Adventures of an Idiot – occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Subtitled…

Strange how compulsive this blogging nonsense can become. In an underhanded, sneaky, creeping up from behind and jumping out on you when you’re least expecting it sort of way.

There’s me, not having blogged anything for, oh, at least five or six days when it gradually dawns on me that I’m beginning to feel something. A vaguely uncomfortable sort of something. A vaguely sort of guilty type something. As though I haven’t done something I should have done.
A vaguely sort of guilty type something seeming to be reinforced by the awareness that its the beginning of a new month.

And then it clicks. I’ve not yet heralded the month in with… um… er… a post to the blog!

Dammit, this is just not good enough. In fact, its bloody disgusting!

Not that I haven’t posted anything but that I should actually be starting to feel guilty about not having posted anything. Ridiculous! Who the hell cares anyway? It really is about time I got meself a life I suspect.

So here we are then, the very first post of March 2010, and what have I to say for myself?
More specifically, what new photochat can I share with all? Given that this is supposed to be some sort of photoblog. Or at the very least, related to photography in some tenuous and distant fashion.

Well, ok, photography then…

Strange how compulsive this photography nonsense can become. In an underhanded, sneaky, creeping up from behind and jumping out on you when you’re least expecting it sort of way.

There’s me, not having taken any pics for, oh, at least… er, hang on a minute. Why I am now getting a really strange sense of deja vu?

Its true though. My clicky finger, like my fumbling with the keyboard finger, appears to have been somewhat idle of late. Come to think of it, I do believe its actually the same finger, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence. And I also suspect its not been totally idle… but best we don’t get into what other uses to which I may have been putting it.

However in my own defence I have to say that I’ve not been completely idle in photo-related matters.
In fact, I’ve actually been quite busy. And I fully intended to blog about this busyness… though I haven’t yet managed to drum up sufficient motivation to set it all down on paper. Er… virtual paper that is.
I haven’t even really managed to assemble my thoughts about the whole busyness into any sort of coherent order yet. Nothing particularly unusual there though.

All of which means that, hopefully, sometime within the next few something or others I shall be pleased to reveal some really new and exciting news… unique and exclusive to this ‘ere blog! Wow!

That’s why its called “news” incidentally. Cos its… er… new.

Except, by the time I get to write about it the newness will have worn off, and its not really all that exciting anyway.

But hey, it seemed like a good phrase to use.

And my first pics of the new month? Well, what a surprise. Back in my old haunt, The Bear pub. How totally unusual. Ahem.

However, there is a bit of a twist on this most recent batch. Cos they’re taken with the Lumix… but in colour! Which is really strange cos the default setting for it has tended to be black and white. As some more observant types may have noticed.

I’ve done a few colour shots with it in the past and have been quite pleased with the result. And the other day, embarking on a little jaunt where I anticipated a few pics may have been required (and circumstances being such as to not permit me to take the larger camera) I hauled along the Lumix and changed the setting to colour for just in case. Cos I’m like that.

The actual pics never materialised but I forgot to reset the camera, so when I dragged it out of its bag today I decided on the spur of the moment to leave it as it was and fire away. Cos I’m like that as well.

And once again I find myself quite pleased with the way it renders colours. Have to say its proving to be quite a pleasing little camera all round. And real fun to use.
If only the damn files were of slightly better quality. And if only my antiquated version of Lightroom would read the RAW files it produces so I wouldn’t have to keep on shooting JPEGs. But then again, if only’s never achieved anything. Just get on and make the best of what you’ve got has always been my motto. Well, one of them at least.

P.S. For the techie types, the foregoing pics were shot in Aperture Priority, all other camera settings at the default (i.e. auto) with “Quality” set to max for JPEGs except for: Sharpness at +2, Saturation at -1, and Noise Reduction at +2. In Lightroom (for most of them) I applied Autotone and the standard Punch preset, max noise reduction on the Luminance slider and that was about it. Oh, I think I had to knock the exposure down a third of a stop on a couple of them and similarly white balance had to be tweaked ever so slightly on a couple of them. But, aside from the over-the-top noise reduction those are the sort of adjustments I’d expect to apply anyway.
So, as the subtitle says…

… or indeed the camera I’d originally intended to get. Oh dear me no.

