Photographer's Corner - equipment

[RonBoyd]

Lightroom CC would be worth $10 a month if I had any interest in using Photoshop.

Upgrade price of LR alone is $80.

Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan 1-Year Subscription - $99.88 (Reg. $119.88)

Use promo code BHOPTIC15 ($20.00 off) at B&H to get one full year of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan (Photoshop CC + Lightroom CC) for only $99.88. Regularly $119.88.

Note from Sean: I've been an Adobe CC Photography Plan customer ever since it first became available. It is undoubtedly one of the best investments I make each month and well worth the normal price of $9.99 per month. However, at this price ($8.32 / mo), it's an absolute steal. [Sean]

 

[NW-Bound]

We only own pocket point-and-shoot cameras, are not serious photographers, and do not take as many photos as people here. Even so, I often wonder if we have spent too much time taking snapshots than to enjoy the scenery though our eyes. The above is perhaps the main reason I have not invested in a better camera.

 

[RonBoyd]

We only own pocket point-and-shoot cameras, are not serious photographers, and do not take as many photos as people here. Even so, I often wonder if we have spent too much time taking snapshots than to enjoy the scenery though our eyes. The above is perhaps the main reason I have not invested in a better camera.

Above?

Oh! But I did savor every moment of the sunsets and the full moon/eclipse. Granted sunsets happen very quickly (relatively) but, even so, there is plenty of time to take pictures without it taking away from the enjoyment of the event. The eclipse, on the other hand, took so long that it became quite boring actually. Of course, that it happened at 4:00 in the morning didn't add much excitement for me personally.

 

[NW-Bound]

Oh, sorry. I did not mean the set up to take any particular photo, but was just thinking of travelers taking mucho [-]megabytes[/-] gigabytes in their trips.

But I can also see that if one is serious into this hobby, then it is not a detraction but an enjoyable activity. It is of course chicken or the egg, but my lack of dedication does show up in the snapshots that I take.

 

[audreyh1]

!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what to say. Does you camera generate 100 mb files? Or do you take very long trips to very many places.

And I thought I was a profligate photographer.

25MB raw files.

We were in Germany and Austria for almost 3 weeks.

On the day we visited Neuschwanstein and Linderhof I shot 1000 images, filling most of the 32G "extra" memory card I had thankfully brought along. Some of the reason for many images was the early morning lighting was high contrast (bright sun and deep shadow) forcing HDR exposures for several landscape views. And then several views were highly amenable to panoramas.

When presented with amazing scenery I just keep shooting and shooting......

I did a huge amount of building interior photography as well on the 3 week trip, although unless there is something like stained glass or a lot of light coming in a window I don't usually do multiple exposures.

This new Lightroom seems to work better with fewer HDR exposures than my previous software, so I may be able to get away with taking fewer. But I need to gain practice with it first to be convinced I am shooting enough when in the field.

 

[explanade]

I used to think that way. Had a moratorium on cameras between a film SLR I owned in the 80s and a compact I picked up about 10 years ago.

Lot of trips with no photos.

Now photos are one of the reasons to travel.

I have my photos cycling through my iMac as screensaver and many of them remind me of the time and place I took them.

 

[explanade]

When I went, photos were not permitted inside Liderhof and pretty sure Neuschwanstein. I snuck one in from the chappel because it looked out to Alpsee.

However, I later found there were better shots from the balcony by the cafe and at the path out to Marienbruke.

I went in the afternoon and the sun was on the opposite side of the lake so the conditions weren't the best.

I played around with HDR and panorama but they take up too much time to process, not to mention the need for additional software. I do take bracketed and overlapping shots, with the thought to process HDR and panoramas of them some day.

But I've liked selected single shots as screen savers well enough. Maybe with LR offering a one stop solution, I'll play around more.

That is when I finally am forced to migrate away from Aperture.

 

[NW-Bound]

However, I later found there were better shots from the balcony by the cafe and at the path out to Marienbruke.

I went in the afternoon and the sun was on the opposite side of the lake so the conditions weren't the best...

And there's that. No matter how good a photo I think I've got, when I go on the Web, there are always better photos, either due to better lighting or quite often skills.

Still, we take a lot of snapshots more because they are personal mementos. In our travel, we often forget the meals or the places we had them. A quick snapshot of the restaurant or the dishes will bring back a lot of memories when viewed later, though it has no artistic values.

