Wordless Wednesday: old tech

Take care!

editing a raw file

Wow, what a long time! I started this post back in March 2015! 😳😲 Unbelievable!
Recently, I got again a question on my workflow, so I decided to finally finish this post. Hint: This post contains some links to software manufacturers. No one paid me anything for getting a link or had any influence on my opinion.

Besides creating jpg files directly in-camera many digital cameras are able to create raw files instead of the JPG or in addition. Raw file means saving the bare information captured by the sensor and not processing it in-camera. This has a couple of advantages. A few years ago, I already published a post on these advantages. Many years ago, I decided to capture only raw files and process them myself afterward to have more control over the process and the final look. No, don’t get me wrong, I don’t use any filters. In only do, what was necessary back in film days.

In the past, I already published some posts covering how I store my images and a bit about, why I’m doing the extra work for raw development. Some of the benefits of doing it this way are in this post. I really encourage you to click on the links and read a bit about the background. Although most recent digital cameras are really great in creating good-looking JPGs, you still have a lot more in raw.

I’m using dedicated raw-processing software and it’s not Lightroom, because this software needs so much unnecessary work which stands in the way where I’d have to work around. The workflow is complicated and not straightforward. And, you’re locked into the software when you want to keep access to your own work.

The DAM (Digital Asset Management) would be nice for the final images, but it’s absolutely the wrong way to import all undeveloped images only for deleting a huge portion right after the import. A database makes additional problems when being used that way and slows down the computer over time. You can google for these problems and find gazillions of people suffering from them. An often recommended solution of having a separate catalog for each job on the other hand leads the whole idea ad absurdum. (btw. the same is true for the recent versions of Luminar, and that’s the reason why I left their affiliate program). Not being able to save all your edits outside of a catalog also hinders you to get your image edited by someone else and get the edits back for learning from the outcome.

These are my steps after coming back from a job or a trip:

1. copy all images in a dedicated folder on my internal disk named with the date and a tiny description of the contents (i.e. 20210507 – garden birds)
2. create a first backup of the whole bunch of images, which will hopefully never be used
3. import the GPS data into the image files (only for trips)
4. normalize the file names when having used more than one camera body to get them in the right order again. My naming scheme is YYYYMMDD_hhmmss-XXX_xxx.NEF. I guess the first and second part of date and time is easily understandable. I take this information from the metadata of each file: the time of releasing the shutter. The XXX stands for a 3 digit code of the used camera body followed by 4 numbers. These third and fourth parts are given to the file by the camera at creation time. The metadata are pieces of information stored in the images by the camera at the time when the image is captured.
5. create a second backup on a second external disk. This one is my backup in case of an emergency.
6. open up a digital light table to check the images and select the ones to get processed.
7. create a sub-folder called “edit” and copy all selected images in this folder, direct the raw processor to the edit folder and process the images
8. the final steps are already in the post, I mentioned above.

In this post, I want to describe the actions I do in my raw processor. You know, I started photography more than 40 years ago and run my own lab in those days.  And the options I had in those days are still the steps I do in digital photography:

1. remove some blemishes and dust-spots
2. brighten the shadows and darken the lights to get a better balance in the image if necessary
3. balance the horizon if necessary
4. correct the with balance if necessary
5. boost the vibrance or increase the saturation if necessary
6. crop, if necessary
7. post-sharpening
8. export to jpg

You see, my workflow is quite easy and straightforward. It costs me a maximum of approximately 2 minutes per image. Some of the actions can be bundled and applied to a couple of images at the same time to speed up the work. But, in general, I’m not a big fan of such bundlings, besides the export to jpg.

You might ask, what kind of software you can use. There are a couple of commercial products around. All I know, offer trial versions for a couple of days/weeks: DxO Photolab, Capture One Pro (free versions for some Fuji and Sony cameras available), OnOne Photo Raw, NX Studio (free, Nikon only – afaik Canon has something similar), and some open-source products, which are also free of charge: Rawtherapee, Lightzone, ufraw, digikam, Darktable. Affinity Photo is more a replacement for Photoshop or Gimp, although it also has a good raw development module. Photoshop brings kind of a lite-version of Lightroom for raw development called Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Gimp incorporates either ufraw or Rawtherapee, depending on the operating system you’re using. There might be some more products in the market, which I didn’t mention here because I don’t know them. So, this list isn’t complete. Sorry!

Although the open-source products usually have a background in the Linux community, they are also available for Windows and macOS. I worked with all of them a bit and would recommend either Lightzone or Rawtherapee. ufraw is a bit like Adobe Camera Raw for Photoshop. Darktable has the same mechanisms as Lightroom. So, it’s unusable for me. I don’t want to import the raw files into a database and stick with this single database because all of my edits are in that database. A corrupt database could make me lose all ever-done edits. DigiKam is an all-in-one solution: fat but mighty. I like the organizing module very much: DAM = Digital Assets Management. For some time, I’m using Excire Foto for DAM. You see, the linked post is quite old. I have to write a new one. This product is amazing.

For modern lenses, it is extremely important to have software being able to adjust and correct lens failures: barrel or cushion distortion and achromatic abbreviations. Back in the film days, the good lenses were designed for not having them. Nowadays it’s easier (and cheaper for the manufacturer) to create a piece of software to correct the failures. All the software I mentioned above is IMHO able to work that way. On the other hand, I have a lot of old lenses, which don’t need such corrections.

