Category Archives: Photography

Earth

Photography

A salutary lesson

I took our seven year old son to see the Disney movie Earth today. I confess the prevailing emotion going into the theater was dread. Dread that this would be yet another saccharine ‘animals behaving like people’ horror so beloved of the Disney studio, replete with overt cuteness and with a mile thick sugar coating to protect all and sundry from the brutal survival that is the natural world of wild animals.


A still from ‘Earth’

Mercifully, the movie is made by the BBC, which still shows vestiges of taste now and then, and we both enjoyed it. Winston, my son, loved it because of the photography, the great pictures of animals and the short length. I enjoyed it because of the photography, orchestral music well played by the Berlin Philharmonic (though doubtless Herbert von Karajan is spinning in his grave at the prospect of his orchestra playing movie music) and punches-only-lightly-pulled when something eats something else. The gore is edited out but you get the message. Mother Nature is anything but nice, polar bears are dumb as two bricks and survival goes to the fittest. (Like Wall Street – just substitute ‘bankers’ for ‘polar bears’).

However, the broader lessons learned from something like this are that working with animals may be as frustrating as working with actors, but they don’t sue and their appearance fees are low. Further, the reality dawns that the amateur photographer – be he movie or still – really is wasting his time trying to improve on the polished professional work on display here. Clearly the work involved was enormous, requiring hundreds of people and a huge ratio of scrap to gold, and dictating the use of ultralight aircraft, balloons, diving equipment, and so on. And lots and lots of takes, considerable risk to life and limb and a cornucopia of top class gear.

Judging by the clearly visible dirt in many frames the whole thing was made on film, rather than digital; we were viewing it on a large (I would guess 250″ plus) screen and the detail definition was startlingly good. Which brings us to two final lessons. There is no way on earth that you are going to be able to reproduce the impact of such a movie at home. And that narrator James Earl Jones has the best voice franchise in the US, if not the best voice. That belonged to James Mason, but he left us a while back.

Cleaning house

Photography

Getting rid of junk

If you haven’t used it in a year, get rid of it.

Now that rule may not work for certain special tools. That wrench that fits that special nut or the super telephoto you use rarely but for which there is really no substitute when you need it.

But, overall, the biggest obstacle to this principle is emotion. It’s hard to get rid of things you are attached to, even if they are inanimate objects.

But I gritted my teeth the other day and sat down to compile a list of the things I really do not need. And it was surprisingly long.

That Thorens turntable? I listen to a handful of LPs annually and invariably get frustrated with all the clicks, pops and the sheer fragility of the medium. So the 480 LPs went to Goodwill (libraries no longer want them) and the Thorens went on ePrey. The related ancient but great British Quad amplifiers? eCheat. Those enormous transmission line loudspeakers I built 35 years ago? Goodwill. Great sound but not much use stored in the cellar and no way was my better half going to allow them in the home. And I can get sound almost as good from modern miniature satellite speakers with a subwoofer, all in a fraction of the space. DVDs? Horrible space consumers. Off to the library, all 535 of them. If I want a DVD I rent it or go to the Apple Store.

Add to these the 200 classical CDs I gave them a while back and there’s a remote chance that the citizens of Paso Robles, CA will learn to spell ‘culture’, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. After all, this is an area where it’s the done thing to marry your first cousin while inhaling too many agricultural chemicals. Call me cynical, but somehow I don’t see Antonioni, Visconti and Scriabin conquering local tastes which stretch to revolting country music and regard Thomas Kinkade as an artist of esteem.

OK, so what about photo gear? I suppose it really makes more sense to send out files for the making of large prints as my wide carriage printer gets relatively little use. But I cannot get myself to part with it. But some others are easy. The 20mm Canon EF for my 5D? A real dog. Canon refuses to make quality ultra wides and I refuse to use the ones they make. Plus my 24-105mm at 24mm is much better and if I want really wide I use the 15mm Canon fisheye (which is great) and ImageAlign if I want rectilinear rendition – at 12mm wide! Anyway, the 20mm is out of here.


Canon 20mm – the lens that drinks from a bowl – my second and almost as bad as the first

Having grown up with any number of 50mm Summicrons on my Leica M cameras, I am attached to lenses of that length. But the Canon 50mm f/1.4 I own is right in the middle of the 24-105mm range and while the zoom is bulkier and slower, there’s nothing to choose between the two in sharpness and I do not need f/1.4, so it’s out of here. Take it to f/2.8 or larger (the zoom is an f/4) and the quality deteriorates rapidly. At f/1.4 it’s the proverbial Coke bottle bottom. I cannot remember when I last enjoyed using it.


