Monthly Archives: August 2010

Adobe Photoshop Express

iPad, Software

A useful iPad app.

I’m not sure what they are putting in the water coolers at Adobe Labs HQ in San Francisco, but they should definitely stick with the program.

First we got a really value added, fairly priced upgrade to Lightroom 3, many of whose enhancements I have written about here – film grain, superior RAW conversions, outstanding flexibility to remove lens aberrations and distortions – and now, at no cost, an iPad app named Adobe Photoshop Express.

The price is right!

It’s an inspired piece of programming which really ‘gets’ the touchscreen interface and one of the best efforts yet to make the iPad into a photo processing platform. Sure the controls are limited – basic exposure, sharpness, effects, frames, monochrome conversions and so on – but all the ‘sliders’ for the controls dictate that the user merely slides his finger across the screen to change things. Surely this is the future of photo processing? Further, sign up at Adobe and if you can get comfortable with access rights (theirs not yours) to your pictures, then you can sync your snaps to your desktop or laptop via their servers.

Here’s a simple snap of our son with a neat frame added – this is a screen shot as I do not have an Adobe online storage account:

Winston at Point Lobos. My ‘equipment man’.

Very worth while looking into and it seems some of the earlier bugs have been stomped on as I have had no issues with my version. And what have you got to lose?

More on Adobe lens corrections in Lightroom 3

Lightroom

Very clever indeed.

A friend wrote recently how much he was enjoying using the newly added built-in lens corrections in Lightroom 3 with his ultra-wide Nikon zoom on a pair of Nikon pro bodies, a lens whose profile is included with Lightroom 3.

This got me thinking. How can one-click corrections work when distortion varies so widely over the focal length range of many wide zooms? If the lens is pre-programmed into Lightroom’s database by Adobe you do not get a choice of focal length when applying the profile. It’s strictly a one choice affair, which contrasts with my approach when crafting profiles for the 9-18mm MFT Olympus zoom for my Panasonic G1, where I had to create disparate profiles for each of the four marked focal lengths. The barrel distortion of that lens decreases with increasing focal length, so it’s not possible to make one profile to fit all focal lengths.

Now one of the finer lenses for my full frame Canon 5D is the 24-105mm L zoom. Lightroom 3 includes a built-in profile for this lens unlike with the Olympus 9-18mm where I had to make my own. The Canon has fine resolving power and micro contrast at all focal lengths of its useful zoom range but suffers from the most atrocious barrel distortion at the wide end (the center of peripheral straight lines bows out), changing to mild pincushion distortion (the center bows in) at the long end. How could Adobe’s ‘one click’ approach possibly work with this lens whose distortion characteristics vary widely with focal length?

Note that if you use Canon’s DPP software (I do not) to process your pictures I’m fairly certain that it corrects distortion at all focal lengths. However, the 5D, unlike the G1, has no in-body distortion correction for the manufacturer’s lenses, so processing in LR3 brings in the images in their fully distorted glory just as with the G1/Olympus lens combination. And distortion correction is important to me as I frequently take architectural pictures where I want my straight lines straight.

Well, it was but a few moments work to take five snaps, one at each of the marked focal lengths, with a straight edge close to the top of the frame in each. I processed these through Lightroom 3 and, after making virtual copies of each, applied the one-click lens distortion correction to each of the virtual copies, selecting the single profile for Canon’s 24-105mm L lens in each case. The pictures were snapped at 24, 28, 50, 67 and 105mm.

Here are the results – in each case the corrected version is shown first:

At 24mm. Noticeable barrel distortion in the uncorrected image at right.

At 28mm. Mild barrel distortion in the uncorrected image.

At 50mm. Very minor barrel distortion in the uncorrected image.

67mm. Very mild pincushion distortion in the uncorrected image.

105mm. Very mild pincushion distortion in the uncorrected image.

So as the above pictures suggest, the Adobe built-in profile for the Canon 24-105mm lens takes into account the focal length at which the image was made and applies distortion correction appropriately. It may be ‘one-click’ for the user, but it seems there’s much more going on below the surface. In all cases the correction is almost perfect, with only the 67mm and 105mm images slightly overcorrected and showing mild barrel distortion. The correction at the wider focal lengths is especially praiseworthy, as the above pictures show. Very clever and much more sophisticated than the case where you have to make your own lens profiles in those instances where Lightroom 3 does not include these.