In case, you want to start developing your photos, I’d recommend either DigiKam, because it is an all-in-one solution, or Lightzone / Rawthereapee. In case, you need some image manipulation tools, try gimp. You can find tutorials on the relevant homepage I mentioned above or on YouTube. Although there are rumors of Gimp would be complicated, that’s not completely true. Also, Photoshop is very complicated, but there are more talkative called-by-themselves experts telling it otherwise because they are kind of experienced because of extensive usage. Each software is complicated on the first try. But, open-source software usually has a very active community willing to help when you’re investing at least a bit of time reading or watching (YouTube) tutorials. The other option is, to give one of the commercial software a try and download the trial version. Also, commercial software needs you to learn how to handle them. So, giving open-source a try first, won’t cost you any money. When talking about commercial software, I like DxO Photolab the most followed by Capture One Pro. When it comes to image manipulation software, I’m using Gimp and Affinity Photo. In the past, I used Photoshop CS6, but it’s not necessary anymore. First, I need such software only for approximately 10-20 images a year, on the other hand, Gimp has everything, I need. A few weeks ago, I published an article on one of my use cases for image manipulation software on NikonRumors and here in my blog.

I tried all the products I mentioned above last year when I had to investigate a replacement for my raw development software. Although the last update was in 2012 it run well and gave me the flexibility, quality, and tools I needed. Unfortunately, the developer decided to retire the software. For some years I was unable to re-install it if there were a reason to do so, but the recent updates of the operating software of my computer made the tool even completely unusable. So, I needed to find a replacement and I did. Recommending software to someone else is not easy because everyone has her own workflow, her own requirements, and her own wishes. So, you have to try on your own and find the software fulfilling all of your requirements to the best.

Below, you can see two screenshots from while developing a raw image in LightZone. The final image is on the top of this post.

browsing a folder with raw files with the folder structure on the left and the metadata of the selected image to the right

 

a couple of presets on the left, first developing step on the right and seeing the distribution of light in the image (Zone Model of Anselm Adams) in the upper right corner

 

Read the steps on the right from bottom to top. The last step is missing: sharpening

In this image, it was necessary to darken the highlights to recover the fine structures in the petals. In-camera development would have left only completely white spaces. From the raw file, I was able to recover the fine lines in the petals as well as the stamens. The erected twig was removed afterward with image manipulation software (Gimp) as well as the cropping.

Take care and happy snapping 😊

Throwback Thursday: analyzing my archive

cranes during sunrise – APS-C + 800mm ≈ 1200mm full-frame (or 36mm film)

Recently, I started analyzing my images a bit. You know, nearly all cameras are writing some metadata in the image files in addition to the image you’re capturing. I dug all this information out of my developed images but left the undeveloped raw data alone. In this analysis, I’ve included only landscape, macro, Astro, and wildlife images, but no people photography like portraits, models, weddings, or similar things.

I installed the open-source software DigiKam on my computer and configured an image directory. All of my developed images are stored in that directory, but in different folders for each trip. You can find out a bit more about my storage principles in one of my past articles.

DigiKam now read in all the metadata from the jpg files and stored them in an SQLite database. After terminating DigiKam, I was able to open the SQLite database with an SQLBrowser and select all the information I want. I first duplicated the database and started then normalizing the information. Over time, I used different software products for developing my images and not all of them used the exact same writing style for naming the different cameras and lenses.

I was very interested in getting to know my most favorite focal length over time. So, this was the first step: selecting the different camera bodies. Here they are listed with their sensor size and resolution in Mega-Pixel.

	sensor size	MP	used from .. to	shutter count
1	entry-level APS-C	10	2008 – 2009	3,700
2	adv. level APS-C	12	2009 – 2017	63,800
3	pro-level APS-C	24	2017 –	54,500
4	Full-Frame	24	2012 – 2014	35,000
5	Full-Frame	24	2015 – 2020	61,000
6	Full-Frame	24	2020 –	2,300

Hint: body 2 was used a lot for wildlife in addition to the common jobs like landscape, portrait, model, event, and weddings until it was replaced by body 4. From that point in time, I used it only for wildlife until it was replaced by body 3, which is nearly solely used for wildlife. That’s the reason for the very high shutter count of body 3. Body 1 and 2 are already sold and body 4 was replaced because of a product recall. I still own body 5 but only using it for portraits or weddings because of the remote flash capabilities. The shutter has a proposed lifetime of 150,000 exposures (5 + 6) respectively 200,000 (3). So, no need to worry.

In the next table, we have the overall usage of a certain lens in combination with one of the camera bodies. The totals are as interesting as the number of images per camera body.

