From Newfoundland, Sony A6000

 

Fortifications at Cape Spear

 

 

South Shore, Newfoundland

 

 

Memorial University Gardens

Take Your Audience Where You Can Get It

Two nights ago I got a phone call. A lady reported that her grand daughter, age 8 had shown up at home with four photographic prints, sealed in mylar, with my name on the back, and even a price sticker - was I missing any of my artwork?

It seems the grand daughter had found the prints (along with several more) in the fork of a tree, with a note attached, free to a good home.

Well, back in the spring I did a major cleanout of the garage, including hundreds of prints left over from when I had worked at the farmers market. I noticed on day two of the cleanup that all the prints put out on day one had disappeared. I was pleased to think someone was getting some use out of them, even if all they use it the foamcore backing board.

So, it would appear that whoever took the prints, picked out the ones they wanted, and put the other ones in the tree at the playground - and now an 8 year old has taken home my architectural images because she liked them.

That's nice.

Black And White Vs. Colour At Turner Valley

 

To make the black and white version, I added a b&w conversion layer, then adjusted the colour sliders - darkening red so the window frames were darker, lightening green so the corrugated paneling looked right, then adjusting the yellow slider darker till the grass looked right. I then added a masked curves adjustment layer in which the white point was moved left, and the line kept straight - this selectively emphasized lightening the lighter areas without affecting the darks. I brought out more texture in the windows, while avioding driving the cracked glass to pure white. I tried it on the paneling but it was too harsh so used a simple s curve on those to brighten the lights without pushing them to pure white, and slightly darkening the darks.

I then did my brown to black action which applied a solid tone adjustment layer, set it to colour, toned it down, then used the available layer adjustment blending sliders (by double clicking on the layer) so that the colour applied much more to the light tones than the dark. i then toned down the effect using a hue/saturation layer to taste.

My impression now is that I much prefer the new version, but that I might choose to work further on the right sided windows so that the lighter areas better balance he left side of the picture - but first I'll live with what I have for a while.

 

Pentax 645Z And Shutter Shake Updated

No examples this morning because frankly we're talking subtleties here, but on the weekend I did get to play further with the 300 mm. lens (equivalent to 240 mm. on full frame 35 mm. - ie. quite long). I did a single image at 1/200 second and that was fine but I'll need to do more tests at this speed - I'd previously tested at 1/400 and found it good, so perhaps I can drop the short limit of questionable speeds.

At the other end I did several images at 1.3 seconds long and to my surprise these too were tack sharp, so it looks like for now the range for watching exposures is anything shorter than 1.3 seconds and anything longer than 1/200.

Remember that all the images with the 300 and 200 mm. lenses are now done with the 12 second self timer, while the 2 second setting seems to be fine with the 120 mm. lens, and that's handy for focus stacking.

So, if I had an exposure that fell between 1.3 and 1/200 second, what would I do? If a modest boost to ISO can get me to 1/200, then that's what I would do - on the weekend, I simply had to bump to ISO 800, a non issue quality wise. On the other hand, if the base ISO exposure had to be something like 1/2 second, bumping upwards isn't practical (that would be ISO 12,000) so the only option is going down the way and there's only three ways to do that, open up the lens (but usually I'm controlling the amount of depth of field I want), move closer to the subject and use a shorter lens (possible sometimes), or to put a neutral density filter in front of the lens and that's what I'll do.

Shooting suggests that blurring with the 300 mm. from the shutter is minimal but real, but in common with all lenses, , the least wind on the lens hood, movement of a foot anywhere near the tripod (unless you are standing on cement), or brushing your leg against the tripod even lightly can have a huge impact in sharpness. I learned this with my Canon cameras and sometimes would even take off the lenshood if there was a cross wind, and in really strong wind would sometimes take multiple shots with me hanging onto the camera and bearing down.

Turner Valley Window

this is a slight crop of the full frame Pentax 645Z with the 120 mm. macro lens. I like the subtle detail of the building interior - hints only and nothing glaring.

Bag For Pentax 645z

The bag contains the camera, that can mount the 25, 120 or 300 mm. lens in the bag and store the other two. In addition the back also holds the 35, 75 and 200 mm. lenses - so six lenses and camera body. The bag is the Lowpro Computreker AW, one of the smaller backpacks and most definitely flyable in North America. It works very well and the zips only need one hand (unlike the much heavier albeit more waterproof model I carried my Nikon gear in.

Turner Valley Doors

I used Photoshop/Filters/Lens Correction  Custom to adjust the barrel distortion and less than perfect rotation and alignment. The day was heavy overcast so I didn't have to contend with sunlight coming through the doors.

