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iMovie 11 review

November 4, 2010 By

iMovie is one of these apps may proish shooter dont want to touch, yet could benefit a lot from. I know because I used to be in this category. iMovie felt too amateurish compared to FCP for me to even dare to use it. At each iLife release, I would give it a shot but never managed to complete a project, always feeling too restricted.

Enters iMovie11. It is still very amateurish at its core (Movie trailers & themes), yet it has some very practical features which make it a great tool to edit something in a rush or to get a draft.

Lets review some of its key features.

Good

Edit native H.264

The first of these features is that you do not need to transcode your clips to ProRes. It saves times and HD space so you can start editing as soon as you are home.

Visual segment selection

Being able to visually select clip segments without having to watch the whole clip is extremely useful. While it is not new and it is also (somewhat) possible in Final Cut, it has to be my favourite feature of iMovie.

Rolling shutter

This little checkbox took a lot of people by surprise. First because it is not advertised on Apple site and second because it actually works. Well, for panning shots. You still have to be careful about jelloying your clip but at least pans are not a dont-do anymore.

FCP XML export

Once you have your rough cut, you can export the clip into a FCP XML file to continue the edit in FCP (or Premiere). I dont know if this features was there in previous version but its the first time I went far enough in my edits to make use of it.

Less good

Clip import

iMovie gives you two choices regarding clips import: either move the files to your project folder or copy them. There is no way to just reference them. I guess the development team does not want to confuse users so they decided to put all project related files in a single directory.

Clip grading

No matter which clip I used, I never managed to make the adjustment sliders work. They systematically destroy my clips. If you are not planning to grade your clips in another software, I highly suggest to not shoot flat or you will end up with a near impossible clip to grade in iMovie.

Compression

While iMovie offers presets to most popular video sharing sites, there are no ways to control the quality of each of these presets. And unfortunately, these presets really damage image quality. If you want to do something decent, you either have to use the QT export or Compressor (via FCP XML).

No precise editing

While I love the fast and rough way to select clips to insert in the timeline, I wish there was a way to trim clips at a specific timecode.

Overall impression

If you can’t afford Final Cut or Premiere Pro, iMovie is the way to go. It is way better than Premiere Element (which was a big deception). Then again, even if you cut using pro apps, you may want to give it a shot, it is fun!

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40% rebate on Capture One 5 Pro

September 30, 2010 By

To most photographers, there are only two ‘serious’ apps to manage and process RAW pictures: Apple Aperture and Adobe LightRoom.

Let me present you a third option: Capture One. While not as popular as the two others, yet it is the one used by most high-end commercial/fashion/portrait photographers. Why? It has incredible color management tools. It is truly leagues ahead of the others in terms of what you can do with the colors. While you have to use a Phase One medium format body to benefit from all its features, there is still a lot of goodies you can use.

My two favorites are the focus mask and focus tool. These two features are priceless when you have to select the best shots out of a 500 pictures photoshoot! Go take a look at the features page to see what else it has to offer.

So, if it is so good, why so few people use it? Some would blame Apple and Adobe marketing, but I think the real reason is that CaptureOne is not good for most photographers. By design the application assumes the image  will be processed in Photoshop to correct imperfections. That is why it does not offer as many non destructive editing tools as the others. When I talked about this to a Capture One guru, he told me that pro photographers should limit their job at taking pictures and sharing their vision. Makeup artist & retoucher should handle the rest. While I dont really agree with this, the guy is making way more money than me with his photography so I guess it is working for him.

So, interested in giving Capture One 5 a try? There is currently a 40% rebate on the Pro version if you use the coupon code 5PRO when checking out. The code is good until the end of the month so hurry up, download the demo and see if you like it or not!

Any Capture One user here?

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Lightroom 3 Review Pt 3: The Develop Module Updates: ACR 6.1, Improved Noise Reduction, Lens Correction Tool

August 11, 2010 By

This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post and the second part here.

