October 17, 2008 in Photography by Mark Levison
I’m looking for one or two Lightroom 2 books.
First I’m looking for a book (or even website) that provides a rock solid (fast, fast, fast) workflow. I’m reasonably proficient in Lightroom 1 – but am finding I have ever shrinking quantities of time to spend working with my images. Anything that can help save me even a few minutes everytime would be a god send.
The more difficult problem. I would like a book that gives me a deeper understanding of the develop module. I have got a fair understanding of the basic controls (white balance, exposure, fill, highlight recovery, vibrance, clarity etc.). But I get lost when I’m looking at the Curves, HSL controls, … – 2.0 has just made my life more complicated (in a good way). For Lightroom 1 I bought the O’Reilly Lightroom Adventure and its a good book, but I found the section on the develop module focused only the what. What effect does each control have? Good to a point – but I struggled to figure out when and why I would want to use the Curves (etc). Are there better books for 2.0? Martin Evening’s book gets great reviews but I’ve no idea about the depth in this area.
Other candidates include:
What can you recommend? If you happen to be Martin can you tell me – does your book have alot of depth in the develop section?
Caveat Emptor – if you buy any of the books after clicking on my link I get 4% of the price. In all likelihood that means I might be able to afford a coffee or two.
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September 9, 2008 in Photography by Mark Levison
About a month and half ago I thought I would treat my new D300 to 4GB compact flash card so I could go more than a couple of days without having to download photos from my existing card. I just happened to be wandering through Best Buy (which is located on one of Ottawa’s busiest and slowest roads) and where I stumbled across a Sony 4GB x133 (yes you can get faster cards – but it suits my needs) for a great price.
Returning home I swapped out my trusty Kingston 2GB x50 card and dropped in the Sony. Over the next few days I went burning through images at my usual rate. About a week later I went to download the images from the card and was shocked to discover Windows warning me that there were problems with the file system. It appears 16 of the 100+ images were missing or corrupt. Nutsss. I booted up Photo Rescue (thanks to Michael Reichmann for the recommendation) and was able to recover a few.
October 30, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Sorry this one is a bit overdue – it should’ve appeared last Thursday (Oct 25).
Welcome to the Carnival of the Agilists a carnival whose editorship rotates among four editors (Pete Behrens, Kevin Rutherford, John Brothers and myself).
James Shore hits a theme that’s been bothering me a bit lately (see Don’t call overridable methods in constructors) : "It’s the Software, Stupid!". Scott Hanselman (channeling Patrick Cauldwell) says: "If your method can’t do what it’s name promises it can, throw". Its a simple reminder – if you can’t meet the contract implied by your name throw an exception. Finally Ed Gibbs gives us the ultimate Agile Metric: Crap4J (a real Eclipse plugin, now supports other IDEs). Simply put it measures complexity (bad) vs test coverage (good) and gives your code a resulting crap rating. Very little code I’ve seen looks good when viewed through this lens.
October 18, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Realizing that I’m likely to be shooting a DX camera body for a long time I’m starting to ask questions about my lens line up. When I shot 35mm film, I used a Tamron 20-40mm for nice wide angles. There were moments where I’ve wanted a slightly wider field of view but on the whole it’s been an excellent companion especially at the price ~$800 Canadian (1998). But now I’m shooting on DX camera body and am stuck with the limitations of my 18-70mm (~= 28 – 105 in 35mm terms) – so I decided to research what my options are. 
The options:
As much as I enjoy filling Nikon’s coffers paying $900+ is currently just a bit rich for my blood. If you’ve got the cash then skip this post buy one. (If you buy any lens clicking on the link above then Amazon will give me 4% of the proceeds.)
October 12, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
The announcement of Nikon’s two new camera’s has really been forcing me to crystallize my thinking around buying a full frame digital camera.
For nearly 15 years I shot with a Nikon F801s (an 8008s for my American friends), it was a solid workhorse of a camera with a good reliable spot meter. About three years ago now I gave up film, sold the 801s and bought a D70. I haven’t looked back the D70 has been a great camera – but when I bought it I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I was secretly hoping that Nikon would produce a full frame DSLR for the pro-sumer market. I had such a strong belief in this that I kept my 20-40mm (a useless nearly useless lens on 1.5 crop sensor).
