While it’s been clear for the past couple of years, the prices of camera gear coming out of Japan has been going up—in part due to a stronger Yen and a weaker dollar—the prices have been increasingly heading towards the point where I have to question whether the gear is worth that kind of money any more.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM II

The 24-70mm focal range has long been the workhorse for photographers. In fact, even though it’s not my favorite lens, it’s almost certainly my most used lens. And it’s hard to argue that while it works, and does a good enough job, the current Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM was somewhat lagging behind Nikon’s in terms of optical quality. So the announcement of the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM II isn’t entirely unexpected.

While the old 24-70 f/2.8 has an impressive number of exotic (1 UD and 2 aspherical) elements, the new 24-70 f/2.8L USM II ups the exotic glass game by doubling the number of UD elements and adding a super UD element while keeping the 2 aspherical elements. The changes in exotic glasses promise to reduce aberrations including color fringing.

Moreover, the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM II manages to shed a few ounces, dropping the weight from 33.3oz (950g) to 28.4oz (805g).

Unfortunately this drop in weight comes with the loss of the reverse-extension zoom barrel. If you’re not familiar with this, the way the existing 24-70 works was that it was shortest at 70mm and longest at 24mm; with the hood attaching to the outer fixed barrel instead of the inner moving one. Though it resulted in a huge shade, it meant that the lens was always properly shaded regardless of what focal length you were shooting at.

The new 24-70 II behaves like any other extending zoom does, where it lengthens as focal length increases, and the lens hood is mounted to the front of the moving lens barrel. As a result, the lens hood, really only shades optimally at 24mm, and not at 70mm.

The real jaw dropping feature of the new EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM II, however, is the price. And by jaw dropping, I’m talking an estimated street price of $2300 US. This is a full $600 more than Nikon is asking for their 24-70 f/2.8 and a staggering $900 more than the current Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, and almost as much as their 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM. To put this another way, if you’re looking to get yourself a photojournalist style kit of f/2.8 glass from 16mm to 200mm you’re now looking at over $6000 in lenses alone.

One other thing the worth a least a mention, the new 24-70 f/2.8L USM II sees some filter bloat, replacing the standard 77mm front filter from it’s pro predecessor with an 82mm front filter. So those of you, like me, who had standardized on 77mm filters and bought a 77mm circular polarizer hoping you wouldn’t need to buy another one. Ya, you’ll be breaking out your wallet for a nice new CPL too.

Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and Canon EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM

Though not to take away from their uniqueness, I’m combing my comments on these two lenses, as they’re really more similar than they are different. In fact, it raises a question in my mind as to why one of them exists.

Wide angle primes have long been the tools for landscape and street photographers, though typically for slightly different reasons. Being prime lenses, they tend to out perform their zoom counter parts when it comes to image quality. Fewer elements, mean better contrast, and one a single focal length means the lens can be better optimized to be sharp and distortion free. Moreover, they tend to pack considerable punch in a tiny package.

Which brings us to the pair of “slow” primes, the 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and the 28mm f/2.8 IS USM. Canon presently has two non-stabilized primes at the same focal lengths and apertures, though they are both some what dated and the old 28mm f/2.8 isn’t even a USM lens. However, they are cheap, coming in at $375 and $260 respectively. Though there not optical stars, they aren’t priced that way either. What they are, though, is entry level wide angle primes—with the 28mm f/2.8 being a entry level APS-C normal as well.

It’s not all bad however, the new primes feature:

• a 4 stop image stabilizer
• Ring USM auto focus motors with Full Time Manual Focus
• distance information for E-TTL2 flashes
• improved super spectra coatings
• 7-bladed circular apertures
• molded aspherical lenses

Canon also touts a distance scale, which while not completely useless, since it includes f/11 and f/22 DoF marks, is still a mere shadow of a proper manual focus distance scale.

That said, the EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM should offer an improvement in image quality over their somewhat dated predecessors.

So what confuses my about the new 24mm and 28mm f/2.8 primes?

To start with their price; which Canon is placing at an estimated $850 and $800 respectively. True, that’s a site cheaper than the EF 24mm f/1.4L USM’s $1750 price tag, but that still leaves the 28mm f/2.8 IS USM out there in why land?

On the other hand, consider a fast normal prime for a crop camera, something Canon still doesn’t have. 28mm on an APS-C sensor has a field of view equivalent to 45mm on a 135-format frame, which is arguably more normal than 50mm. However, at f/2.8 and at nearly the same price as the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM, you have to ask yourself what is that lens really buying you? It’s certainly not buying action freezing shutter speeds, even if the IS system is 2 stops better than the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8.

It would seem to me that a full frame 24mm f/2.8 IS USM priced at around $800-850 isn’t completely unreasonable, when the alternative is the 24mm f/1.4L USM at $1750. However, I think a fast crop normal, say a EF-S 28mm f/1.8 USM, at a $500 or so price point would have made more sense than the $800 full frame 28mm f/2.8 IS USM.

While I’m sure all 3 lenses will be stellar performers that at least begin to warrant their prices, it’s really starting to look like Canon photographers need to start fearing for their wallets.