The Leitz close-up gizmo outfit

Hardware

A new high in strangeness.

If the 20mm Russar and 400mm Telyt were odd ducks in my lens tool kit over the years, this one takes the biscuit.

It’s the Leica close-up kit marketed in the 1950s which I owned for many years. I say “owned” rather than “used” because it was much more fun to assemble this collection of hardware and play with it than it was to use.

The Leitz close-up kit.

What you see in the neat fitted box is my Leica M2 attached to a Visoflex I mirror housing. The housing is attached to the Leitz Focusing Bellows I fitted with a 135mm f/4.5 Hektor lens head and a compendium lens shade – the latter extendable at will for very effective shielding of the lens. There’s a fine 45 degree right-way-round prism finder lower left. An excellent Leitz ball and socket head is lower center. These are beautifully made and I continue to use a variant on my monopod with the Panasonic G1. Highly recommended if you can track one down on the used market – exceptionally engineered, very secure when tightened owing to the design of the ball and indestructible. Attach a QR plate and you are done.

It’s hard to put into words how beautifully engineered everything in this kit really was. Every component speaks to the very height of the machinist’s art and confirms that Leitz’s quality and finish had only one way to go once the fifties ended. Downhill.

The lens fitted to the assembled Visoflex I and Bellows I

The idea of a continuous focusing range from infinity to life size was not new at that time – large technical cameras with long extension bellows had been doing that trick for ages – but seldom had it been executed as elegantly as here, especially in the 35mm film format.

The fitted case also accommodated a dual cable release with adjustable pin lengths. The idea was that the longer pin would raise the flapping mirror in the Visoflex I and further pressure on the plunger would then trip the camera’s shutter. It worked well.

Double cable release attached to the Visoflex I.

Everything was designed just so, right down to the bracing blocks in the lid of the case which made absolutely sure that your precious gear would not flail about in transit.

Truly a fitted case.

A second finder in the kit provided a reverse waist level view and, as you can see, the mirror in the Visoflex I was well oversized, for better function with long lenses.

With the waist level viewfinder in place.

In practice the 45 degree finder was far superior, offering an unreversed image at chest height, and included eyesight adjustment. Perfect.

Focusing, however, was far from perfect. The plain ground glass screen in the Visoflex I had no focusing aids and lacked a fresnel lens, so light drop off to the edges was severe. You simply opened the lens up to its modest f/4.5 maximum aperture (nope,no click stops here) and then racked it back and forth either side of what you though was sharp until it looked as good as you could get it. Then, fingers crossed, you pressed the button or rather you depressed the plunger on the twin release, trying not to forget to stop the lens down first. Of course, as the lens was completely manual things went dark really fast, so that handheld photography was pretty much out of the question. Definition at f/4.5 was iffy and depth of field so shallow that only the very lucky tried to use this apparatus hand held.

The compendium lens hood just went to prove that the engineers and designers at Leitz, Wetzlar had spared no expense. Like everything else in the kit it was beautifully made, slipped into the front of the bellows focusing rack on two chromed rods and clipped neatly to the front of the Hektor lens head in the groove provided.

The compendium lens hood for the Visoflex I.

The Hektor lens head was ordinarily sold with a coupled rangefinder focusing mount but for use with this kit the head was detached from the rangefinder mount and inserted into an adapter tube for fitting to the Bellow. Leitz wallowed in an orgy of adapters for seemingly everything in those days and various other lens heads had to use specific types. However only the rare 125mm f/2.5 Hektor and the 135mm Hektor and, later, Elmar and Tele Elmar kens heads would focus to infinity. You could also fit the 200mm and 400mm Telyt heads if you could find a second tripod to support the whole thing. The 135mm Hektor was a decent pre-war four element design and gained anti-reflection coating during the war years, being replaced by the more capable Elmar and, later the even better Tele Elmar which was the last 135mm rangefinder lens Leitz made with a detachable head. The even later 135mm Apo-Telyt-M was strictly for use on a Leica M body, with a fixed head. It was quite superb for its intended purpose, as my copy testified, provided your Leica M’s rangefinder was properly calibrated. Many were not and only the M3 with its nearly life-sized finder could really do the lens justice at full aperture and close focus distances when it came to dead on focusing.

