Review of Lightzone

Ok, so imagine your windows-based laptop decides to break down. 
Not savable,  reinstall windows does not solve it (still don’t know why)
and you don’t feel like spending money on a new operating system / laptop. 
What do you do? Use an illegal copy of windows? Possibly, but not as stable, can be irritating, and of course it’s not allowed. 
So, the only option I had was to switch to Linux.
At the time it felt like a last resort, but I’ve come to like it a lot. 

Everything works fine (even found a better replacement for MS Word
than Open / Libre office called Kingsoft Office), 
but there is one problem. I’m a photographer, and my entire workflow
was dependent on View NX and Capture NX2 of Nikon. 
So what are you gonna do when you can’t develop your RAW images
anymore?  The open source universe has quite a lot of options
 for RAW developers, but there are two programs that are well known:
Rawtherapee and UFRaw. 
I tried them, but never really got to like them. Yet my Linux-photography adventures are not over because I found Lightzone. 
 

A few years ago Lightzone was a paid program, but when the company behind it went bankrupt Lightzone’s code
was given to the open source community. The heroes behind
the project developed it a bit more, and here is an open source
version of Lightzone.
It’s free and it works on Mac, Windows and Linux (yay!). So how does it stand up against my previous workflow, the one that
I really liked? Lightzone shares more similarities with

Lightroom except for light being used in the name.
There’s the same distinction between a library module and a developing
module. The library module works ok, it’s a bit slow but it works.
Because Lightzone does not have ability like Capture NX2 to read the
picture presets, you have to develop the RAW file from scratch.
Although I do not really like that, it’s not too bad compared to the other
RAW developers.
And of course you can make use of pre-sets.
The first thing Lightzone assumes you want to adjust are your
basic settings, the exposure, colour temperature etc. Which works just fine.
Of course there are there is a dock for the obligatory sliders like
saturation, vibrancy and you can add or subtract certain colours.
But where are the curves? I need to tweak this file. 

Simple answer, there aren’t any.
Lightzone relies on a system they call the zonemapper which is based on
the zone system. There are a 17 bars that you can drag up or down.
These bars correspond to a zone in your photograph.
At the top right corner you see a version of your photo with 17 shades of
gray that correspond to these bars.
Hover over one of these bars and the shade of gray in the photo lights up. 

Now you know what area of the photo you’ll be adjusting when you
drag the bar somewhere. And although it takes some getting
used to, it’s really quite a good system. I feel I can be a bit
more precise, and it feels like I have more overview.
Although this system takes some getting used to I feel like it’s
the main selling point of the software (and that it works on Linux). All the adjustments you make are non-destructive,
and can be changed when you go back into your editing process.
You can also change their positions, which basically makes them
act as layers. Speaking of layers, every adjustment
is a layer, because you can change the blending mode, change
their position in the layer stack, and use something like
a layer mask. Unfortunately there are no brushes available
in Lightzone. There are some pretty good selection tools,
but now you have to trace every subject, and I have not yet
found the possibility to change the opacity of the layer mask
regionally. Although this system has some potential, it either
needs some development or Lightzone needs brushes. 

Problems

Although I really like Lightzone some essential features are missing
or just aren’t very good. I already mentioned the lack of brushes,
but at least There’s a good alternative for it. There are no tools available to correct CA.
The sharpening function works ok-ish except for that it introduces
quite a lot of artifacts to the image, (of course) especially at higher ISO’s.
I don’t like the results from the noise reduction function.
You get the water-Painting effect pretty fast, while some noise
still might be visible. Luckily there is other software available
like GIMP (which I absolutely love) to take care of those functions.
But as GIMP only takes JPG’s, I’d rather do it in Lightzone. 