ACR 6.1

The newest incarnation of Lightroom uses the new Adobe Camera Raw 6.1 for it’s RAW conversion. Since this is a review of Lightroom and not ACR, I’m not going to get into the nuances of the newest ACR suffice to say that overall it appears to be an improvement over previous versions. One of the first things new users will notice is an exclamation point icon on the bottom of some images. This message is that LR wants to apply the new ACR default settings to the image. Upon allowing the update, you will notice a slight change in the handling of shadows, color rendition and a few other areas and overall, it looks good. If you’re someone who prefers the camera manufacturers software for RAW conversion, you’re probably still going to prefer those. The color rendition, quality of detail and overall fidelity provided in those programs (Canon Photo Professional, can’t speak for NX2) still has an edge over Adobe’s CR. This should be expected, given that ACR accommodates almost all types of RAW images and therefore isn’t quite as specialized as those from the Camera makers. That said, for those who do prefer ACR for it’s convenience and options will be very pleased with the new engine overall.

The only downside to the new engine is that you need to have ACR 6.1  running on your system, meaning you need to be running Photoshop CS5. If not, than you will need to render RAW images in LR before opening in Photoshop, which means an extra TIF (if that’s your selected preference for external editing) on your drive and more time spent waiting for an editable-image to be created before being re-opened. Of course, LR offers the option of “open anyway” rather then “render using Lightroom” but the results are inconsistent and frankly a bit unreliable for accurate rendition and conversion. So, if you’re not running CS5 be prepared for a little extra leg work to reap the full benefits of Lightroom3’s develop Module.

Noise Reduction Improvement

Adobe is pushing heavily the improved performance of Noise Reduction in LR3, which is no surprise since Noise Reduction is an item of large interest for photographers given the “Noise Wars” being waged between the camera manufacturers to push the high-iso-noise-performance envelop further and further. So the question is, how good is LR’s new noise reduction? The short answer is very good, in fact certainly better than previous versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. Luminance and color noise are handled nicely with details staying largely intact (compared to previous versions) and realistic. To get a sense of the improvement, I’ve set up the comparison below between LR3 and LR2, Aperture3 and noise Photoshop plugins Nik Dfine and Imageonic Noiseware. I’ll be posting the results soon.

Lens Correction Tool


Another crucial addition to the develop module is the inclusion of the Lens Correction tool. The LC too is taken directly from Photoshop, with all of the same parameters with the exception of scale and edge transparency (I would not recommend using the LC tool for scaling anyway). In addition to the default Photoshop parameters, Lightroom has raised the bar by including it’s own camera/lens profiles- similar to DXO software. These profiles, when applied, automatically correct a the image based on the lens and camera preset detected by LR. This is an excellent feature, and works well for most images. I would, as a recommendation use the automatic profiles as a starting point, as different images shot in varying situations will certainly require different levels of correction. Another great feature is the ability to batch lens correct, as the lens correct option has been added to the list of options when syncing develop settings across a number of photographs.  Overall, the LC tool is yet another vital work flow time saver especially when trying to stay solely in Lightroom for image editing.

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Lightroom 3 Review: part 2

July 30, 2010 By

This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post.

Import Dialog


One of the first things you’ll notice about LR3 is the new import Dialog, which is largely different than previous versions. The simple dialog box of old is gone and replaced with a full screen window complete with a large preview area. The preview area is the most significant improvement- you can now preview images and video before importing and can un-check any you don’t want to ingest- a nice feature (and overdue!). However, in exchange for a more sophisticate import dialog we are also given a slightly more complex interface, with essential source and destination information on opposite sides of the screen. This can make a normally simple task of simply importing, renaming, and adding metadata, cataloging and backing up a little more tedious. It also doesn’t help that they’ve now included a few seemingly unimportant options for these tasks, for example the rename images by shoot in addition to custom name. In other words, LR3 will add the words “shoot_whateveryouwant-1”. It would be just as easy to do this with a custom name, and with this option they’ve just made the list unnecessarily longer. Another annoyance of the new import dialog is that you will get it when importing ANY new images, even simply updating a folder. This essentially creates an extra step in the workflow, i.e. importing tiffs or psd back into LR after they’ve been processed in Photoshop. For photogs who require speed and consistency and are used the efficiency of previous versions of Lightroom in this regard may be surprised when they find themselves being slowed up by these little nuances of the new import dialog.

[Read more...]

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Aperture 3 Review

February 28, 2010 By

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!