So the brass tacks are as follows

• 36.3 MP effective FX sensor
• Base ISO range of 100-6400, expands to 50-25,600
• 4 FPS without the standard EN-EL15 battery, 6 FPS with the EN-EL18 (D4′s) battery in the MB-D12 grip
• Pentaprism viewfinder with 100% frame coverage at .7x
• 51-point D4 AF system
• Dual Card slots: 1- Compact Flash & 1- SD

Sensor and Frame Rate

The thing I think that impresses me the most is the frame rate at the sensor resolution they’re getting.When it comes to frame rate there are things that can become limiting factors, one is the time it takes for the mirror to cycle back down and the AF and metering systems to collect the data they need, the second is the amount of data that has to be read from the sensor and processed. This has been part of the force behind the megapixel limitations seen in the sports cameras, over their similar but higher resolution “studio” counterparts.

In the case of the D800, 6 FPS is well below the mirror blackout limits which makes the frame rate all that more impressive to me—it’s entirely data processing limited.

Of course, it’s not entirely unexpected that Nikon could pull this off; the Nikon 1 cameras could shoot 60 10MP 12-bit frames per second pushing close to 900MB/s though the processor, at least for short bursts. The D800′s max of six 36.3MP 14-bit frames per second nets a respectable 364 MB/s. For comparison, Canon’s 1Dx can push 14 14-bit 18MP frames a second or about 420MB/s but uses 2 processors to do it.

Secondly Nikon has decided to offer a version with out the anti-aliasing filter, the D800E. Without the AA filter, who’s job is basically to blur incoming light to reduce moire patterns, the D800E will be able to resolve more detail than any other small format SLR on the market. In fact, this is one of the key features that set medium format digital backs apart from their small format cousins when it comes to resolving detail. Unfortunately it’s a binary choice, you either buy a D800 with the AA filter, or a D800E without it.

Storage

Though perhaps not necessary worthy of a section all to it’s self, Nikon has upped the storage game on the D800 over the D700 predecessor. Instead of a single compact flash, the D800/E has a compact flash slot as well as a secure digital slot.

This has always been a baffling move to me, regardless of brand. Having two flash formats ultimately necessitates investing in both if redundancy is important. Moreover, it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me, that if you’re going to roll with multiple card slots they should be designed to be factory interchangeable. That is, I should be able to send the camera off to Nikon and have the SD slot changed out for a CF one.

Auto Focus

The D800 follows the D700′s footsteps in using it’s bigger siblings AF system, that is to say the D800/E has the same expanded 51-point system found in the D4. Including 1 cross and 10 horizontal points sensitive with lenses and lens plus teleconverter combinations of f/8

Personally I’ve always though this was a brilliant play. Differentiating SLRs, especially now when they are so auto focus centric in design, by hamstringing them with a piss poor auto focus system like Canon has, is simply off putting. Moreover, it goes back to cutting costs, in that you’re using one less model specific part across your camera models. Think of it like amortizing the costs of the pro AF system by selling gobs of them at the semi-pro level.

Needless to say I think this is one trait I think Canon should really pick up on.

A Look at Usability

That said, there are a couple of places where Nikon dropped the ball, mostly in terms of usability. There has long been a marked asymmetry when it comes to usability between the normal “landscape” grip and the vertical/portrait/battery grip. Nikon had been ahead in some ways with that on the D300/D700 where the add on battery grip included an AF controller thumb stick, making at lest some headway.

The problem then shifted to the DoF preview and function buttons on the front. The D300 and D700 at least places the DoF preview button fairly close to the bottom, meaning it wasn’t really out of reach regardless of whether you used the grip or not.

The D800 exacerbates the problem to some degree, moving the two front function buttons closer together and closer to the top of the camera. While the lower of the two buttons likely won’t be unreachable from the vertical grip, it will be more of a reach. This whole issue would of course be moot, if those buttons were duplicated on the front of the battery grip, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Another usability change that’s been made to the D800 is the way the drive mode dial is orientated. On the D300/700 the drive mode dial was clearly visible from the top of the camera, the writing was on a purely vertical surface. The D800 adopts a D4 style drive mode controller, which prints the drive mode on the side instead of the top. As a result when looking down on the camera, the drive mode is harder to see.

Whether or not this is an issue, largely will be a product of habit and whether or not you tend to look down on your camera when you change the drive mode as part of other settings.

Otherwise, the overall usability of the D800/E is somewhat similar to it’s D700 predecessor, and minor annoyances still exist—like keeping the mode button in a prime spot behind the shutter release while the ISO button is relegated to the left shoulder of the camera.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a long time Points in Focus reader, it’s probably obvious I’m a Canon guy, and the D800 yet again has prompted another round of massive Nikon envy from where I’m sitting. I say this doubly so since the D800 keeps a reasonable estimated street price of $3000 US, while Canon has been doing everything in their power to single handly bankrupt photographers.

While I’m not completely thrilled with the 36.3 MP, it’s simply more than I usually need and therefore more disk space used, and I have personal issues with giving up shooting in full resolution RAW just to save a bit of space. While many are quick to tout the mantra that storage is cheap, properly managing, backing up, and maintaining that storage makes it considerably more expensive.

All that said, 6 FPS at 36.3MP with an auto focus system that can seriously rock, and ISO performance that should be every bit as good as the D700′s if not better when you factor in down sampling for smaller prints, the D800 looks like it should be damn impressive. And the D800E, is well, just icing on the cake, want medium format quality in a small format package and price, exactly.

Clouds build in the evening sun.