But now that D3 is arriving I forced to question my original desire for a full frame DSLR. I’ve come to really appreciate the extra reach that my 80-200mm has.
The quandry: If I will eventually buy a full frame DSLR then I shouldn’t invest in any DX lenses – but I will need a good midrange zoom (don’t have for historical reasons). If I’m going to stick with DX then its time to start thinking about a wide angle and the 18-200 DX/VR.
Key differences:
| |
D3 (FX or Full Frame sensor) |
D300 (DX or 2/3’s sensor) |
| Telephoto lenses |
work at their original length. But to get the greater reach I have to spend real $$$. |
My 70-300, is an adequate 450mm. My 80-200 (with 2x teleconverter) makes a poor mans 600mm lens. |
| Wide Angle lenses |
I will have my wide angles back |
Hmm will have to part with some cash to get wider than 27mm. |
| Depth of Field (for equivalent Field of view) |
Shallower depth of field in any given situation |
Shallow depth of field harder. |
| High ISO |
Bigger sensor, less noise. Definitely great out ISO 1600 Apparently even 6400 is good. |
The few samples anyone has seen look pretty damn good. |
| Weight |
heavy – especially when you weigh all those full size lens. |
|
Unless Nikon has a stunning announcement of a pro-sumer full frame camera in the next 18 mths I will probably just bite the bullet and admit that I’m shooting DX cameras for a long time to come.
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Caveat Emptor – There are a lot of previews out there that look reviews of these camera’s. Beware these are just reviews of the specs. Only Cliff Mautner (wedding photographer) has been allowed to play with a pre-production D3. Even his notes are based on JPEGS (nothing handles D3 RAW files yet).
July 20, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Nathan Myhrvold (yes that Nathan) is apparently a prize winning photographer and 
occasionally writer. He has recently written an excellent article Digital Safari Equipment Tips. Unfortunately Nathan has lost touch with the world the rest of us inhabit. He recommends we have nearly $30,000 worth of equipment saying its a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity both to experience incredible scenery and wildlife and to make some amazing photographs". Sure it is Nathan.
June 8, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Have you been using Remote Desktop to work on a two monitor machine? Have you ever had a modal dialog from your current application open on that other machine? I have. It happens nearly every time I remote desktop. Now here’s the solution:
- Make sure the application has focus.
- Press Alt-Space (displays the windows menu)
- Press M (for Move)
- Press an arrow key – to lock in the move mode.
- Move the mouse until the offending dialog appears
- Click a mouse button to end the move operation.
Dead simple really. Its amazing how useful keyboard navigation can be. Thanks to Chris Anderson and Craig Andera on the Win Tech Off Topic mailing list for answering my question.
Ken Kozman suggested an alternative: Version 6.0 of the RDP client allows you to have a Remote Desktop session that spans two screens. The only downside the screens have to be the same size – my laptop is 1024 x 768 and the 21" CRT beside it is 1600 x 1200. Yes its a CRT – very good for photographic editing its tough to get an LCD with blacks as good as CRT. The limitation is the backlight.
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June 7, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Several readers commenting in Mike’s blog me (Thanks to Jim and Ed for their offers of help).
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May 25, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Ever since I bought Lightroom I’ve been trying to figure out how to ‘and’ two keywords together. My collection has over 5000 images of my daughter. To find an image of her reading I need to be able say "name and reading". In Elements this was easy – I just clicked on both tags and I got the and’d list. ‘Or’ wasn’t an explicit option instead a check box appeared at the bottom of screen saying "near/close matches".
March 8, 2007 in Photography by Mark Levison
Or how you can learn from my mistakes. In the Lightroom Forums there have been many complaints about the import from Photoshop Elements. I’m here to tell you the problem may be your own. I’ve seen two problems – not all images get imported and some of their tags get left behind. Most of the complaints assume the problem is Lightroom’s. I think the problems are from what we didn’t do before we left Elements.
