A Second Look at Piccure

I am always interested in hearing alternate perspectives.  Recently I wrote a review of a plug-in called Piccure and indicated that it wasn't right for me.  Lui from Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH wrote with some suggestions on how I might improve my results.

His first suggestion was to read through the Handbook that they make available.  I had scanned it, and did not read it word for word.  I read it and there is a recommended workflow that I did not follow.

Lui suggested that Piccure be the first thing I do, before any other editing, stating that other filters are destructive.  While Lightroom is non-destructive by design, a saved file like a TIFF as used by any plug-in has had filtration applied if editing has been done.  Ok, while this is completely contrary to my normal workflow, just like Nik's Pre-Sharpening, I will do start with Piccure before doing ANYTHING else.

The Handbook says Edit in Piccure using TIFF, 16 bit and sRGB.  I would never have tried this as I prefer the proper and full colour gamut of ProPhoto RGB.  Lui honestly states that in the current release Piccure doesn't work very well with ProPhoto RGB or Full RGB.  It works best with sRGB.  This is sub-optimal in my view but in respect of his courtesy to write, I agreed to give it a shot.

He also suggested using a Smartspot.  I had tried this but didn't see a difference, but again, I will do so.  He also coached that the Micro setting is a better place to start than the default of Medium because the design precepts behind Piccure are solely to the micro evidence of camera shake.  Here's a comparison screen grab with Piccure on the left and the original RAW on the right.

So here's what I learned from following the Handbook and the guidance from Lui.

The sRGB choice, while I don't like it, makes a significant difference in Piccure's success.  No longer are the colours skewed and the image is no longer made crunchy and as noisy.

Cautious placement of the Smartspot helps a lot.  I tried placing the Smartspot where recommended and then also in a number of other places.  This is time consuming because of the processing load to recalculate with each placement, but it definitely makes a difference in Piccure's success.

Lui also suggested manually tweaking the defaults.  I had already done this in my first review, and so I agree that this is always a good idea.

Outcome

Ok I stand corrected.  Piccure does a VERY GOOD job when you follow the instructions.  If I did not already have a subscription to Creative Cloud (I do) and micro camera shake was something I was concerned about (it is - I shoot sports and wildlife with long lenses), Piccure is a very good solution.   At $80 it may be all you need.

What I Liked

It's a very focused offering.  I can alter my workflow to put Piccure first when I use it.  I'm still not completely clear about adjusting colour balance before or after using Piccure, although I believe that so long as I know the colour temperature, it shouldn't make a big difference if I fix the WB after using Piccure.  The number of variables are small and while the processing requirements are significant when set to highest quality, you get good and visible results.  It does not correct out of focus shots, it corrects for camera micro shake - just as promised.  In my test images the amount of shake was very small but Piccure did the corrections and so long as I followed the Handbook, I got consistently good results.

What I Would Like to See Improved

Number one for me would be to not have to drop the gamut to sRGB when going to Piccure.  I'd much rather be able to have Piccure work properly with ProPhotoRGB gamuts.  I am guessing that the architects understood that sports shooters might be candidate customers and pro shooters tend to shoot in JPEG regardless because they need to upload to their services on the breaks and a decent JPEG is fine for wire services and web broadcast.  That would be a reasonable business decision but it's not me.  I never shoot in JPEG unless I have screwed up.

In the end, I have Photoshop CC and Adobe's Camera Shake Reduction algorithm is very good and there are no restrictions on colour spaces when using it.  If I did not have Photoshop CC, I'd be buying the Piccure plugin because it works, and because Lui advised that addressing the colour space limitation is on their roadmap.  A big thank you to Lui and the rest of the team at Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH for building a good tool, and more importantly for caring what prospective customers think and for making a real effort at creating customer joy.  Other software companies could learn from this attitude.

OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8 is now available

Check it out gang, the newest release of OnOne's Perfect Photo Suite, v8 is available for purchase and download today.  Here's the Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: onOne Software Announces Availability of Perfect Photo Suite 8

New Perfect Eraser for Content-Aware Fill, Enhance and Browse Modules, Perfect Batch Processor, and Re-imagined Effects Module Evolve Popular Plug-In Into a Complete Photo Editing Solution for Every Workflow

Portland, OR – November 26, 2013 – onOne Software, Inc., a leading developer of innovative digital photography solutions, today announced the availability of Perfect Photo Suite 8—the Photographer’s Choice for Photo Editing. Perfect Photo Suite 8 is a full-featured, standalone photo editor that also integrates seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, and Apple Aperture. It includes all the best tools a photographer needs to create stunning images.

Key new features include the Perfect Eraser, with content-aware fill technology; the Perfect Enhance module for essential photo adjustments; a new Browser that streamlines direct access to images wherever they are located; the Perfect Batch engine that applies presets to multiple images with a single click; and a re-engineered Perfect Effects module, with twice as many adjustable filters, customizable presets, and integrated FocalPoint technology. These new tools and capabilities alongside Perfect Photo Suite 8’s eight modules, one-click presets, tools for automated enhancements, and powerful controls allow photographers to enhance, retouch, and stylize images in a layered workflow, replace backgrounds, create high-quality enlargements, and prepare images for output—giving them the ability to express their creativity and transform their photos quickly and easily.

“We are extremely excited about Perfect Photo Suite 8,” said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. “This version is the result of what photographers have been asking for, not only from us but from the industry as a whole. We’re grateful for the contributions and feedback the photography community has invested in our effort and we believe that we’ve created an extraordinarily powerful image editing tool that meets their specific needs in return.”

After a successful public beta program for Perfect Photo Suite 8, many photographers had a chance to try out the new version and give their feedback. “The attention to your user’s needs is unmatched,” said Rebecca Lyyski, owner of Lyyski’s Designs. “As a graphic designer and photographer with an elevated workload, your product has made editing my professional photography a pleasure instead of a chore,” she adds. Greg Lambert, public beta user and onOne Software photo contest winner shared, “Perfect Photo Suite 8 continues to evolve by refining its existing capability, streamlining the interface and providing some new and exciting tools and presets to enable photographers to produce the images they visualize when they press the shutter button.”

The New Perfect Photo Suite 8 Features: • Eight integrated modules – Effects, Enhance, B&W, Portrait, Mask, Layers, Resize, and Browse. Each module is designed to target a specific image-processing task. Together, they help photographers enhance, retouch, and stylize images in a layered workflow, replace backgrounds, create high-quality enlargements, and prepare images for use in various capacities.

• New Module! Perfect Enhance provides essential tools for basic enhancements, such as brightness and contrast adjustments; colorcast, dust spot, and power line removal; and the addition of vignettes. It is an ideal module to start with when using Perfect Photo Suite 8 as a standalone application or when quick corrections are needed.

• New Module! Browse provides convenient and direct access to image files wherever they are stored—whether they are on a computer, an external drive, a connected network, or on a cloud-based storage service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Apple’s Photo Stream.

• Reimagined! Perfect Effects – As a cornerstone of Perfect Photo Suite 8, the Effects module has been redesigned by adding adjustable filters and customizable presets, making it the most powerful and versatile image stylization tool available on the market today.

• Twice as Many Adjustable Filters to create the most sought-after looks, including:

• Dynamic Contrast – Adds stunning clarity to images and makes them pop by exaggerating the levels of contrast, without sacrificing highlight and shadow detail, creating halos, or affecting saturation.

• Lens Blur – Includes the best parts of FocalPoint technology to create bokeh, tilt-shift, and selective focus effects after the shot.

• HDR – Gives images the edgy look of high dynamic range. Settings are adjustable and create effects that range from subtle to surreal.

• Vintage – Turns photos into a nostalgic memory with retro-style filters.

• Powerful brushes provide the right results for specific editing tasks:

• Perfect Eraser removes objects with content-aware fill technology

• Retouch Brush uses spot healing to remove small distractions

• Clone Brush removes unwanted items by replicating and covering specified areas of an image

• Masking Brush reveals underlying layers or selectively applies effects • Perfect Brush delivers precise edge-detection masking

• Hundreds of Customizable Presets are available throughout Perfect Photo Suite 8 that make it easy for any photographer to instantly create an image they love. Presets can also be used as starting points for creativity and efficiency. Presets are included in the Enhance, Effects, B&W, Portrait, and Resize modules.

• Improved Masking Bug in the Effects and Layers modules make mask creation easier and more intuitive.

• Perfect Batch engine simultaneously applies presets from multiple modules and a watermark to a selected group of images.

Availability and Pricing The new Perfect Photo Suite 8 is now available at www.ononesoftware.com/store. Perfect Photo Suite 8 is available in three editions: Premium, Standard, and for Adobe Lightroom & Apple Aperture.

The Premium Edition works with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Apple Aperture, and as a standalone application. It is priced at $179.95. Owners of previous versions of Perfect Photo Suite Premium Edition can upgrade for $99.95. For a limited time, orders of Perfect Photo Suite 8 Premium Edition will include a special collection of Professional Presets and The Essential Video Guide to Perfect Photo Suite 8, which provides a comprehensive collection of getting started training videos for Perfect Photo Suite 8—for free ($80 value). This offer ends on December 3, 2013.

Perfect Photo Suite 8 for Adobe Lightroom & Apple Aperture works with Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements, and as a standalone application. It is available for $129.95; upgrades are $79.95. The Standard Edition works as a complete standalone photo editor and is available for $79.95. For more information on Perfect Photo Suite 8, please visit http://www.ononesoftware.com. A 30-day Money Back Guarantee backs all onOne Software products.

About onOne Software onOne Software, Inc., is a leading developer of innovative software tools and apps for digital photography and offers time-saving software solutions for photographers of all levels, from enthusiasts to professionals. Leveraging its extensive history as successful plug-in developer for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple Aperture, and continued development of cutting-edge technology, onOne publishes unified solutions that offer both full-featured photo editing capabilities and the flexibility of traditional plug-ins. Founded in 2005, onOne Software is a privately held company located in Portland, Oregon. For additional information, visit www.ononesoftware.com.

Is Piccure Your Next Plugin Purchase?

I was listening to a recent This Week in Photo episode #TWIP and heard about this plugin called Piccure.  It was described as a tool to help correct camera shake.  There's a 14 day free trial so I thought I would download it and give it a shot. NOTE :  Since this initial review, I received some guidance from the manufacturer directly and applied it.  I got better results.  After reading this post, head on over to http://thephotovideoguy.ca/?p=1487 for the follow-on

Most folks know that Photoshop CC has a camera shake correction and it's quite good.  Not everyone has Photoshop CC and sometimes a dedicated plugin can be the answer, particularly for people who do all their work in Lightroom.  Piccure comes as a plugin for both Lightroom and Photoshop.  At time of writing there was no support for Aperture.

Initially I feared that the tool would simply do some fairly aggressive sharpening, using a high pass filter style algorithm and punch the contrast up to make it look like it was correcting for camera shake.  So for my tests, I used images that were already corrected in these ways and where extra sharpening and contrast would really make the shot look crispy.

I've netted this down to a single image for the sample pics in the article to make it clearer what is happening.  Please know that I am not making my valuation based solely on a single image test.  What is shown here is consistent with what I saw on all tests.

