The 90/10 Rule

I have tons of photos right now in digital form, some 200 GigaBytes from around 20.000 pictures to be precise.
Some photographer throw 90% of their pictures and only keep what they deem as 'keepers'. But I see them as a documentary of my life's journey, it also serves as a journal for my photographic achievement and skill. And occasionally, one boring looking photograph can be turned into a stunning classic black and white, you'll never know.

Technological progress (like Lightroom 4!) also can salvage what you thought as bad picture into a beautiful one. Not necessarily because of bad technique or lack of skill, but often the limitation of our equipment and situation. Like this one.. I shoot with lens hood on, with reasonable aperture, and it still suffers from fringing at the corners. I am (or rather LR) still unable to fully correct the fringing, but man.. the colors and shadow details are stunning!

PS: and I shoot... RAW(R)!

Lightroom.. and The Age of the Internet

Well.. if you haven't notice what age this is.. I welcome you.
Yesterday, Adobe has release Lightroom 4, its workflow and photo editing software.
Its been highly anticipated by the photo community, including me, who have tried the beta version.
I find the image rendering improvement alone is a significant factor to upgrade from my current LR3.
However... there is just one problem... pricing. Adobe decided to charge international customers more than its US buyers. This pisses a lot of people, moi included. I mean.. what were they thinking ? Do they think we are stupid? Adobe has bright developers, but clearly its management/marketing is not. I don't know what game they are playing, especially after the Photoshop upgrade fiasco. I think they could be the next Kodak.

Recently, I went to the local watch retailer and ask about a model that I fancy. Its quite expensive, so I went home and think about it. Then I browse around and I found the model on Amazon for almost a grand less. Unbelievable! Guess which one I bought from?

Exciting Year!

2012 might not be a good year for some people. Financial meltdown, job loss, and there's the 21st December.
But not so for the photographic world, even at the start of the year, we're seeing D4 from Nikon, X-Pro1 from Fuji, and Lightroom 4 beta from Adobe.
Lightroom 4 now include a book module, and reworked sliders. A little bit confusing at first. You have to decrease the black slider if you want darker tone.

X-Pro1 is a particularly exciting camera, given the promise of higher DR from Fuji EXR sensor technology. It could be that digital will be able to produce film look at last.

Well.. come to think of it, some people will get poorer this year. Man.. I'd better not make any budget related resolution this year.. LoL

First Print

Okay, so I finally unboxed and install the printer last night. Although after going through my picture collection again and again, I realized that I have little to print, I need to print something personal as a gift. A friend was leaving the country soon so I want to give her something nice.

So I print something from one of our dinner outings..
And....

The print was too dark...

At first I thought it was because my monitor setting was too dark. Then I recalibrate it using i1Display 2. Few problems arose. The calibrator said that green level is not high enough. The problem is that RGB setting was at their maximum value, I can't gauge it higher. The secret is that the value is all relative to each other. So I tweak down the red and blue a little bit, and voila! I also decrease the monitor brightness waaayy down. But the print result I had still too dark compared to the monitor, and the colors are somewhat muted.

Then I search for clues in the paper manufacturer websites and forums for some clue. I had a hunch that the paper setting in the print dialog is the key. But it doesn't have any custom paper option, while I'm using third party paper. After some searching, I set the printer to use Matte Black with Epson Fine Art paper.

I print the image once again, and... voila! Nice colors. I managed to improve the print only after one failed attempt. Not too bad eh?

Lightroom Preset

Ok.. I have some image comparison for the x-equal film presets. The shadow area is deeper and give more contrast for overall image. Some people want to see all the details, but somehow I'm more attracted to the darker, more contrasty scene.

Normal

Kodakchrome 200

Normal

Velvia or Kodachrome.. can't remember

Well.. in other news, Blurb will launch an iPad application to view their photobooks.

Technology updates

Few things I have discovered while I'm away from blogging.
I just logged into the dashboard, and Blogger.com has announced that they have released iOS Blogger app!!
This means I can write my travel diary from my iPad. Yay!
And the other exciting stuff I have found is film Lightroom preset from X-Equals. I bought both bundle for a special $5. The list price is $9.99. Before I found these presets, my pictures were just dull. Its the best $$ you can spend on LR preset.
Pictures will be coming soon... hopefully. *cross fingers*

Fun

Few days ago I borrowed a pen tablet to edit in LR3. I often have to dodge and burn the pictures taken with my D300. The problem is that it is difficult to use mouse to follow the various shape / contour of the object. For some pictures such as landscape photos, I can just apply a GND filter effect to it. Using a pen on tablet greatly improve the editing experience. It is so natural like hand drawing.

See the difference ? But still.. I have problem with the edge of the object. I have to edit them very carefully to avoid aberration like effect.

iPad

I guess it'll take quite some time to get an iPad here. *sigh*

Ok.. now more digital darkroom awesomeness.. by LightRoom 3

Unadjusted RAW image (left) - Processed image (right)

HUGE difference!

Model, lens and Lightroom.

Had my first outdoor model shoot last Saturday, the model was beautiful and friendly, to say the least ;)
I learn a lot of thing from the session. Having brought three lenses, two of which are native micro four thirds lenses and one manual focus lens, in the end I only use one lens. Tried the 20mm pancake first. Hmm... nope.. too far. Next was 14-45 kit lens. The problem is this kit lens produced blurry images!! What?!?!? It suppose to auto focus, right? Right?!? Honestly I don't know what the cause of the problem, but I don't have time to waste. So I switched quickly to Nokton VC 35mm/f1.4.

My Panasonic GF-1 with VC Nokton Classic 35mm

I got about one thirds of good pictures out of my camera. By good I mean well focused image with good lighting and composition. I found out that at f1.4 the lens will produce slightly soft results, which is the problem for the rest of the images. I don't have the exact information because being a mechanical lens, it doesn't feed any data to the camera to be saved as EXIF data. But the lens produce beautiful images nonetheless.

I personally prefer to shoot raw because there are much more dynamic range available for adjustment.
And that is where Adobe LightRoom 3 come into play. I'm impressed with this software, and its the first expensive software I will buy, other than the OS itself three years ago.
See the difference ?

RAW (left) and processed image (right)

What really helps me is the ease of use and workflow process. I took about 300+ shots that morning. All I have to do is import all the RAW files into the catalog and tweak them with a few clicks of  buttons or some slider adjustment. In the above picture, I corrected the white balance and few light adjustment. I haven't been able to get significant noise reduction though.

She picked this picture for her tweet.

Update: I took the plunge and bought LR3 this morning.. yeaay!