Memos From The Digital Darkroom

Using a Step Ladder to Change Your Point of View

Mark — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:59:13 +0000

A couple of months ago I was photographing hot air balloons at the Festival of Balloons in Tigard, Oregon. I was walking across the wide, grassy field when I ran into fellow photographer, Daniel Payne. Daniel introduced me to his young son, who was atop a short ladder taking photos of the balloons as they gently lifted into the sky.

This photo was shot from a vantage point that requires a short ladder.

When I mentioned that the step ladder offered a great way for his son to get above the adults around him, Daniel said that he himself often carries a ladder along on photo shoots. Later on, this conversation got me to thinking about how I could use a ladder for an upcoming shoot of my own.

I really enjoy photographing bicycle racing at Alpenrose Velodrome, in southwest Portland, Oregon. With the bright colors, the speed, and the hardbodies — opportunities for interesting photography are countless. Every summer the velodrome hosts one of the best paying track racing events in the country, the Alpenrose Challenge. Top level competitors come from across the country.

There are lots of great vantage points to shoot from at the velodrome, but because of a safety fence many of them aren’t easily accessible. In the past I had contemplated bringing a ladder along, but it just seemed to be a bit over the top to haul a 6′ stepladder around. Now, after seeing Daniel’s step ladder, I realized a ladder was doable.

Two steps is all it takes to make this a great vantage point.

I visited a local Fred Meyer (variety) store to see what the options were for short ladders. They offered two choices, both from the same manufacturer (Cosco). One cost $19 and the other was $32. The primary difference between them was their weights. The more expensive ladder weighed in at only six pounds: just twice the weight of my Canon 100 - 400mm lens. I purchased one and attached an old padded, tripod strap to it so I can easily carry it over my shoulder.

This step ladder has only two steps, with the second step being a larger platform. In many cases these two steps are all it takes to change your point of view enough to get that great shot. In the photo to the left you can see how it enabled me to shoot over the safety fence near the corner of one of the velodrome’s banked curves.

This small lightweight ladder has become a permanent part of my photography kit. I bring it along no matter where I’m shooting because it opens the door for countless vantage points, many of which completely change the feel of an image. I suggest you consider adding one of these lightweight ladders to your photo gear. After you do, you’ll wonder how you got along without it.

Emulating the Look of a Classic Hasselblad with a Canon 5DM2

Mark — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:45:11 +0000

(Guest Blog by Gary Wilson)

All photos © Gary Wilson

One of the wonderful things about photography is its rich heritage spanning evolutions of time and technology. I often rely on that heritage to try old things out in new ways for the fun of experimentation, just to keep interest alive.

Less than a month ago I was doing some on-line reading on premium medium format film cameras, which inspired me to reflect back on the legendary Hasselblad SWC line of cameras. I recalled how enthralled I was by the combination of their square format with the wide viewing perspective offered through their well-reputed 38MM Biogon lens.

Back in the heyday of film, wishful window-shopping was as close as I could come to actually owning one of these cameras. In great part, my fascination was for the implicit functionality of that particular square format camera. The camera’s auxiliary optical viewfinder was the only way to view and compose the image, adding to its simplicity. Any inconvenience in that regard however, was made up for by the system’s square format making it unnecessary to rotate the camera in order to compose for either horizontal or vertical image taking.

I still regard the square format as an appealing attribute and one that I’ve wanted to emulate with my horizontally held Canon 5D2. With some informal math, I came to realize that the 38mm Biogon’s angle of view can be well replicated by a 20MM lens on the 5D2 camera body. I need to admit at this point that an exotic Carl Zeiss 18 or 21mm lens could more aptly be viewed as the perfect lens to use to emulate the reputation and resolution equivalent of the 38mm f4.5 Hasselblad lens. However, my Canon 20mm f2.8 does a great job at about 1/4 the price.

I principally compose to fill the frame from top to bottom and allow for the left-right crop to occur post capture. This provides me with lots of room for composition. An added benefit to this digital approach is that there is now the option of post capture perspective control which wasn’t possible when shooting film with the Hasselblad SWC and the 38mm Biogon lens. The Canon lens also has the advantage of auto focus, which works quite well with this handheld approach.

