Category Archives: technique

Camera Profiling

For all of my previous cameras I have created profiles. When I got the new cameras I decided not to bother and to go with the profiles that are built in to Camera Raw/Lightroom. This was working okay for a while but there were some shots where I felt like the adjustments were having slightly odd effects. It was almost like the files had less adjustability than my old Mark IV files. This didn’t seem likely. I figured I would have a go at creating profiles and see whether that made any difference.

The profiles are relatively easy to create. I have a color card that has twelve different color squares. You take a shot of it in RAW mode. Then comes the slightly annoying step. You have to cover it to a DNG file. Not sure why, since this is all Adobe software, they can’t combine the steps but never mind. Then you open the profiling software. Pull up the DNG file, align the four color dots with the corner color squares and let it do its thing. Choose a name and the profile is saved on your computer where the Adobe software can see it.

It does make a difference. The thing I found most interesting was that the profiles for the two cameras were quite different. It shows up most in the blues for my bodies which, given I shoot aircraft a lot, is no small deal. The shots here are versions of the same images with the default profiles and the new profiles for comparison. Everything else is the same so the difference is purely profile related.

Embedding a Zoomify File

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I have played with the Zoomify files a few times before. Then I found a way to get a Zoomify file output in HTML5 format rather than Flash. Since so many people are on mobile devices today and plenty of them don’t use Flash, having the new format was necessary to make the output usable widely. I didn’t like the idea of a new page opening up though. Taking people off your page can mean that they don’t come back. Fortunately, I found out how to embed this in an iFrame. Those of you that are web savvy will know all about this stuff but I didn’t. However, messing around with some page code and suddenly my stuff is embedded in the page above. Pretty cool. Feel free to zoom and pan around the Nellis flightline!

High ISO Raw File Size

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On my previous camera bodies I had occasionally shot at very high ISO settings as a result of the lack of light. I had not paid a huge amount of attention to any secondary effects of doing so. My current cameras had a work out in some very low light when I decided to test them in some rather unfriendly conditions. When I was at home, I was running some disc backups and I found I could not get the normal number of files onto a single disc. A quick bit of investigation and I could see why. The high ISO shots had a significant increase in file size. As I understand it, RAW files, while containing all of the data from the sensor, do have an amount of compression applied. I imagine that the noise inherent in high ISO shots means that the compression is less effective as there is so much variation across pixels. As an example, a shot at ISO 320 will average at about 22Mb. The shots at ISO 51,200 are coming in at over 30Mb. At ISO 204,000, the files can hit 40Mb. That is quite an increase! Something to keep in mind when planning to shoot in very low light conditions.

Lightning Photography

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When I shot film I had a go at shooting lightning a number of times but never with any success. I would try and react to get the bolt but it was always gone. When you are using film and having a very low success rate, things get too expensive. Consequently, I gave up on it. The move to digital opened up a new range of possibilities.

My new approach doesn’t involve much skill (but then neither does using an electronic trigger). I set up the exposure to have a reasonably long shutter speed. Then I put the camera on continuous mode, plug in the cable release and lock the shutter open. Then the camera takes a steady stream of shots. Of course, when there is a slight gap between shots, you can imagine when the lightning will strike.

I used to shoot a lot from the apartment in Chicago. Set the camera up and go and do something else. Unfortunately, the heavy rains that would accompany the storm activity could result in the sky glaring out but you still had a chance. Some of the shots were okay and every once in a while you would get a really cool outcome. The Trump Tower was next to us and it would be struck occasionally but it was too close to get a good look at. You could hear it though!

Lightroom, Video and Capture Times

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Getting the new camera has resulted in discovering a new quirk in the way that files are handled. I have been capturing video on the camera and, when it is imported to Lightroom, the video is showing a different capture time to the stills around it. The offset is eight hours which is the difference between the US West Coast and UTC. I was wondering whether this was an issue with Lightroom so checked in with some forums on that topic. I got feedback about the way that files record capture time for files and the suggestion that it was down to the way Canon write the capture time in a format different from that in the standards.

I then starting communicating with Canon and they said there was nothing wrong with their format and that the software I was using, i.e. Lightroom, was the one at fault. It seems everyone considers this someone else’s fault. Not much help to me of course. In the meantime, I have to remember to go to the edit capture time function in Lightroom when I import the files if there is any video included. I usually remember but not always. If anyone has a good suggestion, please let me know.

New Zoomify Trial

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I previously added a Zoomify image to a blog post. It was pointed out that, as a Flash based format, it didn’t work on some mobile devices. That was using the default Photoshop installation. I have now found a way of generating an HTML5 version of the Zoomify output. This is a trial to see whether it works. Let me know in the comments. Click here to see the file.

Those That Sneaked In

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I learned something significant while shooting the airliners from above LAX. It is a lot harder to see an airliner from above than I thought. In the many years of flying, I am familiar with the importance of maintaining a good lookout and the difficulty of spotting other aircraft around you in the sky. From our locations over the airport, we were generally picking out the aircraft from a background of the city, not the sky. I had figured that we knew the approach paths and what was due in so we would not have trouble seeing the planes as they came in.

I was very wrong. First, they are not easy to find at all. Three sets of eyes were looking but we would find things at odd times, sometimes when they were very close. Also, with parallel operations to the 24 and 25 complexes, you can get distracted by activity on one side and miss out on something the other side. The result of this was that we did not see some of the jets until they were on the ground. Pete, who was with me, flies 777s so we were keen to get the BA jet when it came in. We knew the arrival time and still managed to miss it until it was on the ground. An Air France A380 also sneaked in past our “diligent” scan. An Aeroflot A330 was also successful in coming in untouched.

All of these were a little frustrating but not terrible. However, it did give me pause for thought about how I would plan the flight the next time in order to keep track of the things that I most wanted to get. This flight was my first time trying this so I was happy to have got so many shots that I like. The missed ones are not the end of the world. I did learn a lot though and will make sure I use that knowledge next time.

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!

Compression of Perspective

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Shooting with a long focal length lens has the effect of compressing the image to make elements appear a lot closer together than they really are. When shooting from the helicopter over LAX I was using a 100-400mm lens. The aircraft themselves were quite low to the ground, particularly those on short final to land. They weren’t a long way off the ground but the lens in use had the effect of making things look a lot closer than they really were. Some of the shots I got of the aircraft over parking lots or near the In’n’Out really make it look as if the jets were barely airborne. I like the extra drama this adds to the shots.

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.