Wakodahatchee is still pretty quiet, there are two pairs of Great Blue Herons that have built nests on the the island next to the first gazebo, one is on the west side of the island in the low trees, the other is high in the dead tree on the east side of the island. I believe both nests have settled down for the 28 day incubation period, so chicks something to look forward to in about 4 weeks. Both nests are very accessible for photography with medium telephoto lenses, 300mm on a 1.5-1.6 crop body.

Green Cay has gotten a little more interisting, there is a male Northern Harrier that is active there, I’ve seem him both times I’ve been there durring the mid to late morning. There is also confirmed reports of a female Bobcat and kittens; though to hope to catch a glimps of it, you apparently have to get there very early before people are out and about. Also I’ve been told of Snail Kites hunting in the area, though I haven’t seen any so I can’t confirm those.

As I mentioned previously, several users, my self included, have run into problems with Adobe’s Lightroom 2.2 update installation some how resulting in exporting to CDs and DVDs failing to work. They would receive the error message, “Disc burning is not supported by Lightroom on this computer. It has been disabled.” Apparently the problem seems to have something to do with the update process, not the software it’s self. After a brief email exchange with adobe’s support they recommended that I uninstall Lightroom and reinstall it and see what happens. Sure enough, the uninstall/reinstall process fixed my problems.

So on that point, to insure smooth sailing upgrading to Lightroom 2.2, I’m recomending, uninstalling Lightroom though the Add/Remove software control panel then installed 2.2. Then installing the update as you normally would using the downloaded update/installer. The download for the update contains the full installer and it will detect your serial number as well as your catalog settings when it launches so there shouldn’t be anything to worry about there.

A man lands a fish under a wharf on the Mississippi river out side of New Orleans.

The address on a door in the French Quater.

Jupiter and Venus are seen setting in the night's sky just after sunset.

I was reminded recently by a rather heated debate that boiled down to a lot of advocating towards specific techniques and technologies, that the how has little to no real meaning in the ultimate ends of photography. You could say in a way that either coincidentally or as a result of the discussion I had an epiphany about the reality that is photography. As I see it, photography, isn’t about taking a picture or capturing a moment in time, but making a connection with the viewer of our images. There is no math, glass, or gear involved here, simply an image and the response it evokes in the viewer.

Fundamentally, we produce illusions that are designed—whether we know it or not—to evoke a response from those that view our work. To deny this is to deny the entire purpose of photography, and perhaps even art it’s self. I think this is a critical idea that’s often missed though. Possibly, because it’s so much more fleeting than the concreteness of megapixels and resolution and possibly because in a world where almost every one can have a camera and take pictures the very act of doing so means very little to so many people.

The concept of an image being an illusion is important for another reason, quite simply in a very technical sense the image itself, whether produced by film or digital capture is an illusion. There is no property of the medium that fundamentally makes one more or less true to reality as much as pundits of either medium would like you to believe. There is no truer representation possible, the ultimate product is the effect of varying colors and intensities of light being reflected off or emitted from a surface. Nothing more and nothing less, to that end, a digital image works no different than one captured in layers of photo reactive chemicals.

This brings me back to technique and technology. Quite seriously, I think the only people who find any of this relevant are other photographers, and in many cases, I think they put far too much emphasis on exploring the minute details of it than what they can do with it. Pixel peeping as it’s come to be called now. Does our equipment have an impact on our ability to create, or vice versa, undoubtedly the answer is yes.

The age old argument about what’s more important, the photographer or the camera though is predicated on the flawed idea that either can exist with out the other. Or really, that with out access or knowledge of the equipment a concept may never even be born, let alone brought to fruition.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that the image produced is more important than the process and equipment used to produce it. I have no delusions about this short note, I know it’s not going to stop arguments over whose camera is superior or whose technique is better. I do hope though, it brings some perspective to the argument.

Happy holidays, and happy shooting.

In the world of digital photography our software is as important to our work as our cameras and lenses.