Piccure really does seem to do some significant math to determine where movement has taken place in the frame.  The default settings of Medium for shake and middle ground for sharpening produced really horrible results with the test image.  They were already pretty sharp.  It's definitely doing something.  I got a warning that because the image was large, it could take a while.  While processing, all eight cores in the Mac Pro were quite busy.

For point of interest, the test shot shown has the following EXIF.

• Canon 1D Mark IV
• Canon 70-200/2.8L IS II
• 175mm, IS mode 2
• 1/400
• f/2.8
• ISO 2500
• EV +1 2/3
• Shot handheld, unsupported

When you launch Piccure from Lightroom, you do so as with most all other plugins.  Right click, choose Edit In and select Piccure.  The defaults are sRGB and 240 dpi.  I reset those to ProPhoto RGB and 300 dpi as those are my common defaults.  The Piccure window looks like this;

You can see that it gives you a look at what it's going to do, a processing indicator and three sliders.  The first controls the balance of speed of work vs quality.  Default is full quality.  Second defines the amount of camera shake to correct for.  Default is medium.  Since there was near negligible camera shake, the results were ghastly.  I've moved it all the way to micro correction.  The third slider is called Sharpness varying between Smooth and Sharp.  In every experiment I end up with this all the way over to Smooth to prevent edges you could cut yourself on, along with a lot of duplication.

In the second image, I've zoomed in to 1:1 and you can see the Piccure proposed fixes on the right side.  The Canadian flag is nearly unrecognizable the goaltender's face cage is blown out and has black halos.

It's pretty brutal so I backed off the Sharpening completely.  In the next two images, I've shifted the display to show first the goaltender's face "corrected".  Look at how shattered the OJHL logo becomes in the processed side.  Then I shifted the image to show the goaltender's face without the processing.  The difference, even with the sliders for shake and sharpness backed full off is substantial.  I admit I don't like what I am seeing.

I didn't give up at this point, but let Piccure do its thing.  To my disappointment, the image is very edgy, the colour saturation is compressed, the contrast is way up and adjustments made in Lightroom have been crushed.  You can see this in the next sequence.  The first image is the export direct from Lightroom without using the Piccure plugin at all.  The second is what came back to Lightroom directly from Piccure and the third is after re-adjusting the Piccure image.

I'm sorry to say that even while the Piccure plugin has done some camera shake adjustment, I feel like I've lost more than I've gained.

By now, you've figured out that I'm not really blown away by the plugin.  You're right.  For $80, I'd like less crispy and less overall image loss.  I need to be fair, there was very minimal camera shake involved in the original image, but these are the ones I would want to tighten up.  If the shot is blur city, it goes to the trash.

As a final point of comparison, here's the LR edit passed through Photoshop CC invoking the Camera Shake Reduction filter and returned to Lightroom before export.  Consider that Adobe now has Lightroom and Photoshop CC for $10 a month.  You can have both programs for half again what the plugin costs on its own.  I hope the folks who make Piccure continue to enhance their product.  I won't be buying a license at this stage.  I can get better results using the tools that I have.  Fortunately software is an evolutionary business and they can continue to improve.  And perhaps Piccure is exactly the right thing for people who may not care to spend as much time in post-processing as I do, or who have more shake evident in their images.

Q & A : The Best Lens for Hockey

To ask a question of The Photo Video Guy, send an email to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Janet writes; "I am getting into sports photography because I spend so much time in arenas since my son and daughter both play hockey.  I have a Nikon D5200.  It came as a kit with two lenses.  One is the regular lens and the other is a telephoto zoom lens.  The zoom says Nikon DX Nikkor AF-S 55-200mm1:4-5.6 G ED.  The person at Best Buy said it was perfect for hockey but my shots are all blurry.  I use the camera in the fully automatic mode.  I want to get nice pictures of my kids but don't have a lot of time to learn all about photography.  Is this a good lens?  Is this a good lens for hockey?"

Well Janet, hockey is pretty challenging.  Most amateur arenas have horrible lighting, the sport is pretty fast, and you have somewhat limited shooting positions.  When I was doing the TV show with Bryan Weiss we had OJHL Director of Photography Brian Watts on the show and he talked about the gear he uses.  Brian is a professional, but his advice is, I think, very good.  I also agree with him.

To make good pictures in the arena, you are going to have to do a few things.  It will be easiest if you come off auto mode and set your camera to aperture priority (it's the A on the top dial).  Then set your ISO to 3200.  You have a great camera with a very new sensor and it will do a good job at ISO 3200.  This high number tells the sensor to be more sensitive to light.  You will get a bit more digital noise at higher ISOs but if you are sharing on the web or making prints up to 8x10 this is going to be just fine.  You will also want to set your camera to continuous auto focus that Nikon calls AF-C.  I don't have a D5200 handy but this is usually a switch on the body, often on the front near the lens.

There are two more setting that you will want to make.  First put the camera in continuous shooting mode.  CL will give you up to 3 frames (pictures) per second, and CLH will give you up to 5 frames per second.  Second, find the control for Exposure Compensation and set it to +1.5 or +1 ⅔ depending on how your camera is setup.  You want to overexpose a bit because of all the white ice.

I suppose I should also mention to have a large fast SD card in the camera, so you don't have to wait while the buffer empties or you don't run out of shots before the game is over.  When I shoot hockey, I average about 200 shots per period.  Most of them aren't keepers, I expect a very high discard rate.  Better to shoot and throw away than not shoot and miss the shot you want.

Now to your last question, about the lens.  It's a good lens particularly for outdoor work.  But without trying to upset you, it's really not the right lens for hockey.  The focal length (biggest amount of zoom) in this case is 200mm.  On a crop sensor body such as you have this is like shooting with a 300mm lens on a professional grade camera like the Nikon D4.  This is good because it reduces size and weight.  Unfortunately the lens you own is optically very slow, too slow in my experience for success inside arenas.

If you still have return privileges, I would pack the lens up neatly and get your money back.  I don't mean to disrespect Best Buy, I'm sure that there are nice people there, but they likely don't know photography.  Head in to a photography specialty store and look at the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 lens.  It's physically bigger than what you have and weighs a bit more, but at 200mm it lets in two more stops of light than the lens you have.  Without a bunch of techno-babble that means FOUR TIMES as much light.  That will make a huge difference for you.  The lens is often on sale, and as this is being written in November, holiday and Black Friday sales are going on already.

In Canada, where I live, Sigma offers a 7 year warranty, no need for extended warranties on this stuff.  Do get a quality protective filter for the lens.  A Tiffen UV is a great filter and much less expensive than some of the other brands.  I won't kid you, expect to pay about 5x for the Sigma what you got the Nikon kit lens for.  If you cannot afford this you can use the lens you have but I am concerned about having enough lens speed for good hockey images.

Once you have the lens on the camera, you've made the other settings I mentioned and you are heading into the arena, use the camera's controls to set the LOWEST aperture number the lens can deliver.  On the Sigma, this is f/2.8 at all zoom levels.  On the Nikon it will be f/5.6 at 200mm, dropping to f/4 at 55mm.  This is called opening up the lens or shooting wide open.  You want as much light as you can get.

Now put your AF focus point on your player of choice and hold the shutter button part way down.  In Continuous AF, the focus will adjust as you and the player move.  It's very effective.  When you think you have a shot, press through gently and let the camera take 3-5 frames.  Hockey is tough because sticks, hands and other players can get in the way. In a great hockey shot, you can see the player, the stick, the puck and the player's eyes.  As I tell my students, repetition is the mother of skill.  Shoot a lot, throw away the ones that didn't work out at home and keep refining.

I tend to recommend shooting in RAW instead of JPEG, but you indicated that you don't want to spend a lot of time learning photography.  In this case, it's probably easiest to set your camera to large JPEG and the Picture Control to Standard.  If you have a program that can convert your RAW images and you are happy doing some editing, shoot in RAW.

As a final tip, since you are shooting your own kids, don't miss a great play because you are scanning through the pictures or deleting bad shots on the camera LCD.  The time between periods is your best time to review, not while the game is ongoing.  Every game I hear a photographer moan when he or she misses a goal because he or she was looking at the back of the camera.

It is absolutely possible to get great pictures of amateur hockey in your hometown arena.  Here's an example from a couple of weeks ago that I shot in my town.

Thanks for writing in, I hope that this article helps!

An Open Letter To Canon Asking For Professionalism

Yes, this is directed to Canon, but if you are a Pro or using Pro level gear from other manufacturers, feel free to change the name and model numbers because it applies to you too.

Dear Canon,

Why do you insist on treating those people who spend the money on your Professional or near-Professional equipment with such disgusting disrespect?

I am a Canon Professional Services member.  I own a 1D Mk IV (expensive), a 1Dx (expensive) and a C300 EF (even more expensive).  If I want wireless connectivity, I can spend $849 retail for a chip in a hunk of plastic to do slow WiFi for file transfer.  If I had gone to a 5D Mark III, I would get the privilege of paying over $1,100 for WiFi connectivity.

Considering that your entry line of point and shoot cameras as well as multiple of your non-Professional grade cameras have built-in WiFi, how can you even consider justifying the Highway Robbery of the prices charged for WiFi for your Professional level gear.  Don't tell me it's about the quality.  Your expensive products perform no more better than the Bob's Wifi I can buy for $24.99 for the laptop at the local computer store.  In fact they have lower performance and poorer user interface.

It's thievery pure and simple.  You charge Pros more for less because some turd in Marketing decided that the market would bear it.  Find that idiot and fire him or her or the entire committee that made this stupid decision.  Immediately drop the price of wireless to under $100 and do your highest paying clients a service instead of a disservice.

We use your pro level gear.  We spend more on a single lens than your average customer spends on three cameras.  We upgrade more often and your reputation gets enhanced because of the quality and commitment we put into our work.  Please stop screwing us on the accessory front.

You don't need to prove you can treat pro level users as badly as Nikon does.  They charge $899 for the WiFi adapter for the D4.  They also charge $70 for the same capability adapter for their consumer lineup.  Just because one major Japanese manufacturer screws their customers doesn't mean you have to as well.

I challenge Canon to DO THE RIGHT THING.  I have no optimism that you will, but I'm throwing the challenge in front of you regardless.  I DARE YOU TO RESPOND.

Sincerely,

Ross Chevalier

The Photo Video Guy

Episode 80 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Nikon announces the DF, lots of noise, preorders not as strong as expected.  Nikon revenues are down, company drops full year forecast.  Nikon releases new firmware for the D3100, D3200, D5100, D5200 and P7700.  D610 is oil spot free.  Nikon updartes NEF to 1.20.0   Canon to release the SL-1 in white.  Canon releases and then pulls firmware for the C300.   Gordon Laing reviews the Sony A7/A7r.  Fuji releases E lenses firmware updates.  Ricoh announces ultra wide for Q.  Adobe has release candidates for ACR 8.3 and LR 5.3.  Blackmagic updates firmware for Pocket Cinema Camera.  Apple updates RAW converter and patches Aperture.

