Birthday Climb
Let me qualify that sightly - I’m no mountaineer wearing crampons and plastic boots, struggling under 75 lbs of gear. I’m a fast/light kinda guy to begin with, and don’t much like travel that requires ropes, ice axes and self-arresting near a cliff. In fact, as funny as this sounds to people who know me well, I’m a pretty conservative guy when it comes to life/death situations. I’ve never been to the top of Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood. Or Shasta. I’ve walked around some of them (often that equals climbing them a couple of times), but never gotten frosty beard at 14,000 ft.
But for the past few years, on my birthday I climb a mountain. Its kind of a tradition. Luckily we have several right next to my little town that do nicely - they involve 4-8 miles and 3000-4000 feet of climbing. At this time of year, it also means some snow and the probability you won’t see anything at the top, but I’m usually done by noon.
Today I decided to do Mt. Si, a popular local route that goes up to about 4000 ft in 4 miles. I didn’t get an early start, but I got out and back by just after lunchtime - just in time to go eat out with my wife. Life is grand.
Here is a photo from the icy top of the ridge overlooking North Bend, WA.
It was a great climb. The
top was knee deep in snow, and the route took a bit
of work to find/get up.
Fun stuff.
Lightroom Tuesday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather
together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the
like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for
you, my dear readers.
- Get it together - a series of tips and tricks for using Lightroom (including Photoshop integration). Great article from Chris Orwig in Layers Magazine.
- Smoke Presets from Lightroom-blog.com. Kinda annoying that you have to register to download. Just make a donate button for those that want to.
- The top ten Lightroom gotchas when working with Lightroom. I’ve seen many of these before. When I teach Lightroom, I talk about the big bump to get over - and #2 is it. Lightroom just manages the files you place at a location of your choice (defined on import) so be very explicit about choosing where and you can get to the files any time you want.
- Matt K has a tutorial on how to automate Lightroom and Photoshop using droplets. This used to not work so well, so they must’ve worked out the kinks.
- Interview with Martin Evening by Scott Bourne. Martin took the photo for the Lightroom 2 box.
- How to brand Lightroom with your studio name with the Identity Plate.
- A short look at Nik’s Color Effects for Lightroom. I can see this pluging being intersting for people serious about color. Too bad it goes outside the Raw file for the result.
- Another new tutorial from Chris Orwig in Layers Magazine looks a the Library module.
That is it for this week. Kinda short, but it’s my birthday and I’m going to go climb a mountain today (a tradition) instead of sit in front of this computer.
Cheers!
Inspiration Monday! Helen Levitt
“Helen Levitt, a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York, died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on Sunday. She was 95.”
Margarett Loke, New York Times, March 30, 2009
Listen to an NPR interview here...
Helen Levitt came to my attention over a decade ago as I just was starting to stretch my artistic wings. I was drawn to the streets with my Leica, and coupled with an insatiable love of walking, I explored the world around me with a curiosity that continues to serve me well. I traveled, I walked, I shot and I devoured the work of those who had come before me. The pantheon included Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston, Andre Kertesz, Gary Winogrand, and (germane to the discussion) Helen Levitt.
Like the others, Levitt had a special eye. She captured street life in America’s cities, back when life was public, before AC, television and video games drove people indoors. She held Guggenheim grants. She had NEA grants. She was a tremendous inspiration to me.
In some ways, I think I was drawn to her work because it reminded me of my youth in the 70’s and 80’s in a small town. As a 10 something, my friends and I prowled the streets looking for fun on our bikes. These were the halcyon days of my youth, when we were free and safe to disappear all day (long before the constraints of such a small town noticeably limited my teenage desire for the larger world). We had the run of the towns, the neighborhoods and the dirt piles. It was heaven.
And I see some of that in her pictures.
Here is a rather abbreviated look at her work...
© Estate of Helen Levitt
© Estate of Helen Levitt
© Estate of Helen Levitt
© Estate of Helen Levitt
Lots more out there.
Peruse at your leisure. Have a great day.
PS. having a nostalgic bent for your misspent youth
prowling the alley? I quite enjoyed Bill Bryson’s
autobiography of his youth in the 50’s. Worth a read.
