Lit Pixels

2011-10-13T18:24:00.001-07:00

Moved....

2010-03-13T06:52:00.001-08:00

The content here, and all my new content can be found at pdphoto.ca, which will direct you to my new Squarespace-hosted site.

Cheers!

014

2010-01-14T19:07:00.001-08:00

003

2010-01-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Flyby

2009-11-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Digital Face 2

2009-11-15T08:50:00.001-08:00

Canon S90 'Antique' Demo

2009-11-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Canon S90 has the typical collection of 'scene' modes, but the 'Antique' one attracted my attention.

This is a series of shots made at the same time and place, but with a higher level of 'antiqueness' added for each. Top is a zero level, stepping through the five levels to the highest at the bottom.

No additional post-processing was done aside from the layout in Lightroom.

Torontohenge

2009-10-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Secure Camera

2009-10-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

22

2009-09-28T17:08:00.001-07:00

Distillery District, Toronto, Canada

Wave Deck 1

2009-09-22T10:22:00.001-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Track Instructions

2009-08-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Compute Anywhere

2009-08-16T18:27:00.001-07:00

Direct Decoration

2009-08-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

King & Bay

2009-07-23T04:26:00.001-07:00

Scan from 120 film past it process date, and with some light leakage for good measure.

Sunny Spadina Sunday

2009-06-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Street Feet

2009-06-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Taming Previews

2009-05-14T08:18:00.001-07:00

One of the things Lightroom does in the background is make previews of your photos. You can choose what size it will make them, if you zoom in on an image it will generate a 1:1 preview on the fly, and you can also tell the program to pre-render 1:1 previews of an entire shoot.

You can manually kill all the 1:1 previews, or have them automatically deleted on a given schedule as I have here.

But what about the scores of smaller preview files? Its not hard to very quickly accumulate a very large number of these. A look at the properties of my Lightroom Previews folder reveals very nearly 35,000 files!

The Previews folder is easy to find. It should be stored alongside the matching Catalog file. Also, if you have multiple Catalogs, you’re going to have multiple Previews folders too.

On the huge hard drives we enjoy a few gigs of previews isn’t a big deal, but if you’re running on a notebook or netbook with limited drive space, that could be some precious capacity tied up there.

Ensure that Lightroom is set to delete the 1:1 previews on its own, and if you need to recover space right now you can also choose Library->Previews->Discard 1:1 Previews from the menu to manually kill them

And in my experience it is safe to delete some or all of the files and folders in the Previews folder, just ensure that Lightroom itself isn’t running.

One final point is that backing up all the preview files is unnecessary, and will make a backup run much slower as so many files have to be scanned for changes.

In most backup programs, including AllwaySync which I use, its possible to define a folder, file name or file type to be ignored during a backup. I only discovered this recently and the speed of my backups has improved dramatically.

Big Fun With Minatures

2009-04-29T17:17:00.001-07:00

Making a detailed scale model miniature is a painstaking process, but not if you have the right kind of photo and use tilitshiftmaker.com to help you fake one.

Its surprisingly easy to fool our mind into thinking it's looking at something very small when looking at a scene from above and with only a narrow band in focus.

It must throw out some part of our brain that deals with scale or depth and creates a convincing illusion of the real world rendered tiny.

The hard-core way to make these kind of images is with a specialized tilt-shift lens, or in post processing with an image editor.

Tiltshiftmaker.com takes the process online and makes it easy, fun and free.

First capture a scene where you’re looking down slightly and with a spread of foreground and background elements. Here’s my one that I took from the top of a parking garage.

The shot is fine, but nothing special.

Uploaded into tiltshiftmaker.com and processed with their simple tool it came out as something more intriguing.

The website lets you upload reasonably large files up to 5mb and 4096 pixels on the longest side or point it to a URL. And if you don't have your own image there are some samples to play with.

My only small beef is that the preview on the site that shows how the final image will look is very small. I assume given the processing going on in the background, keeping this preview small helps tiltshiftmaker.com perform better.

The time taken to process a final image is very quick and if you download it and think it needs adjusting, its very easy to go back to the website and make another version.

Overall a fun and super-easy web tool that is easy to recommend.

Accelleration

2009-04-23T18:37:00.001-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Fragment Fun

2009-03-22T18:00:00.001-07:00

Here’s the process I use to turn a series of images into an interesting, fragmentary collage. Here’s what the finished product will look like.

A lot of the details below refer to Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom, but a similar effect can be achieved with any image editor that supports layers. CS4’s Photomerge helps with some of the heavy lifting but manually positioning a series of shots will eventually give you the same effect.

1. Make your shots

Pick a subject and shoot the hell out of if. In the example above I made 30 frames. Not all of them end up in the final image, but more is better than less.

In this case I stood a couple of meters back from the phone booth, zoomed in about halfway with my Canon G9, and started shooting.

2. Make the shots smaller

Back at the computer I import the images into Lightroom. Here I do some basic tweaks to the look of the shots and export them at a smaller size.

1500 pixels on the longest side I find is plenty large enough. The smaller size will make the processing faster and the individual images will be blended to make a larger one, so you’ll end up with a resolution comparable to what a single frame from your camera would be.

3. Into CS4

Fire up CS4 and open all the images prepped for the collage.

Go File->Automate->Photomerge. Select the collage option, turn off the option to blend and hit the ‘Add Open Files’ button.

Should look like this.

Hit OK and settle back. Depending on the number of source images, their resolution and how powerful your computer is, this can take some time. Photoshop can appear to crash as it aligns images, but eventually it will churn out a collage.

