Happy Daylight Savings Day!

Gallery (30 images): 2018 / Happy Daylight Savings Day!

Finally, more light in the evenings again! I love the switch to daylight savings time, especially when it is accompanied by a gorgeous warm and sunny day! Despite the fact that I am still suffering from the aftereffects of a bad flu, I dragged myself out of the house and wandered down to Granville Island for a few hours later in the evening, carrying my X-Pro2 and Fujifilm's fantastic set of f/2 primes. Sunset was just after 7pm, and the warm colours and play of light and shadow was nice to experience.

After shooting with Fujifilm's new X-H1 on numerous occasions recently, as much as I really liked using that camera, there is still something about the X-Pro2 that just fits me better. The camera's controls are all readily available to my right hand, and I definitely prefer the offset, "rangefinder style" viewfinder too. That said, there are a bunch of things I really like about the X-H1 and I do hope that Fujifilm incorporates some of those firmware tweaks into an update for the X-Pro2 in the future! For my detailed preview of Fujifilm's X-H1, as well as an image gallery with lots of nighttime, slow shutter speed handheld exposures, taking advantage of the X-H1's new IBIS system, see the Beau Photo blog here...

http://www.beauphoto.com/new-fujifilm-x-h1-preview/  (opens in a new window)

Another note: all the images in the above gallery (and in the X-H1 gallery) were only processed in the very latest Adobe Lightroom CC. I have to say, Adobe has come a long way in the last year, improving their X-Trans sensor demosaic a fair bit. Images are rendering really nicely, with minimal colour bleed and better shadow details and texture than I recall. Sharp branches against a blue sky are nice and crisp, natural looking without blurriness or weird outlining.

The above images were processed with Adobe's "Camera ASTIA/SOFT" profile, which mimics Fujifilm's out-of-camera colour fairly well, much better than the "Adobe Standard" profile does. I have tweaked the profile even further myself, incorporating some slight hue and saturation adjustments to some colours, to bring it even closer to Fuji's colours, probably more like a lower contrast "Velvia" setting in all honestly. I find that Adobe's "Camera Velvia/VIVID" setting is just too hard and contrasty to use as a starting point. In any case, I am liking the overall colour rendition, and even how fine details look in low ISO images now, so Adobe finally deserves some praise on how it handles Fujifilm's X-Trans raw images. I will say this though: it's about time!

Southwest trip and X-Pro2 raw processing...

Lightning over White Sands, New Mexico

I am back from a three week road-trip to the Southwestern US. This time, it was a trip through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and back, for a total of 8,945 km of driving. The furthest south was White Sands, New Mexico, where the above photo was taken at dusk. Actually, the shot is looking towards White Sands from Oliver Lee State Park to the east.

Not only is this blog posting about sharing a few trip images, prior to getting some full galleries posted, but also to discuss X-Trans sensor raw conversions, specifically how the latest Adobe Lightroom CC compares to PhotoNinja with images from my Fujifilm X-Pro2. While Adobe has significantly improved their Fujifilm X-Trans raw processing, eliminating many of the original obvious drawbacks, such as badly smeared colour details, strange blurs and/or outlining along high colour-contrast edges and so on, there are still some weaknesses. One is that fine texture details with strong colour contrast still seem to lack definition (nowhere near as badly smeared as before though) and that detail in shadows, and not just ones that have been dramatically pulled up in post, often seems to look muddy and rather blurry. By the way, you can click on any of the shots in this posting to bring up a much larger version. Just click the back button in browser to return to the post after...

Also, if you just want to see images from the trip and don't care about raw processing, click to see all the blog postings from my 2016 June Southwest Trip...

Fujifilm's Fifty-Sixes Compared! The APD Effect…

A large version of the above here: APD-f1.2-lights.gif

Fujifilm has two versions of the their 56mm lens, the regular Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2R and the Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2R APD, one that has an internal apodization (APD) filter. Before I get into the technical lens details, let me mention that you'll see a number of animated GIFs in this blog posting that are comparisons between those two lenses wide open at f/1.2. Note that GIFs only have 256 colours in total and are dithered to allow them to display a 24-bit colour image. This dithering can be visible as some roughness or even slight banding in these animations. Also, for those who just want to dive in and look at images, here is a link to the full gallery with all the photos mentioned in this posting, each carefully shot at seven different f-stops with both lenses - 70 images in total!

