Cranes – Probably Not Here!

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A sign of spring is when wildlife starts showing up that you haven’t seen for a while.  I had a couple of experiences within a day of each other of exactly this.  One seemed perfectly reasonable but the other was probably not the best idea.  We were walking in a state park up in Wisconsin when we heard a lot of noise.  At first I thought it was geese but, as the huge flock of birds approached, it became obvious that they were cranes.

The cranes flew around a lot as we walked, some were high but others were quite low.  We walked on with not too much more attention to them as they honked their way around the area.   However, the following day I was down at O’Hare.  I saw something large and wispy in the sky and realized that it was a flock of birds.  As they came closer, lo and behold but more cranes were coming to town!

Now, O’Hare is not exactly a bird friendly location.  Having flocks of pretty substantial birds in the vicinity of so many aircraft did not appear to be a particularly good combination.  The birds swirled around for a couple of minutes, fortunately a little higher than the aircraft on approach.  Then they drifted off in a different direction and i didn’t see them again.  Not a great idea but, thankfully, no harm done this time!

Lightroom 4 Impressions

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It is a little while now since I upgraded to Lightroom 4 from the previous version (I will let you fill in the name here!). There were a few aspects of the new version that made me want to upgrade and I had played with the public beta version when it first came out. Of course, having ongoing support and updates is always helpful so staying with the old version was never going to be likely and when they halved the price, no further thought was required.

Now I have been using it for a while, what do I think? Well, on the whole I am reasonably pleased with the changes. The new sliders in the Develop module seem to be an improvement on the previous develop version. I was pretty happy with the way it worked before so the changes had to sell themselves to me. They have modified the way I think about the development settings since I used to be able to use Exposure alone to bring back a sky and maintain the shadows. Now I have to consider the White and Highlight sliders a lot more. I am not convinced that Highlight does a lot. White seems to be far more effective in my new approach.  Similarly the shadows slider is now more important to me than the blacks which is a change.

Another issue is with converting previous develop settings. Since the change of sliders is significant, going to the new develop version tends to result in all sliders being reset to zero. This can turn a reasonable image into something far worse initially. Lightroom does not have a conversion algorithm to get you somewhere close. It is back to the beginning. Maybe this makes a lot more sense.

The Map capability is a big improvement for me. Canon cameras are not well designed for adding a geotagging capability so I have ignored it on the whole or experimented with Jeffrey Friedl’s plugin. This is a very user friendly method and I shall make use of it a lot more I think. I like the book creation capability but would welcome some other outlets getting in the game. I have used Blurb before and they are fine but I have liked Adoramapix and have contacted them to see if they will be making templates soon. Let’s hope so.

So, is there anything wrong? Oh yes! It is slow!! The Develop module is awful at the moment. I have a pretty capable system but the sliders we very slow to react. The real time view of what you are changing is not there yet. You pick a slider, hope that the mouse click has actually selected it and then move to where you think works and then wait to see what happens. Is this acceptable? Not at all. Am I annoyed? Yes I am. Is it the end of the world? Probably not. I seem to recall that Lightroom 3 had similar issues when it first came out and was slow. Adobe released some updates pretty quickly and it ended up being a great tool. I am not going to revert back and will manage the sluggishness until they come up with a fix. If they don’t, I may have to consider but I am not the only one having an issue so I suspect it will be dealt with in the coming weeks.  Turning off the second screen makes a substantial difference but is not very useful so hopefully that will be tweaked.  A release candidate for version 4.1 is out now so, while I won’t try it out, hopefully that means the formal release is pretty close.

One other thing I will tag on her and that is the arrival of the beta version of Photoshop CS6. When the beta was released, I was not sure I would bother to try it out just yet. Photoshop is still part of my workflow but, as Lightroom has become more capable, Photoshop has been used less often and for more specialized tasks. I could probably wait, or so I thought. However, I watched some of the demonstrations of new features online and liked some of what I saw, especially the video editing. Since I shoot mo video these days, having an alternative video editor rather than upgrading the package I have might be good. It does seem to have some good basic capabilities and that is all I do most of the time. What isn’t there at the moment is good bio integration with Lightroom. Version 4 has some video clip editing for end points. It would be good if you could send the video to Photoshop in the same way you can an image. Since it would then come back to the catalog when you had finished, it would help in managing everything. Now I finish an edit and I have to import it – if I remember. If they could allow you to take multiple clips and open them as layers (again like you can with images), that would be even better since that lines up with the way video editing is set up in Photoshop. I commented on this on the Lightroom blog but we shall see if they are already working on this.

In conclusion, I am pretty happy with the new Lightroom. With the price halved I am even happier not least because the Photoshop upgrade is obviously not far away. Now to see whether they can tweak it enough to fix the minor problems.

