LensWork Technology Blog

Pano gear —in action

Last week I ordered a panorama head (see this post) from Jasper Engineering, their Pano Head 3.

Because I am a novice at this, I can't offer any comparisons to other gear, but I must say I am very impressed with the build quality of this device. Precision machined and finished to professional standards. I like the large knurled knobs and way everything fits so tight. Precision is the word, so I don't mind repeating it. Now I just need to learn how to use it.

Did the first crude — and I do mean crude — test this afternoon. Out my kitchen window to the shipyard across the street. Correct that — through my kitchen window to the shipyard across the street. I was so anxious for a test I didn't bother to open the window. Yikes.

Here was my strategy on this first test based on a fairly simplistic thought process:

1. Mount the camera in portrait orientation.
2. Level the pano head using the bubble level on the end of the main arm.
3. Use my zoom lens at 45mm (a 90mm equivalent) with a very approximate nodal point. No use fussing too much on this first test.
4. Set the camera to manual to make all exposures exactly the same.
5. Focus the camera and then lock it so it wouldn't refocus with every shot.
6. The detents in the base plate of this pano head are every 15°, but I wanted more overlap than that. I shot images at roughly half-way between each detent and on the detents. This gave me 11 overlapping shots over a bit less than a 90° swing.

This next part may seem a bit convoluted to you experienced experts, but it made sense to me. I loaded the 11 images into Lightroom and did a few basic things there. I tweaked one of the key images as I would if it were a stand-alone photograph — black point, clarity, brightness, sharpening, noise reduction, white balance, etc. — and then synced the rest of the images so they all had exactly the same treatment. I then exported all 11 images using these common Lightroom adjustments to individual image files. These I then popped into Photoshop's automated Photomerge function using the "Perspective" option. As the final step, I cropped out the excess "wings" and did a very quick job of spotting out the power line running through the image that runs in front of our building.

The strategy worked like a charm. It stitched together perfectly and looks great — at least to my novice eye. Printing at 360 ppi it would make an 11" x 52" image. So much for the first test.

Here is the resulting 78 megapixel image . . .

And a downloadable full size JPEG (10megabyte file) just in case you want to take a look in full res.

View this photo

Conclusions: This is fun! This is easy!

Now comes the hard part — making something meaningful and of art quality.

Shorpy Tones 2

First, some objective data. Here are four representative images and their corresponding histograms from Photoshop.

Very interesting. Note that there are true, dead blacks in every image, just not vary many. Same with whites. Medians at 130, 142, 143, 111.

Compared to an image from one of my recent blog posts.

Median = 90. Is this just the way I am processing them, or something in the digital capture? In particular, note that the histogram in Shorpy #4 and my image are similarly shaped, through the lowest 1/3 of the tonal scale. In the remaining 2/3, however, look at all those light tones in the Shorpy image! Wow.

More research and some experimenting needed . . .

Shorpy Tones

I love the daily entertainment of the Shorpy website. Do you?

One thing I've noticed that I am fascinated with are the relative tonal quality of those old images.

Notice the overall lightness of tone. Sure, there are good, deep blacks, but something in those old films or in his reprocessing of the old images gives them a lightness of being that is very different than what we see in today's aesthetic, or perhaps the way our equipment responds to light.

Indoors or outdoors, I see the same thing. Look at the shadows of the following . . .

Is it the very slow film? Is it the extremely gentle shoulder that keeps the highlights from blasting out? What is it about these images that seem so airy and illuminated? And — I guess more to the point — can we achieve this look with today's materials? I love this look, so I'm off to do some experiments.

Sony Vaio X

Here is my initial report on the Sony Vaio X netbook, er, laptop. (Sony may be watching.)

Wow.

Did I say, "Wow"? I meant . . .

WOW!

I really wanted the iPad to be my choice for this upcoming trip to Xiang Sha Wan. I could taste it — that slick presentation screen, the 1.6 pounds that is as close to antigravity as you can come, the eBooks/music/audiobooks/email. I really wanted it to work. After weeks of fretting over this, I've decided it is simply is too much of a compromise when I can take the Sony Vaio at 0.55" thick weighing in at just 1.5 pounds. Including a keyboard, Lightroom, Skype video, etc. Sorry, iPad, you were close but no cigar.

