That’s why they call it a “Beta” (or RTFM)

The latest buzz to hit the photography world has been a trinity of buzz and hype.  First, Canon announced the 1D Mark IV, then, on the heels of that, Adobe announced the release of Lightroom 3 in Beta form.  To round things out, Lensbaby came out with a couple new optical shift lenses to appeal to the creatively inclined.  I mentioned the 1D Mark IV last week, and today I was going to give a rundown of what the buzz is all about with Lightroom.  We all know about the new features including exporting video (musical slideshows), and I was going to show you screenshots and share a few here on the blog.  But, rather than join the fray in a rush to point out the “cool” factor, an interesting experience illustrated exactly why you must tread carefully with betas.

See, it installed and worked perfectly well with Windows XP, but when I went to load it on my trustworthy Mac running OSX 10.4 (Tiger), got an odd error:

Lightroom 3.0 Beta Error
Lightroom 3.0 Beta Error

As those of us in IT say when we see cryptic errors like this:  “That’s not so good…”

But here, it just serves as a reminder to those of you early adopters out there – keep your existing workflow as you experiment with Lightroom 3, because after all, that’s why they call it a “Beta”!  So, any thoughts on why this would happen?  Feel free to sound off in the comments or with me via email or Twitter.  I’m not too worried about it as I’ve got my LR2 and iPhoto to work with, so am happy just acting as a tester in the Windows world.

Last but not least, I know I promised to have a winner for the October contest announced today, but time just ran away from me with several projects coming to a culmination over the past few days. (Good news for the blog and podcast though as tons of content is about to pour through the siphon here!)  That announcement will come tomorrow…and until then, keep on shooting!

ETA:  Based on the initial comments and my actually taking the time to read the docmentation, it does appear my version of OSX (Tiger, or 10.4) is not supported with Lightroom 3.0 Beta, so until I upgrade the OS, my Beta experience will be restricted to Windows XP.

Blur, Baby… blur!

Hey all, this week’s show is done and boy are you in for a treat!  Not only is there some pretty ground-breaking news from the computing world, but the theme for this podcast is blur!  I take a (hopefully) clear look at different types of blur you can get in your images, what can work, what will not work, and how to correct for different types.  Got some great listener questions and answers that tie in very nicely to the theme, and as, always the photo tip of the week.  Here’s the show notes:

News Links – HP Z800 Specs (listen to the show to find out why this is so amazing it’s the only news story!)

Focal Length/Crop Factor/Shutter Speed settings –

  • 50mm converts to 85 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/100th
  • 100mm converts to a 160 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/160th
  • 150mm converts to a 240 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/240th
  • 200mm converts to a 320 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/320th
  • 300mm converts to a 480 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/480th
  • 400mm converts to a 640 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/640th
  • 500mm converts to a 800 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/800th
  • 600mm converts to a 960 crop factor, which means a shutter speed of 1/1000th

Listener Questions:

  • DOF Preview button
  • Battery Length
  • Portrait Lenses

Be sure to stop over to the good folks at PLM to get the podcast, and check out the Lensbaby Composer – a great resource for managing blur in your photos!  Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

An Interview with Peggy Dyer…

As you may recall, a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Peggy Dyer, a professional photographer here in Colorado, and I got to learn about her latest project – One Million Faces.  We got a chance to sit down a second time and I learned a lot more about her creative energy, where she finds inspiration, and about where the One Million Faces project found it’s genesis.  In addition, we also got to talk in more detail about the Lensbaby series of lenses, starting with the first one ever,  going through the most recent Lensbaby Composer, and even a sneak peak of an upcoming lens from them.  Best of all – I actually was able to put together a video of it to share with the community.  It all looks very intriguing and with her creative energies, I am really getting motivated to get out there and try some shots with this gear.


An Interview with Peggy Dyer from CBJason on Vimeo.

A couple links from the interview, including some local charities and other resources that readers may find interesting are also included below:

Until tomorrow, Happy Shooting!

The Lensbaby Composer

For those of you that are regular podcast listeners, you know I talked recently about the Lensbaby Composer and what it can do for your photos.  In the podcast you heard the terms “selective focus” but the term is kind of hard to explain without a visual, so I thought I might be able to do it better justice with a visual here today.  Take a look at this setup:

lensbaby1

So, if you are looking at a scene from camera view 1, and you want the sharpness of your image (your viewers attention) to focus on something at point B, it’s easy to do this.  Simply drop your aperture wide open and the depth of field will throw points A and C out of focus naturally.  Pretty easy, no photo editing, no trickery or anything involved – the mechanics of apertures and depth of field handle this for you.

Well, take a moment to consider things from the viewpoint of Camera Two.

lensbaby2

You still want the focus to be at point B, but because both A and C are also positioned relative to the camera at the same place (they are not in front of or behind the point of focus, they are merely off to the sides of the point of focus), dropping your aperture wide open will not throw A and B out of focus – they still there, just as sharp as point B.  Well, up until now, you’ve always had to take images taken under situation 2 and bring them into image editing software to blur, dodge, burn, and otherwise minimize the attention that points A and C got from the viewer eye.