The 50mm cousin – another stinker

The 5D, 24-105, 15mm, 85mm, 200mm, 400mm Canons and the fabulous 100mm macro – all by Canon – are all keepers.

That massive wooden Gandolfi tripod? Redundant as I use an alloy Linhof. But it doubles as a display piece and may yet survive the purge though there’s absolutely no chance I will ever use it to take pictures again. Maybe I should dump it?

But after that there’s little left that does not get used frequently and my life is the better for a lack of clutter. Plus many Goodwill shoppers can exult in my great classical LPs, so it’s not all bad. And, just maybe, someone sufficiently undiscriminating will like those awful lenses.

Going glossy

Printing

Just doing what it takes

I have been unsparing in my criticism of Apple’s cynical move to producing only glossy screens on its displays. The thinking is identical to that of the jeweler who installs strong quartz iodine spotlights in his store. That 1 carat bauble that so impressed in the store, thanks to the Hollywood lighting, leads to a sense of dismay when viewed at home. It’s no different for Apple’s glossy screens.

So what on earth was I doing ordering glossy printing paper for my HP DJ90 the other day?


An engineering company. Note the micrometer and the Swiss manufacturer!

Well, I may dislike glossy when it comes to making and printing my photographs, but I am not beyond learning from the ace salesmen at Apple, Inc.

Simply stated, I have not submitted a photo for publication since 1977 when I left England and started getting paid for my labors in America. So great was the increase in income and reduction in tax (the top income tax rate when I left the UK in 1977 was 83% ….) that the modest amounts that publication brought no longer made sense. I could earn more the easy way and use the money to take the pictures I wanted to take, not the ones some editor preferred to see.

But the bug bit again recently and while I have no intent to make any money from getting my stuff in print (and the odds of doing so are, let’s face it, pretty remote in an internet world), my ego can now afford it. And as first impressions are 100% of the battle with photographs, when that editor opens my envelope of snaps I want them to say ‘wow’. Glossy paper does that.

So the medium, not the content, may be the message, but if it ghastly glossy paper helps get me into print, so be it. Just don’t expect these prints to be gracing the walls at home any time soon.

This is my first experience of using HP Premium Glossy. The inked areas are matte whereas highlights where no ink was deposited retain the original high gloss of the paper. However, after drying for a couple of hours the inked areas take on a good gloss, although not as high gloss as virgin paper. So it may explain why some later printers now use a glossing agent to restore high gloss to a print – the DJ90 does not have this technology.

Picture Packages

Printing

A useful Lightroom technique

When I make large prints on the HP DJ90 dye printer, it’s usually strictly a ‘one at a time’ sort of thing. The prints are 18″ x 24″ (‘Super A4’ is the uninformative European description), which is as large as my HP will go and, after an obligatory 24 hour ‘drying’ period to let the ink dyes set, they are dry mounted and framed.

However, with my new found determination to get some work published again, smaller prints were called for – 9″ x 12″- and these just happen to divide an 18″ x 24″ sheet into four equal parts.

Rather than cut up the paper first and then do four print runs, it proved just as easy to make one combined print job and do the cutting last.

First I went into the Library module of LR2 then clicked on Library->New Collection. I dragged the candidates into this new collection and oriented them all vertically (Photo->Rotate Left/Right). These candidates had been processed and cropped just so, so that no further adjustments would be required.

Into the Print module of LR2, where I clicked on Tempate Browser->Lightroom Templates->2×2 Cells. Lightroom comes with this template installed. Moving the mouse cursor to the base of the screen to disclose the filmstrip – which I have set to hiding mode so it is ordinarily invisible – I simply highlighted four contiguous images, which then appear on the print ‘canvas’.

The screen now looked like this:

Then it’s off to the races, printing in the usual way. It takes a lot less time to do than to explain and you have the benefit of applying the same print settings to all pictures on the ‘canvas’. Of course if you process the originals poorly, then you may end up with four clunkers, but I seem to have lucked out.

Note the personalized nameplate at the top left of the Lightroom pane in the last picture above. You can do this by going to Lightroom->Identity Plate Setup.

Bad Mac advice

Hall of Shame

Where not to go

It’s no great secret that newsprint is dead. Within a decade even the most powerful print media – WSJ, NYT, etc. – will have ceased publication using forests of trees. eInk technology (like in the Kindle) will add color and someone will design a two button interface almost as simple as a book. All those enviroloonies should be required to help capitalize the related R&D as they do want to save trees, no? And the advent of color will also dramatically reduce the price of art books – when the screen is transilluminated and has superior definition to traditional printing on reflective materials – what’s not to like?

