Entries Tagged 'Things I Use' ↓

iLife ’08, specifically iPhoto and iWeb, noticably darken images when posted using the default iWeb Photo template.

Example 1: The image as I intended:

Example 2: The image as iPhoto / iWeb displayed it as hosted on .mac:

I shoot RAW with my DSLRs and fuss endlessly with the files in Aperture. Since most of the Occasion shots are taken with a Canon Powershot SD 550, iPhoto is where the Holiday and Birthday jpegs live.

When I need to do a Professional looking and quick web site for a Commercial client I use the Web Template feature in Aperture. It is flexible enough, easy to use and most importantly, it is quick. For WideWorldPictures, my personal portfolio site, I’ve long used GoLive. Adobe is famous for it’s high prices and complete indifference to it’s customers. I’m looking to replace GoLive with something not made by Adobe.

I’m also trying not to (re) learn HTML and CSS and start something from scratch. I’d like a dynamic solution but I’m too cheap purchase one. Not incidentally, I have more than enough to do as a photographer so anything that even threatens to save me some time seems worth a try.

With iLife ’08, the latest version of iPhoto has been coupled Apples .mac web service to produce what Apple calls a “.mac Web Gallery.” Web Gallery is a chock full ‘o AJAX with some Flash web application that is a very nice place to hoist portfolios. Additionally, .mac now allows personal URL’s rather than the former www.mac.com/yourmembernamegoeshere/content addressing scheme. All this is most easily hoisted onto the web using yet another iLife ’08 app, iWeb.

I’ll write more about the .mac Web Gallery web application in the near future. Now I need to complain.

Aperture 1.5x is fairly well integrated into the iLife suite. You can basically see your selected Aperture projects, folders and the like using iPhoto and File > Open Aperture Library. This makes iPhoto / iWeb a one stop web content generating tool that can author both traditional HTML web pages along with the new Web Galleries.

Well, almost.

Using iPhoto / iWeb and .mac together with the standard iWeb Photo page template makes a muddy mess of images. Everything previews fine on the desktop, but something goes terribly wrong by the time the images arrive on .mac. It’s either no or poor color management or worse. Aperture output onto .mac looks fine so it would not appear to be only a .mac problem but something that iWeb is doing prior to sending content up to .mac.

In any case, until this gets sorted out, don’t bother using iWeb ’08 to post photos onto .mac. Your images deserve better. I received my copy of iLife ’08 in early August. Five weeks and counting. This is long past needing to be fixed.

I have, for more than 20 years, stood behind a 4 x 5 view camera and composed my images on a ground glass.¹ When I added digital, I chose a Canon 5D in part because of the three tilt and shift lenses that are part of the EOS system. These Canon TS-E lenses bring some of the geometry-bending camera movements of a view camera to Canon DSLR’s. The Canon operation and specs of the TS-E lenses are covered very well here and here.

However, the viewfinder of a DSLR is not to be confused with the back of a view camera. A View Camera allows close inspection of focus with a magnifying loupe as well as real time, interactive adjustments. A good view camera, even a not so good camera, is a precision instrument compared to the combination of a DSLR view finder and the fairly course tilt adjustments of a TS-E lens.

My two Canon TS-E lenses, I own the 24mm and the 45mm, have been, until recently, more useful for their shift capabilities (up and down or right and left) than their ability to tilt (changing the angle of the front of the lens relative tot he film plane.) When I shoot commercial architecture lens shift is vital in maintaining the geometry of buildings. Doing so on the camera results in far sharper and not incidentally, larger files than relying on Photoshop or any other software to correct geometry after the fact. Shift is also very useful for making two shot, stitched, panoramic images.

I suspect that few of the folks lined up to pay real money^(tm) for the recently introduced EOS-1D Mark III did so wondering if, in addition to the the superior high ISO performance, amazingly smooth 14-bit RAW files, unmatched shadow detail, occasionally hinky auto focus, blinding speed along with a bewildering number of features and custom functions, if it might be a very good match for the TS-E lenses.

OK. It is possible I was the only one.

At any rate, the combination of a gorgeous 3.0-inch LCD monitor and Live View, which lets you composition and shooting directly from the camera’s monitor, make EOS-1D Mark III, hence forth the Mark III, a very nice, if somewhat over-qualified, match to the manual focus TS-E lenses.

Once you have the world’s fastest DSLR set firmly on a tripod and Live View enabled Canon has provided several tools that make the faux view camera work quite smoothly. First, a mouse like Multi-controller allows for quick navigation around the LCD screen. At any point one can hit the Magnify Button and jump to first 5x and then, with a second poke, 10x magnification. This makes checking focus, and adjusting tilt to achieve focus, nearly as accurate as a loupe applied to the back of a “real” view camera. Additionally, Canon has built in on-monitor masks for various aspect ratios. Because I will forever think that a 3:2 ratio makes for way to tall a vertical, 4 x 5 is my personal favorite.

Finally, when the world is in focus from here to infinity, there is the perverse joy of knowing you can fire off a 5 frame HDR (High Dynamic Range) bracket in a half-second or so. Now if only Canon would allow the LCD image to be upside down and backwards…

Icebergs, Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland.

Canon EOS 45mm (58mm eqivelent on the Mark III) TS-E Lens

f 9.0 with front tilt. Foreground ice is 3 feet from camera. Distant Mountains at infinity.

¹ It’s been a very long time since I used a ground glass, having switched long ago to far brighter focusing screen systems with a Fresnel lens and far more plastic than glass.

Unless you take a solemn vow to never change lenses on your DSLR, dust and worse will find their way onto your sensor. Much of this is invisible, lost in the shadows and details of an image but some, sometime more than some, will show up repeatedly and need to be removed from the final files. The longer you’re away from home, the worse the dust problem will become.

I’ve just spent three weeks in an unusually dusty Iceland (the Southern part of the country in particular is in the midst of a full on drought) and thanks to the The Visible Dust SensorLoupe ™ I picked up just prior to my departure, along with the same company’s Arctic Butterfly ™ charged brush, I kept my two DSLR sensors pretty much dust free.

So to the fellow tourist who liked my view at Gullfoss so much that he and his extended family had to shuffle over kicking dust into my open camera backpack just as I had pulled off a lens… nice try. I had the Canon 5D factory new that evening. But you and your family are, and will forever remain, clueless.

Juxtapose the product name, Brite Vue Sensor Loupe ™  with the company name, Visible Dust ™ and then reposition just a couple of the words in the resulting sentence and you will have worked far to hard to describe what this device does. The Sensor Loupe ™ does indeed make dust visible. Specifically, it makes dust visible on the sensor of a DSLR. As a photographer with two DSLR’s and an aversion to floaters in my skies I expected to find this handy. At the risk of spoiling your further reading. The Visible Dust Brite Vue Sensor Loupe lives up to it’s own description:

Utilizing advanced (patent pending) features such as BriteVue XL™ technology with high optical magnification (5x), K9 lenses and 6 super bright LEDs, the SensorLoupe™ is the only tool you need for locating debris on your sensor. The high quality optical glass is coated with MgF2 to reduce chromatic aberrations and to seal the lens so that no mildew buildup occurs. The high caliber materials used in construction of the SensorLoupe™ provide a high resolution, crystal clear image of the sensor. The BriteVue XL™design aids to easily spot dust on the sensor, succeeding where other tools fail.

Despite the complete lack of documentation, or maybe because of the complete lack of documentation, I had my Sensor Loupe up and glowing in just a few minutes. A fair amount of the set up time was spent sifting through the packing material searching for the button battery that I was convinced had to be included with the unit and therefore, since it strangely was not in the product box, must be hiding in the shipping box. In fact, two button batteries are required so my careful autopsy of the shipping box was time well spent. But, and I want to be constructive here, Visible Dust… put the damn batteries in with the product.

Exposing the sensor on a DSLR can, if done incorrectly, result in heartache so consult your camera manual before diving in. I had my 5D cleaned by Canon recently and my images were basically dust free so I didn’t expect to see much as I lowered the Sensor Loupe into the lens opening. Sure enough, just one small dust particle. I fired up the strangely named but very effective Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly(tm) sensor brush, removed the Sensor Loop and picked up the dust particle. Then I checked my work. One dust particle gone, three new particles of various sizes, shapes and origins. The Sensor Loupe made each one fully visible. A second pass with the sensor brush and I was back to one particle. Pass three with the sensor brush and I was back up to two. Good I thought, I needed a hobby. Eventually, it occurred to me that by lifting the sensor loupe out of the lens opening I was creating a draft that was encouraging new dust to replace the old. One more try, this time just tilting the sensor loupe up and slipping the bush in, and I was dust free.(tm)