Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

UPDATE: Photoshelter No Longer Sells Stock Photos

Until Adobe put out a point update that fixes these issues my recommendation for buying Lightroom 2.0 has changed from ‘buy’ to ‘hold’ (even though Amazon.com have currently dropped the price to only $220!). The two workarounds put forward right now, are either to stick with Lightroom 1.4.1 - a trusted, stable release, or to only work with small catalogs. Personally I find that incredibly frustrating, as for me if I need to find a photo of something then I want to search my entire catalog based on shared keywords, rather than having to a) remember which catalog I need, b) load it up, c) find the photo then d) merge it with other photos I want to work with - that may be in other catalogs. Although Lightroom’s ability to work with multiple catalogs is very powerful, the sheer fact that you can’t easily share keyword structures (without manually importing/exporting them*) or search across multiple catalogs makes the software much less useful to my mind. A workaround for the cross-catalog search is to export small JPG previews of your 5 star images with embedded meta data then use your computer’s built in file search (OS X spotlight works a treat for this) - this gives a quick visual preview, but doesn’t solve the need to then manually cross reference this back to Lightroom.

Ah, version 1.0 products… when will we (or software companies) ever learn.

* I’m wondering if a workaround to this is to create a single photo with every keyword tag in that’s shared between multiple catalogs.. Then Lightroom might pick up changes from the image and include them in each catalog’s tag hierarchy. Anyone tried this?

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Lightroom 2.0: Performance Issues, Wait for next Release!

The main advantage of saving in raw format is that you have a higher quality image, with more flexibility to tweak and post-process to get exactly the effect you want. The downside is that a raw file takes up more space on your memory card - typically 2-3 times the size of a high quality JPG file of the same image dimensions. That may sound like a lot, but with the ever decreasing cost of memory cards it is not an issue you should worry about if you are even slightly serious about your photographs. Raw is the way to go, and did we mention that a higher quality image is not the only advantage? Yep, raw has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

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Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Tip: Save Your Photos in Raw Format

These days it’s relatively easy for anyone to buy an underwater housing for their digital camera, and head down to the depths to capture amazing, other worldy images. So spare a thought for Bruce Mozert, who back in 1938 took innovative, underwater photos at Silver Springs, Florida using a home made underwater casing. Mozert’s pictures are an amazing mix of 30s style and innovative thinking, not only about composition, but also about how he could create certain effects underwater, such as smoke off a barbecue.

You can see more of Bruce’s amazing images here at the Smithsonian. Or check out our own underwater photography section for hints and tips on creating your own underwater masterpieces.

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Photo Inspiration: The Underwater Photography of Bruce Mozert

Now Canon have released some improvements to their latest cameras, such as the recently released Canon 40D. This set of improvements is shown in the handy video below, just don’t expect the dramatic car chase you might expect from the strange choice of background music:

For those of you with no time on your hands the brief summary of changes is:

1. Prevent Dust Generation: By using specific, high quality components in the lens tube - dust generation from outside and inside the lens is reduced.
2. Prevent Dust from Sticking: Use of an anti-static layer on the sensor makes it harder for dust to stick to the CCD.
3. Remove Stuck Dust: New sensors incorporate a ’self cleaning sensor unit’ that, basically, vibrates very rapidly to shake the dust off. Simple.

Sounds like fun. I might just have to head out and buy a new Canon 40D to check it out in the real world {:)

Related articles:

• Cleaning a Canon 20D sensor (CCD) to remove dust spots

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Canon SLR Dust Prevention (EOS Integrated Cleaning System)

Photosynth, Microsoft’s revolutionary piece of software for making ‘3D’ style images out of flat photos, is now up and ready for use. Photosynth works by taking a set of images of the same thing - a place or object - and using pattern matching to work out corresponding areas on overlapping photos. This process is automatic, and once completed it means you can navigate in ‘3D’ around the constructed image. It’s certainly a step on from the usual panoramic stitching software we’re all used to.

Of course one issue… Microsoft being Microsoft and all, this only works on PCs right now so Mac users will have to wait a bit. On a positive note though, Photosynth works on the Firefox browser, not just IE, which is a big step for Microsoft.

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Photosynth out of Beta

The BBC reported on some interesting cloud formations that occurred over England a few days ago. Mammatus clouds, so named because they look like breasts, form underneath cloud formations under the right conditions. The picture above is particularly nice as the setting sun caught and highlighted the clouds against the threatening gray of the rest of the cloud. It’s a great example of why you should always have a camera to hand to capture these and other moments.

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Photo Opportunities: Breast Shaped Clouds?

Photographer Michael Hughes has a great idea for what to do with your camera when you go on holiday. Pick up some tourist toys or postcards of the local landmarks, then go take a photo of yourself holding the tourist object in front of the real thing. Genius. You can have a lot of fun with this idea, not only with replacing the real thing with a copy of itself, but also putting something stranger over the top, or taking the same object round the world with you and photographing it in different locations.

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Photo Inspiration: Tourist Toy Photos

Obviously this isn’t a static photo, but it was such a beautiful example of how a lightning strike builds up that we had to show it. You can see how the electrostatic charge spiders down from the top left, with many small tendrils each searching for an earthing point. Then, blammo, one of the points a third from the left hits ground and there’s the bright arc we all know and love.

You could take the same video with a handy lightning storm and some patience. Oh and you may also need a high speed video camera to slow it all down as the initial part happens in microseconds and most digital cameras only support slow frame rates such as 15 or 30 frames per second (FPS) to save their memory cards. And remember to stay safe!

Related content:

• How to take Lightning Pictures

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Lightning in Slow Motion

Adobe have just announced that the latest version of their photo workflow software, Lightroom, is now available. Lightroom 2.0 extends the well established cataloging and processing package with key features such as multiple monitor support, extended memory addressing (for those of us with over 4Gb RAM), more targeted dodging/burning and increased ability to export to online photo sharing apps such as Flickr. None of this is world shattering, however it all adds up to a slicker, more compete product that the original. Plus the new version has been in open Beta for a while now, so you can expect most of the major bugs to be gone.

A while back I compared both Aperture and Lightroom’s capabilities, and found that both offer an unsurprisingly similar range of features since they target the same group of users (professional and aspiring professional photographers with a huge photo library that use a lot of RAW). Ultimately I found Lightroom to be my product of choice, although it’s lack of multiple monitor support was my biggest frustration. Aperture’s biggest failure is that it is only available for Apple OS X, so Windows users are out of luck. As a split Mac/PC user this was a stopping point for me. So having decided to purchase Lightroom I was pulled up short when I found the 2.0 Beta had been started, indicating an imminent new product launch. My choice was then to buy Lightroom 1.0 for $299, and then pay an unspecified upgrade price (turns out it was $99 as I thought it would be) when 2.0 hit the stores - there was no sensible decrease in Lightroom’s price prior to this upgrade (silly Adobe). So instead I got a shared beta licence from a friend and have been using the Beta 2.0 since then. Now it’s time to splash the cash on my own copy - finally.

Post from: Digital Photography Hints & Tips

Adobe Release Lightroom 2.0 (UPDATE: Some issues!)