Q & A : Lens Size and Image Circle

To submit a question to The Photo Video Guy Q & A send an email to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Another query from Darren;

"On a full frame camera the image circle has to be large enough to encompass the full size of the image sensor.  My question is: On a full frame mirrorless camera can the size of the lens be smaller?  On a DSLR camera the lens has allow for the mirror. On a mirror less camera the lens does not have to allow for the mirror.  Does this mean a lens like the 70-200 f2.8 can be made smaller for a mirrorless camera??"

The answer to this question is a qualified "yes".

The size of the image circle is an exercise in optical physics.  The arrangement of lens elements in a lens is designed to accomplish the goals of the lens designer, one of which is to define the placement of the image circle to the focal plane.  It's a common understanding that the size of the lens dictates the size of the image circle.

This is not necessarily so.  The size of the lens is also impacted by the distance the lens to the focal plane.  For example. the lenses on my Hasselblad have to create a larger image circle than the lens for the Canon full frame.  The Lenses are physically larger.  Back when I was shooting medium format film, the lenses for my Mamiya RX67 were much larger than for the Hasselblad 500CM.  Both arrangements had to deal with allocating enough space for a mirror.

However, on the Sinar which is a large format camera where the lens board is connected to the focal plane by a bellows, the lenses are actually quite small.

Thus one can conclude that lens size is only partially related to image circle size but also must take into account the distance from the rear element of the lens to the focal plan.

In looking at mirror less camera / lens combinations, we find that most mirror less lenses are physically smaller than their counterparts for APS-C and Full Frame.  This can be attributed to the lack of requiring space for a mirror, a considerably narrower camera body and the requirement for a much smaller image circle.

Creating a larger image circle where the lens mount distance doesn't change and the amount the rear element can enter the camera body is not limited by the presence of a mirror requires that the work must be done optically.  While this could mean elements larger in diameter, it could also mean elements with more radical curvature, the use of more dispersion managing elements and the use of more aspherical correction in the elements.  Lens speed in terms of maximum aperture is also going to be a big factor in physical lens size.  Building that 70-200/2.8 for the full frame mirror less could result in a physically smaller lens, but it may not.  That decision is going to be up to the lens designer.

My guess is that they will work towards smaller and lighter at the cost of maximum aperture.  In the case of full frame mirror less the aperture is a direct comparator when it comes to depth of field whereas f/2.8 on a full frame has less depth of field than f/2.8 on a micro four-thirds built lens when images are compared.

So the answer is a qualified "yes" but only the lens designer will have the final word.

Q & A : Explain the difference between Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual Rendering Intent in Printing

To submit a question to Q&A at The Photo Video Guy, just put your question into an email and send it to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Darren writes "Does anyone have an answer for the Rendering Intent to use? I researched found Relative Colorimetric is more accurate but may produce some Banding. Perceptual will not result in banding but the color may not be as saturated or accurate. In a Henry's printing class, using  A Canon 9000 and Canon paper, I was told to have everybody use Relative Colorimetric. Everyone's prints looked like monkey poop. When I had them switch to Perceptual their prints looked much better. Most of their prints had greens and green foliage."

I think this is a great question because it confuses many photographers printing at home and because the explanations are often not very useful as I have seen.  I'll take a shot at this.

Let's agree that different mediums display colour differently.  The old CRT produced colours that look different from the IPS LED LCD displays of today.  Images that are backlit look different from those that are projected.  Prints look different based on the surface texture and finish of the paper.

I've written lots about the importance of profiling your display before you edit, and recently answered a question from Denis on printer profiling.  Darren's question comes out of that answer.

When we edit on our computers and have calibrated the display, we are working with an image that is as close to "real" as we can get.  When we go to print the image, even when the printer and paper are profiled or we are using an ICC profile, occasionally an image looks, to use Darren's words, like monkey poo.  This typically results from the rendering intent being selected.  I did a quick direct survey of folks I know who print on which of relative colorimetric and perceptual that they choose and got a resounding "Yes, if the first one looks good I stop,  If it looks bad, I try the other one."  Effective but hardly scientific.

It's All About the Gamut

What is gamut?  Gamut means the complete range or scope of something.  In an image, we typically think gamut when we think of the complete range of colours.  Printing paper has less colour gamut than a backlit LED powered LCD display.  This is why an image that screams at you on screen can have less power when printed.  Glossy papers typically have a wider gamut than matte papers, hot pressed papers typically have a wider gamut than woven papers.  I use the word typical because it means true most of the time but not always.

In this example, we see the gamut for the different colour spaces we could use in editing.  This image comes from a great document on Adobe's site called Color Managed RAW Workflow.  It was written by the inestimable Jeff Schewe.  You can download the document here.  The document was written to help people make better prints using a much older version of Photoshop so it is a bit dated.  The concepts contained therein remain absolutely viable.

We can see the horseshoe shape of visible colour and we can also see the gamut limits of the three main editing colour spaces along with an overlay of the gamut response of 2200 Matte Paper.  Plainly, working in the sRGB colour space is going to produce severe out of gamut situations and the image is going to look crappy.  If we were to use the Adobe RGB colour space, there's only a tiny bit of out of gamut area, in the yellow/orange area.  If our image doesn't have much in those colours we might be ok, but if it does, a little tuning can adjust it to fit the capability of the paper.

We work very hard editing our images using Curves, Tonal Mapping, HDR and push pull tools to maximize the dynamic range (number of stops rendered) and colour space.  Most serious editors know not to edit in sRGB or even Adobe RGB but to instead use  ProPhoto RGB.  These are all good steps but it could start to fall apart when we go to print.

Rendering Intent

Inks and papers will sometimes not have the gamut of the final image.  This translates to mean that the colour range of the image extends beyond the capabilities of the media to represent it.  While there are four rendering intents in general, only two are worked with when making photographic prints.  They are Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual.

The question you as the artist has to determine is what you want to happen when the gamut of the original exceeds the capability of the media.  There are two options provided.  In the first option, called Relative Colorimetric, we accept that there are out of gamut colours and are comfortable with losing them.  Just has excessive overexposure causes highlight clipping, we can say that in this model we have colour clipping.  The colours that are in gamut for the media are rendered accurately but colours outside the gamut are lost entirely.  This can produce images that don't look complete, or overly flat.  The colour is right, but there is stuff missing.

The alternative is Perceptual.  This is the equivalent of compression.  We take the image gamut and compress it to fit into the gamut space of the media.  We don't lose any of the colours, but we concede colour accuracy as all the colours get shifted subtly to make space for the entire image gamut in the more limited gamut of the media.   This is the generic default when your printing application doesn't ask you which one you want.  The colours are not bang on right but as much of the colour gamut as possible is preserved through the compression.  Colours towards the middle of the gamut, (see the illustrations) shift less than colours towards the edges.  If your image is composed of a lot of colours toward the gamut edges you aren't going to like it much.

In the image at left you can see the clipping that occurs with out of gamut colours when using Relative Colorimetric.  You can also see the compression of colours that occur with Perceptual.  The graphic is from a longer article by the great people at Photozone.de.  Click here to read it.  Selecting the rendering intent is often done first.  I propose doing it last.  Let me tell you why .

Getting to the Print

In Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5, Adobe added Soft Proofing.  It's in the Develop module and users sometimes get very confused why it isn't in the Print module since you are using it for printing.  The rationale to put it in Develop, according to Adobe folks I spoke to at Photoshop World, is that making a proof is like making a unique edit.  They're right, because I have printed the same image on vastly different papers and ended up with different edits for different papers.

Basically you do your edits and when you are ready to print, and have set up the Print module, you jump back to the Develop module and click the button to turn on proofing.  Then you MUST select the ICC profile for the printer / paper you intend to use.  If you don't do this, don't even bother going through proofing.  What Adobe has done, is to attempt to show you what the printed image is going to look like and how it will be different on different papers using the printer you selected.

What this function will do is show you where your image and rendering intent will work and where they will start to fall apart.  You can now start moving your edit sliders and curves around to pull the proof image back into a pleasing output.  It's really very powerful.  Where it frustrates people is when they have punched clarity, saturation, blacks, whites, hues and sharpness very hard to get a screen image they like only to discover it will look like turtle puke when printed.  This is a great tool as well to help decide what paper you will print on.

Let's start with a RAW image right out of the camera.  No processing done to it at all.  It's not a particularly interesting image but it does have areas of high colour saturation, one of the first places where gamut boundaries get exceeded.

Note the red berries.  Even with no editing done, we could have a gamut problem as we will see when we switch to a Soft Proof view of the same image.

Even in a low quality web image you can see that the soft proof will not look the same as the RAW image.  The colours are flatter, and I've turned on the gamut output device warning so those red berries have a marker on them to show that with the current image settings, this print will be out of gamut.

In this smaller image you can see the out of gamut warning indicators on the berries themselves.  This means that if we were to print this as is, the berry colours would be out of gamut.  They're out regardless of which intent we use, but the flattening will be greater if we choose Relative Colorimetric.  If we were to choose Perceptual the entire image colour palette will be compressed.

Take a look next at the Soft Proof panel that appears when Soft Proofing is selected.  Here we can see the paper ICC profile being used, in this example Red River Paper's wonderful Polar Pearl Metallic using the driver for the Epson 4900.  We see that the intent being displayed is Relative Colorimetric and that we have set Lightroom to simulate the paper and ink.  That last setting is critical to be able to do the next step in making a great print that doesn't cross an out of gamut threshold.  And it is incredibly easy.

Next we see a capture of the full Lightroom screen.

I've made a Proof Copy to start.  This allows me to start with my edited version and makes a new Virtual Copy specifically to be adjusted using Soft Proofing to correct for out of gamut conditions.  In addition to the basic development settings, I draw your attention to the use of the Targeted Adjustment Tool (TAT) in both the Tone Curve and HSL panels.  By placing the TAT on the areas being flagged as out of gamut, I can make specific adjustments to correct these areas without changing the entire image.  Here even thought the out of gamut warnings are still active, they are not showing up because I have been able to leverage the point selection power of the TAT to subtly manipulate the Tone Curve and the Saturation by colour.  I always try to manipulate the image to achieve an intent of Relative Colorimetric first because it holds all the colours and keeps them accurate.  If I cannot get there entirely, that's when a flip to Perceptual will typically bring everything in line.  It's subjective at this point of course.

The really good news is that now when I print this image on the Red River Polar Pearl Metallic, it will look like it does on the display.  I find the paper and ink simulation to be very good, as close as one can come when the edit is backlit and the final print is reflective.  It's still a boring shot, but now at least it has good colours with no colour out of gamut.

I want to thank the great people who came before me and shared their knowledge such that I could teach myself and eventually share my learning with others.  And if you have questions, don't forget to send them in to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca

First Look : Nikon AW1

The first run of Nikon's 1 series cameras has been a questionable success. The J1, in local experience, had a huge number of returns related to customer satisfaction. I liked the V1 although I called it the 688 given its resemblance to a Los Angeles class submarine. The J2 lasted about a week. The J3 doesn't seem a lot different from its predecessors and the V2 is, well it has a face only its mother could love. When I heard about the AW1, a waterproof 1 series camera, I first had to cry because the "credible" writer indicated it was the first underwater camera with interchangeable lenses. This is of course a complete load of poo given that Nikon themselves brought the world the Nikonos line of very serious and very credible underwater cameras and lenses.

