Automagisk blog

Merry Christmas!

Christian — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:24:46 +0000

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 2000, f/2.8, 1/100. Flickr.

32GB + 64GB = 96GB for the D800

Christian — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 13:53:44 +0000

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 2000, f/2.5, 1/100.

The NEF (RAW) files from D800 are 45-50MB, so my 8GB cards could only store about 100 images. Since the D800 can hold both a CF and an SD card, I decided to buy both one 32GB Lexar Professional “1000X” CF card (400 images) and one 64GB Lexar Professional “600X” Class 10 SD/SDCX card (800 images). Hopefully I will never need to take more than 1200 photos without access to a computer (and I still have 2x8GB and 1x4GB for emergencies).

The 32GB card is a Lexar Professional “1000X”, which gets around 70 MB/s in the D800 on Rob Gailbrath’s excellent website. CF cards are still much faster than SD cards. Lexar claims 145MB/s write (over twice the measured speed in the D800) and 150MB/s read for the CF card and 45MB/s write and 90MB/s read for the SD card.

Now I want a faster Mac for Lightroom work!

Nakholmen

Christian — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:31:23 +0000

Some pictures from a trip to Nakholmen, a small island in the Oslo fjord (here) . The houses are summer cottages, originally built for the workers at factories in Oslo. There is a small ferry that runs between the islands, which accepts a regular metro card.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/125.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/5, 1/100.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/3.2, 1/250.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/100.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/160.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/100.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/2.2, 1/250.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/3.2, 1/100.

Oh deer

Christian — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Around 01:30 at night I heard some noises outside the house, and it was these two nightly nibblers. It was very dark and 1/13s is too slow for me on a 50mm, but I am impressed by the high ISO performance of the D800. This image is cropped too, and the above is about 50% of the original frame.

NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 5000, f/1.4, 1/13.

Lightroom develop preset for Nikon D800

Christian — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:50:55 +0000

This one works for me, but I have only had the camera for two weeks, so I might update it: D800standard.lrtemplate. I have one with some basic noise reduction too, which I use for high ISO: D800highISO.lrtemplate. Let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

The old preset for Nikon 300 is still available. For information about how to import the preset, see Adobe’s Create and apply Develop presets.

Heavy transport

Christian — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:26:19 +0000

NIKON D300, 30.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 2500, f/3.5, 1/30.

Some pictures from when Statnett Transport on behalf of Berggård Amundsen & Co AS transported a gigantic transformer through Oslo in January 2012. The transformer is one of three that supply power to an area near Oslo, and it weighed around 400(?) metric tons. It came from Germany on a ship, required some serious equipment to transport it, and there was very, very little clearance for it through the tunnel.

NIKON D300, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8, ISO 2500, f/3.2, 1/40.

NIKON D300, 30.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 2500, f/3.5, 1/30.

NIKON D300, 30.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 2500, f/3.2, 1/40.

Nakholmen

Christian — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:17:18 +0000

New camera, new blog post – after about two years. This is from Nakholmen, a small island in the Oslo fjord. NIKON D800, 50.0 mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8, 1/250.

Black and white version:

Home Studio

Christian — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 13:45:04 +0000

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm, 1/250, f/5.6

I have set up a basic home studio, inspired by the slightly more “pro” set-up detailed on Zack Arias’ blog. I have some plans/dreams, but the image below is what I have today.

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/250, f/5.6

Technical details

The backdrop is an “Arctic white” paper background from Colorama. I made a very simple (and hopefully temporary) “stand” of some strips of wood and some small metal hooks. The paper is, as you can see, taped to the wood using appropriate gaffer tape.

I use three flashes: Two for making the background evenly lit and white, and on main flash in a softbox. No “hair light” for now, but see “Plans” below.

The left flash is a newly acquired Nikon SB-28DX on a Manfrotto 001B stand with a Westcott umbrella. I’m using a standard sync cable to trigger it from the PocketWizard on the middle light. The flash is set to 1/2.

The middle flash is an old Nikon SB-28 with a Morris portable/collapsible softbox, on a Manfrotto 051NB stand (discontinued). The flash is triggered with a PocketWizard Plus II, and also triggers the left flash with a cable. The setting varies a little with where I place it, but it’s typically at 1/2 or 1/4.

