April 28th-May 2nd, 2010 in Moab, Utah
with Scott Martin and Andy Biggs

Scott Martin and Andy Biggs join forces to present a rigorous five day photography workshop in Moab, Utah. Moab is the epicenter of red rock country with its famous arches, balanced rocks and spires in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. If you have never photographed in the Moab area, you owe it to yourself to witness some of the most famous geological formations in the American West. The area is also famous for mountain biking, motorcycling, and offroading. April is arguably the nicest month of the year to be in Moab and we have planned this workshop to take place after all the big offroading festivals that descend upon Moab in the spring.

These medium altitude, ~4000 foot (1.2 km) locations will be between 50F (10C)  and 80F (27C) degrees during the workshop. Combined with low humidity, we will be quite comfortable. If you’ve never been to this part of the world before, you are in for a surprise. Moab and the surrounding areas have far more then one can possibly experience in a weeks time.

This workshop will be packed with both field and classroom instruction. We will be in the field early in the morning and early in the evening to catch the dawn and dusk light with (more…)

October 16th, 2009, 9:30am – 4pm, Houston TX
presented by Scott Martin via ASMP Houston

In my day-to-day consulting I am seeing photographers struggle with organizing ever-increasing, huge amounts of images. To add to this, the “file browsing” applications photographers have been using are showing their age and Adobe Lightroom is emerging as a surprisingly powerful tool for not only image file management, but also as a total workflow tool.

This one day class will examine (in great detail) every aspect of file management in Adobe Lightroom. Streamlining the file import process, working with keywords and file naming conventions will be discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of the DNG Digital Negative format will be covered along with folder based vs. search based approaches. We will discuss a variety of scenarios including transferring images from a desktop to a laptop and back. This workshop is customized for ASMP’s Houston chapter and is intended for professionals, not beginners.

Image file management may not sound like the most exciting topic to examine for a day but it might be the most important one for your image library. This workshop won’t cover optimizing image development, web gallery generation or printing. This workshop is appropriate for new Lightroom users for seasoned Lightroom professionals alike. Handouts and lunch will be provided.

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The sRAW (small RAW) format is gaining popularity among 20+ megapixel camera owners that occasionally don’t want as much resolution or such a large file size. sRAW files are half to a quarter of the resolution of a full RAW and this equates to smaller storage requirements and faster processing for projects that don’t require as much resolution. sRAW files do maintain a nearly all the development flexibility of a true RAW file, and therefore are often more desirable than a less flexible JPEG.

sRAW files aren’t actually true RAW files. The sensor’s true RAW data is demosaiced and rendered to a lower resolution file and saved in the YCC color mode. For this reason the final file size isn’t quite as small as one might hope (IE: quarter resolution sRAW files are about half the file size of a full RAW file). Unfortunately, when these files are currently converted to DNG, images are converted to less efficient RGB space and the file size increases – negating some of the file size and processing benefits.

The chart adove illustrates the file sizes of a full res (resolution) raw file, a half res sRAW1 file, a quarter res sRAW 2 file before and after conversion to DNG, and a full res large JPEG.

Perhaps the DNG file format will be updated to include YCC sRAW files at their smaller file size. In the meantime, if you wish to keep file sizes small when shooting sRAW, I recommend sticking with the proprietary sRAW format that your camera uses (CR2, NEF, etc).

Leica has just announced two new camera systems – the M9 and the X1. The M9 is the latest in the famous M series – it’s the same size and format as the M8 yet it’s chockfull of refinements. The M9 packs a 18.5 megapixel full frame sensor and has 3,5 or 7 frame exposure bracketing for HDR. Its fit and finish are all Leica and its the smallest full frame digital camera on the market. It’s available in 2 weeks for $6995.

The new X1 (pictured above on the right) is a compact sized camera that uses an unusually large and high quality sensor for a camera of its size. It has a 12.2 APS megapixel sensor and comes with a fixed 35mm equivalent f 2.8 aspherical Elmarit lens. At 10 ounces, it offers the image quality of the M8 yet in a smaller format. It will ship by the holidays for $1995.

My favorite feature on the M9 is that it shows highlight clipping (in red) and shadow clipping (in blue) just like lightroom does. Yes!! (illustrated on the right) Workshop participants will note that I’ve been predicting this in-camera feature for years now. We’ll see how long it takes to trickle down to the other manufacturers.

Both cameras save DNG formatted RAW files and include a Lightroom license when registered. Leica followers, you know who you are.

Apple’s long anticipated 10.6 “Snow Leopard” operating system is now shipping. Snow Leopard’s modern cocoa code base promises system-wide responsiveness, reliability, smarter multiprocessor utilization and multitasking on existing Intel based hardware. Geek Mac and Windows users alike should read this in-depth article on Snow Leopard’s under the hood technologies. As with any major operating system upgrade it is important that we make a list of our applications and printer drivers and check for compatibility before making the switch.

Printer driver compatibility is probably the main issue that will force some users to delay upgrading. Snow Leopard’s CUPS printing structure is different enough from the previous version that existing printer drivers may not work. While Apple has their generic “Gutenprint” driver for many common printers, professional will want to wait for the official drivers from the printer manufactuers. Printer manufacturers are weary of releasing 10.6 compatible drivers before they’ve had the chance to test them throughly with the final version. I’ve been told to expect 10.6 compatible printer drivers for currently shipping printers to be released 2-6 weeks after Snow Leopard’s ship date. Expect a slightly longer wait for printer drivers to older, discontinued printers.

Caution is advised when upgrading to Snow Leopard. So far I have seen several color management issues that involve printing in Snow Leopard. Check for compatibility of your applications and printer drivers at the Snow Leopard Compatibility Wiki prior to upgrading. Users should test 10.6 throughly on an extra computer before upgrading production workstations. At the same time, mac users shouldn’t wait too long – this new operating system is ground breaking and will bring significant advantages that will be further realized in future applications (Creative Suite 5 for example). 100 Gigs of RAM, 100 Terabytes of hard drive space and 100 core processors might sound crazy today but Snow Leopard foresees this future.