Changed Workflow

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I have changed my approach to editing my pictures quite a bit recently.  This has served two purposes.  The first is to make better use of my storage requirements and the second is to focus more quickly on the better images.  Sadly, this has highlighted to me how I have actually missed out on some of my better work in days gone by.  Not a happy lesson to learn but a valuable one.

I never used to delete images since storage was not a problem.  I did occasionally find images that newer RAW processors could do something with.  However, to be honest that was a rare occasion and, even then, I wasn’t likely to have an outlet for that image.  However, by not getting rid of stuff, I really cluttered up what I had.  Moreover, I would scan through and find images I liked the look of and mark them as favorites.  When I would come back to them later, I would find they were a bit flawed – not sharp enough usually being the problem.  What was worse was that I would search based on ratings and so wouldn’t bring up the next shot which actually might have been almost identical but sharper!

Consequently, I had a workflow that hid the good shots and encouraged me to pick the wrong examples by mistake.  I have now changed all of this.  Part of this is driven by trying to keep storage requirements under control.  I have been shooting a lot of rotor-craft and getting good rotor blur requires low shutter speeds which often means shooting lots of frames to get a few sharp ones.  When you are being buffeted by the down-wash, no amount of good technique is going to be enough!  I do generally shoot more these days anyway so I have a lot to work through.

The first thing after downloading is to generate 100% previews of all images.  I can then set up Lightroom with one side as the full image and the other has the 100% view.  This way I can determine sharpness of the shot at the same time as seeing whether the overall image is okay, i.e. no poles across the shot or noses cut off!  I have copied a process I saw demonstrated online where I assign a job descriptor in Lightroom and then set up smart collections for that job of Picks, Not Rejects and Rejects.  I have also started separating out video clips to another smart collection.  By reviewing the Not Rejects folder, anything rejected gets automatically removed so it thins out as I go.

This certainly brings the numbers down but not always as dramatically as I would like.  I suppose I should be pleased that I am not shooting such a low percentage!  Once I have done this, I can now trust that the shots that are left are all considered usable.  Then I can go through again and weed out the obvious duplicates by picking the best of a given type.  This will really help to thin things out.  The other thing I will do (which I also tend to start as I get further through the first review) is culling those that are just not interesting.  I have come to the realization, far too late, that only the best shots are ever going to see a use somewhere (and most of them won’t either).  Therefore, a relatively uninteresting shot that is sharp and well composed might as well go in the trash unless it has something unique about it.  Most don’t!

This has resulted in me thinning down the shoot far more rapidly.  The review also includes marking as Picks those I particularly like.  Hopefully, this will make it a lot simpler to get to the good stuff in due course.  Now I am also gradually following the same process for the large selection of previous images.  Maybe I won’t have to upgrade my hard drives for quite a while with all of this space I am freeing up and the reduced rate at which I am filling space.

One footnote to all of this.  My NAS runs a backup of everything every night.  When images get deleted, they will be gone from the backup the following night.  However, before anything is deleted, it is all backed up to Blu Ray discs.  That way, nothing is truly gone forever.  However, it would require some serious effort to go back to those discs to find something that is deleted since they are gone from the Lightroom catalog.  However, they are easy to backup so why not?

Tidying Up a Computer

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This one is for those of you that update your computers to add new capabilities and one day find you have created a monster.  I bought my computer with two hard drives installed.  I added other drives and ended up with seven of them in there.  It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t making the best use of the storage I had and I decided to make two changes.  The first was to replace the drive the OS was installed on and the second was to rationalize the drives for storage.

The original OS drive had been an SSD which was barely able to hold the OS and some of the user data.  however, at some point, something became corrupted and a new install was required.  Unfortunately, the install process which is supposed to allow a reformat of the drive as you go, somehow wouldn’t do it.  Since I needed it for work, I swapped it out with a spare normal drive I had.  This worked but took some speed out of the system.  Fixing this was the first goal.

SSD drive prices have fallen a lot so I actually bought a new SSD drive which allowed me to keep more on it without worrying about space.  This was the first part of the upgrade.  A couple of minor problems troubleshot and I was up and running.  The second thing I had to do was something I had prepared for ahead of time.  Reallocating all of my storage requirements.

Originally, I had a bunch of drives that had become part of the system over the years.  Some were in their third machine!  They were not the biggest drives around so I had a lot of space taken up with relatively limited storage capacity.  I worked out the requirements for all of my different data types – photos, documents, videos, Lightroom catalogs etc.  I then decided how I wanted them split up, what growth I needed and what drive sizes would suffice.  I was actually able to make use of drives that I already had – there were a bunch of reasonably large spares that came from updating my NAS a while back.  That also meant I had some large drives to act as intermediaries while I moved everything around.