...or a Flashlight
Here are some portraits shot last night with just a small LED flashlight for illumination beyond the very limited ambient light.
Very nice methinks. Going to do some more of these today...
Window Light
I’ve spent the last few years learning how to use all this lighting gear, and sometimes you need to step back and just let the morning light flow thru the window.
‘nuff said.
Of course, here I am packing my lights up for a
photoshoot today...
PS. Forca Brasil!
Ouch!
More Examples from the Sigma
Overall quite happy with
the lens so far...
PS. Yes, my son got into the stamp kit yesterday.
When we went out for ice cream as a family, my oldest
goodaturedly remarked that he hoped nobody from his
school would see his nutter of a brother with stamps
all over his face. So it begins...
Methinks a 50 Prime is in Order
Back in the day, I was a
50mm prime snob. I loved my Leica M6 and 50mm
Summicron (I still get all giddy when I think of that
combination). But I’d never gotten around to getting
a 50 prime for my 5D. Part of me was torn - I have
the Leica for the prime stuff I’d like to do - but
sometimes I just wanted to slap on a 50 prime and go.
I’d kicked around the idea of a Canon 50mm prime
(they have three - the 1.2, the 1.4 and the 1.8), but
the 1.4 isn’t easy to find these days and the other
two really didn’t fit my needs for one reason or
another. But then the Sigma went on sale somewhere
last week and I bit.
The Sigma 1.4 is a big, hefty lens. It weights a ton
compared to my rangefinder primes - not shocking -
but still, I’m actually stunned at how heavy it is.
The focus seems reasonably fast and while I have not
put it thru its paces yet, I did get a chance to
shoot a few picts this afternoon.
Here is a quick example open wide (and the effect it
will often get used to produce). I’m surprised how
close it is to my old Canon 1.2 rangefinder lens on
the M8. Minus a bit of glow, but still...
More tests to come...
Lightroom Tuesday!
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather
together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the
like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for
you, my dear readers.
- Nik announced that it will bring all its plugins to Lightroom. (Via Rob Galbraith)
- David Ziser presents a tutorial focused on how to get “really cool lighting effects” in Lightroom.
- Matt K’s preset of the week is “Vintage New York”
- Lightroomnews.com has a tutorial by Martin Evening on how to use/differentiate between the Exposure and Brightness controls in Lightroom. Very cool.
- Lightroomers has a tutorial on understanding the Export process.
- A nice Velviaesque preset (among others - its at the bottom). Don’t know what Velvia is? Seriously, I can’t take you anywhere ; - )
- A small update to the awesome Simpleviewer Web Gallery...
- A basic tutorial on Installing and reading Presets...
- Auto Advance - very cool tip from Matt K. I didn’t know about this until Troy G (Lightroomer) pointed it out one day after I complained about my Caps Lock misadventures.
- Finding missing photos in Lightroom. Some times you need to clean up your mess.
- Sharpening in Lightroom has come along way since 1.0. Here is part 1 of a two par tutorial on understanding sharpening.
- Hey Noob! Got dull photos? Fix em.
- Imaging Insider has a review of the Visual Quickstart Lightroom 2 book.
- Feeling Geeky? Read up on color management and printing...
Music Can Dance 2009
The purpose is to bring dancers and musicians together in order to study each other’s craft and get a more in depth feel for how one discipline influences the other. They focus on shared terminology, artistic collaboration and rehearsal, culminating in an informal performance of their day’s work to an audience of friends, peers, family and the community.
I was there to capture the event in pictures, and here are some of my favorites from the day...
There are many more photos in the Music Can Dance Galleries: Gallery 1, Gallery 2, Gallery 3 and Gallery 4
Inspiration Monday: Josef Sudek
Sudek was a fantastic photographer, and I’d forgotten the depth of his influence on my work until I spent a few hours browsing thru some galleries of his images this morning in celebration. Hells Hounds! Those dramatic blacks! Some of my recent work really keys on a very similar style, however unintentionally. He’s aces in my book. Just spectacular.
Here is a nice overview of his work, for those unfamiliar...
Lots more here...
Creative Camera Article on Sudek
here (1980) here...
When I was in Prague in 2007 I wandered the same
streets and was lucky enough to stumble on an exhibit
of his work.
It took a nice chunk of the day...