4. Fine tune

This is what CS4 came up with.

Remember that every image is its own separate layer so it allows for some fine tweaking. In this case I removed a few layers, and added some additional rotation to a few as well.

The last touches in Photoshop are flattening all the layers, putting it on a white background, and adding a drop-shadow. I think the drop-shadow adds an extra sense that you’re looking at a collage, and how strong it is varies image to image.

5. Back to Lightroom

I then bring the shot back into Lightroom. Lightroom is my hub to keep all my images organized, so I need it in there, and I will also do some final post-processing with it too.

For this one I decide to make the shot black and white.

And the final touch in Lightroom is to crank the Clarity slider. This emphasizes edge detail, which in this case includes the edges of the shots that make up the collage. Again, this strengthens the sense that you’re seeing a collection of shots to make up one larger image.

And the final product looks like this.

More Collage

2009-03-19T19:22:00.001-07:00

I think this collage / pano technique in Photoshop CS4 lends itself well to architecture. In this case an old building in downtown Toronto.

Detailed tutorial in the making…!

Fragments

2009-03-14T18:32:00.001-07:00

I recently upgraded to Photoshop CS4 and there’s a lot of bits to like in the beast. One thing I’ve been playing around with a lot are the options to make different kinds of panoramas.

That led me to trying a collage style approach to assembling panos, but keeping them unblended so that its clear one image is made up of several.

I love the look of this technique applied to a face…

Sign Says it All

2009-03-01T13:29:00.001-08:00

Toronto, Canada.

Shadow of the Past

2009-02-25T13:55:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada.

2009-02-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Cold Sun Walk

2009-02-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Getting Some Heat

2009-01-25T09:54:00.001-08:00

Toronto, Canada

2009-01-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

7-shot vertical panorama.

Union Station, Toronto, Canada.

Streetcar in the Mist

2009-01-10T20:05:00.001-08:00

Toronto, Canada.

Snowstorm 1

2008-12-21T11:48:00.001-08:00

Toronto, Canada.

Simple Advice

2008-12-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Shadow Sailing

2008-11-22T04:45:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, California, USA.

Wellington Street Moment

2008-11-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

Toronto, Canada

Yellow Dot

2008-11-13T18:18:00.001-08:00

Toronto, Canada.

Cold Treats

2008-11-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, California, USA.

Obama Shirts

2008-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, California, USA.

Orange Room

2008-11-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, California, USA.

Poladroid Scooter

2008-11-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

Giving an old shot the 'Poladroid' treatment.

Embarcadero Ride

2008-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

San Francisco, California.

Mechanical Ballet

2008-10-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Short montage video of the machines that drive the cables for San Francisco's famous cable cars. The contra-rotating wheels are hypnotic.

Music is 'Funny' by Daniel Licht from the soundtrack to TV series Dexter.

Video Star: A Taste of the Canon 5D Mark II

2008-10-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Today I got the chance to handle the new Canon 5D Mark II and gave its video capabilites a all-too-short roadtest.

I work at the online video desk of a large Canadian newsroom for my day job. We use several kinds of cameras for reporters to use to shoot video for the web, and our photojournalists use Canon's G7 or G9.

Our photographers are very interested in the new 5D Mark II for its video capabilites which is where I got involved. We had a pre-production model under the watchful eye of a Canon rep to play with for a morning.

We shot some test video around the newsroom which I am unable to share at this stage, but I feel I can give some impressions of how the camera performed for video.

To put it simply, the video looks stunning. We had a 17-24mm [i think] lens on it and to see such wide angle video is mindblowing. The shallow depth of field added a cinematic feel. The video was superbly crisp and the colour was smooth and natural.

I could not believe such rich HD video had come from a camera costing less than $3000. My jaw literally dropped when reviewing the video clips.

The sound was also good, with a nice sense of space and a richness to it. The mic is just below the 5D logo on the front of the camera. The Canon rep said that it can pick up the whine of AF motors in some lenses from that position, and when shooting a still in video mode the sound of the shutter activating was clear. He said that the pickup of the mic will be improved in production models, but its somewhat academic as the camera has an 1/8th inch jack, so adding external audio input would be a snap.

The next nice feature of the camera when in video mode is you can make a still shot at any time. Hit the shutter release and a full-resolution still is made. This interrupts the flow of video being recorded for about a second, with a jumpy return to video afterwards. The rep said the length of this video break when shooting stills would be shorter in the production model.

Exposure in video mode is handled automatically, but its possible to lock the exposure. Settings made on the camera while in still mode will carry over into video mode initially, so you can set it up how you want. However, if the camera thinks it needs to change a setting it will.

In one important video area this camera trumps the Nikon D90. The 5D MarkII will autofocus while in video mode, where the D90 is manual. The focus point can also be moved while recording using a very small directional joystick at the back of the camera.

On top of this the camera felt very solid and comfortable in my hands, and the large LCD screen on the back made shooting video comfortable, albeit slightly odd initially. Holding an SLR away from your body is not a natural pose for me.

I can see people buying this camera purely for its video capabilities, where on the D90 the video has been described as a nice extra, but not somthing you'd run out and buy the camera for.

As I said to the Canon rep as he packed up the camera to head off, they'll sell as many of these as they can make, and deservedly so.

Leaving Union Station

2008-10-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada.

Data Disaster Averted

2008-10-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Its one of those catchy slogans which should be forefront in the minds of photographers.