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Aperture 3

February 9, 2010 By

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.

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EOS E1 plugin for FCP: why?

February 6, 2010 By

A lot of people talked about the announcement of the EOS E1 plugin for FCP yesterday so I feel like I have to talk about it too. As far as we know, it is all vaporware so far since the software is not released yet. Old time blog readers might remember this post from Vincent Laforest testing a similar tool developed by Glue Tools (which has not been released yet, hence my lack of faith in unreleased software!).

So, what is all the fuzz about anyways?

Why do you need a tool to import files from the CF card to your computer? The finder/Explorer is already doing a fine job. Well, the first reason is to make the file importing task part of the FCP workflow. When using the Log & Trans window, you can attach other process to the import action, for examples sending the file to compressor for transcoding, make a backup copy on another drive, add meta tags, etc… Pretty cool and a nice time saver, especially if you are working on a set.

Now about what it cant do…

I have seen  a few cut&paste reports of people saying the plugin would allow users to start the edit with the video still in the camera/CF card. Sorry but this sounds more like a sentence taken from the generic Log & Transfert feature description than what you can expect to do from this plugin. You still need to transcode to ProRes if you want real time editing, and it is not like we are shooting 45 minutes long clips with the 5D, we are limited to 12 minutes so no real need to partial file import. Actually, I dont even know if it is possible with the H.264 codec to do partial import without re-encoding the whole clip.

So, is this a big announcement or not?

Yes it is because the Log & Trans tool is part of a professional work flow. Pros are used to it and expect it. While not a show stopper, it was keeping the 5D away from being seen as a ‘real’ tool on a production set.

The plugin is not out yet so we can’t confirm its features but I hope the file metadatas include exposure settings,  lens used, camera id, etc…

Once released, the plugin will be available here.

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Aperture 3 features Wish List

July 25, 2009 By

aperture

Now that Final Cut Studio 3 is out, lets talk (and guess) about what we will find in the upcoming Aperture update.

I have been an Aperture user since day 1. In version 1, is was revolutionary but slow. V1.5 brought a nice speed boost and V2 introduced a few new tools and the plugin architecture. So what should we expect for v3?

First, meta tagging has to be improved as I talk about it a while ago. I am so frustrated about the tagging system that I am not tagging as much as I used to, which is a bad thing since it is one of the reasons why I picked Aperture instead of Lightroom in the first place… In fact, improvements to the tagging functionality has been so slow that I expect it to be one of the focal point of v3 with the release of automatic tagging of pictures which was started in the latest iPhoto update.

[Read more...]

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Got a reply from On One software about the DSLR Remote

June 3, 2009 By

I received a reply from Mike Wong @ On One regarding my review of the DSLR Remote iPhone application. Mike had the generosity to go over each element I outlined in the wish list and to give us a glimpse of what is coming in the 1.1 update. So here is the relevant part of the email (with my comments).

Auto focus

Assuming that you are not shooting in Live View mode and that your lens is set to AF, the camera will automatically attempt to auto-focus when you press the fire button. You’re not alone in asking this question though so I’m going to be soliciting some feedback from users to find out more about what people are looking for here. As for focusing during Live View, that is something we have planned for a 1.1 update.

Yes, I was thinking about Live View.

Video recording

Also planned for the 1.1 release is to add start & stop for the video recording function on the 5D Mark II

YES! If we could change exposure settings while shooting, it would be even better ;-)

Adding filters to the live view

I’m not sure how we would do this. I’ll share the feedback with the product team though.

Big screen mode

If you rotate the iPhone to landscape mode, the controls disappear.

Oups, my fault! When I tried to rotate my iPhone while I was testing the app and nothing happened. I will blame this on my iPhone then.

Bracketing Assistant

Another feature we have planned for the 1.1 release.

YES, YES!

Shortcuts to some user made presets

If you set up your C1, C2 and C3 buttons with a custom function and then move the dial to one of them, the camera shoots in those modes. You just can’t change into one of those modes from the iPhone.

Too bad, I guess we can’t get everything we ask for in a single update.

Thank you very much for the response Mike. If you have not done so yet, go get the app before the special pricing ends (in$ instead of 20$). Looking at the incoming features of the next release, it is  a no brainer!