The Hektor lens head fitted to its intermediate collar.

It’s some reflection on how times have changed when this sixty year old gear is compared to a modern full frame DSLR. My Canon 5D fitted with the Canon 100mm f/2.8 EF Macro and a ring flash offers focusing from infinity to life-size in a standard focus mount – no bellows needed! – is auto focus and auto aperture, delivers quality which will knock your socks off, and is easy to use handheld. There’s even a costlier ‘L’ version available with anti-shake technology. As these things go it’s also relatively compact, if not lightweight. None of that could be said of the Leitz outfit but the craven functionality of the Canon gear lacks everything the Leitz hardware possesses in spades. Sheer physical engineering beauty.

I have taken more great pictures with the Canon gear than I can recall but cannot recall having taken one half decent picture with the Leitz outfit – which is why you see none her.

But it sure was nice to look at. I bought and sold mine, after many years of ownership, for a song.

A bargain basement G1

Micro Four-Thirds

Snap one up while you can.

The Panasonic G1 is discontinued but remaindered new samples are still out there at a bargain price.

G1 pricing at Amazon.

The replacement G2 is $770, so the equation is simple. If the following new features of the G2 are worth $270 to you, get the G2:

  • A touch screen to focus the camera
  • A movie mode

And, of course, the 14-42mm kit lens on the G2 is now widely reported as being inferior to the 14-45mm version on the G1, and I can most certainly testify to the quality of the latter.

The G10 (lower quality movie mode) at $540 is not really an alternative to the G1. It has an awful EVF (one key reason you buy a G1/2 is for the excellent eye level viewfinder), drops the swiveling rear LCD display (not like I care about that and nor should you – LCDs are not a useful framing tool) and has the same lower quality 14-42mm kit lens.

The G1 at $500 strikes me as a real bargain for real photographers tired of lugging around their heavy APS-C or full frame DSLRs. I have had no reliability issues after nearly 7,000 frames over the past year. If you just want a G1 back-up body, it is not sold in that configuration in the US but I would bet you can unload the spare kit lens for $200 to someone displeased with the latest version. So call it $300 for a spare body. Not bad at all.

And if you want to join the cadre of elite users, like me, you can get the blue bodied version for a modest $40 more!

Further, if you want to get lucky, it seems that an iPhone and a G1 are THE winning combination:

As usual, Windows users are SOL.

Running Windows on a Mac

Software

Ugh!

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Looking back I suppose there have been two sound decisions I made in my business life – we won’t go into the dozens of poor ones here!

One was leaving socialist England in 1977 for America which, back then, truly was the land of opportunity and, in contrast to my homeland, actually had a work ethic. The other was quitting my day job almost a decade ago and deciding to make my own living.

Working for yourself is truly a breath of fresh air and has probably added a couple of decades to my life expectancy. No more corporate team spirit, working for the greater good and all that gobbledegook which has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder wealth over the past few decades in America’s ‘feel good’ society. Whenever forced to attend one of those ghastly team building sessions – whose goal would have made Stalin proud with its emphasis on stamping out all individuality – I would quickly plead a headache and head for the nearest beach with my camera.

But the greatest reduction in stress in my life came from no longer having to use Microsoft’s Windows. This fraud passing for an operating system with its need for large support teams of unwashed techies and constant problems was in my life no more. I became a full time Mac OS X user. And while I have nothing but contempt for Apple’s fragile hardware, OS X has been a model of stability and reliability this past decade and is as good as it gets in the latest Snow Leopard iteration …. especially if you run it on a home made PC box! Good, plentiful, cheap, easy replaced and reliable PC parts installed in a Hackintosh come to life when presented with a sound OS.

However, because I manage money to make ends meet, there are one or two financial applications I use on occasion which only come in Windows versions meaning – oh! horror – that I still have to load that piece of garbage on occasion.