I was more intrigued because of the possibility of a compact system camera with very good glass, a much better than PS sensor and hardened system. As readers know, I work part time at a camera store and we have the AW1 in stock. It was a bit slow today and I had some short time to play with the AW1.

The Good

This feels serious. Construction is very solid. There is plenty of metal involved. The O Ring system that makes a seal for the lens when mounted is simple and yet very innovative as it doesn't preclude using other 1 mount lenses on the AW1, but does add the ability to use the waterproof 11mm-27.5mm lens that comes with the body. Everything is solid.

The shutter button is clean and actuates smoothly without any rocking. Same is true for the video start / stop button. The rockers on the back of the camera have similar feel and the rear LCD is bright and easy to read. The seals for the battery / memory card area look robust and the locking mechanism is both effective and easy to use.

Despite the CX sensor being the smallest of the Compact System Camera sensors, it still produces very good images.  I confess that I shot it as the buyer would out of the box, default of JPEG medium and that is never anything to write home about, but easily as good an image as one would get from an M43 sensor.

There is a simple yet effective finger grip ridge on the front and a slightly tacky thumb pad on the back.  Surprisingly there is a built-in popup flash and the spring deployment is quite aggressive so it should still deploy effectively underwater.

The zoom ring on the 11-27.5 lens is pleasantly stiff.  It's not screaming fast, at f/3.5-f/5.6 but with a top ISO of 6400 should be more than suitable for the use cases.  For those who think in full frame focal lengths, as I do, the lens is like a 30mm to 75mm.  Decent but not really compelling.  I suspect that the limited range is due to the constraints of making the thing waterproof.

That the little AW1 can shoot 15 fps with autofocus for each shot is very impressive.  The AF is blazing fast and the multiple focus points are very usable.  You can actually get up to 60 fps if you let it lock focus and just fire away.

As one would expect, the camera shoots HD video at up to 1080i.  Video is decent, like any camera of similar sensor size.

Battery has a CIPA rating of 220 frames which is quite good considering the small size of the Li-On battery.

Given the camera's use cases, I will forego my typical bitching about the lack of a proper viewfinder.  It gets the job done.

The AW1 comes in white, black and silver.  None of which is particularly useful if the thing gets away from you in the lake or the ocean but pleasant enough out of the water.  The web site does show some fluorescent orange gel type cover.  You don't need it but it would be a good idea if you were going to dive with this thing regularly.  And by dive I mean no more than 50 feet, which in most cases is not going to be a problem.

The Not So Hot

Nikon is not a software company.  I and many others find their menu layout to be designed with the apparent intent of unintelligibility.  The AW1 is nowhere near as horrible as the Android powered point and shoot, but it could be so much better.  Too much time wasted on graphics could be better spent getting to the point.  It's a small camera, so the buttons are small.

I am not a diver, but would be inclined to use the camera in cold and wet weather and I'm not sure that I could manipulate the buttons with gloves on.  I also believe I would inadvertently move the rocker while wearing gloves.

The flash is going to be of limited value underwater.  A guide number of 5 isn't going to drive much light at all.  Certainly no worse than any of the underwater point and shoots, but no better either.

It would have been nice if the zoom range was a bit greater.  The underwater PS market is typically 4x or 5x optical zoom, this lens is less than 3x.  Not a lot of versatility.

While the autofocus is blazingly fast, I did find that when face tracking engaged it slowed down a fair bit.

While I like that the camera has built-in GPS, the fact that you have to go off-board to get WiFi is just plain goofy.  Having to use the DSLR designed WU-1b WiFi adapter takes goofy to the level of stupid.

Why Go This Route

My Canon 1Dx is a professional grade camera.  I shoot it in crappy conditions.  But if I want to make GPS encodings on the images, I need to buy an insanely expensive add-on that gets in the way.  If I want WiFi transfer, same deal.  Stupidly high price for a nothing piece of kit.  I would consider putting one of these things in the bag and grabbing the first shot at a location with it for the GPS and also for quick updates for field level work.  The lens is Nikon, so sharp and with great contrast and the little beast is surprisingly tough.  It actually feels like Canon's EOS-M in construction quality but with autofocus that doesn't suck.

I haven't yet gone the route of a compact system camera.  Technically, the Leicas are mirror less cameras but I don't think of them the same way I might think of a Sony NEX or Lumix.  I like the GX-7 and the Olympus OM-D EM-5 very much, but not so much that I would drop coin on either of them.  I do think that the AW1 is overpriced in its space, but it will likely drop in price as Nikon gets the market sizing right.  This is a very spiky vertical marketplace.  At $799 it's a tough sell.  If they could get it to $499 it would slay the other vendors by adding use cases beyond the "smaller lighter interchangeable lens" banner.

The three sample shots here are literally fully auto JPEGs right out of the camera.  Had I more time, or better mentally engaged, I would have switched over to RAW or at least JPEG Fine.  Given ISO selections between 800 and 1250 by the camera, noise is well handled and contrast is ok.  I did NO processing on these shots at all, and am confident that working in RAW I could get significantly better colour and contrast even at higher ISOs.

Thanks to Henry's of Newmarket for letting me use the camera for this First Look

Specifications courtesy of Nikon

 

Type

• Type

  Advanced Camera with Interchangeable Lenses

• Lens Mount

  Nikon 1/Nikon Waterproof 1 Mount

 

Image Sensor

• Picture Angle

  Approx. 2.7x lens focal length (Nikon CX format)

• Effective Pixels

  14.2 million

• Sensor Size

  13.2mm

   x 8.8mm

• Image Sensor Format

  CX

• Image Sensor Type

  CMOS

• Total Pixels

  15.13 million

• Dust-reduction system

  Dust Shield

• Image Area (pixels)

  Normal Panorama, horizontal pan (40:7 aspect ratio) 4,800 x 920

  Normal Panorama - vertical pan (8:25 aspect ratio) 1,536 x 4,800

  Wide Panorama - horizontal pan (80:7 aspect ratio) 9,600 x 920

  Wide Panorama - vertical pan (4:25 aspect ratio) 1,536 x 9,600

  Still Images (3:2 aspect ratio) 4,608 x 3,072 3,456 x 2,304 2,304 x 1,536

  Still images (taken during movie recording; aspect ratio 3:2) 4,608 x 3,072 (1080/60i, 1080/30p) 1,280 x 856 (720/60p, 720/30p)

  Motion Snapshot (16:9 aspect ratio) 4,608 x 2,592

 

File System

• File Format

  Compressed 12-bit NEF (RAW) JPEG: JPEG-Baseline compliant with fine (approx 1:4), normal (approx 1:8), or basic (approx 1:16) compression NEF (RAW) + JPEG: Single photograph recorded in both NEF (RAW) and JPEG formats

• Storage Media

  SD SDHC SDXC

• Card Slot

  1 Secure Digital (SD)

• File System

  Compliant with DCF (Design Rule for Camera File System) 2.0 DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) EXIF 2.3 (Exchangeable Image File Format for Digital Still Cameras) PictBridge

 

Viewfinder

• Viewfinder

  LCD

 

Lens

• Lens Aperture

  electronically controlled

 

Shutter

• Shutter Type

  Electronic Shutter

• Fastest Shutter Speed

  1/16,000 sec.

• Slowest Shutter Speed

  30 sec.

• Flash Sync Speed

  Up to 1/60 sec.

• Bulb Shutter Setting

  Yes

• Shutter Release Modes

  Single-frame [S] mode Continuous Self-timer mode

• Frame Advance Rate

  Approx. 5, 15, 30, or 60 fps

• Top Continuous Shooting Speed at full resolution

  15 frames per second

  with AF; 30/60 fps with focus locked on first frame

• Self-timer

  2, 5, 10 sec. Timer duration electronically controlled

• Remote Control Modes

  WU-1b Wireless Mobile Adapter

 

Exposure

• Exposure Metering System

  TTL metering using image sensor

• Metering Method

  Matrix Center-weighted: Meters 4.5 mm circle in center of frame Spot: Meters 2 mm circle centered on select focus area

• Exposure Modes

  Programmed Auto with flexible Program (P) Shutter-Priority Auto (S) Aperture-Priority Auto (A) Manual (M) Scene Auto Selector

• Scene Modes

  Portrait Landscape Night Landscape Night Portrait Close-up Auto Underwater

• Shooting Modes

  Advanced movie mode (includes slow motion) Auto Photo mode Best Moment Capture mode (includes Slow View and Smart Photo Selector) Creative mode (including: P, S, A, M, Night Landscape, Underwater, Night Portrait, Backlighting, Soft, Easy Panorama, Miniature Effect, and Selective Color) Motion Snapshot (16:9)

• Exposure Compensation

  ±3 EV in increments of 1/3EV

• Exposure Lock

  Luminosity locked at detected value with AE-L/AF-L button

 

Sensitivity

• ISO Sensitivity

  160-

  6400

• Active D-Lighting

  On Off

 

Autofocus

• Picture Control

  Standard Neutral Vivid Monochrome Portrait Landscape Selected Picture Control can be modified User-customizable Settings

• Autofocus System

  Hybrid autofocus (phase detection/contrast-detect AF) AF-assist illuminator

• AF-area mode

  Single-point AF: 135 focus areas; the center 73 areas support phase-detection AF Auto-area AF: 41 focus areas Subject tracking Face-priority AF

• Focus Lock

  Focus can be locked by pressing shutter-release button halfway (single AF)

• Focus Modes

  Auto (AF) Auto AF-S/AF-C selection (AF-A) Single-Servo AF (AF-S) Continuous-Servo (AF-C) Full-time Servo (AF-F) Manual Focus (MF)

 

Flash

• Built-in Flash

  Yes

• Guide Number

  5/16 (m/ft ISO 100, 20°C/68°F) Approx.

• Flash Control

  i-TTL flash control using image sensor available

• Flash Mode

  Fill-flash Fill-flash with slow sync Red-eye reduction Red-eye reduction with slow sync Rear curtain sync Rear curtain with slow sync Off

• Flash Compensation

  -3 to +1 EV in increments of 1/3 EV

• Flash-ready indicator

  Lights when built-in flash unit is fully charged

 

White Balance

• White Balance

  Auto Incandescent Fluorescent Direct Sunlight Flash Cloudy Shade Preset Manual Underwater All except preset manual with fine tuning

 

Movie

• Movie Metering

  TTL exposure metering using main image sensor

• Movie Metering Method

  Matrix Center-weighted: Meters 4.5 mm circle in center of frame Spot: Meters 2 mm circle centered on select focus area

• Movie File Format

  MOV

• Movie Video Compression

  H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding

• Movie Audio recording format

  AAC

• Movie Audio recording device

  Built-in stereo microphone; sensitivity adjustable

• Movie

  HD: 1920 x 1080/60i HD: 1920 x 1080/30p HD: 1280 x 720/60p HD: 1280 x 720/30p Slow-motion: 640 x 240/400fps Slow-motion: 320 x 120/1200fps Motion Snapshot: 1920 x 1080/60p (plays at 24p) Audio file format: ACC Movie file format: MOV

 

Monitor

• Monitor Size

  3.0 in. diagonal

• Monitor Resolution

  921,000 Dots

• Monitor Type

  TFT-LCD with brightness adjustment

 

Interface

• Interface

  USB: Hi-speed USB HDMI output: Type C mini-pin HDMI connector

• GPS

  Yes (Built-in)

 

Menus

• Supported Languages

  Arabic Bengali Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) Czech Danish Dutch English Finnish French German Greek Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese (European and Brazilian) Romanian Russian Spanish Swedish Tamil Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese

• Date, Time and Daylight Savings Time Settings

  Yes

• World Time Setting

  Yes

 

Power

• Battery / Batteries

  EN-EL20 Lithium-ion Battery

• Battery Life (shots per charge)

  220 shots (CIPA)

• AC Adapter

  EH-5b AC Adapter Requires EP-5C Power Supply Connector

 

Miscellaneous

• Tripod Socket

  1/4 in.