The right flash is a Vivivar 285HV (Strobist review here) on a Manfrotto 051NB in a Westcott umbrella. This flash is triggered by an old “almost reliable” Hama slave cube. The flash is set to 1/2.

Plans

I will make some longer “background stands” so I can use the remaining 10-15cm under the ceiling.

I should also have a “hair light” opposite of the softbox, but there isn’t much room for a stand there. I may use the Manfrotto “magic arm” and attach a flash to the bookshelf (which is built in, and can not be moved easily).

I have looked for “tile board” to get a nice, semi-reflective floor, but not found it.

Wish list

Faster recharging of the flashes! I would love to be able to shoot in continuous mode, but even 1-2 frames per second would be a big difference.
A bigger softbox. When shooting more than 2-3 people, the Morris softbox is a little small.
Two new PocketWizards, so I can get rid of the cable, and the semi-reliable Hama slave trigger.
A proper background stand, so I can put the roll at the top, and just roll out more paper when needed.

Sample photos

Here are some sample photos shot using the spectacular set-up described above. This is almost straight out of the camera, only slight adjustments to the exposure, and some cropping. The final images will get some more TLC.

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm, 1/250, f/5.6

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm, 1/250, f/5.6

Lightroom lens profile for Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 and D300

Christian — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:57:57 +0000

Lightroom 3 has a very nice feature for automatically correcting distortion, chromatic aberration (CAs), etc automatically. It uses “lens profiles” for this. A lens profile is just a text file with all the required details needed by Lightroom, and Lightroom comes with a few lens profiles built in.

If you use a lens that is not included “in the box”, Adobe provides a Lens Profile Creator for making your own. The new lens profile can then be saved where Lightroom finds it, and voila! you have automatic corrections for your new lens.

Jim Camelford (jimcamel.smugmug.com) has made a nice profile for Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 and D300 for NEF (RAW) images, and it can be downloaded from Google Docs.

Here’s how to use it:

Quit Lightroom.
Download NIKON D300 (17.0-55.0 mm f2.8) – RAW.lcp and save it in (on a Mac): /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/LensProfiles/. The directory should already exist, so just save the file there. Never mind Adobe’s instructions to save it in a folder called “1.0”. Here is a screenshot from Finder:
On Windows, the directory should be “C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0\” (maybe you can skip the “1.0” part).
Start Lightroom.
Activate it: Go the the Develop module, then check the checkbox as shown here a the top of this post.

I have updated my standard D300 preset to include automatic lens corrections.

Update

Lightroom 3.3 has several more lens profiles built-in, including Nikon’s 17-55mm f/2.8.

Updating IPTC data in old images

Christian — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:10:59 +0000

Sometime back in the previous millenium, I wrote a small Perl script for my web server that let me display JPEG files with corresponding captions from a separate text file. Today I wrote a Perl script for adding the captions from the text file to the IPTC metadata in the JPEG files themselves.

Caption file format

This is the file format in the captions file, called “imagecaptions.txt”:

001.jpg: Caption for the first image. 002.jpg: Caption for the second image. 003.jpg: Caption for the third image. (etc)

Perl script for adding captions to IPTC metadata

My new script, “addcaptions.pl”, does this:

Reads the caption file
Reads a list of all the image files
Writes the captions to each image file’s IPTC field using the fantastic ExifTool by Phil Harvey

Here’s the code of “addcaptions.pl”:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w 

use Cwd;
use Image::ExifTool;

my $dirname = cwd;
my $file = "";
my $captionsfile = "imagecaptions.txt";
my %captions = ();
my $caption = "";
my $et = new Image::ExifTool;

# Read captions from file
open (F, $captionsfile) or die "$captionsfile: $!";
while (($file, $caption) = split(/:/, )) {
    if (defined($caption)) {
        $caption =~ s/^\s*//; # Remove leading whitespace
        $caption =~ s/\s*$//; # Remove trailing whitespace
        $caption =~ s/< (([^ >]|\n)*)>//g; # Strip HTML tags
        $caption =~ s/\s+/ /g;
    } else {
        $caption = "";
    }
    $captions{$file} = $caption;
}
close(F);

# Write captions to IPTC "description" field in XMP files
while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
    next unless $file =~ /\d.jpg$/; # Only want "XXX.jpg"
    if (defined($captions{$file})) {
        $et->SetNewValue('XMP:Description' => $captions{$file});
        if ($et->WriteInfo($file)) {
            print "\tWrote: $file: ", $captions{$file}, "\n";
        } else {
            print "\tERROR: $file\n";
       }
    } else {
        print "\tUndefined: $file\n";
    }
}
closedir(DIR);

This is not tip-top quality coding, but it works. Hopefully it may be useful for someone else too.