   

   

I've loaded all my software into the Vaio and it is simply amazing. Sure, it's a "netbook" in spite of Sony's insistence that it is a "laptop." It's running an Atom Z550 processor and any way you slice it and dice it, it's a netbook. Even so, the 2GHz speed is noticeably faster than my 1.6GHz ASUS even though it's an N-series processor. It's not going to smoke in a multi-multi-task environment, but that's not what I do on the road. Two, maybe three apps at a time, it does just fine.

The Vaio may be a netbook, but — and this is no small matter — it runs Lightroom much faster than my ASUS netbook did, has a higher resolution screen, and is simply the perfect sweet spot of functional power at minimum weight.

My first real-world test was to fire up Lightroom (3.2) and OneNote 2010 and flip back and forth. Even when Lightroom was exporting a bunch of JPGs, OneNote skipped right along as I took notes and even recorded audio. I simply don't need anything more than this when I'm traveling — but it is sure nice to have both. Unfortunately neither of these things were possible with the iPad.

I assumed I'd use the (included) larger and heavier 12 hr battery for most of my needs. But, then it dawned on me that a couple hours is all I ever actually need for most uses except the actual plane flight. For meetings, for use with a projector during my talk, for taking to breakfast and catching up on the news — the 3 hr (more like 2+ hrs) is sufficient and so light weight. Again, I think the folks at Sony must have talked to real world users. They got it right.

Windows 7 (my first experience with it) is a winner.

The 128GB SSD solid state hard drive is fast, quiet, and efficient.

The Vaio took some heat in the reviews for it's smallish keyboard, but it's essentially the same size as the one on my ASUS netbook. The ASUS is 9.75" and Sony is 9.5". I can't tell any difference between them as I type except that they are both smaller than a regular sized desktop keyboard. That does take some getting used to. I think I'm going to try loading up Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking and see how well it does with voice recognition. I use this so extensively with my desktop, it would be great if the Vaio X has enough horsepower to run this software. I'll let you know.

Decisions over. I'm all set.

Sony Vaio X

The internal debate continues. Today I am popping into the Sony store for a hands-on look at the Vaio X series laptop (i.e., netbook). If I can have all the convenience of a laptop but at the weight of an iPad, that's a seductive combination. Maureen is eager to inherit my ASUS netbook for herself, so I might be more serious about this than I would have guessed. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of iOS 4.2 today, but it looks like it's not coming until sometime next week. If it doesn't solve some of my PDF creation issues with fonts, I would be very disappointed. I have to guess that Apple is motivated to fix this, but with the Jobs/Adobe thing, who knows?

Paranoia is starting to influence my thinking, too. If, for whatever reason, I cannot connect via Wi-fi with the iPad, I'd be sunk. In Mongolia. For two weeks. With a netbook, I'd at lease have Ethernet capabilities as a fall-back position.

Here is a comparison I've been working on.

	ASUS Netbook	Sony Vaio X	iPad
Processor	Atom N280 1.66 GHz	Atom Z550 2.0 GHz	Apple A4 1 GHz
Screen size	10.1" 1024x600 Not quite 16:9 (15.3:9)	11.1" 1366x768 16:9	9.7" 1024x768 4:3
Email	Outlook	Outlook	Mail
Skype	Video	Video	Audio
Can upload audio from the Olympus	Yes	Yes	No
OneNote	Yes	Yes	No
Email images	Yes, via HTML (and from OneNote)	Yes, via HTML (and from OneNote)	Via PDF From Notability
Lightroom	1024x600	1366x768	No
SD Card slot	Yes	Yes	Yes Requires Camera Kit Adapter
Hard drive memory	140 GB ATA	128GB SSD	16GB Flash
USB port	3	2	Adapter, limited application
External VGA output	Yes	Yes	No Yes, via Apple iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter
Need to take an external drive for backup?	Yes WD Passport 500 GB	Yes WD Passport 500GB	Nexto M1, 111 GB and another Nexto eXtreme
Wi-fi	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ethernet	Yes	Yes	No
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes	Yes
3G	No	Yes	No
Mouse	Bluetooth	Bluetooth	No
Track pad	Yes	Yes	Touch screen
Battery life	9-10 hrs	2 hrs (small battery) 10 hrs (large battery)	8-9 hrs
Weight	3.14 pounds	1.5 pounds (2 hr battery) 2.4 pounds (10 hr battery)	1.6 pounds 2.4 pounds with keyboard
Thickness	1.25"	.55"	.57"
Dimensions	10.47 x 7.53 x 1.12-1.50	10.95 x 7.29 x 0.55	9.6 x 7.5 x 0.5
Audiobooks, music player, headphone jack, speakers	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pre-Mongolia out-of-pocket expense	$0	$1300	$444

