Archive for category Photography
End of 2011 and film photography
Posted by therider in Personal, Photography on January 1, 2012
The sunset at the Limantour beach (near Point Reyes) could not be more beautiful. Gorgeous colors and not too chilly winds. I pulled out my Mamiya RB67 loaded with E100VS color slide film. I had already finished 2 rolls earlier in the afternoon, doing some studies of the classic pacific coastline. The light was getting low, so I pulled out my cable release and proceeded to attach to the lens.
And then it struck me. The knob was already at the position to take the cable release in order to trip the shutter. That meant only one thing – that while all afternoon I enjoyed handheld photography without the cable release, I moved frame after frame without actually tripping the shutter. Unbelievable. More than the loss of film and my time, my patience finally eroded beyond the point of no return.
My biggest resolution for the coming year is to simplify my life. I need to reduce my things to the minimum that I need and enjoy all the time. The film gear has to go. I have been justifying keeping them for too long without much of a reward. Processing and scanning film takes too much time and effort and does not give me anything that digital can’t for all my practical needs.
Maybe this needed to happen. I feel lighter and more at peace. I can come back to shoot the waves and the sunset and not get disappointed again. Here is to a very productive 2012.
Happy new year.
Migrating from flickr to picasaweb
Posted by therider in Photography, Software on December 6, 2011
In 2006 I migrated my pbase albums to flickr. Why? Because flickr was the coolest looking thing back then. Some of the things that made me do the painful manual switch:
- Photostream: a new concept unlike the rigid directory-like album structure in pbase.
- Square thumbnails and the ability to put same image into multiple sets without duplication.
- The community feel, groups, and explore galleries.
I have since accumulated more than 6000 photos in flickr and it is an irreplaceable memory lane for me.
Few weeks ago I started wondering about the future of flickr. After acquisition by yahoo in 2005, it has not added any significant feature besides collections (only one level deep hierarchy) and some other cosmetic changes. Given the abysmal track record of companies/products under yahoo, I figured it was time to really check out picasaweb, the other viable alternative I ignored for a long time.
In two days of fiddling with picasaweb, picasa desktop app, and photograbbr I think this is the way to go. This blog post also sold me to the idea. Here are my observations regarding the switch:
- If I let my pro flickr account lapse, I will still have the photos forever, only that the last 200 will be visible in photostream. Any link to photos from old blog posts will continue to work. I have not much to lose. Besides my 6000 photos are all web sized, taking under 2GB of space. In flickr I paid $25/yr for unlimited, but in picasaweb I will have to pay $5/yr for 20GB (1GB is free).
- I am not sure I like the photostream of flickr anymore. Sometimes I think twice before uploading less-than-best photos since friends will see the latest photos. At this point the rigid album feature makes more sense. I will miss having album-inside-album, but I can live with that, since tags can help.
- One big gripe with flickr is filename preservation. It would make the filename as default title, and I have to manually copy it to the description area if I have to change the title. Flickr gives each photo an unique id and there is no other place where the filename is preserved. With picasa this is no more a problem, the photos get uploaded in picasa with empty caption by default, and filename is untouched. For the migration part, PhotoGrabbr is an excellent app. It lets me download flickr photos with flickr filename, plus an xml document which has all the details about the photo including title and description, one of which has the original filename. The migration should be easy and fast.
- The other major pain-in-the-ass with flickr is its image organizer. I cringe everytime I have to use it.
- I really loved the way picasa works, especially the sync with picasaweb. Photo caption syncs both ways. Super easy to delete the online album and re-upload after major changes in the album. Once an album (basically a folder) is in sync with the online version, I can upload more by simple drag and drop to the album folder. So my workflow is like this: work in Lightroom, export processed photos from RAW to 900×600 jpg, and just drop them in a folder under picasa. The tags stay intact from the time I imported photos in LR. Sweet.
- The integration of picasaweb with G+ android app took me by surprise. Very fast browsing of my online photos over 3G. WIN.