Gallery: Fujifilm's Fifty-Sixes Compared! The APD Effect…

I chose to test the lenses at third-stops from f/1.2 to f/2 and then go right to f/2.8 and finally f/4 since the effect becomes so minimal once you stop down past f/2.0. The photos in the sample gallery were all shot on a tripod, with the two 56mm lenses changed carefully as to not move the camera. For some reason, I did notice a hint of movement on some sets that was likely my forgetting to sufficiently tighten the panning-lock on my ball-head, however, there was definitely a distinctly different "aim" to both 56mm lenses, something I found a bit unusual. Even though the shift was only slight, it was bothersome enough that on all the photo groups, I carefully cropped them ever so slightly, then nudged the crop frames around until I got the best superposition of the regular set with the APD set. While this was rather tedious, luckily Lightroom made it fairly painless. Once I had the f/1.2 versions aligned, I could just sync the crop settings on each group of smaller f-stops.

In order to show some of the bokeh effects more obviously, I heavily cropped two sets in the gallery, namely photos 15-28 and 57-70. On those, the frame you see is roughly a third the area of the whole field-of-view. All the others only have a tiny bit of cropping, just enough so I could achieve perfect alignment of each set of shots, well almost perfect at least. Lastly, there was some movement of branches due to wind, especially in photos 43-56.

For some less technical and more aesthetic samples, see this blog posting from a week earlier...

Post: Nicole with the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2R APD

So, now for some details of what makes Fujifilm's 56mm APD lens (almost) unique...

Flashlight Ceiling Beamshots (Take 1)

Gallery: Flashlight Beamshots (Ceiling / Take 1)

I've decided to take my experience in compressing a photograph's dynamic range and apply that to rendering flashlight beam-shots in such a way as to show all the subtle colour differences and beam artifacts. There are many subtleties to the beams produced by various flashlights and while it is relatively easy to see these differences visually when shining against a blank white wall, it is not so easy to capture on camera, at least not with a single photo. Combining the large, 'domed' LEDs with high precision, polished reflectors and anti-reflection coated lenses in modern high-end flashlights can also create colour artifacts in the beam, sometimes quite obvious and other times more subtle.

I have endeavoured to somewhat accurately portray these differences in the gallery which you can access by clicking on the above image. Not only might these beam-shots be of interest to other flashlight aficionados, those that sometimes call themselves "flashaholics", but some of the subtle patterns and coloration are also quite beautiful in their own way. I need to be careful, since with my growing collection of lights, I may be well on the way to "flashaholism" myself! A great resource, if you want to learn more about modern high-end flashlights, is CandlePowerForums.

The middle image above (and the first image in the gallery) show the collection of lights, diffusers and filters that I photographed. There are many notes following in this blog entry, describing the test conditions, which lights were photographed etc. One thing that I will stress right from the get-go is that the photos in this gallery can in no way be used to judge the relative brightness of these lights. More details follow…

[update 12/31/2013]: added one missing photo and revised the order of the gallery and descriptions slightly to make more sense.
[update 1/1/2014]: Added labels to each shot in the gallery and fixed a few minor things in the article. Happy New Year!
[update 1/6/2014]: Added in the Thrunite TN32 beam-shot and took out the laser+refracting head to keep the gallery at a clean 35 shots.

Light Painting at MOA with a SupBeam X40...

On Saturday night, instead of braving the crowds and photographing yet another "Celebration of Light" fireworks, like I have for many years in a row (I was tempted), I decided to do something a whole lot more peaceful and meditative. I went to the totems behind the Museum of Anthropology and did some light painting.

Well actually, it wasn't all that peaceful for me...

It turns out that I did a whole lot of running back and forth through each frame with my new handheld LED searchlight, making sure never to stop in one spot long enough for my body to register on the shot, although there are a few ghostly hints of me showing on a couple of the images. I also made sure that while painting, I was either blocking the head of the flashlight from the camera's view with my body or with objects in the scene, or simply made sure that I was never pointing the light back towards the camera. I did ruin a few attempts when I wasn't being careful enough...

X-Trans Raw Files in Lightroom 4.4 RC

(Above, the left side shows the old conversion and the right side, the new)
Open full image: LR44_train_full.jpg

Yesterday, Adobe posted release candidate updates to Lightroom (4.4 RC) and Camera Raw (7.4 beta) on the Adobe Labs website. One of the key improvements, apart from some solid bug fixes and new camera support, is an update to their Fujifilm X-Trans raw conversion code. In their words: "...a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Fujifilm cameras with the X-Trans sensor." Well, the word "correction" doesn't do justice to all the improvements. Virtually all of the complaints I had about Adobe's X-Trans conversions have been addressed.