Well, what the Lensbaby does, through it’s unique combination of lens elements that include an actual curved optic and a curved field of focus, giving you a round spot of focus, so that it allows you to set point B as a single point of focus, so that A and C will fall off in sharpness, bringing the viewer back to your desired point of what to look at.  (The eye will almost always naturally look for sharpness and light in images…)

So now, dodging, burning, blurring and other darkroom and software techniques are no longer needed!  The Lensbaby allows you to create these visions in camera, not afterward in post processing.  What does this mean for you?  More time shooting, and less time photo editing!  Who doesn’t want that?

The coolest part of the new partnership with Lensbaby is that they’re also offering anyone reading the blog or listening to the show an opportunity to get a 0.6x wide-angle/macro conversion lens for the Composer lens totally free! Imagine taking your creative visions to a whole new level with the Composer lens from Lensbaby – and then add the macro capabilities, and literally, the sky is the limit!  Your creativity knows no boundaries with lens-work like this!  So, if you are looking at adding the Composer lens to your gear bag (and you can purchase it from any retailer), then look no further, because from here you can get a free 0.6x wide-angle/macro-conversion lens from Lensbaby as a way of saying thanks.

Expanded creativity + Free gear = lots of fun

Sounds like a perfect equation for me!  So, stop on over to the partner website they made just for Canon Blogger listeners and readers to get your free lens today.  This is a limited time offer, and I am not sure when it will end, but the Composer and the companion 0.6x wide-angle/macro conversion lens (which you can get for free) would have been very useful this last weekend on the Eldorado shoot.  Remember the rock fissure?  Imagine if I had a chance to fade the DOF out away from the rock completely?  What about the rear window reflection?  Imagine if I could have faded the front window part out of focus completely?  Both of these shots might have ended up in my portfolio!  As they are, I’ve got two snaps that while interesting, will likely never get added to the print portfolio…

Does this help clarify how the Lensbaby works and what it does?  I know it’s a very simplified version, and the folks at Lensbaby have a lot more resources to help explain it than I do so be sure to visit their partner landing page here to learn more about it!  If you’d like to see some samples of the lens at work, (my lens hasn’t arrived yet) make sure to stop over to the gallery page here too!  Got some pics you’d like to share?   Link them here in the comments section (or even share then with the good folks at Lensbaby – they like to hear feedback from the field so share your thoughts and shots with them too!)  Finally, to learn all the details about this promotional offer, stop over to the page the folks at Personal Life Media have set up here.

If you do have pics and thoughts to share here, feel free as always to drop me an email, and you could be on the show!    For those interested in buying the composer, make sure to visit this link here to get the free macro conversion lens!  Questions, comments, feedback and ideas are welcome at my email address (as always) is jason <at> canonblogger <dot> com!

Check them out today – then get back out and keep on shooting!  Hope all your shots are good ones and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

HDR, Web links, and a podcast!

fissure2

So, this last weekend I went on the photo meetup group outing for the month of February into Eldorado State Park, south of Boulder, and had many an opportunity to capture some landscape and macro work. Some great views were had and I only hope that they all come out as well as this one did. While hiking up a trail of slippery snow and ice (it was cold out Saturday morning), I saw this fissure that was pretty intense looking because it was only partially lit. I thought about it for a second and decided to bracket some exposures to see if it would turn out with some HDR massaging. Not only did it turn out better than I would have thought, I was also very pleased with how Photomatix did with this. I would highly recommend this software to anyone interested in HDR work. Not only is it more intuitive than Photoshop, the results were much more gratifying! You can buy Photomatix for PS, Lightroom and for either Windows or a Mac over at www.HDRsoft.com.

Some other web links I learned about recently also include www.fotoblur.com and www.usefilm.com Both are much more cognizant and respective of photography copyright than other social and photo networking sites like Flickr and Facebook (we all know about the Facebook Terms of Service fiasco, right?). One thing I like about both Fotoblur and Flickr is that you are limited in how many images you can upload daily. This requires you to be more careful about what you publish, and as a result, you are more thoughtful and objective of what work is worth posting and sharing online.

Last but not least, the podcast that I had intended to put out last week was delayed for a few days as I put the finishing touches up on a home improvement project. (We finished out one of the basement rooms – expect to see some photos on that makeover forthcoming!) The good news is that not only is the basement room on the verge of completion, but that the podcast is up for this week. Naturally, the title of the podcast will match the blog post title, as the show notes follow closely to todays content. Stop on over to Personal Life Media for the show, or pick it up in iTunes! (Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the review section of iTunes too…the more the merrier!)

Until tomorrow, when I’ll have some more HDR shots to share, keep on shooting – hope all your shots are good ones!