PS. Time to look for his biography.
Mt. Rainier
Living in a perpetually rainy world, one tends to forget how close that snow really is. Just add a little altitude and that rain turns to snow. Lots of it. And this is an admirable quality of the Pacific Northwest. Want snow? Drive to 2000 ft. Don’t. Stay put.
Well, mostly.
Here are a few pictures of the environs as we built our icy accommodations.
Did I ever mention that
building an igloo is hard work?
Dark Garden
Here are a few early photographs coming from this series...
I’m going on a week-long
hike in April in Southern Utah, so I’m sure I’ll be
adding to these.
See more here...
More Irish Dance
Happy St. Paddy's Day
My daughter took up Irish Dance this past year, so we’ve had a chance to get to know a bit about our fine friends from the Emerald Isle. This year she was invited to perform with her school (Baile Glas Irish Dance) in Seattle’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and then at the Irish Festival at Seattle Center.
So it was with a bit of trepidation as we headed out of the house, headed for the city, in a downpour. The thought of how wet we were going to get crossed our minds. Happily, it cleared up 10 minutes before the parade and we saw nary a drop all day.
So in celebration of St. Patrick and his Day O’ fun, here are a few photos...
There were lots of pipes
and kilts in the parade. I’d not worn my kilt for
fear of cultural insensitivity, but apparently the
pipes and drums make everything all better. Next
year...
PS. Yes, the wigs are a bit much.
P.S.S My son reaffirmed his desire to learn the
bagpipes. Steen, the bagpipe man!
Lightroom Tuesday!
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday, aptly named as each Tuesday I gather
together presets, tips, tricks, tutorials and the
like from the Lightroom-o-sphere and post them for
you, my dear readers.
Note: If you click on the Lightroom
tag at the bottom of this page, you can see all
Lightroom Tuesday’s piled up in one page - good for
reviewing things I’ve posted in the past.
- Lightroom-Blog.com has a link to a set of free Keyword Lists for Lightroom.
- Part 2 of an Adjustment Brush overview at DPS. And part 1 here, for those interested in completeness.
- FreelanceSwitch has a belated review of LIghtroom 2 (it came out last July) for the newbies among us.
- Confused about HDR vs. Enfuse methods for extending dynamic range (or at least the appearance thereof). Then head on over to this review of the two technologies.
- LRB Portfolio is a Lightroom Web Gallery that lets you do a bunch of interesting things with a simple Lightroom web gallery. Here is a look at LRB Portfolio 2.1.
- A nice discussion of the Spot tool from Sean McCormack at Lightroom-News.com. Apparently there is a part one somewhere. They have a nice list of other LR tutorials here.
- Matt Kloskowski covers the Previously Viewed Folders/Collections feature. I must admit I forget this little widget sometimes in my rush to navigate. Nice tip.
- A new B/W preset from PresetHeaven. This one is focused on a more gritty, dark black and white conversion.
- A discussion of Keyword Auto-Complete in LR2 by the peoples at Lightroomers.
- Another design-related website review of Lightroom’s raison d’etre.
- A review of Viveza for Lightroom from Matt Kloskowski. I’m sure there are reasons for wanting to use Viveza, but they mostly escape me with the tools in Lightroom 2.
- Julieanne Kost, Adobe evangelist and groupie-magnet, has a wide range of Lightroom Tutorials on her website.
- Adobe TV has more Lightroom tutorials online as well. Lots of great nuggets there as well.
- A mini-tutorial on sorting in Lightroom.
- I prefer using Virtual Copies, but you can always use the Snapshots feature to work with multiple looks.
- Using the Graduated Filter in Lightroom 2.0 is great for Landscape work. Here is a quick overview of the feature.
- A nice video tutorial on how to import presets into Lightroom.
Finally, not specifically Lightroom related, but still interesting...
Well that is it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.
Inspiration Monday: Q. Sakamaki
This week I point you to the lovely, gritty black/white work of Q.Sakamaki, a Japanese photographer based in New York. I ran into his work sometime ago while looking at professional photographer’s websites for a project at work and ended up spending a fair amount of time browsing thru his varied galleries.
