Promising, but not yet good enough to replace the more complicated tools.

Vertus’s UI is interesting different form the other options in this space. It shows you the edges of the regions it’s divided the photo into, and then lets you keep or exclude individual regions. You can control how many regions the photo is divided into, and how sensitively edges are detected. You can also draw in edges around areas of low contrast it doesn’t auto-detect. This is much simpler than Remask, PerfectMask, or Photoshop; though not quite up to the standard set by PowerPoint 2011. The initial mask is pretty damn good, but like all such products when used with real world photos (i.e. not green screen studio shots or carefully cherry picked trade show demos) you need to do some touching up to the mask; and that’s where FluidMask stops being so fluid.

Most importantly, you can’t edit the mask in the cut-out mode. That makes it very hard to see what is and isn’t included, and where you need to fix things after the initial mask.

Second, I was not able to say, “these pixels must be included” or “these pixels must excluded.” The keep exact and delete exact brushes are supposed to do this, but they don’t actually work. The program insisted on coloring particular parts of the mask blue (marking it as a border) and sometimes green (keep) or red (delete) no matter how many times I went over it with the relevant brush. This is so obviously contrary to what’s supposed to happen that I wonder if I’m doing something wrong, and misunderstanding how the program works? But if so, the best I can say is that the program, manual, and tutorials are confusing and incomplete since they offered no clues as to what might be going wrong.

This is disappointing, because Fluidmask got me to a plausible start much quicker and with less effort than Topaz Remask, or OnOne PerfectMask, but it wasn’t able to finish the job. :-(

• Stable Tripod
• Off-camera shutter release
• Excellent focus
• Non-moving target
• ISO 100
• Excellent lighting
• Still air
• Aperture below the camera’s diffraction limit

Is any lens /camera combination going to be able to resolve details that are a pixel’s width apart? If not, how close do the best one’s get?

Of course different cameras have different pixel sizes. Larger cameras usually have larger pixels. So perhaps the answer should be measured in microns. How many microns can the best lenses resolve?

FYI, these settings are all for relatively stationary insects and a 1:1 100mm macro lens. Butterflies and dragonflies (i.e. large flying insects) with a telephoto lens are something else entirely.

Daytime, no flash

• f/8, maybe f/11 for deeper insects
• shutter speed 1/400 s or faster
• ISO 400-1600 as necessary to get the shutter speed up.
• Check your histogram

Consider using a tripod, cable release, and/or reflector.

Daytime, fill flash

Still need to figure this one out, or whether it even makes sense.

Daytime, full flash

• f/11
• ISO 100
• shutter speed 1/250 s
• Flash exposure compensation -2/3 to -1
• Use an external battery pack

The key here is that with those settings, ambient light is nigh on nonexistent. The real shutter speed is the flash duration, which is much less than 1/250s. However backgrounds will be black.

Photographing Insects at Night

• Set the camera on M. Av and Tv modes don’t really work with the flash, and work even less when the flash doesn’t fire.
• f/22 or f/25
• ISO 100
• Shutter speed to 1/250s, maximum sync speed. At that aperture, only the flash matters anyway.
• Flash exposure compensation 0
• Manual focus, usually set at the minimum focusing distance
• Use an external battery pack

5 Stars: Submit to BBC Nature Photographer of the Year, Audubon Magazine Photography Awards, and other contests
4 Stars: Consider making wall prints and framing, using in a calendar, putting in a photo book, submitting to nature magazines, etc.
3 Stars: Submit for Microstock
2 Stars: Upload to Picasa
1 Star: Personal interest; documentation photo. E.g. a personal life bird even with a crappy photo.
0 Stars: Keep
X: Delete

Of course this will require some review of prior work. I’m not sure I’ve got any plausible 5 star photos yet. I probably have enough 4 star photos to make a nice Christmas present for friends and family though. Looking at the bird photos by another photographer I have hanging on my walls now, I’d say I’ve shot better than at least two of the three, and perhaps can match the third.

The four star/ five star distinction may not be cut quite right. Arguably framed prints (especially large ones) should be of Nature Photographer of the Year caliber, as perhaps should be any I submit to magazines (though magazines are also sometimes interested in lesser quality but newsworthy photos.) Similarly there are some great photos I’ve seen in competitions and magazines that I still wouldn’t want to hang on my walls. (In particular, photos of environmental destruction and simple cruelty.)