I’ve long approached my photography in terms of designing an image, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of actually pressing the button and getting an image. Regardless though, what this really means is that I spend a lot of time looking at images, both mine and those taken by other photographers, and trying to figure out what not only makes them tick, but sometimes the thinking that went into getting there. A friend of mine once called this theoretical photography; maybe I shouldn’t, but I like the description.

Which brings me to the theoretical photography moment I want to talk about; how the intended, or at least most common end result can subtly influence the way you actually compose your images—or at least how it affects me.

The impetus of this was this was watching the IMAX movie Blue Planet on the tiny display of my iPad. Having been originally intended to fill a 60 by 80 foot canvas, the composition of the shots was inherently loose. What I mean is, for example, a lioness and her cubs would be bigger than life sized even if they were only say maybe a 1/4 of the frame tall. However, on a tiny display, what amounts to a tiny print, the lioness is little more than an tiny smudge—okay it’s not really that bad.

But that got me thinking about my own work. Most of which is destined, due to printer and camera resolution constraints to be small images, either as a print smaller than say 20×30 or as an image on the web or a computer display. As a result of this, and my increasingly dated 10 MP gear, I find that I heavily bias my own compositions and subject matter in at least two ways.

First, I dramatically favor tight compositions. Not only do they tend to clean up backgrounds, which I think in some ways is a crutch, but they put the most pixels on the subject as possible. Moreover, I’ll take this to the point of doing panos/stitches of things that probably don’t really need to be 100+ MP images, just because to get what I consider acceptable detail and wide angle images.

The second aspect of this is that I tend to also look for and favor images that are more color and geometrical in nature, as opposed to things that rely on being able to resolve detail. So things like twilight light, or the way the atmosphere will affect the color and density of successive tree or ridge lines.

Of course, I would also argue that identifying when you subconsciously do things is the first and most necessary step to addressing those things. Which is really why I’m writing this, no so much to opine on my own flaws, but to perhaps draw light to the need to step back and look at how you may be unexpectedly biasing your own work. I know I probably would have never paid any attention to it, had I not had the right combination of content targeted at immersion and a tiny rendition to notice that even though I try to insure that my gear isn’t dictating my vision, more often than not it really is.

Which brings me to the realization I had the other day. The resolution and format you shoot in and the presentation you’ll be making have and incredibly profound influence on how you compose images to start with.

Which brings me to gloves.

Just about every photographer I know has their preferences. One uses ski glove liners, another has rather nice tactical gloves (though, they do hold up better than softer fabric gloves when it comes to moving stuff). For the longest time used a crappy pair of knit things that didn’t work for crap. However after last years unusually cold winter, I thought it was time to do something about keeping my poor fingers warm.

When looking for gloves I had a few objectives in mind. First, they had to be reasonably warm, but not super hot. Like I said, it doesn’t get that cold down here and the last thing I want is to have to keep taking them off and putting them on.

Second, is that they need to have some grip. My 1D’s portrait grip is mostly covered by a Really Right Stuff L plate, which means most of the grip is smooth anodized aluminum not grippy rubber.

Finally, I really wanted something that didn’t require removing the whole glove to use my iPhone or iPad in the field. This means either “removable mitten” covers, or removable finger tips.

Which brings us to Target, and the Champion C9 gloves they carry. The gloves come in a number of styles, including both removable finger tip versions and finger-tip-less mitten cover versions. Some have grippy rubber coatings, others don’t and this is something I’ll be coming back to.

Style 1: Grippy is Good

I’ll call this style 1 for this purpose, the SKU on the label inside is 044000084 if that helps, I can’t currently find them on Target’s website, but that’s where I got them.

These are your basic light weight gloves. Other than the rubberized palms, they don’t have any fancy features or frills. That said, the rubberized grip holds quite well. Moreover, compared to the second style of gloves, they are slightly warmer.

In fact, the only real problem I have with these gloves is that to use my phone (any touch screen phone or tablet actually) I have to take them off.

Though they’re considerably better than the plain knit gloves I use to use; however, they’re not perfect. That said, if I didn’t have a touch screen phone, I don’t think complain at all.

Style 2: Removable Finger Tips

The second style I found is Target product #061-07-0830. These are listed online (see the link) and have a couple of features I kind of like over the first style.

First, they have removable finger tips on the thumb and index finger. You can work a touch screen phone or tablet without removing the glove, you just have to pop the finger tip off and have at it.

The second selling point for me was the long wrists. They’re long enough that they tuck under a jacket well which is ever so slightly warmer for when I’m pushing the edges of what I consider comfortable temperatures.

The only real problem with these is the complete lack of grip on the palms. However, this is a problem that can be readily solved.

Fixing the Grip Issue

The one problem with these gloves is that they lack any grip, fortunately it’s relatively easy to add grip to fabric. There are a number of guides that suggest buying a product called Plasti Dip, made by Performix, and using a syringe and a toothpick add dots in a regular pattern over the surface you wish to add grip to. This certainly works. However, maybe I’m just way to lazy to bother to grid out by hand 2 palms worth of grip dots on 1/4″ centers, and hope it didn’t look horrible.

The solution I came across is another product made by Performix called Super Grip. It’s a clear spray on rubber coating that’s designed to be used on fabric, moreover it’s flexible and washing machine safe. Their stated application is making rugs and bath mats non-slip, on smooth floors.

Prep for the application was simple enough, make sure the gloves were clean, mask off the area not to be covered with blue painters tape, insert a cardboard “hand” cutout in the glove to hold it’s shape, and spray.