By his own admission, he tends to focus on the daily life of those who happen to find themselves in the midst of strife and conflict. I cut my aesthetic teeth on these kinds of images, mainly by disgusting the excellent work of the early Magnum photographers, and can certainly feel the shadows of R. Capa, HCB, Roger, and Chim in Sakamaki’s selection of images. And that is high praise.
I’d like, in particular to direct you to his focus on Afghan Daily Life. Lots of dramatic black/white images to peruse...
image © Q.Sakamaki
Sadly, his website is all
Flash-based, which means I can’t link to the
slideshow directly (dumb Adobe, dumb) and so I’ll
shrug and direct you to the slideshow “Afghan
Daily LIfe” 3/4 of the way down on the left.
Seriously, I gotta textually tell you where a link is
instead of linking to it directly like we were doing
in 1996 with this great new thing called
hypertexting.
Great job Flash!
Oh, and a secondary Inspiration (and related to the
snarky comment I just made) is the web: its 20 years old today. Huzzah!
Do you remember what it was like to use a Thomas
Brothers Map book to find your destination? Remember
what it was like to look stuff up in the Yellow
Pages? Remember what it was like to have to truck
down to a store to see if they had something in
stock? Remember what it was like to dig into that 15
year old Encyclopedia Britannica to look something
up? Remember what it was like trying to research your
next car? Egads. For you kids, things were a bit more
difficult before that MacBook.
Things have changed. And for the better.
Irish Curls
Henry Coe State Park
One of the benefits of working for a company located in the Bay Area is that I spend time there for work, and at least once a year I find time to tack on an extra few days to spend in the hills just beyond the sprawling valley.
Henry Coe is a spectacular park, with over 87 thousand acres of space to explore. Be warned, it extremely brutal hiking terrain - the trails are often straight up or straight down the rolling Diablo mountains in which they are situated. This helps limit visitors and gives you a bit more solitude. Good thing.
I’ve been hiking here since the late 90s - going back to when we lived in the Bay Area. I’ve managed to explore 80% of the trails myself over that time, no small feat, and I’v even found myself in the largely ignored wilderness areas beyond the park entrances. This year I stuck to the well known western area, just for a change.
One of the striking things about Henry Coe, beyond the rolling mountains is the presence of some majestic trees, including various types of Oak, Ponderosa Pine, Laurel, Madrone, Bay, and the ever lovely Manzanita. Pair these with some lovely rolling hills with steep ravines and bare ridge-tops and you do little but smile as you walk.
Here are a few pictures fro last weekend’s trip...
I head home tomorrow AM,
so I’m pretty excited to see my family.
Have a great Thursday.
Lightroom Tuesday!
Welcome to my weekly
rundown of all things Lightroom. As I’m traveling
this week, I’ll get right to the point:
- How Black are your Blacks? Martin Evening has a great video rundown on the use of the Blacks slider in Lightroom.
- Matt Kloskowski has a short tip on how to strip metadata from your pictures. Reminds me of a story - once while visiting the NY Times for Adobe, we were talking about metadata and we pointed out that most photographers didn’t know how to strip it out and we wagered that the image on the front page for that day probably had the photographer’s contact info still in it. So we logged into the web, downloaded the image and there it was in the Photoshop File Info dialog. He was flabbergasted.
- For those of you not bored with the gimicky HDR look, here are some HDR-esque presets for Lightroom that mimic the look without all the “take multiple images and fuse them” stuff.
- A few more Adjustment Brush tips from Lightroomers...
- Chris Oriwig has written a new basic tutorial that covers everything from import to export, aimed at new Lightroom users in Layers Magazine.
- The Lightroom History panel is very cool. Much cooler than Photoshops. And its permanent - it shows all the things you’ve done and it always remembers. This article covers the basics of the History Panel. One thing I wish I’d fixed is that its at the bottom of the left track in Lightroom, and once you add a few Presets (or 100) you keep having to scroll down that left side to get it all the time. Kind of a pain. I keep hearing this complaint too...
- Sometimes new Lightroom users ask why they have to import. It takes so long. etc. Here is a nice article from Rob Sylvan from peachpit.com that explains what Lightroom is doing when importing...
- Here is a video tutorial from profiPhoto
News that looks at getting some drama out of
a ho-hum sky. Of course, you could also go shoot
that picture when the light was nice
I kid, I kid. - Want to add a watermark in Lightroom? You can easily add a text one in the export dialog. But what if you want a cool graphical overlay with transparency? Then you need LR/Mogrify - which is highly recommended and is donation ware from a great guy who does a lot of cool stuff for Lightroom users.
- Add Parent Folder - it could be of use to you!
- Sometimes when teaching Lightroom, I get the big questions. The biggest generally is: Where does LR save my edits? Usually followed by “What happens if my Catalog gets corrupted”. Here is a nice short discussion of this from a Lightroom forum. Personally I recommend you convert to DNG and make sure that Lightroom is automatically writing changes to the XMP (this is in the catalog settings dialog).
- A nice article on Smart Collections and how they can help your worklfow. I really pushed for Smart Collections in the 2.0 release, and luckily had little resistance as this was a very important feature.
- Saved all your photos in iPhoto and now want to move to Lightroom? Here is a tutorial on the process.
- This came out awhile ago, but somehow I’d missed it - a new Tether app for macs. If you want to tether your studio shoots (connect the camera to a computer and see the shots onscreen as you shoot them), you might be in luck. Tethering is cool, but in the past it was a bit of a pain to setup. This new app promised to make this easier. I’ll have to try this when I get home.
- Want to Layer Presets? Huh? That was my first reaction. Watch this tutorial here...
- Exposure Fusion vs. HDR - if you had to ask, you probably don’t wan to know. Ok, so now you’re curious eh? Ok, read up.
Well, that is it for this week. Have a great Tuesday.
P.S. I’m doing a Lightroom 101 session today @ Smugmug HQ in Mountain View, Ca. If you are in the neighborhood and want to sit in, just ping me via email or twitter and you’re invited.
Inspiration Monday!
This week’s inspiration comes from none other than my lovely daughter. She’s only 9, but the intensity and dedication she invests in dance rivals that which I’ve seen at any level of artistic achievement. She dances 5 days a week (more if we’d let her), puts in everything her little body has, and she does so on her own accord. We support her, but we never have to say so much as a word to her. It all comes from within.
This past week she competed at the Youth America Grand Prix in San Francisco, and placed in the top 12. We’ve mostly avoided competitions - this was her first - and she went on stage and delivered. Out of a field of over a hundred dancers, most of whom were older (and many on pointe), she went on stage and (ahem) brought it.
Her teachers were in tears. I’ve seen her dance with such beauty and grace before and I understand the reaction.
So this week is dedicated to my lovely Chloe and her dancing heart. Here she is at a local Russian Cultural Festival a few weeks ago...
I’m in the Bay Area this
week for work. I took advantage of the trip to spend
some time in Henry Coe State Park, backpacking into
the more traveled western part of the park I’ve not
been to in a few years. Expect some pictures in the
next few days...
A few pictures...
I’m preparing for a
week-long trip to the Bay Area today. I’ll be down
for work, plus getting in a few days of backpacking
in Henry Coe State Park as well. Should be fun.
My planned base backpack weight is about 7 lbs before
food/water/camera. The camera should add 4 lbs. How
crazy is that.
The Kindle2 Arrives...
But I digress...
I’ll leave the description and visuals of the unboxing to Cali. It will suffice to say, that it was very Apple-esque.
The sad thing was, the wireless network was down for most of the afternoon. So I mostly let it charge, periodically pretending to care about the User Manual (the only thing installed on it besides a Dictionary). I had work to do anyhow.
Then evening rolled round
and I noticed I had a connection. I quickly ordered a
few newspapers and magazine or two. $14 for the
NYTimes for the month. $2 for Newsweek. And a few
books at $9 a pop. Then I downloaded a bunch of
classics from Manybooks.net (mostly from
Project Gutenberg) to round out my growing
collection. Finally, I added an Audible book or
two for good measure.
I was set.
A few random thoughts from my first day with the
unit:
- It’s a bit heavier than I’d like. Holding it up all the time isn’t tedious, but you feel it.
- The screen is really nice. Looks like paper. I’ve been impressed with the tech behind it since I saw the Sony ebook reader at CES a few years ago.
- The refresh is kind of annoying. I understand why, but slowly blinking screens usually mean trouble, so we notice them.
- The kindle store is nice enough. Very much the killer app that the iPhone store was. You can also buy on Amazon.com itself.
- The device’s ergonomics are acceptable. Better than the first generation, that is for sure. I find the little joystick thing to be a bit hard to deal with - it hardly sticks out and you gotta use your fingernail sometimes to hit it. Maybe I just need practice.
- The paging buttons are a bit higher than I’d like. Holding the unit makes you want to press lower on the device - for some reason they put Menu and Back under the thumb, when I press Next alot more.
- This thing screams for a touch screen. Seriously. After using an iPhone for the last year, I really hate physical buttons when a swipe would do.
- Annotation is still to hard. I’ll rarely do it.
- I like that it remembers where I was - even across multiple devices (more on that in a minute).
- No case. Gotta buy one, but I’m leery of increasing the bulk.
- Mounts as a drive when you plug it into the USB port on my Mac. Nice for transferring free books.
- Sure wish there was a way to browse free books like I can on Stanza on my iPhone.
- Feedback is sometimes a bit lost on the screen. They have a little icon top left that shows progress, but you miss it, and sometimes it does not show (mostly saw this when I was trying to register on a dead network).
- If Whispernet is down, it can really take the wind out of your first 15 minute experience. Doh!
- I saw an automatic update come in today - it was sitting on the table after the above photo and when I walked by, it was busy installing itself.
- The screens when its off show graphics of authors. Cool. Sure would like to add my own.
- I’d certainly like a more visual way to browse a newspaper. You just kinda page thru (or jump article to article) but I could easily envision a better mechanism for browsing newspapers/magazines. People, newspapers and magazines are inherently visual artifacts. One should be able to browse them visually instead of choosing from a long line of textual article headers. The inner UX designer roars!
- Color. Yup. Would be very nice. I’m already wondering what the battery life is like with this unit though...
- Having new things greet you in the morning rocks. I woke up to a new version of the New York Times and the Seattle Times.
- Time/Newsweek - more photos. And illustrations. You got the media, share it. The screen is pretty good.
- As the screen isn’t backlit, you need a light to read it in the dark. Makes sense I guess...
- The Kindle Store has a lot more books than I expected. But the magazine section need a huge update. I’m a big magazine lover, and I’d really like to avoid that pile of read magazines sitting in the corner, but there was only a handful available today. National Geographic. Bike. Outside. Come on!
- The Text to Speech feature sounds pretty good. Turning it on takes way to long - I can’t imagine doing this as I get into the car. It does pause by pressing the spacebar, so that is nice.
- Audible books (something I’ve been doing for many years and love) work great as well. I wonder what the battery life is like compared to the iPhone.
- Getting PDFs on it is a pain in the rear. Come on Adobe. Get with it.
- I sure wish that screen would rotate when I change the orientation of the unit. Spoiled, I know...
Overall, I’m quite happy with the Kindle. I’ve been an ebook reader for years - going back to my Newton days @ Apple. I’ve had Newtons, Palm Pilots, Handsprings, Windows Mobile Devices and iPhones. I was even at Adobe and watched them flounder about in this space. Things have gotten better with each update, and it looks like Amazon has a winner on their hands.
Even better, today Amazon released the Kindle iPhone application. A Kindle on your iphone. I knew this was coming based on some comments made at the Kindle release a few weeks ago. Pretty cool.
PS. I’m going on a backpack trip this weekend. I’m going to bring the Kindle instead of a book. AT 11 oz, its about the same as a heavy paperback or light hardback. But it holds much more. I’ll report when I get back.
Happy Up Here
You can buy this song on iTunes - its a single from their new album. I own everything they’ve done; they’re one of those bands whose new stuff I just buy because I know I’ll like it.
Others in this (ahem) privileged bucket: Skinny Puppy, Ohgr, Engima, NIN, Great Big Sea, Yann Tiersen, Daft Punk.
Yup. This song will be in your head all day. You’re welcome.
M8 Firmware Update 2.004
I picked up an M8 as soon
as it was available. I’d been waiting for it for
years.
It was expensive, but for an M photographer like me
used to the simplicity and beauty of the M-series
camera, it was worth every (pretty) penny. Honestly,
Leica lenses and an M8 really are something special.