Recipe

Write existing metadata to XMP files in Lightroom:
Metadata -> Save Metadata to File (⌘S)
Run addcaptions.pl
Read updated metadata from XMP files in Lightroom:
Metadata -> Read Metadata from File

Result

All the image files now have captions in the IPTC metadata
Captions are searchable in Lightroom
Web galleries of old/ancient images can be uploaded directly from Lightroom, with captions

Large panoramas

Christian — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:30:29 +0000

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/800, f/9

I have a 12 megapixel camera, but I can still create panoramas of more than 70 megapixels by combining several images into one.

My Nikon D300 creates images that are 4000×3000 pixels. That’s good enough for enlarging to around 60x45cm (24x18in), but above that the pixels can bee seen. I wanted to create a 200cm (80in) wide panorama, and I wanted it to be really sharp. I did it by combining (merging) several images into one large one. Here’s a recipe:

Try to get the same perspective for all images – go as far away as practically possible.
Use a tripod.
Use f/8 or whichever aperture is the optimal for your lens.
Start from one side, remember the “edge” where the next image should overlap.
Make the overlaps about 1/4 of the image, maybe more if the perspective is a little different.
Import into Lightroom, make some adjustments.
Export to TIFF.
Use Adobe Photoshop (30d trial version available) to merge the images:
File -> Automate -> Batch -> Photomerge…
Import back into Lightroom.
Adjust some more.
Export to TIFF.
Have the panorama printed (and maybe mounted) by professionals.

There’s a video showing Photomerge in Photoshop here: http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-cs4-photomerge.html

Since I wanted a horizontal panorama, I took vertical images to get the most out of the D300’s 4000×3000 pixel sensor. Here is one of the 17 (seventeen) images I merged:

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm, 1/1000, f/10

After merging 17 images in Photoshop, I had an image that was 18000 pixels wide and 4000 pixels tall. That’s 72 megapixels. Not bad for an APS-C sensor.

Here is the finished panorama, 200x30cm (80x12in), mounted on an aluminum plate, hanging on the wall:

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm, 1/13, f/6.3

Detail:

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm, 1/15, f/6.3

Close-up (hard to tell from this photo, but it really is very sharp):

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm, 1/10, f/6.3

The Glacier is the Tuna glacier in Tempelfjorden, Svalbard.

Interior: Bathroom

Christian — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:07:01 +0000

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1/200, f/5

Here are a few images from an shoot for a company specializing in interior consulting and styling. The bathroom was quite small, and with two big mirrors on one wall. A little difficult to light without anything showing in the mirrors, so I ended up using a single SB-800 through an umbrella, with a second SB-800 for fill on some of the images.

All images were shot on 1/250 to eliminate the available light, and on most of the images the main flash was set on 1/1 to get a small aperture and maximum depth of field.

I regretted selling my Sigma 10-20mm when I had to squeeze and crawl around on the floor and into corners trying to capture everything with the 17-55mm.

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm, 1/200, f/5

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm, 1/250, f/8

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/250, f/11

NIKON D300, ISO 200, 17.0-55.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 1/250, f/4.5

Landevei magazine launch: Eddy Merckx TT

Christian — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:51:52 +0000

The new Norwegian road cycling magazine Landevei arranged an Eddy Merckx-style TT in Maridalen outside of Oslo today. I had planned to participate (and be at the end of the results..), but since I didn’t have enough time, I instead ended up getting there a bit late with a camera.

Landevei is a very nice magazine, by the way. Interesting and amusing articles, very good pictures, and quality print. Clearly the best Norwegian-language road cycling magazine, although the competition is not that fierce.. You can also follow Landevei on Twitter: @landevei (and/or you can follow me: @cloveras).

Inspired (again) by the “epic” images in Rouleur magazine, I found my old(ish) Rapha-style Lightroom template for Adobe Lightroom 3, and ended up with images like the ones below. The template uses the “grain” effect, so it will not look the same in Lightroom 2. Download the latest Lightroom beta here: Lightroom 3 beta 2.