With the Super Grip applied, the style 2 gloves aren’t quite as grippy as the first pair, but they’re more than grippy enough to hold my 1D and a 24-70/2.8 by the portrait grip (with the a fore mentioned L-plate) without worrying about it slipping out of my hand. Plus with the finger tips removable I can actually work my cell phone while I’m in the field, which is a huge plus for me.

Conclusions on the Gloves

I’ve ditched my old gloves for the the second style with the a fore mentioned fix of spraying the palms with Super Grip. That said, I don’t think either pair are the end all be all of light weight gloves for photography, especially since they have to be modified to work well.

Are they the end all be all solution to lightweight gloves? Not really. They’re considerably better IMO than basic knit ski gloves/ski glove liners, but they aren’t really top shelf material either. Moreover, I have no idea how durable they’ll ultimately end up being.

Unfortunately, they seem to be a Target specific product so sourcing them may be difficult if you don’t have a Target stores in your area.

At the time I wrote that article, there was also a tool available from Helicon focus that would do the same thing automatically and then use a contrast detection algorithm to determine whether the image was maximally sharp (i.e. dead on in focus). Unfortunately they seem to have removed that feature from their software.

Likewise, a new app has shown up on the scene Reikan’s FoCal. FoCal seems to be doing the same thing that Helicon Focus’s software did, though it seems to do it using a special target. Do note, as of the writing of this I haven’t actually tested FoCal.

I’m not one to get in the way of other people’s businesses, but with the economy and my business the way it is, I have more spare time than spare change; if I can work out a solution that costs me time and not money well that’s what I’m going to do. Which brings me to this post.

Theory

The traditional AF calibration process goes something like this:

1. Set up target
2. Align camera
3. Manually focus to infinity
4. AF on the target take an image
5. dig through menus to get the the AF settings, change the setting slightly
6. repeat 3-5 until you’ve either covered all the necessary adjustments or until you find one that works best

However, the AF micro adjusts are essentially just saying to the camera, “when you think it’s in focus, move the lens x steps more”. The whole refocus to infinity and repeat is largely a product of not being able to simply command the AF system to move in small steps from the camera, which is what the live view solution does.

The unassisted live view method is a slight improvement over the unassisted method, in that the live view method only requires one manual focus and AF operation, but requires you to manually advance the focus in EOS Utility (or whatever camera control software you use) and keep track of the number of times you click the button.

Automating Live View Capture

My fist thought was, hey I’m not a useless programmer, I can grab the SDK from Canon and just write up a nice little C# app that does all the camera control stuff for me. Then I realized that the Canon SLR SDK is written in C not C# so instead of just getting down to business, I would have to write a wrapper then write the app. Okay scratch that idea.

Then I remembered AutoHotKey. AutoHotKey is a generic macro program that mimics keyboard and mouse inputs following a script. If it sounds familiar to readers of this site, it’s what I used to work around rather annoying problem I was having with my Wacom tablet drivers crashing. While AutoHotKey can’t do any form of image analysis, it could at least remove the work in capturing the images, and that’s enough for me for now.

Caveats and Prerequisites

There are a couple of caveats with this whole solution.

1. It only works with Canon cameras, specifically those with Live View.
2. You must have Canon’s EOS Utility installed.
3. You need AutoHotKey_L installed (tested with version 1.1.05.06).
4. You can’t do anything else while the process is running.

The first 3 are pretty straight forward; number 4 is a gotcha. Because this script emulates keyboard and mouse actions, if you start using the keyboard and mouse while the script is running it won’t be able to send the right actions to the right program. I’ve tried to make it as fool proof as possible, but there’s only so much I can do with these tools. As it stands it shouldn’t take more than about 2-6 minutes depending on whether you run the fine or course capture process.

Also while you can’t calibrate those cameras with Live View but without AF Micro-adjusts (like the EOS 40D, or the newer Rebels) you can generate the image stack to see if they are focusing correctly.

Procedure

After insuring you meet the prerequisites and having the software installed, download the Zip file from the link in the box to the right, and extract it somewhere you can get to (like your desktop). Then follow the steps for building the image stack.

1. Connect the camera to your computer via the USB cable.
2. Setup and align your camera and autofocus target as you normally would.
3. Set the camera to manual exposure mode.
4. If testing a zoom lens, zoom to the most common focal length you use, alternatively you can repeat the procedure for various focal lengths and use the micro-adjust that best matches all the focal lengths.
5. Set the aperture to it’s widest setting (i.e. f/2.8 on an f/2.8 lens)
6. Set the ISO to 100
7. Adjust the exposure using the shutter speed so that the camera meters correctly (I usually meter at +1/3 to +2/3rds given my environment tends to be on average lighter than 18% gray.
8. Start Canon’s EOS Utility
9. Make sure that EOS Utility has brought up the remove control panel and is communicating with the camera.
10. Double click on the AF Test.ahk script you extracted from the zip file.
11. Follow the onscreen prompts from the script.
12. When everything is done, the script will automatically close the EOS Utility live view window and display a notice that capture is complete.

Again, while the capture is running it’s important that you don’t try and do something else on the computer.

The output of the capture will be stored in the director you’ve configured EOS Utility to save images to. The first image will be the one made to set the AF system, you can delete this if you wish, it’s extraneous. The remaining 11 or 41 images are the focus stacks.

