Tag Archives: digital

Negative Lab Pro 2.0 Update

A while back, I bought the Lightroom plugin, Negative Lab Pro. This is a plugin that converts digital images of negatives to a positive image. I wrote about it in this post. A short time ago, the developer brought out a version 2.0 upgrade to the plugin. It turns out, the upgrade was free for those of us that had bought the original plugin. I installed the upgrade to see how things have been improved.

Initially, I was very disappointed. The conversion process after the update seemed to be awful. Things looked dark and blotchy and efforts to unconvert and reconvert the images didn’t help. I was perplexed by this since a number of users had already exclaimed how happy they were with the update. If in doubt, follow the old approach of closing stuff and restarting it. I closed Lightroom and reopened it and whatever was wrong before was now fixed. The conversion worked very well. The controls have been expanded to give you a bit more to play with. The main benefit I am seeing so far is in the color balancing. Shots seem to have a more natural look to them without me having to work too hard on the color in the first place. Shots like those with a lot of sky and an odd colored aircraft will still test the algorithm a lot but otherwise it seems to have a good handle on things. It is also now able to handle frame edges without getting confused. You can tell it how much of the edge to ignore which is a useful feature although I have got into the habit of cropping carefully already.

All in all, the upgrade seems to be a good one. Since it hasn’t cost me anything, that is a nice thing to have. It is also good to know that the developer is continuing to work on the product which holds out the hope of further upgrades to come. I continue to recommend this to anyone that has been scanning their old negatives with a digital camera.

How Low Can You Go?

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The high ISO capabilities of modern cameras are a constant source of discussion whenever a new camera comes out. It was quite funny to see everyone get so excited about the multi-million ISO range on the Nikon D5 when it was announced, only to see that the high ranges were nothing more than moose with a bit of an image overlaid on them. Not a big surprise but still funny to see how much everyone was going nuts about it before the reality set in.

Consequently, I was interested to see what the new bodies I bought were really capable of. I have already posted a little about some of the shots I took as the light faded at SFO. I was shooting with a tripod and a gimbal mount to make things easier but I was also working within the ISO range of the camera. I went with auto ISO and exposure compensation while shooting in aperture priory and wide open to get what I could. However, I really wanted to see what was possible so I changed to manual mode, exposure compensation and auto ISO to see what could be done. Auto ISO is not going to use the extended ranges of ISO.

I don’t know about the Nikon cameras but the Canon cameras tend to have three extended range ISO settings at the high end. There is the highest ISO setting that it recognizes and then there are H1, H2 and H3. They don’t name them with the actual ISO settings but you know what they are based on what you see on the camera. The manufacturer does not label them as normal ISO settings because they do not stand behind them as a capability. There is a good reason for that. They are just like the highest Nikon settings. Useful if you have no option but not very good otherwise.

The same was true with my older bodies. They had a very high ISO range that was not great but it would do in a pinch. At the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta I shot an Aero Commander in the pitch black that flew over and I saw stuff in the shot I couldn’t see with the naked eye. This is with a camera that is ancient by modern standards. I expected a bit more with the latest generation. Certainly, there is more to be achieved with what we have now. However, post processing becomes a part of the story.

My first experience with these shots was in Lightroom. The shots did not look good at all. However, there was a clue in all of this. The first view in Lightroom is based on the JPEG that is baked into the raw file. It looked okay until it was rendering by Adobe at which point it looked a lot worse. This piqued my interest. Sure enough, at the extended ISO ranges, the shots looked pretty awful. Lots of purple backgrounds. These were not going to be any good. However, the initial preview had looked good., is this a case of Lightroom not being able to render the shots well? I figured I should try going to the source.

At various ISAP symposiums, the Canon guys have talked about how their software is the one that you should use since only Canon know how to decode their shots properly. They have the recipe for the secret sauce. Since Digital Photo Professional (DPP), Canon’s own software for decoding raw files, is so terrible to use, I never bother with it. The raw processing in Lightroom (and ACR since they are the same) is so much easier to use normally and works really well. DPP is just awful in comparison. However, we are now dealing with the extremes of capabilities of the camera. The embedded previews seemed better so maybe it is possible that DPP will be able to do a better job.

You can now be the judge. Here are some pairs of shots. They are the same shot in each case. The first is processed in Adobe Lightroom and the second is processed in DPP. I think it is clear that DPP is better able to work with the raw files when it comes to extreme ISO settings. The shots certainly have a more normal look to them. The Lightroom shots look really messed up by comparison. It doesn’t mean I will be using the extended ISO ranges on a regular basis. Jumping to DPP for processing is not helpful on a regular basis. However, if the need arises, I know that I can push the camera a lot further and use DPP to get something that is okay if not great. This could be handy at some point.

How Many Megapixels?