The “Rapha” Lightroom development template is available here: Rapha.lrtemplate.

LR2/Blog

I’m kicking myself for not having used this very nice plug-in for Lightroom. It makes it ridiculously easy to create blog posts directly from Lightroom, and it also lets me add EXIF and other (meta)data, copyright watermark, etc using templates. It works with both LR2 and LR3b2. See the LR2/Blog Quick Guide for more information.

For this first post I am uploading 1200px images, but specifying 600px width. Your browser will resize the images, but the download size is still 1200px. Right-click and “view image” to see the large version (I suspect I may manage to update the template to make this a bit more elegant soon).

This is the LR2/Blog template I’m using (almost identical to the simple default one):

{cameraModel}, {isoSpeedRating}, {lens} @ {focalLength}, {shutterSpeed}, {aperture} {return}

Up to now I have uploaded to Flickr and then manually to my WordPress blog. Adding 10 images could take 15-20 minutes of work, plus the upload time. With LR2/Blog it takes 1-2 minutes, plus the upload time. I have had “test LR2/Blog” on my todo list for a long time, but I didn’t have time(!) to try it until now..

If you use Lightroom and have a blog: Get it here, and remember to donate: LR2/Blog.

Images

Here are some of today’s images, automatically uploaded directly from Lightroom to WordPress, with metadata and watermark:

NIKON D300, ISO 400, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm, 1/160, f/6.3

NIKON D300, ISO 400, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/320, f/5

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 140 mm, 1/640, f/4.5

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/200, f/6.3

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 130 mm, 1/800, f/4.5

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 82 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 78 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 82 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/1250, f/3.2

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 78 mm, 1/800, f/2.8

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/800, f/2.8

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 102 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 116 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 155 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 130 mm, 1/400, f/6.3

NIKON D300, ISO 800, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 102 mm, 1/400, f/8

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/800, f/3.2

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 135 mm, 1/800, f/4

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 110 mm, 1/800, f/5

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 98 mm, 1/800, f/2.8

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/800, f/5

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/800, f/3.5

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 190 mm, 1/250, f/8

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 155 mm, 1/250, f/9

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/250, f/10

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 86 mm, 1/2000, f/2.8

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm, 1/1600, f/2.8

NIKON D300, ISO 1000, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm, 1/250, f/10

Black & white: http://superelectric.net/2010/landevei-tt-bw/
Color: http://superelectric.net/2010/landevei-tt/

Daily bike commute: IXUS superclamped to the handlebars

Christian — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:00:43 +0000

I highly recommend turning off the sound.

This is an 8km bike commute from Kastellet to Solli plass, Oslo, Norway. Filmed with a Canon IXUS 200 IS (PowerShot SD780 IS), mounted on the handlebar of a Canyon road bike (no suspension) using Manfrotto 635 superclamp and a Manfrotto 488RC2 head. The camera tilted down a bit during the ride, because of all the shaking (I tried to adjust it a few times while riding).

Here’s the bike, sans camera stuff:

This was just a quick test. I have plans..

Time-lapse with D300, Lightroom and Final Cut Express

Christian — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:02:43 +0000

Time-lapse of about 1500 RAW images taken between 22:00 and 01:00 on E6 between Skedsmokorset and Kløfta on a freezing November night.

Tommy Johansen in Veidekke contacted me last spring to create a time-lapse of some of their construction work. In November, on the very last night of pavement work on the E6, everything finally fell in place. I drove the 30-40 minutes from Oslo, past the barriers and signs, onto the closed part of the highway (ignoring honking and blinking lights from other cars thinking I was asleep/nuts/etc) and got to work.

It was a cold night, and taking time-lapse photos takes time, so I was wearing the same as when it was -43°C (-45°F) at Svalbard. Toasty!

Camera settings

Nikon D300 and 17-55mm f/2.8
ISO 1600, NEF (12-bit RAW, 4288 x 2848)
1/15 second exposure, f/4.5 aperture
2-second intervals and 999 frames, using the D300’s built-in interval timer
Tripod: Manfrotto 190DB and 141RC

I wanted the big machinery and the people to be in focus, just the opposite of typical time.lapse movies where the moving part of the image is blurred out.