Y’see, ever since totally trashing my last point’n’shoot, a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6 (the sad tale’s here if you’re really interested), I’ve been promising myself a replacement. (Nowt wrong with the dSLRs of course… just that sometimes they’re not quite right for the job.)

First choice was a G9, or G10, or G something or other… one of them from the Canon stable anyway.
All well and good, and such is still on my wish list. But I also quite fancied one of them there “bridge” or “ultrazoom” cameras or whatever the hell they’re called cos it’d be absolutely ideal for a coupla little projects I’ve had in mind.

So first choice along those lines was an offering from Olympus. Can’t remember the model number at the mo’ but its their latest apparently… with something stupid like a 28x optical zoom wouldya believe!
Fancied it cos a Flickr chum of mine has one and I’ve been really impressed with the pics he’s pulled off from it. (Nothing to do with the skill of the guy behind the camera of course. Oh no. Couldn’t be anything to do with that.)

However, for various reasons that didn’t materialise.

And what I’ve ended up with instead is this ‘ere Lumix FZ38 from Panasonic.

Not a totally mindless acquisition however cos I’d done some review reading about the little beastie beforehand (most notably this one)… and (more significantly perhaps) I acquired it at substantially less than the normal retail price. Quite substantially in fact.
Not that such a mercenary consideration would have influenced my decision in the slightest of course. Ahem.

Anyway, its a brand new toy for me so I’m still messing around with it… seeing what it can do sorta thing. Or, more to the point, what I can do with it. Or, more accurately perhaps, can’t.

Plus it has all the features that were on my “must have” list…

Ultrazoom (of course!)… 18x optical in fact. Not as “ultra” as some, but good enough for what I have in mind.
Viewfinder (albeit electronic) with diopter adjustment (absolutely essential far as I’m concerned).
Various useful modes in addition to those crappy “scene modes”… Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Program, Manual, etc.
And it’ll shoot in RAW… though its some weird format with a .rw2 extension that my version of Lightroom won’t read. Oh pooh. Dammit. Shoulda checked compatability with LR out first. (Though I have a bit of a suspicion that the latest version of LR… 2 point something or other… will read the files.)

Still, a minor detail (relatively) cos the cam comes with a version of Silkypix Developer Studio that seems quite reasonable… once I manage to sus out how the bloody thing works! Prob’ly just end up shooting JPEGs all the time (cos to be honest the quality isn’t quite what I’ve become used to, though fine for web usage. Which is what I’d intended anyway. Er… noise and detail resolution seem to be the main issues at the mo’).

The only real gripe so far (excluding the noise and detail res cos such things are only to be expected really at this sort of level) is the fact that its powered by one of those stupid lithium ion batteries (or whatever they’re called) rather than a set of AAs. And why the hell don’t manufacturers/vendors supply a spare battery in with their kit?
It’d be so damn useful (save having to go hunting for one soon as new kit arrives, and it would ensure that users would have a backup battery of the right spec rather than one of the cheapie lookalikes that could do all sorts of harm… according to the user manuals at least) and I for one certainly wouldn’t object to the few extra quid that might be involved.

However, here it is; me new toy…

Oh… and it’ll also shoot video. As if I cared about that. If I’d wanted to shoot video I’d have got a bloody videocam wouldn’t I?

Er… I think I did in fact. Oops.

Not so very long ago I was having a grump about my rigorous observance of workflow. Or rather, lack of it.
Which is unusual for me… not the grumping bit (that’s fairly standard) but the failure to observe a workflow routine. Cos I’m normally pretty good. Well, at that at least. If nothing else.

In fact, it was only just into the start of last month that I was grumping about it, cos I seemed to have accumulated a huge backlog of pics that hadn’t been archived.
Which I then dealt with.