• Approx. Dimensions (Width x Height x Depth)

  4.5 in.

   (113.5 mm)

   x 2.9 in.

   (71.5 mm)

   x 1.5 in.

   (37 mm)

  Excluding projections.

• Approx. Weight

  11.1 oz.

   (313 g)

  camera body only

• Operating Environment

  14 to 104°F (-10 to 40°C) on land; 32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C) in water Less than 85% humidity (no condensation)

Q & A : Clarity on Printer and Paper Profiling

To submit your question to The Photo Video Guy Q&A just send me an email at ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Just when I think that there may go a week without a question, I am saved by good folks with excellent questions.  This one comes from Denis.

"I hope all is well and you have the time to answer a question that has come up. I watched Scott's "Grid show #113 about printing your own work. They talk about calibrating your monitor and printer with the Color Munki. If you have set up that calibration of both does that interfere with the paper profile that you down load from the paper manufactures? I have been told you need to bring your paper that you want to print on to calibrate the printer. That would mean you would have to do that to each paper you will be using.

I would like to know if that calibration over rides the paper profile. Do you have to use samples of each paper to calibrate. I have been seeing on thing and told another. I am going to allowed access to a color munki so I can calibrate both. I would like to know how this works and separate the myth form the legend  ! ! ! !"

The Scott that Denis refers to is of course, Scott Kelby, most celebrated (deservedly) of web / new media photographic instructors.  I've written and reviewed on the subject of display profiling on multiple occasions with the fundamental answer, if you edit your own work, you MUST calibrate your display.  Denis' question goes to the next level, taking that calibration to the printer.

I believe in printing your images.  There is nothing like a print in hand.  Folks wanting to make their own great prints, know that there are many choices in printers, inks, and papers to use to product final artwork.  Any paper manufacturer that is actually serious about quality printing produces ICC profiles for their papers.  Let's start there.

An ICC profile characterizes the colour space, or input device, or output device according to standards set by the ICC (International Color Consortium).  It's basically a set of rules that say to achieve this colour space, make the following adjustments to the default settings.  ICC paper profiles provide definition on how to get accurate colour representation on a particular printer, with a particular paper with a certain ink set.  That does mean what it sounds like.  For example, I use an Epson 4900 printer.  So only ICC profiles for that printer are useful to me.  If I use Red River Paper's superb Polar Metallic paper, the ICC profile is for that paper, on that printer and assumes I am using the factory ink.  Since serious printers use pigment based inks over the less accurate dye based inks, this becomes even more important because variance in pigments is reduced and archival life is substantially longer.  With rare exceptions, a print made using the manufacturer's ICC profile for the specific paper on the specific printer will do a really fine job, presuming of course that the edits were made on a computer with a calibrated display.

But there are exceptions.  Perhaps you are experimenting with different surface types.  Perhaps the paper manufacturer whose products you use doesn't have a profile for your specific printer.  Perhaps you have tried the manufacturer's ICC profile and it just doesn't look right.  This is when you need to create a custom paper profile for your workspace.  This is more work than you might think but is as accurate as you can get.

The XRite Color Munki Photo does both displays and printers.  Many calibration tools only do displays.  I have personally paid for and used a number of tools for calibration and ONLY recommend products from the Color Munki line.  Other products have produced poor results and display considerable inconsistency.

With the Color Munki photo, you print a test print directly from the software.  It creates a series of patches printed using your printer on the paper you are using.  You then use the Color Munki Photo to scan the patches.  It then does some significant math and you then print a second different test print.  You then scan its patches and the software generates a new ICC profile that is unique to your setup, your printer, your inks, your paper.  At this point, you no longer use the manufacturer's ICC profile, you replace it with your own.

In order to get a good custom profile, you must wait the required drying times specified, as ink setup takes different amounts of time depending on the paper type, and whether it has OBAs or is resin coated (RC paper).  This makes constructing a custom profile a time consuming business.  Once you've built one custom profile, you might want to build one for every paper type you use.  And that's how it works.  The ICC profile you create is only valid for the one type of paper.  You'll use ink and at minimum two 8x10 sheets and about 40 minutes for every profile you create.  In theory you should be good from then on, but professional printers recommend redoing this every time you have a major ink change, and for each new lot of paper.

I recommend keeping a binder of all patch pages and the documentation from the manufacturer on best printer setups.  I annotate the documents to what works for me.  I print exclusively from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  The current release offers print proof and final printer brightness and contrast controls.  When I find a setting that works for my printer and a particular paper type, I document that for next time.  I also create specific printer setups in the Print Management function on my Macintosh so the next time I am going to print on Breathing Color Crystalline Satin Canvas roll paper, a single click sets the proper platen height, dpi and other settings.  You can probably do this on Windows too.  I have no idea how and no interest in figuring that out though.

I have printed on papers from Canon, Epson, Hahnemuhle, Canson Infinity, Red River, Moab, IT Supplies, Inkpress and Kodak.  Some are great, some are truly awful, and what works best for me may not be what works best for you.

On the subject of printers, I have printed on Xerox, HP, Canon, Fuji and Epson.  For home based printing, start and stop at Epson.  HP and Xerox do great office printers.  They are not photo printer manufacturers.  Fuji is production level, not for the home or even small business.  Canon should be great and maybe the recent Pro-1 is better, but having owned the 9000 Mk I, the 9000 Mk II and the 9500 Mk II, unless you plan on printing only on Canon branded paper, bypassing ICC altogether and printing from Canon's DPP software only, do not spend one thin dime here.  It's a great system if you stay completely in family. Otherwise it's a nightmare in excessive red.  Canon reps have acknowledged this and their response is use only Canon paper.  Screw that.  I do know that one of my inspirations in printing, Mr. Martin Bailey of Tokyo, uses Canon large format IPP printers and is very happy.  I believe though that Mr. Bailey builds custom ICC profiles for everything.

To learn more about making great prints yourself I recommend a couple of resources.  First is Martin Bailey's Making the Print eBook available at Craft and Vision here.  It's wonderful and will set you back all of $5!  For more depth and detail, the "bible" on the subject is Jeff Schewe's book The Digital Print available below through Amazon (and please buy through the link to help support The Photo Video Guy).

Thanks to Denis for the question and don't hesitate to be the next question answered here on The Photo Video Guy.

Canon Moves the C100 Ahead

We've recently seen the release of the Canon 70D DSLR with Canon's new Dual-Pixel AF that dramatically improves the experience of autofocus while capturing video.  What some people don't know is that only the C100 in Canon's Cinema line does autofocus, the higher end C300 and C500 do not. Today, Canon announced that a service upgrade to the C100 will be available in February 2014.  Owners will send their camera to a Canon Service Center and for $500, the sensor will be replaced with the new Dual-Pixel AF sensor.

Continuous AF is supported with Canon lenses and this upgrade will effectively double the AF performance in the C100.

It's a very nice announcement to see.  A C100 sells new for about $5,700 body only.   The upgrade brings a great camera to the latest in autofocus technology for less than 10% of the purchase prices and prolongs the useful life of the investment already made.  Kudos to Canon for not only supporting new customers but also for providing investment protection to existing customers.  I hope we see similar service centre upgrades from Canon on other products.

Kudos to Google Nik Support - specifically Andre

I confess that when Google acquired Nik Software, I was concerned it was the beginning of the end for some great tools.  The first surprise came when Google bundled all the disparate offerings together into a single package that cost about 25% of what the individual products had sold for.  Yes, I was saddened that I had been a loyal customer and paid more than 4x what a new client could pay, but that's how the ball bounces sometimes.  I also received an email from Google saying my investment was protected and I would get all the updates without charge.  Cool!

Then, blackness.

I use a variety of plugins and add-ons.  All have regular updates and fixes.  Nik had as well but once Google took over, I saw nothing at all.  I didn't think about it because the stuff that was installed was working.  Then this past weekend, I learned about a new plugin called Analog.  It's another film look plugin and I already have several and don't use them so not really a big deal to me.  But I became a bit annoyed that I hadn't been getting any updates so went the the Nik Google page and filled out the contact form, actually anticipating no reply due to past experience with Google support.

I stand happily corrected!   This morning I received an email from Andre in Google / Nik support apologizing that I had not received the first update back in March that made updates automatic, along with some potential ideas on why I had not.  He also provided me the direct link to my own licensed downloads that will autoupdate.  Various software companies approach support differently.  All use forums where users help each other.  Some charge per incident, some could not care less.  I can now put Google / Nik in the same category as I place DxO.  Excellent personal response in a very timely manner.

It would be easy for an organization the size of Google to ignore customers.  I much prefer working on Macintosh platforms, but if you aren't paying for AppleCare, you're pretty much out of luck.  Apple could learn about support from Google in this case.  Kudos to Andre specifically.  One person changed my mind about Google Nik.  One person is all it takes.

Q & A : The Lowdown on RAW vs JPEG

I cannot recall the number of times a photographer has asked me to explain the whole RAW vs JPEG thing.  Since I started this Q&A offering, it's come in a couple of times, and the latest comes from Joss.  Here's the email, although I don't know Joss' gender, the message is pretty darn clear. "Hi.  I heard about this question service and want to ask a question that i can't get a straight answer to.  My camera is a Nikon D7100.  I just got it.  I bought it to replace my D5000.  I always used to to take pictures using the settings that came in the camera.  I bought the new camera online and went into a couple of stores to ask questions about it.  I want to learn more about taking pictures and the store people gave me different information.  One man said I should use JPEG.  A lady in a different store said to use RAW.  Neither one could tell me why.  I feel like people tell me things without knowing why.  Can you help me?"

In fairness, I edited the email a bit to remove some duplication, because Joss got some really crappy guidance, and more than once.

Let's start at the beginning.  When a sensor captures an image, it doesn't care about the image.  It doesn't even "know" it's an image.  What it sees is an electrical representation of a luminance value.  The three colour Bayer array used in most sensors assigns the luminance value to one of RGB for each photo site on the sensor.  Complex algorithms assign the colour levels based on the luminance values the photo sites collect.  The data stream of the file is what we call the RAW data.  Each manufacturer writes the data in their own format.  In most cases, the formats are proprietary, but some manufacturers choose the open standard DNG format.  The format is not that important so long as software can decode it.  Each camera adds a unique set of information to the file, and that's why a RAW file from the D5000 doesn't look like a RAW file from the D7100.  So even from one manufacturer, you still need a RAW decoder for each camera type.  Apple and Adobe produce new decoders pretty quickly.  That's why older software might not be able to decode RAW files from newer cameras.

