An Open Door Lens Sharpness Discussion.

The three images below show the effect of shooting through an open door when the inside temperature is 70 degrees and the outside temperature is 20 degrees.

The first and last photos were taken through regular somewhat dirty window glass immediately before and immediately after the door was opened and closed.  The middle photo was the best of several taken with the door open and only clean air between the camera and hawk.

The open door had some advantages.  The auto-exposure increased from 1/500 to 1/1000.  A slight green color cast is noticeable in the photos taken through the window glass.

After taking a number of photos through my kitchen window,  I decided to risk a shot from outside.  I moved my camera to my unheated sun porch and shot through the open screen door.  As careful as I was, one of the two hawks was spooked and flew away.  Its partner was disturbed but remained long enough for a couple of photos.

The shot on the left was taken through window glass and the shot on the right was taken in the cold air. 

The three photos above are a 300x closeup view of the differences in sharpness in the unsharpened raw files.  The image on the right was taken in 20 degree air - it is the sharpest.  The image on the left was taken in a 70 degree room with ordinary window glass between the camera and hawk.  It isn't as sharp but could be sharpened in Photoshop.  The image in the center was taken through a door that was opened in a 70 degree room.  It is unusable mush.

When I photograph Sandhill Cranes, I usually use my vehicle as a blind.  It is often very cold and I close the windows when I'm not shooting.  These images illustrate why it is better to stay warm with a jacket instead of using the heater in the car. 

I've seen many discussions comparing lens sharpness.  The differences are usually barely perceptible.  The shots above show that even the best lens will produce unacceptable results when the air between the lens and subject is distorted.

30 Random Thoughts While Scanning 30 Years of Negatives

• ·           I'll never finish - scanning is so slow. 

•         I should have done this sooner.  I could have shared more of my life with my children.

• ·            Did I know how to focus?  I missed focus on many shots that autofocus has made easy.  On the other hand, I'm impressed with focus on some action shots that I nailed.

• ·            I made a lot of the same mistakes on the same roll.  I didn't know that my exposure was wrong until my film was processed.

• ·          Why didn't I take more photos?  I wish I had more of so many things. 

•              I miss so many people.
         

•            Everyone was so young
         

•            Dust Dust Dust  Dust was everywhere.
          

•            Dust has changed color.  It's black now when dust is on the sensor.  It was white then on my prints.
         

•           How could the photo labs scratch so many negatives?
        

•             I can't pick the peak of action from several shots with film.  I only had one chance to get it.
         

•            I didn't worry about using out of date film - I should have.
           

•       Why did I take so many photos of cats?
         

•           The Lab covered many mistakes.  I was under the impression that overexposing negative film resulted in finer grain.  It may have but the dynamic range isn't as good.
         

•             I like the way film handled fine details.  With digital, the detail is there or not. Film leaves a hint of detail.  An example is a scene where distant tree branches meet the sky.  It looks more natural with  film
           

•       Most people wore funny clothes and drove classic cars.
        

•            I use out of focus areas in my composition now.  We didn't have bokah back then.
         

•           I should have spent more on lens.  
         

•           Some creative things I did are no longer creative when everyone can do them in Photoshop.
         

•            I thought I was a good photographer then.  Most of my scenic and nature photos aren't worth the time it takes to scan.
        

•            It is hard to preview images.  I need a 10x loupe and a light table and need to look at each one.  Now I see everything on my huge screen and see tiny flaws immediately.
          

•            People look very happy with their ex-wives and husbands.
         

•          I have photos of people I had completely forgotten.
         

•         I have photos that I don't remember taking.
         

•           I have photos that I didn't want to remember taking.  I had to quit scanning for a while after I saw a photo appear on my screen of my wife and daughters funeral.
         

•            Some negatives are impossible to color balance.  I don't know if the negative faded or the film processing was bad.
        

•           My medium format shots are nice, but I can do better with 35mm today.
           

•       I wish I had taken more shots of the everyday things.
         

•           Some of the real old people I photographed were younger than I am.
         

•           I wonder if I'm wasting my time.  Some of my negatives are 40 years old.  I'm not sure that any of my digital images will be around in 40 years.  It only takes one delete and they are gone.

Sell Adobe - This Will be a Nasty Divorce

It was a marriage made in heaven.  I purchased Photoshop shortly after switching to digital photography.  I had never paid so much for software before but Adobe had a winner.  About once a year, Adobe would release a new version with marvelous new features.  I willingly upgraded each time up to Photoshop 7.