If you chose to use the course steps, you’ll have 11 files that correspond in order to micro adjust settings of -20, -16, -12, -8, -4, 0, 4, 8 12, 16, and 20. If you chose fine you’ll have 41 images corresponding to -20 to +20 in 1 step increments.

Interpreting the Results

The easiest way to interpret the results is to load the images into your favorite RAW viewer and page though the images. The one that looks most “on” will be the image that you want to make note of. You just have to count what image that is and convert that to the correct AF micro-adjust step. You can use the tables below to convert the image’s sequence number to an AF Adjust. (Note, this assumes you don’t count or deleted the first image taken.)

After dialing in the AF adjust, take a few manual test images to insure that it is correct. Again, due to the way this script works, it’s possible that a command may not be relayed properly for any number of uncontrollable reasons.

As always, if you find a bug, please leave a comment here, or email the contact address in the script, and I’ll try and address it.

I’d elaborate more, but I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation has done a much better job of it than I could.

The way I see it, the easy piracy genie is out of the bottle. Much like nuclear weapons, there’s virtually no way to put that genie back in the bottle. Draconian legislation won’t stop piracy, it almost certainly won’t even slow it down. What it will do, however, is drive it increasingly underground

However, in the process of trying to do the impossible, these laws will almost certainly take down countless sites that aren’t doing anything illegal at all, quite probably to the determent of many individuals and small businesses struggling to survive as it is.

As an author and photographer, especially now in the digital age, I have to rely on copyright laws to protect my work. However, at the same time I recognize the need for those protections to be reasonable or they risk harming those of us that aren’t multi-billion dollar corporations, and who can’t afford to spends millions on attorneys, more than anyone else.

From where I sit, the SOPA/ProtectIP act certainly aren’t reasonable, especially in the light of the potential to have both my income frozen and my site shutdown by someone acting maliciously with out money or ability to fight that in court. Don’t think it could happen? The DMCA is already been abused that way to temporarily censor non-infringing content, and the DMCA has a extra-judicial counter-notice mechanism that the ProtectIP/SOPA lack.

So with out further adieu, these are (in no particular order) the 5 photography related apps I most frequently use on my iPhone.

Camera+

There’s something to be said about the camera you always have with you, namely the one in your phone. For years they’ve sucked—and in my personal opinion they still do—but starting with the iPhone 4 they’ve reached a point where they’re good enough for many. The only problem is when the built in camera app has a brain dead exposure curve that doesn’t dole out enough shutter speed to stop camera shake.

Enter Camera+, while it’s something of an all-in-one camera app, including the ability to apply post processing filters, the most important to me function is simply the ability to turn on “stabilization” and keep the images sharp. After that, the rest of it’s features are just gravy.

Camera+ in the iTunes Store

The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE)

Knowing where the sun will be, and more importantly when it will be there is close to being vital for for anybody who shoot’s landscapes, and pretty darn handy for everybody else. TPE, originally a desktop app (and still available in that form), the iPhone app packs all the useful information into a mobile package.

This includes information like:

• Twilight times,
• Sunrise and Sunset times, including their azimuth
• Moon phase

Needless to say TPE is one of the first things I check if I’m considering a sunrise or sunset shoot.

The Photographers Ephemeris in the iTunes Store

LongTime Exposure Calculator

In many ways photography is about finding a new way to show the same thing we see every day. One of these ways is though long exposures. By capturing light over seconds or even minutes, we can transform a normal scene into something that’s considerably different.

One of the hardest parts of these long exposures is metering and calculating the actual exposure. Most cameras can’t meter for a scene that requires a shutter speed slower than 30s. However when there’s a will there’s a way. LongTime Exposure Calculator will calculate exposures for extremely long exposures done with high strength ND filters, simply by entering the metered shutter speed and the amount of ND that’s being used.

A couple of quick scrolls and you’re 8s base exposure is 2 hours and 8 minutes with 10 stops of neutral density in front of the lens.

LongTime Exposure Calculator in the iTunes Store

gps4cam

Geotagging is becoming an increasingly popular, if not a requirement. However, even pro level cameras still don’t have built in GPS capabilities, often requiring expensive addons. The second alternative is to carry a stand alone GPS—actually this is your only option if you’re a Canon shooter who doesn’t have the EOS 1Dx—that keeps a log of where it’s been. Then using software to sync the camera time and GPS time insert the location data into the images.

GPS4CAM gives iPhone users a 3rd option, use their phone’s location system to generate your location log. GPS4CAM will perform the same trip logging and export to a .gpx file that many stand alone GPSes will, but it does it with a piece of hardware you’ve already got in your pocket. Moreover, if total location accuracy isn’t critical and power usage is, gps4cam can use GSM tower data to generate location data.

GPS4Cam in the iTunes Store

Strobox

In photography, lighting is key, and if you do a lot of shoots with models or products, being able to keep a record of your setups is definitely handy. Traditionally you might have done this with pen and paper, but not any more.

Enter Storbox, this handy program allows you to build and save top down diagrams of your setups. Moreover, you can export your setups as PNG files making it easy to share them without anyone without them having to have some specific software to view it.

Strobox in the iTunes Store

The mark of progress brings us again to the start of the public beta for the next version of Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom. Now before you run off and download it and think, “Oooh new tool time!”, keep in mind this is a beta program. What that means for you non-computery photographers is that it’s not feature complete, functionally complete, may damage or destroy your files, wont perform as well as the final version, and most important may not be stable or even usable at all.