		1	2	3	4	5	6	Total Result
10.5mm f2.8 fisheye	APS-C		106		28			134
35mm f1.8	APS-C		2					2
10-20mm f4-5.6	APS-C		240					240
18-55mm f3.5-5.6	APS-C	3	5					8
18-105mm f3.5-5.6	APS-C	192	2758					2950
16mm f2.8 fisheye	full frame				39	82		121
12-24mm f4.5-5.6	full frame				1			1
14-24mm f2.8	full frame				188	319		507
24-120mm f4	full frame		2	13	3647	6863	361	10886
70-200mm f2.8	full frame				4	1		5
70-300mm f4.5-5.6	full frame	4	860		438	142		1444
80-400mm f4.5-5.6	full frame		102	4073	239	1111	6	5531
150-500 f5-6.3	full frame		227		46			273
150-600mm f5-6.3	full frame			2564			38	2602
200-500mm f5.6	full frame					34		34
800mm f5.6	full frame			154				154
90mm f2.8 macro	full frame					15		15
100mm f2.8 macro	full frame		102					102
105mm f2.8 macro	full frame		53	117	60	556	73	859
20mm f1.8	full frame					165	17	182
35mm f2.0	full-frame					51	2	53
50mm f1.8	full-frame		11		2	3		16
85mm f1.8	full-frame		2		23	9	3	37
28-70mm f3.5-4.5	full-frame			4			9	13
12mm full manual lens	full frame					7		7
		199	4470	6925	4715	9358	509	26176

Hint: I don’t own all of the used lenses. I owned some of them at a certain time and sold them already, while I got borrowed others. But, the cameras I got borrowed for testing purposes are not included in these statistics.

Hint 2: the totals per camera in table 2 don’t correspond to the number of shutter releases from table 1.  In table 1 I have the total number of shutter releases from the counter inside the camera. The total per camera in table 2 is the number of developed images. Sometimes, I’m taking security shots and develop only one or doing HDR images, where 3 or more different exposed raw files are merged into one final image to benefit from the expanded dynamic range. Astro images are quite similar to HDRs, but here are tens up to hundreds of raw files merged. In wildlife, portrait, and wedding photography, you also take more images as you need for different purposes.

Hint 3: I left out all portrait, wedding, event, model, and engagement photos because I know the most favorite lens for this purpose: the 85mm prime, the 50mm prime as runner up, followed by the 35mm prime. These lenses are quite old. They were made for film cameras (pre-digital). They are perfectly sharp and don’t have distortions, as all modern lenses have (you usually don’t notice this fact, because of the firmware of the lens and the camera, where the distortion is automatically corrected more or less well. But the corrections have an influence on the sharpness. Therefore I’m preferring the prime lenses.

Next, I will see my most favorite focal lengths (shown as 35mm equivalent), aperture, and ISO values.

The last step will be a script, correcting the wrongly labeled images.

Take care!

Monochrome Monday 6-12

Take care!

Throwback Thursday: participate in a photo contest

Recently, I was a member of a jury for an international photo contest, themed “Water”. Ten-thousands of participants sent in their photos and we were supposed to select the best ones. It was a hard and exhausting job.

I was really shocked about the vast amount of really bad images: no balanced horizon, stains in the sky or cut of parts at the edges of the frame, blurry images or long-exposure images taken without a tripod. It was so annoying.

In addition, I was shocked about the huge amount of images, where the sender didn’t pay any attention to the topic of the contest. Either, the image was completely off-topic or the main subject of the image was something different and the water only padding or an accessory part.

Lets dig a bit deeper. For this competition, I expected to see images, where water is the main subject. Water can have one of 3 states of aggregation: gas, liquid or solid. Show them to me: i.e. Rain, rivers, ponts, fountains, the ocean, waves, a shore, snow or ice. Be creative.

But, keep in mind, water has to be the main subject. So, people rushing through the streets during rain won’t match the subject. But, raindrops on the surface of an umbrella will do. Or, the tire of a car splashing water from a rain poodle in the street while rushing through it, will do, too. Another example might be: not a glass of water standing on the table, but the detail of pouring the water out of the glass or in the glass.

My advises for sending in photos to a photo-contest are:

1. read the rules carefully and understand them. Even such an easy-looking theme like the one I mentions above can be very, very tricky
2. pick images with the topic as the main subject
3. make sure, the chosen image has perfect quality (no stains, no dust spots, straight horizon, no blurs, no motion shake but intentional, …).
   When it comes to lens flares: check, if they support the main subject. If not, avoid lens flares. They are often considered as a flaw, too.
4. pay attention on how to compose an image (foreground, middle-ground, background; as well as where to place the part of interest). There are guides on how to compose an image available at the internet.
5. focus on the message of your image. Include as much as possible, but not more than necessary. Just like Robert Capa said “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough”
6. put your emotions aside. I know, your feelings and you memories come back when looking at you images. But, someone else won’t feel them just like you, because no-one else knows, what you felt while taking that picture. Everyone else simply sees the image and judges based on the image. So, put your emotions aside when selecting an image for a photo-contest.
7. check the legal side: are you the author of the image? Are you allowed to publish / send in the image? Do you have property and / or model releases?
   You know, by sending in an image to a photo-contest, you also have to hand over some legal rights!!
   Check the fine-print of the photo-contest. Are you fine with all of the regulations? What about the GDPR?
8. usually your gear isn’t important for an image to be eligible for a certain contest. But, sometimes the regulations say i.e. only cell-phones, no cell-phones, only taken with gear by a certain brand, no edits, only edited with a certain software
9. What about watermarks? Sometimes the regulations say no logo or watermark. Obey the rule for not being disqualified. You know, I also use a small watermark as my signature, just like a painter. It’s neither a weapon against image theft or a working concept for documenting your ownership. Even without such a watermark you keep your rights. If you really want to have such a watermark, keep it unobtrusive. Otherwise it could ruin your image.
10. double-check your image again against all of these advises!