Adobe never released Photoshop 8.  They announced Photoshop CS instead.  They started breaking the software into modules that interacted with each other.  They split Photoshop into two versions - the extended version was more expensive.  It sounded great in their press releases but it made my workflow more complicated.  Instead of working for me the software started working against me.  Since couldn't move to the extended version as an upgrade, Photoshop CS was a watered down version of Photoshop.

About the time of Photoshop CS2, things got worse.  Adobe announced a new file format - DNG.  They said that the time would come when they would no longer support older versions of file formats.  They provided a DNG converter free of charge.  Once we had modified our files to their format, we would always be able to work with them.  They were doing this as a favor.  Adobe also provided Camera Raw and soon you had to buy the most recent version of Photoshop if you wanted to be able to use the latest camera models.  They effectively cut out the past and future for those who didn't upgrade.

I did like one of the new modules that Adobe developed - Lightroom.  I started using it with Lightroom 2.  I found that I needed to use Photoshop less as I started using Lightroom more.  I liked Lightroom so much that I decided not to purchase Photoshop CS5.  Adobe had only made minor changes and I didn't have a new camera.  This strategy worked for almost a year.  About the time I was expecting Photoshop CS6 to be released, Adobe announced that only users of CS5 would be able to upgrade.  They offered a small discount for Photoshop CS5.  I purchased the Photoshop CS5 upgrade before their deadline.  The extortion had worked for Adobe and their profits went up. 

Photoshop CS6 didn't have any new features that I was excited about, but I had learned my lesson.  I went to Amazon to purchase it and found out that it wasn't there.  Adobe now was only selling it through their own site.  They didn't even want to provide a CD with the purchase. 

Photoshop CC was announced in June.  I had learned that when Adobe changes the name, bad things happened but I wasn't prepared for this one.  Adobe had another new rule.  They wanted me to pay a monthly fee to use photoshop whether they had improved it or not.  They were also now selling space on the "cloud" so that I could start paying a monthly charge for my files as well.  This was the breaking point for me.  I decided to continue to use Lightroom and my Photoshop CS6 would have to do until I absolutely needed to move to something new.

Apparently many others felt the same way, and Adobe offered a "deal".  I could subscribe for 10 dollars a month and would receive Photoshop CC as well as Lightroom if I was a current user of CS6 and met a deadline date.  This deal is good as long as I maintain my subscription although the fine print doesn't say  exactly the same thing that Adobe is promising.  I need to trust them. 

I swallowed my pride and signed up.  Adobe promptly allowed hackers to download all of their credit card subscribers information. 

Apparently Adobe isn't telling its stockholders the same thing that its telling its users.  Today I read:
"The quicker transition to subscriptions has a shorter-term downside: because customers pay smaller fees steadily over a long period of time instead of a large sum at the beginning of a purchase, revenues drop when the subscriptions begin. That's true of  Adobe, and it's complicated by the fact that it offered promotions to encourage people to make the change.
For example, earlier Creative Suite customers can spend $30 a month instead of $50 for    their first year for the full CC subscription to all Adobe's software, and the company also has a limited-term $10-per-month Photoshop Photography Program option that gives   access to Photoshop, Lightroom, cloud storage, and access to the Behance professional network. "

Adobe is telling its stockholders that everyone loves the new model and to expect massive increases in profit in future years.  

Adobe should tell its stockholders that it is out of ideas and now needs to rely on extortion and vague promises to maintain its user base.  It has become a commodity - a monthly bill like a leased car.  Nearly everyone who wants Photoshop has it.  The only way to increase prices is to charge more or to offer something better.  Adobe is looking at strike 3 with many of its most loyal users - including myself.    If someone else starts to market a similar product, I'm ready to leave.   If you own Adobe stock, I wouldn't count on Photoshop to increase future profits.  The band may be playing but the ship is going down.

Chromatic Aberration along the Bear Tooth Highway

I photographed this scene along the Bear Tooth Highway.  I used a Canon 5D Mark III camera and a Canon 16-35mm lens set at 16mm.  The lens was set to f16.  I used 3 exposures -  -2,  0,  and +2.

I compared HDR results using Photoshop CS6, Photomatix Pro and Nik HDR Effx Pro 2.   The result above is with Nik HDR Effx Pro 2.  I liked it best because it looked sharper than the Photomatix result and more natural than the Photoshop result.  All three programs have numerous adjustments that I could have used to improve the results, so don't accept this opinion as my final answer.

