What keeps things in check is the fact that money is an issue. Living in New Zealand means you normally pay through the nose for just about everything of a techy/imported nature. I have to double and then triple check everything I look at buying to make sure it’s something that will really benefit me.

So onto the bones of this post…

As some of you will have noticed, earlier in the year Adobe released CS5. I spent the 30 days of trial licence playing with it and trying it out in every way I could think of, to make sure it was worth the pennies. Finally on May 24 I bit the bullet and handed over the cash.

And so onto my first gripe with Adobe. I purchased Lighroom 2 straight from the USA server back in Aug 2008 without a hitch. I paid my money and hit the download button. When I came to do the same thing with CS5 I was told that as I’m not in the USA I would have to use my local online store. Upon switching to the closest store available, Australia (obviously some version of the word ‘local’ that I’ve not come across before), I noticed that CS5 had jumped in price by over NZ$100. “Bugger that” I thought and proceeded to go back to the USA store to try paying with Paypal instead of VISA.

“It appears that your Paypal account it funded with a credit card that isn’t American” (or something similar) appeared on the screen. Hmmmph, well that didn’t work.

I could completely understand the price increase if I was purchasing a different version of the software. Maybe one that was localised to my language. Or that had to be shipped internationally. But I wasn’t! The download version I get from the Australian servers is exactly the same as the download version found on the American servers. I just had to pay more for it because I’m not American. Gee, thanks Adobe!

Eventually I gave in and decided to pay the extra. I just couldn’t be bothered ranting and raving to Adobe customer support any more. They weren’t listening, wouldn’t give me a reason for the extra cost and exuded an air of “we  just couldn’t care less”.

Less than a month later Adobe releases the final version of Lightroom 3. Onto gripe number two…

I was big fan of Lightroom 2 and only swapped to Nikon Capture NX 2 because I felt Camera Raw 4x and 5x weren’t doing my NEF files justice. I’d been testing Lighroom 3 beta since early in the year and was very keen to see what a difference the full version would make to my files. Especially now that it had auto lens distortion correction, new camera calibration settings and the new Camera Raw engine,so I downloaded LR3 and began the 30 day trial to see if it was worth swapping my entire workflow back.

After 22 days of testing, tweaking and lens profiling I’d made up my mind. I was pleasantly surprised to find that while LR3 wasn’t quite as good at processing my NEF files as CNX2, Adobe had done a lot of catching up. LR3 was now close enough in quality that the other benefits of using LR in my workflow were enough to seal the deal. I hit the’ Buy Now’ button and immediately received another happy surprise; if you purchased LR3 with CS5 you’d get 30% off!

And then Adobe did it again.

After a bit of digging I realised you only get the 30% off if you purchase CS5 and LR3 at the same time. If you are an early adopter/loyal Adobe fan and had purchased CS5 before LR3 was released then tough poop, you gotta pay full price. What the??

So even though I was a signed up Lightroom 2  user running a beta copy of Lightroom 3, and that I’d purchased a copy of CS5 Design Premium only six weeks ago I didn’t get the promo!

Instead, if I waited for a couple of weeks and not jumped on the CS5 band wagon I’d be rewarded for not being an early adopter and be able to upgrade both at the same time and get 30% off LR3? Hmmm, not much of an incentive to be an early adopter is there?

I hit the Live Chat button on Adobe’s site to ask them how I’d go about getting the promo price. They said to call during office hours and talk to sales, and “No” they don’t have an email address so “Yes” you’ll have to call them. So I wait all weekend, every day edging closer to the end of my 30 day trial of LR3. Finally this morning I called the 0800 NZ number, only to be told “Sorry mate, I understand what you’re saying but it’s not my problem. Call your local sales office (local meaning over 2000km away in a different country) and ask them”.

Blimey, talk about having to jump through hoops! So I shell out for an International call to my local sales office and ask “Come one Adobe, do the right thing and extend the offer to us early adopters!”

To which I’m told “No”. Wow, well done Adobe!

What sort of message to you think that sends to your early adopter users? How do you think those people will react when asked if they are happy with the way Adobe has treated them? Do you see them recommending Lightroom 3 to their fellow professional photographers over the competition?

I know of at least three people (and I bet there are lots of others) who have bought CS5 and are still using Lightroom 2. They would more than likely upgrade to Lightroom 3 if they knew about the 30% off deal and were offered, as a thanks for being an early adopter of CS5, a promo coupon code they could use with at the Adobe online store. I’m not talking about giving this to everyone, just to those people, like myself, who went ahead and purchased CS5 before LR3 was available.

I finally found an address for the Adobe Pacific Sales team by the way; p a c s a l e s @ a d o b e . c o m  (without the spaces) and have sent them an email suggesting they do the right thing and reward their loyal early adopters, but I’m not holding my breath. So far I’ve been completely underwhelmed by any of Adobe’s customer services.

