I hadn’t intended to do a slideshow video with the fireworks images I shot the other night. Then I remember Lightroom has a way to export slideshows as videos and so I figured what the heck I’ll give it a try. So this is the entire 15 minute show compressed into under 2 minutes worth of video. Best viewed full screen in 720P.
All the images were shot at f/8 ISO 100, with shutter speeds varying from ~1s to ~16s. In my experience fireworks can be treated like flash’s can, where the aperture and ISO control the brightness of the trails and the shutter speed balances how much of the “ambient” environment is brought into the frame. Typically I shoot fireworks with the camera set to bulb, and vary the time the shutter is open to stop multiple bursts from blowing out the frame (you can see this happen in images towards the end during the finale).
Let me preface this by saying I like prints. Tiny pictures on monitors, low-resolution digital picture frames, etc., don’t do much for me. When I want to look at an image, I want to look at a real print, and a big one at that.
I had no intention to get into printing, not now at least. If it hadn’t been for a really good deal on the printer, I would even be writhing this.
The truth is I see printing is something of a rabbit hole, a very deep one if you want to do it right.
OMG It’s HUGE!
That was my first thought when UPS delivered the box. On its own, the printer weighs 33 pounds and measures 26 by 14 inches without the front or rear paper trays opened. When using the front load feeder, the rear supports extend the printer’s depth by another 14 inches. Tack the front output tray on and you have a printer that takes up just about 3 feet from extreme front to back.
The size and weight meant putting it on a glass desk was right out. Fortunately, I had a 26” rolling tool chest, like you’d find in a garage, to put the thing on. Even then, the printer is barely small enough to fit on top.
My second observation was that Canon seriously should put a couple sheets of 13×19 Pro Platinum paper in the box with the printer. They may see it as an unnecessary cost, and maybe it is, after all I had the forethought to order a box when I ordered the printer, but being able to open the box and print big is certainly a good hook if you ask me. That said, my first print was an 8×10 just to make sure the thing worked.
And wow does it work, just don’t put a wimpy table under it or you’ll think you’re in the middle of a very localized earthquake.
The printer has a top loading sheet feeder, but for heavy photo papers, the front-loading single sheet tray is a much nicer way to insure your paper isn’t damaged or bent. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that keeping the paper square when using the front tray is painless; as long as the paper is tight against the right side of the printer it will be aligned correctly.
Print quality, at least from my initial prints is solid. Certainly as good as, or better than, the lab done prints I had handy for comparisons. Blacks are black, there’s no banding or layering visible. Details are well reproduced and crisp. I was actually quite surprised how well some things came out, even though they were enlarged perhaps a bit more than they should be.
I’ll eventually get around to writing an actual review of the printer, but I’m going to need to put a lot more paper though it. I still have a couple of outstanding questions I need to answer and I’ll need to try some 3rd party papers, I also want to try some of the higher end matte papers. Finally, ink cartridge longevity, especially when printing 13x19s, is still of some concern. But for now, I’m having a blast with big beautiful prints where when and how I want them.
Don’t use perceptual rendering intent when printing. Well maybe.
The truth is, I’m new to this whole printing thing, and that means this is all an uphill battle for me. Yes, I’ve done a lot of reading on it, and watched Michael Reichman’s series From Camera to Print, but in the end there’s no substitute for actually putting ink on the page and printing things. Unfortunately, one of the biggest hurdles for me for the time being is profiling my printer; namely I won’t be doing it any time soon.
In any case today I learned a number of things starting with be wary of the perceptual rendering intent.
For those that aren’t aware, and while I’m probably going to butcher the explanation anyway, the perceptual rendering intent aims to prevent banding from out of gamut colors by compressing the images whole color gamut into the printers (or display’s) available color gamut. Conversely relative colorimetric simply collapses the out of gamut areas into the last in gamut color the device has. Cambridge in Color has a real nice page on this.
In theory, the perceptual intent should allow some degree of set it and forget it ability. Namely it will keep images from banding where colors go out of gamut.
That said, color is more complicated than just a 1D line, and it seems that the process of compressing colors into the printers gamut may very well also alter the hue, even if it’s not supposed to. Of course it’s possible that OEM Canon profiles for the Pixma Pro 9000 Mk. 2 are wonky, or have broken perceptual intents, or it could be Lightroom, since the soft proofs in Photoshop look pretty close to the prints.
Which I think is the real lesson I learned here; Lightroom, while arguably the best DAM and RAW processor currently available in my opinion, is still grossly deficient when it comes to printing, and possibly even just viewing images. Without soft proofing, if not also lacking the ability to use relative colorimetric rendering intents throughout the program you’re doing little better than guessing, or guessing and checking in Photoshop.
The plan for the moment, I guess I’ll be keeping track of what worked somehow, (maybe I’ll have to write a LR plugin for this) and soft proof in Photoshop before printing. I also think I’m going to default to relative colorimetric unless something ends up looking really wonky because of it.
I’ve been looking for a better way to manage my gallery online and make it easier to clients, both new and old, find and purchase my images. Photoshelter seemed to offer a lot of really nice features; easy e-commerce setup, built in pricing using Fotoquote, build in licensing for stock photography, and most importantly for me it offered a way for me to avoid having to patch and modify another piece of software running on my own servers.
Unfortunately, after having played with it, I’m just not sure whether I like Photoshelter or not.
The Trails of Trials
The trial of trials is simple, how do you expose functionality during a trial period that doesn’t hurt you later. Do you, for example, expose all the functionality to the user to let them evaluate it, or only what they’d have access to at whatever account level they signed up at.