I will have to update one of the drives in due course but it will suffice for a while.  My culling of old images will also buy me some time there!  Ultimately I got everything migrated across to its new home, the Lightroom catalogs updated to find everything again and I now have two less drives in the box and still plenty of capacity.  A bit of a pain to do but worth it I think.  Let’s hope everything behaves for a while and no further rebuilds are required!

Snocross in Short Sleeves

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March in Wisconsin seems like a pretty good time to schedule a snowmobile race.  Unfortunately, that would mean that you didn’t know this year was going to be particularly mild all winter and especially so in March.  So it was that the final round of the AMSOil ISOC Snocross race was scheduled for the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva WI in mid-March.

Just because it was warm, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be racing though.  Congratulations to the organizers who made good use of their snow cannons to put a base of snow down on a basic course.  Apparently, it was a bit truncated compared to previous years but there was a course.  Moreover, the course managed to hold together as the air temperature made its way up to the high 70s (if not creeping into the 80s!).  I wondered whether this great job of combating the conditions extended to the clothing the racers wore.  I doubt too much snowmobile racing clothing is designed for the high 70s.  I suspect it is more about staying warm.  They were probably pretty toasty!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn’t applied for media credentials for this event so was only shooting from the public areas.  With the course laid out the way it was, this really didn’t prove to be too limiting.  There were a few shots I would like to have got but it really didn’t make too much of a difference.  The action is close to the people most of the time and they come by pretty frequently so there is usually plenty to see.

I was pretty happy with the outcome to be honest.  It was a fun day out and I spent it with a good bunch of guys as well.  We would split up at times but end up back at similar locations before too long so it worked well.  One of those disappointing things about shooting an action sport like this is that you find yourself focusing on a particular rider and hear a groan from the crowd.  This is a sign that someone has wiped out quite dramatically but all you see is them getting up and retrieving their machine unless you get lucky – certainly luckier than the racer!

Now I just have to work out what the real name is for the machine.  I always thought they were snowmobiles but then I watched some stuff from Alaska that said the people in the know call them snowmachines.  The announcers at this event didn’t seem to be aware of that so I am just as in the dark as I was beforehand.  Anyone know the right term?

Final Overnight Time Lapse

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I mentioned before that I had tried to do an overnight time lapse video.  In that post I detailed all of the ways I had screwed up the process.  Rather than sulk, I did take all of those lessons to heart and went back for a second attempt.  This time, I was a lot more successful.  I hadn’t got around to figuring out how to make the tethering work properly but the alternative was acceptable and I had learned the rest of my lessons.

One minor hurdle still existed.  Our windows are not at their cleanest at this time of year and shooting through the glass is the only option.  We are due to have the cleaners take care of them shortly (although that will probably only guarantee some rain immediately afterwards).  In low light and with a wide enough aperture, the dirt smudges are not too much of a problem.  I have to make sure the shoot doesn’t include any time with direct light on the window which would make the muck flare up in the shots.

The other minor issue is a function of the double glazing.  More intense light can show up the effect of the light bouncing between the glass panes.  At night this isn’t a hassle except with the moon which is so bright.  For some reason I should be able to figure out but can’t, the center of the window almost totally removes this effect and it gets worse towards the edges.  However, the moon is so bright in the scenes it blows out and, since the whole thing animates to a video, the loss of shape in the shots becomes less apparent as the moon zips across the sky.

With all of that said, here is the video itself.  It seems to have worked out well.  Sadly, the messed up effort seemed to have got some more interesting light sequences from the windows of the building but you can’t have it all.  Enjoy!

Remember Northwest?

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I have been going back through a lot of the archive recently with the goal of culling a lot of the crap images that have no hope of ever seeing the light of day again and are, therefore, just filling up drive space.  As I do this, it reminds me of a few things I haven’t seen for a while and some I won’t see again.  Northwest Airlines is one of these!

From time to time I have done a lot of shooting of airliners.  I won’t profess to them being my favorite thing to shoot – fast jets and helicopters are probably my favorites – but when it comes down to it, I love all things that fly and airliners do just that.  Besides, they are sometimes easier to come by!  One of the features of shooting airliners is that most of what you see does not cause you any surprise.  There may be something that is rare or unusual wherever you are and that can be quite exciting but usually what you see is pretty much what you would expect to see.

It is only at a later stage, when whatever you saw is no longer around, that you can get interested in something that was previously pretty unexpected.  Such is the case with Northwest.  Before the merger with Delta, Northwest had a large fleet that covered the country.  I didn’t fly with them much but I would frequently see their aircraft.  I would take pictures of them but probably not get too excited.  I even spent one day at Detroit where they were most of what I saw.

Now, Northwest is no more and its fleet has been repainted in Delta’s colors.  To find a picture of a Northwest jet as I go through the archives suddenly takes on a level of interest that it hadn’t at the the time it was taken.  Maybe it will have the same effect for you so here are a few samples of something no longer to be seen.