 

[audreyh1]

We only own pocket point-and-shoot cameras, are not serious photographers, and do not take as many photos as people here. Even so, I often wonder if we have spent too much time taking snapshots than to enjoy the scenery though our eyes. The above is perhaps the main reason I have not invested in a better camera.

In a sunset, the camera is sitting on a tripod. I'm usually not looking through the viewfinder - I can see the scene on the back of the camera as well as the view in front of me.

So I'm standing there, watching the sunset, occasionally press the button once to take a series of exposures. Very occasionally make a framing adjustment or turn up the ISO. A lot of time spent just enjoying the view.

 

[audreyh1]

Lightroom CC would be worth $10 a month if I had any interest in using Photoshop.

Upgrade price of LR alone is $80.

I've only paid for a Lightroom upgrade every couple of years. And I will probably not upgrade my Photoshop 6.

So far Adobe has provided camera raw updates for Photoshop free of charge. And I use Photoshop less and less as Lightroom becomes more capable.

So I haven't been interested in the subscription model. Mainly because I already own stuff.

 

[audreyh1]

When I went, photos were not permitted inside Liderhof and pretty sure Neuschwanstein. I snuck one in from the chappel because it looked out to Alpsee.

However, I later found there were better shots from the balcony by the cafe and at the path out to Marienbruke.

Our driver/guide made sure we knew about the view from the balcony by the cafe. And I'm glad he did. I shot several panoramas there - the view was amazing and the light was great.

And we were at Marienbruke first thing in the morning - like 8:30am. This was where a lot of stops were needed because the castle was brightly lit while the ravine was in deep shadow. So I burned quite a few HDR image sequences there. By some miracle we had the bridge to ourselves for a whole minute!!!

No interior shots of course. But beautiful gardens at Linderhof, and you could shoot inside a couple of the small buildings if you were willing to shoot through glass. And we visited a couple of other locations that day.

 

[explanade]

You had to compete in the balcony with people taking selfies.

Ugh what a stupid trend.

Honestly I would not pay to visit inside again. If I could go to the cafe without doing the tour, that's the way I would go. Otherwise stay outside.

But now that I've been, there are other sights I'd visit, like bertesgaden and Hallstatt.

 

[audreyh1]

You had to compete in the balcony with people taking selfies.

Ugh what a stupid trend.

Honestly I would not pay to visit inside again. If I could go to the cafe without doing the tour, that's the way I would go. Otherwise stay outside.

But now that I've been, there are other sights I'd visit, like bertesgaden and Hallstatt.

The balcony wasn't that crowded, actually.

We first saw the "selfie sticks" when we arrived in Salzburg. Seemed like half the Asian tourists were carrying them. We thought it was hilarious. Quite practical if you are seriously into selfies which apparently they are......

We enjoyed the interior of Neuschwanstein very much. But I'm sure once was enough.

It's the most crowded attraction in Bavaria. That's just the way it is.

I had visited 50 years early where I was barely 5, so it was fun to see the difference from what I remember. I think we only saw the interior great hall when I was 5, as I only remembered the staircase in a huge room. We certainly didn't see any of the upper floor rooms. I didn't realize they existed until the recent visit.

 

[audreyh1]

OK - so I gave HDR in LR 6 a whirl. Just picked my first HDR set of Neuschwanstein from the Marienbruke. It was challenging because the bright early morning sun lit up the castle and nearby rocks and distance, but the closer trees and ravine were in very deep shadow. So multiple exposures were called for. Also note that the HDR set of exposures was handheld - a multiple exposure sequence done automatically, but no tripod.

I took five exposures, but I selected the middle and darkest, lightest for the HDR: -2EV, 0EV, +2EV.The examples seem to indicate LR works better with fewer exposures/less overlap.

I was quite impressed. Beautiful full range of exposures in the resulting HDR going from all black to all white - much better than the prior solutions. Seemed like a very smooth tonal range. Also no weird edge effects like I was getting in some of my older HDRs.

Did this on the Air. Took a while to crunch the HDR preview, but not super long. Didn't use deghosting - wasn't needed. LR did an awesome job of alignment as can be seen by the 100% closeup of the castle. The laptop I worked on doesn't have a calibrated monitor.

Pretty amazing really. This will be fun while traveling - if I have time!!!!

 

[Ronstar]

I'm going to get Lightroom 6 soon. I'll just get the standalone version w/o photoshop. I have been using the Google/NIK HDR Haddon for Lightroom, and it seems that the HDR composites are not as sharp as a single photo.

Audrey's LR6 HDR looks very sharp to me.