Keeping the machinery and people sharp required a short(ish) shutter speed to freeze the movements (luckily the machines move very slowly, but the Veidekke employees were more speedy), and using the a big aperture to avoid raising the ISO too high, but still getting a little depth of field. It would have been nice to be able to use a camera capable of higher ISO without more noise (when is the Nikon “D900″ coming?), or a lens with a larger maximum aperture, but my settings worked out ok.

Here is one of the photos:

D300, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 22mm, f/4.5, 1/15s. Larger version.

Editing the photos in Lightroom

I used RAW (Nikon NEF) because I wanted to be able to adust as much as possible in Lightroom afterwards. Taking the photos took many hours, and as this was the last roadwork project in 2009, missing the white balance or exposure would be.. well, unfortunate. Post-processing was quite standard: I used my Lightroom develop preset for Nikon D300 as the starting point, found a white balance that worked well with all the images in the series, adjusted the levels, etc.

The lighting was standard highway lighting: Quite yellow. I put the tripod below one of the streetlights, both to have as much light as possible, and to be as far away from the next one as possible, eliminating reflections and glare.

As you can see, I panned to follow the scraper maching at 00:30 and also at 01:45 to follow the other machine. This was the scary part. I knew I had to pan very steadily, and I also had to start and stop the panning without screwing up any photos. I’m quite happy with the result.

At one point a big truck needed to pass where I was standing, so I missed a couple of frames around 00:58. I stopped the interval timer, grabbed the tripod and camera, jumped over and in between the middle barriers (traffic passing me at 100 km/h 1m away), the truck passed, and I ran 4-5 meters ahead to catch up with the “machinery caravan” and started the interval timer again.

Oh, and I did export the photos to JPEG after editing them in Lightroom.

With images taken quickly after another, Lightroom and the MacBook’s trackpad can be used to “scrub” back and forth, making the still images look almost like a movie:

Making the movie

I have previously used Apple Quicktime Pro (or “Quicktime 7″ as it’s called in Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard), as described in Time-lapse movies with the Nikon D300. But for this video I wanted titles and a soundtrack, which is not possible using the “Open image sequence…” method.

So I bought Apple Final Cut Express. It has most of the basic functions in Apple Final Cut Pro, but at a price that mortals can afford ($199 vs $999). From Wikipedia:

Final Cut Express’s interface is identical to that of Final Cut Pro, but lacks some film-specific features, including Cinema Tools, multi-cam editing, batch capture, and a timecode view. The program can perform 32 undo operations, while Final Cut Pro can do 99.

A quick Google search for “final cut express vs final cut pro” might also be interesting.

Editing in Final Cut Express (FCE) is quite easy for using the basic functionality. I used Adobe Premiere on Windows a few years ago and FCE works much in the same way. I won’t go into the details of working in FCE, as Apple has some excellent tutorials.

One important tip: Before you drag in all the (JPEG) images into the FCE bin, set the default duration of a still image to something like 0.2 seconds – or whatever you think will work for your project: User preferences -> Editing -> Type a new value in the Still/Freeze Duration Field.

More?

See the video on Vimeo, and also on Veidekke CEO Terje R. Venold’s blog Terjes tanker.

Five-minute time-lapse movie of Vancouver, Canada.
Philip Bloom’s Dubai time-lapse.
Eirik Solheim has squeezed one year(!) into 90 seconds.

Comments, links to more time-lapse movies, anything else? Input appreciated!

MacBook with two drives: 160GB SSD + 640GB HDD

Christian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:12:57 +0000

I was tired of needing to connect an external drive to my MacBook to access my image archive, and was planning to buy a 1TB drive to swap with my Apple-supplied 320GB. Then I came across the MCE OptiBay adapter that makes it possible to swap out the MacBook’s built-in DVD burner with a second drive, freeing up the standard HDD bay for an SSD.

I now have 800GB of storage in my MacBook, split between a speedy 160GB SSD and a 640GB regular hard drive. Great success!

Apple Disk Utility showing the two internal drives: 160GB “MacBook SSD” and the 640GB “Snurre” HDD (as well as a few external drives connected).

I was originally planning to swap the 320GB drive with a regular 1TB drive and keep the DVD, but after reading the speed of SSD drives I quickly decided I ~~needed~~ wanted one.

There are good SSDs and bad SSDs, and after some intensive research on the interweb, I decided for the Intel X25M 160GB. It has received a lot of good reviews, it’s reasonably big (for now), and the price is ok – for a SSD.