What to take?

I'm headed off to inner-Mongolia for a photo event and some shooting in late December. Last year when I went to China, I took my ASUS netbook and was thoroughly thrilled with it. Reflexively, I added it to my travel list for this upcoming trip, too.

And then I got to thinking. What did I actually do with the netbook and what if instead I were to take the iPad this year? Could I get by with the iPad and cut down on weight even more?

Well, what an interesting train of thought this has turned out to be.

What I actually used the netbook for last year:

• Email and voice email
• Internet stuff
• Skype (video) back home
• Upload camera cards to clear them out for use the next day, which meant . . .
• Lightroom
  • Reviewed images of the day
  • Organized my files into folders
  • Added key words

What I did not use the netbook for last year:

• Ebooks (used the Sony Reader instead)
• Music (used the Sansa Fuze instead)
• Take to breakfast with me so I could read eBooks (used the Sony Reader instead)
• Use it to show anyone LensWork or LensWork Extended (I never had it with me)

Can I do the things on the iPad that I actually did last year with the netbook? Well, . . .

• Email, yes
• Access the Internet, yes
• Voice email, yes
• Skype, yes, but audio only
• Show samples of LensWork and LensWork Extended, yes

In addition, I'll be able to:

• Upload and review images from the day's shooting
• Email review images back home
• Use the iPad as my eReader du jour
• Audiobooks
• Music

Although battery life doesn't compare to my MP3 player or the Kindle, it is comparable to the netbook; the iPad has a more portable form factor than the netbook; it's lighter weight than the netbook. In fact, even adding the Apple blue tooth keyboard, the total is still lighter weight than the netbook.

So that just leaves the primary reason I took the netbook: uploading the images off my camera cards each night in preparation for the next day's shooting. This trip I'll take my Nexto M1 image tank for that purpose. I'll have more to say about this device in later post.

So here's the total weight analysis:

Last year:

• ASUS Netbook
• Carrying case
• AC adapter
• Bluetooth mouse and batteries
• External backup hard drive
• Sony eReader, cover/case

  Total weight: 6.39 pounds

Proposed for this year:

• iPad
• Carrying case
• AC charger plug with USB connection and USB charger cord
• Camera Connection Kit
• Bluetooth keyboard and batteries
• Nexto M1 image tank and USB cable (will charge with the iPad AC plug)

  Total weight: 3.64 pounds

  (Only 2.94 pounds if I leave the keyboard behind and just use the on-screen keyboard.)

So, as surprised as I am, I think the netbook and the Kindle stay home this year. Wow, who'd have thought?

Which has led me to a bunch of research in iPad APPs I'll need . . . which I'll tell you about in my next post.

There's RESET, and Then There’s RESET

I refer to the RESET command in Lightroom, which I always thought meant "reset" — as in "go back to zero." I'm sure this was discussed in one of the many Lightroom tutorials I've completed, but for the life of me I don't ever remember the issue RESET being covered — at least not the most crucial part of what RESET actually does. You see, RESET doesn't go back to zero like you'd think — or at least like I thought. Guess again.

The reset command is not an "everything back to zero" command. Instead, the ground zero that reset actually resets to can be defined by us. In fact, it probably is, either by us or by Adobe by default. Reset means "go back to the beginning as you've defined it in the Set Default Settings" command. This is a very different thing than ZERO. It's found in the Develop Module under Develop/Set Default Settings . . .