 

[audreyh1]

I usually first process a single exposure to make sure that I really need to use more than one to get an acceptable result. In this case, in spite of the tough lighting situation, the single exposure I took before taking the HDR sequence actually didn't have any areas hitting the exposure limits. In Lightroom, adjusting the exposure and contrast you can get all the image inside the histogram.

The HDR images the exposure adjustment ranges from -10 to +10. In the non-HDR case the range is -5 to +5. I think in the HDR version I was seeing info between +/- 7, otherwise all black or all white. So gained a couple of stops of range for control, but in this particular case it may not have mattered since nothing was actually blown out.

On HDR file sizes: Looking at an old HDR 32 bit tiff built using the prior method, they were typically getting close to 250MB. These new 32 bit DNGs are under 75MB. Major improvement there.

I was often getting bogged down before in the process of creating composite files, and then dealing with artifacts introduced during the process. That really slow me down. And ultimately I just wasn't happy with the Photoshop 32-bit HDR tone mapping. I think I can get past that roadblock now. What a relief!

Glad I am retired. I have a lot of photo processing to do!!!

 

[Chuckanut]

OK - so I gave HDR in LR 6 a whirl. Just picked my first HDR set of Neuschwanstein from the Marienbruke.

Next time let me know you are photographing my vacation home. I'll have the staff prepare a grand lunch.

 

[Ronstar]

Audrey - I like your most recent photo more than the HDR in your previous post. Great image. How did you process the most recent pic (....single_exposure.jpg)?

 

[audreyh1]

Audrey - I like your most recent photo more than the HDR in your previous post. Great image. How did you process the most recent pic (....single_exposure.jpg)?

Well - I was working on the big HD screen workstation, and I took a little more care. Having stared at the image for a while I knew better what it needed.

In the first case I was working on my little Macbook Air laptop with teeny uncalibrated screen. There I was just making sure everything was functional on the laptop and to get an idea of how slow things might be.

 

[Ronstar]

Thanks Audrey - I know how that goes. I only download and rough process on my macbook when I'm on the road. Then fine tune later on the bigger monitor when I get home. It does make a big difference.

 

[audreyh1]

Another quick and dirty experiment. I did a pano in LR6 from three shots of the Salz River. This is the view of Salzburg from the Monchsberg ridge next to old town. The river does a gentle S curve through the city. I uploaded a 2500 pixel wide jpg (original is around 8700 pixels wide). OK - it looks like this forum set it to 1600 pixels which you have to keep clicking to zoom in all the way.

There is an incredible amount of detail. In the original you can see all the cars and buses. The pedestrians walking across the bridges and down all the streets. You can even see the locks attached to the bridge railings. Amazing!

The initial panorama merge to preview was really, really fast - surprising me. I could switch between the different methods and it didn't take that long. I selected auto crop. Then when I accepted the preview settings LR did the processing, but really didn't take that long. I was expecting a much slower response based on comments I had read. I'm running on my Macbook Air again.

What a delight to be able to go back and adjust the crop after making some small leveling adjustments.

I think they have made some performance improvements, because some of the things I was tinkering with used to crawl in Photoshop, let alone Lightroom.

I spent a lot more time scrolling through this at 100%, looking for artifacts. Didn't find any - just a spot to remove and a distracting white tag to clone over.

The three original shots are around 20MB each. The pano is 103MB

 

[RonBoyd]

Another quick and dirty experiment. I did a pano in LR6 from three shots of the Salz River.

Terrific!

I do wonder, however, about the date in the lower right. It implies the "Date Taken" but I suspect it was the date of processing. <grin>

 

[explanade]

Do you have faith in DNG to store a lot of your photos under that format?

Well for HDRs and Panos, better than JPGs or TIFFs at any rate?

Heard some people rave about Polar, an online-only editor.

 

[audreyh1]

Do you have faith in DNG to store a lot of your photos under that format?

Well for HDRs and Panos, better than JPGs or TIFFs at any rate?

Heard some people rave about Polar, an online-only editor.

Yes. It's better than a company proprietary camera raw format.
Way better than JPGS - it has all the data.

Not too worried about the Adobe formats for the next few decades anyway.

TIFFs are just huge.

Up until now I had been using PSD files.

 

[audreyh1]

Terrific!

I do wonder, however, about the date in the lower right. It implies the "Date Taken" but I suspect it was the date of processing. <grin>

I didn't put that date there, the forum did. That looks like an upload timestamp. If you click on the image to open it directly, that will go away. Then click again, and you can zoom in more on the image at 1600 pixels.