Conclusion

If I’m honest, I use Lightzone out of necessity. I do like the principles
of the software (it’s open-source and free, it works on an open-source
and free operating system, making use of the zone system rather than
curves) it just needs some maturation. When I take the same image and
develop it both in Lightzone and Capture NX2, the image from Lightzone
tends to look better in terms of exposure and colours. However, this is
probably due to laziness as Capture NX2 applies the picture style and
white balance that I had set in my camera. However, in terms of
sharpening,noise reduction and CA correction, 
Lightzone gets blown out of the water. 
This has led me to do the following: did I shoot portraits or landscape on
an ISO lower than 800? I just leave my Linux system running, and develop
in Lightzone, and sharpen in GIMP. Did I shoot in a dark situation,
(e.g. sports, wildlife etc), I reboot my computer into windows
(wait literally 15 minutes for it to boot) and start up Capture NX2
(and hate windows some more because it’s slow). 

So would I recommend the software? YES! Yes there are flaws,
and in my view the software has to mature a bit, but it works, I can get
good results out of it, and best of all it’s a FREE CROSS-PLATFORM RAW DEVELOPER. Just try it out, share it with your photo
buddies because it’s a fun piece of software. 

lenses with defects are ok

I once wrote a blog entry about whether photography is art or not. The reason I wrote that, and why I keep up my blog, is to find out what I really think about it. when I write it down I tend to think it more through. One of the things I mentioned in the article was that digital photography becomes too perfect. Almost cold and robotic instead of an organic process. I wrote that light leaks and lens imperfections shaped the character of old photographs. Recently I have been reviewing a few lenses on my blog, (mostly to help other buyers of old glass since there is relatively little written about it on the internet) and I have been complaining about the performances of some of these old lenses. For example in my review of the vivitar 200mm f/3.5 I do not sincerely recommend (even though it still is a great lens) it because it shows quite some CA wide open, and the sharpness is a small OK. 

However I took that lens out today, and because it was overcast and it is a longer lens I had to use it wide open. Then I took this photo, and when I saw it on the computer it struck me that I have been contradicting myself. I once said that it shaped the character of a photograph when it showed defects, and in my reviews I was complaining about their “character”. And to be honest I even exaggerated the softness of the lens. I shot this photo in raw, and did not add any sharpening, reduced the contrast, and applied a Gaussian blur at the edges. So what I am basically trying to say is that there are a lot of good lenses, but some are more appropriate for different kinds of photography. When you want to best (or clinical perfect) look, go for the latest lenses, but sometimes the defects of lenses can give a wonderful mood to your photographs. 

leave your white balance on auto

I know, everyone always says that your auto white balance isn’t any good. And partly it’s true, it can be way off. And that’s also the beauty of it since I only recommend shooting in auto white balance when you shoot in RAW. Because when you shoot in RAW your in-camera white balance does not really matter, you can change it afterwards without compromising the image quality.

Now back to why you can shoot auto white balance: it messes things up up. For example this photo:

With the correct white balance it looks way warmer and greener. Which would have been fine, but with the blue hint the photo looks better (to me). I do not think I would have come up with this result myself. I probably would have fine tuned my white balance to make it correct and the photo would look less alien. But with photos like this, when your white balance is off, sometimes it gives you a tip how you could process your photograph.

On the other hand, when you are on an assignment and you want to do as little post production as possible, you probably want to fine tune your white balance in camera. But if you’re shooting for yourself and you want to “develop” your photos anyway, you can try auto white balance.

Thanks for reading,

Koen

macro photography

As a frequent viewer of my stream you’ve probably noticed that I have been doing a lot of macro photography lately. This is mainly caused because I’m out of landscape subjects. Everything is really far away, or I have been there over 50 times with all the possible weather conditions. I just moved to macro photography because that’s a new world to me. And I thought it might be time to share some things I have learned.

• Bring an envelope, seriously even if your bag is as full as can be there’s always room for an folded envelope. Since your photographing small things anyway you can use this as an reflector. As a bonus you can fold the envelope a bit creating a smaller part which is in the reflected light.