I have prepared some side-by-side comparisons of various images (Lightroom screenshots), converted with the previous Adobe X-Trans algorithm in Photoshop CS6 and ACR v7.3 (the left-side 100% crop), and Lightroom 4.4 RC (the right side 100% crop), which uses Adobe's new code. At 100% or 200% pixel-peeping zoom levels, the differences are clearly visible, if you know what to look for. Below each image is a link to open a 3000 pixel version of the full image in a new window, processed and output with the new Lightroom 4.4 release candidate. When you click on the side-by-side comparison screenshots, make sure you zoom to 100% on the window that opens to see the differences more clearly. Or save the shots to your computer and open them up in something other than your browser. The screenshots are from Lightroom sized to a 27" display, so they are 2556x1418 in size.

I have purposefully chosen images that look particularly bad, the worst ones I could find when viewed at 100% zoom, in order to illustrate the sometimes dramatic changes in this new update. In a few instances, the problems were serious enough that you could even see them in substantially downsized versions for the web, for example the "can" (compressed air can) image, the "railing" image and the "grass" image.

Fujifilm X-E1: Dynamic Range and More Comments

Fujifilm X-E1 Dynamic Range Comparison Gallery

The above animated GIF I made, shows an example of what sort of range one can get from a single raw file. It is an image that was included in the night shot gallery linked to in my previous X-E1 post. The dark version is how the default conversion settings look (my defaults, that is, ones that already give slightly more shadow detail than normal), when processing through Adobe Lightroom v4.3RC. The bright version is the final result. Most of the adjustments were just done with the highlight and shadow sliders, but in this case, I wanted to darken the bright interior down more without darkening the outside lit walls too much, so I did some selective adjustments for the windows. I was a bit sloppy and didn't isolate the main yellow door frame enough in the "after" version, so it has darkened down a bit too much for my liking. In any case, it serves to illustrate that one can get a remarkably good dynamic range from a single raw X-E1 file. Hopefully people don't find the continuously running animation above too annoying!

If you click the image (or the link below it), you'll be taken to a gallery with 24 image pairs, all taken from my previous X-E1 galleries, each pair starting with the "after" version and the image to the right is the "before", the original unadjusted version. It is effective to use the right and left keyboard arrow keys to switch between image pairs, so you can see a smooth fade from before to after and back, similar to the above animation but in higher resolution. Some images have fairly minimal adjustments but I thought it would be helpful for people to see how much manipulation has gone into the final versions, especially the night shots. On a few you'll see some slight tilting caused by perspective corrections where I either didn't quite get the shot perfectly lined-up, or where I intentionally tilted up or down for compositional reasons.

Canon Pixma Pro-1: Profiling and art papers...

On my last Pro-1 blog entry I mentioned that I found that downloaded profiles improved on the many that Canon supplied with the printer. Well, I am picky I suppose and while some profiles I've tried do seem outstanding, like the one I downloaded from Moab Paper's website for their amazing Slickrock Metallic Pearl for example, others could use a little help... especially those for some of the fine art papers. So, I've started the process of generating my own profiles by printing out the high-quality + extended-greys targets for my Spyder3 Print calibrator...

X100: Firmware v1.10 has arrived!

Fujifilm Global: X100 Firmware Update Page

The long awaited major firmware update has arrived! A link to the appropriate page is below the above image, a photo of my own X100 that I took just before initiating the update. After a few minutes of playing around, I have to congratulate Fujifilm for carefully listening to user feedback with a responsiveness that I have rarely, if ever, seen from any other camera company. This is no subtle update: major changes to the operation of the camera have been made, and all this after a few months of end-user and reviewer feedback!

In particular, I want to mention image playback, which has been changed so dramatically that it has gone from being one of the most frustrating cameras I have ever used used in that regard, to very nearly the best! Not only can one still very quickly zoom in with a single button press, but also switch between info screens, to a blank "image only" view, also zoom in from the histogram/full-info view, switch to previous and next images in almost every possible mode and finally, the current mode you are in now sticks for good, until you go and change it yourself. Anyone who has spent any time with an X100 will be astonished at how dramatic and effective the changes are to image review and playback. Well done!

When it comes to shooting, all the annoying "automatic" mode changes, ISO changes etc. when switching between P/A/S/M modes, turning the power off, initiating playback, all those "...what the hell did the camera just do without me asking it to?!" quirks seem to be pretty much gone for good now. Hooray!

Infrared with the Fujifilm X100

Ever since the X100 was announced, I was curious about its ability to possibly shoot infrared. With a large, highly sensitive APS-C sized sensor promising clean high ISO, a contrast-detect AF system that should allow for focusing in IR light without any manual focus offset or camera recalibration, and its hybrid viewfinder that should allow one to either see "through" a near-opaque IR filter with the EVF, or use its OVF for direct viewing, I figured it had a chance.