And the third party lenses from Zeiss, Cosina and
Canon (yes, they made them in the 50s) are nothing to
shirk at either.
Better, Leica has consistently supported the camera
thru some rocky quality problems, and have always
gone way above the standard service level by
periodically releasing updates to the camera via
firmware that were more than just bug fixes.
Over the course of the last year or so, with each
release I’ve seen better colors, better AWB
performance and they’ve even added new functionality
never promised when the camera was released! They
gave us SDHC support awhile back and that was a nice
addition. Then they added an Auto ISO fetaure. This
new firmware updates the shutter and enables
“Discreet” mode, which allows the photographer to opt
for a delay in the shutter re-cocking. Name one other
camera company that has done something this cool for
their existing customers?
Honestly, the *only* thing I’ve ever disliked about
the M8 was the shutter sound. It was the opposite of
an M shutter. It was loud and had this terrible whirl
as it re-cocked. I’ve just dealt with it.
This new update really works. How they did it, I have
no idea. But it rocks. You can hold down the shutter
button and it will not re-cock until you let go. This
is great for times when you want a picture, but the
sound would be obtrusive. You take it and then wait
for something to mask it.
It works pretty well - discreet mode is much quieter.
Sweet. Thanks Leica.
Download the update here...
Lightroom Tuesday!
Lots of things to cover
this week, the biggest being the first...
- Lightroom 2.3 was finally released in final form (Its been in beta release for at least a month). It contains updated Raw support for new cameras (D3x, E-30), fixes some memory leaks/crashes and an issue with Canon 5D MK II files that was causing weird artifacts. I have not yet talked to Ira Block, one of the guys who reported the artifacting about the release to see if he finds the problem fixed.
- Kelby Training has a new Lightroom course (Lightroom 2: A Creative Approach wtih Jack Davis) available. Here is their Lightroom Section. I’ve quite enjoyed the courses I’ve taken in the past from Kelby’s offering, and they’re a great way to get 1:1 training without expensive seminars.
- Mike Solomon offers a take on High ISO images in Lightroom (and some presets). As someone who shoots in some of the worst light possible (ballet dancers in crappy, low levels of fluorescent lighting) I get it...
- Martin Evening (he did the cover for Lightroom 2’s box) talks grayscale conversions in this excellent video. (via the Lightroom-Blog.com).
- LRB Portfolio - a gallery plugin for Lightroom 2 has just been released. It uses the gallery engine to create a complete website for photographers.
- David Ziser has an online tutorial covering Adjustment Brush presets in Lightroom 2.
- Looking for saturated colors? Preset Heaven has a new preset just for you - CSI Miami.
- Matt K provides us with an interesting take on creating focal points with a graduated filter. Crazy I know. Have a look.
- Steve Paxton talks about sorting and labeling images in Lightroom. I’ve said it a thousand times, being a good editor is a skill you gotta develop. Lightroom’s tools can help.
- Another detailed discussion on black & white conversions in Lightroom if you must.
- Into Geotagging your photos? Read up. I’m a bit ambivalent about the practice, but if you’re techy-nerd is looking for an outlet, I suppose this is as good as any.
- Free presets-o-rama from I heart presets. Mostly sepia-esque.
- Become a crop and straighten maven. If you are not all ready, of course.
- Here is a nice tutorial covering HDR Photo using Photomatix Pro and Lightroom. (via Marcus Griebling)
Update 10 AM
- It looks like Nik has finally come out with a Viveza plugin for Lightroom 2. Not sure if this makes a lot of sense given that the Adjustment Tool in Lightroom does such a great job at, well, adjusting stuff. But its nice to have as an option.
That should do it for this week.
BTW, did you know you can follow my rash observations at a more intimate level via twitter? Ya should.
Inspiration Monday: Joao Pina
This week I ran into the work of Portuguese photographer, Joao Pina and was stunned by the gritty work he’d done of the violence in the Brasilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
Pina studied at the ICP in New York (lovely place to visit when you’re in town) and has worked for a nice long list of magazines. Read more here...
Here is a sample of his work:
Image © Joao PIna
Image © Joao PIna
Image © Joao PIna
Image © Joao PIna
His website is worth spending some time with,
so, peruse at your
leisure...