The one thing this misses is the rarity of the subject. That’s important for some uses where even a fuzzy but IDable shot of a never before photographed species may be more interesting than the 38 millionth photo of an American Robin or a European Honeybee. I could do that with just a keyword, but my goal is to be able to quickly review and categorize a day’s shoot with maximum speed and minimum typing, so I know what to come back to later for editing or uploading.

I’d also like some indication of whether I’ve already worked on the photograph in Lightroom/Photoshop or whether it’s a good base photo that still needs to be processed.

Thoughts? How do you rate your photos?

• Canon 400 mm f/5.6L lens: $1100
• Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD XLD for Canon Digital SLR Cameras, barely used, $350
• Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) Macro Ultra Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras: $275
• Canon 18-55 IS II, broken autofocus: $50 or best offer
• Canon Extender 2X II: $250
• Canon Powershot SX30IS, barely used: $350
• Canon Powershot A650IS: $175

Most have original boxes, manuals, chargers, batteries, lenscaps, etc.

The Tamron 70-300mm and the Powershot SX30IS are still under warranty. The rest aren’t. Shipping is not included.

I will also consider trades for Canon DSLRs and pro-grade lenses.

1. 70-200mm is not a very interesting range for me. It’s too long for buildings, landscapes, pets, and anything inside my apartment and too short for birds. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll try it at the zoo, where it may work better (big animals at medium distance.)
2. When you can get close enough to the bird to not need more than 200mm, this lens is sharp, possibly the sharpest lens I’ve ever used. Just look at this chickadee (make sure the window is wide enough for the full image for maximum effect):

   

3. My biggest problem was focus. A lot of shots (though not all) seem to be a little out of focus. Possibly this copy of the lens front-focuses a bit on this body? I have not tried to autofocus microadjust it yet. Also f/2.8 has way less depth of field than I’m used to. I seem to get better results around f/5.6-f/8. (Also worth noting: the 50D does not have state-of-the-art autofocus. The 7D and 1D Mark IV are both noticeably improved here.)
4. Adding the 2X Mark II teleconverter softens the image. It’s noticeably less sharp at f/5.6 than a 100-400mm or 400mm f/5.6L lens, though it does have much better maximum magnification and minimum focusing distance. Sharpness picks up a little at f/8. It may be better with the 2X Mark III though.
5. I find the push pull zoom of the 100-400 a lot easier to manage than the twist zoom of the 70-200. Some folks feel otherwise, I know.
6. Adding/removing a teleconverter in the field is possible, but nontrivial. Still, 140-400 is not a bad range; and quite competitive with the 100-400. There were shots I missed because I did or did not have the teleconverter on at the wrong time.
7. From 70-200mm (i.e. without a teleconverter) this lens is about two stops faster than the 100-400. In fact, it’s as fast as any zoom lens I know of. Only a few primes are faster. For wild birds I don’t need this, but it was helpful indoors at the zoo.
8. The image stabilization does help. Though subject motion was often a problem, I rarely felt like I couldn’t hold the lens steady enough for the shot. I didn’t have to worry about the shutter speed. Aside from subject motion, 1/100s or faster was fine for this lens. (Of course, I’d do better still with a camera body with better high ISO such as the 7D or 1D Mark IV. I don’t like to shoot the 50D above ISO 400, and prefer ISO 200 if the light allows.)

And a couple of points probably not specifically related to this lens:

1. Use flash at the feeders. The difference is like night and day, though I should try this without a teleconverter at f/2.8. However there was a large group of folks there today so I didn’t get too close. (Lens aside, I really need to get more comfortable with flash, both as fill and main light. I’m just not fluent with what to use when, and even when I know how much of what kind of flash I want, I have real trouble figuring out which buttons to push to make it happen. In fact, the last time I tried to shoot indoors, I mucked the flash up so badly I had to do a factory reset on the camera to recover.)
2. Must remember to use manual exposure mode for flight photography. Backgrounds change too rapidly to keep up with exposure compensation in Av mode.

Bottom Line: this is not a bad combination, and just maybe better than the 100-400, though it’s not as obvious to me as to some other folks who’ve tried this. If you want a 70-200 lens, then buying a 2X teleconverter makes way more sense than buying an extra 100-400 lens, or even a 400mm f/5.6. However if you primarily want a 400mm lens, then the answer is not so apparent.