• Don’t be afraid to get bit. This mind sound a little extreme, but if you’re calm on the ground and pay attention to any biting bugs on your clothes etc. you can keep the amount of bits to a minimum. But what might help is bring a sheet or something else to lay on. And if you’re from the Netherlands you’re lucky, if you’re bit by a red ant you won’t even feel it the next day. (I don’t dare to say anything about other countries though).
• Be aware for ticks, check yourself after every photo session. To get a bite for a photo is one thing, but it’s something else to get lyme disease.

• A bean bag is more useful than a tripod. You will be laying on the ground photographing things which are really low to the ground as well. It is hard to get as low with a tripod as you can get with a bean bag, and it’s more comfortable.

• Shoot in bursts: this might seem weird, but if you don’t want to open up your aperture more / raise your iso but you do want to get a sharp photo of a flower swinging in the wind you can use the burst mode. Because the flower moves less fast at the end of it’s motion and than you will be able to get a sharp photo.

• Look for points of attention. Because of the large magnification you basically take a landscape photo of a flower. It might not be clear to the viewer where he has to look at, so add something to the flower, like bugs or waterdrops.

• Raise your ISO before you open up your aperture. Besides that it becomes harder to get things in focus, your DoF becomes also extremely small. Be sure that you use a adequate aperture for your main subject to be in focus.

And as far as I can help you with finding subjects, well just lay on the ground and look through your macrolens/ pimped lens. Virtually anything can become interesting, and there might just be something going on there with the bugs. All the bug photos you have seen here are taken because I was already laying on the ground.

Thanks for reading

Photographing roe with a manual focus lens.

Last Sunday I went to the Amsterdamse Waterleidingsduinen, this is a forest near the sea and a lot of roe live there. Really a lot, I can almost guarantee that if you walk in this forest for more than one hour you will have seen some of them. Having this in mind I always take my telephoto lenses and my tripod with me when I go there. Since there are so many roe living there they are relatively used to humans, as long as you keep on walking they won’t move, especially if you stay on the tracks. This is not weird, imagine you were one of them and all you see is humans walking on the tracks. If I were a roe I would probably think that these weird creatures can’t get off or something like that.

Anyway, it is not that hard to come close, which is a good thing for the photographer. But when I go out I always go out early. This is because most of the roe seem to get up around sunrise, eat and after a while hide in the forest to start ruminate. This is when you can’t find them as easy as when they’re eating. And the light is much better as well, if not a bit weak in the forest. I usually solve this with bumping up the ISO to 800 or 1600 if needed. And this is very important: get a proper exposure. There will be less noise in your photograph if you expose a photo properly at 1600, than if you underexpose on 800 and try to solve it in post. I only have a Nikon d60, not a camera which is known for it’s great noise performance, but I get acceptable results at 1600. Even if I didn’t get acceptable results I would still bump up the ISO, because a extremely noisy image is still way better than a noise-free blurred photo.

The only problem with raising the ISO is that you have less freedom in post, of course there will be some noise so your can’t crop as extreme as you can at ISO 100 without losing detail, changing your white balance will also show more noise. Bottom-line is that it is even more important to get everything right in camera.

Now the use of a MF lens: this is hard. Telephoto lenses are the only lenses where I really miss having autofocus. Mostly because your object is fast moving, and your DoF is relatively short. To be able to take photos I always pre set my focus, since I use a prime lens I know at which focal length the animal will fill the frame. If the animal is further away I can always adjust it, the amount you have to turn the ring isn’t as large when you focus on something further away as when you focus on something more close. This works relatively well, but still you will need some time to fine-tune the focus. Therefore I don’t pay attention to running roe, just on the walking and sitting ones.

To be able to get more control over the scene I always use a tripod. (also because the light in the forest is very dim and I just can’t get to 1/400^th of a second to handhold a 300mm lens). Your camera will not move, this makes it easier to fine-tune your focus. And your frame won’t move as well. With the large magnification of a telephoto lens it is harder to maintain your composition handheld. You have to keep really still to get your desired photo, and a tripod solves that.