Pentax 645Z, 35 mm. lens, f11, ISO 100

Michael Reichmann 20 Year Retrospective

This is a $350 book so I can't recommend it to everyone though I wish you could all afford it. But, considering that the full cost of the book goes towards the Luminous Landscape Endowment Fund (Michael paid for the printing of the book himself) to support photographers and projects, perhaps there are some of you who find yourself in a position to help, while at the same time receiving a wonderful book.

The book is massive and with 380 large photographs on heavy paper and beautifully printed is a real joy to own. There are some black and white images but largely it is Michael's colour work that is exhibited here and there are some truly wonderful images - a mix of favourites (ladder and wall from San Miguel) and Bullfight in motion, and images from Antarctica, Bangladesh, Iceleand and China.

There are delightful surprises too, and images going back to medium format film. Michael has a strong eye for both colour and composition and images range from subtle to brilliant.

The book includes landscape and people and working environment photographs and the website has videos of the book's production as well as each image in the book.

The book is 12 inches square and  the book clean and elegant. Some images bleed across the gutter, but only where large is worth while and the pages open up easily so the gutter can be seen - this is a sewn book.

Think of it as payback for 15 years of Luminous Landscape - so about $22.50 a year - not a bad deal.

Strongly recommended.

Pentax 645Z And Shutter Shake

So yesterday, while I was at the gas plant photographing, I decided to check sharpness with the 300 mm. lens with mirror lock up and 12 seconds self timer instead of 2. You will remember I had problems getting sharp pictures outdoors, but no problems in a dark interior with 30 second exposures - so it had to be shake and not lens blur. I suspected the short duration self timer (my remote hasn't come yet) but wasn't totally sure. How much could be from the shutter mechanism, even though reportedly improved compared to the 645D?

The two images below tell the tale - they were not taken together and don't have the same framing, but I think you can see that there is some definite softness to the first image that isn't there with the second.

The difference?

For the first image I shot at ISO 100, 12 second self timer, live view, 1/25 scond.

For the second shot, I upped the ISO to 800, giving a shutter speed of 1/400, both at f16.

I later did some indoor work and know that a 5 second exposure is absolutely sharp. For now, with the 300 mm. lens, I'll try to avoid anything lower than 1/400 or higher than 5 second but perhaps test two seconds. I'll use the great high ISO capability of the Pentax 645Z to keep away from that area.

This is far from ideal as that's a 10 stop difference or ISO 100 to ISO 100,000 - just not on. Printing the centre section of the 'blurry' first image for a print of 30X40 shows slight but acceptable softness checking from 10 inches. Additional sharpening within Photoshop results in a 30X40 print of superb quality and no signs of sharpening.

This really is the difference with the Pentax, not that it's so many more pixels than the Nikon 810, but that the files are so robust. As far as I'm concerned, I've just eliminated the one nagging doubt about the system - how would 300 mm. perform - very well thank you. The 12 second self timer has fixed 90% of the blur I was seeing in previous shoots outside, and I can work around that other 10% if need be, most of the time, and when I can't, it won't actually matter in a 30X40 print - how cool is that?

I have never felt as good about a system as I do with the 645Z, not even at the time, when I didn't know any better, and now that I do, wow...

 

Turner Valley Continues

Bin Bottom Redux

Don't forget to click on image to see 1200 pixels wide (of the original 26 thousand)

So, I have been living with the print for 24 hours and am not happy. The version I made then is below. This evening I decided to start back at the original stitched image after basic trimming. I elected to NOT chop off the right side after all but see if I could make the various parts of the image relate better. A variety of curve layers later (probably about two dozen), and a few curves that had the highlight point shifted left, but this time no Akvis Enhancer (that increased local contrast). I then felt I needed to improve the highlights, but didn't want the near whites driven to stark white. What I did was to create a curve starting in the upper right, running on the diagonal for the lightest pixels, then lightening for the light gray areas, then returning back to the diagonal line for the rest of the curve. To get that you need a few points that force it back to the diagonal otherwise anything that goes above the diagonal in the lighter areas automatically curves below the diagonal line in the darker tones and that wasn't what I wanted.

I still wasn't happy with the image and wondered what it would be like to play with the temperature slider in Camera Raw - no sweat. Save the image then save again as a TIFF and open that in Camera Raw and adjust tones and temperature to taste, a little cooler as you see in the above image. What I really did was make it a lot more contrasty and cool, then opened the image, copied all, then closed it and pasted it as a new layer in the image I was editing earlier this evening. Now I could use layer opacity and masking to control just how much of the cool contrasty image  I wanted, and where.

Turned out I didn't want a lot, and not everywhere, and with some more tweaks above is what I have ended up with.

I might still lighten the gray areas on the far right a tad more, but that's for another day.

I want to discuss what role complex images like this play in photography and when I have settled (for the near future) on the editing, will do so.

I would really like comments about this image, NOT about how you would fix it, but whether as is it works for you or not, and why.

