Book Review: The Hot Shoe Diaries

June 28, 2009 in Book, Review | No comments

Joe McNally’s The Hot Shoe Diaries: Creative Applications of Small Flashes is about lighting using small flashes (strobes). If what you find on Strobist is not enough, this is the book to get.

Joe starts by describing his gear. He’s a Nikon guy, clearly in love with his gear, and he clearly knows his stuff very well. I use Canon, so was there a problem? No. Most of what the Nikon strobes can do Canon can do too (and vice versa) so if you understand what he explains, it is quite simple to translate into the Canon world. Effectively you loose less than a dozen pages to “Nikonese”.

Joe then presents a large number of his images, explaining how he lit each one of them. There is a lot of anecdotal background describing how he came to make each shot, which I found quite entertaining.

Speaking of which, Joe is very funny. I laughed out loud a number of times reading the book which is something that can not be said of many photography books. If photography and comedy turns you on, this may be the book for you …

I found the description of how each image was created easy to understand and visualize (sketches are provided for the mor elaborate setups). Joe clearly is an experienced educator, I had no trouble following him and creating some of the effects.

The selection of images is quite useful as a number of concepts or different ways of lighting are explained which can then be combined for good effect in your own photos. While some pictures are way beyond my ambitions (I do not see myself rigging a dozen strobes to an airplane … I do not have a dozen strobes :-)) most are directly applicable to situations and subjects that anyone might encounter. I learned a huge amount of practical knowledge.

To summarize: if you are interested in lighting using strobes, this is simply the book to get.

5 stars (out of 5)

5 stars (out of 5)

Man-child meets Gorilla-child

June 24, 2009 in Photo | No comments

While visiting a zoo, I saw a wonderful scene:

A boy touches a gorilla child through a pane of glas.

Man-child meets Gorilla-child

A gorilla child was lying on his (her?) mothers back, clearly enjoying the snuggle, and resting his feet on the pane of glass that makes up their habitat.

A boy came along and, wanting to meet the gorilla, touched the apes feet through the pane of glass with his hand. He seemed a bit disappointed that all he felt was the cool, smooth glas, not the warm and soft being on the other side.

I was stuck by the thought that if it is possible for a man-child to reach out to a gorilla-child, how much easier it must be for man-child to reach out to man-child.

Panasonic DRMs Camera Batteries

June 23, 2009 in Hardware, Musings, Photography | No comments

Panasonic have warned customers of certain (unspecified) non-Panasonic batteries because

“Some of these aftermarket batteries are not equipped with internal protective devices to guard against overcharging, internal heating and short circuit. If these aftermarket battery packs were used, it could lead to an accident causing damage to your camera or personal injury.”

So they issued a firmware update to “detect these aftermarket 3rd party batteries so such serious safety issues can be avoided.” Panasonic then warn the user

“After this firmware update your Panasonic Digital Camera cannot be operated by 3rd party batteries (non genuine Panasonic batteries).”

This smells like Panasonic are locking their customers into (expensive) original Panasonic batteries using DRM techniques. Or is it really a safety issue?

I have yet to hear about burning cameras, but there were and continue to be a number of spectacular battery failures involving cell phones and laptop computers. In all of the cases involving laptop computers, the batteries involved are the batteries sold by the laptop manufacturer.

With cell phones, the manufacturers seem to allege that the battery was either 3rd party or that there had been supply chain fraud, i.e. the battery was forged. I do not recall ever seeing these allegations substantiated. And even Nokia have had to recall millions of genuine batteries because they were failing.

I have been unable to find  any proof – or at least substantiating facts – that 3rd party batteries are more likely to fail than OEM batteries. [If you know otherwise, please share your knowledge.] So, on balance of probabilities, is it likely that there really is a substantial risk to Panasonic customers?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that by putting DRM into their cameras, Panasonic can sell more batteries if customers have no choice to buy cheaper batteries.