While OS 10.5 Leopard was around I used Parallels as an emulator to run Windows – my copy of Windows started life as Windows 98 and I upgraded it to XP years ago. Parallels was buggy but sort of worked, with a clunky interface and a very long install time. It would lock up every other day on my MacBook and Intel iMac. Well, still better than Windows.

When Snow Leopard OX 10.6 came to market I upgraded but, surprise, surprise, Parallels would no longer work, the maker wanting more money to make its product compatible. Now given that any spend related to Windows is regarded as obscenity in the home, I shopped around and found two competitors.

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The competition is comprised of VMWare’s Fusion, also wanting payment, and Sun’s VirtualBox. The latter is free and, now that Oracle has bought Sun, has some serious development effort being put into it. There’s money in virtualization. My earlier experience with VirtualBox 2.0 was awful and I had forgotten about it.

But when VirtualBox 3.0 was released in June, 2009 I paid attention. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, did not become one of the world’s wealthiest by suffering fools (Gates at MSFT didn’t suffer them either, but made sure he sold his product to them) and a download of VirtualBox 3.0 showed the product to be much improved. Super stable on the HackPro, fast and easy to set up if, that is, you can get past the instructions which were written by engineers for engineers in contrast to the Apple approach of writing instructions for regular humans.

Mercifully, I am an engineer and most certainly not a regular human, so installation was a breeze. I then installed Windows XP Sp2, duly inserted my Win 98 disk to prove I was legit (though why anyone would actually want to steal Windows must be one of the great mysteries of our time) and immediately upgraded to Win XP Sp3 which, amazingly, went without a hitch.

I’m currently on VirtualBox 3.2.6 and Windows runs in it in its own little space, making sure no bad stuff migrates over to my OS X work space. If it gets clogged up I’ll simply reinstall it and the one or two apps I use. I give it 4gB of the 8gB of RAM in the HackPro when it’s on and allow it to use all four cores of the Intel Core2Quad CPU in the HackPro, and it runs fast if only in 32-bit mode, but how anyone can stand the UI of Windows XP beats the hell out of me. It was awful in Win ’95 and remains so in XP. No, if anything, it’s worse in XP, trying to interpose a user friendly interface which only makes the bad look awful. VirtualBox + XP Sp3 load in some 40 seconds and XP constantly reminds me that my ‘computer may be at risk’. How about fixing that, Microsoft, without forcing the user to pay for band aids? One of the nicest aspects of VirtualBox is that it allows you to create virtual disk drives in Win XP so that you can seamlessly access files in your OS X space. So, for example, I can install Lightroom 3 on the XP ‘machine’ and access my Lightroom catalog on the OS X side easily. A related benefit is that I can see how this site looks in XP using the truly awful Internet Explorer browser which, needless to say, respects few of the standards adopted by every other browser in the universe.

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Windows XP Sp3 running this site on the HackPro. OS X in the background.

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All the usual peripherals work with no tuning – wireless internet, USB devices, sound, card readers, optical disk drive and so on. The only thing I have not bothered with is getting wireless printing to work as life is too short. I merely take a screen snap and print from OS X on the few occasions I need hard copy.

Anyway, this is a really long winded way of saying that if you really must run Windows on your Mac, get VirtualBox.

It is free, super stable and if you get a hankering to run Ubuntu, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows XP or Vista, Windows Server, Windows 7, Oracle Enterprise, Debian, Redhat, Fedora, Gentoo, SUSE or Mandriva on your Mac, virtualization is a nice safe way of doing that.

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And if you are seriously troubled, then consider updating to Windows 7 and making the world’s richest man yet wealthier. After all, there’s a fool born every minute and he has made Microsoft what it is today.

Running Windows in emulation mode under OS X on a PC box hacked to run Snow Leopard may sound like feeding bacon to a pig, but it’s the only safe way of running Windows on anything.

And, if you absolutely must know, this site looks almost acceptable in Internet Explorer 8. Lightroom 3? No problem, if limited to the slower 32-bit mode.

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Lightroom 3 running in XP/VirtualBox in 32-bit mode.