Smugmug For Images

I have yet to find the ideal website. Rapidweaver did odd things with text so that what was lined up properly on my screen would overlap on other peoples' computers. Smugmug had been unattractive a few years ago, the site I had developed professionally looked good and worked well - but loading images is a pain (Joomla).

I now have the vast majority of my images at Smugmug and my newer images at this gallery.

The images are larger than ever before, and when you click on the images, can be seen on their own, with no thumbnails occupying half the screen. You can go through the images via the keyboard, using the left and right arrows.

I haven't found a convenient way to make Smugmug do everything I have on my website (eg. downloading pdf's) so for now, it's just a way to look at images conveniently.

100% Clip From Single Image, Pentax 645, 120 mm. Lens

This has only the sharpening that I used on the previous Nikon D800e in Lightroom, no additional sharpening in Photoshop.

Stitching With The Pentax 645Z (what was I thinking?)

Shot today with the Pentax 645z, and for my sins,  I couldn't help stitching it - after cropping, it's 22,000X8,000 pixels and took hours to process and edit. I had found an industrial refuse bin, lying on its front, and shooting into it, this would normally be the bottom of the bin - made with the 120 mm. lens. I actually shot it twice - once using a swing (and depth of field was no where near enough to compensate for the greater distance to either side) and later, shifting the tripod laterally so that focus was maintained (ie. distance to subject constant). There's tons of detail of course and I think that once I have finished editing, I'll get a large print made. This would be 26X73 inches at 300 dpi.

This was the side of a bin, with only about two feet between this and the next bin. I played with the 25 mm. lens but even with this, I could only include a small part of the subject. I decided to shoot it from the front, doing a 12 image focus blend to get the depth of field from left to right, near to far. Shot with the 200 mm. lens, the FA model, which I'm pleased to report, is sharp to the corners.

This is a reprint of the image made on Friday, aiming for better balance in the bottom third and bringing out some highlights in the upper third. Previously the right bottom was too dark, the left bottom too light, and not enough texture in the bottom right.

Print Size With Pentax 645Z

What we have here is normal sharpening in Lightroom, and additional sharpening in Photoshop, .6, 312, 0, 0 and we can see sharpening artifacts at 100% but this makes a very nice print at 41X75 inches (150 dpi), this from a two image stitch.

I don't know that I'm getting any more resolution with the Pentax compared to the Nikon D800e, what I can say is that I get it consistently which I didn't with the Nikon - everything had to be ideal - now I just fire away and can reasonably assume I'm going to get great results. This may not seem right, that  somehow I'm compensating for poor technique with more expensive equipment, but what I see happening is that with the Nikon, I could not always control every factor, and now I don't need to. Welcome to the real world of less than perfect lenses, less than absolutely still tripod and camera, and no wind, and , yes; absolutely perfect technique.

It reminds me of the days of trying for absolutely highest resolution with 35 mm. film, we'd shoot with high contrast copy film, processed in a compensating developer, and use only the best lenses in camera and under the enlarger, and yes, the results were sharp, though not always, and more often than not the prints were crap because the tools only really worked for a very limited selection of subjects and soft lighting. Switching to medium format produced images of a rich tonality across a variety of subjects and conditions that could not be reproduced in 35 mm.

The Pentax 645z is simply more reliable than smaller cameras when it comes to quality large images, and that's important to me.

Sulphur Plant, Turner Valley

Below is a 100% crop (see more of it by clicking on it) after all the edits - this includes stitching, stretching (Edit-Transform-Warp) and Akvis Enhancer, and gives you an idea of what happens when you manipulate a file like this. There is sharpening in Lightrooom (see below) as well as some additional sharpening in Photoshop before applying Akvis Enhancer (always do the sharpening before the Enhancing).

The clip below is the same sharpening I gave my Nikon D800e images in Lightroom,  58, .7, 70, 0

And below is 80, .7, 50, 0 - as this was shot at f16, more sharpening to compensate for diffraction is reasonable and perhaps a little more might still be ok.

 

and here we have 101/1/50/0 which goes a bit too far - though you'd neve see it in print.

Siding, Pentax 645Z, 25 mm. Lens

Turner Valley Reshoot

This is a reshoot from some 8 years ago, when my camera was a Canon 10D, 6 MP, and for years I have wanted to remake the image with a better camera and today got my chance. With a bit of help from Ken holding back branches that had grown over the scene since I was last there, I was able to make the image with the Pentax 645Z, 120 mm. lens.

Print Sharpness Vs. Image Sharpness

I used to write with a fountain pen. With some paper the ink would bleed from the original line, perhaps as much as an 1/8 of an inch in diameter on cheap paper with a loose weave - for example, newsprint. The same thing happens with solvent based felt pens writing on newsprint flipboards.

