David Erterius has recently posted this excellent video of a displaying male Spoon-billed Sandpiper.
Unfortunately this amazing little wader is critically endangered. The primary cause of the species’ plight is depressingly familiar - habitat loss on both its breeding grounds and migration/winter feeding habitat.
It is thought that there could be fewer than 1000 adults left…meaning that few of us are likely to ever see one ‘in the wild’.
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This viral video of a man walking across America is very cool…especially to someone like me who enjoys creating time-lapse video.
The really impressive part is the fact that it has stop-motion animation too!
The following video shows how they did it – excellent stuff!
(via Chase Jarvis blog)
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Still busy, busy, busy here at the moment. So, less words and more images :-)
These are from my recent trip to Mull, Scotland and a day on the Farne Islands. The White-tailed Eagle images were from the “Lady Jayne”, a boat that runs from the Ulva ferry quay. The owners, Martin and Judith, offer an excellent trip out to see the Eagles at very close quarters! Visit their website, Mull Charters for details or read Martin’s blog.
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I guess I need to get out more…or I have too much time on my hands. Here I am, going through my image library, wondering what happened to my good intentions about using the DNG format for my stored RAW files.
Back in the summer of 2007 I jumped on the Lightroom train and made some significant improvements to the way I managed my image libraries. Nearly three years later I am working pretty much the same way…with a couple of exceptions.
The biggest thing I haven’t followed through with is the use of the DNG file format. On paper it really seems like a good idea. Especially for an information/data/asset management geek like myself. The three big positive features for me are:
1. Open file format – it doesn’t rely on any single company to ensure I will still be able to read my files in 20 years (anyone remember Kodak photocd format?)
2. No sidecar files – metadata is stored inside the DNG rather than in a separate file. Personally I think this is a good thing – one less file to delete by accident and a lot less files to backup.
3. File size – in general DNG files are smaller than the manufacturer’s proprietary formats (e.g. CR2 or NEF) due to a better compression algorithm. This is now becoming more important to me due to higher pixel counts and ever larger RAW files (my trusty old Canon 1D mkIIN RAW files are about 8mb, whereas my new Canon 7D files are about 24mb…).
So it seems that I really should make the change and start converting those files to DNG…
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OK, not really.
Rather than post my own Adobe Lightroom 3 resource list, I thought I would post a list of the resource lists I use for reference.
Sean McCormack has created this excellent resource list:
http://lightroom-blog.com/2010/06/lightroom-3-resources.html
Wade Heninger’s regular Lightroom Tuesday is all about Lightroom 3:
http://heninger.org/index_files/4a804bfac7ead3a3b1150d4d91ba240a-655.html
and there is Tom Hogarty’s post on the official Lightroom Journal:
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2010/06/lightroom_3_resources.html
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Adobe have announced the release of Lightroom 3. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe or purchase from Adobe: £232.65 for the full version, £74.66 for the upgrade.
The main update since the second beta is the inclusion of lens correction, as per Photoshop CS5 – both through profiles and manual adjustment. This is a great inclusion and, like the improved noise reduction, should negate the need for using the PTLens plug-in on the majority of my images.
The other main change is the ability to upgrade existing Lightroom 1.x, 2.x and 3 Beta catalogs…so no lengthy import processes required!
Other changes include: additional print templates, improved web templates, migrate Photoshop Elements libraries to Lightroom 3, additional presets and increased print resolution (720ppi for print, 1200ppi for print to jpeg).
If things go according to plan, I will be posting more this week, including a list of my favourite resources etc.
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Hmmm, where did the past 2 months go?!? Moving house and a significant work project have kept me fully occupied…and I have been on a photography trip over the past couple of weeks (more to come on that).
Whilst talking about being alive…
(in case you are wondering, its the closing song to Portal, a very good game by Valve).
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Here is a quick list of links to resources about the Lightroom 3 Beta 2…
Jeffrey Friedl’s blog has a quick overview and details on his multitude of plug-ins.
Victoria ‘The Lightroom Queen’ Bampton has her traditional what’s new post.
Rob Sylvan has posted about his favourite features over on Lightroomers.
Ian Lyons has written an extensive post on the new features.
Richard Earney writes about the features he values most.
Sean McCormack has covered the main features on the Lightroom-blog.
John Beardsworth covers his favourites.
Gene McCullagh started his coverage at Lightroom Secrets.
Gilles Theophile has a complete overview in french.