Moreover, like they did with the Lightroom 3 public beta, Adobe has elected to not include catalog conversion functionality, so you can’t import a copy of your existing Lightroom catalog and start playing. In fact, Adobe recommends that you work on copies of your images as well. Nor, does Adobe guarantee that any catalog created by the beta version of Lightroom 4 will be useable in the final version.

In short, this is a preview of the cool tech we can expect to see in Lightroom 4 when it’s actually released, probably sometime later this year.

What’s New?

Well it wouldn’t be a new version if it didn’t have new features. The high level list is something like this.

• Robust Video Support
• Manage images by location with the Map Module
• Simplified Basic Adjustments
• Powerful new Shadow & Highlight controls
• Additional local adjustments including Noise Reduction and White Balance
• Soft Proofing Reinvented
• Elegant Photo Book creation
• Email from directly within Lightroom
• Publish videos directly to Facebook or Flickr
• Enhanced DNG workflows
• Adobe Revel export workflow

The nice thing is some of those categories expand into a pretty significant pile of new functionality. Take “Robust Video Support” which actually includes limited editing functionality, as well as basic color and exposure corrections.

Jumping Right In

If there’s one thing I can say straight up, the public beta for Lightroom 4 is very much beta software. I’m not talking Google’s perpetual beta-until-the-word-beta-doesn’t-mean-anything. I’ve had tremendous stability issues running this on my machine (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit). Looking at it wrong will crash the beta for me, which makes it rather hard to actually spend time working with it.

On top of that, even though the functionality exists, one sure fire way I’ve been able to crash LR4 Beta has been to try an export images. Obviously this is something I really want to be able to do, as even in the “limited” state LR4 is in, many of the new development tools work really well. Moreover, they really do streamline the development process and make getting to a final image really smooth.

Develop 4.0

Of all the functionality that Lightroom brings to the table, I spend the most of my time in the Develop module working on my images.

The revised basic pallet.

Adobe has simplified the “Basic” panel options removing the confusing brightness slider, and breaking the histogram into 6 distinct “bands”. From brightest to darkest, whites, highlights, exposure, shadows, and blacks.

The new controls make it much cleaner and easier to adjust the various ranges. In fact, it’s so much faster and cleaner that, I find that after a mere 15 minutes using the beta, I miss the controls when I go back to Lightroom 3.

The only thing that’s partially confusing to me is the layout of the sliders when using them. In the histogram they are organized as blacks, shadows, exposure, highlights, then whites when moving from left to right. The sliders themselves are organized in a much less “intelligible way”. I can understand moving exposure out of the more fine grained controls, but I think Highlights, shadows, whites and blacks, should be stacked from brightest to darkest. In other words, I think they should be listed as whites, highlights, shadows, blacks, from top to bottom. Of course, this is still beta software and the final version may not reflect the current ordering.

The second most notable change is that the sliders are now organized as “- 0 +” with 0 centered, as opposed to the previous 0-100. And this is the bit that threw me for a minute.

If you take, for example, blacks; in the Lightroom 3, it was normally set to something like 5, with a lot of room to shift the black point darker (i.e. increasing the number to 100). In Lightroom 4 beta, it can be shifted either way. Dragging the black towards the left (-), makes the blacks blacker (raises the black point), dragging the blacks to the right (+) makes the blacks lighter (lowers the black point).

It works real intuitively once you first grab it an use it but is kind odd at first. Moreover, it gives an unprecedented—in Lightroom at least—level of control in how you’ll be able to manipulate things in LR4 over how you have to now.

Soft Proofing

Soft proofing gamut warnings enabled, areas in blue are out of gamut on the current display, areas in red are out of gamut in the target color space, and magenta areas are out of gamut in both color spaces.

We’ve only been asking for this for well as long as Lightroom has been available, and Adobe has finally added it, and so far as I can tell done a very good job with it.

Soft proofing is handled in the develop module, and can be as little as gamut warnings or be taken as far as full corrections using specially tagged virtual copies.

Clicking the soft proofing button (or using the ctrl+s/command+s(?) shortcut) gives access to two different gamut warnings. The first is a gamut warning for the display you’re using. In other words, Lightroom will highlight (in blue) where the image’s colors are out of gamut on your display (i.e. you can’t see these colors).

The second, is the destination proof which is highlighted in red. This can be configured to sRGB for the web, Adobe RGB, or any of your printer profiles.

Since soft proofing has been added to the develop module, Adobe has also added a mechanism for tagging virtual copies with the color space they’re rendered for. That is you will now be able to create a color space specific virtual copy, make your alterations needed for the target device, then print or export that. Fortunately, creating the virtual copy can be done automatically when you enter the soft proof mode.

I should note, some things can get a bit wonky. I’m not sure yet whether the ICC profile is invalid, or the wrong version, or if it’s something else, but I have found something can get a bit wonky. For example, using the profile provided by Canon for the Pixma Pro 9000 II and Canon’s Photo Paper Platinum, Lightroom thinks the paper color is yellow as shown in the picture below (the background color sounding the image by default should be the same color as the paper you’re using).

Bad ICC profile, or something in the beta reading the ICC profile wrong? Either way, the background shouldn't be yellow.

RGB Adjustment Curves

Also long on the feature request list, RGB adjustment curves. Granted these haven’t been high on my wish list, but it’s nice to have. The only real problem is that the size of curves adjustment are continues to remain considerably smaller than it is in Photoshop.

