David Naylor: Blog

Wordpress Migration Completed!

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:08:00 +0000

I have now managed to migrate my blog content and design to Wordpress!

There were quite a few hoops to jump through, but I've finally got to the stage where I feel I can invite you over to the new version. In fact, if you're reading this in an RSS reader you should be automatically redirected to the new version of the blog if you click through.

I believe I have managed to set things up so that all incoming links should redirect to the posts imported into Wordpress. (Which use a different URL scheme than Blogger.)

Here is the link to the new RSS feed.

Should you find any weirdness, I'd be very grateful if you let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Moving from Blogger to Wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:18:00 +0000

Blogger have just informed me that they are getting rid of the possibility to publish via FTP to your own domain/server.

I should be angry, but I'm kind of happy because this is just the kind of push I need to move to some better blogging service or software.

Just like everyone else, I've decided to go with Wordpress. I've got it up and running, and I have managed to import all my old posts.

The next thing to do is to migrate my design to the new system, and when that is done I'll implement automatic redirecting from all my old posts.

Obviously I hope to do the switch with as little disruption as possible, but any subscibers I have might need to re-subscribe to a new feed. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Lens Cleaning Tips

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:49:00 +0000

Just before I was about to sell my old lens, I searched the web for good ways of cleaning the outsides of a lens.

If you're reading this, you're probably familiar with the weird white stuff that gets stuck between the little grooves on your zoom and focus rings. I guess it's a mix of salt, grease and dead skin cells. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably haven't had your DSLR for a full year.

This is what it looks like:

Anyway, the method that I found is really simple. (And cheap!)

Just find an old toothbrush and fill a cup with warm water. Dip the toothbrush in the water and flick it hard a few times to get most of the water out of it again.

Then you simply brush the mucky areas. Just make sure the toothbrush isn't leaving pools of water all over your lens – it'll get into the joins.

Rinse the toothbrush if it gets too dry.

If you don't drop your lens in the cup of water, you should end up with a lens looking close to new!

(BTW, this is not the lens I sold. The toothbrush method worked so well I went ahead and cleaned all my lenses.)

Sharpness test: Sigma 17-70mm vs Canon 17-55mm

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:37:00 +0000

After having bought my second hand EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 I sold my Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5. But before I sent it off to the buyer, I took some test shots for a little comparison of the two lenses.

I set my camera up on my tripod and took shots of our bookcases from roughly 2.5 meters away, at a right angle. I took photos at 17mm, 35mm and 55mm with both lenses, and at each focal length I took photos at f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6 and f/8.0. (Obviously, the Sigma doesn't do f/2.8 at 35mm and 55mm.)

One thing I did notice fairly soon was that the Sigma's autofocus was much less reliable than the Canon's. For some of the shots I ended up having to manually hunt for the optimum focus distance. The Canon got it right every time.

From each test shot I have cropped out sections from the centre, mid and edge areas. All in all, 66 squares of 300x300 pixels, which I have ordered in (hopefully) pretty tables below.

As you can see in the overview photos, the sections are taken from different places for the different focal lenghts. (To use the areas of the bookcases with most detail in them.)

I've put my own conclusion in words at the end, after all the tables.

17mm - Centre
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

17mm - Mid
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

17mm - Edge
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

35mm - Centre
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

35mm - Mid
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

35mm - Edge
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

55mm - Centre
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

55mm - Mid
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

55mm - Edge
Aperture	Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5	Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
f/2.8
f/4.0
f/5.6
f/8.0

Conclusions

On the whole, in almost all of the little squares, the Canon is running circles round the Sigma. No pun intended actually.

Surprisingly though, the Sigma looks sharper than the Canon in the centre and mid areas of the frame when using f/2.8 at 17mm. The Canon seems to suffer from some kind of fringing here. (At the edges though, the Canon is better.)

To summarize, it was much as I had hoped and expected. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed with the Canon's performance at 17mm. At the same time I don't think that fringing will be very visible with most subjects. It would take a lot of fringing to out-weigh the benefits of having image stabilization.

Firefox 3.6 Released Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:26:00 +0000

Mozilla are opening the flood gates on Firefox version 3.6 tomorrow. Here's a short video showing what's new:

Your browser doesn't support video. See it on Youtube.

