Something

The final solution

I used to change out camera bags frequently. Seasonally? After I outgrew my faithful Tamrac adventure backpack I never found a bag that checked all the boxes.

What are those boxes you ask?

Fit all the gear. ALL THE GEAR.
Be comfortable.
Have all the gear be instantly available at a moments notice.
Be weather resistant/have a rain cover.
Be carry on compatible.
Not look like a camera bag.

The Lowepro Video Fastpack 250 has been my mainstay for the last 5 years or so. It  got a bite taken out of the lower padding by my motorcycle at one point, but it keeps chugging along. But as the "life-and-camera-gear-simplification" process continues I see that the Fastpack will need to go. It doesn't fit all the gear. I can strap my 500mm and the tripod to the the sides but... It then upsets #2, #3, #5, and #6.

In the name of simplicity( and good image quality) I plan to replace the 500mm with 70-200 + a 2x extender. I need a 70-200 anyway seeing as how I dropped my IS F/4 in Salt Lake City that one time and it was never the same. My current 28-200 Tamron is a workhorse. And the image quality(especially at 200mm) is atrocious. But hey it was 99 cents. Well. $10 dollars anyway. But I digress.

The 500 goes away. The 70-200 goes in the imaginary perfect bag. Followed by my recently repaired 17-40L. All is well... Oh, and the 2x. And the new ebay mid-range lens. And the nifty-fifty. And the full-frame camera that I'm going to buy after I save up for all the other things... The tripod needs to go too. Its too old. Too heavy. On my recent trip to the Oregon outback the tripod head failed. Twice. Actually just the mount. Unforgivable.

Although alot of my gear is in transition, I can see things finally getting sorted out. I'll do a gear review in a few weeks with some before and after (if I can find any before...) But first I need to review some more non-adobe-cc software, the Oregon Outback series, my recent shots from climbing Mt. Theilson, and some recent Yosemite shots. (The above is one of them.) So hang tight... 

The digital darktable

Canon 7D
Tamron  28-200mm@28mm
Post:
Darktable 
GIMP
Alienskin Exposure X

Processing images after the shoot can be tedious. The best image organizers run fast. No lagging. They allow you to quickly sort the sometimes thousands of images from a trip or shoot. Adobe Lightroom and I have had a rocky relationship. It cost money for one thing. Which mean I couldn't spend that money on lenses. It also had a bad habit of not playing well with my network storage. And it did this weird thing of pulling its database into a giant library. It made the program run fast. But it used up a huge amount of disk space. Adobe addressed this issue in more recent releases.


I have tried various other methods including file explorer. Lately, I have been using Darktable. Nice program with a bit of a learning curve. Not as intuitive and missing some features that Lightroom would offer, but much faster. And free. I had a bit of a hard time getting used to the controls. In edit mode, you can't use keyboard arrows to navigate. But you can if you have full-sized images in the  "lightable" section. Overall the program has a professional feel and could easily fit into a high volume workflow.

Import, export, info. Click on the "Darkroom" to enter edit mode.

Sort previously sorted images for fast processing.

Scan through lots of images and view the information in the right pane

The house that Jack built

Manipulating an image after the shot (or "in post") can make some purists shudder.  "Wait!" they exclaim. "It isn't real!". This is true. But neither is your image in the first place. It is merely a representation of something. And sometimes that representation needs some help depicting the essence of the reality.

Most gentle tweaking(contrast, highlights, hue) can be done in lightroom-like post-production organizational software. Heavier editing needs a dedicated solution. For me that is GIMP. It works. Not as slick as some Photo$hop type programs, but it gets the job done.

Typical use will involve selecting a photo from the group that needs some work. Sometimes it just cropping or adding a filter. Sharpening is sometimes required.

Here is a recent shot of Bridalveil fall that received some editing via GIMP. Many photoshop tutorial will translate closely to the GIMP interface. Sometimes it takes a moment of hunting or googling to find the method. But often you will find a favorite method/workflow and will use the same for many situations.  I find myself exclusively using curves to adjust colors.

Go try it out.

Adding a layer

Color curves are a requirement for a serious editing software

Combine layers

Nice export options

Canon 7D
Tamron  28-200mm@28mm
Post: 
Autostitch
Darktable 
GIMP
Alienskin Exposure X

The Cult of Creative Cloud.

Adobe has always been the premium choice in the creative media space. They make great products. I have used Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, InDesign, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, and Audition. Probably others.

Photoshop, Premier, Lightroom, and Audition were the most used in my workflow.

I refer to these programs in the past tense because I am currently not using them. Why? I'm trying to quit. I've been CC free for almost a month now.

I hate the cloud. It exchanges old annoyances with new ones. And extracts a monthly cost for them. Although the old CS bundle was costly, I was not reminded every month! I understand the cost thing. I really do. It is the best way for Adobe to stay profitable. But it hurts my monthly budget enough to notice. And the cloud validation fails just often enough to be a regular workflow interruption. Inspiration can be fleeting. And when you have to wait for Photoshop to load, it can be difficult to hang on to. And when you have to stop everything to sign back into your Adobe account, it can die completely.

Adobe gets in the way.

Alternatives? Yes. Better? Probably not technically. But in terms of getting out of my way? Yes.

I'll highlight the alternatives that I have been using over the next few posts. But here is the short list.

Photoshop --> GIMP
Lightroom --> Darktable
Premier Pro --> Lightworks
Audition --> Audacity
After Effects --> Natron
InDesign --> Scribus
Acrobat --> Pdf Editor

Admittedly a couple of these have to try hard to keep up with the Adobe version. It's really too bad that it has come to the point that it is easier to deal with clunky interfaces and suboptimal programs than to waste time in the cloud. I am not very familiar with a few of these. Some are old standbys. I'll review the familiar ones first and as I become more familiar, highlight the newer ones.

Canon 7D
Tamron  28-200mm@39mm
Post: 
Darktable 
GIMP
Alienskin Exposure X

Google-

Another one bites the dust. A Google service that is.

With no google+ I'll push to other common platforms. No big.

Be sure to stay tuned for my post on the Cult of Creative Cloud.


Scott.

Preparing for summer

A good spring cleaning always reminds me that complexity often is at war with creativity. How often have I missed put on a good opportunity because I was too busy fiddling with the gear? I have typed out a quote and taped it to my PC. It reads "Simplify and Excel". I often refer to this if I am finding myself bogged down in the details.

Too much stuff gets in the way and ends up fighting the very excellence that we want. This spring I have cleared out boxes and boxes of camera equipment. Some were originally for reselling. Some were for specific projects. Some sentimental. But all of it collectively was weighing me down. I found myself longing for the time when I had all my gear in a single camera backpack... So that is the aim. It might hurt at first but it will be healthy.

I'm down to a backpack, and a large crate. And a Rubbermaid bin, And some odds and ends. And maybe a pile of tripod pieces. And probably more... But the percentage is down significantly.

.

I'm looking forward to running a nice tight kit once again.


Phothog

Flower in the concrete jungle

Fairweather friends

Maple through the falls