Over the last few days I had the hard drive in my computer which stores all my photos begin to fail. This drive is dedicated to photos and only photos. No programs or anything else goes on it.

Because I had a solid backup strategy what could have been a catastrophic loss became a fairly minor inconvenience and an investment of a few hours.

Here's how it played out and from this I hope you can draw some ideas to have a plan in place to backup and recover your data if the primary copy goes south.

When I am done importing images from a shoot and after an editing session I do a backup to my RAID1 NAS drive using Allway Sync of my photo drive. Always. Every time.

Once a week I also backup the photo drive to two external hard drives, again using Allway Sync. One copy stays at home, another goes to the office so there is physical redundancy, as well as drive redundancy. So at any one time I have four drives with my complete photo archive on.

Once a week I also backup my Lightroom catalog to the same photo drive, so that gets backed up along with everything else on this schedule.

Last week I began to see some odd behavior when I browsed my photo drive. It would be slow, there would be a lot of hard drive activity with little to show for it, and then the kicker: I got a Windows delayed write error and then the drive appeared to vanish from My Computer.

Not good.

During a reboot Windows automatically performed a check disk on the photo drive and it seemed to be back in action, but I knew that was going to be short-lived.

I backed up the photo drive to one of my external drives, but not the NAS. That way if there were any corrupted files they wouldn't get copied out to all my backups. I also did a fresh backup the Lightroom catalog. This last step alone is probably the one thing that saved me the most time and made me love Lightroom even more.

Time to get out the tools and swap some drives. Out came the old photo drive and in went a fresh 500gb. A few hours of formatting and copying the 250gb of photos from the backup external drive and all seemed to be back in order. But then I tried to launch my primary Lightroom catalog.

The program said it was corrupt and its attempts at fixing it came to nothing.

Throughout this entire process this was the one moment I began to sweat just a litle. Thousands of indexed, keyworded, named and filtered shots are managed in this catalog. Was that work I would have to start again from scratch?

Fortunately no.

I was able to launch the backup Lightroom catalog I had made before swapping drives and I was back in business.

Bottom line was a few hours of large-scale data moving and not a single byte of data lost and almost no stress on my part.

This is the second time I have had my primary photo drive in my computer fail, and its the second time I've had an up-to-date backup that saved me from disaster.

The hardware and software to protect your images is a small price to pay for the insurance against losing them all. If what happened to me struck you right now, how much would you lose?

Gossamer Alien

2008-09-26T05:18:00.001-07:00

Toronto Zoo, Toronto, Canada

Photo essay: Toronto Patterns

2008-09-20T07:04:00.001-07:00

My photo essay Toronto Patterns has been published online by BlogTO.com. Thanks to the folks there for the publication and also bigger thanks for offering a venue for Toronto-based photo essays to be seen.

Photography and podcasts

2008-09-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

For me listening to podcasts while walking around photographing go hand-in-hand. While I listen to a wide range of podcasts, what better than to listen to photography-related programming?

I've tried many, and there are only two that I still subscribe to, and I encourage you to give them both a try.

TWiP [This Week in Photography] is a blog and podcast that features some experienced photographers from diverse backgrounds, both pro and serious amateur, talking about the news, art and technology of photography. Mixed in with their audio podcast stream are videos that provide some visual introduction to such things as the histogram and HDR. The natural rapport between the presenters is what makes this so enjoyable to listen to. Their information is great, but it seems to stick in the head more when it comes across like a few buddies sharing experiences.

The TWiP podcast finds the happy place where it's not basic and not super high-end. I think any photographer of any level can learn from and enjoy listening to this show. Highly recommended.

The Image Doctors on Nikonians. Obviously this is targeted at all my fellow Nikon shooters out there and while some of what the two hosts talk about is platform-specific, a lot isn't. General discussions about composition, lighting and filters apply across the board. The discussion can often progress at a gentle pace, to put it nicely, but I think its better than the alternative of fast-paced yammering.

The deep info about Nikon cameras and lenses has informed the way I use my gear, and if you're also a Nikon shooter, this is a must-have on your mp3 player

Up Umbrella

2008-09-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

Ottawa, Canada

Pillars of Gold.

2008-08-31T18:05:00.001-07:00

Toronto City Hall, Canada

In Space No One Can Hear You...

2008-08-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Canada

Riding a Rainbow

2008-08-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

The Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Canada.

Flickr's new slideshow tool

2008-08-21T18:19:00.001-07:00

Embedded slideshows.... thanks Flickr folks!

Someone's Having Fun

2008-08-20T04:58:00.000-07:00

The Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Canada.

Bold Colours

2008-08-15T19:19:00.001-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Green Arc

2008-08-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Lightroom 2 Bug

2008-08-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

Its been an overall very good experience after stepping up to Adobe's Lightroom 2 the day of its release. Dual monitor support and regional image editing are great, but there's an annoying bug.

My preferred way of sorting images is to go Capture Time, Descending.

This puts my most recent images at the top, which saves scrolling down to the bottom all the time, especially in a folder with 1000's of images.

But... if you go into the View menu and try and select Ascending order, both Ascending and Descending get selected at the same time. Check out the screenshot to see what I'm talking about.

I can't select Descending at all, and trying to deselect either of them once ticked is impossible.

This is happening on my two installs of the software on an XP desktop and a MacBook, so it's not just me.

It's not a killer bug, but its a strange oversight and really affects my workflow. I find I open up Bridge more often now to get images sorted properly which defeats the content management goals of Lightroom.