Well, the bad news is the same thing happens with inkjet ink. Yes, it dries fast, but in the second or two before it does, the ink can spread, and the very surface that is designed to hold a lot of ink and therefore make rich prints, can also result in more spread of the ink.

So, it turns out that how sharp your prints look is a function of the individual brand and surface of the paper. Another brand in a similar surface may be significantly less or more sharp.

I recently switched (for routine printing) from the very expensive and no longer made Ilford Galerie Gloss Baryta paper, to Inkpress luster. I quite like the paper, but I think I'm taking a hit in print sharpness. Oh, not a lot, just enough to annoy me, especially in smaller prints.

To some degree this can be compensated for with output sharpening. I used to do this routinely with matte paper but had stopped when I went to the Ilford paper, but looks like I'm going to have to restart it. I was using Photokit sharpener output for prints.

Pentax DFA 25 mm. on Pentax 645z

 

The whole scene

  

 Centre crop - click to open in new window at correct size

 

 2/3 of way out to upper left - remember to click for actual size

3/4 of the way to upper left - and click

  

extreme upper left - yet again

So, this is f8 in a real subject, not a flat plane. Lightroom used its profile for this lens to correct for distortion and I had to add some extra purple defringing so this is what one would actually have to work with. Clearly the corner is not great, but remember this is a tiny part of the picture. I made a print, 41X55 inches, or at least the corner thereof, and the 13X19 print of the corner is sharp from 6 inches in - this looking at a 5 foot print from 10 inches. Do I wish the corner was a bit sharper, sure, but I can live with it. In practice, this means that with the Pentax 645Z I can make a 41X55 print that looks as good at the same viewing distance as a 24X36 inch print made with my Canon 5D2 and 17-40 at 17 mm. - so almost double the linear dimension (24 to 41). Essentially that's what I was looking for.

This is 100% even without clicking, but you see more when you do, of the same corner, but at f16, and a little bit more sharpening in Lightroom (70, .8 instead of 50, .7), also a bit more shadow recovery.

How Much Does Focus Blending and Stitching Cost In Sharpness?

This one is hard to quantify, but I think I can say that the answer is quite a lot. If I want to make a square picture and use a 2 - 3 image stitch to do so, it is definitely better than cropping a single image, but truth is every time we morph our images, to correct lens disortion, or perspective, or to stitch two images together, we lose a little resolution, perhaps as much as a third, which would be the equivalent of going from primes to a zoom, or a top zoom to a kit one - and really only an issue in really large prints or on screen at 100% (as per previous article about lens quality).

Remember that when stitching shots made with wide angle lenses, there is a lot more morphing and stretching of the image and pixels than in an image stitched from a longish lens.

My feeling is that focus blending also loses a fair bit of resolution. First the images have to be stretched compensate for size changes as you focus (true of all lenses but oddly not always in the same direction in zooms). Then the sharpest bits have to be tested for and gathered, and though I don't know, that may cost further resolution.

Think about the following worst case scenario:

You are using a wide angle lens to do an even wider stitch panorama. The lens has some distortion so in processing the images ready for stitching, Lightroom corrects the barrel distortion common in wide angles. Then the stitching programme does it's on pinching and stretching to make the images stitch properly, and then a whole lot more stretching to compensate for perspective distortion (unless you select cylindrical view and accept curved straight lines). Depending on how wide the lens is and how long the panorama, this might be as much as a 100% stretch, cutting resolution at the sides of the print by as much as 50%.

One way to avoid this cost in stitching is to use shift lenses, or a shifting back. Here the only limitation is lens quality at the larger image circle edges. For my Canon 24 ts-e lens, it shifts beautifully and a stitch that doesn't use image morphing can result in extremely high quality results. Lesser lenses do engender more loss at the edges then you have to test to see whether a camera swing type stitch is better than a lens shift stitch.

Bottom line, the wider the angle of lens, the more difficult it is to stitch, and oddly the same thing applies to focus blending as well where perhaps due to the complex nature of the wide angle lenses to minimize distortion in the first place, simply scaling images does not make them match all across the image and detail is lost.

So, with all of this, is there a role for stitching and focus blending? Absolutely. Like I started with, the square image from a crop doesn't hold a candle to the two image stitch, it's just that the two image stitch isn't quite as good as you think it should be.

The best way to think of it is that stitching is like switching to a larger format camera, with a poorer quality lens.

There is one situation where more pixels, even if not of the best resolution still makes better prints and that's in really big prints. This takes us back to the days of film where as one enlarged the images, they would gradually become less sharp, but there was no sudden cliff of lost quality. Now that most shoot digitally, the cliff is there, where sharpening becomes visible and pixellation becomes problematic. This seems to be true regardless of the strategy to make the really big prints - enlarging before sharpening or after, using this plug-in or that. The greater the number of original low noise pixels, the better, which usually means a larger sensor, not breaking up the current sensor size into smaller but more numerous pixels.