You see, taking part in a photo-contest is not that easy, as it looks like first.

If you want to, you can take this as an example and for you own training.
If you want me, to judge one of your images, drop me a note and a link to the image in the comments below. The review can be public as well as private. It’s your choice.

Another option is, taking part in the challenge I set up at Viewbug. You can participate for free. Simply follow the link and create an account at no costs.

Wordless Wednesday: blue tube

Take care!

Creating a photo collage the easy way

Earlier this week I published a collage containing my top 10 images from last years Monochrome Madness, an open competition with only monochrome images. I got a few questions, how I was able to create it.

As usual, there are several options to create such collages. Some of the options might be Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, GIMP* or  Scribus*. (* these apps are open source and available for free legally!) I uses something completely different: Collage Factory Free. This is the light version of a software specialized for creating collages. The light version does not have all features of the complete version. Thus you might call it CrippleWare! Despite this, it has enough features for me.

First of all, you select a template. You can always modify the collage by adding further images, delete place holder or re-arrange them. You can also change the size and the angel simply by clicking on one of the blue dots in the edges of a frame and pull it or click on the red dot above the frame and spin it around as long as you like it.

Next, you select your images and pull them in the free space on the left. From here, you distribute them manually with your mouse or click on one of the automatic buttons in the upper left area (“fill random” and so on) I usually distribute them on my own.

Now, you can add a text box, if you want to. You can use every installed font. The software goes you some effects to add, like shadow, border or fillings.

Not everyone like the default background. That’s ok! You can change it. the app comes with many different option for the background: simple colors, color gradients, patterns and background images. You can even chose your own image for the background.

The last step is choosing the image size for the final image ind jpg format. Here we have the strongest restrictions in the software. There are only very few sizes available in the free version. For me, it’s enough. But, decide on you own. Don’t forget to save the creation in the edible format of the app, too. So you can change parts later, if you don’t like your original creation. The file format is a structure, that contains even the selected image. So, you can even move the edible file i.e. to an external storage and won’t loose one of the used images.

I attached screenshots from the app of a complete workflow. I created a collage from my Cuba images.

If you try the software on your own, please let me know, if you like it and, maybe, you can publish your creations somewhere and leave me a link to it. I’d like to see your creations!

Enjoy!

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High Dynamic Range Images

A few days ago, I got another interesting kind of photo software from MacPhun: Aurora HDR

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Before I start a review of this new software, I want to explain the basics in this concept first.

Dynamic is the variance from brightest to darkest parts of a natural scene, which is visible lossless when looking on it or capturing it in a single frame. Comparing the capabilities of the human eye and a modern digital sensor, you’ll find a huge difference. According to (Source), the human eye (although not the best in nature!) has a dynamic range of about 20 f-stops (out of 23 – a range from starlight lit scenes to white snow in full high standing sun at noon without clouds in the sky). So, you can see details in the dark, even when the surrounding scene is very bright – or vice vera. The sensor of your camera has a dynamic range of 6 – 8 f-stops in jpg files (depending on the quality of your camera). In raw files you’re able to capture dynamic ranges of about 10 – 12 f-stops (also depending of the quality of your camera) . Why jpg-files are so bad and why you should use raw files instead, was the topic for a past post.

But back to our todays topic: HDR. To cope with the reduced dynamic range compared to our natural experience through our own eyes someone invented a technique to capture more information for an image. Therefore you have to take more than one shot of a scene by using several shots of an identical frame, but modify the exposure slightly by shifting the exposure time without changing anything else. You take one correct exposed shot balanced for the mid-tones. Next, you take an under-exposed image (i.e. -1 f-stop) and next an over-exposed image (i.e. +1 f-stop). The under-exposed image represents the highlights, so you should be able to see all the details in the bright partes of the image. In this image all dark parts might be black, but that’s fine for now. The over-exposed image is the opposite of the under-exposed image. Here, you get the details in the dark parts, while the bright parts are blown out and nearly white.

Don’t try to simply adjust your aperture, by changing the f-stop. Although, this results in a modified exposure-time, it also changes the characteristics of the image: the field of depth is changed, while the exposure balance stays the same 😦 That’s not our intention!

You have to use the “+/-“-key on your camera or switch to manual mode, to dial in the corresponding exposure times manually. Keep in mind, +1 f-stop means doubling the exposure time twice (.i.e. 1/100s -> 1/50 -> 1/25s) and -1 f-stop means dividing the time in halves twice  (i.e. 10s -> 5s -> 2.5s).