My Canon EOS 60D Predictions

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:36:00 +0000

It seems Canon are about to release their 60D fairly soon. Just for fun I thought I would put together a prediction of what I think the feature list will look like.

Here's a quick summary, then I'll discuss each point in more detail:

18 megapixels
6 frames per second
1080p @ 30fps + 720p @ 60fps video
19 point autofocus
95% viewfinder
New 640x480 screen from 7D
Electronic Level: No
Wireless Flash Control: Yes
Weather sealing: Same as 50D
LCD Focusing Screen: No

Sensor resolution

I think they will use the 18 MP sensor from the 7D. I doubt they would save any money on using the 15 MP sensor from the 50D. Instead they will turn the heat up as much as possible on Nikon and use the 18 MP sensor.

Frame rate

To keep the 60D from getting too close to the 7D it must be no faster than 6 frames per second. At the same time they can't make it any worse than the 50D, so it must 6 fps, no more, no less.

Video

HD Video to the same specs as the 7D. That's to say 1080p @ 30fps and 720p @ 60fps. Also, the new Live View/Video button should make its first appearance in the XXD series. They probably won't include manual controls though, to save some goodies for the 7D.

Autofocus

The more I think about it the more I think Canon will include the full 19 sensor AF of the 7D. There is no logical way of removing sensors from the 19 point pattern (see it here) and Canon need all the sensors to keep new camera buyers from choosing Nikon. They might make the possible configurations more limited though.

I would be surprised though if they just stay with the current 50D autofocus, which has basically been around since the 20D. Canon really need to work hard (and seem to be doing so) to stay ahead of Nikon.

Viewfinder

Sadly, we're not likely to see the nice viewfinder from the 7D, which has 100% coverage. Instead we'll probably just see the 50D's 95% viewfinder.

Screen

I think Canon will re-use the improved 640x480 screen from the 7D, which is more compact than that on the 50D, and works better in daylight. I think they'll move the buttons back to the left hand side too. (BTW, why don't dpreview.com specify sensor resolution in the above way? They seem to be reasonably bright people.)

Electronic Level

This is tricky ... hmm. I don't really think this is the kind of feature that will make professionals choose the 7D above the 60D. But Canon probably think so. And as far as I know, Nikon don't have this feature. So Canon will probably feel safe in keeping this as a 7D exclusive feature.

Wireless Flash Control

Yes, this is a must. Now that Canon has developed the software for this (in the 7D), it would be stupid to not include it. The D90 has had this since August 2008 ...

Weather sealing

... won't be significantly better than the 50D.

LCD Focusing Screen

I don't think we'll see the nice LCD viewfinder overlay from the 7D. It will probably be one of the features used to differentiate the two models.

So ...

What do you think? Leave a comment!

Random Christmas Photos

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:28:00 +0000

Various photos from the Christmas holidays. We really have had beautiful winter weather here in Sweden. Several weeks of temperatures between -10 and -20 degrees C.

Frost On Everything

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:13:00 +0000

The last few weeks have been very cold here in Sweden. But the last few days in particular have offered some very pretty frost.

Even though the temperature was -10 C, we had mist. I don't know how that's possible, but it definitely looked like mist or fog. The damp but cold air covered everything in a thick layer of frost.

So, a perfect opportunity for a photo walk bike ride through Eskilstuna with my new lens.

First Impressions of the Canon 17-55mm IS

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:34:00 +0000

I haven't done any serious sharpness testing of this lens yet, but so far I'm really liking it. The f/2.8 aperture through the zoom range, the quiet auto focus and the image stabilization are all fantastic.

Or what about this shot through our bedroom window? 17mm, which normally needs 1/30th of a second to be sharp hand-held. Here I got away with 1/3rd of a second, leaning my hand against the window frame.

That one third of a second feels like an eternity when you're holding the camera and hear the click ... ... click.

BTW, if you can explain why the frost is on only one side of the tree branches I'd be very grateful. (It is frost, not snow. And the wind these last few days has been basically non-existant.)

I was also able to shoot a perfectly sharp photo of my wife pulling a silly face in our bedroom, lit by nothing but her computer screen and a 40 Watt light-bulb. Admittedly at ISO 800, but it would have had to be ISO 6400 with my old lens. And my camera only goes to 3200 ...

Summary: Looking forward to using this lens for a long time to come!