Only about three weeks ago you’ll note.

And in the intervening three weeks or so I haven’t really done all that much photo-wise.
Not so’s you’d notice.

So how the hell then have I managed to end up with another huge backlog of pics waiting archiving with which I had to deal before even thinking of starting on the batch of pics I shot yesterday?

It really is quite amazing.

A few shots here, a few shots there; and before you know it you’ve accumulated hundreds of the little buggers (something like 500+ in this particular instance).

Here’s how it normally works for me…

Having had a bit of a pic-taking sesh I’ll dump the lot into Lightroom (having transferred them to the infernal machine first of course. This is normally done soon as I get back home after a session cos a) it frees up the memory card which then goes straight back into the camera ready for “just in case”, and b) I’m generally a bit eager to see what I’ve managed to snap that’s usable… the on-camera LCD screen being totally not reliable. As I’ve observed several times before).
Do a preliminary edit of the batch, which principally consists of sorting into appropriate “collections” (usually by location… or sometimes topic) and then sorting out which ones are worth keeping and which are gonna be visiting the recycle bin.
Once that’s all done I’ll then plough through the lot again, collection by collection, selecting those that I want to upload to Flickr (or whatever else may need to be done with them as an “end result”).
What this usually means is that I still end up with something like 50%-60% of shots that’ll never see the light of day (though I’ll still hang on to them… er… “just in case”).

Then the real work of processing begins, which is where I try to knock the final edits into some sort of presentable shape. (And usually end up rejecting a few at this stage as well!)
Fortunately this particular stage of the procedure doesn’t take too long normally cos I’m a firm believer in trying to keep post-processing to an absolute minimum. In my book the ideal to aim for is to get the pic as right as possible in-camera first.

That done, I then export from Lightroom in various formats (generally web-optimised for Flickr or elsewhere, full-size HiRes JPEGs, and a compressed version of the processed RAW files).

So far, so good.

Then the “front end” fun begins. Which could be uploading to Flickr. Or some other site. Or creating a zip file and emailing to somewhere (or maybe dumping to one or another of my various hosting services (ye gods… I seem to have so many of them!) from where the end-user can grab the file). Or burning to a CD. Or whatever.
If it’s exporting to Flickr then that usually entails a whole load of other work getting them appropriately tagged and into some sort of order within the sets etc I’ve created for my photostream. And of course very often writing a post about the session for this ‘ere blog. Etc etc etc.

Front end finished with I then generally wait a coupla days to see if there are any “issues arising”. Absent which, I set about archiving.
Which basically entails backing everything up (all versions of the files, including the original unprocessed RAWs plus any related stuff I may have created such as flash slideshows etc) to two completely separate locations (one a networked file server, the other an external and portable hard drive). All sorted by location, date, camera etc.

(Don’t even think of asking what capacity storage I’ve got… its getting bloody ridiculous!)

And then, finally, removing the original imports from Lightroom.
There’s a mate of mine who’s constantly taking the micky out of me for my doing this cos apparently he uses Lightroom as his cataloguing app as well. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate though is that my current system resources (on my pic-processing machine) really don’t like Lightroom running with a huge database (no matter how much optimisation of it that I may do) so I’ve found it easier and more efficient to use LR simply as my “processing lab” so to speak.

(Incidentally, for anyone who’s interested, I now use FotoStation Pro as my cataloguing app. Bloody good it is too!)

Each to their own is what I say.

Basically then that’s my “workflow model”, and most of the time I stick to it pretty rigorously. Have to really else I’d end up in a right old muddle, with files cluttering up everywhere and not being able to find a bloody thing. (Which, curiously, sounds to me very much like my mate… the one that uses Lightroom as his catalogue. Hmm.)

Easy, you’d have thought. Easy and smooth, no trouble at all once the routine’s established. Become habitual sorta thing.
Apart from recently so it seems.