C'mon Adobe, what's up with this?

Sync Stress

2008-08-06T11:26:00.001-07:00

After getting a NAS [Network Attached Storage drive] recently for local backups and sharing of media, I had the problem of what to use for regular backups from my desktop machine to the NAS.

A key requirement for all my backups over the years has been for them to be 'in the clear'. That way I can hook up any external drive or put any disk into any machine and start reading the data. Not special backup software needed.

For years I've used a program called Folder Match. Unfortunately the main site for the software isn't active anymore and that's not a bad thing. The program works well for syncing files but it hasn't been updated for a while and new, free options have emerged.

I have toyed with Microsoft's SyncToy. Version 2.0 is tagged as being in Beta, which makes me nervous, and it's s_l_o_w. Maybe it gets faster with each use, but so far I haven't been patient enough for it to run a full backup.

Getting Window's task scheduler to trigger SyncToy never works reliably for me either.

So today I've settled on Allway Syc which is free for home use. It's fast, has a clear interface so you know what it is copying/deleting across the synced folders and has an easy built-in scheduler.

Now I feel like my precious photos are being looked after reliably and can sleep a little more soundly.

In Loving Memory

2008-08-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

St James Cathedral Church, Toronto, Canada.

Boat Parking

2008-07-30T19:02:00.001-07:00

Toronto Island, Canada

Sydney from the archives

2008-07-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Its been over two years since I left Sydney to live in Toronto, and trolling through my archives came across some old shots from back there that brought back memories.... such as this one...

Taste of Steel

2008-07-03T18:49:00.001-07:00

Apartment building, Toronto, Canada

This Line That Line

2008-06-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Toronto City Hall, Canada

Take a Seat

2008-06-07T19:13:00.001-07:00

Toronto Reference Library.

Serious Implements

2008-06-01T16:37:00.001-07:00

Some heavy-duty mixer heads in a bakery that look more like medieval weapons than tools for cooking. Toronto, Canada.

Trippy Time Lapse

2008-05-26T19:04:00.001-07:00

When Flickr launched video a few weeks back I was as upset as a lot of other users there were. Flickr was about photos after all.

Then I saw a few time lapse videos appear and something kinda clicked in my head. A time lapse video is after all made up of a long sequence of individual stills run together.

So out came the D300 instruction manual and I worked out the interval shooting option built into the camera and got out there. After this effort on the weekend, I think I'm hooked on this kind of work. Take a look...

This was put together using QuickTime pro to do the initial blending of frames to make a 15-frames-per-second video, then trimmed and audio added in Vegas Video.

Kinda Redundant

2008-05-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Port Philip Bay, Melbourne, Australia.

Keep On Wiping

2008-05-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Winch Face

2008-05-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

Is is just me or is there a face lurking in the design of this winch?

Swirly Spectacular

2008-05-17T08:02:00.001-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Delivery Vans

2008-05-09T18:03:00.001-07:00

Toronto, Canada

Taste of Spring

2008-05-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

Spring finally arrives to Toronto, Canada.

Yellow Highrise

2008-05-06T17:51:00.001-07:00

Reflection of buildings in a puddle. Toronto, Canada.

Street Fashions

2008-04-23T17:55:00.001-07:00

Melbourne is known as the fashion capital of Australia. The little laneways that bisect Melbourne are the place where the fashion-conscious go to see and be seen.

Being Watched

2008-04-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

Generally I've had few problems shooting in public places. There's many horror stories out there about over-zealous rent-a-security enforcers giving photographers a really hard time, but so far I've been spared such an encounter.

Austrtalian Driftwood

2008-04-05T08:25:00.001-07:00

One of many diriftwood shots I made during my recent Australia trip.

This beach was where I used to go as a kid during summer holidays. Erosion has taken a big toll on this stretch of beach since then, however.

Waves have eaten into the shore and made a large number of trees collapse into the sand.

Sad for the trees, but the weathering on the shore had made for some great photographic subjects.

Back from Down Under

2008-04-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are back in Toronto after a visit back home to Australia.

It's my first trip back since I moved to Toronto almost two years ago and it was good to see friends and family. Even though the trip was more people than photo-orientated, there was ample opportunity to get out and about and do some shooting.

I ended up coming back with about 1000 frames. After culling out duds there's still a good 700 or so images that I'll keep on my drive.

Exactly how many will get some post-processing treatment is another matter. I'm about a third the way through working on my shots and have output 90, so I'd expect 300 or so for the whole trip.

Maybe 30 will actually be worth showing to more than the family but I'm looking forward to collating a final gallery.

I shot some stock images that I'll be able to sell, but was mainly shooting for myself so there's some atypical bits of Australia captured.

It's a bit of a psychological barrier to have such a large number of images to work through. I've barely shot anything fresh since getting back, instead stuck in front of the computer making edits.

To make life as easy as possible I loaded the shots from the D300 and my Panasonic point-and-shoot in a new catalog in Lightroom. As I've been going through the shots I've been making some new Lightroom Presets which, for simple snap-shots, take a from-camera image and make it into a more acceptable shot with just a couple of mouse clicks.

A Photoshop resize droplet to create 1024 pixel-size small versions for these snap-shots has also been a big time saver.

I've kept advanced editing for the shots that need a bit of extra work, or with which I want to make more of a statement, fairly minimal. It generally comprises a very mild vignette effect and some curves applied in Photoshop. Maybe a bit of dodging and burning here and there.

