Category Archives: equipment

Speeding Up Lightroom

YouTube is a fantastic way to lose track of time. It may well have an abundance of crap but it also has lots of informative material. More importantly, watch one thing and you get recommendations of other things, many of which are actually quite useful. I was watching a video by Tony Northrup on building a computer for photo processing and he was talking about putting the Lightroom catalog on an SSD. This got me thinking about something.

When I built my system, I installed an SSD to be the drive on which the OS is installed along with the applications. I have traditional hard drives for the data storage. One of these was set up with the Lightroom catalogs keeping them separate from the image files to make the response time better. At the time of the build, a 250Gb SSD was affordable but not cheap so that was what I went with. With everything installed, that doesn’t have enough space for the catalogs.

I never thought more about it until after this video. I started thinking about some old SSDs I have and looked at whether the catalogs would fit on either of them. It turns out that, with all of the preview files, the SSDs were not big enough. However, I did then have a look at the price of a drive that would be large enough such as another 250Gb drive. That would have plenty to spare to account for future needs.

While looking at these, I was also able to see 500Gb drives and they are only about $150. I was unaware just how much the price had fallen. Consequently, a spare drive bay now holds my Lightroom catalogs. I only have a relatively small amount of experience with the new configuration but it is safe to say that things are positively zipping along compared to where they were before. I was wondering whether the system might be in need up upgrade or replacement but this one change seems to have made things significantly better. I will report further if I discover more but, if you have a similar configuration, this might be the upgrade that makes things noticeably better.

How Things Move On

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I am sure that there are countless examples around of how things progress leaving something that we used to think was impressive looking horribly dated. This is not something unique, then, but it did amuse me. While going through some old camera bits to find an old connector, I came across this compact flash card. My first digital camera was a Canon EOS10D and it actually came with a card included. This was it. 32Mb of awesomeness.

Even then that wasn’t enough and I immediately got a couple of 256Mb cards. However, given that I tend to have 64Gb cards in the camera these days – 2000 times the capacity – is a sign of how things change rapidly.

Update on the Negative Scanning

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I wrote about the set up I had created for scanning negatives using a digital camera a while back. Since writing that, I have been working on a lot more scans and have gained some additional experience. This has resulted in a few changes to the configuration so I thought I would share those too. Overall I am very happy with the results I am getting as a result of the updates. Things could be better but that would involve considerably more expense and the need just isn’t there.

The first change I made was to use a different lens. I had been using the 24-105. It was pretty close to the film plane and was sensitive to getting the alignment spot on. I had a few times when focus was not consistent across the shot. I thought it might be better to try a longer lens further away and this proved to be a big help. I have my old 100-400 still so I hooked that up. It makes for a slightly higher position but I can use the zoom quite well although it needs more of the extension tubes to focus properly. It does result in good focus although I tend to focus manually as the autofocus does not seem happy in this setup.

I was using Liveview quite a bit and I discovered that the old batteries I have were not lasting long at all. Rather than buy new batteries, I went to Amazon and picked up an AC adaptor that replaces the battery for about $15. Now I can scan as long as I like without having to have batteries charging in the background.

I also have modified slightly the light pad. I found I was moving it around a lot more than I realized as I moved the negatives and swapped strips. A little gaffer tape now holds it pretty much in place. This means I can have the lens zoomed more closely to the full frame of the film which allows for a higher resolution scan.

With everything tethered in to Lightroom, the import process is pretty smooth. The preset I use is okay but I am regularly tweaking for the white balance and exposure. This is not too big of a deal. I find I can get better detail out of the shots than was possible with the scanner and using the raw convertor gives me plenty to work with. They are still limited by the quality of the original shots of course!

Overall I am very pleased. I can scan a lot of stuff very quickly compared to the old way and now I am happy to scan a whole shoot without worrying about whether any of them could be ignored. It is quicker to scan them and then discard them afterwards. I am scanning stuff that I have been thinking about for a long time and rescanning shots that had been done before but really were not great. Of course, now I have even more stuff to do in whatever spare time there is so maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all!

An Alternative to Negative Scanning

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I am in the process of experimenting with a new approach to scanning old photographs. For many years I have been using a Minolta Scan Dual III scanner. It can accept strips of negatives or slides and does a reasonable job of scanning them in. It is a bit labor intensive and is certainly not fast. Moreover, the scanner is not terribly reliable and it will often hang mid scan requiring me to restart it and close down the application before restarting that too. Since it takes a long time, I often get it running and go and do something else so I might miss the problem.

I do have another imaging tool that works very quickly. In fact I have several of them. These are my current digital cameras. I have bought a set of extension tubes to allow me to treat existing lenses as macro lenses. I have also acquired a small light pad. Cutting some card to shape means I can hold down any old negatives and view them through a hole with illumination from the light pad below. Mount a camera on an arm looking down on the pad and I now have a way to image the negative.