Just in case, the +/- 1 f-stop images aren’t enough to bring back details in the dark and / or bright parts, try +/- 2 f-stops or come up with a row of five more images (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2). You could also end up with even more than 5 image for a single series. Expand the series as long as you have any black or white parts in you image. Many cameras assist you in here, while marking these parts blinking (the mode is called ‘highlights’ in my camera menu and works only on the small screen on the back of my camera – the image is ok, only the in-camera playback is marked this way). By using this, you can shift the EV in each direction, as long as all of the blinking parts vanish in that direction. I.e. you increase +EV to get the dark details, but in the same moment, you’ll loose more and more highlights. As I said above, that’s ok. Next you increase your series -EV to capture the details in the highlights, by loosing the darks. That’s also ok. You have to increase +EV as long, as there are no blinking dark parts left and you increase -EV as long, as there are no blinking highlights left. You don’t need to increase in thirds, as your camera might step up and down. It’s enough to use the whole numbers as I mentioned earlier. As you might imagine, all of these requires an unchanged camera position! Always use a tripod for this and disable your image stabilizer while the camera is mounted on top of a tripod!

Back at home, take your series of images (usually 3 or more), make your usual corrections (i.e. shifting the horizon) for all images of that series exactly the same way and pay attention to get correct aligned images at this stage. All of them should show exactly the same cutting and the same orientation, convert them to tiff (for preserving all information – never use jpg in this stage) and use a HDR software, just like Aurora HDR from MacPhun (there are more software products available for creating HDR images) to fuse these files to a single balanced image with details in all parts of the image. Croping should be done at the very last step on the final image! And, that’s the point where I’m continuing soon!

For now, I’ve assembled a small gallery of some of my HDR images. Although, there are some photographers out there, who love very intense colors for their HDR images, I don’t do so! I use this technique very mild to get natural looking images.

Take care!

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Monochrome Madness 2-32

It’s time for another Monochrome Madness hosted by Leanne Cole. Have fun and don’t forget to the check out the other photographers contributions.

Today, I have an image for you, which is kind of typical for November although it’s taken two weeks ago in the early morning of October, 28th at 6:42 a.m. It’s the full moon above a foggy landscape.

When the Romans tried to conquer the parts of Europe north of the Alps about 2.000 years ago, they were confronted with huge dark and dense forests. Because of the Gulf stream, central Europe has a quite mild, but wet climate.* Rain falls down and the forests give back parts of the moisture by sweating fog. For the common sun pampered roman soldiers, these conditions were very frightening. Finally, they were unable to conquer the parts east of the river Rhine, despite their endeavors and they paid a very high price for their efforts. West of the river Rhine the landscape wasn’t forested as east of the river. So, they were able to found several cities in todays France and in todays Germany along the west bank of river Rhine: i.e. Trier, Cologne, Xanten to name a few of them.

Nowadays, we don’t have so much forests anymore. Thus, we have thick fogs ‘only’ in fall and spring. Although, they can occur during summer, too, but only on very distinct weather conditions and only very local.

Take care!

* Imagine, New York is located nearly parallel to Rome in Italy. Rome is locate yet 1° further north than New York, that’s about 111 km. And while New York suffers from snow each winter, Rome almost never sees any snow flake. That’s a result of the Gulf stream.

Rome        41° 53′ N, 12° 29′ O
New York  40° 43′ N, 74° 0′ W

and I’m living about 1,100 km north of Rome

Monochrome Madness 2-31

This week Monochrome Madness hosted by the Australian photographer Leanne Cole has a specific theme. It’s clouds.

Clouds are quite special. They bring structure in a dull gray sky or may pop out in bright white on a sunny day. When thinking of photographing clouds, you might think first of beautiful illuminated clouds at sunset. But, in monochrome there are way more situations for beautiful clouds. Have a look on a past post, when I compared a shot developed in color to the same shot in bw. Another kind of cloud-photography you can often find in fineart and architecture photography: long exposures.

For a better contrast, you should use a yellow-filter in front of your lens. This filter works on the color spectrum inside the natural ‘white’ light. The gray tones are moved (other colored filters would do the same, but working on different colors). That part of the light, that has the same color of the filter, is intensified (that means: becomes brighter), while the complement color is alleviated (which means: becomes darker). This effect is very welcomed in black-and-white photography to get a certain mood in the resulting image.

Back to our yellow filter. How does it work? Yellow becomes brighter, while blue becomes darker. So, white clouds pop out of a dark sky.

Why should you do this? Black-and-white film (and software, too, when not correcting this), get too bright skies without much structure. A quite dull image!

Other possible filters are colored in orange, green, red and blue. Each of them works on the mentioned color to brighten it and on the complementing color to darken it. Each of them has its certain field of work. The yellow filter, instead, is the most commonly used filter in landscape photography.

Although not photographers, you can find the effect also in movies by i.e. Alfred Hitchcock or Leni Riefenstahl.

Take care!

up, on to the wall!

Hey, you like to go out and taking photographs? You brought back (and bring back at least occasionally) a card full of great photos? Raw-development is also already done? And now? Only using up several giga-byte of storage on your computer?

How often do you look on your photos stored on your computer, usb-stick or cell-phone? Do you show them around? How do you do it? Do you put them online to a web-forum, your blog, at g+ or at flickr? Isn’t there more? What else could you do with your photos?

Many years ago, when photos were taken on film, you’ve had to bring the film to a lab for development. A few days later you got your developed film back via postal service or fetch it from a store. According to the order you placed with the film, you also got at least one print in 9x13cm (3,5×5 inch) or 10x15cm (4×6 inch) from each photo.