Once the whole lot is done I may go back and take another pass at images I especially like to see what more I can unlock, but my shutting finger is getting twitchy to capture fresh frames...

Not all love for Lumix

2008-03-01T14:47:00.001-08:00

Today's wandering ended up taking me around the University of Toronto grounds. The D300 was at home so it was pocketcam time with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3.

It's a good little camera but it has some shortcomings. This shot of a gauge through a safety cage came out very soft in the colors.

While the optics of the Lumix are made by Leica and are very good, the software lets the camera down too often. Anything over ISO 400 is very noisy, and the in-camera noise reduction and sharpening is too aggressive so shots like this with a lot of smooth color end up a bit soft but overly sharpened at the edges.

If only this lens was on a Canon G9 body, then I'd be beating down the doors to get one.

But while the little Lumix struggles with strong colors, it can capture tones and lighting very nicely, as evidenced in this shot.

After just a small amount of processing in Lightroom, this shot just sings now. Another strength of the DMC-TZ3 is that it's fast, so this is one of several shots in a sequence after a rapid power-on. When you're never sure what is going to happen and where a fast starter and shooter is a good friend to have.

As a little bonus here is a link to download the Lightroom preset I used to create this look for you to use too.

While I'm happy with the Lumix overall, I don't think I would buy the same camera again, nor recommend it to others. In the $300 to $350 price bracket there are some other nicer cameras that are probably better all-rounders than this unit and have more manual controls.

Top 5 Reasons I Love the D300

2008-02-18T07:40:00.001-08:00

With four weeks of good usage under my belt with the Nikon D300 I think I can make a few conclusions about why I think this is an incredibly good camera.

So, in the tradition of countdowns throughout history, here is my top five reasons I've grown to love the D300.

5. Construction
The camera feels incredibly solid in the hand. Its confidence-inspiring that an accidental knock or bit of moisture won't kill it outright. All the dials and buttons have a firm and purposeful feel. But the solid construction doesn't mean the camera is a big burden to carry. It's not dramatically heavier than my old D70 and it's the choice of lens that adds the most weight.

4. Color & Light
From the very first frames I made with the D300 I was impressed by how well it rendered color and shades of light. Colors aren't just natural and rich, their gradations in tone are also gorgeously smooth. Take this image for example of some colorful kayaks reflected in still water.

3. Noise and ISO
A lot of hard-core camera geeks have been going on at length about the low noise characteristics of the two new Nikons, the D3 and D300. Yes, the D300 does have very low noise, and shots I've made at ISO3200 look amazingly clean. You can really only traces of noise at higher ISO settings when zoomed in 100% on an image. I think if you're spending a lot of time examining your images at 100% then you're literally losing sight of the big picture.

The bottom line is that higher usable ISO settings means more opportunities to make pictures.

2. Speed
Faster than a speeding bullet sums up the D300. From the instant-on to the incredibly responsive shutter the camera is all about speed. Reviewing and flipping through images is also super-fast and thanks to the ability to configure four 'banks' of settings you can very rapidly change how the camera behaves. I have one present bank set for RAW shooting, another for JPEG and one for long exposures and each one has a few tweaks to optimize the camera for just that situation.

The speed continues in front of the computer too. As the camera performs so well and captures scenes very close to how I saw them, any post work needed to create final images that please me or a client is greatly reduced.

1. Inspiration
What these highlights and all the D300's other strengths add up to is a camera that inspires you to pick it up and use it. Like some high-performance sports car it begs you to see what it can do and also to see how far your own skills go. That means I'll be making more and better images and that's what it's all about in the end.

Better Make Some Room

2008-01-30T05:31:00.000-08:00

While I think pigeons are rats with wings and a a scourge on cities, they can make interesting photographic subjects. Here one comes into land on the top of a rotunda in a Toronto park. The rest seemed huddled up there for warmth.

Panasonic DMC-TZ3 f 4.8 at 1/640s ISO100

Kayak Kolor

2008-01-28T17:04:00.001-08:00

This is one of the batch of shots I made the first time out with the D300. The richness, naturalness and detail in the colors are spectacular and in this one frame alone I could see the value in every cent that I spent on the camera.

Nikon D300 f10 at 1/50s ISO 200.

Line of Light

2008-01-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

Union station streetcar platform, Toronto. Nikon D300 f5 at 1/30s ISO220.

Congressional Content

2008-01-23T17:30:00.000-08:00

There's been quote some buzz around the U.S. Library of Congress releasing thousands of archival photos onto Flickr.

There are some spectacular images in the collection which capture elements of life that have since disappeared. This old storefront is one that jumped out at me.

Even better, the images are labeled as copyright free so there's a lot of scope to get in and have some fun. A large photo-collage was the first idea that came to me, but one of the problems with the images on Flickr is that they're all 1024 pixels on the longest size. Good to browse but not good for extensive reworking

You can get to very high-res versions with a little bit if clicking. The description for each image in Flickr has a line something like this; Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34582

Taking that link brings you to the Library of Congress' own website. There you click on the embedded tumbnail image to take you to another page that has links to download either the same size JPEG shown in Flickr or a HUGE tiff file.

I decided to use this fine character as my example.

In this case the Library of Congress offered the option to download a 140mb tiff of this shot. The resolution of the tiff weighed in at a staggering 6162 x 7981 at 1800 dpi. This is a seriously high-res file and you can see that from some 100% crops.

You can see there is an extraordinary amount of detail captured in these scans and while grabbing hundreds of megs of pics may not be everyone's cup of tea, it's good to see that if you find and image in the Library's collection you really love you can get a top-notch version of it.