I am taking the images at my desk so I am able to tether the camera to the computer and use Lightroom to capture the images directly. This has actually provided me with an opportunity to drag out one of my older bodies that doesn’t get used anymore. My old 40D has been sitting on a shelf for a long time but it has come back into use for this project. It has more than enough resolution for this task. (Unfortunately, the batteries are now rather old and don’t hold a charge well so I am going to get an AC adapter from Amazon for ten dollars which should free me to scan as much as I want.)

I slide the negative into the holder and check the rough alignment through the viewfinder. Fortunately, although it took me a while to find it, the 40D does have Liveview so I can make use of that to make sure the alignment is right. I use the trigger release in Lightroom’s tether dialog to take the shot to avoid disturbing the setup. If an image needs over or under exposure, I have to remember that it is a negative so I have to use exposure compensation in the opposite sense. The shot is imported straight in the Lightroom when it is taken. The first thing that I need to do is reverse the tone curve to change the negative to a positive. A white balance correction will take out the color cast of the negative and I now have an image to work with. I have a preset for given film types that does this during the import process.

The image is now recognizable but not there yet. Now I have to do some manual manipulation to tidy it up. The sliders have to be used carefully in this case because they are now working in reverse as a result of the tone curve that I applied. This requires some thought. Exposure is still exposure but is reversed. Usually shots look a bit washed out so, what would normally by the Blacks slider is now the Whites. Shadows are handled with the Highlights and vice versa. It takes a bit of getting used to but it is not too hard after some practice. I tried using Auto Tone but it did not do a great job. I imagine the algorithms were not designed for operating in reverse!

With everything set up, I can work through a shoot very quickly. Choosing which ones to ignore and reshooting if something doesn’t look right can be done pretty much on the fly. Is the image quality great? It’s okay but not amazing. However, many of the originals are not that great either. For the majority, it actually does a pretty decent job and sets me up for something that I can do more work on if I need to. It is a big improvement on my previous approach and now I will make quick scans when I need them rather than be dreading the time involved and avoiding all but the must have shots to save time.

Yet More on the 100-400

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Here is the latest update on the 100-400 saga. As reported here, I got the 100-400 back from Canon and they had indeed found something wrong with it. This was, as I noted then, a relief as I wasn’t imagining things or just not being able to use it properly (although that is still a real issue with my photography as a whole!). However, until I had been able to get out and about and given the lens some significant use, I didn’t know whether I would really see the difference.

Now the jury is in. I went out over the weekend and shot a lot of stuff in some nice conditions. Over the last couple of days I have been going through the images from the shoot. Let’s just say I have a very big grin on my face. The problem I was seeing before is gone and now I am seeing some really nice image quality all across the frame when shooting wide open. This is great news. After having the lens for a year and feeling less than happy, it is like I have got something new to use. I am a happy camper! Expect some of the shots from this shoot to make their way on to here over the coming weeks.

Update on the 100-400

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Nearly a year ago I got the new model of the Canon 100-400 EF lens. I had it on back order when it first came out and it arrived just before Christmas so became an impromptu gift to me! Almost everything about the lens I liked. However, if you read my initial thoughts on the lens which I covered here, you will have seen I had a concern about softness in one part of the image. I have used the lens extensively since then and, while I have not always had an issue, I have continued to be concerned about the output in one area – particularly when compared the the excellent sharpness the rest of the image was displaying.

I sent the lens to Canon earlier this year for a service. I explained my concerns and they took a look and told me it was functioning properly and returned it. I took it on another shoot and got more shots which did not look right. This time I emailed CPS and provided them with some sample shots. They suggested it didn’t look right and told me to send the lens back in with a description of everything to date along with more sample images on a card.

I now have the lens on its way back to me. Here is what they found.

Your product has been examined and it was found that the optical assembly was broken causing the auto focus to operate improperly from time to time. The 6th group lens and 2nd group lens were replaced. Product functions were confirmed.

It is nice to know that I wasn’t imagining things but a little disappointing it took this long to get to the bottom of things. Of course, I could have done some of this sooner if I had been more certain of the problem. In future, I will be a bit more willing to trust my instincts. Now to get the repaired lens in my hands and test it!

Lightroom Furor Missing the Point?

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Adobe recently updated Lightroom and introduced a new version of the import dialog. This move caused consternation in the online photo world and they are currently planning to revert back to the previous version. So much of the focus was on lost functionality in the new version. I have struggled to see how bad the losses were. Everything I needed before was in the revised dialog and from what I can see, the bits that went away were not exactly game changers. Of course, different people have different uses so it might matter to them.

What I am surprised about is that far less attention is being given to the fact the new release is horribly buggy. The new import dialog is a prime example. You have the import presets as before but if you change to a new preset, the location that is shown for where the files will be copied is the previous one. If you click to change it, you see that the correct folder for the new preset has been selected. It actually sends them where it is supposed to but it shows a different location. This is annoying but not impossible. The import dialog presets have been buggy for as long as I can recall with certain elements impossible to get rid of once selected.

