Category Archives: Photography

Lightroom masking in v15

Lightroom, Photographs

Extraordinary.

I’m one of the crowd that detests Adobe’s subscription model for its many photography applications, having paid to own Lightroom many years ago only to find that Adobe made sure it refused to work on the Mac Mini M4, forcing me to ‘upgrade’ to the subscription version with its predatory pricing. So much for lifetime ownership.

However, giving credit where it’s due, the masking and highlight recovery capabilities of v15, the latest upgrade, are extraordinary. These are best illustrated by the image I took of Marion Campbell in 1977 in the Outer Hebrides island of Harris, off Scotland’s northwest coast.

Back in 2008 I wrote:

I have been trying to process this snap for thirty years. Every decade it gets better as processing technology improves. Oh! if only I had had a fill in flash with me. Anyway, I now have the burned out highlights largely recovered and some vestige of detail in that wonderful, craggy face.

And that effort was tortuous indeed, requiring much work in Photoshop.

Now, with Lightroom v15, the process has become an order of magnitude easier. A while back I had re-‘scanned’ my early Tri X film images using the Nikon D800 and a Micro Nikkor lens. Definition is as good as you will ever get from a film scan, and far faster than using a flat bed scanner with its mediocre results.

Still, the ‘scanned’ image does not look great. After importing the image into LR and straightening things up, with some added tweaks on the sliders I had a half decent image but one which still has horribly burned out highlights from the window behind Ms. Campbell’s head:



The unprocessed film scan from the D800.

Adobe claims that v15 of Lightroom uses AI – doesn’t everyone claim AI as the magic sauce today? – in helping with masking, so I had a go using the dropdown box which gives several masking options:



Masking options.

I chose ”Select Subject’ and LR did a great job of doing just that, allowing me to add contrast and vibrance to the face. Next I added another mask, this time choosing ‘Select Background’, which LR accurately did, and had at it with the Highlights slider, for a truly exceptional result. A third mask using the ‘Brush’ this time allowed me to paint in her blown out hair with another tweak on the Highlights slider and here is the result which took less time to do than to write about:



The final result.

So finally, 48 years later, I have the displayed image which, until now, has resided in my mind’s eye.

Why, I’m almost feeling good about that Adobe subscription ….

Adobe +50%

Lightroom

Yes, a 50% price rise!

The crooks at Adobe are at it again.



50% price hike.

The rest of the letter goes on in tedious detail about how Adobe is the greatest public benefactor since Social Security and generally claiming sainthood. It’s so puke worthy I am not publishing it here.

When I was using my Mac Pro I had ‘lifetime’ ownership Lightroom for a single purchase. When security enhancements – which Apple refused to apply to that fabulous machine (shock news!) – ceased to be available I had no option but to upgrade to a modern Mac Mini M4. Naturally, Adobe saw to it that my Lightroom ‘owned’ application ceased working at the same time, forcing me to sign up to their $9.99 monthly subscription.

I passed on Photoshop, buying a lifetime ownership of Affinity – and that looks like it’s about to adopt a subscription model soon as well. Affinity does most things Photoshop can, though there’s a bit of a learning curve involved.

I write ‘forcing me’ as I have yet to find an application which competently combines LR’s excellent processing and cataloging features, but now I will get serious about doing some research of alternatives.

Meanwhile I have signed up for one year with the crooks at Adobe at the existing $10 monthly rate, and earnestly hope this is the last time I ever pay them:



Artcise NB36 ball head

Cameras

A remarkable value.

When I documented Carmel’s gorgeous Christmas windows with the monster Nikon D3x body and the exceptional resolving power of the 35mm f/1.4 Sigma Art lens in 2014 I uses a Sirui ball and socket head on my ancient but sturdy Linhof tripod. On completion of that project I sold the Sirui as I do not do landscape photography and in the studio strobes permit the camera to be hand held rather than mounted on a clunky tripod.

Recently I have again developed a hankering for some more night time photography and needed a competent ball and socket head to mount on my old Bogen/Manfrotto 3016 monopod. While old it has only three sections, meaning just two levers to undo and tighten, and is made of light alloy. Even 1/15 second exposures with the monopod are sharp for the device removes any possibility of vertical motion, the bugbear of sharp images. The 3016 is readily found on eBay for $30 or so and is recommended without reservations. If the locking levers loosen with age they are easily adjusted and a monopod is a great deal easier to use than a tripod. It’s also a handy weapon when on the wrong side of the tracks ….

My tool of choice for nighttime street snaps is the Leica M10. Not a fast to use camera by modern standards, no AF or IBIS, but it’s a small package, inconspicuous and comes with fast lenses, my street favorites being Canon’s 35/2 and 50/1.4 offerings.

The Artcise NB36 ball head comes with two Arca Swiss QR plates to attach to the base of your camera(s). The female socket is 3/8″ so a small adapter is required if your tripod or monopod uses a 1/4″ size screw.

The head has no fewer than three spirit levels if that’s your thing, two in the top plate and one in the knob which fastens the QR plate. Good luck seeing these at night.

But the real appeal of the Artcise head is the price, which is under $20! It’s a remarkable value for a device which is nicely made, all operations are smooth and the weight capacity is a claimed hefty 33lbs. Not as much as the Sirui’s but hardly a limitation with modern 35mm and digital cameras. None of the three knobs can be fully unscrewed/removed/lost, a nice piece of engineering design. And at $18.70 it’s a keeper as the resale value is precisely zero.

Highly recommended, and some nighttime pictures from the Leica M10 should be available soon.



As delivered. The Arca plate has anti-slip rubber on the side which abuts the camera’s baseplate.