Whatever your settings are when you click on Set Default Settings will be the automatic settings used when importing and when you click on the reset button. I have no idea how this little detail escaped me, but what a huge oversight on my part. Somehow I had set this default wrong and all my images imported with the wrong settings. It was easy to fix, but took me a while this morning to realize my mistake.

For reasons I'm not sure I know (but suspect were simply carried over from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3), my default settings were . . .

Because it was the default, every image I've imported into Lightroom 3 arrives with these settings. Because it was the default, every time I'd reset an image, it would jump to these settings. Maybe these are Adobe's defaults; maybe I somehow set them without knowing I did so; maybe they did carry over from Lightroom 2 when I updated my catalog. I don't know. The point is, these settings were fairly typical for my images in Lightroom 2 using PV2003, but are way off for Lightroom 3 using PV2010. I've needed to tweak every blasted image I've imported to Lightroom 3 to get it were I wanted it — and didn't need to. Aaaargh. I am dogmeat.

More typically, my settings end up something like this on most images processed in Lightroom 3 using PV2010. If they don't end up here, they at least ought to start here because it's a better setting for the vast majority of my images from the Panasonic G1 camera.

Now that I understand it, this feature is quite powerful and a good thing. For one, I can have different default settings for different cameras. Handy! Once I finesse the settings for sharpness, noise reduction, etc., every image comes in using that default and is ready for more serious editing. Handy! If I ever need to change the settings — which is precisely what I needed to do for the update to PV2010 — it's easy to update images to these new settings by simply doing a RESET. Handy!

And I can always get back to true dead zero if I need to with a preset that changes everything to zero. I suppose in some sense, the default settings is nothing more than a preset you can get to with the special RESET command/button with the added advantage that it is applied automatically per camera upon import. I know I must have learned this somewhere along the way and simply forgotten it. Live and learn. I just hope I don't forget it and need to relearn it all over again with Lightroom 4 and the next process version update.

A Lightroom moment of insight

I figured it out. Remember the "mealiness" I was talking about in this post? I now know where it was coming from.

I had forgotten that it is possible to set a default processing in Lightroom for a given camera. In Lightroom 2, I created a default for sharpening and noise reduction that was appropriate for my Sony DSC-R1 camera and Process Version 2003 used in Lightroom 2. Having forgotten that, when I moved to the Panasonic DMC-G1 camera, I created a Develop Preset for it and applied it to each image upon import into LR2. More on this in a bit.

When I upgraded to Lightroom 3, the default I'd set in Lightroom 2 was carried over and became the default for all imported images in Lightroom 3, Process Version 2010. Of course, the settings were not appropriate for Process Version 2010 nor my Panasonic camera, hence every image was looking "mealy" because they were over-sharpened and employed no noise control whatsoever. I was flummoxed with every image I'd work on until I realized this.

The first step was to set new defaults — as soon as I could find where to do so.

The default setting is found in the Develop Module under Develop/Set Default Settings . . .

This brings up this dialog box . . .

Aha! I canceled out of this dialog box, zeroed all develop controls, carefully worked the sharpen and noise reduction to something that looks good for this camera as a new default starting point with each image, and navigated back to the above dialog box and clicked on "Update to Current Settings." Now all the unprocessed RAW files I import start with this new default — without any mealiness to them.

Keep in mind three things:

• This is just a starting point
• This preset is not a factor in images you've already processed in the Develop Module.
• Images I brought over from LR2 that had the previous "default" setting remained at those settings even if I updated to Process Version 2010. I suspect this is because the previous default setting that had been applied meant that these image had been "developed" and therefore the default/developed settings were not updated.

Yowza, even if I update to Process Version 2010, the old default settings will still be applied? Yup. To remedy this and get to the new "default" settings, rather than click the Update Process Version exclamation point icon, just reset the image even though it hasn't had anything done to it yet other than the default. The reset will both update the image to Process Version 2010 and apply the new default settings to the image.