This is one reason for my happiness with the Pentax 645Z. It can take more editing, more stretching, more blending or stitching than cameras I have used before, and why, though micro 4/3 can make lovely images, they don't hold up in editing as well as images made with larger formats. If you don't do a lot of blending and stitching and editing and manipulation and perspective correction and lens correction, then the results can be wonderful.

I guess you could say I tend to stress my image files, and the more information there is to start with, the better the result.

Whether anyone should be torturing images like this is whole other matter and a subject for another day.

Lenses For The Pentax 645Z

Lloyd Chambers has just commented that he wouldn't purchase a Pentax 645Z because of poor and inconsistent lens quality (and quotes his testing on the 645D, as well as with the 25 mm. on the 645Z).

My experience with the lenses for the Pentax has been different - centre resolution has been just fine, and corners have been good across the board (35A, 75A, 120A, 150A, 200FA, 300FA) and adequate on the 25 (entirely expected given the nature of the lens).

Remember two facts though - first Lloyd is comparing the Pentax with its available lenses, to the Nikon D810 with the best Zeiss glass, all primes, all expensive, all manual focus. That's fine, but doesn't reflect the real world for most who feel that the whole point of something like full frame digital slr's is to have auto focus and perhaps IS and zooms. Second, I looked into Pentax 645 glass before making purchases and knew pretty much what I was getting into - I settled on primes (not the zooms that Lloyd felt were so so), and avoided focal lengths that had proven less than stellar (45 mm. and oddly, the newish 55), and with the exception of replacing the 200A with the 200FA, have been happy with my choices.

Shutter shake was an issue for longer lenses, not the lens quality itself when Lloyd did his 645D testing, and I too am having some shake issues. It isn't clear yet if this is the shutter or as I hope, the two second mirror up self timer that ideally should be at least 4 seconds. Oddly, when on the weekend I tried switching to the 12 second self timer, I lost mirror lockup. Next weekend I'm going to try the separate mirror lock up control PLUS the 12 second self timer and see how that does. I'm fairly optimistic this will fix the problem with the 200 and 300 mm. lenses as the shake I have seen is in random directions, not that of the shutter movement, and also based on my experience with the Canon 5D3 and Nikon D800e where I know damn well that 2 seconds was not enough to dampen vibrations with the 70-200 lens despite a good tripod, good head and good lens collar.

The 25 mm. Pentax DFA isn't ideal, but neither was the Ziess 15 nor the Nikon 14-24. I suspect I could get close to perfection with a non retrofocus lenses for technical cameras and a separate medium format back - for a minimum of $25,000 for a one lens outfit. That isn't going to happen. I have made several images with the 25 that I could not have made with longer lenses, not without stitching anyway and given I was focus bracketting, that would have been cumbersome at the least.

How Far Apart Are Mediocre and Superb Lenses?

There are two ways to look at lens quality - what can you measure and test, and what can you see in prints. They 'ain't' the same thing at all.

For example, I made good use of my Sony A6000 on holiday, and the most used lens was the 55-210 - which according to all the usual test sites (photozone.de, slrgear.com) is mediocre. Yet, I have made some lovely images with this lens, and sharpness to me, in the print was perfectly fine. I even tried it on the A7r before selling that camera, and it wasn't bad, but tried removing the baffle to get even wider coverage on the big sensor camera and definitely the edges are poor, but it was never intended for full frame sensors so can hardly be blamed for that.

It's so small and light that it's a perfect match for the A6000, and one of the things that put me off the A7r in the end was that with my 70-200 Canon (that was noticeably sharper than the new Sony 70-200 even in prints) the camera ends up huge.

Issues of quality apply to all formats. Theonlinephotographer recently published an article on lens quality - how to use a lens to it's best, and how to stress it and it makes good reading.

An example of stressing a lens is stopping down well beyond the start of diffraction. Peruse any photo magazine that features landscape and you will find plenty of examples of f22 on a 35 mm. format wide angle - well within diffraction, and when viewed on screen at 100%, clearly showing that the benefit of increased depth of field did not outweigh the fuzziness introduced by the small aperture - but the magazine print, some of them two page spreads, look fantastic. Likewise 13x19 prints show the same thing - what is seen on screen isn't shown in print.

I started to notice this when I went to 20+ megapixels - what was clearly out of focus on screen looked fine in normal sized prints. It's all very well making test crop sections from really enlarged prints, but if you never actually make the uncropped huge print, what you are testing isn't reality.

This is a common phenomenon - just think of cars that handle beautifully at 150 mph, but fortunately are never driven at that speed, cars that cost a lot so they can do wheelies and burn rubber, but you don't because the tires are expensive, and besides, you grew out of that when you turned 21 (ok, maybe 40 for some).

