Lightroom and the Wacom digital tablet

Now I said this in an earlier post: If you’re using Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or especially Lightroom 2 you’ll really want to introduce a Wacom digital tablet into your workflow – even – or maybe especially if you’re new to photo editing. Now I’m not alone in my opinion. Here’s a link to Scott Kelby’s hugely popular and authoritative PhotoshopInsider blog where Wacom advocate Wes Maggio really spells out the advantage to using a Wacom digital tablet.

Don’t be intimidated by the idea of introducing a digital tablet into your workflow. Basically it’s just a sophisticated usb mouse pad that includes a digital pen. For more global changes (Global changes are changes that affect the entire image.) working with an ordinary mouse or the mouse that comes with the digital tablet do the job just fine. But if you want to  make more local changes then a digital pen, especially one which is pressure sensitive, (That’s a pen that adjusts the size of the line it’s drawing depending on how much pressure you use when moving it.) is a real treat.

I use my digital pen to draw lines around teeth and the whites of my subject’s eyes. With the pen it’s a snap. With a mouse, not so much fun.

Digital tablets aren’t expensive. You can get one of the Bamboo models for just over $100. Trust me, it will be $100 well spent.

I’ll be putting up our images from our wonderful weekend in Algonquin Park this weekend at my Smugmug site at Peter West Photo. And checkout my new teaching site at CameraTraining.Ca.

Advanced flash workshop Friday in Oakville

We’ve got a room for one more (okay maybe two) in our Friday advanced flash workshop. If you’re working as a professional photographer doing weddings or portraits this is the workshop for you. We’re going way beyond the basics into how to use your advanced flash speedlights to make magical images.

Graduated filters and polarizers in landscape photography

One the tricks that Ethan Meleg showed us at the Outdoor Photography Canada magazine shoot up in Algonquin Park was the essential use of polarizing and split-grad filters. I’ve long advocated their use but until you’re standing in the early morning glow of the new day there’s no way to appreciate these filters without using them.

We were using Sing-Ray Filters which are the best. Period. I will be seeing if I can my hands on my own set and then use them in demonstrations during my field classes. Thanks again to the good folks at Outdoor Photography Canada magazine for such a great time.

Algonquin follow-up

One of my readers sent a comment asking for recommendations as far as tripods are concerned.

The short answer is “Gitzo” for the tripod and the guys at Luminance Landscape have a great review of the Gitzo 2227 paired with a  Gitzo Magnesium ballhead 1277M. This is a heavy-duty tripod and not one you’d likely want to pack in your suitcase for a vacation trip down south. I will last you a lifetime and will work for every camera from 35mm to 4X5.

Now do I own one? No. Do I wish I did? Yes.

So what do I have? I’ve got a small Gitzo G120 with a light Manfrotto head which my wife uses and I just bought a Manfrotto 055CXPRO3 with a standard Manfrotto head. This is a carbon-fibre tripod that worked well on my Algonquin trip. I bought the optional strap and it was easy to lug around all day long.

If I knew then what I know now I’d buy a Gitzo tripod at around $800 to $1000 and a head assembly from Really Right Stuff. If I didn’t need the weight reduction of carbon fibre I’d skip it and go with metal which might be more robust.

Here’s a review of best head assemblies.

Algonquin landscapes – Lessons learned

One of the wonderful things about taking a workshop is you will learn so much more than what you already know. Doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or emerging professional there are lessons to be learned. For example, on last weekend’s fabulous Algonquin fall leaves adventure, pro outdoors photographer Ethan Meleg taught me a few things I didn’t know about landscapes.

First lesson learned was to always – and I mean always – use a tripod. Landscape photography often requires long shutter speeds because the aperture of the lens is closed down (f/16 or so) to produce as much depth of field (in other words getting everything from the foreground to the background in focus) as possible. Ethan said that there are two ways to buy a tripod. The first is to go and purchase a relatively inexpensive tripod ($200) and use that for a few years. And then as you add heavier cameras and lenses finding out you need a heavier tripod ($500) to keep everything steady. Of course then there’s the tripod for travel which has to be carbon fibre ($600++) to keep it light. And soon you’ve got a closet full of tripods. I’ve got three and two monopods.

Or there is the fast (but painful) way of buying a tripod and that’s to shell out $1,000 or so for the tripod and $500 for the heavy-duty ball-head assembly. Now you’ve got one tripod that will last you forever and you’ve paid out half of what it will cost by starting cheap. Wish I had known this before I bought my first $200 Gitzo.

BTW the Algonquin photography workshop was sponsored by Outdoor Photography Canada magazine and you should all get your own subscription. The images are wonderful. The photographers are terrific shooters. And the editorial contest is first-class. Best of it’s Canadian.

