Dave Hartley

I upgraded my 1.4.1 release of Lightroom to the new version 2.0 last night. Today was the first day that I really got to play with it. Somethings I like, some I don’t; I’ll post a blog on my initial thoughts after I’ve played around with it some more.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s given me the spinning ball of death on my Mac twice tonight (please read the full post as I’m updating whenever I get a hang). Both times, I was in the develop module. The first time I was using the dust spot removal tool and had just typed “N’ to come out of the tool… spinning ball hang. The second time, I had used the graduated filter tool, went to the saturation control and pressed down arrow key twice … spinning ball hang. Both times the cpu was at 99% and I had to do a force quit. This is on a 2.4HGz MacbookPro, 4G ram and 10.5.4.

Luckily my catalog was ok after each force quit, and it’s a reminder to ensure that you backup your catalog just in case.

Update: I just had another spinning ball. Again in the develop module; this time I was in the Detail -> Chromatic Aberration panel and had just hit the up arrow key + shift twice on the Red/Cyan adjustment. Again, Lightroom not responding and cpu load is 90% with a force quit required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In the Library module, Lightroom was in grid view and generating thumbnails in a set of folders (over 4000 images in about ten folders). I selected one image and pressed ‘E’ to go into loupe view… hang, spinning ball. CPU load was zero, Lightroom was not responding, and I had to do a force quit.

Update: Another spinning ball. Dual monitor mode. Loupe view on monitor 1, grid on monitor 2. Hit X to flag a photo as reject… hand and had to force quit. CPU load for Lightroom was 98%.

Update: Another spinning ball in dual monitor mode. This can occur when we have loupe/grid view on the different monitors and also when both are in loupe view. Sometimes, the spinning ball comes back to life after several minutes but sometimes it locks up and force quit is required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In develop mode using the gradient tool. I had just made an adjustment to the clarity and got the infamous spinning ball, Lightroom was not responding with cpu of 24%. To make matters worse, I took a snapshot screen grab of the activity monitor showing the Lightroom hang and then pasted it into a new Photoshop file … my whole computer froze up requiring a hard reboot.

Update: Another one. In loupe view, I was zoomed in and hit X to mark as a reject… spinning ball, 98% cpu and force quite required.

In Lightroom, the default behavior of the white balance tool is to automatically dismiss itself once you have clicked on a neutral target in your image. This is pretty annoying as you typically want to click on several locations in order to determine the optimal neutral target. Instead of repeatedly clicking on the white balance tool, the best option is to change the tools preferences so that it doesn’t dismiss itself after you make a selection. To do this, whilst in the Develop module (D), press the ‘w’ key and this will produce the white balance selector tool options in the toolbar (see the image below). The default behavior is to have the Auto Dismiss option ticked. Click on the tick box to remove it. Presto! The white balance selector tool will now stay enabled.

This is an account of our worst journey in the world, not the worst which I’ll mention at the end.

On Friday, January 4th of this year, we were scheduled to fly out of San Francisco. Our first flight would be to Dallas, then the same day we would fly Dallas to Buenos Aires, arriving in Argentina early on the 5th. We would then cross the city to the domestic airport and catch a flight to Ushuaia, which is at the bottom of Argentina, and is where the ship was leaving for our trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and

On our recent trip to Belize, we spent two and a half days at Half Moon Caye. This is owned by the Belize Audubon Society and is a sanctuary for Red-Footed Boobies and Frigate Birds. Each morning, the Audubon residents would check the sanctuary to see if any chicks had fallen out of their nests. The adult birds will not tend to these chicks and so the birds are rescued, raised and eventually released into the wild. When we visited, there were two chicks that had been rescued and these hung out by the resident accommodation. We went to photograph the two chicks but the photographic environment was not optimal to say the least. One chick was hanging out by the building with the other standing on the building steps. To make matters worse, the background was a mixture of wooden building and bright background caused by the fact that the building was raised. The picture below gives you an idea of what we saw when we first turned up.

At first I thought there was no decent shot in the current setting but decided to take a few shots anyway. Looking through the view finder, I originally tried to put the dark part of the background behind the chicks head but had trouble getting the right composition. Then I noticed the pleasing blue background which was the out of focus sea. I then changed my angle to put the blue background behind the chicks head and played around with various compositions. The picture at the top of the post shows the result of changing my angle and working the subject.

On our recent January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, I was able to give the Nikon D3 a good shakeout, with my trusty D2x as a backup. I was looking forward to seeing how the image quality was at higher ISO’s. This is important when traveling to places such as the Falkland Islands and South Georgia as the weather is typically overcast, resulting in plummeting shutter speeds; not so good for shooting wildlife. The camera did not disappoint; in fact it was stunning. Take a look at the table which shows the ISO speed and the number of photos that were taken (actually the number of images I still have on my disk). Most images were shot at ISO 800, with the next two ranges being ISO 500 and 640. I only have 135 images with the ISO at it’s base value of 200. The image quality was so good that I was treating ISO 800 as a starting point. You will see that I shot a few images at ISO 100 (LO 1); I was trying to get the slowest shutter to blur a glacial stream which had a King penguin standing on a rock.