JPEG is a standard format designed specifically to convert RAW data streams into a generic format that is widely understood without specific decoders for each camera model.  I order to do this, a number of algorithms get used in the conversion.  They turn the data stream into an image.  Colours are adjusted, contrast is altered, sharpening is applied amongst other image alterations.  In order to simplify file movement, compression algorithms are used to reduce the file size to make transmission easier.  The JPEG compression model is known as a "lossy compression".  In a lossy compression, when duplicate data values are found, the duplicates either get pointers applied to other image points, and adjacent duplicates have some number of them deleted entirely.  In the case of the general JPEG model, the quality setting has control over how much gets tossed and the related file size reduction.

For example, a quality setting of 100% still uses a compression ratio of 2.6:1  That's about 38% of the original file size.  This makes it easier to email the file around because it is smaller,  Unfortunately the file is also missing a lot of data.  That looks like about a 60% loss of data.  A quality setting of 50 means a loss of over 90% of the actual data.  The default quality settings are typically 75-80, loss of around 70% of data.   Simply put, there is no way any JPEG can ever offer the level of data that RAW can.

There's a popular misconception that the only difference between RAW and JPEG is that you cannot adjust the white balance after the fact in JPEG.  This is complete crap.  Software may not offer the same settings for RAW or JPEG, but both are adjustable.  Since there is so much less data in JPEG, the results after shifting the colour balance tend to look like crap pretty quickly but this doesn't mean that it's not doable.

There's another issue with JPEG that is not well known.  Every time you open and change a JPEG, it gets the compression algorithm applied again.  That means that every open / save event results in further degradation.  By the way, if your first save is at 70% and the second is at 90% doesn't restore the loss from the first save.  It's multiplcative.  That means worse.

RAW is lossless.  If you edit a processed RAW file, and you don't want to lose quality, you need to save in another lossless format such as TIFF.  JPEG is great for sharing on the web but it should be the LAST step and only saved in that format ONCE.

RAW does require processing to convert the data stream to an image.  That doesn't mean you need to do significant editing.  Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom both offer presets to apply the JPEG camera "looks" without the JPEG loss.

None of use will always get every element of the image right in the camera every time.  RAW gives you all the data, all the time.  There's really no reason to do otherwise.

I hope that this helps Joss and everyone else who is confused.  I have heard of some folks saying that they can explain the differences without getting technical.  Since the entire process is completely technical this sounds spurious to me.  The net is shoot RAW.  You're always ahead of the game.

Episode 79 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Nikon DF prue photography November 5.  Nikon testing OX X 10.9 software compatibility.Nikon 18-140 is a good performer according to DP Review.  Canon releases Q3 results, profits and net sales up Y/Y.  Imaging expectations reduced due to drop in P/S sales.  Canon updates the firmware on the 5D Mk III.  Will there be an M2 on Nov 10th?  Next generation 1D in late 2014?  More rumours on 7D Mk II.  Canon 55-250 STM better choice than EF-S 55-250.  Lumia goes RAW on 1020.  DxO Optics Pro 9 released.  Aperture 3.5 has Smugmug support and icloud photo sharing.

Q&A : Getting Started with Studio Lights - LED or Flash

Kaley writes... "I love taking pictures and I'm good with animals so I thought I would start taking pictures of pets for people, so they could have nice pictures on their computers or even get prints made.  My camera has a popup flash but it always gives red eyes and the pictures don't look nice.  I saw on YouTube that professionals use studio lights.  I didn't get what the guy was saying and I don't have a lot of money to spend because I am starting out.  The guy at "local store" told me to get a flash setup, but by the time he was done it was like a thousand dollars and really heavy.  I left and went back a couple of days later and a different person told me just to use LED video lights because they won't scare the pets.  That made sense but when he showed me some, the shadows were really deep and I don't think the pictures would look good.  They were really expensive too.  I want to see if I can make money at this, not spend a lot of money.  What do you think?"

This is a really good question that Kaley is asking, and very timely because continuous lighting has come a very long way.

To start, we are really talking about the difference between flash and continuous light.  Flash brings lots of power and you can add modifiers pretty easily to soften the light.  While a flash meter is ideal, with digital you can bang away for a few shots until you get the exposure you like.  Continuous light has less power, usually a lot less power, but has the wonderful advantage that you can see what the light looks like right through the viewfinder or on the LCD and your reflected light meter in your camera is going to get the exposure pretty close to ideal without any guesswork.

I want to stick to low cost options since that is a key deliverable for Kaley.  Pets can be, and often are, startled by the big pop of a flash unit.  Cats in particular have very sensitive eyes, and since most cats keep people around as a source for food only, they are just like super models and tend to disappear when annoyed.  Dogs are better with flash in general, and that's about where my experience photographing pets ends.

In the flash world, you need a couple of hot shoe flash units of decent but not blinding power, a couple of modifiers, stands and clamps.  If your camera can control the external flashes using the popup (many Nikons support the Creative Lighting System and many Canons support Canon's flash control system) then you can control the two flashes from the camera and use the vendor's TTL for through the lens flash metering.  Consumer level DSLRs and many Compact System Cameras cannot do this, so then you need to experiment with the flashes on manual and using slaves and triggers to get the flashes to fire.  If this sounds complicated, it actually is until you've practiced a bit.

For Kaley's purpose and in many cases for people as well, I am really liking using continuous lighting systems.  They're easy to set up and the entry kits come very complete.  Something like the Erin Manning kit sold widely has two softboxes, two stands, two lamp holders and two big 5500K daylight compact fluorescents.  They run cool and last a really long time.  Setting up is no harder than flash but you get to good exposures very quickly if you are not a flash expert.  No worries about sync speeds and cabling and radio triggers and...ok I'm getting a headache.  Westcott just released the Skylite which is a continuous LED light that takes Bowens modifiers and is pretty soft out of the box.  It has power control and is really nice but it's price is about four times what it should be.  For pets and a couple of people, the Erin Manning kit is ideal.  The only downside is that despite being like 500w lamps in brightness, the bulbs don't put out anywhere near the power that a big flash will.  Move the lights in as close as you can without being in frame and use a mid ISO like ISO 400.  This will give you enough depth of field and decent shutter speeds.  Today's continuous lights do not get very hot and they last a long time.  You can get started for around $400 for a kit such as I describe.

It is possible to use the sort of multi-LED portable video lights that are on the market but they tend to be small and don't have diffusers so the light tends to be harsh.  Some people put a plain white shower curtain in front of them to soften and spread the light.  It works surprisingly well, but the shower curtain can be awkward.  Direct video lights are not that good for portraits and may annoy animals.

Kaley did not mention it but she will need some kind of a background for the shots.  There are all kinds of background stand kits you can get that work well.  Animals are one of those situations where you will need the background to flow from behind onto the floor.  There are painted and dyed muslins that you can get pretty cheap, but the dyes tend to run and the material is a wrinkle fest.  Paper rolls tend to work better, since you can just tear off anything that gets wrecked.  And it will get wrecked.  Covered in hair, scratches, "accidents", paper is cheap.  Go with a neutral background so as not to take attention away from the subject and fill the frame.  Savage has recently released some very neat "floor" backgrounds that could work since the pet tends to be lying or sitting down on something.  Cats may sit on stools, dogs may not.

That's about it.  If you are looking for quick and relatively inexpensive, it's pretty hard to beat simple continuous lighting systems.  Thanks for reading.

Send your questions in via email.

Q&A : Neutral Density Filters

Did something happen to create a rush on ND filters?  As I was preparing this post, I got a couple of other questions on the same topic.  So for the three folks who wrote in, I am going to summarize your questions and try to answer them in a single post.

1. Why would I need to add a filter to my lens, can't I do this when editing my pictures?
2. Why would I want a filter to make my pictures blurry?  I thought it was going to make the shutter open longer, but the sales guy said it would make the water blurry.
3. I have seen lots of fall pictures with leaves and rivers and rocks and the water looks really smooth and like it's moving but everything else is sharp.  How do I do this?

Well I'd be happy to believe that folks could get good advice in any photo retailer, but I know better.  Let's start with what a Neutral Density (ND) filter is.

A neutral density filter, and I will refer to them as ND filters henceforth, is a filter that reduces the amount of light passing through the lens to the sensor.  Neutral means that there is no colour shift or colour filtration being applied.  ND filters come as either full, meaning the same level of light reduction is applied across the entire filter or as graduated filters that have a range from no filtration to the full effect over some span.  I won't spend time on graduates here, the conversation will stick to full coverage NDs.

Some vendors calibrate their ND filters in stops, for example, 1 stop or 3 stop filters.  Others refer to them as nn x where the nn is a number.  This is perhaps photographically correct but is user unfriendly.  So here's the simple math.  For every 0.3x of filtration that's one stop.  So a 0.6x ND filter cuts the light by two stops.  Now you can be immune to bafflegab.

ND filters are created a couple of ways.  In a popular method, the glass that the filter is cut from has a dye injected while molten.  In another case, a foil overlay is applied to the filter glass.  In the case of Tiffen filters, a Wratten optical gel is sandwiched between two pieces of optical glass to form a laminate.  Because the colour controls in Wratten filters are long proven, and because Tiffen uses proper optical glass, they can be a very cost effective route for ND filters.  Avoid the foil overlay type.  You'll know because they will be very cheap.  Spray painting a UV filter with grey transparent paint gives about the same effect and the same lack of quality.  If you go for the dyed glass model, have your check book ready because then you want top line glass to ensure consistency of the dye base.  This means either Schott or Schneider glass such as the filters from Heliopan or B+W.  For your own sake, stick with one of the three named vendors.

There is a special class of ND filters called Variable Neutral Density filters.  Variables are not made the same way.  They are two polarizing type filters, one mounted in a fixed ring and one in a rotating ring.  As you rotate the front filter, the twin polarizing filters act to cut or pass light.  Variables are incredibly handy because they typically cut light across a range of up to 6 stops, often from two stops to eight stops.  Variables are very demanding optical units.  The Heliopan units are the best out there, although I have used the Tiffen ones extensively and can recommend the Singh-Ray units as well.  B+W also do variables but they are harder to find it seems.

More troubling are the stunning array of craptastic variables that cost less than the price of a single decent polarizer.  These filters have no coatings and because the polarizing film being used is of such poor quality, they produce horrible amounts of moire (an optical interference pattern, click here for a full definition) and also apply a colour cast, usually akin to rotted meat green.  Don't waste your hard earned money on this junk.

So to the questions...

You cannot slow down the shutter speed to create motion effects after the shot is made, claims by post-processing software vendors notwithstanding.  In fact other than a UV and a Polarizer, an ND set or ND Variable is the only filter you need in your kit.  Be aware that if you use a strong ND filter, your autofocus system will throw its virtual hands in the air, so you are in manual focus mode pretty quickly.  Some people like variables because they can use AF with a low setting, lock the focus and then dial up the light cut.