Nowadays you can find self-service print stations in supermarkets, drugstores and small photo shops. These might be the replacement for the ordered prints I mentioned above. I guess, this is used mostly for photos taken at family events like birthdays, christmas or weddings. Photos taken during a vacation might end in a self-designed photo book. According to the ads, they seem to be very popular. But is this all? No!

There are also labs around, that are offering prints in bigger sizes. I ordered some of such prints in 30×45 cm (12×18 inch) or 40×60 cm (16×24 inch) to put them on a wall. What a great impression. I put them with a passepartout in a wooden frame behind a sheet of glass. Thus, the print is saved well. But, the glass is mirroring. Especially in quite darker parts of the photo. Nevertheless, such a big photo not only reminds you to that special situation, it also can motivate you.

Transportation

Up to DIN A4 (20×30 cm / 8×12 inch) prints are distributed in a hardened envelope and transported by the usual mail service. Bigger sizes prints, instead, are distributed rolled in a cardboard tube and transported by a parcel service. Furling such a print is easy for distribution, but has a big problem: the print memorized the time being rolled and tends to roll up again after being unrolled. Additional, you are in risk of kink or bend the print while pulling it out of the tube. These kinks often are irreparable damages.

Alternatives

For some time, there are also a few alternatives available: Canvas prints, metal prints (composite materials) and Acrylic prints.

Canvas

A few weeks ago I ordered two canvas prints sized 60x80cm (24×32 inch) to test the quality. They came in a parcel as expected. Each frame wrapped in air bubble film separately and together in a stable cardboard box. Despite their size, they are surprisingly lightweight compared to a conventional framed print.

Interestingly, both canvas prints have an impression of depth and three-dimensionality. It seems for me, as if I could really touch the subject in the image, when looking at them.  That’s a very different experience compared to conventional prints. Maybe, that’s a result of the structured surface of the canvas material.

Unfortunately, on all four sides you’re losing parts from your image. That’s because of the canvas is pulled over the wooden frame and fixed at the back. Depending on the thickness of the frame, you lose several centimeter / inches. Therefore, make sure, you don’t have any necessary content in these border parts. Some (if not all) print shop know about this problem and face it with different options to choose from. The simplest option is accepting the loss. Or, you can add extra space for the wrapping in white, black or fitting to the image. Now, it’s up to you, to choose the best option for your purpose.

You don’t need a picture frame or a gallery system necessarily to put such a canvas on the wall. Simply put needles in the wall and use the wooden frame inside the canvas for hanging your picture up.

Acryl

I also ordered an acryl print. It’s much more expensive than a canvas print. The look-and feel is similar to the conventional prints mounted behind glass and you don’t have any losses and the borders of you print. Delivery is also in a flat cardboard box. The surface is sensitive for scratches. Thus, it comes with a protective foil, that you have to remove after delivery.

For this kind of print, you definitely need a clamp behind your print to hang it up. Not every print shop includes it per default. So, look carefully for it.

Storing

I like to change my prints every a few times a year. Thus, I have to store them somewhere. Storing conventional print is easy. They don’t need much room. I take them out of the frame and store them in a folder, I bought in a store for artists (painter). It’s a cardboard map big enough for A2 prints. Usually it is used by art students to collect their works. And, my photo prints are save inside, too. It’s also quit easy to reach them when I want to change one.

Canvas prints are way bulky. You also have to take care of them, while storing them. The material is quite sensitive for pressure. You have to avoid, that something else lays on top of a laying canvas frame or might press an edge from the side while storing them standing upright.

Acryls are also not so easy to store. OK, they are not as thick as canvas and less sensitive for pressure. But, you have to save the surface from scratching and, most importantly, handle the jutting clamp on the back.

Conclusion

For me, each of these different materials has its own pros and the quality is very similar. At the moment, I like the canvas print most, because of the mentioned feeling of depth.

But, I don’t want to conceal a drawback. You can only use the predefined formats for your print.Usually, the print shop offers his products huge variety of formats you can choose from. But, supposed you have i.e. a panorama in a format, not available at any print shop. In this case, you can print is on paper and cut off the unnecessary parts, cut a passepartout and build a frame on your own. This is not possible with the other materials.

I’d like to get your comments. What do you think about hanging your own photos in i.e. your living room or your hall. Have you ever tried, hanging up your own photo? What kind of material do you like most and why? Are you interested in printing you own photos now, if you didn’t do so before?

 

How to select your best photo from the bulk

Back, in film days it was easy. You took a film with 20,24 or 36 shots on your trip and gave it to the lab after coming back home. Or, depending on your destination, you even were able to find a lab in your trip location. A few days later you got your developed film and a bunch of prints, depending on your type of film and the selected service. But, this was quite expensive. 1 film containing 36 shots with development and prints was as expensive as a todays 32 GB SD-Card from a medium quality brand (or a 128 GB SD card, when including inflation considerations).

But, what can I do with a 32 GB SD card compared to the 36 shots on film? Do you remember my post on jpg vs. raw? Assuming, one photo needs 25 MB storage, I’d be able to take about 1.300 photos with only one card.

While I’ve chosen my frames very carefully to avoid bad shots when I was photographing on film, I now often waste room by taking additional shots for different angles, take safety shots in tricky situations or when standing on wobbling ground. Or I try different settings, or taking redundant shots from similar plants / flowers / landscapes / posings  … – you name it. This results in a full memory card with lots of photos to be checked.

