Gardens by Day and Night

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The hotel I have used on my recent visits to Tokyo is one of a group of hotels in one location.  Between each of the buildings is a garden.  It is a peaceful place to hang out (even when it was as hot and humid as it was when I was first there) and it has temples, bells, a lake and lots of places to rest and contemplate.  In the evening, it is subtly illuminated providing a very different feel compared to how it is during the day.

On some occasions, music was piped in.  One evening there was a guy playing some sort of flute as he wandered around the garden.  I assume he was hired to do so rather than just showing up and playing but you never know.  He was fighting the noise of the cicadas when it was hot!

Alpha Jet Action

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The Alpha Jet has attracted the attention of a few owners in the Pacific Northwest.  This example is pretty cool because, rather than being painted in some new scheme, it is still in the colors it wore when operated by the Luftwaffe.  It flew a few passes during Skyfair so we were able to see it in action.  I have seen lots of the French style Alpha Jets with the spinning nose but my exposure to the German style of jets over the years has been a lot less.  The pointy nose has a slightly more purposeful look to me.

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!

 

ABX 767 in White

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I’ve taken so long to write this post that it has been expanded.  I got an ABX 767 freighter coming in to SeaTac one time in overcast conditions.  I had been meaning to write about it for a while but other topics had seemed more appropriate to cover first.  Then, while out hunting for an MD-11F, I happened to have another example fly over me as I was parking up.  (This one is an ABX jet but they are a common fleet.)  The camera was to hand so I was able to get some shots for almost directly beneath.  I guess this was the trigger for me to finally write the post!

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.

Dreamlifter Turnaround

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The 787s fleeing the hurricane weren’t the only aircraft arriving at Paine Field while we were there.  The regular schedule of 787 component deliveries was underway with the Dreamlifters.  One of the jets landed just after we got there.  We watched from the rooftop as it taxied in, the crew opened up the tail and a fuselage barrel section was offloaded.  There was another Dreamlifter already parked up when we got there.

Once our tour was over, we headed back upstairs because this Dreamlifter was now ready to go.  It pushed back and taxied out.  I decided to try some video of it rather than more stills.  The jet was off to Japan and was fueled up.  Consequently, it used a good chunk of the runway to get airborne.  I was watching through the camera and can admit to being a little surprised how long it ran.  The video I got is below.

Rice Fields in the Country

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A feature of the Japanese countryside is the amount of rice that is growing everywhere you go.  I was often amazed to see small sections of rice growing in little spaces between developments of buildings and homes.  Further out, where there is more space, the rice fields are substantial.  These rice fields were in Ibaraki prefecture.  As the sun got lower in the sky, the tops of the plants caught the light nicely as they blew in the breeze.  It had quite a peaceful feel to it all.

Eastern Front Veteran

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The FHCAM IL-2 Shturmovik has been airworthy for a while but I have previously only seen it on the ground.  Skyfair was my first opportunity to see it flying so I was rather pleased.  This is a pretty rare type and a new one for me so having it display was a treat.  The sun was rather high when it flew which is a bit less than ideal for a plane with a dark paint scheme but that is a small price to pay.  It flew a number of passes, all of which felt nice and close.  Great stuff.

R44 Pilot Showing Off for the Camera

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I was wandering along the runway at Concrete towards the end of the day during the fly in.  A Robinson R44 had been doing pleasure flights throughout the day and was landing well up the field from where I spent a lot of my time.  I had photographed it as it came over a couple of times but soon lost interest.  However, as I wandered along, I happened to be near his landing spot when he came back from another trip.  I was far better placed to get a shot or two so I did.  However, he spotted me and, instead of following his normal approach routine, he brought the helicopter to a hover in front of me facing at me as they all looked at me while I looked at them.  As long as I kept shooting, he didn’t go anywhere so eventually I just lowered the camera and waved.  At that point he turned around and landed.