All of the examples that accompany this article were taken within this last month using the method described. It should be noted that all these examples are handheld, three exposure, High Dynamic Range images, which suits my personal aesthetic. You may not be into shooting HDR, but if you are interested in exploring the look of the legendary Hasselblad SWC, think about pairing your full-frame dSLR with a 20mm lens.

Gary Wilson is a long time Portland, OR based architectural photographer, who over the many years of enthusiastically pursuing his professional career has found that it is helpful in staying flexible by dedicating time to travel and to his fine art photographic work. Over the past three years he has enjoyed exploring the various expressions of HDR work and routinely employs facets of it in his commercial architectural photography. You can learn more about Gary at http://www.garywilsonphoto.com.

Understanding Monitor Profiling Devices

Mark — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:37:16 +0000

A common question from clients and students is, “What’s the best device to use for calibrating my monitor?” In some ways this is an easy question to answer. I simply direct them to the devices I’ve used, such as the Spyder 3 Pro, i1 Display 2, and the Color Munki. Because I’ve used these devices, I know they can be relied on to produce consistent results. However, there are some differences in the technology used in monitor profiling devices that influences which ones are most appropriate in specific situations.

I was aware of some of the differences in profiling devices, but I never really had a complete understanding of how all of the pieces fit together. I’m happy to say that it all came together when I read an excellent post to the ColorWiki by Pat Herold, color expert from CHROMiX, Inc. in Seattle, WA.

The post, titled Profiling Devices for Monitors, can be found here: http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Profiling_Devices_for_Monitors.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between a spectrophotometer and a colorimeter and which specific devices use these technologies: or your simply wondering which device might be best for calibrating that new iMac, you’ll want to read this article.

Beware of USB Flash Drives

Mark — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:30:13 +0000

USB flash drives are very handy for transferring data from one computer to another. In fact, I use one as a “sneaker-net” in my office because sometimes it’s easier to transfer data with a USB drive than with my network.

However, these simple little devices can cause big problems because they are an extremely efficient tool for spreading computer viruses.

A Virus in the Lab

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing computers in a digital lab for a Photoshop class I was teaching. Part of that preparation included copying student practice files to each system. My preferred method for doing this is to load a folder of files onto a flash drive and plug it into each system to carry out the transfer. In this case the USB drive had only one folder with 12 image files on it.

Everything was fine until I got the the 10th computer and noticed two new files (n0qls.exe and autorun.inf) had mysteriously appeared on the root directory of the drive. This led me to believe that the previous computer placed the virus on my flash drive. This made sense because it was the only Windows system being used for that class. As you probably know, the Windows operating system is a major target for a wide variety of computer viruses.

When I got back to my office I did a quick search and found that n0qls.exe is a well known trojan horse virus that can be used to modify or delete files on an infected Windows system. Like many other viruses, it can be spread by USB flash drives.

A Simple Virus Delivery System

When you think about controlling the spread of computer viruses, risky websites and contaminated email attachments are usually the main suspects. Few people consider the ubiquitous flash drive that so many of us carry everywhere we go. However, using these devices to deliver a virus payload isn’t new.

A few years ago I was having a conversation with a friend who was an IT person at a secure government installation. The topic of USB drives came up and he told me the management at his facility had circulated a memo on the topic of these drives. The memo stated that if an employee found a USB flash drive in the parking lot, or anywhere on the premises, they were to call security immediately. That’s because a hacker knows that the first thing someone does with a found flash drive is stick it into a computer to see what’s on it and maybe find out who owns it.

Take Appropriate Precautions

Even if you use Macs, you may still be part of the problem. In my case above, I began my process with a very clean USB drive, because I had formatted it before placing my folder onto it. However, it only took a few minutes for the drive to become contaminated and ready to infect the next Windows system I plugged the drive into. So no matter which OS platform you use, it’s best to take a few precautions when working with a flash drive.

If you use a Windows machine regularly, you should be familiar with the drill:

Make sure that your virus protection software is up-to-date and running.
If your anti-virus software runs automatically, it may not find a virus on the USB drive if the drive isn’t plugged into the system during the scan. Because of that you may need to manually scan the drive with your virus software.
If you even suspect your flash drive is contaminated, scan it with your anti-virus software and take appropriate action.