Camera bag: Meet Lens

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:36:00 +0000

I've been saving up for a while, and with some money I was given for Xmas I had enough to get a second hand Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM.

It took many late nights of on-line research to decide which lens would be the best choice. I've been considering the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC (Vibration Compensation) and the Sigma 17-70 f/2.8-4.0 OS (Optical Stabilization). But in the end I decided to hunt down a second hand Canon 17-55mm f/2.8.

Initial reviews of the two other lenses have been so-so. And the Canon has both the constant maximum aperture of the Tamron and the quiet auto-focus of the Sigma.

I've managed to get my hands on a two year old copy of the EF-S 17-55mm which doesn't seem to have been used very much. It really is in perfect condition, and I only paid two thirds of the price of a new one.

I'll probably post a little comparison between the EF-S 17-55mm and my current standard zoom, the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5. If nothing else to cure my own curiosity.

By the way, if you live in Sweden and want to buy my Sigma, I'm selling it here.

As always in camera-land, one piece of new equipment will lead to another.

The EF-S is good in many ways, but it definitely isn't compact. This means that I can't really fit all my lenses in my current camera bag and the guy who sold me the 17-55 showed me his beautiful Lowepro Slingshot 350 AW. Beautiful as in extremely well designed.

The Lowepro 350 has a smaller sibling, the 300 (which lacks a laptop compartment) which will most likely be the subject for my next saving-up project.

Nice Lens: Sigma 17-70mm 1:2.8-4 OS HSM

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:27:00 +0000

Sigma has just introduced a new and very interesting lens, the Sigma 17-70mm 1:2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM.

When I got my Canon EOS 30D I decided to go for the Sigma 17-70mm 1:2.8-4.5. It is better than the standard kit lens and optically better than the Canon EF-S 17-85mm even if it lacks stabilization.

Sigma's new lens offers two great improvements:

Ultrasonic auto focus motor (HSM)
Optical stabilizing

It also features better glass than the old lens, so in theory it should give even more detail. The old 17-70mm isn't very sharp at the wide end.

I've felt that my 17-70mm 1:2.8-4.5 is the weakest of my lenses when it comes to low light photography. Adding stabilization would make a huge difference. An alternative would perhaps be to get a second hand Canon EF-S 17-55mm 1:2.8 IS.

Really looking forward to reading some tests of the new Sigma.

Firefox 3.5 most used browser this week

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:10:00 +0000

This week, Firefox will most likely become the most used web browser version in the world, according to Statcounter.

According to Net Applications though, Firefox 3.5 has a while to go before being king.

I wish Google would share their browser data. They did, way back, didn't they?

S:t Eskils kyrkogård

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:46:00 +0000

I've been waiting quite a while for a foggy morning to visit S:t Eskils kyrkogård (churchyard) with my camera. Today wasn't foggy, but it was frosty, so I gave it a go.

When I got there I had trouble seeing stuff and was a bit disappointed, but after a while I got going.

NEC EA231WMi Review

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Well, we decided to get the NEC EA231WMi after all. A contributing factor was that my wife wanted a new bedroom tv. So we got both. :)

As flat screens go, it really is brilliant. It seems almost completely insensitive to viewing angle, although when you tilt it up and down you can see the gamma changing very slightly.

This screen is factory calibrated so it gives you pretty much correct sRGB (gamma 2.2) colours right out of the box.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it is also able to actually show 8/24 bits of colour. So it doesn't show any banding in a test such as this one.

When gaming it is brilliant to have a large wide screen. Crysis never looked so good. With our XFX Radeon 4890 Black Edition I'm able to play with maximum settings @ 1920x1080. The first time I tried it it really made me go wow.

I did consider the Dell U24010 for its 1920x1200 resolution, but in the end it wasn't worth the extra money (+50%). Also, the Dell is nowhere near as nicely calibrated out of the box. (And I don't have a calibrator thing.)

The NEC pivots, but I noticed that my pivoting software interferes with Crysis for some reason, so I un-installed it. And after having Googled around for a while, I now realize that it is possible to rotate the screen by hitting Ctrl+Alt+arrow. Edit: I've found that to be incorrect. However, I've been able to set a keyboard shortcut in the ATI Catalyst Control Center.