Overall, the program is a lot less reliable. I have had develop screens lock up when it gets tired with a blue block replacing the image in question. If I leave it open long enough, it locks up completely. Sometimes, when I go to the Open Recent tab, the arrow appears but no recent catalogs are on display.

So, while everyone has been getting really messaged up about the import dialog, I am not that bothered. I think they should have been focusing on how Adobe released an update to Lightroom that seems to have a ton of problems with doing the basic stuff it is supposed to do. That seems far more worrying to me.

Windows 10 Upgrade Experience

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The upgrade to Windows 10 was one I have been thinking about for a while. I wasn’t interested in upgrading straightaway since I figured there would be a bit of debugging of the OS by the early adopters. I also didn’t want to compromise any of the important stuff I have. Therefore, I decided to use my laptop as the prototype for the upgrade to see how it went before upgrading anything else.

The upgrade went surprisingly easily. It downloaded all of the new files when it started which took a fair bit of time but then it went off through the upgrade process with little involvement from me. When everything was done, I went through the options rather than accept the recommended selections an unchecked a bunch of the items that appear to share more information than may be preferable. I shall wait to see whether any of those selections limit any functionality.

The only issue I have had so far related to the trackpad on my laptop. Previously, the trackpad allowed scrolling by running my finger along the right side of the pad. This function has gone away and now I use two fingers to swipe up and down. This is taking me a while to get the hang of since other machines still operate the old way but I think this will be okay in due course. The other issue with the trackpad is that, periodically, it appears to freeze for a moment and the cursor doesn’t move. It then clears itself with no further issue so I suspect it is a minor driver issue that will, hopefully, be updated in due course.

I was also able to copy the old version of the Windows games from Windows 7 to the Windows 10 system. They have updated versions in Windows 10 but, if you like the previous versions, you can keep them. Otherwise, the changes seem pretty reasonable and I haven’t had any issues so I think I will be upgrading the rest of our machines. We shall see whether they also go smoothly. Getting Nancy’s laptop off Windows 8 will probably be a popular move!

Blog Image Upload Using WP/LR Sync

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Providing a review on something you haven’t had a lot of use of doesn’t seem like a good plan. This is something I have been using for a while and, now I have had a bit of time with it, I thought I would share what it is like. Uploading images to the blog is obviously a big part of the preparation of posts since, at the end of the day, this is primarily a photographic blog. When I first started out, I would create the images I wanted and then upload them manually. That was time consuming but was soon superseded by an alternative.

I started using the LR/Blog plugin to Lightroom. This would create a version of the file including any formatting, borders and conversion to the right color space and would then upload it to the blog. This worked okay for a long time but it had one significant limitation. If I tried to upload too many shots at once, it would fail and then lock me out of the blog for a while. I started searching for an alternative when my efforts to solve this problem went nowhere fast.

If you Google this topic, almost everything brings you to LR/Blog. However, recently I came across WP/LR Sync. It is a Lightroom plug in that makes use of the Publish services in Lightroom. Rather than uploading the images one time, you add the files to a collection that is then published to your blog. If you change the image, you can have the online version amended in sync with the original. If you go to http://apps.meow.fr/wplr-sync/ you can read more about it.

I decided to give this a go. However, in the guidance, Jordy provides a piece of information for people like me who have problems uploading lots of images. Apparently, my hosting service treats too many upload attempts in a short time as an attack and you get locked out. This was what was happening before. WP/LR Sync has a field that allows a small time delay between images which, if set just long enough, will prevent you getting treated as an attack. Something like this would also cure my LR/Blog issues I guess but that ship has sailed.

I am very happy with the new plug in. It works well and allows the same edits of the image before uploading as before. A benefit is that, if you drag images to the sync collection and they were already in there, you don’t end up with duplication on the blog. The one you previously uploaded is there. You just might have to scroll down a bit to try and find it. If you want to have a go with this add on to Lightroom, visit http://apps.meow.fr/wplr-sync/ and check it out.

Haze Filter

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The Creative Cloud version of Lightroom drops new features in to the software when the updates are installed. This is a nice thing to have happen but, unless you are paying attention, you might not be aware of some of the new features. It took me a while after the last update to learn that a new filter had been added that was designed to take haze out of images. This is a great idea. I have experimented with trying to remove the effect of haze in shots before but, because the effect varies by distance, it can be quite tricky to get something that doesn’t look totally wrong.

I have not played with the filter a lot but I did decide to try it out on a shot I took at Crater Lake a few years back. Wildfires had resulted in smoke in the air which meant the usual clear view across the lake was obscured. I thought I would see how the filter worked out. Above are the before and after shots. It is an improvement but obviously isn’t going to rescue a totally messed up shot. I did try a more aggressive setting but that looked wrong itself so this was the one I went with. We shall see if this has other uses for me over time.