So, I have been playing with Aperture 3 for over two weeks now. I haven’t explored fully its 200 ‘new’ features yet, but I have played enough to make up my mind about it.
I am not going to go over every new features since a lot of people have already done it. Instead, I am going to talk about the stuff that matters to photographers.
Speed
I am very sorry to say that but the current version of Aperture is slow. Browsing from one picture to the next is slow unless you are in quick preview mode (Press P to toggle). Once you get into the habit of switching between modes, it is not that much of a burden but remember that you can only edit pictures in normal mode.
Before some fan boys reply that it isnt slow, know that I did everything I could to speed it up: rebuild library, use a fast machine with RAID-0 drives, etc… With the same setup LightRoom runs circles around A3. That is sad.
Adjustments
Noise
Aperture 3 noise reduction is good and would stand well on its own if it was not of the spectacular results one can get in LightRoom 3 or with Neat Image. If shooting in low light is important to you and you want to use A3, get Neat Image.
The Presets
I have a love/hate relationship with presets. Amateurs see them as the be all end all of image editing, thinking they can get pro results with a click of the mouse without even understanding what is going on. A3 surfs on the preset wave started with LR to get pretty much the same results (given the same adjustment panels). Actually, I prefer the way A3 handles presets than LR: you can either combine presets by picking them one after the other, or replacing them by option clicking the new preset.
Curve
A3 has a nice curves adjustment tool. You can select a color from the image and it will place an adjustment point at corresponding position on the curve. Quite useful to clean up background or changing cloths color. Remembers me of the way Capture One 4 handle curves.
Brushes
There are a lot of talk about the new non destructive adjustment brushes. Here again, the A3 team fell a bit short. While the brushes work very well, you cannot use the same brush with two different adjustment level. I correct myself, if you click on the option gear, you can add as many distinct adjustment brushes as you want. Cool!
The missing adjustments
Where the hell is the grad filter? It has to be one of the most important filter one can use, yet it is not there. It really makes me wonder if the Aperture dev team actually use the software!
The other missing adjustment is the tone splitting. While I think LR user overuse this tool (especially in presets), it has proven time and again to be a key feature to quickly set a mood on a batch of pictures. Here again, the adjustment isn’t there.
The vignette tool has not evolved at all. I was hoping to at least get the choice of going toward white instead of black as in LR or to select the desired affected corners but we got nothing new.
Import
I love the new import screen and its link to Places. If you have a mix of geolocated pictures and non geolocated ones, once you start to import, the software will ask you if you want to associate the locations. Brilliant!
Conclusion
Unfortunately, A3 is not what I would call a release ready product. While it has some incredible features that I havent covered (slideshows & hybrid stuff) it fails to cover the basic by giving photographers what they need the most: speed and controls. The dev team spent too much time working on ‘new’ features instead of working the app core.
Hopefully, a software update will come in a few months to correct these issues but right now I can only recommend A3 as a slide show editing platform. Actually, pro photographers might want to get it for that feature alone. It is really that great!
Canon rumors has a picture from a presentation where we can see the list of features which will be added with the next firmware in March.
The features are:
- Manual sound recording level & meters
- Histogram display when shooting in manual mode
- AV and TV mode for shooting video
- Increased audio sampling rate to 48k.
- 24/25 fps at 1080p.
So what does that mean?
First, no 60p720. That really sucks if it is true! I wont talk too much about this simply because everybody must feel the same as I do about it.
On the other hand, the new features are great! Shooting in AV/TV mode is an incredible feature if you need to shoot a subject moving in a variety of exposure and want to maintain a constant look.
While I dont care too much about the audio features, I know a lot of people who will appreciate it.
I kept the histogram for last. If there is one feature that can redeem the lack of 60p720, it has to be this one. While it is impossible to get a perfect exposure by judging the LCD image, using the histogram makes this job ridiculously easy.
What about stills?
Seems like there is nothing new for still photographers. This is a little bit ridiculous. How hard can it be to add a 5-7-9 exposures bracketing or auto ISO limits? Lets just hope there was a second slide to this presentation.
Shipping date
The week of March 17 is the rumored date and fits in the time line I was given (post Olympics) so I tend to believe it. I guess we will see soon enough!
Canon is now hosting a full page in its digital learning center about the FCP E1 Plugin that we previously talked about.
Canon also used the opportunity to send a quick jab to Nikon when talking about H.264: This is an ideal file type for video capture in an SLR camera, delivering relatively compact file sizes with image quality noticably superior to alternate video compressions (such as Motion JPEG).
From what I have been able to gather from the various screenshots, there is not much new. On the contrary, some of the wished for features (lens & exposure metadata) are not present.
As I predicted, the sentence ’start editing right form the CF card‘ wasnt really true. The plugin converts the clips to ProRes (you can pick any variations) before you can do anything with them. Canon talks about a 3x speed gain over the standard Compressor transcoding. That is nice but that is about the same thing you can get by using MPEGstream clip. Actually, I wonder if that is what they are using under the hood!
For who is this for?
Log and transfer is a workflow tool. It is near useless for 95% of the 5D users, but, for those who are going to use it, it is incredibly useful at helping them to organize their files and automating their backup strategy. Oh, there is also that Timecode thing that would be so useful if there was an easy way to synchronize the date/time on multiple camera at once.
While there is no harm in installing the plugin once it is available (March), unless you are shooting against a script, the organizing features of the plugin will be overkill.
BTW, thanks to David Guset for the link to the Canon page.