ND filters do not make pictures blurry.  That's the job of the photographer.  However, strong NDs may cut the light so much that to use one without a tripod will result in blur.  Typically we use ND filters to allow for slower shutter speeds in bright light so we can capture the sense of motion, such as in a waterfall or fast moving river.  BTW, if you normally live in AUTO-ISO mode, this is when you want to stop that.  To get slower shutter speeds you want lower ISOs, so pick a low ISO and then determine how much ND cut you want.  You can also use ND filters to allow for shallow depth of field in bright light.  For example, at ISO 100 in bright sun, your shutter speed would be 1/125 at f/16.  If you wanted to shoot at f/1.4 you would need to move your shutter speed to 1/16000 of a second.  Oops, not going to happen.  Add a three stop ND and now your shutter speed only has to move to 1/2000.

If you are shooting video, which typically uses a higher base ISO, ND filters can help you significantly to get good exposures on really bright days or to allow for wider apertures where you want to control depth of focus.  All professional and some consumer grade video cameras incorporate ND filters.  Digital ND is the cheap solution, the higher end kit moves a physical filter in front of the sensor for better image quality.

To get that beautiful creamy water, you need long shutter speeds, and you won't get 30s exposures in daylight.  Adding a 6 stop ND to a less that stops down to f/32 in our above example would get you to a two second exposure even in bright sun, and if the water is moving quickly enough you will have nice motion effect.  If the day is overcast, you could get to 15 seconds.  Nice and creamy.

If you want to really stop the light for really long shutter speeds in bright light, there is an answer from the Lee Filter company.  Lee is best known for superlative gel filters, but they do a line of rigid ND filters that are excellent.  The Big Stopper cuts a full 10 stops of light.  It slides into a lens mounted filter holder because a) your camera cannot focus when it's in place and b) you can't see anything through the viewfinder when it's in place.  It's whole job is long shutter speeds.  It's not an inexpensive option but it works brilliantly and is available to fit most all lenses, including those with big curved front elements like Nikon's brilliant 14-24/2.8.

If you take your photography seriously, at some point you will realize that you need an ND filter.  Or two.  Or a variable.  Also remember that in the absence of directional light, your polarizer is also an effective 2 stop ND, so you are probably already on your way.

Finally some sales people advocate stacking ND filters to cut more light.  Don't.  This is last resort, really.  If you find yourself wanting ND filters, you want them to cut light so go big, 3 stops at the minimum.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

The Photo Video Guy Podcast - Episode 78

Leica releases firmware upgrades for the S, S2 and M.  Nikon releases the D5300.  The D610 us spot free (so far).  Nikon sues Sakar for patent infringement.  Nikon releases the 58/1.4G lens for full frames.  Sigma announces the 24-105/4 ART.  Sony releases the RX-10, the A7 and the A7R and announces new FE lens lineup.  Fuji release the X-E2 and XQ1 and shows some love for the older X100 with new firmware.  Panasonic releases the palm sized Lumix GM-1 MILC and 12-32mm lens.

Recommended : The Grid October 17, 2013

I'm all over the place regarding The Grid.  Sometimes an episode is just fawning dreck, sometimes they just destroy aspiring photographers, and then there are the other times, in fairness - the majority, where they just hit it out of the park. If you've stopped doing HDR because seeing HDRs often makes your eyes hurt, tune in to Episode 117.  The segment on How Not to Hate HDR is extremely well done and worth watching.  Like many people, I have sinned in HDR and produced some truly nauseating offences, including halos, black clouds, HDR where it shouldn't be, HDRs in the worst kind of light and other crap.  I don't publish them, because they suck.  But there are photographers who think HDR is the cure for a lousy image.  The list of things not to do, or to do only when you are absolutely sure is very helpful.  They also show some decent HDRs from RC Concepcion that show how you can sometimes break the rules and get a nice image.  HDR processing is highly subjective, but in this case, I have to say that the list presented is an excellent set of guidelines to leverage.

The first part of the episode deals with the recent plagiarism scandal regarding Jasmine Starr and others.  Scott's presentation is balanced and reasonable and worth a listen.  Because a photographer screws up (and the people involved, screwed up big) does not immediately mean that the individual is a failure as a photographer, or is an evil entity.  They were stupid.  Evisceration is a bit over the top.

Watch the grid on the web at http://kelbytv.com/thegrid/

First Look - Panasonic Lumix GX-7

The GX-7 is the latest in the Lumix family of M4/3 interchangeable lens mirror less cameras, or as I prefer to refer to them, "cameras".  Seriously, we can stop the whole mirror less vs DSLR crap ok?

Quickly, it is a 16MP micro four thirds architecture using the standard M43 mount for lenses.  The LCD is 3" and has 1040K dots for great viewing.  Of course it does video, I'm pretty sure that if you buy a hamster today it does 1080p video.  The camera is WiFi capable and also supports NFC with capable devices.  The body comes in either black or silver.  Panasonic makes a big deal of the Venus processing engine that has superior noise management for improved low light shots.  In my own AUTO ISO test, ISO floats to 3200 still produced really nice images.

The GX-7 is like many other cameras of the type.  It's compact, takes great lenses and is really targeted at the more serious photographer.  That's not to say you cannot shoot the camera in P all the time, but you don't have to.  Moreover the choices are not cluttered with a bunch of "picture styles".   Relax there are photo styles, but not in the way.  I shot the camera predominantly in Aperture preferred, using AUTO ISO as well as specific settings for ISO.  I used a number of different lenses on the camera including the Olympus 17/2.8, the Sigma 30/2.8, the Sigma 60/2.8, the Olympus 9-18 and the Olympus 14-150/4.5-5.6.  I had some extra time at the store where I work part time so did my first look there.

The camera uses SD cards and is powered by a Lithium ion battery.  While there were Lumix lenses in the store, I just don't care for the Lumix power zoom or the 14-42.

In addition to a very bright and sharp rear LCD that tilts up and down, there is an EVF to the left rear that also tilts.  The EVF has a diopter adjustment hidden on the bottom to adjust for your own eyesight.  The EVF display is awesome with 2764K dot equivalency.  It's bright and easy on the eyes, plus the eye detection system works fast and accurately.

Light in the store was, well it was crappy, so the available shutter speeds even at high ISO were relatively slow.  I was very impressed by the in body stabilization because I typically cannot handhold a 300mm equivalent at 1/60s.  Images on the screen were sharp and easy to check.  Uploaded to Lightroom 5.2 the RAWs were read without problem and all the EXIF data came across.  There are no lens profile corrections at this moment for the combinations I used, but in general the lenses I tried were very good.  Colour balance was excellent even when switching lens brands.  Autofocus is super fast.  I was using my store test card, a 4GB Transcend piece of crap, and writing speed for RAW+JPEG was pretty slow.  I do not blame the camera, I blame the junk card.  When I get a long form test unit, I will use a proper card.

There is a built in transformer like articulating flash, but what is better and far more useful is the fully functional hot shoe.  You can use Lumix TTL flashes of course, but I would be more inclined to use a Pocket Wizard to fire real strobes.  The camera's small size makes it very fast to shoot.

The downside for me is that I have larger hands and while the body is very positively grippable, I found I was hitting the buttons and rocker with the base of my thumb when using the camera one handed.  The LCD is a touch screen and because I shoot left eyed, I not only got nose prints on the LCD, I also managed to activate the touch screen.  Not optimal.  Since this was a first look, I did not read the documentation to see if the sensitivity is adjustable.

I love the image quality, think that the camera is extremely usable and the EVF is brilliant.  I look forward to a longer term test but as it sits, after 20 minutes, I put the camera away and won't miss it.  The right side strap lug could not be in a worse place.  It interferes with the grip, it presses into your hand, and it makes using the camera awkward.  Seriously if this were my camera, I would find a way to remove the lug entirely and use a Black Rapid or Cotton Carrier strap screwed into the tripod socket.  It's such a good little camera that the discomfort of the stupid lug annoys me even to write about it.

If you have smaller hands, or less meaty hands and want a really superlative small, fast camera that has access to the pantheon of M4/3 lenses, take a look at the Lumix GX-7.  I think you'll be impressed.

The sample images contained here are the original RAW files, imported to Lightroom and exported as 80% JPEGs, 72 DPI, sharpened for screen.  No colour, WB or any other processing was done.  You can see that the camera produces really nice images, no muss, no fuss.