Maybe they would listen if other LR2 users who found themselves in the same boat as me also emailed them? Go on, do it! Adobe will only learn if they get enough people feeding back this sort of info. As the saying goes “Only the squeaky wheel gets the oil”…

I used to be an avid LR user. I loved the way it did almost everything from camera download to final print via a web gallery for good measure.

Then I bought a D700 and installed the trial version of Capture NX2. What a double edged sword that turned out to be. CNX2 is pretty clunky, hangs at least once a day and has no real DAM options. However, it does know how to talk to my NEF files properly. So it auto fixes any CA errors, high order lens distortion (not just pin cushion), does a better job of noise reduction and supports Active D-Lighting (what a life saver this is if you know how to use it!)

Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with the other!

Adobe have had to go with the one engine (ACR) so that Lightroom can handle many different RAW formats while maintaining editing options. However, by doing this they have made the choice to only ever give a pretty close, reverse engineered version of what the file actually looks like. I’ve done LOTS of testing to see if I could stomach going back to ACR conversion of my files but now I’ve made the jump to CNX2 I’m stuck there. If anyone tells you there is no difference in quality, they are either telling you a whopper or they haven’t really done a comparison.

So to get to the point of this post; Converting to DNG means you are using the current best guess of what a NEF file should look like according to Adobe. Once you have converted the file you will never be able to go back to the original (assuming you dumped it like so many of you say you do) and run it through an updated converter some time down the line to get a better result. You’ll be stuck with how the file looked using today’s technology.

An example of what I’m trying to say; Back when I had my D70 about five years ago, I tried the trial copy of Capture NX to convert some files. I’ve been able to go back to those files using the latest Capture NX 2 (v 2.2.4) and rework them so they look noticeably better than before. If I’d converted them to DNG back when I took them (using the version of ACR that was around back then) they would still look pretty much the same today. The issue of xmp side car files evaporated when I went over to CNX2 also, as it writes all changes back into the NEF file, even multiple versions should you want to try different development tweaks. And at any point you can revert an edited file straight back to the original, un tweaked version at the click of a button.

So to summarise – if you feel that Adobe’s rendering of your NEF’s is good enough for you, then carry on using it. When they day comes that Nikon finally stops supporting your version of NEF (if it ever happens) then you can always convert them over to DNG at that point.

But, if you ARE going to go down the DNG route, I strongly suggest you keep your original NEF’s because once they are gone you can never get them back. And lets face it, a few DVD’s to back up your originals isn’t going to break the bank.

You’ll thank me for it one day…

To me a photo is a way of sharing a moment in time with other people not fortunate enough to see the original. A camera, even a good one like the Nikon D700, is only capable of capturing a small amount of what the eye sees. For example it’s dynamic range is piddly small in comparison to the eyeball, which makes shots into the sun at sunrise rather difficult.

I keep harping on about the wonders of Capture NX 2, and today’s post is no different. Below is a shot taken with one hand, while driving a manual shift 4×4 around a hilly paddock, while keeping an eye out for the resident stag who kept trying to climb through the window and tell me how upset he was. Knowing what the camera’s sensor is capable of and what your post processing software can recover enables you to recognise and capture shots you wouldn’t even have considered when shooting film.

Look what is possible with about 10 minutes of post production…

Why settle for what the inferior camera sensor recorded when you can make a photo look almost like how your eyeball saw it? Above you can see how the scene was captured (top) and how it eventually ended up looking after a bit of work in Capture NX2 (bottom).

• Lens flare removed – check
• Horizon straightened – check
• Saturation improved – check
• Shadows recovered (while not blowing out the highlights) – check
• Restoration of very dark photo back to how it actually looked – check

It’s good to capture the very best photo you can, I’m not saying you should just walk around shooting without some preparation or planning. However, if you want to try getting all the deer to stand still, smile on cue, not gore you and also not blink too much when the 100+ studio flashes you have set up around the paddock to fill in the shadows all fire simultaneously, go for it! I’ll stick to getting the best I can from the safety of the 4×4 and working on it in post processing.

Lightroom masks are great, I’m not contesting that, but Color Efex Pro (especially when used  in conjuction with Capture NX 2) takes non-destructive editing to the next level. Every filter can be layered and individually masked. Localised edits can be made using the intelligent, auto selecting u-point tool, brush or lasso/marquis select options. Each layer can have it’s own opacity and most tools have shadow and highlight protection tools.

I spotted a scene with some potential but didn't have time to do anything other than point and shoot.

The great thing when using Efex Pro with Capture NX 2 is that all the edits are saved into the NEF file where they can be recalled and edited at a later date. You can even save multiple versions of edits into the one NEF or delete all edits to revert back to the original file. And did I mention all of this is non-destructive?

No more making flattened TIFFs of all your photos then editing those in Photoshop.

In this example I was trying to get arty shots of the Bridal party in their motel room. When you don’t have time to set up lights and you want to just catch candid moments, arty can be difficult to pull off. If I set the camera to tungsten WB the shadows looked ok but the highlights looked blue. If I set it to daylight then the highlights looked ok but the shadows came out browny/orange. In the past this would have bothered me a lot. Now? Not so much…

I used to try to get the perfect shot and then do a few minor tweaks later. Using tools like Color Efex Pro I now aim to capture a decent base shot knowing that I can work on it later to get the perfect look. This means I no longer have to wait or plan for the perfect shot (I still do when I can) and so have captured moments I’d have missed  before.