Attached to the M10. Because of Leica’s slavish devotion to a dated removable baseplate, the Arca Swiss style plate must be removed to swap the battery or storage card. The plate may clear the battery door on the M11 if mounted transversely – I don’t know. not having an M11 (I wish!)


Mounted on the Bogen/Manfrotto 3016 monopod.

The Savoring books

Book reviews, Cooking

Gorgeous and tasty.

For an index of all my book reviews click here.



My small collection.

Take a magnum opus like Julia Child’s ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ and you have every recipe imaginable from that land of culinary genius. Yet the books are as boring and as poorly presented as it gets. There are no photographs, a handful of poorly rendered pencil sketches passes for illustration, the fonts are dated and ugly and, well, the whole thing smacks of a well prepared meal thrown on a paper plate in higgledy piggledy fashion.

And that is very much not the case with these wonderful books from Williams-Sonoma, mostly published in the first five years of the millennium and now sadly out of print. I got mine from Abe Books, lightly used, for pennies on the dollar. Each boasts not one but two photographers – one for the locales, the other for the food and the photography is, without exception, gorgeous. And these are not just cookery books, for each recipe comes with historical detail explaining provenance and subtleties. Highly recommended not just for cooks aspiring to emulate the best in Western European cuisine but for lovers of great photography everywhere.

Garage kaizen

Ramblings

The second most important space in the home.

For a closer look at the many art works on display click here.

I wrote about kaizen in the context of the most important room in the home – the home theater – a while back.

It’s common for members of the Toyota C-suite to spend formative years in the kaizen function where failed parts are analyzed and improvements conjured up. This inculcates the belief that nothing surpasses reliability in importance when it comes to daily conveyances and explains why Toyota makes the best cars in the world. Contrast this with GM. One example of many is their Northstar V8 engine. It took Detroit 6 years to determine the cause of the serial head gasket failures and leaks before they realized that the studs were pulling out of the block. A mere few millimeters of additional thread did the trick by which time the motor’s reputation was irreversibly damaged. Considering American occupational psycholigist W. Edwards Deming had taught the Japanese how to make reliable cars you would think GM would know better. But no. Hang reputation, aim for short run profits, the American Way.

And talk of cars brings us to the second most important space in the home, the garage. My goal is to make this a warm and welcoming place, with shadowless task lighting the first consideration. Art works on the walls enhance the sense of occasion when entering this working space, but it’s the placement and display of tools and parts which is the key to making this a proactive and efficient workplace. And there are rules guiding this goal.

First a tool hidden in the drawer of one of those awful rolling carts is a lost tool. The cart will sooner or later crash into one of your machines and you will spend endless hours searching for that one special tool buried in its innards. No, tools must be displayed in logical groupings which means pegboards on the wall. And not those awful, depressing brown ones. Yecch! They must be white to contrast the tool with its background and to reflect ambient light into the workspace. For safety – the weight of tools adds up quickly – wooden battens are fastened to the studs behind the drywall and the pegboards are fastened to these battens, using drywall screws with finishing washers to spread the load. This makes for both a robust attachment method while providing clearance for the pegboard hooks as they poke through to the rear.

Further, tools must not be stacked for the same reason that they must not be hidden in drawers. Anything below the top of the stack will be lost or forgotten, sooner or later. Here’s my tool wall and yes, kaizen is easily eroded as the images show, for I have started stacking tools over the years, denying my own rules. In addition to the growing stacking issue with the pegboards, the area with fasteners is an absolute disaster, and the shelving needs work too.



The tool wall



The tool wall – a closer view.
Classic BMW and Ford posters at left.

Note the magnificent red Handy motorcycle air lift, the finest tool in the garage, at lower left. It’s one of the few things, along with the attendant compressor, I will allow to take up floor space. As a general rule the fewer things on the floor the better:



1975 BMW R90/6, 2007 Honda Silverwing and 2013 Honda PCX 150.
The artwork is from the Laguna Seca Historics

This fastener assembly is a disaster. To remove any one bin all above must be removed, the bins spill fasteners faster than a politician accepts a bribe and those lost nails on the floor lead to flat tires. Hard to imagine anything worse. Well, there’s always the Titanic:



Disaster area – fasteners. Inaccessible and
waiting to fall out.

Mercifully Amazon lists an alternative for very little money with several configurations.

This took a bit of time with the need to properly sort mis-filed pieces, but boy is it worth it:



Neatly labeled in alphabetical order

Amazon lists very robust 5 shelf units and I had installed four of these a few years ago when they cost $100. The price has now dropped to $55 and they are recommended. Easy to assemble, robust with a 350 pound capacity per shelf, I fastened them with metal straps to the batten you can see in the image, the latter attached to the studs behind the drywall. This both protects against earthquakes and takes out the tippiness of the heavy structure waiting to fall on a car or motorcycle:



Shelving from Amazon – lots of wasted space, too much stacking

Like the stacking which bedeviled the pegboards the shelves have suffered similar migration over the years and there is much wasted space. More shelves are called for:



Four shelving bays, 5 shelves apiece

So I procured an additional five shelf unit, discarded the uprights and installed the five additional shelves where the gaping spaces were. The metal semicircular straps securing the uprights to the batten have been removed in this illustration:



Adding shelves.

While that’s just a 25% increase in shelf area the difference is night and day. A related rule in any garage is to have as few items on the floor as possible and these added shelves really help:



Five added shelves in place

So after a few days of banging away at this kaizen project the garage is once more that special place which invites quality wrenching …. until the next time things need remediation. Constant improvement is the ticket.