News from BeachTek
First, got this email from BeachTek:
To everyone waiting for the new DXA-5Da XLR adapter for DSLR cameras, they have now shipped ahead of schedule to both B&H and Adorama. The first shipment is in very limited quantities but we are expecting the next, much larger batch to arrive before the end of March. The new DXA-SLR with built-in preamplifiers and phantom power is still on schedule to be shipped by March 30th.
next, the MultiMount5D will be available at the end of March for 89$.
Vimeo goes 1080p and HTML5!
You can read about it here. I dont know which one is the most important: 1080p or HTML5… So far, these upgrades wont affect many people/video since most people are not using a HTML5 browser and the clips are rarely uploaded at 1080p resolution.
At least, now you know and you should change your Compressor presets to use the new resolution.
5D Firmware update
A lot of people have been talking about the upcoming firmware update. Planet5D is now talking about a March launch. Guess what? That is what I have been talking about since 2009! The release of the firmware was bound to the Olympics. Canon wants videographers to shoot the events with the 1DMrkkIV and not the 5D (they want people to see pro using the pro bodies). Once the Olympics are over, they will push the new firmware.
Zeiss new HDSLR lenses
I could say a lot of things of why this is big news, but Vincent did it very well already in his post.
Aperture3
I have been using A3 for over a week now. Expect a detailed review by the end of the weekend.
Edit: forgot to add this link to a quick overview of the video feature of A3 by the folks at Still Motion.
New content
I have been working on a few personal projects recently expect to see some of my work soon. Both in stills and motions.
Art Beat is giving away a free clip every day.
Visit the link and register to get your clips because you never have enough cloud/wave/nature/etc clips. The quality is incredible and with some color correction, you can give these clips a totally different style. Best of all: they are all free!
Actually, just browsing the library is a nice source of inspiration (just wasted 12 minutes doing so)! I love the church series for example.
Since so many of you liked the 5DMrkII vs 7D one, here is the newest iteration from Philip. I am sure a lot of people can relate to this. Thanks to Harry from Beach Tek for pointing out the clip, I almost missed it.
Just received this email from our BeachTek rep friend:
I found a Dealer that has stock of 6 DXA-5D adapters with phantom power. You can contact Nick at Roberts Distributing at 800-726-5544. They are selling them for $333.33 each.
The newer cheaper model (DXA-5Da) does not have phantom power so this might be a good opportunity for you to grab on if you need it and save over the new DXA-SLR model we talked about earlier.
First, I would like to correct myself. Contrary to what I said in my initial post, it is possible to buy a digital version of the app. You just need to download the demo and on the opening screen, just click on the buy button and it will lead you to a store page where you can either buy a digital version of the app (basically, just a serial number) or order the standard DVD box. But before doing so, I think you should read the whole post…
Note: watch update at the bottom of the post…
Read the rest of this entry »
If there is one thing no one was expecting this week, it has to be the release of a new HDSLR camera. Yet, that is exactly what Canon did. The new Rebel T2i is, on paper, an incredible package priced ridiculously low.
For the photographer
18mp on a 1.6x crop factor, I will have to see some real life sample shots to judge image quality but it is interesting to see the ISO going to 6400 (extendable to 12k) for an entry level toy. That is quite good if image quality is at the rendez-vous.
It also benefits from a lot of features that used to be restricted to the double prosumer bodies like improved auto focus and light metering. From a photographer perspective, it should be considered a decent upgrade for any 50D or older camera owner (if you dont need the burst rate). At least, from a specs sheet perspective.
For the videographer
Remember how 5DMrkII owners felt when the 7D was released? Well, 7D owners are now feeling the same! The new rebel can shoot video full manual and has variable frame rate (24p, 25p, 30, 50p and 60p), something to make 5DMrkII owners jealous. I know because I am!
Of course, the camera will probably not have the same low light image quality as the 5DMrkII (and maybe the 7D) and it is not full frame so it does have its limitations. Yet, it is a fraction of the cost of its ‘better’ alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »
Finally out! It was about time.
I will not list all the new features (over 200), if that is the kind of stuff you like reading about, head over the official Apple page. Instead, I will list the features that mean the most for us.
First, facial recognition. I already talked about it in my Aperture 3 prediction about 8 months ago. This is a big thing if you are often shooting the same people. I am just worried about how long it is going to take to pass over my 192 gigs of pictures…
Next on the line is Places. Another feature that most travel photographers will love. I know because I had to geotag over 2000 pictures when I came back from Vietnam. Not a fun experience! At the local scale, it is also going to be useful to organize pictures when doing on a location scouting day. I used to import them in iPhoto just for that and it was a real pain.
Video import and playback directly in Aperture! I love this one for two reasons: first because it is going to be useful to do everything in a single operation and also because it shows how Apple recognize HDSLR as a trend and not a novelty. As soon as I finish the download, I will see if it if possible to batch process video files automatically for conversion to ProRes.
Slideshows. I never used these in Aperture. I preferred working within either Lightroom, Animoto or Motion. But, with the new slideshows, I just have one thing to say: wow! I am impressed. 95% of the work I used to do in Motion is doable in Aperture and it looks even easier!
Finally, Brushes. It was about time Aperture got these! None destructive editing at the pixel level has been the reason why I moved to Lightroom (ok, also because it was faster!). I am glad the feature is now in Aperture since it saves a round trip to Photoshop for 95% of the image corrections.
While waiting for my review, you can read what Chase has to say about it. He was on the beta list so he probably knows more than me!
Note: You can upgrade to Aperture 3 from the Academic version of Aperture 2!
Note2: I havent found an electronic version for the full product, so I had to place an order and download the demo.
