Monthly Archives: December 2012

DxO ViewPoint

Lightroom

A handy plug-in.

DxO is a Photoshop or Lightroom plugin whose purpose is twofold. Correcting keystoning from leaning verticals or slanting horizontals and removing volume anamorphosis, the elongation of objects near frame’s edge when very wide angle lenses are used. I have traditionally used PS CS5 to correct keystoning and believe that PS CS6 adds volume anamorphosis correction, but as DxO is running a $39 special offer – half off – through December 31, 2012, I purchased the Mac version on the recommendation of a friend.

DxO’s poky servers went down half way through my first download attempt but the second was successful. It’s a whopper at some 187MB, larger than Lightroom itself. You have the option of installing it as a PS and/or LR plugin in addition to the mandatory stand-alone version which is installed in the Applications folder.

The LR version integrates seamlessly, requiring the user to hit Photo->Edit in->DxO Viewpoint when in the Library or Develop module whereupon LR generates a lossless TIFF file which pops up in DxO ViewPoint. You have a choice of 32-bit or 64-bit versions. I went into Finder and erased the 32-bit one as it’s a distraction. If you can use 64-bit, why not?

The controls are intuitive. In the image below from the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, there is keystoning in two planes – vertical, obviously, and horizontal as I was not plane to the subject.

There are three keystoning icons in addition to traditional sliders. Icons are the way to go. First you dial in your preferred aspect ratio – 3:2 like the original in this case – then click on the double keystoning icon and align the guidelines with the two verticals and two horizootals that have to be straightened:


Guidelines aligned along two verticals and two horizontals.

Click Accept then File-Save and the corrected version is saved, stacked, along your original in LR:


Corrected version.

Here’s the result after using the Transform->Distort command in PS CS5 for comparison:


Corrected in Photoshop CS5.

Note the excessive elongation of the plinth compared with the DxO ViewPoint corrected version. I have left in a hint of keystoning in both versions to preserve the suggestion of great mass and height.

Either version is better than the rudimentary correction in Lightroom, which tends to remove far too much of the original.

I don’t know that I would pay $79 for this plugin but $39 seems fair. As I do a fair amount of architectural photogrtaphy, it fills a niche in the toolbox. Whenever taking pictures where keystoning is unavoidable, I make sure to include lots of space around the main subject, knowing that much of it will be lost in processing.

Original on the D700, 35-70mm f/2.8 AFD Nikkor.

Seafood

Photographs

Yummy!

A few from San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf the other day:


Famous Fishwich.


Crab boiling.


Clam chowder.


Waiter.


At the crab store.


Maritime Store.


Fishing Boat.

All on the D700 with the 28mm f/2 MF Nikkor, except the last where I used the 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor.

Kids’ Christmas

Photographs

The joy of childhood.

Few things evoke such joy as seeing children enjoying the cool, crisp air on Christmas Eve, all warmly bundled up. These were snapped in San Francisco yesterday.

Here was my walkabout – the Nikon D2x never misses on GPS locations, compared with the D700 which has at best a 70% hit rate, returning a blank the rest of the time.


Kids’ Christmas walkabout.

All on the D2x with the 85/1.8 and 180/2.8 AF-D Nikkors at or near full aperture.

Norman Parkinson

Book reviews, Photographers

A very British glamour.


Click the image for Amazon. I do not get paid if you do that.

It’s fitting that this book of Norman Parkinson’s images for Vogue and Queen has his wife Wenda on the cover. As he relates:

“Whatever style and elegance might be attributed to my work, most of it was Wenda Rogerson’s influence”.

And style and elegance are abundantly present in Parkinson’s work. What distinguishes this book from other Parkinson tomes I have featured here is that finally a real and successful effort has been made to reproduce his colour work properly. In 1981 he said:

“I’ve been slowly slipping out of black and white and now I only take it under sufferance as a sort of back-up to my color snaps”. Thank goodness for that because his color work is a standout.

It’s a splendid book and shows well how he transitioned from the more formal monochrome work of the ’40s to his great color images in the ’70s. Recommended, regardless of your interest in fashion. My copy ran under $20 from a remaindered bookseller but even at Amazon it’s a bargain.

Nikon voice memos

Lightroom, Nikon bodies

Smooth Lightroom integration.

One really handy feature in the Nikon D2/D3/D4 bodies is the ability to record a voice memo of up to sixty seconds in length for each image. After enabling the function in Settings, you hold the voice memo button down while speaking into the microphone on the rear of the body. If you are taking posed snaps of strangers and want to send them a copy as a courtesy, this is a great way of recording their email address for later retrieval.

At first I thought this to be a worthless gimmick but in practice am finding it to be a really useful feature on my D2x.


Recording button red circle; speaker and microphone – yellow and green arrows.

You can playback the voice memo using the camera’s small speaker to check it’s intelligible at the time of recording.It sounds far better over your computer’s speakers!

When it comes to processing, Lightroom fully accommodates this function. The WAV file recording has the same frame number as the image but with a ‘.wav’ file extension and is imported along with the image into LR 2, 3 and 4.

You can see the sound file in the Library module of Lightroom and you can play it back by clicking the arrowed icon:


LR’s Develop module and the playback icon.

A like feature is also available on some Canon DSLR bodies.

File sizes? A 10 second recording averages 75MB – not enough to worry about when it comes to consuming precious space on your camera’s CF or SD card. The D2 and D4 use one CF card, the D3 one or two CF cards.