Category Archives: equipment

Lightroom Issues Update

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In quite a few previous posts, I have mentioned the troubles I have had with Lightroom recently.  This was all triggered by an update a while back and subsequent updates have not solved any issues.  The problems just continued and I was unable to get anything to address the sluggish behavior.  The program would respond better when I was working in the Develop module but it was very difficult in Library and when importing.

I recently had a bit more success.  I contacted someone who, while not working for Adobe, does have a business based around Lightroom and has good connections with the company.  I was able to send this individual a copy of my catalog.  They had a play with it and had similar issues with memory overuse so it wasn’t a hardware issue.  They were able to pass on the catalog to an Adobe engineer to investigate further.  I feared there was some corruption in the catalog and hoped they would find a solution.

It transpires that there is not any corruption.  Instead, it is in the nature of the catalogs that I have created that the problem lies.  A long time ago I posted about my approach to processing a shoot.  I would use a Collection Set for each shoot in which I would use smart collections to take shots with the right combination of keywords and dates.  They would split out rejects from non-rejects and put HDR, panorama shots and videos in separate smart collections.  This made processing the shoot more efficient.

As a result of this approach, I have, over the years, accumulated a large number of these collection sets with smart collections in them.  This is what is causing the trouble.  The program is getting bogged down with all of them.  This leaves two ways forward.  In the short term, I am going to go through these smart collections and turn them into simple collections.  Hopefully this will reduce the processing burden.  I don’t need the smart functionality any longer so I can just take the selected images and make simple collections out of them.

The longer term action is that Adobe is now aware of this issue.  Hopefully they can investigate a way to address this in a future update so that it isn’t constrained in the same way.  It happened suddenly so there was something in the coding that changed to cause the issue so maybe it can be similarly quickly fixed.  In the early days of Lightroom, it was limited in the number of images it could have before things got sluggish and that was resolved so hopefully this can be too.  We shall see.  If it is, you’re welcome!

 

A Further Trial in Focus Stacking

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In a previous post I wrote about a focus stacking effort I made with images of a model aircraft at a show.  I had been meaning to have another go at this and do so in a more controlled environment.  I then ended up buying myself a macro lens for use in my negative scanning efforts and immediately started playing with it to shoot things close up – it’s a macro lens for goodness sake!

As an f/2.8 lens, when shooting macro shots, the depth of field is really shallow.  This got me thinking about trying another focus stack.  A small Leatherman seemed as good a target as anything.  I set up with manual focus, put the camera on a tripod, went to manual exposure and then shot a sequence with small changes to the position of focus for each shot.  Then it was off to Photoshop.

Photoshop did a pretty good job really.  The distortion of the areas out of focus means that the area that the subject covers can vary quite dramatically as the focus shifts backwards and forwards.  The algorithm did well getting things masked and blended.  The only bit it struggled with was at the very top where the knurled edge seemed to confuse it a bit.  The top shot is the finished effort while two others are included to show how much things are out of focus in the individual shots.

Going Mirrorless

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Being late to the party is something that I make a habit of.  You could also be more optimistic and say that I am not an early adopter.  A number of friends and colleagues have added a mirrorless body to their collection of gear and I have followed suit.  I am perfectly happy with the performance of my SLRs.  This was to add something rather than replace something.  The primary interest was in size and convenience.  There are times when lugging the heavy bodies around is just inconvenient.

I went with an EOS M6.  I did consider going with a different manufacturer but using other equipment I already have was one factor.  Another was that this camera gave me an option I was quite keen on.  It has a screen for use while shooting but it also has an optional viewfinder to slot into the hot shoe.  This was discounted to only $11 when I bought the camera.  I like a viewfinder hit am okay with a screen.  Nancy, on the other hand, does not like screens so the viewfinder can be brought along if required and will make her happier to use the camera.

So far my experience with it has been very good.  Image quality has been fine, the controls are good and let me make adjustments without needing to enter menus.  The flippy screen is really handy and the kit lens fits plenty of needs.  The app that works with it is also pretty handy which gives a few options I wish the SLR could match!  The time lapse functionality is good too.  I have not tested it fully with my range of lenses and will do so at some point.  However, for what I bought it for, it is doing the trick nicely.

My Copy of Lightroom Got Sick

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After a previous update to Lightroom (6.12), it became almost unusable.  Importing would take forever and, once the images were in, it would grind to a halt.  Keywording and editing became a nightmare.  I was struggling to work out what was wrong.  A check on performance showed the processor wasn’t busy but the RAM was maxed out.  I couldn’t understand why.  The first thing I do when Lightroom behaves strangely is to delete the Preferences file.  This file can get corrupted and mess with the performance badly.  Just delete it and restart and things are often fixed.  That didn’t work in this case.  When the new version of Lightroom was released, I hoped this would fix everything but sadly not.  (Meanwhile Photoshop itself is working just fine on this system.)

I had a long session with the Adobe tech support people which got me nowhere.  After telling me this was normal, they realized it was not when our screen sharing crapped out as a result of the machine slowing to a virtual standstill.  They tried a bunch of simple stuff and got no further than I had on my own.  They suggested a second session would be needed and then promptly sent me an email telling me that the issue had been successfully resolved.  Not sure how they concluded that.  Meanwhile, I wondered whether there was an issue with my Windows installation so decided to do a completely clean install.  This had some slight benefits but basically the problem still remained.