$MOMO PHOTOS READ THIS

Last night I volunteered to shoot photos for former Oakville Mayor Ann Mulvale’s 60th birthday party where she asked everyone who attended (early hopes were for 250) to donate $60 to the $Millions or More Oakville ($MOMO) to benefit the Stephen Lewis Foundation and its fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

So, if you attended the party last night and you’ve beaten me here (this will make it Friday morning as you read this) your photos are waiting for you at my online gallery site here which is www.peterwestphoto.ca. Now that is to say if it’s sometime after 11am Friday. If your photos aren’t ready yet they should be up by mid-afternoon and you can find them under the gallery marked Oakville. The gallery is not passworded and the photos will download by right clicking the image and following the instructions on your screen. If you have any difficulties just send me an email to peter@peterwest.ca .

I hope you had a great time. I’m guessing I did

If you have a moment, take some time to visit this site which is part of my photography teaching business. The information here is for my students of digital photography and you’re welcome to view it. I am available to give talks and workshops on digital photography from the basics to the professional level. Just send me an email for more details and thanks again for supporting $MOMO.

PictoColor doesn’t get it

I bought a copy of PictoColor’s ICorrect Portrait for $99 less than six months ago following David Ziser’s excellent Digital Wake-Up Call workshop. I didn’t really need it but after David’s ravings I thought I’d give it a try. I works pretty well. I’ve used it maybe half a dozen times and find it does speed up the process of correcting for skin tones. So now I’ve changed over to MAC platform and I emailed PictoColor about transferring my license over to MAC. Well image my surprise when I got this little note:

“Dear Peter,
Thank you for your inquiry.  Our policy for platform switching is to have you purchase a copy for your new machine at the upgrade price located here:

http://www.pictocolor.com/upgrade_products.htm

- -
Customer Service
PictoColor

Partner for Success with our Affiliate Program
Earn 25% percent commissions on our award winning products with PictoColor’s Affiliate Partner Program!
http://www.pictocolor.com/Affiliates.htm

Notice how quick PictoColor is to promote their commission selling scheme but now they want an additional $49 to transfer the license. This is really poor practice not copied by reputable software companies (like Adobe which transferred my much more expensive copy of Photoshop CS4 from PC to MAC for $0 and even sent me a new disk. Cool and professional. Not so cool is PictoColor wanting another $49 (US).

Pictocolor claims on their Company Information page that “we believe in three things, helping you make the color right, making your life easier and saving you time. Why not add a fourth statement around providing excellent customer service. That would be most welcome.

So until PictoColor changes its policy I can’t recommend them anymore. And no you’re not getting an additional $49 and you’ve lost me as a customer until you make good at transferring my license from PC to MAC. That’s not too  much to ask.

Our excellent Algonquin adventure

Marion  (BTW that’s her in the masthead photo 2nd from the left) and I took off Thursday morning for a weekend workshop shooting the autumn colours in Algonquin Park. We got into our room at the Algonquin Inn which is located on Hwy. 60 just outside the park just after lunch. After a short break, we got the cameras out and went off to shoot photos. As we drove up we didn’t see much evidence of fall colours but the park held a surprise for us. As soon as we approached the western gate the fall colours were all around us and they got better – way better – as the weekend progressed.

The main part of the weekend was a of Outdoor Photography Canada’s workshop hosted by publisher Roy Ramsey and led by Ethan Meleg. I will comment on lessons learned and lessons confirmed in future posts.

After a full-day of shooting (well we did sneak into Huntsville for dinner at the Tall Trees restaurant – four-star approval rating from both of us) we got back to the Inn for a welcome reception and to meet all our fellow students and shooters. Ethan brought along a couple of his pals so there were plenty of helping hands to go around. Photographers abilities varied from pretty basic and up but regardless of where they started the weekend I think it’s safe to say that everyone came away with great images and wonderful memories.

So are there things that could have gone better? Well the weather was terrific despite forecasts of rain all weekend long. Only materialized a little on Sunday morning. Algonquin area was expecting heavy winds and rain this week and that will likely knock a lot of the leaves out of the canopy.

So I’ll have more to say in the next post but for now: How’s this:

How great are the Wacom digital tablets?

I like recommending photography equipment that works. So when it comes to working with a digital tablet, I have no hesitation in recommending the digital tablets from Wacom.

Here’s why: I just got back from an extended weekend of shooting fall colours in Algonquin Park (This was organized by the nice folks at Outdoor Photography Canada magazine. I’ll have a multi-post review of the workshop and links to my images. I’ve got multiple gigs of images to edit down to something manageable.) and I took my new Macbook Pro (extremely happy with my decision to purchase the Macbook) so I could download my images every evening (I also kept the images on the memory cards as a backup).

I also took with me my Wacom Bamboo digital tablet. This smaller tablet easily fit into one of my camera bags and made simple edits on my images just so easy. It also served as my external mouse. The computer and tablet sat on small tablet in our motel room.

The good news about the Wacom Bamboo is it’s around $100 here in Canada. You can buy it from Henry’s Cameras right now. The Bamboo Fun model even comes with a copy of Photoshop Elements. Cool.

Now comes word that Wacom is introducing a new Bamboo tablet. Here’s a link to their website.

Hotel shots

David Ziser who runs the Digital Wake-up Call workshops has an excellent video tutorial on how to shoot portraits using just one umbrella in a Hilton Hotel of all places. David shows you that you don’t need a studio to get great images. Honestly he makes it seem so easy.