And to leave you, here's another shot from the collection which shows that time and design may change, but there'll always be some kind of junk left behind.

Four Way View

2008-01-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Here's for separate shots of the rear section of a plane I took recently. I was playing around with different framings and it was only when I got home and reviewed what I'd shot that I saw these work well as a vertical, segmented, image.

All were taken at Hamilton Airport, Ontario on Christmas day 2007.

Quebec City Jaunt

2007-10-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks at the coal face here with work and some vacationing. Work not that visually interesting, but vacationing is another matter.

Some time off work saw me heading to Qubec City which is a dream to photograph.

Enjoy this selection of shots of this most aesthetic of Canadian cities.

More Free Stuff for Your Pictures

2007-09-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

Pretty much as soon as I posted my first list of excellent free software to use with your photos I thought of more to add. So at no extra cost here are some bonus free software image tools that you shouldn't be without.

Paint.net - This is a key piece of software on my laptop. For quick and sometimes surprisingly advanced editing on the cheap, it is very hard to beat.

Boasting layers [a-la Photoshop] and some handy effects you can do a lot with this baby.

The interface has a nice modern feel too and you can move around tool palettes just like the 'serious' image editing programs.

Andrea Mosaic - You may have seen cool photos made up of many, many smaller images. Andrea Mosaic will take your images, or if you don't have a large collection you can download a starter pack of images with the program, and start building mosaics.

Mosaics are especially good when printed out because of the amount of fine details included in them. And with that in mind they make great gifts too.

Autostitch - Panoramas are a great way to capture a big scene that just won't fit into a single frame; You take multiple shots of a scene and use a stitcher to blend them into one large photo.

Autostitch is a fast stitching program and it often works better than the panorama tool in Photoshop.

The interface is very minimal, but don't let that put you off as the results make up for it. On stitching jobs with a lot of high resolution images Autostitch can run very slow so to save time, first run the program set to make a small size panorama. If that works out OK you can go back and run the program again for a full-size panorama.

Preset Paradise

2007-09-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned Lightroom and few times and that's for an important reason; it's the hub for managing and processing all my digital images. Hand's down it's one of the best tools that lets a photographer focus on taking photos and not spend hours plonked in front of Photoshop.

One of the features of Lightroom that saves a huge amount of time is the use of presets. Lightroom ships with some built-in presets, but it's very easy to make your own. Presets are also flexible so you can continue to make fine adjustments once a preset has been applied.

Here for your enjoyment are two of my own presets for you to download and try on your images.

They're completely free to use but if you do like them and post images using them please link back to this post.

Instructions for loading them into Lightroom are at the bottom, for now let's take a look...!

Liberty Street Preset - I give presents interesting names based on the location where I took the photo that the preset was first created for. In this case it was along Liberty Street in downtown Toronto.

Here's how the preset looks...

before

after

I like the rich look to the metallic parts of the image and this is a black and white preset I use a lot.

Hearn Look - This is a strong duotone style conversion that I found adds a lot of atmosphere to shots with heavy industry or decay in them.

before

after

To install presets into Lightroom simply launch the program and in the Develop module right-click in the list of presets already loaded. In the popup menu select 'Import' and navigate to where you saved the downloaded presets. Done!

Enjoy.

Software Toolkit - The Free Stuff

2007-08-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

One of the simple realities of digital photography is that you have to be as good with a monitor and mouse as with a viewfinder and shutter button. The means you have to have the right software to get the most from your images, but that doesn't mean you have to spend a fortune [but you can!].

This three-part series looks at the software that I use and rely on for various tasks.

Today it's the Free Stuff, next time mid-priced which I put at less than $200US and then it's the Big End where software costs hundreds, or over a thousand.

So lets get into some software goodness....

Irfan View - If you don't have this, what is your problem? It's a basic photo editing program that can do a good job of resizing and simple adjustments such as brightness, saturation and some sharpening. It also opens a huge range of files, so if you can't open it in another program, try it in Irfan View.

On the downside the interface is in need for a serious overhaul to bring it into the 21st Century, but how it looks doesn't detract from how it works.

Another good note about Irfan View is that you can install it on a USB drive so you can have image editing capability anywhere.

Picasa - What I like most about Picasa is it's non-destructive image editing system. You can make tweaks to your shots, including some pretty good special effects such as filtered black and white, but the original image from your camera is never changed.

This is a Good Thing because you should always store an unedited version of every shot you want to archive so you can always go back a re-process it later.

When you tell Picasa to save changes to your images it still looks after you by creating an 'Original Images' folder where the unedited shots are copied so you always have the unedited source image.

Picasa also does a great job of indexing images on your computer. I installed it for my parents-in-law who always lost photos on their computer. Now Picasa finds it all for them.

The program also integrates with Google's Web Albums to you can easily upload images from within Picasa to share.

To top it off it also reads RAW file formats.

NoiseWare Community Edition - This you could say is a bit of a controversial one as I use noise reduction software very rarely. I find I'd generally prefer a shot with more detail and more noise than smoothed out detail with less noise.

Sometimes a shot comes along, like a blue sky, that could benefit from some noise reduction, and with an investment of $0 you can't beat the free version of Noiseware.

RawShooter Essentials - This is an older program now out of development. The creators, Photomatix, were bought out by Adobe and some of the technology of RawShooter ended up in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.

That doesn't mean that RawShooter is crapware. It still does a good job of processing RAW images from your camera so you can then do further editing in something like IrfanView.