This post comes on the release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.2, an update that for the moment I’d recommend avoiding if you use the built in disk burning capabilities and run Windows XP or 64-bit Windows Vista.

What I don’t understand is why Adobe can’t seem to release updates and patches to this program without introducing a slew of new bugs and problems. Is Lightroom already such a mess internally that they can’t fix issues with out introducing new issues?

That being said, if you are experiencing this problem or any other problem, I strongly recommend filing an official bug report with Adobe. You can do so by filling out the Adobe Feature Request/Bug Report Form.

First off, Nikon has announced their new studio camera, the D3x. A 24 megapixel beast that stands poised to challenge the Canon EOS-1Ds. Well at least if it wasn’t so underwhelming. The D3x doesn’t have nearly the ISO range the D3 and D700 do, and while it does finely give Nikon a serious studio camera there’s a lot to be unhappy about; the $8000 price tag is a good place to start. Thom Hogan has posted a fairly in depth commentary on the D3x here.

Personally I find the D3x a bit underwhelming, partially because Nikon raised the bar so much with the D3 and D700 when it comes to image quality and high ISO performance and partly because it’s really nothing revolutionary in and of itself. They also can’t seem to figure out how to make a self cleaning sensor work or fit in their top end body either.

To wit Canon countered the high ISO IQ of the D3 quite effectively with the 5D Mark 2 and demonstrated that such performance can be achieved in a 20+ MP sensor. So why isn’t it in the D3x? Clearly Nikon must have known that after the D3′s stunning success with high ISO it was just a mater of time before the competition put out a similar camera with higher resolution. At a minimum, I think Nikon needed one more stop on the top end on the D3x. Sure the D3x has a stop more ISO than the EOS-1Ds Mark 3, but this isn’t the same market place as when the 1Ds Mark 3 was released. While I doubt Canon will take the 1Ds Mark 4 all the way to ISO 25,600, I have doubts that the top end will only advance a stop to ISO 6400.

But, by having made the D3 such a leap over it’s predecessor Nikon has inadvertently set the bar for their successor quite high. I don’t think it’s possible they could have put a D3x out with out it seeming seriously underwhelming. Either way it’s likely going to be a seriously good piece of kit. Here’s hoping they stick to tradition and have a new 70-200 VR coming along shortly as well.

For more information visit Nikon USA’s product page by clicking here.

Following the news, I’ve posted my gallery for the Miami Auto Show. I’m also working on an article for the show, including some tips and tricks on making the best of marginal situations.

Finely I have also posted an interesting experimental gallery of long-exposure night driving photographs. No these weren’t done hand held, the camera was locked off on a tripod in the back seat, with an ultra wide angle lens and a cable release so I didn’t have to take my hands off the wheel. One thing I noticed in these experiments is that images rounding curves are significantly more interesting than ones on straight roads and you need between a 10 and 15 second exposure to get enough blur to gather something interesting. Oh ya, and the roads are a lot more bumpy than you realize.

Until next time…

Very much worth looking at for landscape and wild life photographers.

Gallery – 2007 Winners.

DP Review, seems to be my favorite source for camera news at the moment, and they seem to be the first in the field with a review of Canon’s new EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. The short of it, the lens compares favorably to other similar lenses in some respects and not so favorably in others. Distortion isn’t very well controlled, nor is chromatic aberration. Center sharpness looks pretty good, but edge sharpness isn’t all that great.

Build quality seems nice though, and my experience handling one briefly bears that out. The zoom ring is nice and snug but still very smooth and precise. Though the lens’s lack of a USM focusing motor, especially for a lens in this price range (roughly $700) is disappointing, and the focus ring is small, and turns when the lens focuses.

Read DP Reviews full review: Canon EF-S 18-200 mm F3.5-5.6 IS Lens Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review.

Based on this review alone, I’d say that this lens is probably a good buy for someone who’s looking for a single lens to cover the wide focal lenghts and doesn’t need ultra razor sharp images, or is using an 8-12 MP camera (where it should be some what sharper). This lens isn’t for the pro or advanced amatuer photogrpaher looking for the best image quality possible though.