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How many is too many? I really don’t know. I refer to the number of pixels that can be squeezed onto the sensor for a digital camera and what is desirable or not. Over the years the camera manufacturers have steadily increased the number of pixels on their sensors and come up with ever greater resolutions as a result. This has been both beneficial and problematic. What I am not sure about is whether I am missing the point with all of this.

My first DSLR was a Canon EOS 10D. It was a 6.3Mp camera – something that would now be considered unacceptable on a cell phone. It was a great camera, even if it did have a number of limitations that would be considered unheard of today. However, for its day it was very good. I had full page images printed in magazines from it with absolutely no problem.

As the megapixel wars got going, I was adopting larger and larger file sizes by default. I would tell anyone who asked that megapixels were not the most important thing when buying a camera and there were plenty of other issues to consider. I certainly don’t mind having a more dense file when I need to crop in to a shot but the impact on memory cards, the need for ever larger hard drives and the upgrades to computers to process the larger files were downsides that I didn’t appreciate.

For a while it seemed like the pixel count had leveled off a bit and the focus was on gaining better noise performance at high ISO settings. This seemed like a very worthwhile approach for me. However, big sensors are now back in play with the Nikon D800 leading the way and Canon talking about some large sensor cameras to come. (I think it is worth noting that, since the pixel count is a function of the square of the linear resolution, these larger counts do not translate in to a huge improvement in linear resolution. Yes, you do get more detail but it isn’t quite as mind-blowing as some will suggest.)

Am I a dope for not welcoming this? Am I taking a Luddite approach in sounding happy with what I had and not appreciating the advances? Do I just accept that all of my gear has to be upgraded periodically to stay in line with the latest thing whether it is camera file sizes, the processing requirements of new generation software or the interface needs of the latest devices. I’m sure there are some benefits to having such dense files but I am not sure that they matter for what I do.

As for the uses for large file sizes, there is always much discussion about printing big or using for billboards. Only a photo nerd looks at a picture from six inches and billboard resolutions are actually quite poor. I wonder what a good resolution level really is. Anyone care to suggest the perfect compromise?

Oh, to have been digital then…

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When I am working on a project that relates to something older than 10 years ago, I have to dig into my film archives and see what I have shot in the days before digital came along. Almost invariably, when I undertake such a task, I am struck by how things have changed when shooting digitally compared with film.

There are two main differences I notice between now and then. First the number of shots and second the quality I can get from them. I should, at this point, confess that I always shot negatives rather than transparencies (well, almost always) when I was a film shooter and they will be plenty of photographers who will consider never speaking to me again as a result. However, while the reasons for that are in the distant past, I don’t know whether it would really change much at this point.

Numbers are easily explained. When I shot film, every frame had a cost. The film had to be bought and then it had to be processed. It also then needed to be stored which I didn’t always do as well as I should. Consequently, some images that should be available are in less than perfect condition. That is my fault, of course, not that of the technology. This cost meant that shots were taken sparingly.

When I went to airshows in the late 80s, I would probably shoot about six or seven rolls of the 36 exposure. I used to think this was a lot and my none photographic friends used to think it was extravagant. About 200 shots was a lot. Compare that to a show today and I can safely say things have changed. I would miss good shots because I was waiting for what I hoped was the slightly better one to come. Now I shoot all of them and worry later. A reduction in skill and technique? Maybe or perhaps it is just making use of what is available to you. Certainly, I can experiment with a number of different shot types now in a way I couldn’t before. Slow shutter speeds are a particular example.

I still have to store them of course but storage is cheap and digital files don’t degrade – you can lose them completely of course but backups are straightforward which they certainly weren’t for film!

Quality is another issue. RAW converters continue to improve and you can extract some good detail from the shadow and highlight areas if you are not too reckless. The film is set at development and then you have to work with it. Again, a skill that can be controlled but going back is a lot more difficult. I don’t have access to the best of film scanners but getting a crop out of an old neg is a bit hit or miss. Compare that with a crop of a digital file and I think the benefits to me are obvious.

I look at shots of long gone airframes from events in my past. First, I wish I could have them as digital files from a camera rather than a scanner. However, I am more shocked when I see something rare and look at the next few frames to see what I shot and see a totally different subject. How could I have been so blase? I guess this is a lesson to learn now. We might be bored with what we see a lot of now but, one day, these things will be history too so we had better make the best of what we have now and learn from our/my mistakes of the past.

Global Aviation Magazine

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The team that has been bringing you Global Aviation Resource for over two years has been working on an additional product to bring aviation themed material to a wide audience. The launch of Global Aviation Magazine is the result of their hard work.

The first issue is now available here and I recommend you take a look if aviation is an interest of yours. I might also suggest you take a peek at a piece on helicopter lifting operations written by someone with a familiar name.

Check it out and let us know what you think.