However, there is a in photo adjust tool which makes it somewhat easier to tweak using the image as the point selection.

Chromatic Aberration Removal

Perhaps not a top billed selling point, but lens corrections and CA removal is one of those tiny touches that goes towards a far more professional looking result. Lightroom 3 introduced profile based lens corrections including profile based CA removal. Adobe has determined that they can do a better job removing CA from images algorithmically instead of though a profile, and thus there’s now a new setting in the Lens correction pallet to use the new CA removal algorithms.

Maps 1.0

Geo locating images has become an increasingly important, never mind useful tool for photographers, both professional and amateur. The problem in the current iteration of Lightroom is that to include or use geolocation information, a 3rd party utlity or plugin needs to be consulted.

The trick has always been adding location data to your images. Until recently, GPS support was largely relegated to professional level cameras and even then with expensive addons. Nikon has been quite progressive, with the relatively inexpensive GP1 (supported by all of their current cameras from the D3100 up). Canon is slowly starting to follow suit, at least producing a reasonably compact GPS module for their new 1DX, but for the most part lacks any form of built in support.

One way to work around the limited support from the camera companies is to carry a stand alone GPS receiver that exports GPS track files (.gpx). With that, and some special software, and now Lightroom 4, you can add the GPS data in after the fact by syncing file capture times with the track file position times.

I haven’t been able to play with this yet, but it’s on my short list if I get some time.

Custom locations can be used to group images based on a their proximity to a given point.

The Maps module also adds support for custom locations that can be used to group images based on their proximity to a given point. For example, in the above image I’m creating a custom location for Walt Disney World. Once that’s created, any image that is geotagged with coordinates inside the circle (partially cut off) will be accessible though that saved location similar to how categories can span multiple capture dates.

Moreover the saved locations can be used to generate private locations which will force Lightroom to remove the geotagging information on all images that are exported that are in that location. This way you can put say a mile radius circle around your home, or something like that and not have to worry about that information making it’s way to Flickr.

Additionally to satisfy the people who don’t want any location data revealed in their exports, there’s an option to remove all location data from all photos in the export menu. So even if you’re not interested in telling everyone else where you took your images, you can still keep track of them internally.

Rounding out the Location module is the ability to add location data to images in a point and click way, as well as import and apply GPX track files to images. I’m hoping to revisit this when I get a chance to do some GPS tracking.

All told, I’m pretty confident that the GPS module is going to be something that pushes me towards properly generating GPS data for my images. Being able to quickly look at images based on where they were shot, and keeping track of that appeals to my need for OCD metadata.

Video 2.0

Lightroom 3 introduced the ability to catalog video in addition to photographs. Lightroom 4 expands on this ever so slightly, providing the ability to control white balance and exposure in the video, as well as being able to trim starting and ending time from the video.

Unfortunately video is still something that I haven’t had the opportunity to get into in any serious way, so the functionality of Lightroom 4 is largely untestable to me at the moment. I did, however, import a clip I had and the manipulations can, in the beta, be made to though the quick develop panel in the loupe view.

Unfortunately, that’s about the end of my ability to test the video capabilities, which means I have no idea how well LR4 will integrate into something like Adobe Premier or whether you’ll have to maintain two different import workflows for dealing with SLR video.

Books 1.0

Photo books are for sure a very nice way to present your material, either to clients or as a keepsake/gift for friends and family. Adobe has recognized that and included a streamlined book creation module in LR 4.

The beta current integrates with Blurb or can produce a press ready PDF. The software includes page layouts for image only as well as text pages, though at least in it’s current beta form it does lack any form of spell checking; meaning you’ll still want to compose your text in a proper word processor and past it into LR for the book.

Conclusions, for Now

Adobe’s public beta of Lightroom for gives us a glimpse of some very cool things coming down the pipeline. However, in it’s current form it’s not meant to be used in production work. It’s also very slow, buggy, and unstable. These are characteristics of all pre-release/beta software, and should not be considered against the Lightroom 4 when it’s finally released.

I’ve tried very hard to experiment with the functionality that’s currently available Lightroom 4 Beta, but due to the nature of the beast, some things are necessaraly under discussed by virtue of the difficult I’ve had getting them to work. For example, exporting an image from the beta is a sure fire way to get it to crash on my machine, however, I’ve spoken to other people trialing the beta and they’ve had no problems at all doing the same thing. Again, this is the nature of the beast.

Suffice to say, from what I have been able to play with in Lightroom 4′s first public beta, I’m very excited to see where Adobe is taking Lightroom.

As for when we’ll see the final release version of Lightroom 4, that’s anybody’s guess at the moment. On one hand Adobe doesn’t comment on their intended release date. On the other, depending on the feedback they get during the pre-release testing process, the date may need to be moved. Suffice to say, if my memory serves me, Lightroom 3 Beta 1 was released in October of 2009 with the first real release version following in June of 2001. Given that, I think we should be expect to see Lightroom 4 come out sometime in fall of this year.

Want to play with Lightroom 4′s first public beta yourself? Download it from Adobe Labs here.

In the last few years the “serious” compact market has been moving increasingly towards compact interchangeable lens cameras, i.e. Sony’s NEX and Olympus’ digital PEN line. I’ve never been a huge fan of that format largely because it eschews an optical viewfinder for compactness, and compactness for interchangeable lenses.  Never mind the platforms are awash in confused design decisions, trying to reach both the P&S user and the serious photographer.