Factors in favor of the 60D:

Factors in favor of the 50D:

Bottom line: if you want to shoot video, the 60D is a no-brainer; and if you’re buying a new camera anyway, you might choose the 60D, especially if you don’t shoot fast action. However there’s very little reason for anyone happy with their 40D or 50D to upgrade. The 60D offers very little new to interest photographers.

The real upgrades from the 50D are the 7D, the 5D Mark II, or, for the truly obsessed, the 1D Mark IV. In the 1.6 crop factor body, the 7D is still the Canon to beat, combing the best of both the 50D and 60D with several additional improvements to boot. (19 point autofocus, three custom modes, video, 18 MP, 8 FPS). I bought my 50D before the 7D was released, and couldn’t quite justify the upgrade. I’d rather spend the money on lenses. I suspect that’s likely to remain true until we get a 70D or an 8D in a couple of years. Maybe by that point I’ll even have talked myself into a 1D. :-)

Canon 60D

The 60D was decidedly underwhelming. In some ways, it’s a downgrade from the 50D, especially if you don’t want to shoot video. It is slightly lighter, which is nice, and the controls it removed are controls I’ve never used anyway. Perhaps I’d find a use for the articulating screen. However I was really hoping for something that would be an improvement on the 7D, not merely a slight upgrade over a Rebel. Features I was looking for included better high ISO performance, waterproof, 45 point autofocus, better autofocus, ring of fire, and the ability to autofocus at f/8. Just maybe this camera has less noise at medium and high ISO than the 50D does. Once again, we’ll have to wait for reviews to find out. However it failed to meet all the other desiderata. At $1099 (body only) it is reasonably priced, but unless you want to shoot video you might well prefer the slightly cheaper 50D.

Two New Teleconverters

Canon released new “Mark III” models of both their well-regarded 1.4x tele-converter and their not so well-regarded 2X tele-converter. It’s not immediately clear what, if anything, is really new about these two pieces. Personally, I’d love to see a 1.4x tele-converter that works with any lens, not just the longer lenses. I’d also love to see a 1.4x tele-converter that didn’t lose a stop of light. Almost as good would be a 2X tele-converter that only lost one stop of light, or even simply that didn’t suck. We’ll have to wait for the reviews to see just how good or bad these are. If they’re just a slightly improved version of the Mark II teleconverters, I doubt I’ll buy either one, especially at $500 apiece.

70-300 mm L series zoom

At first glance, this lens really impressed me, and I was getting out my credit card, but then I realized I had misread the specs. I thought it was f/4 at the long end, but in fact it’s f/5.6. That makes it a lot less attractive since it can’t take a tele-converter while still autofocusing. The 1.2m minimum focusing distance is still very impressive though. I can’t wait to see what the maximum magnification is. This could turn out to be a really nice lens for butterflies, dragonflies, wasps, and other large flying insects. However, without the tele-converter, I suspect it probably won’t be as nice as the 300mm prime, no matter how good the optics are. Still, I’m willing to be surprised. If the magnification factor is actually in the ballpark of .4x or so, it could be a real contender, especially at only $1500, comparable to the 100-400mm zoom and the 300mm f/4 and 400mm f/5.6L primes.

The new 400 F/2.8L IS 2

My friend Steve Nanz has shot with the predecessor to this lens for years, with great results, but I’ve never considered it. For a lens that heavy and expensive, I want a lot more reach. Still, one nice new feature of this lens is that it’s a full 1.5 kg lighter. That’s a big improvement. Update, first price is $11,000! For that much money you could buy the 800mm.

EF 8-15mm f/4 L USM fisheye zoom lens

So far from what I shoot, it’s completely irrelevant to me. I’d rather have the 10-22mm EFS anyway.

The new 500 F/4L IS 2 and 600 F/4L IS II series lenses

It’s about time that Canon showed nature photographers some love. Depending on price point, these could be very nice upgrades for photographers who don’t want to go all the way to the 800 mm f/5.6L lens.

The 300 mm f/2.8 IS II

This is perhaps the most interesting announcement in the batch. Since it will take a 2X tele-converter and autofocus even on a non-pro body, this should be some real competition for the 400mm f/4 DO lens that’s been the handheld choice of most professional bird photographers for the last few years. Close focus is a respectable 2m; not macro range but a reasonable 20% improvement over the model it replaces. If it’s not too incredibly expensive — say under $3000 — I might even have to buy myself one, especially if the new 2X tele-converter performs as well as the old 1.4 X. teleconverter did. However that’s unlikely. The old model costs $4500 or so, and one thing Canon hasn’t learned from computer manufacturers is the art of releasing better models for less money. Likely this one will cost at least several hundred dollars more than the previous model. Update: looks like it’s about $7000, way more than the 400mm f/4 DO. For that price, I’ll stick with the 300mm f/4L IS or the 400mm f/5.6L.