Compare this to an identical trip that we took in February 2006. In this case, the Nikon D2x was my main camera. The following table shows the ISO speed and associated number of pictures that are sitting on a backup portion of one of my drives. Notice that most of the images where shot at ISO 200. Only a small number of pictures where taken at ISO 800. Was the weather better? Good light? Not really, pretty much the same. What the D3 allowed me to do was to utilize faster shutter speeds and/or add more depth of field. This is a huge benefit to wildlife photographers! Animals are always moving around and the light is not always optimal, so being able to utilize higher ISO is a huge gain!

Considering these statistics, if my D3 was my main camera and my D2x was my backup, how many pictures did you think I took on the trip with my D2x? Less than twenty and I only kept three! I’ll discuss that more in another post.

The Napa Valley “Festival del Sole” includes a live performance of LIFE – A Journey Through Time. This is a multimedia presentation of Frans Lantings LIFE project with images being displayed on three screens accompanied by an orchestra. We’ve seen some demo footage during a workshop that we did with Frans Lanting last year and it was mesmerizing! The performance will be on Sunday July 13. We’ve already got our tickets and highly recommend seeing it. More information can be found here.

We have a booth at the Fillmore Jazz Festival this weekend (July 5-6). A variety of photographs will be on display and available to purchase. We’re at booth # 2406, Fillmore Street, between Washington and Jackson. Stop by to say hello, and a chat (photography, nature, travel, anything).

Yesterday morning, my friend Enrique and myself went down to Palo Alto Baylands with the intention of shooting shorebirds at sunrise. We left San Francisco at 5:10am as sunrise was at 5:48am. Leaving SF, it was already 71F as the Bay area was experiencing a heat wave. On arrival, both of us noticed the moon in the sky as we were getting our gear out of the car. It was too nice to pass by so we started shooting. After a few minutes, the crimson light was gone and the sun started to peak over the East Bay hills so we picked up our gear and headed off to photograph the birds. Compared to previous years, the bird photography at the Baylands this year has not been so good. The Palm trees where the Great and Snowy Egrets nest are not in good condition and the whole place seems more subdued. This is probably due to the low rainfall we’ve experienced this winter.

I received my Nikon D3 in early December after I returned from my November/December 2007 Antarctica trip. Wish I’d had it for the Emperor penguins and the following Falkland Islands trips but it didn’t ship till late November 2007 and of course I wasn’t in the country to pick it up! The good news was that I had it for my January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. To say the camera is sensational is an understatement. The ISO handling, autofocus, rear LCD etc have really pushed the envelope. Typically when you travel to the Falklands and South Georgia you are constantly fighting poor light due to overcast skies. Obviously, this impacts shutter speed which is always worrying when shooting wildlife. The D3 allows me to shoot at ISO ranges that I wouldn’t have dreamed about before. The photo was taken with a storm brewing, overcast skies, rain, windy; in fact shortly afterwards we were all hurried back to the ship in case it got too rough for the zodiacs. The image was taken at ISO 3200 which gave me 1/250 @ f8. Although the Elephant seals look like they are just lying there, in fact they are constantly moving around due to the hierarchy and they are also always blowing their noses, hence the need for Kleenex.

Sailing to Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic destinations involves spending days en route. For trips that involve going to multiple locations, these days of “down time” could be spent catching up on sleep or editing photos. However, even though the oceans are vast open spaces, there are still a lot of opportunities to photograph. The skies can contain numerous birds, many of which follow ships. Many hours can be spent photographing Black-Browed Albatross, Southern Giant Petrels and Wandering Albatross as they effortlessly fly past. The photograph shows a Wandering Albatross. Wandering Albatross are the largest flying birds, with wingspans reaching 2.5 to 3.5m. The photo was taken at the following coordinates which you can paste into Google Earth:

52 26.778S 049 29.911W

It’s not a great picture but what caught my eye was the flash of red. Looking at the image on a computer, the bird had a red tag with the number L97. My wife also had photographs showing the tag identification so we talked to Chris Edwards who was the Expedition leader. Chris has spent quite a bit of time in Antarctica and his son, Ewan, is stationed at Bird Island, which has a population of Wandering Albatross. We gave Chris copies of the photograph and the GPS location and he forwarded them to his son. Here is the information on the bird:

“The bird was ringed in 1990 on Bird Island, presumably as a chick. It departed and returned during the 1994-1999 summers as a non-breeder. It bred in 2000 but not since then, possibly because its mate had not returned.”

That’s pretty amazing that we can see a bird in the middle of no-where and then find out quite a bit about its history.