It also turns very easily around its foot. The turning mechanism on our old screen was so stiff that you always ended up moving the stand as well as the actual screen.

Here are some photos comparing it to our old screen, an Acer AL1722. The most obvious difference is the colour temperature of the screens. I did each comparison straight on and with the screens at ~45 degree angles.

Nothing much to complain about with a normal picture.

Here you can see that the NEC is affected a lot less when viewed from an angle.

For these shots the exposure was increased to exaggerate the effect slightly. But this is still pretty close to what it looks like in a pitch dark room.

These two photos show that the colour temperature is very consistent across the screen. First I thought I could see a slight gradient from left to right, but when I analyzed them in Photoshop I realized I was just imagining it.

Edit: Added a few comments about the comparisons.

Edit 2: Decided to continue with some more thoughts ...

As I said above, the gamma varies very slightly with viewing height. But the difference is small enough to be unnoticeable between your left and right eye when the screen is pivoted. (Our old screen was a bit of a pain to use pivoted because the left and right eye got significantly different gamma which resulted in a very weird feeling.)

The screen comes with a nice cover that snaps into place on the back of the foot to keep the cables in place. The snap is a bit weak though so I have stuck ours in place with some blue-tak.

The screen came with automatic brightness adjustment enabled by default. I found this to be rather annoying, since the effect was very noticeable when switching the desk light on or off. It would perhaps have been less annoying if the brightness was adjusted in a smoother fashion. As it is now, the brightness jumps up or down in a series of small yet very noticeable increments.

Instead I usually have the brightness constant at around 40–50%.

It is interesting how quickly you get used to the extreme width of the screen. I thought it would take much longer. Already I feel that going back to 1280x1024 would be pretty tough.

I'm beginning to see the possible benefits of Windows 7's improved window handling (without actually having tried Windows 7 yet). It would be very nice to be able to easily get two windows side by side. I know it is possible in XP too, but it is quite a tiresome process: Minimize all other windows, then choose the menu option after right-clicking the Task Bar.

I'll end with a summary: Highly recommended!

Firefox 5 years today

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:31:00 +0000

Today, the 9th November, is Firefox's 5th birthday. Firefox 1.0 was released the 9th November 2004.

Photo by Christopher Blizzard.

I didn't start blogging until December 2004 so I have no historical blog post to link to.

Back in 2004 I'd already been using Firefox since version 0.6, released in May 2003. And I'd been a fan of the Mozilla Suite for roughly 2 ½ years. (Mozilla 1.0 was released 5th June 2002.) And before that I was happily using Netscape 6 since its release in November 2000.

In 2005 I wrote a long version of how I became such a huge Firefox fan. Towards the end, thinking about the future, I wrote:

Imagine being a web developer in 2009, with almost 93% of the browser market being CSS3 compliant.

Hah, that's a laugh. It turns out things don't move quite that fast. Still, we're basically rid of the IE6 plague and IE7 is heading in the same direction – down.

Here's to another 5 years of Firefox gaining market share! In 2014 it should have at least 50 percent. IE will be a minority player.

Tonight I'm meeting Mozilla Sweden, i.e. David Tenser and Patrick Finch at the Bishop's Arms for a ... beer? Naw, a coke maybe. :)

Edit: Mozilla's Asa Dotzler has a good blog post up.

Screen Cravings

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:23:00 +0000

I don't know why. I can't explain it. But for some reason I've started dreaming of a nice new wide-screen display for our computer.

I have no reason to dream of a new screen. We have a 17 inch, 1280x1024 Acer that works perfectly. It swivels, tilts and does all kinds of tricks. Yet I can't get this thing out of my head:

It is the NEC EA231WMi.

It is 23 inches across. It shows 1920x1080 pixels. It can be raised or lowered, turned, or pivoted for reading long documents.

But most importantly, the panel in this screen is an IPS panel. That means the picture is much more like what you got on an old fat-screen.

Most flat-screens can't actually show all the 16.7 million colours that an old fat-screen can. The fact that nearly all flat-screens only have 6 bit colour depth for red, green and blue is a well-kept secret.

Now it couldn't have been a well-kept secret if 6-bits meant horrible colour. It doesn't. But it can mean that you get slight banding in gradients which should really be perfectly smooth. Have a look at the background on my website to see what I mean.