What was missing?

I’m most disappointed that the rumored 200 mm f/4L macro lens was not released. I don’t know if this was ever more than a rumor, or if maybe we’ll see one at some point in the future. However, Canon’s 180 mm macro lens is way behind the curve and could use a serious upgrade.

I had also heard rumors of a 100 to 400 mm zoom that maintained f/4 throughout its range. That was also missing, though perhaps the rumor passers were thinking of the 70-300 mm L series zoom. Still, that lens has too large aperture and/or too short a long end to be really attractive.

There is a point at which physics gets in the way of some of the lenses I would like to see. However, camera technology advances a lot faster than lens technology these days. I’m still hopeful that someone is going to release a reasonably priced SLR body that has much better autofocus than we’ve seen so far, and can autofocus it f/8 or even slower. The one area where cameras do seem to be making really significant advances is a noise reduction at higher ISOs. It’s now routine to shoot at ISO 400, and if you need more speed even ISO 1200 is completely reasonable. One thing it would be easy for cameras to do, but which can it really hasn’t figured out yet, is a shooting mode in which the ISO is shifted rather than the aperture or shutter speed. Or perhaps a shooting mode in which both ISO and shutter speed and aperture are shifted but in a certain sequence within a certain range. For instance, I’d like to be able to program my camera for a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second, an ISO between 400 and 1200, and an aperture from f/5.6 to f/16. That is, the camera would fix the shutter speed, and then figure out the best combination of ISO and aperture to match that shutter speed, and if it still had light to spare, then maybe increase the shutter speed. That would actually be fairly easy to do, especially compared to some of the physics tricks that have to be played to improve the actual optics. This is a simple matter of software. In essence, I like to be able to download a simple algorithm for choosing the levels for birds and another for choosing the levels for bugs to my camera and map them to the custom function buttons that I otherwise mostly don’t use. Nikon has a piece of this, as do some point and shoots, though none of them support quite this much. I’m not sure why the Canon professional cameras haven’t caught up here.

What are the Lightroom equivalents of these values? Is there a mathematical formula that converts from Photoshop’s black, white, and midpoint slider values to Lightroom’s Exposure, Blacks, Recovery, Fill Light, Brightness, and Contrast sliders?

Here’s a harvestman with Lightroom’s default settings:

Here’s the same harvestman with manual tone adjustments. Notice how much clearer it is, and a lot closer to its “true” colors in the field:

And here it is again with auto tone:

In general, autotone seems to have more trouble with darker settings than with brighter ones. It may also have trouble with a darker figure at the center compared to a brighter background (not uncommon when shooting tiny bugs.) though that’s not obvious in this picture.

The initial tone settings on all photos are:

Exposure: 0.00
Recovery 0:
Fill Light: 0
Blacks: 5
Brightness: +50
Contrast: +25

Recovery 0 and Fill Light 0 make sense. A properly exposed photo doesn’t need either of these, and how much of which will vary widely from one photo to the next. Buy why set Blacks to 5? That’s almost always too high for my photos.

Why is Brightness set to to 50 and exposure to 0? Why not set exposure to .5 and Brightness to 0 instead? Or why 50 and not 45 or 55? or 25 or 65? How were these numbers arrived at?

Why is Contrast +25 and not +20 or +30? Where did these values come from? Is it plausible that they’re all multiples of 5?

Second question: Auto Tone. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It almost never picks a reasonable recovery or fill light value if a photo needs that. How is it calculated? Has Adobe ever explained what’s happening here? The one thing I’ve been able to determine is that cropping doesn’t seem to affect the results. I.e. Lightroom makes its adjustments based on the entire photo rather than the cropped portion. It might do better if it would just look at the piece of the image I want to keep.

As I said, I use Lightroom, but I suspect the questions are the same for Photoshop and anything that uses Adobe Camera Raw. Can one play with the algorithm at all? I know how to make a preset that chooses fixed values, or that uses Auto Tone, but I’d like a little more control, something that can consider the nature of the photograph itself before choosing the adjustments. Is there any way to do that?