Full specifications courtesy Panasonic

DMC-GX7

TYPE	Type				Digital Single Lens Mirrorless camera
	Recording Media				SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card, SDXC Memory Card (Compatible with UHS-I standard SDHC / SDXC Memory Cards)
	Image Sensor Size				17.3 x 13.0 mm (in 4:3 aspect ratio)
	Lens Mount				Micro Four Thirds mount
IMAGE SENSOR	Type				Live MOS Sensor
	Total Pixels				16.84 Megapixels
	Camera Effective Pixels				16.00 Megapixels
	Color Filter				Primary color filter
	Dust Reduction System				Supersonic wave filter
IMAGE STABILIZATION SYSTEM	Image Stabilization System				Image Sensor Shift Type
RECORDING SYSTEM	Recording File Format				Still Image: JPEG (DCF, Exif 2.3), RAW MPO (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard) Motion Image: AVCHD (Audio format: Dolby Digital 2ch) / MP4 (Audio format AAC 2ch)
	Aspect Ratio				4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 1:1
	Image Quality				RAW, RAW+Fine, RAW+Standard, Fine, Standard MPO+Fine, MPO+Standard (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard)
	Color Space				sRGB, Adobe RGB
	File Size (Pixels)	Still Image			[4:3] 4,592 x 3,448 (L), 3,232 x 2,424 (M), 2,272 x 1,704 (S), 1,824 x 1,368 (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard) [3:2] 4,592 x 3,064 (L), 3,232 x 2,160 (M), 2,272 x 1,520 (S), 1,824 x 1,216 (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard) [16:9] 4,592 x 2,584 (L), 3,232 x 1,824(M), 1,920 x 1,080 (S), 1,824 x 1,024 (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard) [1:1] 3,424 x 3,424 (L), 2,416 x 2,416 (M), 1,712 x 1,712 (S), 1,712 x 1,712 (When attaching 3D lens in Micro Four Thirds System standard)
		Motion Image*	MP4	NTSC Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 60fps (sensor output is 60p, 28Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 30fps (sensor output is 30p, 20Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 30fps (sensor output is 30p, 10Mbps) [VGA] 640 x 480, 30fps (sensor output is 30p, 4Mbps)
				PAL Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 50fps (sensor output is 50p, 28Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 25fps (sensor output is 25p, 20Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 25fps (sensor output is 25p, 10Mbps) [VGA] 640 x 480, 25fps (sensor output is 25p, 4Mbps)
			AVCHD Progressive	NTSC Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 60fps (sensor output is 60p, 28 Mbps)
				PAL Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 50fps (sensor output is 50p, 28 Mbps)
			AVCHD	NTSC Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 60i (sensor output is 60p, 17Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 60i (sensor output is 30p, 24Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 24p (sensor output is 24p, 24Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 60p (sensor output is 60p, 17Mbps)
				PAL Area	[Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 50i (sensor output is 50p, 17Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 50i (sensor output is 25p, 24Mbps) [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 24p (sensor output is 24p, 24Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 50p (sensor output is 50p, 17Mbps)
	Continuous Recordable Time (Motion Image)*				AVCHD: Approx. 140 min with H-FS1442A / Approx. 130 min with H-H020A
	Actual Recordable Time (Motion Image)*				AVCHD: Approx. 70 min with H-FS1442A / Approx. 65 min with H-H020A
	Flicker Reduction				[1/50] [1/60] [1/100] [1/120] / OFF
Wi-Fi FUNCTION	Wi-Fi				IEEE 802.11b/g/n, 2412 MHz - 2462 MHz (11 ch), Wi-Fi / WPA / WPA2, Infrastructure mode
	NFC				ISO/IEC 18092, NFC-F (Passive Mode)
VIEWFINDER	Type				LCD Live View Finder (2,764,800 dots equivalent)
	Tilting				Yes
	Field of View				Approx. 100%
	Magnification				Approx. 1.39x / 0.7x (35 mm camera equivalent) with 50 mm lens at infinity; -1.0 m-1
	Eye Point				Approx. 17.5 mm from eyepiece lens
	Diopter Adjustment				-4.0 - +3.0 (dpt)
	Eye Sensor				Yes
	Eye Sensor Adjustment				High / Low
FOCUS	Type				Contrast AF system
	Focus Mode				AFS (Single) / AFF (Flexible) / AFC (Continuous) / MF
	AF Mode				Face detection / AF Tracking / 23-area-focusing / 1-area-focusing / Pinpoint
	AF Detective Range				EV -4 - 18 (ISO100 equivalent)
	AF Assist Lamp				YES
	AF Lock				Set the Fn button in custom menu to AF lock
	Others				Quick AF, Continuous AF (during motion image recording), AF+MF, Eye Sensor AF, Touch AF/AE Function, Touch Pad AF, Touch shutter, MF Assist, Touch MF Assist, One Shot AF
EXPOSURE CONTROL	Light Metering System				1,728-zone multi-pattern sensing system
	Light Metering Mode				Multiple / Center Weighted / Spot
	Metering Range				EV 0 - 18 (F2.0 lens, ISO100 equivalent)
	Exposure Mode				Program AE / Aperture Priority AE / Shutter Priority AE / Manual
	ISO Sensitivity (Standard Output Sensitivity)				Auto / Intelligent ISO / 125 (Extended) / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600 / 3200 / 6400 / 12800 / 25600 (Changeable to 1/3 EV step)
	Exposure Compensation				1/3 EV Step, ±5 EV
	AE Lock				Set the Fn button in custom menu to AE lock
	AE Bracket				3, 5, 7 frames, in 1/3, 2/3 or 1 EV Step, ±3 EV
WHITE BALANCE	White Balance				Auto / Daylight / Cloudy / Shade / Incandescent / Flash / White Set 1, 2 / Color temperature setting
	White Balance Adjustment				Blue/amber bias, Magenta/green bias
	Color Temperature Setting				2,500 K - 10,000 K in 100 K
	White Balance Bracket				3 exposures in blue/amber axis or in magenta/green axis
SHUTTER	Type				Focal-plane shutter
	Shutter Speed				Still Images: Bulb (Max. 120 seconds), 1/8,000 - 60 Motion Images: 1/16,000 - 1/25 (NTSC area / PAL area)
	Self Timer				10 sec, 3 images / 2 sec / 10 sec
SCENE GUIDE	Still Image				Clear Portrait / Silky Skin / Backlit Softness / Clear in Backlight / Relaxing Tone / Sweet Child's Face / Distinct Scenery / Bright Blue Sky / Romantic Sunset Glow / Vivid Sunset Glow / Glistening Water / Clear Nightscape / Cool Night Sky / Warm Glowing Nightscape / Artistic Nightscape / Glittering Illuminations / Clear Night Portrait / Soft Image of a Flower / Appetizing Food / Cute Dessert / Freeze Animal Motion / Clear Sports Shot / Monochrome / Panorama
	Motion Image				Clear Portrait / Silky Skin / Backlit Softness / Clear in Backlight / Relaxing Tone / Sweet Child's Face / Distinct Scenery / Bright Blue Sky / Romantic Sunset Glow / Vivid Sunset Glow / Clear Nightscape / Cool Night Sky / Warm Glowing Nightscape / Artistic Nightscape / Clear Night Portrait / Appetizing Food / Cute Dessert / Freeze Animal Motion / Clear Sports Shot / Monochrome
BURST SHOOTING	Burst Speed				Mechanical shutter: H: 5.0 frames/sec (with AFS), 4.3 frames/sec (with AFC, In 1-area-focusing AF mode), M: 4.0 frames/sec (with Live View), L: 2.0 frames/sec (with Live View) Electronic shutter: SH: 40.0 frames/sec, H: 10.0 frames/sec, M: 4.0 frames/sec (with Live View), L: 2.0 frames/sec (with Live View)
	Number of Recordable Images				9 images (when there are RAW files with the particular speed) Unlimited consecutive shooting (when there are no RAW files) (depending on aspect ratio, memory card size, picture size, and the setting for the quality)
BUILT-IN-FLASH	Type				TTL Built-in-Flash, GN7.0 equivalent (ISO200 · m), GN5.0 equivalent (ISO100 · m), Built-in Pop-up
	Flash Mode				Auto, Auto / Red-eye Reduction, Forced On, Forced On / Red-eye Reduction, Slow Sync., Slow Sync. / Red-eye Reduction, Forced Off
	Synchronization Speed				Less than 1/320 second (Built-in Flash) Less than 1/250 second (External Flash)
	Flash Synchronization				1st Curtain Sync., 2nd Curtain Sync.
MONITOR	Type				Tilt static LCD with touch monitor
	Monitor Size				3.0 inch (7.5 cm) / 3:2 Aspect / Wide-viewing angle
	Pixels				Approx. 1,040K dots
	Field of View				Approx. 100%
	Monitor Adjustment				Brightness, Contrast and Saturation, Red tint, Blue tint
LIVE VIEW	Digital Zoom				2x, 4x
	Extra Tele Conversion				Still Image: Max. 2x (Aspect ratio sets at 4:3. Not effective with L size recording. Magnification ratio depends on the recording pixels and aspect ratio.) Motion Image: 2.4x (FHD/60p, FHD/60i, FHD/30p, FHD/24p in NTSC area / FHD/50p, FHD/50i, FHD/25p, FHD/24p in PAL area), 3.6x (HD/60p, HD/30p in NTSC area / HD/50p, HD/25p in PAL area), 4.8x (VGA/30p in NTSC area / VGA/25p in PAL area)
	Other Functions				Guide Lines (3 patterns) Real-time Histogram
LEVEL GAUGE					Yes
DIRECTION DETECTION FUNCTION					Yes
FUNCTION BUTTON	Fn1, Fn2, Fn3, Fn4, Fn5, Fn6, Fn7, Fn8, Fn9				Wi-Fi / Q.MENU / LVF/Monitor Switch / AF/AE LOCK / AF-ON / One Push AE / Touch AE / Preview / Level Gauge / Focus Area Set / Zoom Control / Photo Style / Aspect Ratio / Picture Size / Quality / Metering Mode / Highlight Shadow / i. Dynamic / i. Resolution / HDR / Electronic Shutter / Flash Mode / Ex. Tele Conv. / Digital Zoom / Stabilizer / Motion Pic. Set / Picture Mode / Silent Mode / AFS/AFF/AFC / Peaking / Histogram / Guide Line / Rec Area / Step Zoom / Zoom Speed / Sensitivity / White Balance / AF Mode / Drive Mode / Restore to Default
CREATIVE CONTROL	Still Image				Expressive / Retro / Old Days / High Key / Low Key / Sepia / Monochrome / Dynamic Monochrome / Rough Monochrome / Silky Monochrome / Impressive Art / High Dynamic / Cross Process / Toy Effect / Toy Pop / Bleach Bypass / Miniature Effect / Soft Focus / Fantasy / Star Filter / One Point Color / Sunshine
	Motion Image				Expressive / Retro / Old Days / High Key / Low Key / Sepia / Monochrome / Dynamic Monochrome / Impressive Art / High Dynamic / Cross Process / Toy Effect / Toy Pop / Bleach Bypass / Miniature Effect / Fantasy / One Point Color
CREATIVE VIDEO MODE	Exposure Mode				Program AE / Aperture-Priority / Sutter-Priority / Manual Exposure
PHOTO STYLE	Still Image and Motion Image				Standard / Vivid / Natural / Monochrome / Scenery / Portrait / Custom
PLAYBACK	Playback Mode				Normal playback, 30-thumbnail display, 12-thumbnail display, Calendar display, Zoomed playback (Max. 16x), Slideshow (duration & effect is selectable), Playback Mode (Normal / Picture / Video / 3D Play / Category / Favorite), Location Logging, Clear Retouch, Title Edit, Text Stamp, Video Divide, Time Lapse Video, Stop Motion Video, Resize, Cropping, Rotate, Favorite, Print Set, Protect, Face Recognition Edit
IMAGE PROTECTION / ERASE	Protection				Single / Multi, Cancel
	Erase				Single / Multi / All / Except Favorite
PRINT	Direct Print				PictBridge compatible
INTERFACE	USB				USB 2.0 High Speed Multi
	HDMI				mini HDMI TypeC / VIERA Link Video: Auto / 1080p / 1080i / 720p / 480p (576p in PAL system) Audio: Stereo
	Audio Video Output				Monaural Type, NTSC / PAL, NTSC only for North America * Check the website of the Panasonic sales company in your country or region for details on the products that are available in your market.
	Remote Input				φ2.5mm for remote
	Microphone				Stereo
	Speaker				Monaural
LANGUAGE	OSD Language				English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Thai, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, Arabic, Persian, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Vietnamese * Check the website of Panasonic sales company in your country / region or ask customer support for details of the OSD language available on the products sold in your country / region.
POWER	Battery				Li-ion Battery Pack (7.2V, 1,025mAh) (Included) Battery Charger
	Battery Life (CIPA Standard)**				Approx. 350 images with H-FS1442A Approx. 320 images with H-H020A
DIMENSIONS / WEIGHT	Dimensions (W x H x D)				122.60 x 70.7 x 54.6 mm / 4.83 x 2.78 x 2.15 inch
	Weight				Approx. 402 g / 0.89 lb (SD card, Battery, Body) Approx. 360 g / 0.79 lb (Body only) Approx. 489 g / 1.08 lb (SD card, Battery, H-H020A lens included) Approx. 512 g / 1.13 oz (SD card, Battery, H-FS1442A lens included)
OPERATING ENVIRONMENT	Operating Temperature				0 °C to 40 °C (32 °F to 104 °F)
	Operating Humidity				10%RH to 80%RH

The Photo Video Guy Podcast - Episode 77

Awesome food photographer Nicole Young is on The Grid this week on Kelby TV.  Zeiss releases manual focus 55/1.4 OTUS for only $4,000.  Ricoh releases Pentax K3 and weather sealed 55-300/4.5-5.8.  D610 is out and looks like a D600 with minor tweaks.  D5300 won't arrive until January.  Canon patents 35/1.4 L II.  Canon releases alert on LP-E6 battery issues.  Sigma to release a 24-105/4 full frame lens