I have done a bunch of scanning of similar issues and I found out a technique the support team can use to tweak performance.  There is a config.lua file that can be created in the presets folder to influence the system.  I have added this file and it has certainly made a few things work better.  It has also slowed some things down as well which isn’t ideal.  This was not a solution though.  All it did was make the program slightly more usable.

Another session with Adobe ensued.  This time we got into the permissions for some of the folders that contained the catalogs.  Lots of time to reset these to give greater authority.  I was told this is sometimes an issue with large catalog files.  Lots of time later, I found that nothing had really changed.  The whole thing would still get bogged down very quickly.

Then I read about Lightroom 7.2.  This was a new update that was supposed to address a lot of performance issues.  It was supposed to make better use of multi-core processors as well as larger RAM configs.  I had seen a sequence of updates not improve things – my issues were clearly not the normal performance problems although I had previously experienced some of them too – but I was hoping that, if they had changed the architecture of the software, maybe whatever was causing my machine to have problems might have been tweaked/replaced.  If not, I was seriously considering the need to buy a new system since this was so horribly inefficient.

I waited for the release date to come around when I knew the update was on its way.  Then I got an update to the iPad version and it said the new version of Camera Raw was included.  This must mean it was close.  A day later, the update dropped.  I downloaded it immediately and opened up.  Hurrah!!!  Everything run fast, the RAM levels were moderate and stable, everything was happening as it should.  My system lives!  Let’s hope this isn’t a false dawn.

Making Use of the Camera’s Features

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One of the things that I was glad to get when I last changed camera bodies was the ability to have exposure compensation while shooting in manual mode.  You might wonder why this is a useful thing to have but I was shooting a couple of time recently when it was useful.  Sadly, the first time I didn’t think to use it.  The second I did though.  This is the result of shooting in dark conditions when the light levels are changing quite a bit.

The problem in the first case was that I was shooting in aperture priority mode.  The light was low, so I went to auto ISO to allow it to adjust.  The camera looks to get a shutter speed that is related to the focal length of the lens you are using.  I was shooting a landing aircraft and, when I was out at the full length of the zoom, it kept shutter reasonably high.  However, as the plane got closer and I zoomed out, the camera dropped the shutter speed down which meant the panning resulted in a lower keeper rate.  I should have foreseen this and I was annoyed with myself.

The next time, I thought through the issue a bit better.  A gray sky meant that I needed to have some positive exposure compensation.  I went to manual mode, set the shutter speed and aperture that I wanted but included the exposure compensation.  Then I set auto ISO.  Now I had the ISO adjusting to get the combination I wanted while including exposure comp.  On my old bodies, this was not possible.  The result was the exposure I wanted with ISO adjusting throughout the sequence.  When conditions are not great and changing quickly, this is an approach I can highly recommend.

Planning for the Eclipse

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A couple of years ago I started thinking about the total solar eclipse.  We were living in California at the time and I had not long before been to an aviation shoot in Madras Oregon.  Madras was almost directly on the centerline of the path of totality so I thought about booking a hotel.  However, I didn’t do it then and time rolled on.  This year we moved to Washington so now Madras was a bit closer – just over five hours away if traffic is flowing freely.

As things got closer, it was time for a more thoughtful approach to what might be involved and this is where Nancy played the leading role.  She was not particularly interested in the eclipse but she knew I was.  Indeed, at one point in the run up she actually asked me if I would prefer to make the trip alone.  I can tell you that, having witnessed everything, she is really glad I didn’t want that!  Salem was the closest place with a good position for the totality.  Situated on I-5 south of Portland, that also meant a lot of other people were going to be going there so that was a non-starter.  Madras is further east which adds a bit to the drive but we focused on that.

We decided to stay in Portland the night before and set out early.  Plenty of people had been flooding in over the previous few days but, no doubt, others would be doing the same as us.  We also chose not to go to Madras itself but to go to Warm Springs just north of Madras.  This is a Native American reservation and they were welcoming people to the baseball fields to watch the eclipse.  The area is very dry so the chances of cloud obscuring things were a lot lower than closer to the coast.  To get there should take just under two hours from our hotel near Portland’s airport.  We decided to leave at 3am to give ourselves plenty of margin.

We did have a Plan B.  While there was a lot of time in the schedule for traffic, if it got really bad, we might just find ourselves on the highway when the eclipse happened.  As long as we got south of Mt Hood, we would be in the path of totality and, if you looked at the charts for timing, you didn’t have to get too far in to have a reasonably long period of totality.  We packed plenty of food and water and assumed, if it was totally congested, we would be with a huge bunch of people on the road and would enjoy it all together.