The NEC EA231WMi can show all those colours. And it is much less sensitive to viewing angle than most other screens.

Those things are great for a photo-geek like myself. Especially the bit about viewing angles, since it means that I don't risk making photos too light or too dark because I happened to have the screen tilted slightly wrong when I made the adjustments.

The fact that the screen is really wide is nice for using Lightroom, which has panels down both sides and the photo in the middle. On a wide-screen the photo area becomes much larger.

Obviously it can show full 1080p HD video too. Such as the upcoming season of Top Gear. (Sunday 15th!)

The best thing is the price of this thing. Around $380, or SEK 3600, which is about half as much as most comparable screens. Still, I'll have to ask for contributions for Xmas. The money I've saved up for unnecessary fun stuff isn't quite enough yet.

Rowan Berries (Again)

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Crispy Leaves

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:49:00 +0000

I liked how this one turned out. Shot with my 50 mm lens at f/1.8. I have desaturated it, added some split toning and a vignette. I have some more on Flickr.

Firefox 3.6 beta 1

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Firefox 3.6 beta 1 has just been released. Read all about it here. Get it here.

Three small improvements that I really like:

When you fill out a form in a web page, the autocomplete suggestions are now ranked based on how recently and how frequently you use the different words (aka frecency).
If you middle-click or Ctrl+click a link to open it in a new tab, the new tab will be created directly to the right of the current tab instead of at the far end. This makes it easier to switch to, and related tabs are kept together.
Videos embedded in a page with the <video> tag can now be shown fullscreen.

Ubiquity - Whoa!

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:35:00 +0000

I just tried the Ubiquity add-on for Firefox for the first time. This thing is incredible! I just typed in weather and somehow it already knows where I am?! Almost scary!

How Mozilla Sees the Future of the Web

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Just found an extremely interesting video where Mozilla's Aza Raskin explains how they are thinking of the future of the web.

More about Lightroom 3 beta

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:58:00 +0000

Here are a few more things I've noticed about Adobe's new Lightroom 3 beta.

Keyboard shortcuts for +/- exposure have been fixed, which I really like. Previously, hitting the + key would increase exposure by 0.33 steps and the - key would decrease it by 0.10. Now they both change exposure by 0.10, and holding shift gives you 0.33 steps. The way it was meant to be!
The spot removal tool is still laggy, as I showed in a previous blog post. It seems to be related to having two monitors active (in Windows, not Lightroom).
The White Balance picker still only picks one pixel. It would be much more accurate (and less affected by colour noise) if it would average at least a 9x9 sqaure of pixels.
This has nothing to do with the new beta, but I've just discovered how the Masking slider (under Detail) can help keep smooth areas smooth when you increase sharpness in the image. My new settings for the details panel will probably be 40 – 1.0 – 40 – 40.

Lightroom 3 beta Review

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:06:00 +0000

I woke up this morning to the news of Lighroom 3 beta having been released to the masses. Now, after work, I've downloaded it and run it through some tests. Here's what I've found so far. (If you want a full list of improvements, check out the Lightroom Journal.)

Image Quality

Now, many know-it-all photographers complain about other photographers pixel-peeping. Looking at your photos at 1:1 or 100% is the worst thing you can do, according to these people!

Since photos are made up of pixels, there is no other way of checking image quality than looking at the pixels – peep away! And that's what we're going to do here. Otherwise we wouldn't see any differences at all. So basically all the anti-peepers need not worry about Lightroom 3 beta.

Lightroom 3 beta is much better at dealing with purple fringing than version 2. This is without any de-fringing turned on in the Lens Corrections panel. As you can see the difference is pretty clear:

Here's another 100% comparison, where I think you can see that Lightroom 3 beta makes the yellow leaves less blotchy and more detailed. That's how I see it anyway, and the branches are clearly sharper. (This is at my fairly aggressive default sharpness settings: 40 – 1.0 – 40.)

The above comparison becomes clearer if we zoom in to 300%. The leaves look like oats in a porridge to the left – ugly blotches – and I'd say there is more detail to the right:

If you pull the sharpness slider down to 0 though, the difference between the two versions is pretty much nil. So I draw the conclusion that the sharpness algorithms have changed more than the underlying de-mosaicing algorithms.

