En bra foto-podcast

Det finns en hel del podcasts om foto, en del är OK, en del är mindre bra men sedan finns det en som sticker ut lite extra: Photography Daily. Jag lyssnat på den nästan sedan den startade och tycker den är riktigt, riktigt bra.

Det är dagliga avsnitt under måndag-fredag där avsnitten måndag-torsdag har varit en intervju med någon fotograf. Fredagen har varit ett “photowalk”-avsnitt där Neale James tar en promenad med kameran och svarar på olika lyssnarfrågor.

Nu i december så har innehållet ändrats lite, måndag och onsdag är intervjuer, tisdag och torsdag är kortare avsnitt där Neale James pratar om olika saker. Fredagar är fortfarande en photowalk. När jag skriver detta så har det nya formatet bara varit igång i tre dagar så jag lite svårt att säga vad tisdag/torsdag innehåller.

För de som är medlemmar så finns det också en “megazode” en gång i månaden. Det är ett långt avsnitt med lite allt möjligt.

Avsnitten är lagom långa, ca 20-35 min, och handlar om fotograferna, deras arbete och vad som ligger bakom det de gör. Vad som gör podcasten riktigt intressant är hur Neale James lockar fram mycket intressant från de som intervjuas. Det blir som att höra på ett intressant samtal mellan två personer istället för något sorts reklamprat om fotografen. Det förekommer väldigt sällan några utrustningsdiskussioner, om det inte är relevant, utan fokus ligger hela tiden på fotografen/arbetet.

För mig har det blivit min favorit-podcast och är du intresserad av foto så kan jag verkligen rekommendera den

I'm disappointed by Lightroom's

In theory, LR syncing is really, really great: by using Lightroom’s syncing feature I’m supposed to be able to take photos on my iPhone and have them synced to Adobes cloud … and when I open Lightroom Classic (I’ll call the other version Lightroom Cloud) on my desktop I’ll have the photos there.

Or even better, I can import photos from my camera on my iPad, do some editing and when I come to my desktop are there with edits. Great, wonderful, perfect … in theory. Reality is not that great.

For some reason I’m not able to add/sync photos without having LR telling me that it is “Syncing X photos” (X usually being 5, 6 or some other single digit number). Lightroom continues to show this message for hours, days, weeks and it drives me crazy since I’m never sure that all photos from my iOS devices have been synced to LR Classic. I think that all changes and photos have come across — but I’m never sure, not a good feeling.

“But just import all photos into Lightroom Cloud and manage them there!!” Sorry, but I don’t trust Adobe handling my photos — remember a few weeks ago when they managed to delete photos from a specific user group, neither do I have the money to give Adobe for storing all my photos, Lightroom Classic have a number of features/plugins that isn’t available for Lightroom Cloud and I don’t really like how photos are organized in Lightroom Cloud. It’s not a real alternative for me at the moment.

Should I switch to some other software. Well, iCloud Photos syncing has been rock solid to me, I always have the photos available on all my devices. OK, some delays have happened and I have had to wait for 10-30 minutes, but it’s fairly rare. Unfortunately, Photos/iCloud Photos miss a lot of the features that is available in Lightroom Classic so it’s not really an alternative either.

Then there is On1 that have gotten some syncing features but since it’s a fairly new system I don’t want start using it at the moment. I’m also unsure how the pricing works out. Otherwise, I don’t know of any real alternative to Lightroom when it comes to syncing.

I really wish that Adobe could create a 100% solid version of iOS LR ↔ LR Classic syncing.

Conferences and photography

One of the benefits of going to a conference is that you get to see a new place, which of course means a chance for some photography. Here are a few photos from Aberdeen 2019

From Dagstuhl and Völklinger Hütte

And finally some from Uppsala

In other words I enjoy going to a conference since that usually mean that I get the chance to take a new photos. Note that conferences are rarely in places where you really want to go !!

Anyway, tomorrow it’s time for a new conference … but this time I’m going to sit in my office at home so no photos from a new place. Instead I’ll try to take a photos from the village where I live, perhaps not as exciting as photographing a new place but not too bad. Here are a few photos from the village that I’ve taken the last few days

PhotoStatistica – looking at my photo library

I found out about PhotoStatistica yesterday and I couldn’t resist buying and try it on my photo library. It took some time before PhotoStatistica the collected the data but once this is done it is quick to check different statistics.

So here is some data from my library

Aperture

I’m not very surprised by this since I’ve taken most of my photos indoors I’ve used f2.8 a lot. Judging by these numbers it seems reasonable that several of my lenses are f2.8 … I simply have a need for it.

ISO

Neither am I surprised by this, for most of my photos I have wanted to freeze motion while taking the photos indoors. This is consistent with this. What I find interesting is that ISO 400 is so high but I think it’s because of my D80, it didn’t really like high ISO so I usually tried to keep it as low as possible. I’m guessing that ISO 800 is mostly from my D700 and ISO 1000 and above from my D4s.