So, as I said, had to tackle yet another mysteriously acquired backlog before processing yesterday’s pics. In the course of doing which I came across the little pic featured at the top of this post that it seems, for some bizarre reason, I’d failed completely to even import into Lightroom despite its having been part of a batch taken a while ago now. How strange.

And of course its what prompted this little moan. There now, hasn’t it been entertaining?

Its been an almost permanent on-and-off gripe of mine that pics uploaded to Flickr get their colour changed. Well, thanks to a mate of mine commenting on a previous post and offering a damn good suggestion (dunno why I’d not thought of doing this before) I decided to conduct a coupla little tests.

This was the image I embedded from Flickr (as mentioned in aforesaid post)…

And this was the image I exported from Lightroom as a JPEG, and have now uploaded direct to here…

Sure, there is a difference, but nowhere near as much as I’d thought there would be. So apologies to Flickr for a start. Though its obvious the colours are changed a little bit, so I wasn’t totally wrong.

However, the colour (principally the blue) still isn’t right, nor as it looks on the original pic in Lightroom. So, back to Lightroom and desaturate the blue a bit, and I end up with this. Which is much closer to how the blue actually looks “in the flesh” (though its still not quite “spot on”)…

Spot the difference?

Anyway, that set me to thinking and I began to wonder whether that colour management plugin I installed to Flickr ages ago (see this post) had anything to do with this annoying behaviour. So I disabled it and restarted Firefox.

And whaddya know… the blues in the top two pics now look fairly close to how they should be whilst the bottom one looks totally naff!

So it was that so-called “colour management” plugin after all.

Come to think of it, I have a vague recollection now of mentioning (shortly after I’d installed and tested it) that it seemed to enhance colours somewhat.

Hmm. So what do I do? Re-enable the plugin and press on as normal, or uninstall it and go back to the way I used to work? Decisions, decisions. Oh blast!

Regular visitors here may recollect the travails I had with my newest camera, the Samsung GX20 (latest dSLR addition to their line, and their “flagship” camera so to speak).

Said regular visitors may also have noted how strangely quiet I’ve been on this topic of late.

Couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, the file sizes (in RAW format) produced by the camera are quite… er… “substantial” and the computer I use for processing pics found itself being taxed to the limit in handling them. RAM upgrade called for, and until such time as I organise that I’ve been a bit reluctant to use the camera, preferring to revert to its less highly spec’d brother the GX10.

And secondly, in my exploring those “travails” to the fullest I’d begun to develop certain suspicions regarding the primary cause of the perceived colour balance problem.
Suspicions that I was a bit wary about articulating until I’d done some rather more exhaustive testing, particularly given that my experience in these matters is somewhat… um… “limited” shall we say.

Well, I’ve now done some more testing of the sort I had in mind. Not exhaustive admittedly. I have still to try the “test setup” out under a more extensive range of lighting conditions for absolute confirmation, but initial results seem to be confirming what I’d begun to suspect.

Tuesday last I attached the brand new Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro lens (this post refers) to the GX20 and had a session under rather dismal lighting conditions.
Importing the resulting RAW files into Adobe Lightroom (Lightoom be it noted, not the RAW converter app that came with the camera) and using the bog-standard ACR 4.4 option that comes with version 1.4.1 of Lightroom (rather than the “embed” in the RAW file itself) I processed them into JPEGs… in some instances I tweaked the exposure, saturation, sharpness etc but in no single case did I have to significantly manipulate the colour or white balance.
Yet, looking at the resulting pics on three different machines, and in both Lightroom and after uploaded to Flickr, I can find little evidence of the huge colour imbalance (with a strong bias toward the magenta) that seemed to afflict earlier shots taken with the camera. That’s not to say there isn’t still a colour cast… there is, but nowhere near to the same degree.

And such a result does indeed point to my slowly dawning suspicion having some merit. Which was that whilst the app-dependent rendering of the RAW file may have been somewhat a culprit, as too may the newly-developed joint Samsung/Pentax sensor have been in part responsible, the principal culprit is the kit lens that came with the camera.

Bizarre maybe, but all the indications are pointing in that direction!

