Progress....

Progress Progress! After spending most of yesterday prevaricating or working on the programming problem this morning I have cracked it - not bad work for less than two hours. Yepe!!!

I have also taken this opportunity to split my Lightroom catalogue. I use an awful lot of keywords and this really slows down Lightroom after a while - this is official from Adobe so this is the time to split it. It is going to take a few days but I hope to have it complete for the start of next year.

Two things...

The mysterious Canon 3D - I believe its was used at Roswell

No 1.

I was playing around with the settings in Lightroom this morning and changed the settings for the 'automatically write changes to XMP'. As a result of this when I ran the back up program it detected changes to all my images and so proceeded to back all of them up - that is over 36k of images! Now if this is only a one off then I can live with this but if it happens every time I go to back up photographs/images then I will have to uncheck the option and slap myself on the wrist and stand on the naughty step.

No 2.

I never cease to be amazed at people. I drop into the DPReview forums from time to time just to see what is happening. I must say it does get depressing. I usually just visit the 'Canon EOS-1D / 1Ds / 5D Forum' to see if there is any interesting information to pick up. Inevitably it boils down to baseless rumours about the next Canon release, usually backed up by doctored photographs of a Canon camera with a new model number added - see Canon 3D above or some slanging match or another about some minor point or another. Now I am all for free speech and I am aware that what I write/think is mainly a maudlin collection of inane observations but I just wonder at what drives people to circulate such rumours or get so agitated about some minor infraction/different view. I just wonder how the main contributors to such forums find the time to contribute to the forums at the rate they do and make photographs. If you are wondering why I haven't posted such views - well I have and got FLAMED!

The rebuild has started

Well here we go again. It doesn't seem like four months have passed since I rebuilt my system but it is. Anyway progress to date. I have installed Adobe Lightroom and the previous catalogue appears to be working - this is a real relief. I have uploaded the current years image files, only 60GB and am now starting on last years - 160 GB. The only hitch, and it really isn't a big one, is that I downloaded the beta version of Safari - not a good idea - and I have had to delete this and will reinstall the latest offical version.

So sofar so good. I am going out to test my new camera and hopefully when I come back I will have another year's image files uploaded.

More Back Catalogue

It is amazing what you forget about over time.  I have been working through some of my undeveloped photographs from the last two years for the forthcoming British Wildlife Photography Awards and come across some real gems I had completely forgotten about.  I think there are two things that have contributed to this.  I am a bit of an old fart so my memory isn't as good as it used to be.   The second is that I produce so many photographs that I can't be expected to remember all of them.  All I can say is thank good for Adobe Lightroom!

These were taken last year in and around Seahouses, Northumbria

Closer to home.  These were taken in my garden or at Calke Abbey

A real mixed bag.   The top two were seahouses, the bottom left is Melroes Sands, Pembrokeshire and the bottom left is north Norfolk.

If the last was mixed bag then this is even more so.  From top left to bottom right, my garden; Fountains Abbey, North Norfolk and Seahouses.

What to do when it doesn't rain

Another beautiful day - not what I wanted so what to do?   Well its catch up time.   I have a weeks worth of photographs to process and work on so that is what I have been doing.   The subjects range from wonderings in a woodland to the recoding of roadworks at night.

One thing I have noticed is that I am making more large panorama photographs.   I know this is strange but seeing the two Crewdson's photographs at the recent Photocinima might have something to do with this.   Well thinking about it I am not sure whether this is true.  What is true is that I am thinking about buying rolls of paper for my printer so that i can print off large scale prints longer than A3+.   Mind you I think about a lot of things and rarely follow them up.  We'll have to see what happens.

Updating we will go.

I have spent the past day or so updating both Photoshop CS4 - now 11.0.1 & Adobe Lightroom - now 2.3.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly some software gets out of date so quickly.   In the case of Lightroom this is in part due to the continue development of new cameras that mean that the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) has to be continually updated.   However, both are also to fix known bugs/faults call it what you will.

One interesting aside about running 64 bit.  At the recent Focus on Imaging show at the NEC  I spoke to the onOne people about when the 64 bit version of Genuine Fractals was going to be available.   The advice was that this is unlikely to be available until well into the latter part of the year.  I was also informed that I should consider using the the 32 bit version of both Lighroom and Photoshop as there was 'no difference between 32 bit and 64 bit'.  This may be so but if you have built your workflow around the 64 bit products then moving back to 32 bit can be problematic.

Shooting tethered

Perhaps not the best self portrait in the world but it is a start.   The real reason I have posted this is not show off my wonderful face but rather to celebrate that I have got my camera to shoot.   The story is really quite boring and so will fit in just right on this blog (I hope that is not the reaction of the reader but I just don't know!)

Anyway, the story.   As part of the flash development I decide I needed to shoot tethered as this would give me greater feedback than the small LCD on the back of the camera.   I tried to set it up last Tuesday.  However, whilst the software installed it kept failing.   After a frustrated hour or so I decided to call it a day.  I duly reported my frustration at the course meeting the next day - much the the amusement of a certain Mac user(You know who I mean KL!).