Because RawShotoer is a couple of years old now, support for newer cameras may not be included, but it's worth giving it a try.

I found some of RawShooter's output images to be a bit flat and it's easy to tweak shots into looking like over-processed atrocities, but if you're on the road and have to make a JPEG out of a RAW file, it's a good starting point.

RawShooter also can install to a USB drive. With this and Irfan View together on a USB drive you can walk into any internet cafe anywhere in the world and start pumping out images. There are some good online images editors, but the obviously rely on a good internet connection, and in the wilds of a foreign country, that can be hard to find.

PhotoResize - Lastly is this excellent little program. As the name suggest, PhotoResize will size your images to the dimensions you want simply by dragging and dropping a photo onto the program. Just like a Photoshop droplet without the Photoshop!

Configuing PhotoRezise is as easy as renaming the .exe. So naming it PhotoResize200.exe will give you images scaled to 200 pixels while preserving the aspect ratio.

The real power of the program comes from making a shortcut to the main .exe file. In the shortcut you can add additional command line codes that can specify exact dimensions, add sharpening, specify output size in kB, etc, etc, etc.

Batching is as simple as dropping a whole group of images on the PhotoResize icon.

To top it off the PhotoResize will also attach a suffix to your file name with the dimensions of the image. Just pefect.

It too can be run of a USB drive so you can resize to your hearts content anywhere, anytime.

Why does Nikon want free photos?

2007-08-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

Today I came across a new group in Flickr setup by Nikon and their Learning Center.

Having a major camera manufacturer on board at Flickr seems like a good thing and as a Nikon shooter myself I thought this is something worth examining and contributing to.

That was until I hit the 'join group' button and was confronted by some interesting legalese. Here is an excerpt...

By submitting your photograph(s) into Nikon’s Digital Learning Center Group (“Group”), .... you agree that Nikon Inc. and its assigns shall have, without further obligation to you, the royalty free, fully paid up, non-exclusive right and permission to copy, publicly display, publicly perform and use, worldwide in any online media now known or hereafter developed, including but not limited to the World Wide Web, at any time or times, subject to the availability of your photographs(s) in the Group, through March 31, 2008, your submitted photographs, Flickr username and titles to the photographs (if any): (a) on the Group website, located at www.nikonusa.com/slrlearningcenter/ and (b) in connection with Nikon’s online promotional campaigns for its Digital Learning Center, each without further obligation to you, unless prohibited by law.

This to me reads that Nikon will take submitted images they like and reproduce them on their website with no reward to the photographer except to have their Flickr username attached.

I know a lot of photographers [me included!] would like high profile exposure such as being shown on a Nikon website, but I can't reconcile that with handing over my images with so little control on how and where they're going to be used and with no concrete reward.

Nikon is a huge company so why should they solicit Flickr users for free images that Nikon is well placed to pay for in cash, discount coupons or equipment?

What also concerns me about this legal disclaimer is that is appears to revoke whatever copyright permission you set on your Flickr image. If Nikon was serious about having a collaboration with users on Flickr why not request all images have a Creative Commons license that allows usage by Nikon and the wider world too?

I can imagine a lot of photographers just clicking 'accept' without a second thought and then being surprised when their shots turn up in a Nikon tutorial, but I urge special care when it comes to handing over control of your intellectual property.

Cailbration, Baby

2007-08-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

After looking at some pretty technical aspects of photography through high dynamic range it's important to take a step back and think about calibrating your monitor.

Calibration is one of those back-to-basics things that is easy to put off or to not put enough importance on. I know, because I did that for a while after first moving to digital shooting and my photography suffered.

To put it as simply as possible, calibrating a monitor ensures that it is correctly displaying what visual information the computer is sending to it. Are reds really red, are blacks really black, etc?

In my case, calibration was one of those things put off and I just assumed that my monitor was showing me what was really in my pictures. I was sadly mistaken.

For the first few months of shooting with my Nikon D70 DSLR, I finally noticed that it looked like the camera shot with a distinct green tinge. Playing around with the white balance settings did nothing so I searched online and found other people reporting the same issue.

Thinking my camera was at fault I setup an action in Photoshop that adjusted the color balance to get rid of my green tinge. Even so I was never confident of the color coming out of the camera. This pushed me into converting a majority of my shots into black and white as a dodge to the issue.

Finally I became frustrated enough to actually do something, and realized how easy it is to a simple calibration.

Installed with Photoshop is a tool called Adobe Gamma which you can find in the Control Panel in Windows. To get the best result launch Adobe Gamma, select Control Panel mode and de-select the tick mark next to the option 'View Single Gamma Only'.

You will get three color patches with sliders that look like this:

The goal is to adjust the sliders so that the color square in the middle matches as closely as possible with the striped border around them. Once done, Adobe Gamma creates a monitor profile which will load when you start your computer, giving you a calibrated screen every time.

When I did this the first time, I was horrified at how far off my monitor was. The change was so dramatic that it took a while for my eyes to adjust to a 'good' monitor image instead of the old one that they had gotten used to.

The green tinge was gone, the screen was brighter with more detail in the grays and mid-tone areas.

Monitor calibration using this method is much better than nothing, but it is very subjective; it's still your eyes making a judgment. If you're serious about monitor calibration [and if you're reading this you should be] invest in a colorimeter.