Some extra contrast and brightness using the u-point colour tool, a bit of added noise, a selective B&W converstion, a few selective tweaks of the saturation, and a bit of masked levels and curves and... Voila!

Last year the huge crowds caused some of the queues to become three hour endurance tests. Some people tried for two or three days straight to get into the Wearable Weeds show and still missed out. Hence 2010 saw some big changes to the way the show was organised. By all accounts things ran a lot more smoothly this year.

Even though the show organisers had changed things around the weather decided to do a 2009 re-run. During set up the sky’s were clear, the winds manageable and the temperature comfortable. The day the gates opened to the public a southerly system arrived, the heavens opened, the winds picked up and the temperature dropped by a good 10°C

Due to the stink weather and other work commitments I didn’t get anywhere near as many photos as I’d have liked.

Why shoot a fountain from the same angle as everyone else? I knew the designer (Carl Pickens) from last years show and he kindly let me walk on to the garden to capture this 1/6400 second slice of time.

I knew that the organisers would be getting standard photos of each garden in its entirety, so I went for detail and arty shots. I love trying to get a different angle to all the other photogs, getting an image of something ordinary that makes people go “Ooo!”

Another cool design was Dan Rutherford’s ‘An Icy Oasis’ (excuse the pun). It featured a huge refrigerated base kept at a chilly -12°C to slowly grow it’s own ice sheet, a huge ice sculpture and an artistic representation of Plate Tectonics. Not exactly what you’d expect at a Flower Show!

This is a crop of the top third of the full image. Click on the link below to see the full gallery of photos.

The above photo did originally have black curtains behind it. The problem was that every time I went over to close them they’d have been moved by people or the wind by the time I got back to the camera. Eventually I gave up on trying to get a full blackout and cheated, the dramatic sky you see in the photo was photoshopped in afterwards. You can still see a bit of reflection in the pool at the far right from where a gap had opened in the curtains.

For the full set of photos click here.

Well the other day I did it. I managed to drag my bum out of bed and head on down to New Brighton Pier to see what I could find. And I’m soooo glad I did! By 7am it was already about 25°C and the surfers were turning up in droves, all keen to get in a good mornings session before having to head off to work.

Due to me being a little slow reacting to the alarm clock I hadn’t quite made it to New Brighton when the sun broke the horizon. As soon as I saw the first few rays I pulled over, climbed the dunes and grabbed a shot;

Another example of one shot semi-hdr photography using my D700... "Active D-Lighting set to high Captain! Thanks Scotty, now hit it with a dose of D-Lighting and some Levels & Curves in Capture NX2!"

After half falling back down the dunes to my car I headed on down to the pier. Only one other photog had made the effort to get out of bed early so we had the beach and the surfers to ourselves. It turned out to be one of those mornings where pretty well anything I pointed the camera looked great. I like those

Luckily the surfers who turned up were so entranced by the call of the breakers they didn’t notice me following them around (or more likely they just wanted to keep away from the dishevelled looking, coffee craving, odd ball with the camera )

Five minutes drive down the coast from home. Why on earth would you want to live anywhere else? Well barring a tsunami that is. But apart from the threat of a wall of water washing you away, life here is pretty damm good.

For the full set of images click here.

For those of you not familiar with the technology here is a quick catchup;

Active D-Lighting (ADL) analyses a photo as it’s metered and automatically adjusts the highlights and shadows to obtain the widest dynamic range. You set ADL in the ‘Shooting’ menu of your Nikon to one of the following; Auto, High, Medium, Low or Off. You will only receive the benefit ADL if you are processing with Capture NX2, in anything else the adjustments will be lost and the file will just come out looking slightly overexposed.

The end result of all this is that if you shoot with ADL turned on, and you process with Capture NX2 (not the most user friendly of programs but a must if you want the best quality out of your NEF files) you’ll get an image that has a much better dynamic range (almost HDR like in some cases) than shooting without it. The nice thing is that you can always turn the adjustments off in CNX2 if you don’t like what’s been done to the file.

In the past using a HDR technique was great so long as nothing moved between the bracketed exposures. Now you can get almost the same effect with just one shot, no more blurry ghosts as people move between frames…

Which brings me to my example of how ADL can come to the rescue. There are times when you are shooting a dark subject against a bright background (or vis versa if it’s penguins in the Antarctic) when you either don’t have time to set up a flash, the subject is too far away for your flash, it’s not convenient to use one etc. Rather than having to spend hours in post processing blending multiple exposures of each shot for a faux HDR image, or working the contrast / exposure / fill light levels for each shot, switch on ADL. Here’s a ‘with and without’ example (remember you can turn the ADL adjustments off after the fact in CNX2, which is how I got the ‘without ADL’ image).