I am kind of sad to no longer renew my flickr pro, but I am sure it would have been 10 times more awesome from its 2005 version had it not gone under Yahoo.
Update: here is my new picasaweb public gallery: https://picasaweb.google.com/107557198667490360767
Solution for Epson 7600 printing in Snow Leopard
Posted by therider in Mac, Photography, Software on September 30, 2010
In the previous post I have outlined a trick to print correctly from Lightroom. While that works, LR has a weird crop issue when printing. So I continued my search to find a fix with PS.
Thanks to Doyle Yoder from a Luminous Landscape forum thread (reply #18), finally I can print right again from PS CS3. The steps are:
1. Convert to printer/paper profile.
2. Assign sRGB profile, ignore the color shift as it shows on the monitor.
3. In the print dialog, choose “Printer manages color”.
4. Because of above choice, “Color matching” in driver dialog will show “Epson color controls” automatically chosen and grayed out. Now choose NCA in the settings.
Voila. Perfect print.
Epson 7600 and Snow Leopard printing woes and solution
Posted by therider in Mac, Photography, Software on September 29, 2010
Brief update from my side is that I picked up a large format Epson Stylus Pro 7600 from a good friend of mine. As much as I was excited to own such a fine printer, I was bummed for two straight days not able to print a test image correctly from Photoshop CS3 on an intel macbook with Snow Leopard (10.6.4). I used the latest 8.19 printer driver.
I followed the standard process. Photoshop manages colors, with Bill Atkinson’s 9600 Premium Luster paper profile (9600PLU1), with Relative Colorimetric intent and Black point compensation turned on. Also NCA (no color adjustment) in the printer driver. Each and every print came out darker as if shadows quickly rushed to blackness. Also the black and white images seemed warm.
From numerous sources on the web I found out that the root cause is “double profiling” due to a bug in the print workflow. What happens exactly is that when we apply a profile in the print dialog in PS, and then go to printer driver dialog, the “Color Matching” section shows that “ColorSync” is automatically selected and is grayed out. This is not desired because ColorSync itself applies another profile depending on the paper, in my case, 7600-Premium-Luster-PK. the NCA option is also grayed out. This double profiling screws up the prints.
Many people have fixed it by pointing the default ColorSync profiles to “Generic RGB” as if it is a null profile. But it did not work for me.
Another source said to convert the image to the paper profile, then choose “Printer manages colors”, and NCA in printer driver. Very strangely, the printer just won’t print anything with this configuration.
Then I found out a very interesting fact that in Lightroom the application print dialog and the print driver dialog are on separate buttons. I had to choose the NCA on the driver dialog first (clicking “Print Settings…”), making sure that Color Matching is “Epson color controls”, the only alternative to “ColorSync”. Then I chose the paper profile on the right side pane before clicking “Print one”, and not “Print…”. If you click the latter, the color matching will be reset to “ColorSync” and you have to undo it by choosing “Printer manages color” instead of the paper profile and click “Print…” again.
The print finally showed shadow details as desired and perfectly neutral black and white.
It will still be a PITA to prepare images in PS and print via LR, but at least the prints will be right. CS4 or CS5 might have this particular bug fixed, but not sure.
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Various Epson 7600 related links:
1. Lesson: Printing Images Using an EPSON Pro Stylus 7600 / 9600 Large Format Printer and Adobe Photoshop
2. Lessons from using an Epson 7600 printer
Test prints:
1. On-sight
2. Bill’s downloads
Update: After getting the 7600 working right, the 2200 driver started giving problems. It won’t print and the utility app will not launch. After lots of research the solution that worked was to install the 2200 driver in uninstall mode before re-installing it. Then I tricked the 2200 the same way as 7600 to get it to print using paper profile and “Epson color controls”. The result came out better than what I was doing all along with “Printer manages colors” workflow. The grays are more neutral than the distinct magenta I used to get. It is still a little warm so I might still be using QTR for b/w but the color prints are gonna be better from now on.