In my last post on this I mentioned the star system, for marking bad shots with a waste-bin, good shots with 1 star. Next filter all shots and select those with 1 star and mark the best of these with 2 stars. Repeat this until 5 stars are given to your best shots from that trip or shooting. This is a good workflow for finding the best shots, but it won’t help to find and compare similar photos taken in different places or on different trips or on different times. Here you’re on your own – up to now.

Maybe you’re stumbled upon Google’s image search, where you can put an image in the box designed to put the search term into and Google will show similar images from the web.

You can have this on you own computer, too. How? With the new app “snapselect” by MacPhun.

At the first start the app asks you for your images folder. Next, all images in this folder and all other folders below this starting point are read and indexed. For my image folder containing about 10,000 images this step lasted about 30 minutes or so. It creates a folder inside your home directory (Library/Application Support/com.macphun.snapselect_1.0.0) to store small pieces of data for each of the scanned images. In my case this folder needed about 1,1 GB of my hard disk space. But, this is necessary to do the magic: comparing the images and show similar images from all over your image folder, regardless when and where you took that image. Instead of this, it can also use your Lightroom, iPhoto or Aperture catalog. But, I haven’t tested one of these, because I don’t use any of them.

Imagine: you can select one photo of a red rose, adjust the accuracy slider and see every red rose on your disk. The accuracy slider is to define how much the equality of the images should be – or, in other words, how similar the selected images are supposed to be.

Now, you can choose i.e. the best photo for a competition or select the photos to keep or keeping only the best photos on your disk or whatever else you want to reach. In my screen shot above* I selected a folder containing some RAW files containing birds of prey taken at the fall festival in Middelkerke (Belgium) last year. You can see how snapselect grouped the photos showing similar birds and in similar poses. This is really a fantastic help when it comes to select photos.

This is one of the fantastic features of the new snapselect. Go and get your own trial and check it out! You can get it from your Mac App store.

Take care!

* (click on the image to see it bigger)

How to store photos on your disks

As a photographer you collect many, many photos over the years. Back, in film days, there were prints, slides, mounted slides and developed films to store carefully. They had to be stored dark, dry and preferably dust-free.

Today, when we have digital photos, the problems changed a bit. We don’t need that large cabinets anymore, because a digital photo need much less space. But, because it’s so cheap to make a photo, we have much more of them.

In film days, we have had folders for the developed films and hand-written index sheets or card boxes for the slide trays. This was done carefully, to have chance to find a certain photo without much effort.

Today I want to introduce you to my digital filing system.

First of all, I have my SD card containing the photos. On trips I usually transfer them every evening from my card to my computer and check them. The check is for making sure there is no corrupt file. I also delete bad photos: unintentionally shutter releases, obvious mismatched focus or unrepairable over- or under-exposed photos. Then I make a second copy to an external USB disk and clear the SD cards for the next day.

I create a folder for the trip like: “20140629 – Iceland”
Below this folder I create separate folders for each part of the trip. (note: photowalks and roundtables usually don’t have this additional level)

20140629 – arrival
20140630 – 01 – Gullfoss
20140630 – 02 – Geysir
20140630 – 03 – Brúaráfoss
20140701 – 01 – Pseudo crate field
20140701 – 02 – Viking house
20140701 – 03 – Gjáin Foss

This scheme makes it much easier to find a certain photo later. (keywording is not subject to this post)

As I wrote in my last ‘tech‘ post, I’m a raw shooter. Thus, I have to do my developments, when I’m back at home (on a trip I only develop very few, but really fantastic, photos).

Therefore I create a sub-folder called “edit” inside the folder of certain trip part. Each developed photo is stored inside this edit folder. When I’m ready with all development of a folder, I start a batch process for exporting all developments to JPG-Files. Subsequently I start another batch job, that creates some further sub-folders for the original (printable) JPG and a watermarked file in web resolution.

When I’m finished with a project, I move all JPGs to my file server, all developed files go to my NAS and all untouched raws to an external USB disk. On both storage devices, I have folders named by the year to hold the folders mentioned above. My file server and my NAS are backed up every day (night) to separate, independent USB disks. The external USB disk with all the raws isn’t backed up separately. Now, the pristine second copy isn’t needed anymore and thus cleared for a new use.

2014
 ⤷ 2014 – Iceland
    ⤷ 20140629 - arrival
       ⤷ big
       ⤷ org
       ⤷ web
    ⤷ 20140630 - 01 - Gullfoss
       ⤷ big
       ⤷ org
       ⤷ web
    ⤷ 20140630 - 02 – Geysir
       ⤷ big
       ⤷ org
       ⤷ web
    ⤷ 20140630 - 03 – Brúaráfoss
    ⤷ 20140701 - 01 - Pseudo crate field
    ⤷ 20140701 - 02 - Viking house
    ⤷ 20140701 - 03 - Gjáin Foss

Both, file server and NAS, are built from regular computer parts and set up with Linux. Thus, I’m able to adapt them easily, in case of new requirements.

