Color negative and scanned version in Lightroom

Now that we’re only a year away from being empty nesters we’re thinking about bringing all our old photos into the digital age. The kid in this shot is now 17.

I’m testing out scanning negatives on the Nikon Coolscan V ED that I have been using for scanning slides. The image quality is coming out beautiful, but it’s taking way too long (over 3 minutes per negative after it’s done all its processing).

Next two options: shooting with my camera on a backlit macro set up and processing in Photoshop, or just paying a service to do it all for us.

A timelapse video of my approach to solving crossword puzzles. I start with the first word I can enter and expand from there, rather than doing all the across or down clues first.

One frame per letter shot on my Canon 40D and processed in Lightroom and Premiere.

See it in HD on Flickr or Vimeo. Or even better, click the ‘HD’ option in the frame above and then play it in full screen mode.

My Droid

I’ve been living with my Droid for about a month now. Friends have been asking for a review, so here it is. Note, I haven’t used an iPhone so I can’t do a comparison between them.
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Snow Ranch with low power launch under way

For Eric’s day we went to the LUNAR monthly high-power rocket launch at Snow Ranch in the Sierra foothills. By being so far away from civilization they can get clearance to go to 15,000 feet. Today had a low ceiling, so there were only a few opportunities for the high-power engines.

The rocket in the image below disappeared into the clouds after an impressive lift off, and had a successful recovery (eventually). Another of the high power rockets wasn’t quite as lucky – after screaming up into the clouds a small bang was heard, and instead of floating down under a parachute it just rained parts.

High-power launch

It was also a beautiful day for exploring the hillsides. You don’t realize how relentless the wind can be until you see trees like this one.

Wind blown tree

Ever since I started shooting images seriously for my A Picture A Day project in 2007, I’ve been shooting in RAW format. RAW saves all the image data the camera collects with minimal processing, as opposed to jpeg which applies color correction, sharpening and image compression to create a final image. By shooting RAW I retain the full 14bits of color, giving me greater latitude for processing afterwards in Lightroom or Photoshop. I have found that I have one to two stops in each direction of exposure latitude allowing me to bring up detail in shadows and highlights without sacrificing one for the other. It also means that I can adjust the white balance afterwards with no penalty – I leave my WB always set on Auto and select the proper color balance later.

Here’s an example of a shot that would have been impossible otherwise, shot with available light at the California Academy of Sciences. First the ‘BEFORE’ image, showing what you’d get without saving the RAW version:

BEFORE

The penguin exhibit is at the end of the Africa Hall – a space intentionally left dark to highlight the dioramas. The area above the water is brightly lit – seemingly daylight in intensity. Below the waterline it is quite dark, but our eyes have an enormous dynamic range and pick up plenty of detail in the shadows in the water and highlights on the rocks above the water. A camera however has a much more limited dynamic range. The image above shows the best estimate the camera can give to balance this range when it tries to create a final jpeg compressed image. Neither end of the range is usable – the water is too dark to see anything and the highlights above the water are completely blown out. Can you even tell there’s a girl reaching out to the curious penguin?

But the camera actually saw a much greater dynamic range than this and saved it in the RAW file. By splitting the image in Lightroom and bringing the exposure up a stop in the bottom and down a stop in the top a balance more in line with our perception of the site is achieved.

AFTER

Yep, that’s the picture I thought I was taking.