of geotagging apps, but I have standardized on this one.  The developers update it regularly, I haven't hit any major bugs and it does what I want.  The app is available on the iTunes App Store for $3.99 and is also available for Android, wherever one might buy Android apps.  BTW, I don't know if English is the developer's first language as some of the text on the site can be a bit awkward.  Focus on the quality of the app, you'll be very pleased.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Canon Pixma Pro - Getting the red out

Hey everyone! I was a devoted Epson printer user in the past but moved away to Canon because I grew really weary of the printhead on the R printers jamming up when not used daily, turning a nice machine into a boat anchor. So, I switched to Canon Pixma Pro, choosing the 9000 in my case. I'm kind of like a lot of photogs I meet. Shoot a lot, print a little. Sometimes it's just a lot cheaper and less time-consuming to have my stuff printed commercially. But following the purchase of the Nik Software Complete Collection, I've been printing a lot to validate that what I am learning is actually resulting in better images.

I thought I was screwing up. I had all the right ICC profiles, I had current drivers, I had current versions of Aperture, Photoshop and LIghtroom. I had my screens calibrated with a Huey Pro. But my prints from everything looked a little bit red. So after wasting a lot of time and a lot of paper, I finally turned to the web to discover, hey, I'm not alone, lots of folks find the Canons print too red.

So I checked with Canon. Despite making great gear and passable software, let's just be polite and say that they weren't very helpful. So I started working through that bucket of software that comes with Canon DSLRs. My whole kit was stolen in April while I was in Barcelona so I had current SW as part of the replacements. I found a few things.

First is Canon Easy-Photoprint Pro. It's a plugin for Photoshop that allows you to leverage the Canon print engine, albeit through a goofy model. (HINT - don't look for it anywhere near Print). You can select non-Canon ICC profiles with the plugin, but the UI is lousy so you'll spend time looking. If the results had been good, I would do a screencast on using the plugin, but as you'll see there is no reason to do so. Some reviewers said it gave them exactly what they saw in Photoshop. Not so me. What I got was darker, greyer, flatter and generally looked like something the cat puked up. Trashcan that.

Then I looked to using ICC profiles from Aperture. Just like Photoshop, I did not get what I saw on screen, what I got was too red. Ok zero for two, or more accurately zero for four since I got the same output as Photoship CS 5.1 and Lightroom 3.4.1. Seriously ticked off

Then I came to Canon Easy-Photoprint EX. I launched the program as it is standalone and navigated to the folder on my Drobo where the images are stored. It found the Lightroom images without problem but if you use Aperture, well it doesn't even see the Aperture library so that sucks. I opened some images that I had done work in using the Nik tools into Easy-Photoprint EX and they looked right on the screen, unlike how the Easy-Photoprint Pro images had looked. I loaded some Ilford Classic Glossy 4x6 in the printer. I could not find any way to select any ICC profile in Easy-Photoprint EX, other than the default Canon ones so I picked the Canon Glossy profile and printed the images. Surprise! They came out looking fabulous, exactly the way they did on the screen. Doing side by side compares with direct prints from Aperture, Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop using the Canon plugin reinforced how lousy the other images were, either too red or grey and flat (Easy-Photoprint Pro plugin).

All is not perfect. The UI for Easy-Photoprint EX is not Mac-like. It's not even Windows like, more pencils and ugly-like. It's also dog slow to load and to get your images open, selected and to the print phase. Once you do get to the Print dialog, it moves along very nicely indeed, and I cannot complain at all about the image quality. So at this point I have an answer to my printing concerns, but it's not a good answer as it involves yet another app and yet another set of steps. Clearly it is possible to get colour accurate prints out of the Canon Pixma Pro printers, so why can Canon not make them print properly without using their proprietary app and only their ICC profiles? C'mon Canon, fix this!