I even emailed Fujifilm and mentioned how cool it would be if they made a special edition IR-enabled X100 since they are pretty much the only company that has ever made specialty IR/UV enabled digital cameras. They could leave the standard IR-blocking filter off the sensor and then replace the internal switchable ND filter with an IR blocking filter instead, similar to a Tiffen Hot-Mirror filter.  Then one could shoot standard colour images with the "ND" filter in place, now actually an IR blocking filter.  Then to shoot digital IR, just turn off the "ND" and attach the visible light blocking filter of choice, such as a Hoya R72 or a B+W 093. One could then even do even more exotic UV photography with an appropriate filter... presuming that the Fujinon lens will "sort of" focus UV light... not an easy task actually. For sharply focused UV images, one needs very exotic glass, rare and expensive.

Geotagging inside Adobe Lightroom...

Lightroom Geotagging plugin in action (click image for larger view)

One thing I am personally surprised at, is how few camera manufacturers put built-in GPS modules in their cameras.  There are a handful of P&S models from a few companies, but the only DSLR I can think of is a recent Sony model. Nowadays, I expect a GPS chipset would likely cost a company $10 or less to include in their camera - heck, just about every cellphone made in recent years has one, even inexpensive ones and not just high end smart-phones. Some companies, such as Nikon with their GP-1 and Hasselblad with their GIL GPS receiver have some reasonably convenient add on modules for their cameras that will automatically geotag your images, but why not include these in all cameras?!

Part 1: Photo Backup Strategy

Part 1: Backups at Home

RAID & hard drives - Back it up!

People often ask me what my backup strategy is so I thought I would outline what I am doing with the many images I shoot these days.  In the above photo on the very right, you can see a LaCie 2 TB RAID drive, set for the faster RAID 0 (striped) as opposed to the more secure RAID 1 (mirrored).  I wanted the best performance possible for storing my Lightroom image library which is why it is set that way. You can also see a couple of WiebeTech drive enclosures to the left, and there is one more WiebeTech behind the speaker on the left that you cannot see.

In the foreground is a smaller enclosure with a 128GB SSD drive that I use on the road with my MacBook Air as a shared drive.  My current working Lightroom image library and image files are on the SSD so I can work on stuff while away from home and then just plug the drive in at home and seamlessly resume where I left off without having to deal with library syncing etc.

Lightroom 3: Web module plugin compatibility

A note about web-gallery plugin compatibility with the latest version of Lightroom...

(Shortcut to the gallery mentioned: 2010 Olympics: February 22nd Festivities)

Adobe is finally shipping boxed copies of Lightroom 3, and we now have upgrades and full versions in stock at Beau Photo.  I have been using the beta version of LR3 ever since it came out, and one very obvious improvement is in image quality.  The new "Process 2010" raw conversion algorithm is vastly improved over the previous one, which Adobe has tagged "Process 2003".  Much better noise reduction (very near the quality of third party programs like Noise Ninja) with detailed control over luminance and chroma settings, including the ability to essentially turn NR off completely if you want to handle noise using third-party software. In any case, what I want to mention here is compatibility with third party gallery plugins, specifically those from The Turning Gate.

CS5 HDR Toning & Topaz Adjust

Photoshop CS5 has introduced a useful new image adjustment control called HDR Toning.  I have found it to be useful on not only HDR images, but even on regular images that need a bit of extra pop.  It probably wouldn't be that good an idea to use it aggressively on 8-bit per channel images, but on 16-bit images or 32-bit HDRs it can work wonders with minimal effort.

On the left (click for the full size dialog box), you can see the adjustments I've made for the following image.  As with the Shadow/Highlight control in Photoshop, I don't find the defaults to be particularly good ones, but with some careful tweaking, the HDR Toning function can make some fairly subtle and natural looking adjustments, although over-the-top settings are readily available for those who really like the obvious "HDR Look" that seems so popular these days.

Camera Raw v6.1 Lens Corrections

If you have bought Adobe Photoshop CS5, you should ensure you also have the latest update of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).  If you haven't upgraded to CS5 yet, Beau Photo has the upgrades in stock!

At first glance, ACR 6.1 might not look all that much different than 6.0 or, for that matter, the 5.x versions, but trust me, it is! First off, v6.0 has brought a whole new level of image quality, with massively improved rendering of fine detail, mainly due to its new demosaic, sharpening and noise reduction algorithms. Version 6.1 ushers in something that is truly huge though: automated lens corrections for chromatic aberration, vignetting and even distortion. This is the part of the new ACR window I want to draw your attention to: