Well its been awhile so Merry Xmas and Happy New year!!
What a busy period it has been, mainly due to long work hours and a decision to make a calendar for 2008 at the 11th hour!!
The good side of that project was that it forced us to go through the Masai Mara shots and pick out some suitable for a calendar.
The result of that is the new gallery on the web site. It is a work in progress (which everything seems to be of late) so keep checking back as more shots are added.
Check them out: Masai Mara
and tell us what you think
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Thursday, January 17, 2008
Masai Mara
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Internet Explorer issues
Hmm, the previous post seems to be causing dramas with IE.
For a better viewing experience try, Firefox or Safari
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
LightRoom goes to Kenya
Taking a laptop on the recent trip to Kenya allowed me get a good feel for what shots were in the bag while in the field. Of course though you need some software to make this easy.
My current workflow involves LightRoom. Though its exact place is not set in concrete at the moment, so I am using it as much as possible to see what fits.
Lets have a look at how I used LightRoom in the field?
Lightroom is the one stop shop of RAW processors, its DAM, its a Processor on steroids, its print tool, its a slideshow generator, its a web gallery tool.
At home its the current processor of choice and DAM tool but for the trip it was mainly used as in importer and review tool.
It was used as an importer because it does a reasonable job of the task.
Yes Photo Mechanic is quicker and given time is the enemy of digital photographers this may force a change in the future.
Another consideration was I had grand plans to do some keywording on the flight home so by importing the shots into LightRoom from the beginning would save some time.
Reality:
Doing a photo safari with Andy Rouse (The Mara with Andy Rouse) is not for the faint of heart, we spent vast amounts of time in the field. Which is fantastic BUT doesn't leave a lot of time for digital housekeeping.
In my plan to keyword on the way home, I forgot my most recent workflow idea.
DNG is the new Master file, ie every shot must be converted from RAW to DNG before keywording.
See post To DNG or not to DNG? for my reasoning on why I use it.
Given I had little time for the digital side of wildlife photography on the trip I decided to import each sessions RAWS into my Preview LightRoom catalog.
There is much rumbling on the net about how slow LightRoom is to import shots. Obviously this is hugely subjective, it depends on the quality of your computer hardware for a start.
As an idea, I just imported and generated a 2048 pixel preview of 1977 DNG images and it took 56 minutes with a MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz, 2GB RAM.
All that said its still can take some time, so to speed it up, I did not check the Render Standard Preview option.
This sped up the import but meant I took a hit when reviewing the images.
On the time downside, I did choose to copy the files from their original location on my Nexto Ultra ND2525 to a new folder with new names (as per my naming standard).
for full workflow in the field (Digital Workflow for a Wildlife Photographer in the field).
Reviewing with LightRoom was easy and the laptop had enough grunt to generate the previews in the fly without too much delay. Occasionally the "Working" popup appeared but that's expected.
I reviewed the shoot on the Library panel in Loupe View using the x key to tag rejected shots.
Using the left & right arrow keys to move through the folder.
When done, it was simple matter to delete the rejected photos.
Hardly a pushing the boundaries of what LightRoom is for but it did was asked.
Should I have used something else? Maybe, Photo Mechanic is much faster for importing but I haven't shelled out for it yet.
Still using Lightroom gave me the option of keywording direct into my catalog if I had time to follow my workflow.
Monday, October 22, 2007
To DNG or not to DNG?
Awhile ago digital photographers were presented with the solution to the tyranny of vendor specific file formats.
That answer was/is DNG.
Having recently changed my workflow I figured it was time to look again at DNG at what it has to offer and more importantly does it fit into my new world.
DNG is non hardware manufacturer
specific file format. If you are not fully aware of the options available for your DNG files then check out the site, as I won't be covering it in details here.
As anyone who has owned more than 1 DSLR knows, every time a manufacturer releases a new camera they subtly change the internals of their RAW files.
This causes a little fear in the heart of the digital photographer as who is to say you will be able to get any software in 10-15 years time to interpret these files.
To alleviate this Adobe came to the party with an open format file and a very nice tool for generating the files from your RAWs.
My (and many others) concerns of this is why is Adobe to be trusted any more than Canon or Nikon?
The answer to that in a nutshell, is they cannot.
BUT, since they have made the internal structure of the format freely available, 3rd party software developers can write their own "editors" which can read the format.
This suggests that as long as there is an interest there is bound to be software to interpret the files.
If the openness of the format doesn't do anything for you then is there any benefit to you?
I struggled with this for along time, specially when virtually none of the major RAW editing suites would work with DNG.
Well thankfully things have changed and the latest round of offerings is more compatible with DNG, so it starts to look a little more attractive.
At the end of the day though its still just another form of RAW so why bother?
My original workflow used Tiff files as the absolute master file.
Tiff has been around forever and is a given standard but the files are huge.
In a nutshell, it use to be: edit RAW then convert to Tiff for Photoshop work.
Now do first cull on the RAW files and then convert rest to DNG.
The DNG becomes the master which is then imported into LightRoom. Now I have broken the emotional attachment to the RAW's I can continue the culling.
For me the fact of still have my original RAWs safely backed up and away from an editor frees me to cull harder.
This reduces the amount of clutter in my catalogs, which has to be a good thing.
From Lightroom I can export to whatever output format I need (jpg, tiff etc) so there is no need to keep a master Tiff. Admittedly the export to Photoshop for decent noise reduction/sharpening and a touch of velvia vision
does water down the master DNG concept.
So what have I gained:
The Bad:
Could I have just made a copy of my originals RAW's and only work on those to help culling.
Yes.
I am just looking for a reason to use DNG?
The answer there is probably still: yes and the change to LightRoom made it easy to do.
At the moment this is working nicely for me but as with all things workflow, its a work in progress.
So why the warthog??
Other than a burning desire to post a shot from the recent Kenya trip; DNG is a little like the warthog, a little rough around the edges but you cannot help but like it.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Partial New Gallery: Wildfocus Images
Well I had hoped to get the Etosha shots processed before we left for Kenya but this did not happen.
Since getting back the exciting new Masai Mara shots are magically drawing me to them. Still I had some Etosha shots in the pipeline so I forced myself to finish them of.
Once I pick the eyes out of the Kenya trip I will return to Namibia.
Check them out: Etosha
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Monday, October 15, 2007
Digital Workflow for a Wildlife Photographer in the field
In this age of digital photography, every photographer must at some point decide on a workflow. This is extremely important for the wildlife photographer as they are usually a high volume shooters.
So after hours of mental agonising over the 'best' way to work you decide upon your workflow, you try it out after a local shoot and its all good.
Soon though its time for a big "away from home" trip.
Will you much loved workflow cope with life in the wild?
Our recent Masai Mara trip provided just that challenge.
You have thought out your trip (if not start here) and in the course of that you have purchased new "items".
For us the new items which affected worklow were a laptop and the recent inclusion of LightRoom into our Workflow.
Obviously the inclusion of LightRoom into the workflow brought many possible ways of doing things. Most of this had been put in place before the trip
but the challenges of 4 weeks on the road can change things.
The issues:
The solution:
Out in the vehicles:
WHY: It has a verify function, is very quick and its battery life is fantastic.
Once back in camp:
WHY: The Nexto has a Firewire 400 connector so its slightly faster than a USB2 card reader.
WHY: Renaming files now saves considerable time later.The date based folder makes it easier to find things when you get home.
WHY: If your trip is a decent length, hard drive space is at a premium, so get rid of the obvious rubbish.
WHY: You can never have too much backup for your precious digital files!!
On average we had 2 - 3 hrs between morning game drive and the evening drive, so doing the above for 2 photographers and having lunch meant no afternoon nap.
The theory was to spend the gap time converting to DNG, so that by the 8-9 hr flight home I could keyword. That didn't happen.
At no time was any editing planned, no laptop lcd, even calibrated is really up to the task.
While you are there to maximise your opportunity to take great shots you also have to take the time to let it all soak in.
Time in the wild is something to be cherished in our ever ordered and controlled world.
So you want to minimise the time spent behind the computer.
The thing to remember with workflow is that there is no one right solution.
What works for one photographer may not work for another.
So the best thing to do is find out what others do and utilise the bits you like.
Hopefully our workflow will give some of you some ideas or at least make you think about your workflow BEFORE you get into the field.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wildebeest Migration Carnage
While in the Masai Mara recently to try and get some migration shots we noted the lack of decent crossings. There had just been some heavy rain and the Mara river was flowing fast. Hence not a lot of crossing action.
It would seem the situation hasn't got any better!
Check this out
Lowe Pro CompuRover in the field
So you have a photo safari coming up and you have decided you want to take your new laptop for decent reviewing. You know what that means; New Bag Time!!
Well that's my excuse anyway!
For the Kenya Trip we needed a bag to carry gear plus a 15" MacBook Pro.
So how did the CompuRover cope?
We did a lot of searching for camera bags that can also carry a 15" laptop, given we live in Australia it did limit the choices somewhat. After much discussion we decided on the CompuRover.
What did we put in it:
Overall weight: Don't ask!!
What worked:
Improvements required:
Fully loaded we got this bag into every aircraft overhead, except for the Dash 8 (where it fitted under the seat in front). So if you have some regional (or smaller) aircraft flights you may have some issues.
Overall it performed very well and was just as good as our original Rover.
If I was travelling alone with full kit, the load of non camera gear would have to be reduced to handle the bigger lenses.
If you want a hybrid bag then the CompuRover could be for you.
If you want a bag to carry all your kit (and wildlife photographers have a lot of kit!) then keep looking.
Technorati Tags: CompuRover, Camera Bags
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