Getting up just after 2am, we checked the traffic reports online.  Everything was currently clear.  Good news but not necessarily to be relied on to last.  If we were leaving then, how many others were doing the same?  We put our stuff in the car and off we went.  The roads were pretty open and, as we got onto route 26, we were in a steady stream of cars but nothing that would slow you down.  We headed off into the wilderness.  This is a trip that takes you through some great scenery – if it is light.  Instead, we were out in the pitch black.  The stars around us were amazing to see since there was no light pollution if you weren’t looking ahead in the path of the headlights.

The traffic never materialized.  We got to Warm Springs in an hour and fifty minutes, arriving at the parking area fifteen minutes before it was due to open.  We met the nice people looking after things and they informed us we were the first to arrive and to park at the end of the row (which was hard to see in the pitch dark).  We parked up and had a few hours to kill so set the seats in the car up as a sofa and took it easy.  Nancy couldn’t sleep but I dozed off a few times.  Meanwhile, more cars arrived and people started milling around as it gradually got lighter.

Once the sun was up, we went off to look around the town and stretch our legs.  Then we set up our spot for the viewing.  I had brought two main cameras.  One was the longest lens combination I could get and the other had the 100-400 on it which I was planning to use for a time lapse.  I had bought solar filters for both a while back and B&H had shipped them with loads of viewing glasses.  We had shared some with friends already but we carried loads of spares in case anyone needed some.  No-one did though.  Everyone around us was well prepared so our spares stayed in the bag.  Meanwhile, I set the time lapse camera at an angle to see if I would track the path of the sun across the frame.  (I got this wrong as I did not have a steep enough angle.  I tweaked it a couple of times but it wasn’t ideal.  It worked but was a bit wonky!)

Lastly, I opened up the Solar Eclipse Tracker app on my phone which provided an audible guide to what was coming up and we got ready.  The skies were pretty clear initially with a hint of wildfire smoke in the distance.  As the time got closer, some high-level cloud did come in but nothing too significant.  Then it all started.  More to come…

Adobe Fixed the Time Zone Issue for Video

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In this previous post, I noted that there was a problem with the way in which Lightroom identified the time of video files.  I was having to manually adjust the capture time after importing them.  When I contacted Adobe, they said it was a problem with Canon and vice versa.  Not helpful.  However, I notice that, with a recent update (I won’t say upgrade because some aspects of it seem to have really screwed up Lightroom performance), the video files now come in with the correct time associated.  I only found this out because I was about to adjust them when I realized they were already correct.  One little annoyance has now gone away.  Hurrah!

Sensor De-mosaicing and Southwest Colors

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I have been pondering the way in which the method by which digital images are captured is affected by what is being photographed.  As part of my workflow, I render 1:1 versions of the images and then quickly weed out the ones that are not sharp.  This needs you to be able to see some detail in the shot that shows whether the sharpness is there.  I have found that, if a Southwest Airlines 737 is in the new color scheme, something odd happens.

Digital image sensors actually capture one of three colors.  Each pixel is sensitive to a certain color – either red, green or blue – courtesy of a filter.  They colors are arranged on the sensor in a pattern called a Bayer pattern.  The camera then carries out calculations based on what the pixels around each location see to calculate what the actual color should be for each location.  This process is known as de-mosaicing.  It can be a simple averaging but more complex calculations have been developed to avoid strange artifacts.

When I photograph the new Southwest scheme, something strange occurs around the N number on the rear fuselage.  It looks very blotchy, even when every other part of the airframe looks sharp and clear.  I am wondering whether the color of the airframe and the color of the registration digits are in some way confusing the de-mosaicing algorithm and resulting in some odd elements to the processed image that weren’t there in real life.  If any of you have photographed this color scheme, can you see whether you had something similar and, if you did or didn’t, let me know what camera you were shooting with so we can see if it is manufacturer specific or not.

Demise of a NAS

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Moving house means packing up your stuff and hoping it all survives the journey.  Some things you have are not ones you are happy about leaving out of your control so you take them with you.  Since we were driving up, we had a bit of flexibility about what we could take with us.  Aside from the camera gear, I brought my two NAS devices.  These have the backups of all of my stuff so, while the computer went in the truck, I had the backups.  However, when we got to the new place, one of the NAS units wouldn’t fire up.

This rather defeated the purpose of taking my backups with me.  The reason I have two units is that the one I have had the longest is limited in the size of drives it can handle.  2Tb drives are the largest so, as it was getting full, I bought a new unit.  Originally I had planned to just use it but, instead, I kept the one going and added new data to the new unit to avoid having to buy larger drives up front.

I figured at some point I might want to retire the old NAS.  It was far noisier than the new one and was probably over ten years old.  It seems to have made the decision for me.

Now I was in a worrying position.  The newer unit didn’t have enough capacity for all of the data.  However, it could handle most of it.  I immediately backed up what I could.  Meanwhile, I ordered new drives to expand it.  The price of drives has dropped dramatically so the 3Tb units are being replaced by 8Tb items.  That should provide plenty of capacity for a long time!  As the drives get swapped out sequentially and the NAS rebuilds and syncs everything, I gradually got extra capacity and set up the full back up process.  Now I am back to normal.  It does make me wonder about the life cycle of a NAS though.  (As an aside, I do have a tertiary backup of the images to BluRay so, while some elements were vulnerable for a while, the majority did have a fallback option.)