I gave this matter some thought on Thursday and decide the only way forward was to uninstall the software and install the latest software that had come with one of my 40D.   I checked the software and yes it was for Vista - the other software had come with me aging 5D and didn't support Vista.  I had tried to down load the latest software from the canon site but clearly this didn't work.

So there I was today (Friday) surrounded by camera boxes, CD, cameras and my laptop.  It took a while to uninstall the previous versions, I had installed all the packages on the disk.  I then installed the new software and after a few false starts it worked.   The I am using Adobe Lightroom to view the photographs on the laptop and this works really well.  I have to say that it is not exactly straightforward setting up Lightroom to shoot tethered but once you have gone through all the steps it does work well, apart from the fact I cannot get the software to convert into DNG.   If you want to see who to do this then view the excellent video on this from Lightroom for Digital Photographers.

So now to making best use of this new skill/set up.

The start of something new

Burrough Hill Iron age Fort

I have spent most of the day setting up my new computer.  To date only one set of software won't work - Genuine Fractals 5.   According to the web site this software will not work with 64 bit OS - see support website for more information.  This is a bit of a blow but one I'll get over.

It has been quite tiring slowly building up the new computer - I still have to install the scanner and printer - but these can wait.   I have to say I am impressed with the performance of the new computer.   I am now able to move seamlessly from Lightroom 2.2 to Photoshop CS4 in a blink of an eye.

The new Photoshop is a bit different from CS3.  I am taking my time to get use to the changes but the most important thing is the performance of the software.  The Burrough Hill image at one time was over 300mb in size and the machine/software didn't break into a sweat.   The new zoom facility on Photoshop take a little getting used to - it is so quick and smooth.   Overall, it has been a very enjoyable day.  Lets hope this continues.

Install Continues

The install of software, backup etc continues.   One or two problems have arisen due to the fact that the operating system is 64 bit and the printer is on the network running 32 bit.   I am sure I will be able to sort this out tomorrow.   I have just tried to install my ancient copy of Visual Basic and this has failed,  fortunately I am able to write software fixes to overcome this.  Again this is more irritating than anything else.   I just wonder how easy it would have been with an Apple - perhaps the 32/64 bit conflict may not have arisen although I am not so sure.  

I am currently rebuilding my Lightroom catalogue.   I decided to take this opportunity to rationalise my under lying structure.  This should help in the long term.

Digital workflow

Having spent the weekend thinking about the forthcoming upgrade of my PC I have come to some conclusions about my digital work flow.    The first is that this is an opportunity to refine the process so that it is as efficient as possible.   The second, and this is a linked to the first, is that I will build the work flow around commercially available software rather than using software that I have written for myself.

The nuts and bolts of the work flow will be built on two file formats.   DNG and TIFF.   The reason for this is because these are open formats and so should be immune to the vagaries of changes within digital file format.  They also represent the highest quality files for saving data.   Of course I will use small JPG files when publishing to the net or when required but the main file formats I will use are DNG and TIFF.

As for the software I will build the work flow around Adobe products.   The reason for this is simple - they are the industrial standard for photography and so should provide a stable platform upon which to build any work flow.    The only exception to this will be the use of Photomatix for generating HDR images.

Thinking about setting up the new computer

National Gallery - London

Having to undertake some interesting think about how to set up the new computer.   This wasn't too much of a problem in the past as I hadn't developed a significant digital work flow.   This time it is different and it is causing my brain to hurt.   It revolves around three applications: Adobe's Photoshop, Lightroom and Dreamweaver.   How do I set up these packages up on the new machine?   Equally, do I spend a some cash and buy CS4 - after all I am a full time student and so could get the web premium package for a significant discount.   This is probably the best way forward in the long term but just at the moment it may cause complications when I have an essay to finish.  Problems problems problems.   I suspect I will have to bite the bullet and set things from new and take it from there.   Should be an interesting few weeks.

Why so many images?

Waterfall - Lathkildale

Having spent the day culling over 2000 images from the weekend shoot I am still trying to answer why I shot so many images.  For this shoot I think the answer can be broken down into the following reasons:

Subject Matter:  The main subject was wildlife, in particular migrating birds.   Because of this you have to shoot a large number of shots to get the image you are looking for.    If you are trying to capture an image of a goose landing then you need to shoot the whole landing and then perhaps choose one or two;

Experimentation:  I was also trying out new approaches and techniques.   This will always be a hit and miss affair and so will lead to a large number of discarded images.  This I guess is the cost of experimentation.

Of course the beauty and perhaps the curse of digital is that you can shoot as many images as you wish.   The real cost of digital is at the start - once you have bought the hardware then the costs are almost negligible.    This reminds me of the old joke about the cost of anew drug. The first tablet costs £700m whilst the second one only costs a penny.  So it is with digital.    Of course it is not that simple but certain types of images generate far more than others.   I would be very surprised if I generated this number of images if I were shooting a landscape - in fact I wouldn't.   Still I think I still need to monitor what I am shooting and why.

The Mystery Wind Boarder

This should be the mystery wind boarder I mentioned earlier