Consider too, the subject matter. A lens that is sharp in the centre but has weak corners and even edges will be fine in portraits, sports, news, streetshooting, and just about anything other than distant landscapes and architecture.

We also need to consider that a superb lens on a small format will not look as good in a large print as a medium quality lens on a larger format, everything else being equal.

Lenses like the Zeiss Otis are mostly about being extremely sharp, corner to corner, wide open, and at this the lens has no peer. But how many of us need corner to corner sharpness at f1.4, or for that matter, the high contrast this lens has wide open. Often 1.4 is for people pictures and a bit of reduced contrast isn't a bad thing, and how often are the corners in the same millimeter deep area of focus anyway?

Bottom line: modest price primes and top quality zooms do a pretty decent job.

Pentax 645 and 200 mm. FA Lens

This is a 100% crop from an ISO 800, f7.1, 1/250 sec. handheld shot, making a 20X27 inch print at 300 dpi. My thinking is that if 100% looks this good.... Testing at the corners is yet to be done though in casual images, there might be some forward focus but just as sharp.

Turner Valley Compressor Building

Backing Up

Over the years I have tried a variety of backup strategies, from two different Drobos, to using Time Machine (Mac backup that backs up all the time so even a file erased earlier today can be recovered), to various external drives.

Drobos were slow, and given they were backup, the fact that they back up redundantly was somewhat unneeded, and given they stay plugged in at home, don't solve the problem of a power surge or fire.

Time machine has proven handy in the past when something got corrupted and I needed to go back to before the corruption, but the cost in slowing down the computer has been unacceptable.

All methods have had their problems. Taking the time to find all the raw files to back up onto one hard drive is problematic, though easier since I started using Lightroom, but not for the old files.

Today I have started what I hope will be both easy and fairly strong insurance against failure.

I picked up a hard disk caddy, and am now doing a 1:1 backup of each and every hard drive that is used as primary storage for my images. No more shuffling files and storing multiple drives onto one backup. As long as the receiving drive is as big or bigger, no sweat. I plan to do two entire sets, one for home, one for the office. The home set will be backed up in the future on a regular basis, the office set probably no more than once a year. Both sets of hard disks will be sitting unused and unconnected and at low risk of loss.

So far the process is slow, so it's something I'll run overnight for each one.

I might still consider time machine the main few hard drives but not for all the peripheral ones (of which there are half a dozen, on top of the four in the desktop Mac Tower, and only if it doesn't get in the way.

Is this ideal backup - absolutely not - I could lose an image from the last few months in a catastrophic failure, but I have Lightroom set up to make duplicates of all images as I dump the memory cards, so the worst I'd lose would be an edited image of less than three months age - that's something I can live with, especially as often with my favourite images, they get saved multiple times during the editing process, and in conversion to TIFF for large scale printing, and with toning, etc.

The big thing is it's better than what I have at the moment, which has been piecemeal for the last couple of years due to a variety of technical glitches saving to raid machines.

So, simple, redundant, and doable, that's what I'm looking for.

Why the Pentax 645Z Makes Sense For Me, But Maybe Not You

I've been reading the dialog between Diglloyd and Ming-Thien and thought I would respond to the issues they raise relative  to the Pentax 645z

You have to be aware of my situation.

1) 99% of my photography is on a tripod.
2) All of that is live view, manual focus, magnified view.
3)95% of my photography with the 645Z is done at f11, or sometimes f16
4) Although I don't sell a lot of prints, I do get requests occasionally for 6 foot wide prints - I need the most pixels I can carry.
5) I'm 64 and have a  bad hip - I'm not going to be hiking more than half a mile (the distance into Jura Canyon) any time soon, so +- 5 lb. carrying weight isn't relevant.
6) 95% of the photographs I make take 5-20 minutes to set up, find exactly the right position, get the right height on the tripod etc. so a little extra time to set the camera itself is moot.
7) the few times I need a faster camera, I generally know it before I leave the house and can take a more appropriate camera. I'm debating whether to hang onto the 70D because it will take my remaining Canon 70-200, the 400, and my two ts-e lenses, the 24 and 90, or more likely wait for the new Canon. If it really is good, then I might get that, if not perhaps the price of the 5d3 will drop and I might be able to pick up a used body.
8) for travelling with my wife, the A6000 is so light and compact and handy and did such  a good job in Newfoundland, it's going to work well for some time to come.

Yes, I did shoot those horses the other day, and the Pentax 645Z did just fine, hand held, with the 300 mm. lens, for making a 20X27 print.