Unfortunately, like a lot of you I suspect, I applied a develop preset to every image when I imported them into the catalog. Having forgotten about the default settings business, I simply created a Develop Preset for my new Panasonic camera and applied it during the importation process. This means I don't have any images in the catalog that aren't already "developed" to at least that degree. So, I need to reset every image in my entire catalog — but only those that I've not done any serious developing work on. If I've done any work on an image after importation, I don't want to reset them or I'll lose all that work.

The best way I know to do this (at this point in my understanding) is in the Library Module, Grid View, and then Filter-by-Metadata. I can filter by Develop Preset for the preset I used on import. For example, I applied the Develop Preset Dakota Creek Sharpening 01 when I imported a bunch of the images in this folder:

All those images can safely be reset which will update them to Process Version 2010 and apply the new default settings. Sort of a pain, but better than trying to remember to do this six months from now when I will have forgotten all of this.

At least now I understand how I got where I am — I'm more knowledgeable, but dizzy.

More Lightroom 3 PV2010 conversions, and a conclusion

No question Lightroom 3 is a winner. No question that the Process Version 2010 is the way to go. The controls are much better for the ultimate goal of making the best images we can.

Also, no question that the wonkiness I'm seeing in the examples from yesterday are a problem.

I wondered if the issue was one of the RAW corrections applied in the software of my Panasonic G1, but I now don't think so. Here is a processed image from a RAW file from my Sony DSC-R1.

Full size image: View this photo

On the right is the image processed in LR2, and the left is the updated Process Version 2010 image. Again, the issue a corner as you can see here, in this case the upper left corner of the image . . .

Full size image: View this photo

I next exported the image to Photoshop to see if it was only an issue in the preview in LR3. Nope, it's really in the file. Even the Photoshop image shows the horrible defocusing in the upper left corner. It's clearly not just an issue with the LR preview files.

Full size image: View this photo

So, whatever the something is that's going wonky, is not limited to Panasonic G1 RAW files. The mystery continues, although because I have a remedy I'm losing impetus to investigate further.

Remedy: Here is the image after I reset back to the imported DNG and then do all the processing in LR3 using Process Version 2010 from scratch. Wonderful! Sharper, crisper, better noise control — all in all, a very favorable case for LR3 and Process Version 2010.

Full image: View this photo

So, the lesson for me is simply don't convert PV2003 into PV2010. Instead, start from scratch and completely reprocess the image with full confidence that the end point will be worth the effort.

Lightroom 3 wonkiness, version 2

Here is another image comparing Process Version 2003 (the one I did to my satisfaction in LR2, left) to a straight conversion by clicking on the update icon.

You probably can't see it at this magnification level, but click on the link below to take a peek at a full size, 100% magnification screen capture and you will.

View this photo
  

Notice the "mealiness" in the smooth tones? It's not really an over-sharpening, but it's like there's something similar to a mealy noise in the converted Process Version 2010 image that simply doesn't exist in the Process Version 2003 image. I can get rid of it by fussing a bit with masking, sharpening, luminance noise, and color noise adjustments, so ultimately it's not a problem. But, without the fussing to correct this I'd be very hesitant to use them.

Until I learn more about this, I will definitely be reprocessing with care all my older images that I want to use in Lightroom 3 as Process Version 2010 images so I can take advantage of the new tools. The problem is, if I have to do a bunch of fussing to correct whatever is going on, why not just start from scratch and re-work the image from the original DNG? But, if that's the case, does that mean I will lose all the work from Lightroom 2 if I want to take advantage of the new tools in Lightroom 3? Are they kidding?

I'm yet to do print tests. That's next.

BTW, why aren't I reading about this anywhere else? Is it just me, just my Panasonic G-1 camera DNG files?

More . . . .

Made a virtual copy of the LR2 post-conversion to Process Version 2010. Took the original back to the RAW file with RESET. Worked it in LR3 until it looked pretty close. Compare the corners in the two images below. In both cases the LR2 converted image is on the right, the LR3 Process Version 2010 image is on the left.

View this photo  upper right corner

View this photo  upper left corner

Why is the upper right corner of the image totally out of focus, yet the upper left corner looks pretty good? Hmmmm . . . . Something fishy definitely going on with this Process Version conversion — at least with my files from my Panasonic G-1 camera.