Why 640GB?

Why not put a 1TB drive in the optibay? Because it only has space for 9.5mm drives, and the 750GB and 1TB drives available are 12.5mm. They will not fit in the optibay. It is possible to put a 12.5mm drive in the normal hard drive bay, but that means no SSD speed (if the SSD is used as a system drive in the optibay, the MacBook will not “hibernate” properly if the battery is completely drained).

How fast is it?

Fast! Boot time is greatly reduced and applications can be started simultaneously and load very quickly. I haven’t timed it, but Lightroom loads much, much faster than it without the SSD. Read How to make your Mac feel lighting-fast for some more details:

After using the Intel X25-M 80GB solid state drive for several months as a boot drive in my Mac Pro, I’m never going back to a hard drive (for my boot drive).

Super-fast system boot is the norm, and launching apps is spectacularly fast: launch every app you’ve got and they’ll all be ready for use in a few seconds. Try that with a hard drive—coffee break time.

Installation

It took me about 10 minutes for the full install. MCE supplies the screwdriver, and there’s a CD with a PDF with illustrations and text.

Here are the contents of the MCE OptiBay kit:

From the left: USB cable and USB power cable (not needed), screws, screwdriver pen, Enclosure for the DVD drive when removed from MacBook, Western Digital 640GB hard drive (bought separately, but MCE also sells hard drives), CD with instructions and the optibay adapter itself.

Tha MacBook ready to have it’s DVD drive swapped with the 640GB hard drive:

The DVD player is in the top left corner, attached with 4 screws and one flimsy cable in a tiny socket. It’s the red/brown cable in front of the fan.

I highly recommend having an extra MacBook to read the installations instructions on..

The DVD player slides easily into the enlosure, and I haven’t bothered attaching it with any screws – mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to. There is no faceplate, so it does look a little rough.

There several how-to videos available on the interweb, such as this very nice one from Steve Trotto:

Where do I keep all the stuff?

SSD: Mac OS X, Applications, Lightroom catalog, Lightroom previews, Documents.
HDD: Image files (pretty much every photo I have, except some time-lapse), iTunes music (might have to put some of the 100+ GB on an external drive, though..), a few movies and TV shows.
External RAID-1 drive: Backup of all images, backups of Lightroom catalog, all the accounting stuff for Automagisk, misc. important files.
Other external drives: Movies, music, misc. stuff.

What’s next?

SSDs will get cheaper and cheaper, and I might replace either the SSD or HDD with something bigger when “necessary”.

What else?

ChronoSync is the best backup sofware I have found for Mac OS, and Carbon Copy is great for cloning drives.

And: MCE does not answer emails. And: FedEx needed 7 days (and USD 50) to bring the package from California to Norway.

More information

I highly recommend reading these articles to get some SSD knowledge:

The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD (AnandTech)
Intel X25M 160GB Solid State Drive (SSD) (Macintosh Performance Guide)
Reconditioning a solid state drive (SSD) (Macintosh Performance Guide)

Update 2011-02-16

I recently ran out of storage, and decided to swap the 640GB HDD with a 1TB HDD. The Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB drive (model number WD10TPVT) is 12,5mm thick, and does not fit in the optibay adapter, so I put it in the regular HDD drive bay. The SSD is now in the optibay. This works perfectly, but – as I had read – the MacBook does not resume/awake after draining the battery completely – it’s a fresh boot. This is not a problem for me, at least not when I have 1,160GB of storage, with everything important on the fast SSD.

Update 2012-10-19

160GB SSD and 1TB HDD almost full. Replacing 160GB SSD with 512GB SSD (about the same price as the 160GB was two years ago). A total of 1,5TB now, which should last for a few more months.

Winter wonderland

Christian — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:00:01 +0000

Norway is currently having the best winter in a long time: Lots of snow everywhere, and real winter temperatures: -10°C (14°F) and below.

For me, this means a lot of cross-country skiing in great conditions, and not much photography at all. Except for a few snapshots with the Canon IXUS 100 IS I (almost) always have in my pocket, sometimes resulting in shots like the one above.

Snowy night photography

Christian — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:00:01 +0000

After one of many heavy Christmas dinners I decided I needed to get outside and move around a little. It had snowed heavily for days, and was still snowing when I went out around midnight, all dressed up in Norrøna Lofoten and some big boots bought at Svalbard.