Don’t get me wrong the compact interchangeable lens cameras can be fine cameras for many people, but they compromise in all the wrong ways for what I want in a smaller counterpart to my SLR.

Canon Powershot G1 X – The Huge Sensor Compact

Canon, has so far been pretty hostile to the idea of an compact interchangeable lens camera, at least that’s been my feeling of their comments. I have, so far, agreed with them. So far, many of the mirror-less systems, make tradeoffs in terms of size and controls that leave me wondering what they were thinking.

There was some speculation that Canon would make the next PowerShot G into an EVIL, and while it would be the most “apt” compact camera to re-image, that’s not what they’ve done.

Instead, Canon has elected to continue with the compact camera design, only now they’ve crammed a comparatively huge sensor in it. The G1X’s sensor is it’s only 20% smaller than the APS-C sensor in their SLRs, and considerably bigger than both Olympus’ µ4/3rds or Nikon’s CX format.

Likewise, the G1X has a fixed 28-112mm equivalent (15.1-60.4mm) f/2.8-5.6 image stabilized zoom. The integrated lens gives the camera the ability to fold the lens into the body. The real genius of the design is probably most evident when you look at DPReview’s comparison to the Panasonic GX1 (see here). The Powershot G1X, while slightly bigger than the GX1 packs a lot more into the package.

• The lens covers a wider range (28-112mm equivalent compared to 28-84mm) and does it at a faster aperture on the wide end (f/2.8 v. f/3.5).
• There’s an optical viewfinder
• There are 2 control dials (+ the ev comp dial)
• The G1X has an articulated rear display.

If anything, I kind of wish Canon could have ditched the sub-par OVF. Without it, the G1X would have been nearly the same height as the Panasonic GX1. Which while I like being able to put the camera to my eye and shoot, I can’t say I’ve ever done that a lot with the Canon compacts I’ve had in the past—at least not with any regularity.

The promise is that the G1X should perform about as well as the 7D in low light situations. Couple with the fixed lens, the G1X should be a compact, solidly performing camera on the high end of the compact space.

The only real question left in my mind, is whether the G1X is a stopgap measure in their line until they can roll out a mirror-less interchangeable lens camera, or if it’s really the direction they’ll be taking their high end compact for the future.

Canon PowerShot G1X (Canon USA)

DPReview’s Canon PowerShot G1X Preview

Fuji X-Pro1 – The Digital Rangefinder that isn’t a Leica

Last year, FujiFilm released the X100. What I would call a digital rangefinder, in a sense that the Leica M9 is a digital range finder. Granted they aren’t exactly comparable, but the X100 offered the first really nice optical viewfinder—though not as nice as a Leica M—with the cool capability to switching over to being an EVF if needed. The problem, it was a fixed lens design.

Enter the Fujifilm X-Pro1.

The X-Pro1 takes the X100′s dual mode viewfinder and packages it up neatly with a interchangeable lens mount. What it intelligently doesn’t try to do is be everything to everyone. The X-Pro1 is clearly aimed at serious photographers, in fact it’s size and design aims it squarely at Leica’s $7000 M series range finders.

Only compared to an M, the X-Pro1 buys a lot of modern convenience, most notably that it’s fully electric lens mount means auto focus, auto aperture, and possibly image stabilization.

As much as I like the look of the X-Pro1 on paper, I have two big problems with it.

First it’s another system. Okay there’s nothing Fuji could have done about this, but it means that you’re severely limited in options right now and will be for the next year or two. And that assumes that the 9 total lenses Fuji has announced actually come to market.

The other problem is that it’s unlikely the X-Pro1 will ever take off in the numbers that are necessary to really get some good 3rd party support for it. Which is too bad, the X-Pro1 really looks to be the poor-man’s Leica M9.

Of course, DPReview is suggesting that there will be mount adapters, and that Leica’s M mount will likely be high on the list. Then again, even with mount adapters, you run in to the small issue that the X-Pro1 is an APS-C camera, meaning you’re 1.5x cropping those Leica lenses. A Leica 18mm f/3.8 (which may not even be able to be mounted due to it protruding into the lens mount) would only give the view of a 28mm lens, and costs considerably more than the X-Pro1 costs to start with.

The real problem I have with the X-Pro1 is the price. It really does look like the body alone is going to run for $1700. At that price point, it’s competing with Canon’s 7D, Nikon’s D300s, and Sony’a SLA-77. Granted they aren’t targeting the same market, but when the choice is between a limited (at the moment) rangefinder and either a 18mm f/2, 35mm f/1.4 or 60mm f/2.4 lens, or a Canon 5D-2 with a 24-105 f/4L IS, it at least warrants some time thinking about it.

FujiFilm X-Pro1 Product Page

DPReview’s X-Pro1 Preview

Exciting Times

Suffice to say, things are really starting to get good. Aside from the increasingly ridiculous prices of these cameras, we’re really starting to see hardware the can do incredible things.

Canon’s 1Dx and Nikon’s D4 take shooting in the dark to new heights.

Canon’s Powershot G1X makes for a really impressive compact camera that should be able to really shine in the high end compact space.

Finally FujiFilm’s X-Pro1 has the potential to bring back the “range finder” form factor and be a serious alternative to Leica’s M cameras, at least if it makes it. And I hope it does, because I’d love to have one in my bag.