So watch this space!

…so what’s new?

Regular visitors to this blog (all three or four of them) will be somewhat aware of the tussles I’ve been having with the Samsung GX20 dSLR that’s recently come into my possession.
More particularly, with the colour balance of the pics that are the product thereof.
More particularly still, with the way that Adobe Lightroom appears to render the RAW files… leading to said “defective” colour balance.

Well, y’know how it is… you have a tooth that isn’t quite aching, but is on the verge. So you just can’t resist probing it with your tongue… constantly. Until it actually does ache of course.
Or the itch that you just can’t resist scratching.
Or the niggly little problem that seems to defy all resolution. So try as you may to cast it from your mind, your thoughts just seem to keep returning to it.

That’s how its been with me and the GX20’s “colour issue”.

I’ve fiddled with it, abandoned it, returned to it, tweaked it, got close to getting it right but not quite, and become thoroughly frustrated and bored (in equal measure) by the whole affair.
Yet could I leave it alone? Could I buggery!
The more kindly mates of mine (um… mate as in singular) have charitably remarked upon my “tenacity”.
Tenacity nothing. Sheer pig-headed obstinacy more like.

And in this sheer pig-headed obstinacy I decided to do a bit more research. On matters such as RAW conversion, camera profiles (with particular regard to Lightroom) and the like.
You wouldn’t believe how much highly technical and completely incomprehensible information I’ve forced my poor brain (er… that alcohol-sodden mess of completely scrambled tissue that’s my excuse for a brain) to suck up.

Yet out of all of that emerged a pointer that seemed worth investigating…

A nifty little feature in Lightroom (one that I’d typically paid absolutely no attention to before) named “Camera Calibration”.
And right at the head of it there’s a function called “Profile”… with a little drop-down box to it offering two options: “ACR 4.4″ and “Embedded”.
“Well”, thinks I, “this looks interesting”.

So I do something virtually unprecedented… resort to the Lightroom helpfile. Which turns out to be a whole set of pages on the Web. Providing answers to all the problems that seemed insoluble when I first started using the program. Really wish I could get my head around the bizarre notion that help files are there to help. Ho hum.
Some more reading and, if I’m understanding it correctly, the “Embedded” option only appears in the Camera Calibration feature if the imported file contains its own camera profile differing from the default ACR (Adobe Camera Raw presumably) profile included in Lightroom.

The temptation to play is just too irresistable. So I re-import a RAW file from one of the first “colour test” shots I did with the GX20, and tentatively apply the “Embedded” profile option.
And don’t do very much else. A tad of sharpening. A slight lightening of the shadows. And that’s it.
And voila! It appears that the colour problem I’d been encountering has been virtually resolved… to my eyes anyway, and peering at the resulting JPEG suspiciously on a couple of different monitors (one colour calibrated, the other… um… not).

If this truly is the solution to the so-called “problem”, resolved simply by recognising that the RAW files produced by the GX20 each contain their own unique “profile” (which may well go some way toward explaining their massive size), then I have once again cause to berate myself for being such an idiot in not having realised this earlier.
And for not noticing that Lightroom (lovely program that it is… drool simper drool) enables the reading of such embedded profiles!
As it happens I did in fact remark, in a comment to an earlier post on this topic, that “I’m not yet totally convinced that the fault isn’t with me. Maybe I’m just doing something incredibly stupid…” Which is pretty much the same as stupidly not doing something I should be doing.
More to the point, I curse all my mates who’re Lightroom afficionados (yep, all one of them… and you know who you are) for not having mentioned this incredibly useful function to me, knowing that I was struggling with what seemed an almost insurmountable problem. (Mind you, such recalcitrance is I suppose excusable on the basis that its merely a reciprocation of my own sense of humour that compels me to stand by and watch unhelpfully whilst my mates struggle with problems for which I know the easy answers. Hmm. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.)

So I take back all that I may have rather unkindly said about the GX20. If the colour issue’s sorted this easily and I can use Lightroom to process the pics, then it is indeed a truly super camera.