Even if you don’t regularly use a Windows computer, you should be taking precautions with your flash drive, especially is it’s being used on a Windows machines. Because most Mac users don’t employ virus software, it may be difficult to scan the drive for viruses. In this case, because the data on a flash drive is often disposable, the best way to insure cleanliness is to format the drive on a regular basis to remove everything from it. Just be sure to format it so that it can still be used on Macs and PCs.

When formatting a drive for use on both platforms, follow these guidelines:

When formatting on a PC, choose FAT32 (also known as MS-DOS format) as the formatting option.
When formatting on a Mac, choose the MS-DOS FAT option in the Erase section of the Disk Utility program.

I used to take my USB flash drives for granted, never checking them for unwanted programs. Now I’m much more careful when using my drives on other people’s computers. By the way - in the future I plan to transfer student files from a CD so that I won’t be responsible for inadvertently spreading a virus.

Adding a Missing Parent Folder to a Lightroom Folder

Mark — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:23:31 +0000

When you import existing images from your hard drive into Lightroom, the folder with the files in it is listed in the Folders panel in Lightroom. However, if that folder is inside of another folder, the parent folder is most likely not listed.

Here’s what I mean. My system is to have one main folder or hard drive that contains all photos. Inside of that I have a subfolder for every year. Each of the year subfolders contains folders for photo shoots from that year. In Figure 1 you can see this diagrammed. The Smith shoot folder is in the 2010 folder, which inside of the main Photos folder.

The folder structure as shown in the Mac Finder

If the Smith folder is imported into Lightroom, any subfolders inside of it are also imported, but it’s 2010 parent folder isn’t. Because of that, the 2010 folder and its parent folder (Photos) are not listed in the Folders Panel, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Parent folders are missing in Lightroom

These missing folders make it more difficult to keep track of your hard drive organizational structure in Lightroom. Their absence also prevents you from being able to do things like filter or synchronize the entire parent folder.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. If you want to see a folder’s parent folder, all you have to do is right click on the folder and choose Add Parent Folder. If you’re using a Mac without right-clicking enabled, Ctrl+click on the folder to get the same contextual menu.

In this case, after the 2010 folder becomes visible, I right-click on it to add its parent folder; Photos. Figure 3 shows the updated listing in the Lightroom Folders panel.

Figure 3: Now the parent folders are available

This procedure is especially useful if you like to store folders temporarily on your Desktop. After Desktop is displayed in the Folders panel, you’ll be able to better keep track of those folders because it will be obvious that they’re still on the Desktop.

Keeping Your Backups Green

Mark — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:20:25 +0000

This weekend I went to Fry’s Electronics to purchase a new external backup hard drive. The one I have been using for backup is a 500 GB drive that’s is almost full. I plan to store it in a safe location and put a new drive into service. For the new drive, I wanted something larger, preferably 1 TB.

Anyone who’s been to one of the Fry’s Electronics locations on the west coast knows that Fry’s has lots of choices when it comes to external hard drives. But it didn’t take me long to find a perfect drive for what I wanted. It was the 1 TB Simple Tech [re}drive, shown below.

1 TB [re}drive by Hitachi.

The outer case is completely recycleable.

This drive is a new drive from Hitachi. It’s called the [re]drive because it’s designed to have a low impact on the environment. The case is made of aluminum (30% recycled) and bamboo, both of which are easy to recycle. To see a full list of the environmental impact of this drive, click here. Additionally, the drive is designed to use much less electricity than comparable drives, which means that it also saves you money. The best part about this drive is that it was only $99.99.

Whether you’re into helping the planet by being green, or helping the green in your wallet, you’ll like this drive. You’ll especially like it if you’re using a Mac because its aluminum case fits the visual design of most Macs. If you use it with a PC, you’ll like the fact that it’s formatted and ready to go with award winning Fabrik Backup software preloaded onto it.