After what seems like more than a 6 month absence, Travels to the Edge is back on PBS. I just saw my first new episode was recorded, Hokkaido and Honsu Japan. From the little I saw before I decided to watch it later, it looks like more awesome photography.

Find your local airing schedule here.

Check out the Travels to the Edge site here.

Photokina wrapped up last week, and I have been trying to following along on the news as best I can. The big news to me was that there wasn’t an awful lot of news, outside of the cameras and lenses I’ve posted about previously. There were a lot of rumors about a new 70-200 VR from Nikon and a new 100-400 IS from Canon, neither materialized. Sigma announced a new revision of their SLR, the DP15; and a new point and shoot, the DP2. The DP2 is similar to their DP1 but complementary with a faster (f/2.8) more normal (41mm equivalent) lens.

Probably the biggest news on the camera front was the announcement of a couple of Micro 4/3rds cameras. If you’ve not seen Olympus’s announcement on what it is, Micro 4/3rds is an adaptation of their 4/3rds system to a thinner mirror-less design. The new system is compatible with 4/3rds lenses—through an adapter—but supports a new smaller lighter series of lenses designed specifically to be as compact and portable as possible.

The most interesting new camera, at least form an SLR user’s perspective, is probably the Panasonic Lumix G1. Not much bigger than more traditional super zoom point and shoots, it supports interchangeable lenses and a SLR sized (2x crop factor) sensor, giving it more flexible lens choices and potentially better low light capabilities. That coupled with the forth coming 20mm f/1.7 (40mm equivalent) micro-4/3rds lens would make quite a powerful yet unobtrusive camera for street photography.

Some things that did catch my eye include the announcement of Adobe Photoshop CS4, which brings 64-bit support to windows machines and support for using your video card to accelerate calculations among other things. I could write about it, but most of the cool features are demonstrated in this podcast (creativesuitepodcast.com), and it’s far more fun to watch than it is to read about.

On the storage front, SanDisk announced Extreme III and Extreme IV flash cards, including 32 GB Extreme III cards. Speaking of which, while it’s been trumpeted all over the web as of late, but SanDisk has been running a rebate on their compact flash media for the last few weeks (ends the 11^th of October), on their flash media. 16GB Extreme three cards are going for as little as $7 to $25 a card in some places, if you can find them in stock. Most of the online camera stores are participating, so if you’re in the media market right now that may be a place to look.

The other announcement in storage was by a company I’ve never heard of, Pretec (pretec.com), of two new compact flash flashcards, a 64GB and 100GB 233x (35MB/s transfer) flashcards. Something that’s sure to come in handy with the today’s high resolution and video producing cameras. I’ve never used them, and I can’t seem to find them listed any ecommerce sites I’ve used for ordering media, so I have no idea if they work well or even at all.

On the lens front, Tokina has added motors to their Nikon mount lenses. I’m not sure if this is good or bad yet though. On the up side, they will focus on the D40, D40x and D60 bodies; on the down side, Tokina doesn’t have an Ultrasonic lens motor design, so they will likely be louder than they otherwise would be when driven by the in body motor. One thing that is for sure, this gives entry level Nikon users access to fast f/2.8 zooms of decent optical quality in focal lengths of 11-16mm, 16-50mm and 50-125mm. All told, it’s not a bad for set of pretty close to pro grade lenses and can be had for less than $1900 for the three.

Also completely unrelated to Photokina, there is currently an update for Adobe Lightroom 2 in the final stages of testing. According to the Adobe Labs page, it fixes several stability issues and makes some performance improvements. As a Lightroom user, I’m keeping on top of this, and I can only hope it fixes a couple of the issues that I’ve experienced with Lightroom on Windows XP.

Not really sure what to say about this, so I’ll let the work do the talking for itself.

Taming Light – a set on Flickr