Mostly Digital Photography

Quite a lot is happening on the camera, and also my photography, scene at present, so here are some first thought – more to follow.

Colour management – being  (NOT) satisfied with how an image I have worked on will appear on the web, and on print, has been a huge problem for me in the past. Spyder 4 just announced … barely a month after I received my Spyder 3!! Frustrating, but I think the Spyder 3 kit I bought, which includes printer/paper calibration, will make life much easier (well, it already has!).

I’m finding the 366 days a year single image very upsetting – I want to ENJOY my photography, and having to go out to shoot an image every day may motivate some people, but I find it a pain in the … posterior. I’m sorry, but I have a life outside photography, and some days the weather, location, health, mood, just don’t motivate me, and if I have to take a photograph I will produce a really rubbish image (like today), but other days I produce several images that *I* like. Please don’t misunderstand me, those who are motivated and capable of shooting a brilliant image every day are to be congratulated, but it’s just not my scene.

The new Fuji camera and lenses are exciting – but not cheap, quite big, and the way the camera responds to the user (the ‘user interface’) has not been reported on yet, and is quite important to me. I date back to the Pentax slogan ‘Just hold a Pentax’, and for me it was so important, though YMMV! From reports so far, I think that Sony NEX cameras fail at present on the  ’Just hold’ factor, and Fuji haven’t received that message before either. For me, and it’s entirely a personal thing, the Panasonic cameras are the most intuitive to use – maximum control over how the camera performs, and in  the most obvious way for me! If the Panas don’t appeal to YOU, just choose what YOU  like, but I hope you will not feel that you need to tell me that I am wrong in what suits ME – constructive comment welcome though!

Lightroom 4 BETA has now been released – potentially at least as exciting as camera news! There are some good features in the spec, but experience so far is rather disappointing. So, book (Blurb) support and  Soft Proofing, but Apple’s Aperture has offered similar support for a long time (though Apple books, not Blurb). Soft Proofing was potentially (for me) a huge benefit, but so far I cannot find a way of preventing it changing the border/background colour, which makes it almost impossible to judge what soft proofing has done! An existing image that I had  previously round-tripped to Nik Silvereffex 2 as  a TIFF could not be updated for the metadata. An image I had processed in LR 3 seemed to look very different in LR4, and updating it to LR 4 processing made it even more different. Yes, this is a beta, but I’m seriously worried to have had all these issues in the first, 1 hour, session using it! A

As a postscript, I can understand some of the changes to the LR Develop module, but I think there are hints of ‘dumbing-down?’. Personally, and it just the way I have used LR, I’d have preferred to see more ‘power user’ features, but I suppose that would potentially damage the sales of Photoshop!

UPDATE: Just watching the excelling videos by Juieanne Kost on Lightroom 4, which make several things clearer, not least how to change the background colour when soft proofing!

I decided to shoot an image a day during 2012, then discovered there are some web sites promoting this idea, so I’m posting on those as well as my Photo Diary page.

Personally I really like having projects, as they give me some additional objectives, but I’m already finding the one-photo-per-day idea quite frustrating – some days I have lots of images, and some days none, and I want to ENJOY my photography, not have it become a chore (I have to shoot another image even if the weather is horrible, I’m unwell, other things to do, just not feeling motivated!). So I’m already not sure (on the fourth day!) that I will stick to this project.

None of the images I’ve used so far had any real merit, the first day was particularly bad as I rushed outside to shoot the first thing I could see, as the light was failing and it was just starting to rain. Today’s image must be a theme used countless times before, so I don’t claim any originality, even though I’ve not see any of the undoubted many previous images!

Comparisons

I had to stay in for delivery of a Pocket Wizard kit, and by the time it had arrived the weather had taken a turn for the worse. I really must try to get outside for some different images tomorrow!

I’m really an available-light photographer, but I do use strobes for some work now. I’d used some cheap flash triggers until now, but they fail more often than they work. The Pocket Wizards are a ridiculous price, but if they work it is worth it – I have wasted so much time and money on the cheap substitutes in the past. I’ve seen some reviews which not only comment on the price of the Pocket Wizards, but also criticise the build-quality. I find this difficult to understand – they seem well-made to me, and I’m a mechanical (and later production) engineer.

Oh, and of course the image did involve 2 exposures, one general shot and one of the screen, separately adjusted and then combined. I should probably have taken steps to avoid the highlights from the lights on the oranges, but life is too short! I should probably have bought more oranges as well, to fill the background …

Well, I haven’t been able BEFORE to fully explain where the disc space on the MBP (MacBook Pro) hard disc went, but I think I now have an explanation for MOST of it – iPhoto! I suppose I should have been aware that iPhoto, as well as Aperture, does not delete images when you delete them (!), but moves them to a deleted area in iPhoto! Personally I would expect them to go to the OS X trash can, but I was aware that did not happen with Aperture, and evidently not with iPhoto as well. You have to select the trash, delete from there, and then subsequently the OSX Trashcan – well, belt and braces, string, and hands to hold things up, but personally I find this ***WAY*** over the top.

I DON’T use iPhoto deliberately (Lightroom or Aperture are my preferred choice) EXCEPT that it seems the default/only way I can deal with removing images from my iPhone/iPad.

So, I removed the iPhoto trash, gained about 10G, then found some other images which were in iPhoto that I did NOT want there (not really sure how they got there), and got rid of those too. I now have around 30G extra storage available. I guess I should see if there is anything else that has somehow got into iPhoto which is really irrelevant!