Aperture vs Lightroom
Posted by therider in Photography on April 23, 2010
I have been a lightroom user for over an year and just wanted to try out the new Aperture v3. What got me excited about Aperture are the two cool features – making books with professional templates and slideshows with stills, videos and audios.
I tried to evaluate Aperture for my day to day editing which I am pretty fast in LR with the keyboard shortcuts. The feature that makes my workflow fastest is how the arrow keys work with LR. The left and right keys always browse through the photos. The up and down keys modify values whenever focus is on a adjustment slider like exposure, white balance, etc. This makes editing much faster than with wacom tablet and pen, since the increments are spaced apart thereby needing less computations. However, in Aperture, both left/right and up/down movement of arrow keys browse through the photos and I need to use mouse on the sliders – a big disappointment.
I might check out the book and slideshow features, but for the time being LR will remain my workhorse editing tool. Unless someone can show me that Aperture can be configured to be as fast as LR in the editing department.
Using color blend mode in Photoshop
Posted by therider in Photography, Software on March 13, 2010
Over the years, I have been processing thousands of images in photoshop, but the various layer blending modes don’t get used much. Except for overlay and soft light for when I do high pass output sharpening.
Very recently, I came across a specific requirement. A favorite photo had abrupt vignetting and the color of the sky in the upper corners were different in hue from the rest. I would normally use the clone stamp tool with low opacity, but I had one problem, there were some power lines that went right through the corner. Then I tried using clone stamping in a new transparent layer with blending mode set to color instead of normal. That gave me exactly what I needed, the color mismatch was fixed without doing anything funky with the power lines. The photos below illustrate this technique.
Original with color shift in corner
Problem with clone stamp tool using normal blend mode
Clone stamp tool using color blend mode
Using color blend mode in photoshop
Epson 2200 in Snow Leopard
Posted by therider in Mac, Photography, Software on January 27, 2010
The upgrade to Snow Leopard a few months back was smooth, except for one fatal thing. The colors from my Epson 2200 went from awesome in Leopard to downright awful, thanks to the third party Gutenprint driver. I only realized this mess today since I had been printing black and whites using the Quad Tone Rip (QTR) driver which kept producing neutral prints.
So I hit google and there it was, a pretty long forum thread on the very same issue. To my surprise I found that Epson indeed released Snow Leopard driver for the 2200 printer sometime in Nov 2009. I installed it, then removed and re-added the printer and voila, the colors are almost back to normal. The interface is actually much better than what I expected, and the advanced color setting panel actually worked (it was mangled up in the Gutenprint driver).
Now that I still had a little magenta cast (as opposed to horrible), I tweaked with the advanced color settings panel. Took down magenta to -9 and suddenly the grays started to look like gray. There is just one thing to be done in photoshop prior to printing. The brightness of the image has to be increased a little bit. A foolproof way to do this is to have a curves layer, with no adjustment, then setting the blending mode to screen with 50% opacity. That makes my color prints about same as what I see on my monitor. For black and white prints using QTR, the last step is not necessary, or maybe about 20% opacity will do.
Looking forward to some print sessions in the coming days.
Update: Magenta -12 works even better.
Epson V500 and coming back to film
Posted by therider in Photography on October 27, 2009
I used 35mm film extensively since 2003 till about 2005 when I bought my first digital SLR, a Nikon D70. In those days I was pretty much brainwashed with all the digital hype like everybody else. The film workflow was lengthy. Mail order slides and B/W took about 2 weeks to arrive. Good film scanners were expensive and did not seem worth more than a DSLR. I had to retire film for a while. Back in those days I was doing event and sports photography for the graduate school newspaper and digital was just the right tool for the task.
Fast forward 3 years. I live in the bay area, close to San Francisco and many scenic places. I occasionally photograph events and portraits but other than that I am mostly drawn to making fine art images. Not that digital can’t do it, but film imparts a special character to the process. Anyone who has seen glowing color slides on a light table or made black and white silver gelatin prints in the chemical darkroom, can immediately understand my point. Film is tangible, unlike digital files. You don’t need a computer to have fun with film. To enjoy the photography even more, I picked up a battered Mamiya RB67 medium format film SLR. I like it so much I am going to shoot medium format film for as long as it is available and affordable.
