I suppose this was probably inevitable, sooner or later. Nikon has announced that they’re seriously curtailing their film-based camera business, cutting their film body production back to just the new F6 and the entry-level manual FG10, dropping all but a handful of their manual-focus lenses, and stopping production of things like their large format lenses. Of course there are still tons of usable Nikon film bodies and lenses out on the used market for those who want them, but film seems to be moving higher up the endangered species list every day.
Category Archives: Photography
Lightroom
Yesterday, Adobe announced Lightroom, a “professional photographic workflow tool” similar to Apple’s Aperture. It won’t be released for some time, I think, but they released a Mac-only beta when they announced it yesterday. Far more experienced and qualified photographers than myself have weighed in on it, but I thought I’d give my impressions from playing around with the beta.
- This is definitely a beta, nowhere near release quality software. Not only in the sense that it has bugs, but that it’s missing tools (you can’t even crop with it). I’ve actually encountered surprisingly few serious bugs, but I haven’t used it that heavily yet (I only have a hundred or so images imported).
- Something I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere: This thing really doesn’t like Unsanity’s Application Enhancers. I have ShapeShifter installed on my machine since I’m not a fan of Aqua, and Lightroom was very sluggish in use at first. After adding it to the Master Exclude List in the APE control panel performance jumped up several notches to “tolerable”. (Dual processor 1.8GHz G5 for reference)
- Lightroom doesn’t seem to have the user interface flash that Aperture does. That may come closer to release though. The interface layout seems to be logical and clean, and more streamlined than something like ACR.
- The Grayscale Mixer seems like it will end up being very useful for getting good B&W pictures. I think I like it
- The organization tools seem a bit rudimentary compared to some other apps I’ve used, but I’m quite willing to admit that I just haven’t tried it that extensively.
- I see a couple of major advantages over Aperture right off the bat (at least on paper). First, Lightroom allows you to import your images into its database while leaving the actual files where they’re at on disk; Aperture insists you suck all of the files into its relatively opaque database file. Second, Adobe has said Lightroom will have an extensive plugin architecture by v1.0, which is something that’s helped turn Photoshop into the 800lb. gorilla it is.
It’s definitely good to see some competition in this arena; existing solutions like Photoshop are powerful, but almost too powerful and not streamlined enough for general use. Having several companies will result in better software for less. I’d recommend if you have a Mac and a digital camera (especially one that shoots RAW) to check out the beta.
Nikon’s D200
Pictures of and information about the upcoming D200 have been leaked from Nikon’s website. 10.2 Mpix, $1699, which is a great price. It looks to be a much more “pro” body than my D70, which is a good thing.
I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy one; these things are always hard to get and expensive right after they’re released. Maybe next spring, after they’ve worked out all the bugs. Still, it’s nice to know that I have an upgrade path that doesn’t involve spending 4000 dollars.
Occurrences like this make Apple’s need to take down its website every time they update their product lineup appear much less like paranoia…
On purchasing an inkjet printer
Consumer-level photo printers must be one of the few pieces of technology that the internet is completely, utterly useless for researching. The main reason I don’t own an inkjer is that I’ve never been able to figure out which one is the one to buy, and in the last ten years it hasn’t gotten any better. Printer reviews seem to fall into several categories, in increasing levels of usefulness to me:
- CNET-type “reviews”, which aren’t more than a couple of pages and are geared towards grandma or a corporate buyer. They spend most of their time on ease of use, and if they mention quality it’s “text quality was good, and photos looked like lab prints”. They don’t give any indication as to whether they’re qualified to evaluate the photo quality or not. I’m guessing not.
- “Comprehensive” reviews where they spend 10-20 pages with picture after picture of the printer and every single tab of the driver software, and reduce quality evaluations to a couple of paragraphs on the last page or so. Thanks, but I don’t need a recap of the manual. (this type of review is also very common for digital cameras)
- Reviews where they actually make an attempt to evaluate quality with a color-calibrated system and seem to have some clue what prints are supposed to look like. I found this site which seems to fall into this category and is going in my bookmarks. Their reviews are still pretty long and have too many “unpacking the printer” and “here’s what the drivers look like” shots, though.
- The best reviews are ones by pro photographers who wrap the whole thing up in a couple pages, hitting the high points and the low points of setup and usage, and giving a good qualitative evaluation of the print quality. My needs are nowhere near what these guys need, so I figure if it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for me.
The problem is that the pro photographers only seem to review the $500+ wide-carriage high end photo printers, which is far more than I need or want eating up my desk space at home. So while they’re good for figuring out whether Canon, HP or Epson are capable of manufacturing a quality printer, they’re not really useful for me to figure out what would be a good $150-$200 printer to sit on my desk.
The problem with the other categories of printer reviews is that nobody seems to review everything, not even CNET. Printer manufacturers don’t make this any easier by having product cycles shorter than the average fruit fly’s lifespan. Epson and Canon seem to be generally on top, but they also seem to trade places every six months or less, and it’s tough to figure out who to buy at the moment.
I had it narrowed down to two specific printers (for reasons which are unlikely to become clear at the moment) and found that nowhere was there a site that had reviewed both models. Sites had reviews of one, or the other, but not both. Not even CNET. This sucks because when comparing opinions it’s hard to tell how qualifications compare between sites, and it ends up being a lot of reading to try to get a feel for the site and reviewer.
In the end, I read tons of reviews, and then just… picked one. Seriously, it was barely more informed than flipping a coin.
Why have you failed me, Internet?