Consider too, what I was looking for:

a) a camera that mounted lenses the right way - and it's not just the lenses but every rear lens cap too (perhaps you can forgive Nikon when you remember the Japanese drive on the left side of the road).
b) I needed a fully functional live view, at open aperture - only Canon has that.
c) I've come to live the tilting screen on the A7r and the 70D. Yes, I'd prefer both tilt and swing, but tilt covers 90% of the situations, not the 50% you'd expect, so it's a hell of a good start and remote viewing via my iPhone may solve the rest (I have a flu-card on order).
d) I didn't like the button and control layout on the A7r and much prefer the situation with the Pentax.

And don't forget, I had already acquired an almost full set of lenses for the Pentax three years ago when I came close to getting the 645D (at about $300 a lens) which can still be done.

So, with that background, my decision seems almost a no brainer - even though I can imagine some situations where the Nikon D810 might be a better choice given the wide range of great and fast lenses for it - the Sigma 35 and 50, the Zeiss 15 and 21 and wide variety of long lenses. Yet, the Nikon zooms aren't that great - the 24-70 is mediocre at 24, the 70-200 f4 good but not outstanding at 200, the 80-400 (new) good up to 300 mm. and fine in the centre at 400, but not for landscapes, great for wildlife though (that I don't generally shoot).

So,for me, for now and the next few years, the Pentax 645z makes good sense. Whether it would for you will depend on your needs, desires, and circumstances. I'm hoping this explanation might help you make your decision.

Pentax 645Z F Stop Setting

I note on the PentaxForums that Royce Howland, fellow Calgary photographer  has discovered a possible glitch in the Pentax, in that he can't reliably use the f stop ring on some lenses when in manual exposure setting. I had not discovered  this because I always put the lens into A mode where the camera sets the f stop, after all the camera comes with front and back dials specifically for the purpose, but still, if you can do it, it should work.

When I tested my camera, the same problem happens - for some odd reason, when in manual mode and setting the f-stop on the lens, the camera thinks it is two stops wider, and that gap stays as you change f-stop. This only seems to happen with FA lenses, not the A series manual focus lenses, and not the new lenses that of course don't have f-stop rings anyway.

For me, it's a non issue, just something for people to be aware of - use the body to set f-stop, lens aperture set to A.The proper aperture is set and recorded.

Editing Turner Valley 645Z Images

 The colours of the above image were not harmonious and the image shouted for a black and white conversion. Given the antique nature of the subject, it seemed sensible to apply a toning. I used my usual browntone made by applying a fill layer of solid colour and converting the blend to colour, with adjustments to intensity across the brightness range via the blend detail window (double clicking on the layer). I wasn't quite happy with it and having this evening looked through Roman Loranc's wonderful book of photographs in which he uses a neutral black but toned mid and light tones, I decided to try adding a saturation level, with a -76 adjustment to saturation. I then double clicked on the adjustment layer and moved the right hand (highlight) slider of the output image to the middle, thus removing the desaturation from the light tones. I then used the opacity slider for the layer to reduce the desaturation effect overall to 70%, leaving jut a little richness to the shadows and softening the gradation of colour.

 

I quite liked the web image but my print of this photograph looked week, the highlights lacking detail, the port quite dull, and the backdrop rather flat. About a dozen adjustment layers later the port had some oomph, the shadows some depth, and the highlight silver some richness.

I don't think I'm finished with the editing here. I think to right of the port could be a tad lighter, probably using a curve in which the white point is moved to the left, rather than just a lightening curve. but first I'm going to live with the print for a few days.

One thing I'm delighted with is that these files do stand up really well to editing. It does seem that the larger and cleaner the original file, the better edits look. The Nikon D810 is out and it fixed most of my frustrations with the Nikon, and early testing suggests the images will be great, but I have absolutely no regrets about my purchase of the Pentax 645Z, the most comfortable I have felt about a purchase in a long time.

More Images From Gas Plant

Images From Turner Valley

This was with the 300 mm. lens, two images blended, though in hind sight I really needed 3 to get the nearest part of the fibreglas in focus.

This was shot with the 75 or maybe the 35 and below is a 100% clip from somewhere in the middle. I'd love to see a six foot print of this image.

Shot with the 120, aiming upwards, perspective corrected in Photoshop, Command A to select all, Command T to transform, and Command Drag to stretch the corners to correct perspective and trim exactly to requirements.

Another Day With The Pentax 645Z

I photographed about four hours and by the end the camera battery was indicating low but not out - still functioning fine. I had used live view for all the images, and many were 30 second exposures inside one of the Turner Valley Gas Plant buildings, all the windows boarded up, light supplied by one large door in  a very large building. I used the 25, 35, 75, 120 and 300 mm. lenses.