Scott Rouse has his thoughts on the Lightroom Lab.
Official Adobe resources:
The Lightroom 3 Beta 2 release notes.
Tom Hogarty’s official announcement.
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Adobe has announced the release of a second beta of Lightroom 3 (download it here). This comes five months after the first beta was released and promises a good selection of new features and further improvements in speed and image quality.
Having a second beta release is a real contrast to Apple’s secretive approach to developing and releasing products (e.g. Aperture 3). Adobe say that more than 350,000 photographers downloaded the first beta, allowing them to get valuable feedback on the new and improved features. I think this feedback loop has really benefited the product.
The highlights in this beta release for me are:
Click through for more information on the changes in Adobe Lightroom 3 beta 2 (Lr3B2).
…
Before I go on, I should remind you that this is still beta software, released by Adobe to get feedback on the new features and performance of the product. Make sure you are working with copies of your photos and have a good back-up of any data you work on with Lr3B2.
Noise reduction
Lightroom 2 didn’t have the best reputation for image quality with some of the internet pixel peepers, especially if you pushed the camera beyond it’s ISO comfort zone.
Adobe have been working hard on this and I am very pleased with the new improved noise reduction controls and general step-up in image quality overall.
To test this out Lr3B2, I re-processed one of my Whip-poor-will images. This was created in near total darkness, using car headlights as the sole source of light. I pushed my old Canon 1D mkIIN right to its ISO limit at 3200 and was working at shutter speeds of 1/13 second.
Now I know that ISO 3200 is not that extreme on modern bodies, but it really is pushing the limits on my aging 1D mk2N – bare in mind that I try to avoid going over ISO 400 with it!
I ran the image through Lr3B2, fiddling a little with the noise controls and I am amazed at the results! It significantly cleaned up the high levels of grain in the background whilst retaining good definition in the feathers and ‘hairs’ around the beak.
Although I would prefer to manually and selectively clean up an extreme image like this in Photoshop with the Neat Image plug-in, I can see that my more typical images are not going to need their routine round of noise reduction in Neat Image any more. Which is excellent news and a step removed from my workflow.
Video files
I know a lot of photographers were not that excited by the inclusion of video in their DSLRs but there are equally a lot who are very excited by this change in technology. So I imagine there is going to be mixed opinions on this new feature…anyone remember when Flickr introduced video?
I do shoot a little video, not so much in the past couple of years but this is a welcome addition. As well as ‘traditional’ video, I create a bit of time-lapse, so the big thing for me is that I can now manage final time-lapse video files along side the original photos – yet another simplification of my workflow.
Combine this with Sean McCormack’s timelapse preset, you can create and manage time-lapse video without really having to leave Lightroom.
Tethered image capture
All I can say is – hooray! Finally I can avoid the rather fragile set-up of running the Canon software and monitoring a directory to import the photos ‘live’ into Lightroom. I have only played with this briefly with some table-top macro fun but have plans to test this, quite literally, out in the field. I’ll post more when I have it.
Import Dialog
Adobe have made quite a few changes to the import dialog, most minor but all really improve the ‘experience’. Most significant for me was the fact that it now waits for you to select a folder before heading off to check for images and remembers where you were last time you imported.
Other improvements
Publish has a couple of tweaks, including allowing you to specify a target file size and support for uploading original video.
One of the bigger changes in develop is updates to the contrast curve. As well as the original curve controls, Lr3B2 now allows you to alter it at specific points – very much like Photoshop.
Finally, the slightly confusing concept of process versions has been updated. The biggest change is that the indicator has been moved and is much more prominent in the lower right of the image (rather than on the histogram).
Any more?
Yes there are plenty more changes – I suggest you look through the release notes and read through the extensive coverage that will be published by the Lightroom community over the coming few days.
I’ll also be adding more info over the next few days…
Click here for more on Lightroom 3 Beta
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Once again I find myself writing an apology for not posting for a few weeks. I guess people who try to read my ramblings regularly already know that I am not regular…but I do try to post more than once a month…honest!
Anyway, without anything interesting to post, I thought I would recycle the three most popular posts in the past year.
However, the most popular post is a rather random rant I made about a well known security software company but as it is not what I want my blog to be about, I have chosen to ignore it (well, it is my top 3 list!). So the ‘edited’ top 3 are:
1. Lightroom 3 Beta - Save photos to the cloud
3. Lightroom plug-in for Nature Photographers
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