A colorimeter is essentially an eye for your computer, connected via USB. Combined with software, the colorimeter reads what the monitor is displaying and feeds it back into the computer. So when the computer displays primary colors, blacks and whites, the colorimeter reads what is actually being displayed, and can make adjustments automatically so that accurate color is assured.

I invested in a Spyder 2 system which does a great job on calibrating my desktop and laptop monitors. It's not cheap, at about $250 Canadian, but there are cheaper options.

It's important to consider that you can spend thousands on cameras and lenses, plus computers and software, so there's no excuse to try and pinch pennies on getting your monitor looking it's best.

The bottom line is some calibration is better than none, and some kind of colorimeter is absolutely the way to go.

New HDR Tool

2007-08-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

There's a new high dynamic range tool on the scene. PopPhoto.com has a review and tutorial for a program called Dynamic-PHOTO HDR from Mediachance.

From the the PopPhoto site it looks like Dynamic-PHOTO HDR has a much more comprehensive interface than Photomatix, with areas to adjust curves, add B&W effects along with some pre-set HDR settings with room to save your own favorite presets.

I grabbed the demo and made a quick test image. One thing that I noticed is, while the function is disabled in the demo, it looks like you can also save as HDR image in a format that you can reload into Dynamic-PHOTO HDR and re-export with different tone mapping settings.

At US$39 it's a darn sight cheaper than US$99 for Photomatix Pro too.

Here's the tone mapping screen and an output test shot.

First impression is that I like the look of the shot using one of the program's presets.

I'll be back again soon with a more comprehensive look at Dynamic-PHOTO HDR.

High Dynamic Range with a twist

2007-08-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

Last time I gave you a quick primer on the 'proper' way of getting High Dynamic Range (HDR) images which involves shooting multiple exposures of the one scene.

The problem is that you may not be able to setup to get those multiple exposures or you just didn't think of it at the time.

Here I'll show you how to get HDR images from just a single shot.

You'll need a few things for this tutorial:-

1. An image in a RAW format. This is the image I'll be using. Look for a shot that has a wide range of texture and detail.

2. A raw converter. I'm using my good friend Lightroom, but any RAW converter will do the job.

3. Photomatix HDR software.

4. An image editor. Photoshop CS3 at my end, but anything will do the job.

Lets get it started.....

1. Make extra versions of your original image at different exposure levels.

This is easy in Lightroom. I made six virtual copies of the original shot and used the Exposure tool on each one to make some underexposed and some overexposed. This is how the tool looks in Lightroom, in this case with an exposure of +3.

You can see how totally blown out the image is, but look at the back of the seat. Detail that was lost in darkness is being revealed.

Overall my exposure settings were: -2, -1, 0, +1 and +3. You don't need to do exactly these steps. A -2, 0 and +2 will yeild good results.

2. Save your different exposures.

This is how my six versions look in Lightroom.

The beauty of Lightroom is I can do all these adjustments and then export all images as a group. Your RAW converter may require you to load and save your image each time you want to make a different version.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, save your versions in an easy-to-find location.

3. Load images into Photomatix

This is where the fun starts.

Once all your images are loaded into Photomatix select HDR > Generate and sit back while the program processes your images. It can take a while depending on the number and resolution of your shots.

Eventually you'll get an HDR preview which will look something like this.

Don't freak out about how the image looks at this stage. In the top right corner of my screengrab above you can see a little HDR Viewer window. This is a preview of what Photomatix has managed to extract from your shots and gives you a sense of how the final image will look.

4. Tone Mapping

This is where your aesthetic judgment comes into play. In Photomatix go HDR > Tone Mapping and start making adjustments.

Through Tone Mapping you choose how the data from your differently exposed images is blended, how much saturation is boosted, how strong the overall effect is etc, etc, etc.

The options can look a little intimidating but experiment and you'll quickly get a sense of how it all works.

This is my Tone Mapping effort below.

Some photographers who use HDR can go pretty overboard with heavy blending and lots of saturation, giving a cartoonish look to their shots. In this case I wanted a subtle use of HDR to bring out details.

5. Save from Photomatix.

Once you're happy with the look of your image click Apply in the Tone Mapping tool.

Photomatix will think some more as it generates your image, and then you can save your final high dynamic range shot.

Depending on how you like the results from Photomatix you can leave your work there but I chose to finish off the shot a little.

6. Finishing Touches.

I loaded the tone mapped shot into Photoshop for some final touches.

I cropped the shot to focus attention more into the car, losing the distracting reflection of the window on the left and the torn fabric on the right. I also did a very slight Levels adjustment and sharpened the image.

Here is the final product.

I'm very happy with this image and this technique is a great way to pull some extra wow out of the right kind of shot.

HDR huh? A primer on high dynamic range photography

2007-08-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

To kick things off I'm going to delve into high dynamic range photography, or HDR.

HDR is a technique when you make several images of the same scene, each exposed differently. One shot is exposed normally as a baseline image and then additional shots are deliberately overexposed and underexposed to capture more detail in the darkest and lightest parts of the scene.

Take a look at this sequence of eight shots I took of this scene as an example.

Shooting a sequence like this is very easy. Many cameras have an automatic exposure bracketing function or you can use the exposure compensation setting on your camera.

They don't really look like much on their own, but when all those shots are combined in a program called Photomatix, details in all the shots are blended together to reveal this image.

This is a very strong application of HDR but serves as an example of the capabilities of Photomatix. More details on operating Photomatix are available at their website so download the free demo and start playing.

This is just the start of what you can do with HDR photography and next time I'll show you how to use Photomatix in unconventional ways to boost your images.