To my surprise, the images from the 300 look great - very sharp. This might have to do with the 30 second exposure eliminating shake, also no wind indoors. Outdoor images were inconsistent, some sharp, other very definitely showing movement. I know that when I was using both Canon and Nikon, 2 seconds wasn't enough to settle movement after pressing the shutter and I'm looking forward to getting an infrared remote for the camera. Clearly more testing is required, but it's nice to know the lens itself is fine.

The camera worked perfectly, with no quirks that I could discover. I'm still learning how far to the right I can push exposure. At the moment I'm being pretty careful not to go well into blown highlights just in case, and knowing I can dig into the shadows without problem.

My impression is that while resolution may not be that much higher than the D800e, it's easier to get high resolution - the Nikon could do it, but not consistently, even in similar conditions, and frankly that's a huge advantage for me.

When checking sharpness of an image already made, you can scoot around the magnified image quite quickly. When doing so in live view before the shot, it's fairly slow - not an issue for the kind of work I do.

Focus blending is working well, using Helicon Focus, and I made my first images today that will need to be stitched - which is perhaps a bit silly but the lens nicely fit the vertical part of the subject and it just seemed natural to then swing the camera.

I did wonder how badly I'd miss my zooms, after all my 70-200 has always been my favourite lens, both in Canon and Nikon. To be honest, I didn't even give it a thought till now, after the fact. Sure I did more lens changes as I set up scenes - but that's at least as much lack of familiarity with the angle of view of the specific Pentax lenses and already is improving.

I worry that the battery compartment lock seems flimsy - a thin tab that has to be lifted up, turned 90 degrees and then pulled to open the door. It would be very awkward in gloves. I'm going to be careful with this.

I have to be a bit more careful clamping the camera to the tripod head The small square Really Right Stuff plates are great for not getting in the way, adding bulk or weight to the camera, but as the camera is much larger than the plate, I seem to be spending more time checking to be sure the plate is really seated in the clamp before letting go  - but this is mostly to do with the size of the camera blocking the view of the clamping, not the smallness of the plates and I wouldn't want larger plates. It's even worse when I use Arca Swiss style plates on a view camera. For that size, I actually prefer the safer and much larger plates from Manfrotto, but I wouldn't want to put two of those on the Pentax.

One thing that has to be considered with Pentax is the size of the company and the rate of development, though if you think of how long people have been waiting for a new 100-400 Canon zoom, or a 400 5.6 with IS, maybe I shouldn't worry too much. I do have the sense though that the camera and lenses have to work for me now, not from some future possible development. For my style of photography, the Pentax and its current equipment are perfect and I have no sense that I'm limited waiting for further developments. This won't be true for others, who might need leaf shutter lenses, or tilt shift. As to this latter, correcting perspective in Photoshop is so easy that shifting isn't really needed (and with the high pixel count, using shifting to stitch more pixels isn't important, and tilting has largely been replaced with focus blend, which is, after all, a lot more flexible being able to cope with 3D subjects, not just flat planes.

What if the company itself disappeared? People used Contax medium format for at least 10 years after the company went bye-bye, so again I don't see this as a huge issue and the fact that Ricoh can release such a great camera at this time speaks well of the company. The 645D was successful despite its limitations, the 645Z could be huge for the company.

Pentax 645Z After 3 Days

Perhaps the thing I like most about the Pentax is the compete lack of surprises - everything works logically. I have the open aperture live view focusing that I used to have on the Canon and really really missed on both the Nikon D800e and Sony A7r. You may thing this is a small thing, but if every single exposure you have to change the aperture to wide open, focus, then stop down again, it really is a pain - and if you forget to stop down again - disaster. And if you are in manual exposure - forget it because the screen gets too bright and you have to change the exposure too - so nice to be back the right way. And I always have the option to preview stopped down but if you aren`t using especially fast lenses, focus shift is not a big issue.

Turns out I like the weight and size of the body - it just feels so solid, and I don`t have the sense with long lenses that they need separate support - which makes changing lenses that much easier.

I find I don`t really need the 150 mm. lens - too close to my 120 to be worth the trouble, and I`m replacing the old 200 with the better 200 FA so I`ll likely carry the 25, 35, 75, 120, 200 and ?300.

I need to do more testing on the 300 both to see if shutter shake is an issue (I don't think so) and resolution - it's sharp in the centre, not sure about the corners yet.

I really like that the tilting lcd screen moves away from the body when you look down on it, not partially hidden by the viewfinder, especially if looking at it from an odd angle, like the camera aiming downwards but higher than I am.

I like that the lenses and lens caps screw on the right way unlike Nikon. The viewfinder is great and with glasses easy to use including the data display. It's easy to both use and see exposure compensation, and focus comfirmation works great, with the focus point glowing red in the viewfinder, unlike Nikon that had that little green circle at the bottom of the screen.

ISO has a dedicated button so really easy to use.

These may seem little things but they sure do make shooting more pleasurable and working the camera less distracting.