But now the most important part about wildlife photography, enjoy it. Don’t walk through the forest with the camera attached to your face. It is hard, the light won’t be perfect, nor will the pose of the animals and you will have a lot of photos which didn’t work. And there will be branches in front of the animals, there’s no forest without branches :) But that doesn’t mean that the experience is bad. Enjoy the forest, the animals, the atmosphere. Keep in mind that to be able to do so next time you have to behave as a human and not as a photographer-psycho-robot who is determined to get his shot no matter what. 

is photography art?

To be honest I don’t know. I have been thinking about this because of a discussion I had recently about photography with another photographer. He insisted that I studied the work of some older photographers (I am familiar with the work of the well known photographers but not with every single on of them.)

His approach to photography is completely different then mine, he tries to be influenced by photographers and I just try to take the best photo I am capable of. (I am probably influenced by other photographer but I don’t try to be influenced by them)

And I think there is a difference in how we think about photography. He considers it art, while I consider it photography. I truly don’t think that photography is a pure form of art. It is artistic, but it is just too real. Everyone can take a perfectly good photograph his compact camera and get a great result. Especially if you know just a little about photography. I also think that photography mainly is about how you use your equipment and your equipment. I can not place something extra in the photo, I can’t influence how a deer behaves or how a landscape looks like. How can I make it mine, my scene. Of course I can use filters, different perspectives etc. but the credits for creating the scene, the surrounding, the inhabitants of this world go to mother nature. You can’t wave with your lens over a scene and create something which only you could see, only in your imagination.

I also couldn’t help noticing that all the images he showed me he considered art were taken on film a long time ago. Most of them showing light leaks, unsharpness, and with a lot of blacks and whites. We both agreed that they are nice photos, and I think that these images come very close to art. And this is where this article really is about.

Digital (and late film) photography has become too good, too sharp, too true. There is no more room for errors. Everyone is buying expensive lenses with ED elements, for optimum sharpness and minimum flares, ghosts etc. I think modern technology has perfected photography to such an extend that it is nowhere near art anymore.

What I also noticed was that since I noticed this, I have been using one of my lenses which is more prone to flare and ghosts and is not sharp at all wide open. I always took this lens for granted, there’s oil on the aperture blades and it hasn’t a good IQ. But now I have been looking for less quality it hasn’t left my camera. Unfortunately the sun hasn’t shown it’s face yet, so I can get some low-contrast-flared-low-quality-images, but if I get some I will post them in this article.  

But I also do think that there is a place for the modern photography. I do want to have sharp photographs from my friends etc. or when there is a beautiful sunset. But I think that there is a place for low quality lenses in photography and that that place is forgotten. Not only by me but by almost every photographer.

This was my rant for today :P please take a look at my review of the metz 36 AF-5. Especially the last part about whether I should keep the flash.

my christmas card

This is the photograph i picked as my christmas card. Actually there's a funny story behind it, I was thinking about setting up my tripod and place myself in the scene, walking away or something like that. But then this couple showed up. I had my camera already mounted on my tripod and because I already had a not so great experience with photographing someone in that forest that day I decided to put my camera on self timer. After I composed the shot, I pressed the shutter and acted like I was waiting for the couple to clear the scene. When the shutter released after 20 seconds this photograph came out of it. I was very lucky that they weren't in a weird pose or something like that because after a another 20 seconds they were way too close. 

After some more walking around in the forest I loaded this photo on my laptop. Unfortunately the colour temperature was way off. It was way too blue and my white balance was already on shadow. Even at the warmest temperature it looked too blue. 
I loaded this photo in Gimp, and converted it to black and white. Then I duplicated the layer several times and applied different brown colourizations to them. I shuffled and fiddled a bit with the opacity and the blending modes. When the colours were to my liking I made all these coloured layer one layer and applied a layer mask. I masked out all the snow because I didn’t want yellow snow. So that was about it for today, thank you for reading!