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DSLR Remote review with a Canon 5D Mark II

June 2, 2009 By

As stated a few days ago, I bought the DSLR Remote on the day of release, picking the Pro version. For a 8$ difference, I don’t understand how someone could go with the lower-end alternative.

Installation & Setup

On One Software really did a great job to make the setup process as easy as it could be. Basically, all you need to do is  download and install the server application on your computer, plug the camera via USB, start the iPhone app and voila!

Note: If you are like me and dont read instructions, you might be looking for Liveview and the intervalometer for while. They are hidden under the FIRE button. You need to press the FIRE button and hold it for a few seconds to make the options appear. Took me a moment to figure that one out!

Things I liked

1:1 zooming

Being able to zoom in at 1:1 is incredible. It allows you to review shots faster at the press of a button. The problem with the current implementation is that you either zoom at 1:1 or you dont. It is impossible to do fractional zooming like in the iPhone photo app.

Note: you can only zoom after the shot is taken and zooming is disabled in live view.

Liveview

Adjusting the exposure settings from the iPhone and automatically seen the update on the screen is very cool. Well, its like the first time I used liveview but now I can adjust the lights as I am looking at the result on the iPhone. Brilliant!

Time lapse (Intervalometer)

If there is one thing that I hate about Canon bodies, compared to those from Nikon, is how crappy their firmware are. Nikon gives its user more control over bracketing and allow them to set time lapses in ways that are even better than what you can do with the dedicated and over priced Canon remote trigger. DSLR Remote solves part of this issue by giving its user the ability to take X shots (up to 1000) at any given constant interval.

Note: if you activate the bracketing, only one picture will be taken per interval period. My suggestion to the developper would be to add a check box to set the camera to take 3 (or even better, x) consecutive shots per interval.

Things missing / Wish list

Auto focus

You have to prefocus, even the AF button of the 5D can’t be used remotely. Blame it on the Canon API.

Video recording

While I would have been happy with just the ability to press the record button and have the camera starts recording, a more advanced version would be even better. I am thinking here about the ability to zoom while recording. Doing so would transform the iPhone into the perfect follow focus screen. And, while I am at it, what about plugging the iPhone directly into the camera? (On One Software said that is something they plan to explore once the new iPhone SDK is out, cool!).

Adding filters to the live view

This is a follow up to my previous point. If it was possible to have a high pass filter on top of the video preview, it would make follow focusing even easier/better. I doubt the iPhone has enough CPU power to do this but still, everyone is allowed to dream, no? A more realistic request might be to enable/disable zebra mode with the press of a button when shooting pictures.

Big screen mode

Once the parameters are set, the only required button is FIRE. Why not then hide all the other buttons and put the picture full screen? Even better, rotate it according to the orientation of the iPhone.

Bracketing Assistant

I love bracketing. I don’t know how many times it saved me  when shooting outside or in HDR. Unfortunately, DSLR Remote does not offer a bracketing assistant. I would have loved to be able to set it up like the intervalometer: assigning a number of pictures to take and the variation in exposure between each shot. This feature alone would motivate me to bring a laptop in my bag the next time I go in the wild.

Shortcuts to some user made presets

I hate switching my camera settings, even more so if the menu I need to change is deeply nested into the custom functions. Wouldn’t it be great to click on one icon and have all your HDR landscape preferences loaded? Then click another to move into time lapse mode? Of course to be really useful the software would need to be able to access the camera custom functions and I have no idea if it is possible right now…

What I couldn’t test

I wish I had the wireless battery grip to see if it worked. I think it does since it allows tethered shooting but I would love to know if someone has tried it.

Conclusion

Should you get the application? At the current intro price of 10$, it is a no brainer. It is obviously  a very first try and some more iterations will be required to satisfy the more demanding users. Yet, the current version does what it is advertised for, never crashed during the 200+ shots I took and saved me from round tripping between the camera and the light stands while adjusting lights to do some product shots.

I am happy.

Buy DSLR Camera Remote
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Buy DSLR Camera Remote lite
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Btw, there is a trouble shooting document here in case you run into any issues and a FAQ.

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