As for the noise reduction, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. The reviews I've read/seen this morning have hailed it as something almost revolutionizing. I'd say colour noise reduction always has been very good in Lightroom, and I can't see that 3 beta makes it any better (or worse):

NR on in the comparison above means colour noise reduction set to 10. Sharpness settings were now at Lightroom defaults, 25 – 1.0 – 25.

Of course, they haven't yet implemented luminance noise reduction, let's see what they can do there. In Lightroom 2 I never use the luminance slider because it just takes away so much detail.

CPU usage and responsiveness

I imported (added to a new catalogue) two folders containing a total of 295 photos from my Canon EOS 30D. I chose to render 1:1 previews at the same time. This took just over six minutes in Lightroom 2, but almost three times as long in Lightroom 3 beta!

The actual import though (minus the 1:1 rendering) took roughly half as long in 3 beta as in 2.

I kept an eye on CPU usage while doing this. There isn't much difference, but Lightroom 3 beta seems to be slightly worse than v2 at using all the power in our quad core AMD Phenom II CPU.

Lightroom 2 (ignore the right third of the four graphs):

Lightroom 3 beta:

I also tried exporting 82 photos to full-size JPEGs. This took 95% longer in 3 beta, even though it was using roughly 80% of the CPU compared to around 63% for v2.

I read somewhere that you don't get the blurry thumbnails in 3 beta that you got in v1 and v2. That's not entirely true. You maybe won't see them as often because scrolling is slower (see below) but you can definitely still get to see blurry thumbnails.

I'm not sure there's been any real improvement when it comes to leafing through photos in loupe view either. There can still be a delay before you see the photo nice and sharp, depending on how much time you allow for the next image to pre-load.

Scrolling made worse

The scrolling in the Library was changed from Lightroom 1 to 2, for the better. It was made much faster. Now it has been made worse again.

Adobe have implemented scroll acceleration, so you need to scroll fast to get anywhere. I liked the old way, in 2, where you could scroll a notch or two and still get somewhere. This new implementation is much more hard work for my index finger.

Grain effect and watermark

Lightroom 3 beta lets you apply a grain effect, and I suspect this will be a somewhat overused look in the coming months:

Here the grain is combined with a split toning, which is possible in version 2 as well.

Library filters are lockable!

In Lightroom 2, any filter you make in the Library will remain active in the folder or collection where you created it even when you moved to another folder and back. But it wouldn't remain active from one folder to another.

This is done much more intuitively in Lightroom 3 beta, if you ask me. Now, by default, the filter will be forgotten if you switch from one folder to another. But you can choose to lock it with a padlock icon, and it will remain active for any folder or collection you browse to.

Wish-list

There are still a few things on my feature wish-list for Lightroom 3 final.

Plug-ins for the develop-module.
Automatic lens correction. (Barrel/pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting.)

Conclusion

Quite a lot of nice improvements! Some may seem insignificant to others while making a huge difference for me.

The best part is that the Lightroom developers are still hard at work, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the two things above!

Foggy morning in Eskilstuna

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:05:00 +0000

Woke up to some great fog. Sadly it lifted slightly before I got out with my camera on my way to work.

Spot removal tool in Lightroom 2 jumps and stutters

noreply@blogger.com (David Naylor) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:57:00 +0000

My mother in law had ~1500 scanned photos where she wanted dust spots removing. No problem I thought, that's a pretty quick job in Lightroom.

I imported the photos, and got going with the Spot removal/clone/heal tool. It didn't take long before I noticed that it stutters, jumps and lags endlessly, which makes it extremely frustrating and basically impossible to use.

I really think this should be considered a bug for the Lightroom team to fix.

I made a screencast to show you the issue:

All that jumping and stuttering you saw there was in Lightroom, not just because of the video/recording.

I've tried to find more information about this on the internet but without any real success. I guess it's not a very common problem, or more people would be complaining. So I decided to post something about it, hoping to get responses from people who've noticed this too.

If you have seen this, leave a comment!

Edit: I seem to have found what's causing this bug, and hence a workaround. The stuttering of the Spot Removal tool only appears when I have two monitors active in Windows. (The setting in Lightroom though makes no difference.)

Actually, that's not quite true. Here's what I should say: The stuttering goes away when I disable my second monitor in Windows. I have found the stuttering to reappear after a reboot, even though only one monitor is active. Really weird!!