Photoshelter does the latter, exposing only the functionality available to the account level you signed up. If you sign up as a basic user, you don’t get FTP access, or e-commerce stuff–they aren’t part of the plan. In retrospect, I want to be clear about this, e-commerce functionality is available to basic users for a 1 time $50 setup fee, not that it’s not available at all. What I’m talking about here is the ability to preview the e-commerce functionality prior to actually setting it up.
That said, exposing the majority of standard or pro features might not be a bad idea for all trial accounts. For example, having FTP access for 14-days could help basic users get their initial images online quickly so they get a better feel of the service. Moreover, having experienced FTP access may help push some people towards the higher tier accounts.
The alarm goes off, some crap radio station blasts garbage to be quickly silenced, it’s 4:30 AM. My gear is packed, the cameras are charged, checked out and ready to go. I did that last night, I’m not a morning person; I wouldn’t begin to rely on my ability to be clear and coherent in the morning, not at this hour.
I’m not the only one awake at this hour, not even close. Discovery is quietly sitting on Pad 39, undergoing the final checks for fueling. Her crew is still asleep, they won’t be up for another 2 hours, but they’re not the only ones needed for this to work as it should, not by a long shot.
The Shuttle program is making its final hurrahs. One flight left for each of the 3 Orbiters, and I had tickets to watch Discovery take off from the NASA Parkway, 6 miles away from the pad. That’s as close as you can get without having press credentials. This is the bittersweet tail, my account of the beginning of the end of an era.
I managed to score a rare commodity, causeway launch viewing tickets for the launch of Shuttle Discovery for STS-133. My dad covered the shuttle launches throughout most of the 80s for a South Florida newspaper, so I grew up with all kinds of really nice photography of shuttle launches, but never saw one my self until just last year and then from 15 miles away. Then again, it was easier back then for a serious photographer to find a news paper that was willing to “hire” them and write the necessary letter for the photographer to get press credentials. Moreover, it was also easier to get access to the non-press viewing areas like the causeway on the NASA parkway.
Now, access to Merritt Island during Shuttle launches is seriously curtailed. Public viewing requires tickets that are available though a lottery system. Even then, only limited numbers of tickets being issued for access to the KSC visitor center, and an even smaller number of tickets being available for access to the causeway. Suffice to say, the causeway viewing tickets sell out minutes after they’re available and the KSC visitor center tickets are gone minutes later.
For me, this is an exciting opportunity, not only as a photographer and a space geek, but also to document something at its close that my dad was documenting at the beginning.
The one thing that I know, but want to be clear about, is that without the ability to place remote cameras much closer to the launch site than you can physically be (i.e. what the press can do), the images are all largely the same, tiny shuttle on a long trail of smoke and fire. Distance only makes the tiny shuttle not quite so tiny and much less distorted.
I’ve received at least one email, and now a comment about sudden flash death induced by or related to LPA design’s Control TL PocketWizards. Moreover, a recent post on Canon rumors has a link to a paper, purportedly produced by LPA Design employees summarizing their investigation into flashes failing.
LPA design claims to have received reports from 120-140 customers that their 580EX II flashes, has been damaged within the past 18 months with similar symptoms. The symptom specifically is the inability for the damaged flash to produce controlled bursts. Lacking the ability to control the output, the flash will make a full power discharge all the time, even for TTL pre-flashes.
TLDR, The Brass Tacks
The potential exists with at least Canon’s 580Ex II and possibly Nissin’s Di866 (I’ve received a report of a Nissin Di866 being fried in a similar manner) flashes that a failure can occur.
The failure doesn’t appear to be related to heat buildup, so AC-5 soft shields aren’t a problem.
The failure appears to be strongly related to an electrical arc formed between the flash tube and the flash’s reflector, eventually frying the controller.
Replacing the fired controller, doesn’t fix the problem, and the flash will die again, even if it’s never used with a PocketWizard.
LPA Design claims that failures have happened to less than 0.5% of the MiniTT1/FlexTT5 units, and less than 1% of 580EXII flashes connected.
From my interpretation of the LPA design report, the problem lies in the flash and not the PocketWizards.
Moreover, it seems that if your flash exhibits defects that lead to the failure use becomes a consideration. In LPA Design’s tests, the arcing occurred randomly, even in HSS discharges where you would expect to see it in every “pop”.
Finally, it’s entirely likely that as many 580EX II flashes are failing on users who aren’t using PocketWizards at all, but we’re not hearing about it since they either aren’t being used as much or simply are being considered a case of random broken equipment by the users.
A Deeper Analysis
The LPA investigation tracked down the problem to 2 main areas. First, the failure is ultimately noticed when the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) that controls the actual flow of current to the flash tube dies. Secondly, it appears that the IGBT dies due to repeated arcing between the flash tube and the reflector behind it.
It’s that time again, time for Canon’s spring product announcements. The big, at least for me, announcement is a 200-400mm lens. However, Canon is also bringing to market a 2 new consumer level SLRs and a pair of new low end flashes.
Call this a day late and a dollar short. I’m not big or important enough for Canon to give prior notice to, so my comments are limited to what I can glean after the embargo’s end and the press releases go up.
Overall, Canon has put forward a couple of solid looking entry level cameras, finished replacing their new stabilized super-telephoto primes, and released a pair of low-end flashes, one with some very intriguing features. Moreover, Canon is clearly continuing to treat video support as a first class citizen in their SLRs by adding features that make sense and continuing to refine and improve the way you can use it.
