Archive for February, 2007

For photographers late February and early March can be the most interesting time of the year.  This is not because of great photographic opportunities but rather the annual Photo Marketing Association convention and trade show.  The PMA as its known is usually the excuse that manufacturers use to announce new products and components.  So far my assessment is that the products released are just evolutionary improvements, but I see that some are pushing the envelope.  Here’s my list from a Canon owner’s point of view…

1.  Canon EOS-1D Mark III Digital SLR
2.  Canon EF-16-35mm f/2.8L II USM wide angle zoom lens
3.  Lexar Professional UDMA 300X CompactFlash card (2GB, 4GB, 8GB) & Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 Reader
5.  Miscellaneous accessories from Canon that I wasn’t interested in (wireless remote and flash)
4.  A variety of point and shoot cameras from both Canon and Nikon

I’m not likely to pick up a 1DMkIII, but the 16-35 and the fast Lexar card and reader are intriguing. 

With the new card Lexar has caught up to and passed SanDisk who with their Extreme IV series and FireWire card reader introduced high speed download.  With UDMA, Lexar raises the bar a bit higher, which is nothing but good for all of us.  Now, when will camera manufacturers improve their throughput to match the cards?

The 16-35 improves on a lens that originally received mixed reviews.  Some liked it and others hated it but if you could live with the known issues it would work for you.  With the II version Canon is attempting to correct the known issues and I believe finally provide a respectable wide angle zoom.  I mentioned to Aaron a couple of weeks ago that when I started research on wide angle lenses for Canon gear I was disappointed in the lack of consistent quality Canon usually provides in that category.  Hopefully this will correct that deficit.

For now these are just announcements.  I’m looking forward to when these products hit the streets and then seeing the reviews and how these devices work in the real world.   Ah, Christmas in February (and hopefully throughout spring).  

I’m not able to make it to Winterail this year, but one of the presenters, Steve Sloan, has posted a couple clips of his show on his blog.  You can view the first clip here, or view the second clip which he posted here.

If you can’t make the show, viewing some of the material online is the next best thing.  Thanks Steve!

….just some notches and a little luck.

I need to apologize for my lack of updating on this site lately… things have been busy in my offline life and I haven’t had a chance to shoot much new material.  One of the things going on is me accepting a new position, which happens to be a few blocks away from a mainline in Southeast Portland… so you might start seeing some new material from that area.

GorgeRail plans are coming together with only a couple little logistical pieces needing to be worked out before we start selling tickets.  Stay tuned.

I’m bringing at least one more person on board to post here, and he has already shared some interesting ideas for ways to add material to the site.  His name will be familiar to those in the northwest as well as the locomotive preservation crowd… expect to see something in the next week or so.  Until then you can just wonder who he is

And since all good posts have at least one photo, here’s a short of our “train” from GorgeRail last year for a ride on the Oregon Pacific Railroad:

On Sunday when I headed out to photograph the Crossett Western #10 the weather seemed OK.  It was cloudy and overcast with occasional drizzle…honestly normal weather for February in western Washington.  Yacolt and Chelatchie are in the foothills of the Cascade mountains and as such tend to receive a bit more rain than Vancouver itself.  I’m sure everyone can guess where this is going.  Yep, the weather up in the hills was not as nice as it was here.  The funny part is the rain always seemed to come down about the time the train showed up.  As the train made its way north at the end of the day a pretty heavy shower started as it approached East Amboy.  Fortunately for me a nearby Douglas Fir provided me some shelter while I snapped away. 

Just another February day in the Northwest where if you don’t shoot photos in the rain, you don’t shoot photos!

Fog in January in Washington?  Impossible.  OK, setting the obvious aside I’ve been on the lookout for a nice fog photo for some time and Sunday mother nature, BNSF, and Amtrak lined up all the pieces….all I had to do was point the camera and open the shutter.  Actually it was a little harder than that, but you get the idea.

Last summer I made a post about Adobe’s new photographer’s photo processing tool, Lightroom.  Since then Adobe has worked with photographers and the Lightroom user community to improve the tool and release subsequent versions for evaluation.  As expected, Adobe made the announcement of the release of Lightroom 1.0 last week.

Why should anyone spend $199 ($299 after 4/30/2007) on this software?  What I’ve found it Lightroom blurs the lines between RAW conversion and editing by building solid tools into a single streamlined work flow.  The photographer is removed from thinking about the two things as distinct processes and instead is given the image as the primary focus and the methods of processing are made secondary.  The bottom line for me is image post processing is faster and easier. 

According to several things I’ve read, this product is designed to enable the photographer to spend more time behind the camera and less time in front of the computer.  I’d certainly agree with that statement and that is one of the major factors in my decision to purchase this software.

I don’t need any more convincing on its value, but in case you want to hear it from someone other than me, here’s some excerpts from an interview with Scott Kelby President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. 

“…I think the controls for processing RAW photos are far superior in Lightroom than in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop. (Lightroom has all the controls from Camera Raw plus a number of incredibly helpful features that even Photoshop CS3 still doesn’t have.)”

“Then there’s Camera Raw. It’s really great, but Lightroom has all the features of Adobe Camera Raw, and some features Camera Raw still doesn’t have, including some amazing interactive features that take Lightroom over the top.”

“So, it comes down to this: if Adobe designed a product from the ground up exclusively for Photographers, and it was created, moulded, and tweaked by pro photographers to address the work flow issues they face every day, and it’s faster, more customizable, and has more power (not to mention features that Photoshop CS3 still doesn’t have), why wouldn’t you use it instead? Now, Adobe probably isn’t thrilled to hear me saying this, but it’s their own fault. Surely, they realize Lightroom is better at managing, sorting, and displaying thousands of images? In fact, they are the one’s who let Lightroom’s Develop module have many more features than Adobe Camera Raw in CS3, so surely this didn’t catch them by surprise.”

“In my opinion, every part of Lightroom is better than it’s corresponding part in Photoshop. For example, Lightroom’s Print module blows away the printing features of Photoshop CS3. Blows them away—no contest. The Color Management is nearly invisible (which it should be), and you can’t compare the silent, highly limited features of the Bridge’s slideshow to Lightroom’s full featured Slideshow module. Plus, Lightroom’s Web module, with it’s slick built-in Flash and HTML templates and are a breeze to customize is leaps and bounds ahead of Photoshop’s Web Photo Gallery. I can’t explain what Adobe’s thinking, but I know what I’m thinking: I’ve pretty much stopped using the Bridge and Camera Raw for most of my photo management and Raw editing, and I recommend the same thing to my friends.”

Q: So what does Photoshop do better?
“For one thing, retouching: Lightroom doesn’t really have retouching tools so if you need to remove a wrinkle, make someone thinner, clone something, or any of a thousand other retouching tasks, you need Photoshop. Also, Lightroom doesn’t have layers (yikes!), so compositing (and many other tasks) still needs to be done in Photoshop. And you can’t make selections of any kind in Lightroom (double-yikes!). Lightroom doesn’t have filters—not a one (no Unsharp Mask, no Gaussian Blur, no nothin’). Plus there’s no Brush tool or brushes in Lightroom, or professional control over type, or Layer Styles, or guides, or a Pen tool, or blend modes, or Layer Masks, or Actions, or Extract, or Feathering, or a Gradient Tool, or Shapes, or Channels, or Lab Color Mode, or CMYK conversions, or …well…I could go on and on, but as you can see, these two programs really need each other big time.”