If, that is, customers continue to buy Panasonic cameras. A long time ago I decided to stop buying product where the manufacturer is trying to lock me into an expensive closed system. So: no devices that require proprietary MemoryStick or xD cards. No proprietary branded batteries with DRM.

On a lighter note: I guess Apple nail this one squarely – no more replaceable batteries at all. 🙂

Using a PrimeFilm Scanner with VueScan on Mac OS X

June 1, 2009 in Hardware, Helpful Hints, Mac OS X, Software | No comments

We recently received some photos from a family event that were – gasp – made using analog film. You should have seen the look on the face of the dozen or so children when they crowded around the SLR expecting to see a preview on the LCD only to discover that there was no LCD on the back of this camera. Talk about culture shock. 😉

Anyways, the quality of the prints was appaling, as where the scanned images on the CD that came from the processing lab. The negative, however, looked fine to my no-longer-used-to-look-at-negatives eyes. I decided to revitalize an old film scanner I still have in a box. It is a rebadged Pacific Imaging PrimeFilm 1800u scanner, which will turn a negative into a 4 Mpxl file with 16 bits per color channel.

I like using VueScan with flatbed scanners. It is a low-cost, high-power solution and Ed Hamrick does a fantastic job of supporting almost every scanner under the sun. My experience so far has been that you plug in the scanner, start VueScan, and start scanning.

With the PF1800u it turns out to be a little bit more complicated than that:

  1. Download the latest driver from Pacific Imaging, an application called CyberViewX_SF. Localized non-english variants are available.
  2. Install the driver at the default location (/Applications).
  3. Find VueScan on your hard drive and Get Info in the Finder. You can do this by using the context menu (right-click or control-click), hitting CMD-I, or File > Get Info in the menu.
  4. Make sure “Open using Rosetta” is ticked (see below).
  5. Connect the scanner to your computer and power it on.
  6. Start VueScan.
"Open using Rosetta" in the Finder "Get Info" panel.

“Open using Rosetta” in the Finder “Get Info” panel.

You can skip steps 3 & 4 if you are using a PowerPC Mac. CyberViewX_SF is a PowerPC application, so Intel Macs need to be told to run PowerPC code because though VueScan is a native Intel application. I wish Pacific Imaging would update their driver!

I had some difficulties because CyberViewX_SF is not in the default install location on my system. In this case, VueScan can not find the driver it needs and complains.

If you – like I – want to put your applications in a non-default place, you can create a soft (or hard) link to it to make VueScan happy:

$ sudo ln -s /Applications/Graphics/CyberViewX_SF /Applications/CyberViewX_SF

where “/Applications/Graphics/” is the location of the CyberViewX_SF folder. That’s it!

Thanks to Ed Hamrick for the great support!

 

Update: Since Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), Apple has dropped support for PowerPC code. You can no longer install Rosetta, so your scanner is just a paperweight if you switch to 10.7 or later.

HDR using Photoshop vs. Photomatix

May 4, 2009 in Photo, Photography, Software, Technique | No comments

Processing multiple exposures into a single HDR (high dynamic range) image turns out to be more of a subjective process than I initially thought.

Have a look at the following image, which was processed using Photoshop CS4 and the “Merge to HDR” feature:

Image processed from 3 exposures by Photoshop CS4 "Merge to HDR".

Image processed from 3 exposures by Photoshop CS4 "Merge to HDR".

Not bad, really, at first glance. But notice at the right edge, about halfway down the image, how the arch coming in from the wall is completely blown out?

Now look at the same source exposures converted by Photomatix:

3 Exposures processed by Photomatix Pro.

Image processed from 3 Exposures by Photomatix Pro.

The highlights are not blown out, the tonality of the image is smoother, the reddish cast is reduced. All in all, the image is much closer to the intended look than what Photoshop allows.

Given that Photomatix allows me a lot more control to tweak the result than Photoshop, I think the money is well spent on Photomatix …

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