Which brings me to the curious case of MacWorld magazine. ‘Curious’ because it begs the question why this trashy publication survives. When I got our first Mac a decade ago a relative gave me a subscription to this rag and it helped get me into the Mac ecosystem. That was ages ago and, like a fool, I still pay for a print subscription. At least until this one expires, that is.

This is simply the very worst place to go for objective advice about Macs. The magazine started life 25 years ago with funding from Apple. If you are not already holding your nose, you should be. Now purportedly independent, it is a sycophant’s dream for anyone getting a paycheck from 1 Infinite Loop. You see, they have yet to see an Apple product they do not like. Read any of their reviews and you will quickly realize that these are little more than regurgitated press releases.

Two cases in point. The other day they had a laudatory piece on Apple’s Time Capsule back-up hardware. Only thing they forgot to mention is that you cannot boot from the TC. So what are you going to do when your Mac’s drive crashes? Pull out the original OS X discs? Try and access TC that way? Do you even know how risky and time consuming this is? It’s not called Time Capsule for nothing. As a disaster recovery tool it is almost completely useless. But it ranks a rave review from MacWorld. No mention of the booting issue, of course.

Or their piece today on external hard drives. Without so much as opening the box they laud the overpriced LaCie Rugged. I own one and yes, I have dismantled it. Not from idle curiosity but because the bottom-of-the-line Western Digital drive inside failed just after the warranty expired (good business design, if you ask me). The full scope of the ‘rugged’ moniker was then exposed. The ‘ruggedness’ is comprised of four rubber strips inside, purportedly cushioning the drive from the case. Laugh – I did when I opened the case. And, of course, a 2mm thick jolly colored rubber covering on the case. Did MacWorld open the case? Did MacWorld try dropping the drive on a hard floor? Did MacWorld refuse advertising dollars from LaCie? Well, you can figure out the answers to those questions. (Hint: Not a ‘Yes’ in sight). So for a 2mm thick casing of rubber and four rubber bumpers (aggregate cost: 2 cents) LaCie gets $160 for something you can build yourself for $85; $70 for the drive and $15 for a self-powered USB enclosure. The assembly skill is especially low – even a GM production line worker could do it, although it will take you 2 minutes, while his union will make sure it takes an hour.

Let me illustrate. The drive is a 2.5″ SATA notebook drive – available for $70 in a 320gB size. The enclosure is a $15 2.5″ SATA enclosure from Tiger Direct. That price includes a leatherette case and a nice long USB connection cable with a pass-through connector to permit ganging. Why, they even provide the two screws and the screwdriver you will use to secure the drive in the case.


Detailed assembly instructions. Free screwdriver not shown.

Did you get that?

Oh! you want to add the ‘Rugged’ feature? Heck, blow $5 on some foam rubber and do 10 drives while you are at it.

MacWorld is a great place if you want to read Apple advertising and pay for it.

However, for objective comment just check in with the Apple Discussions section of Apple.com and see just how flawed many of Apple’s much hyped products are – like Time Capsule (worthless if your internal drive fails), Back To My Mac (terminally faulty), Airport Extreme wireless routing (the signal fluctuates for unknown reasons at anything over 10 feet from the router), glossy screens (useless for real users), dying Firewire (too bad about all those FW drives you bought), perennially ‘new’ connectors which obsolete your peripherals – and this is from Apple’s own site, for goodness sake.

Skeptical? Here’s today’s front page from just the Time Capsule ‘Discussion’ – a lot of comments and views for a device that ‘just works’, no?


It just works, right?

And that’s after Apple’s (very active) censorship of its Discussions forum.

Before you even think about any major software upgrade (OS X upgrades and security upgrades have been the worst in this regard), wait a month, read Apple’s Discussions, then decide whether to risk it. I have long adopted this approach and it has saved me countless hours of repair otherwise caused by Apple’s policy of releasing buggy software and having unpaid users test it for them – a practice Microsoft perfected years ago. You have already paid a 30% premium for the Mac; it’s nice that critical user feedback is free and that you don’t have to pay advertisers posing as journalists at MacWorld for it. Just let the first implementers serve as your reviewer of choice.

MacWorld magazine and its staff of shills is a much overdue entrant to this journal’s Hall of Shame.