My desktop computer is also backed up every night. All those backups are incremental backups. This is copying only the modified files, instead of the whole disk. Thus a backup is finished usually in less than half an hour, depending on the amount of modified files.

Take care for you valuable files. Have a backup!

Happy snapping 🙂

 

Why should I do the extra work for using raw instead of jpg out-of-cam?

Most, if not all, digital cameras come preconfigured by the manufacturer to save the photos in jpg format. This format is standardized by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, usually written as an acronym JPEG. You can recognize files following this standard by their extension .JPG or .JPEG.

The jpg format has a lossy compression algorithm to shrink the file size. The compression level is usually leveled by fine, good, moderate, web, small size or in percent levels. Regardless of the notation, the higher the quality, the bigger the files. Or to change the angle of view: the higher the compression, the worse the quality.

JPG has also another design problem. It only uses 8 bit for coding the colors. Each color is assembled by leveling the three color channels red, green and blue (RGB). I.e. a white point is saved a 100% red, 100% green and 100% blue. Thus you need 3 byte (1 for each color channel) for storing 1 pixel. Assuming, your camera sensor has a resolution of 3000×2000 pixel, you can easily calculate the size for a photo: 3000 x 2000 x 3 = 18000000 = 18000 kilo-byte = 18 mega-byte.
The compression algorithm tries to find neighboring pixel of similar (not same!!) levels in all of their 3 color channels and sets them as equal to save space. Especially in nice color gradients like skies at sunset you will see serious problems: the colors don’t blend smooth, but change in bigger steps instead. Very ugly. Have a look in the attached screenshot below.

Higher-quality and semi-professional cameras support more than 8 bit in their sensors. They use 12, 14 or even 16 bit for each of the three color channels. This results in 4096, 16383 or 65535 color nuances per channel instead of 256 when using 8 bit. Do you see the difference?
So, your camera is recording a scene with a color depth of 14 bit (thats 16383 color nuances), just like mine and JPG only uses 8 of them (for 256 nuances). How can this work? It works by compressing similar tones to only one. The result is, you’re loosing much of your details in the mid-tones, in the darks and in the highlights. While the highlights will tend to turn to white, the darks will tend to turn black.

One of the loopholes might be, using TIFF instead of JPG. This format preserves all information, because it uses 16 bit for each color channel and does not use any compression. The downside of this quality is the size. Using the same values as above a TIFF file would eat up 36 mega-byte. Or, by using values from my camera: while a JPG usually uses between 10 an 12 MB, a TIFF file has 155 MB.

Many cameras have another option: raw files! These files are called raw files, because they are stored without any touching inside the camera. They preserve all bits recorded by the sensor and use a lossless compression. But, these formats are camera dependant. Each manufacturer uses his own format and to make this even worse, it is different for each camera model. When using this format, each of my photos needs about 20-30 MB of storage space. And these raw files aren’t ready for use. They have to be developed in post-production, just like the films in analog times.

So, why should you use this option? There are already TIFF and JPG in place? Why shout I invest much more time for post-production? And, why should I invest more money in software, when I can get ready to use photos right out of my camera? My print shop ony takes JPG anyway.

That depends! Think of the color depth I mentioned earlier. You could get better quality prints by spreading the tones, lighten the darks and darken the highlights in post-production. So, you can get a more natural ambience without huge black and / or white areas without details. Another option is, you can change a few basic settings like the white-balance or slightly shifting the aperture lossless. And higher quality print shops also accept TIFF-file, and they know, why 🙂 Look at the web site of your print shop for accepted file formats.

So, you only can win by using raw-files. There is software available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows for doing the necessary work called “the digital darkroom”. This name derived from the darkroom necessary in film days for developing the film and to process the film negatives to prints.

There’s a huge variety in products available. You don’t need to use Adobe’s Lightroom. There’s even software available as open-source for free and maybe even from your camera manufacturer using optimized setting for your camera and the lenses.

I attached a 100% crop from one of my photos taken last month in Belgium to demonstrate the (bad) effect. I shrinked the quality level to 40% before clipping out this part of the upper left corner of the sky. Keep in mind, depending on the dye distribution in a certain photo, the effect becomes visual earlier or later. Sometimes this effect is already there, when using a quality level of 80% on other photos it appears not until 50%. For my photos, I don’t use any compression.

Click on the photo, to see the effect better. Below I attached the original photo. Feel free, to drop me a note, a question or a suggestion in the box below.

Take care!

Taking photographs in the old way …

… on analog film.

A fellow blogger wrote a post on this topic: 7 reasons to return to film photography

I stumbled over that post by change. Most of his reasons are reasonable, but there are others he didn’t set in the perspective.

I started photography in the early 1980s (OK, I got my first camera during the 1970s, but here I mean a more serious kind of photography). So I took photographs on film for approximately more than 25 year. Over the years you get plenty of dia slides and negatives. You have to catalog them and store them. You have to take care for a storage, suitable for them (not too hot, not too cold, no humidity, dark, keep them plan). Nearly the same is true for the prints.

I developed my black-and-whites myself. You need a  bunch of chemicals, that need special care after usage. The same is true for the color processes (more complicated, expensive and pollutive). Don’t mention the laboratory equipment. If you’re really interested in the old chemical processes, try taking a class at a school or try to get an internship at a photographer who still uses that old way.