For which no doubt my regular visitors (few though they may be, and likely to get much fewer if I keep on posting about this particular topic) will breathe somewhat more easily, in the comforting thought that they won’t have to suffer any more of my whining about this matter. Heavens be praised! (Gotta admit, I was beginning to get bored with it myself too.)
But at least in this tediously long iteration of my woes and travails re the GX20’s colour balance there exists a compelling testament to my idiocy, unfolding before your very eyes… virtually in real-time. Validation indeed of why I originally titled this blog “Adventures of an Idiot“! Laid bare for the whole world to see and gloat over. (Or shall I just delete all the pertinent posts? Hmm.)

One of the originally offending images

As an aside to this whole affair, in the course of my fairly extended reading of all those incomprehensible white papers and stuff I absorbed the rather useful tidbit that in fact, certainly in photography and more specifically digital photography, there’s actually no such thing as accurate colour rendition. In any objective sense. Essentially it all comes down to what the “creator” (the photographer) sees as the most visually pleasing rendition. So there!

The tussle with the GX20 continues! (See immediately previous posts)

Or rather, with its colour balance.

Or rather, with the apparent inability of Adobe Lightroom to render an accurate colour balance from RAW files produced by the GX20.

Well, I’m not having any of it!

Having begun to suspect some fundamental flaw in the way the Samsung GX20 was processing shots in-camera, I’m now beginning to backtrack from that a little bit.
Even using the software that’s supplied with the camera (Samsung RAW Converter 2.0) some tweaking appeared to be necessary to mitigate the effects of what appears to be a bias in favour of the red/magenta/purple spectrum in the darker (shadow) areas. And, almost without exception, the shots seem to be over-saturated. (Compensating for this is still causing me a few problems… but I’m getting there, slowly… largely by trial and error!)

In the course of trying to tackle this issue I’ve received suggestions from a number of people, quite a few of which have referred to various camera settings. But, being a bit of a Doubting Thomas by nature these suggestions have done little other than cause me to do a bit more in-depth reading about RAW files themselves.
Out of which emerged the fact that most of the camera settings (white balance, saturation, contrast, sharpness etc., and more especially the range of “digital colour filters”) only really have an impact on JPEGs; if one’s shooting exclusively in RAW (as I now do by default) they make no difference whatsoever. For all intents and purposes the only settings that impact RAW files are ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.
(This pdf from Adobe makes quite an interesting, and sufficiently short/non-technical, read!)

Thus, theoretically, any RAW converter app worth its salt should be able to satisfactorily process files from the camera… assuming it supports the DNG format that is.

Which Adobe Lightroom does! And given that Lightroom is my app of choice (for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is familiarity with the interface, and a few extra features that other RAW converters don’t seem to possess) I’m buggered if I’m going to be forced into using Samsung’s own RAW converter if I can possibly avoid it.

So, adopting “persistence” as my middle name, I repaired to my favourite watering hole (where, as frequenters of this blog and my Flickr photostream will already know, lighting conditions are somewhat “curious”) and fired off another batch of test shots.
Which I then processed entirely using Adobe Lightroom and utilising an import preset I’d configured to compensate for the apparent under-exposure and over-saturation that had seemed to be the hallmark of GX20 shots. And, I have to say, I’m not entirely dissatisfied with the results.
Whether this will be equally successful under other lighting conditions remains to be seen, but I’m not prepared to give in just yet!

Oh, perhaps I should also mention that this batch of shots were intended purely for me to play with exposure/colour/saturation… in terms of composition and focus (indoors, variable lighting, hand-held) well, basically they’re crap. So bear that in mind!

What makes this whole issue incredibly irritating, aside from the fact that I’m actually having to work at producing even half-way decent pics (which seriously goes against my nature) is that the price-bracket of this camera (in the UK at least) suggests its not aimed at the dSLR entry-level market but at the “serious” enthusiast, with aspirations to targetting the semi-pro market also.
In consequence of which I really did expect a somewhat better performance.