I have right now about 30 boxes of 35mm color slides, countless 35mm color and b/w negatives, and more than a dozen medium format slides and b/w negatives. And this collection is going to grow.
Glad I waited all these years for a good affordable scanner, and the Epson V500 can be considered the home run. Short of 4×5 scanning (I don’t think I have enough patience to go up to 4×5) this one has everything I need. I just did my first few scans and for the first time I was able to appreciate 16 bit black and white images. The tonal gradations are very tolerant of drastic adjustments unlike 8 bit where it would lose detail pretty quickly.
I guess it will be interesting to dig through my old films. Lots of memories from Long Island, and maybe a few surprise images. I will see.
P.S. I can’t deny the evil influence of my coworker Ken (@wirehead) in making me a medium format fanatic, not to mention his showing off velvia 6×7 slides of women in fishnets doing light painting in the middle of nowhere 
Photography Equipment
Posted by therider in Photography on August 17, 2009
As the saying goes, gear does not matter in good photography. I would agree that any consumer grade DSLR of today pushed to its limits can produce stunning results. However, pro gear has some intangible benefits. They are a pleasure to use and can comfortably cover many corner cases. Besides, I have a lust for tools, and I like to use good equipment for photography as well.
I started photography with a Nikon FM10 film SLR in 2003. I went through several more Nikons before switching to Canon but for a short while. I am back to Nikon again. My equipment list shows both current and past gear.
Camera Bodies
Nikon D700, Nikon F100
Previous Canon Bodies: EOS 5D, Rebel XTi, EOS A2
Previous Nikon Bodies: F3HP, D70, F80, FM3a, FM10
Lenses
Nikon AF-D Zoom Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 IF-ED
Nikon AF-D Zoom Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5 IF-ED
Nikon AF-D Nikkor 50mm f/1.4
Previous Canon Lenses: EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro, EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM
Previous Nikon Lenses: AF-D 50mm f/1.8, AF-D 85mm f/1.8, AF 70-210mm f/4-5.6, AF-D 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5, MF 100mm f/2.8 Series E, Nikon MF 50mm f/1.8 Series E
Flashes
2x Vivitar 285HV
Accessories
Phottix Cleon N8 wireless remote
Lighting Equipment
3x Pocketwizard Plus-II transceiver
Strobist SO2 kit from mpex.com (lightstand, reflective umbrella, peanut slave)
White shoot through umbrella
Westcott 30″ reflector kit
Various gels
Camera Bags
Lowepro Nova 4 AW
Lowepro Computrekker plus AW
Medium Format System
Mamiya RB67 Pro-S with 120 back
Mamiya Sekor 50mm f/4.5 C
Mamiya Sekor 90mm f/3.8
Mamiya Sekor 250mm f/4.5
Nikon F3HP
Posted by therider in Photography on April 18, 2009
Picked up a mint Nikon F3HP with a Nikon 50mm/1.8 Series E for a song, thanks to craigslist. This is a legendary 35mm film SLR with everything manual except a battery dependent shutter. Not that I had to have a 35mm film SLR again, but with the throwaway prices of these beautiful instruments in this digital age I figured maybe it won’t hurt to keep one.
I am pleasantly surprised with this camera, especially after going through the manual. To discover the removable prism was fun, now I can use it like the mamiya on the streets and can get some pleasing candids. The mirror vibration and shutter noise is much smoother than the FM3a I had, so my days of regret are over. Moreover, the 50mm lens is thin like a pancake which is cool as well.
Looking forward to using up the Ilford hp5+ bw films I have lying around since last year.
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Hi, I'm Joy, a Javascript engineer at Zoosk. While code pays my bills, I enjoy hang gliding, photography, motorcycling, woodworking and home renovation. Welcome to my blog.
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