What a Balls Ups

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I have previously played around with time lapse videos made with an SLR, a timer release and some software linked to Lightroom to create the finished video.  I decided to go a little longer with one and make a video throughout the night, starting before sunset and finishing off once the sun had come back up again.  This did not prove to be as simple as I had hoped!

It should be pointed out that most of these problems are entirely of my doing.  First of all, I did a calculation of how many shots I thought would be necessary to complete the clip.  This was more than would fit on one of my compact flash cards.  No problem, the camera has a second slot.  It turns out that, unlike the MkIV which will switch to the second card when the first is full if you so desire, the MkIIN won’t do that.  Okay, not problem.  I shall tether it to Lightroom and download direct to the laptop.

This didn’t work.  I believe this was also my fault as the MkIIN has a firewire connection as well as the USB and the USB tethering showed up on the computer but didn’t actually do anything.  Okay, I can fix this.  I shall let it run for a long time and change the card shortly before going to bed and the new card should work through the rest of the night.  A fully charged battery and off we went to dinner.

Upon my return, I find that the camera is not shooting any more.  Foolishly, while I worked out that a 16Gb card would be fine, I didn’t remove the 8Gb card that was in there so the card was full.  I swapped the card with another one quickly and set it off.  A while later I come back to check on it and nothing is happening.  The new card is full.  I hadn’t formatted it first.  What a fool.  I also have a flat battery.  This is not going to be good.  Fortunately, the MkIIN came with the DC adapter as standard (unlike the MkIV – how tight are you Canon?) so I swapped that in, put in a fresh card and formatted it.  Then I went to bed.

This finally worked.  The remaining shots worked fine.  The result wasn’t too bad but, since it had some obvious jumps in it – the moon was traversing the scene when the gaps occur – it wasn’t usable.  However, it did teach me a bunch of thing that I now need to deal with for the second attempt.  let’s see if I can balls that up as well!

Goodbye Another 747 Fleet

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A while back I wrote a post about the retirement by JAL of their Boeing 747 fleet.  At one time they had been the largest operator of the type.  Well, it has happened again.  Another large operator of the 747 is retiring its final passenger example.  Singapore Airlines is saying goodbye to the Queen of the Skies.

Unlike JAL that is in financial difficulties and is rationalizing its fleet, Singapore is doing very well.  It is just moving on.  It has a growing fleet of A380s and a substantial fleet of 777s so the 747 is no longer suitable for its needs.  Sad to say but it is actually just a bit old these days.  The freighter version is going to live on with Singapore so it won’t be impossible to see the type in Singapore colors but it will only be the Mega Ark aircraft from now on.

All of this makes me feel a bit old.  I was studying aeronautics when the 747-400 was going through its certification program.  My college days are a long time ago so the fact the 747-400 is now considered pretty old is hardly surprising.  That doesn’t make me feel any better about it.  The unique shape of the 747 is very appealing to me even now.  With the never ending stream of 767s, 777s and A330s, a 747 showing up is always a welcome surprise.  I guess it is going to become a rarer one in the coming years!  Enjoy them while you can.  At least the 747-8 will be around for a while but they don’t appear to be selling in quite the same number so we shall have to see how easy they will be to see.

Turn the River a Slightly Different Color

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Since the birthday of this blog has just passed, I am now going to spend my time repeating previous blog posts from a year ago.  Seems a lot easier than creating new content.  In fact, for those of you with an inquisitive nature, I will make things easier and you can go to this post to see what I wrote before and decide for yourself whether I am being original or whether I am totally ripping off my own work.  If it is different, has the quality of my posts improved???

This year St Patrick’s Day was a Saturday.  I am not sure whether this really made any difference because the city chooses a Saturday to celebrate everything and that is the party day whatever the date.  The odd thing this year is that it was warm.  Mid 70s is not what you expect for this time in March.  In fact, my first St Patrick’s Day in Chicago, we went to see the parade and gave up half way through because we were thoroughly frozen!

This time being too warm was more of an issue.  I won’t go in to whether the madness that the city falls in to is any way related to St Patrick or even the Irish (and we shall leave the fact that Patrick wasn’t Irish anyway for another day!).  Instead, I am going to focus on the tradition of dying the river green.  I went down to join the crowds and see how things were developing.  It was very busy with the weather really bringing out the crowds.

Dying the river went fine despite the coxed eights that didn’t get out of the way in time.  The Police boats seemed mad but hadn’t made an effort to get rid of them ahead of time so what did they expect.  It was funny to see the speed boats running close by and putting quite a wash over the eight who looked less than happy about how close they were to sinking!

Watching the crowds was also fun.  You do see some sights on a day like today and some of them can be photographed.  However, you also have to be careful since the drinking starts early and can affect the good humor of some people!