Flash

I’ve taken a lot of flash photos … but I didn’t expect it to be the majority of my photos. Interestingly enough most of those, wild guess would be 75000, are taken with one single flash unit: my beloved SB-900. I really like this flash and it has worked flawlessly for, I think, 10 years or so.

Shutter speed

Based on the previous diagram this shouldn’t come as a surprise, 1/200 s is the max flash sync speed on my Nikon cameras.

Program

No surprise here either, I almost always use aperture priority.

Focal length

Not a surprise, my main lenses has been a 24-70/2.8 and a 70-200/2.8, it’s just lately that I’ve started to use lenses outside this range.

Brand

I’ve been using Nikon cameras since 2002 so no surprise here. The up and coming brand is Panasonic, I bought my first Lumix in 2016 and I’m using Lumix cameras more and more. The reason for this is that my D4s is a very good sports camera but a m43 system is much easier to carry when out and about.

Model

Here there were a few surprises. The D700 was my work horse for about 8 years so those number were expected. But I thought I would have taken more photos with the D4s than the D80. I have been using the GX80 a lot so 10000 photos seem completely reasonable. The biggest surprise here was that the S90 ended up on fifth place. The reason why the G9 is on sixth place is that I’ve only had it for 4 months, I expect it to be closer to the GX80 at the end of the year.

PhotoStatistica can show more info but these are the ones I find most interesting. While most of these numbers were what I expected, there were a few surprises.

Isn't Kendo interesting?

I think I better explain what I meant with

the problem was to make the photos interesting

in a previous post. I did not mean that Kendo isn’t interesting, just that for me the problem was to make my photos interesting. Let me explain, in Jutsu there is a lot of movement like when a person is being thrown

or when someone tries to kick someone

But there are also “slower” parts where it’s possible to concentrate on faces and details.

Add to this the fact that I know some jutsu, which makes it possible for me to guess what is going to happen right before it happens, which of course makes it easier for me to capture a photo at the right moment.

So what is it the makes Kendo more difficult? First problem is that I know nothing about Kendo, making it difficult to predict what is going to happen. Another problem is the protective gear Kendo practitioners wear, the helmet makes it much more difficult to catch facial expressions, the gloves makes it difficult to catch hand/finger movements, etc. My third problem has to do with Kendo itself.

This first attempt told me that Kendo is pretty much two-dimensional. With this I mean that much of the action is along a straight line. This makes things easy in the sense that I could position myself closer and use a different point of view. But I didn’t know that so I didn’t, I didn’t even consider it because if I would move closer in jutsu the risk of getting a body part slamming into me or the camera would be high. So in jutsu I want to keep some distance to the people I’m photographing, in Kendo I could be much closer … but I would of course have to check that it was OK before doing that.

BTW - sorry about no example photos from the Kendo shoot but they didn’t want any images online so I’m going to respect that.

Another thing that differs from jutsu is that the focus of the action seem to be when the Shinai (the bamboo sword) hits the opponent, in jutsu a number of things could happen. This means that I that if I want an action photo I know what to concentrate on, but this happens very fast so it’s more difficult to catch the right moment … and I’m not convinced that it makes for a good photo.

To just see the Shinai hitting the opponents helmet doesn’t make for a good photo … at least not more that a couple of good photos before it gets repetitive.

So the photos I liked best were photos taken at the start of an attack, they showed the fast movements, the energy and other things that seem to be what Kendo is all about. I also liked the more “portrait” like photos I took, which in my opinion shows the other side of Kendo - calmness and concentration.

Well, it was my first attempt so I can easily have missed the important parts of shooting Kendo just because I don’t understand.

I’m slowly understanding why some people place so much importance on ending up on Flickr Explore. First time for me (I think, I never check) and that picture currently have 1800+ views instead of the more normal 2 or 3. Interesting phenomena.

Every time I decide to stop searching for a Lightroom replacement and really learn how to take advantage of the program, I find something that gets me to think “I can’t get rid of Lightroom fast enough”

Merry Christmas - God Jul

Suck, tävlingsregler

Jag funderade en kort stund på att vara med i en fototävling som Norrlandsmejerier anordnar. Jag kom så långt att jag började välja ut bilder och sedan så letade jag efter tävlingsreglerna för att se hur många bilder man fick skicka in … och tappade sedan lusten att vara med. I reglerna står det nämligen

I och med deltagande i tävlingen anses deltagaren ha gett sitt medgivande till att personuppgifter och insänt bildmaterial lagras elektroniskt samt att dessa får och kan komma att publiceras på Norrmejeriers webbsidor, mjölkpaket och andra kommunikationskanaler Norrmejerier förfogar över. Norrmejerier förbehåller sig rätten att använda insända bidrag vidare i sin marknadsföring. Deltagandet innebär att deltagaren avsäger sig andra ersättningskrav än eventuell tävlingsvinst.

Är det bara jag som tycker att sådana här villkor är svinaktiga??