D300, 800 ISO, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23mm, f/2.8, 1/30s.

I was only out for about an hour, but quickly found that there are a lot of different temperatures on streetlights: yellowish, greenish, blueish and all sort of in-between stuff. I left the white balance on “auto” and decided to fix everything in Lightroom later.

After fiddling quite some time with images like this one, I decided black and white would be best. It was just too much work getting everything to look right, especially with different lights in the same photo.

D300, 800 ISO, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17mm, f/16, 3s.

I couldn’t get the colors to look right and still keep the “snowy” atmosphere. I wanted the snow in the air to be clearly visible, which was difficult when I also wanted the colors to look right. The image above is a 3 second exposure, and this one is 1/13 second:

D300, 800 ISO, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17mm, f/2.8, 1/13s.

Here is another long exposure (10 seconds), giving the pine tree on the left a little blur – but making the snow in the air invisible. This has both the greenish streetlights and the whiter (bluer) lights near the building on the left, making black and white an easy choice..

D300, 200 ISO, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 32mm, f/13, 10s.

A short(ish) exposure showing some of the snow in front of the light, but still giving a sense of blur/movement:

D300, 200 ISO, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 18mm, f/2.8, 1/4s.

Lightroom details

As mentioned, I left the white balance on auto, and converted to black and white. I started out with the very nice Ilford HP5 400 Lightroom preset from LifeInDigitalFilm, and adjusted a little bit extra for each image. The Ilford HP5 400 made the snow in the air clearly visible, and I think the contrast and tone curve worked well for these photos.

I wrote about Lightroom black and white presets before, and might as well paste in a little of it here:

PresetHeaven has an overview of 34 free black & white film presets for Lightroom (actually, it is 17 presets with and without auto tone).

All the presets are made by Michael W. Gray at LifeInDigitalFilm. These are the 17 films:

Agfa Scala 200X

Agfapan 100

Agfapan 25

Agfapan 400

Fuji Acros 100

Ilford Delta 100

Ilford Delta 3200

Ilford Delta 400 Pro

Ilford Delta 400

Ilford FP4 125

Ilford HP5 400

Ilford Pan F 50

Ilford SFX 200

Ilford XP2 Super 400

Kodak TMAX 100

Kodak TMAX 400

Kodak Tri-X 400

I’m looking forward to Lightroom 3 and the “grain” effect, which I have tested a little bit in Using the Grain effect in Lightroom 3 RC1.

Merry Christmas

Christian — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:00:46 +0000

A bit late, but here’s s photo I took (quickly) while shopping food on December 24th:

D300, ISO 400, 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55mm, f/2.8, 1/40s.

The original didn’t look very interesting, but it provided a good start. I got to the result above by doing this in Lightroom:

Apply my standard D300 develop preset during import.
Desaturate all colors except red and orange.
Tweak the orange and reds a bit.
Adjust the exposure and levels a little.
Add some vignetting.
Crop.

(Update: Back-dated this post a little..)

Using the Grain effect in Lightroom 3 RC1

Christian — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:26:09 +0000

Inspired by Ben Ingham’s superb photos for Rapha rides Norddal and other series, I have fiddled a little with the new “Grain” effect in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 RC1:

Nikon D300, 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 78mm, ISO 1600, f/3.5, 1/320.

Creating the above image took less than a minute using the “B&W”, “Post-Crop Vignetting” and “Grain” controls. Very nice to have effect like this built into Lightroom. I really like the Grain effect, and it makes it very easy to get exactly the result I was hoping to get with my Grainy B&W preset.

Here is the same photo developed with my standard Lightroom preset for Nikon D300 (with some small additional adjustments):

The Lightroom 3 beta is not finished enough to replace Lightroom 2, but it’s nice to test the new features. If you haven’t already: Download the Lightroom 3 beta from Adobe Labs: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 RC1.

I saved this preset as “Rapha”, and if you would like to test it, here it is: Rapha.lrtemplate (please note that this was just a quick test with one(!) photo, so I can guarantee that you will need to make additional adjustments).

Rapha has made some of Ben Ingham’s pohotos available as desktop backgrounds at www.rapha.cc/rapha-desktops. If you like these photos – and road cycling – maybe you should subcribe to Rouleur? (If you already do, and have a spare #1 issue, let me know..)

Ben Ingham’s website is beningham.net.