The image looks fine in the normal size range.  It has chromatic aberration that is disturbing when enlarged beyond 100%.  I tested the adjustments available in Photomatix Pro and Nik HDR Effx Pro2 and produced the following results:

The top row shows Photomatix with CA correction turned on and then off.  The bottom row shows Nik HDR Effx Pro 2 with Red/ Cyan set to -40.

Orioles and Oranges

Winter doesn't want to quit this year.  An overnight storm left 3 1/2 inches of snow on May 2.  I was surprised to see a Baltimore Oriole on my deck by the feeders.  I took out an orange and he immediately returned to eat.

I put my camera on the kitchen table and took photos through the window several times during the day.  When I downloaded the shots, I had over 100 images of Orioles and oranges.  Most of them looked fine individually, but they were more than a bit redundant in a group.  I needed to select the best without wasting a lot of time.

I put BreezeBrowser Pro in slide show mode.  I ranked the entire group with a number 1 to toss and a number 4 to keep.  Birds that weren't sharp or had their butt facing the camera received ones.  I sorted by ranking and put all the number ones in the cull group. About 1/2 of the original group remained - about 50.

I utilized the compare feature in Breezebrowser Pro next.  I selected images 4 at t time.  I picked the strongest image in each group and tagged it.  I paid particular emphasis on the sharpness of the oriole's eye.  I moved all the untagged images into a separate directory.  About 12 tagged images remained.

I used Breezebrowser to look at the entire group of remaining shots as thumbnails.  When viewed this small several shots looked like exact duplicates of each other.  I selected the duplicates and used slideshow mode to view them in full screen size.  None of the images was an exact duplicate when viewed full size.  I let the slide show loop until I determined the best image off the group.  I kept the best image and removed the rest.  About 6 images remained.

Lightroom could be used for these steps instead of Breezebrowser if you have plenty of patience.  I don't.  I loaded the remaining 6 images into Lightroom to adjust cropping, exposure and color. I deleted any image was not satisfactory in Lightroom,   The shot above was one of the 6 images.

Some would call this process "Spray and Pray".  I disagree.  Every shot that I took was the best pose and sharpness that I could manage at the time.  When is all said on done, it doesn't matter how many shots I took or how much trouble I had getting the shot.  The final image is all that matters.  You either like it or you don't.

Canon 5D Mark III Problem

I had a problem with my Canon 5D Mark III that I have been unable to troubleshoot.  Two consecutive exposures were messed up.  These multiple exposures were not planned.

The first image contained portions of two different exposures.

The first image was immediately followed by another image that contained portions of two images and had a significant color error.

The exposures immediately before and following these shots were normal.  I haven't had a similar problem since.

The problem occurred in camera.  I can rule out a problem with the compact flash card and any  problems with downloading.  I can rule out any problems with the shutter or other physical  portions of the camera.

I checked the EXIF data.  The only thing that I was doing differently from my normal settings was that I had set the camera to the "P" (Professional) mode.  I expected to see it set to Aperature Priorty.  It's possible that the dial drifted but that is harder to do on the Mark III than it was on the Mark II.

The problem had to have happened after the exposure and before the image from moved from the cameras buffer memory to the compact flash memory.  After careful study in PhotoShop, I've concluded that the two problem images actually resulted from more than two exposures.

I haven't been able to get the camera to repeat the problem but I'm afraid that it will happen again when I'm working with photos that are more important.

A Different Point of View

My last trip to photograph cranes in Central Nebraska was hampered by the small number of early arrivals.  I stopped at the Crane Trust just before heading back to Omaha.  There were cranes everywhere, real cranes stuffed in glass cages and a hundred other shapes and forms in the gift shop.

One artist caught my eye with a series of crane painting.  The cranes were created with a multitude of colors instead of trying to use the colors found in nature.  The art took the familiar shape of the cranes and transformed it into illustrations that stood out among the hundreds of crane images.

I decided to try something in Photoshop that was "outside the box" for me.  I began with a dark and dreary image I created seven years ago.

I loaded it into Photoshop and began creating layers with different exposures and hues.  I used various filters and  overlays to modify the image.  Translation - I played around with alot of differnt things until I found a combination I liked.

My final image wasn't very far "out of the box"  It is similar to an early morning flight with the warm hues of the rising sun.  I would look great as a large canvas print.

Unfortunately this is a one of a kind rendition.  I merged all my layers without recording what I did.    If I had been smart, I would at least have saved all the layers in a Tiff file.