Mac Installation Note

When I plugged this drive into my Mac G5 it was necessary to prepare it for use on a Mac by erasing it, which is fairly straightforward. The software guide that comes on the drive explains how to do this using the Disk Utility program (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). When I chose Erase I got an error that said, “The drive could not be unmounted”. After a bit of Googling I found out that all I needed to do was eject the drive by dragging it to the trash, leave it plugged in and powered up, and then choose Erase again. It worked like a charm.

BTW - my wife, who owns a small accounting firm (juliafitzgeraldcpa.com) was also in the market for some new backup drives. She bought two of them.

Which is Better, Lightroom or Photoshop?

Mark — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:09:54 +0000

(This is a article I wrote for the Portland Metro Photographic News website. )

The first time I saw Adobe’s Lightroom, while it was in its earliest beta version, I wondered what the point of it was. I could already do everything it did in Photoshop. Why did I need to learn a new way of doing what I already knew how to do? However, as I began using the software on a daily basis, I soon realized that Lightroom?s approach to workflow is quite different than the Photoshop approach.

Photoshop is an amazing assortment of image editing tools. There are tools for web designers, graphic artists, engineers, doctors, 3-D modelers, and even photographers. Photoshop is like going to the hardware store and ordering one of every tool. Then tossing all those tools into a giant toolbox. Whenever you need any particular tool, it will be somewhere in the toolbox. It may take a while to find it - and then you may need to spend some time learning to use it - but it will be there.

Lightroom was designed specifically for photographers. It’s more like going to the digital hardware store and ordering only the tools a photographer uses the most often. Then laying out the tools on a workbench in the order in which they are intended to be used. This intuitive user interface, combined with a narrow purpose, makes Lightroom an ideal working environment for photographers.

At this point you may have come to the conclusion that I think Lightroom is better than Photoshop. However, I believe that a well-balanced digital post-production workflow requires both Lightroom and Photoshop. That’s because each of these products is intended for different parts of the workflow.

Follow this link to read the rest of this article.

Using the Presets Preferences to Find Missing Presets and Templates

Mark — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:45:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was teaching a Lightroom workshop to a group of photographers in Eugene, Oregon. When we were going through a hands-on exercise on importing files, three of the students had a problem following my instructions. It seems that some of their file naming presets had gone missing. Fortunately, the same thing had happen to me several months ago so I knew how to solve this mystery.

This is what the file naming menu should look like.

One of the options in Lightroom’s Import Photos dialog is the File Naming options. This menu, shown on the right allows you to choose from a group of common presets for renaming your files as they’re imported. For some reason many of these templates can disappear from the list, leaving only two or three options.

If this happens to you follow these steps to recover the missing naming templates.

Choose Lightroom > Preferences (Mac), Edit > Preferences (Windows).
When the preferences dialog opens, choose Presets from the buttons at the top. When you do, you’ll see the dialog shown below.
Choose Restore Filename Templates to reset the file name templates menu to its original options. Be aware that if you have custom presets that you’ve created, they won’t be shown.
Lightroom's Presets preferences allow you reset individual groups of presets

This ability to reset individual groups of presets and templates without affecting the others is a nice feature in Lightroom. Remember it whenever some of your presets or templates go missing.

Using Keywords to Kick the Bucket System of Organization

Mark — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:06:38 +0000

When dealing with digital photos, it extremely important to develop an organizational system that’s intuitive and easy to use. This is not only due to the high number number of images today’s photographers are shooting, but also because of the digital nature of all of the images. This type of organization is referred to as “Digital Asset Management” (DAM).

Do I really want to put Ruby into a bucket?

In earlier days of digital photography, the primary approach to DAM was to organize files into specific folders based on image content. For example, Every time I take some photos of my dog, Ruby, I place them into a folder named “Ruby”. If I shoot some photos of our other dogs, Hazel and Sam, then I place them into folders with their names. No matter when the photo was shot, it gets placed into a folder based on the image content.

I call this the Bucket System. It’s like sorting photos from a shoot into specific buckets that contain other photos of the subject(s). Though the Bucket System represents an outdated way of doing things, I still meet photographers who are using it. In some cases I’ve seen it lead to an unmanageable mess.

The Bucket System seems intuitive at first. That’s because I can see all photos of Ruby whenever I want to without needing to remember details about where they are stored. However, I have two main problems with it. First off, it removes files from the original context of when they were captured. If I shoot photos of Ruby on a hiking trip, those photos are removed from that trip folder and placed into the Ruby folder. I could make a copy for the Ruby folder instead of moving the original, but that uses more storage space. It also makes it difficult to remember which file is the main one I’ve edited.

My second issue is that it causes problems when there are multiple subjects in the photo. If I shoot a photo of all three dogs (like the one on the below) which folder do I place them into? Ruby, Sam, or Hazel”? If I use all three folders, I have the same problem of creating and managing additional copies of the same image. Yes, I could put them all into a folder named “Dogs”, but I know lots of dogs. That folder wouldn’t really help me to stay organized.

This image of the couch potatoes gets keyworded for Sam, Hazel, and Ruby.

The real key to an efficient DAM is Keywords, (or Keyword Tags). Using keywords allows you to label photos with image content while leaving them in their original context. With keywords, if I have a photo of these couch potatoes, I label it with Sam, Hazel, and Ruby keywords. Then when I’m looking for photos of the dogs, this one will pop-up in the search returns when I search for any of those keywords.

If you’re using Photoshop/Bridge, Lightroom, Elements, or Aperture, there are easy ways to add and filter for keywords. No matter which one of these programs you use for your DAM system, make sure that you’re using keywords to kick the Bucket System and build an efficient organizational system.

Solving the Problem with Colored Label Appearance Between Lightroom and Bridge

Mark — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:19:39 +0000

I love Photoshop CS4. I’ve been using it since the earliest beta release and I’m quite happy with the direction the development team chose to go. However, I do have a few pet-peeves. One of them is the way the colored labels are now set up by default in Bridge CS4 that’s causing problems for Lightroom users. I know this is causing a problem because today I worked with two different people today who were dealing with it.

Here’s an example. After shooting the photos below at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, I sorted and labeled them in Lightroom. The photo of the solar telescope on the left has a red label, the photo in the middle has a green label, and the photo on the right has a yellow label. Unfortunately, when viewing these photos is Bridge CS4, it’s difficult to see which color is applied to each image because all of the labels are white. This is happening because of a silly change to the preferences in Bridge CS4.

Colored labels added in Lightroom are white when viewed in Bridge CS4.

There’s a cool customization you can do in the Bridge preferences that allows you to use custom names for the colored labels. Some photographers take advantage of this by changing the name of the labels to something meaningful. For example they change the name of the red label to “Delete” and the green label’s name to “Keeper”. That way it’s easy for everyone involved to know that the photos with red labels are to be deleted, and the photos with the green labels are to move forward through the workflow.

This is a nice feature when you set it up to work with your workflow. However, this feature can cause unintended consequences when working with labels added in Lightroom, causing them to appear white when viewed in Bridge CS4.

I know what you must be saying by now, “I didn’t change the names of the labels.” You didn’t have to. Adobe did it for you. Now in Bridge CS4 the default names for the colored labels are the names shown below. Maybe they are useful to someone, but I personally don’t know anyone who uses this system.

The new default names of colored labels in Bridge CS4.

When a label is added in Bridge, these new names don’t affect the appearance of those labels in Bridge. But when the labels are added in Lightroom, it causes the problem because this isn’t the same naming strategy that’s used for colored labels in Lightroom. They’re named for their colors (red is Red, green is Green, etc,) which is the same way it used to be in Bridge.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix this problem. Choose Adobe Bridge CS4 > Preferences (Mac), Edit > Preference (PC). Then select Labels from the menu on the left. When the Labels preferences are displayed, replace the default names by typing the names of the colors into the text boxes beside each color (as shown below) and click OK.

Replace the default titles with the name of the color.

Here’s a bonus tip! If you deselect the “Require the Command Key…” option at the top of the dialog, you can change the Bridge keyboard shortcuts for appling labels to use just the number (without holding down the Cmd/Ctrl key) to apply labels. This change makes the shortcuts match Lightroom’s colored label shortcuts, which is handy if you use both pieces of software.