Here are five articles from the last seven days on Photofocus. Bob Coates shows how to pair Aurora HDr and Luminar Flex. Bryan Esler explains cloud backups. Lauri Novak asks “Why did you buy that lens”? Mike Muraz writes on picturing office spaces. Finally, Kevin Ames reviews an 8-bay Drobo.
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Pairing Aurora HDR and Luminar Flex - We have all heard that the best time of day to photo is sunrise and sunset. This is quite true as the sunlight passing through the atmosphere softens the light giving our environment more dimension and a warm glow. But what do you do the rest of the day? Alternatives If you are working with a subject that is relatively small and close to you, adding fill flash, a reflector or using a shaded area can fill the bill. If you are a pro you especially have to be able to bring the image home no matter what the lighting conditions may be. What if your subject is the landscape. And the time you have to photograph —either because of a work schedule or you are traveling — means you either make the shot now or don’t make it at all? Here in Arizona, even if I am out on the trail in time for sunrise, the light turns harsh so fast I needed to find ways to record the scene to my liking. High Dynamic Range (HDR) to the rescue. Grab your tripod if you have one (I use MeFoto Roadtrip for hiking). At the least, find a way to steady your camera. Then make multiple images of the scene by bracketing the exposure using shutter speed. Many cameras these days have ways to accomplish the brackets with a single push of a button. This allows you to increase the dynamic range enabling you to not lose highlights in the bright areas and not loose details in the shadows once the image is processed. I am a Panasonic Lumix G9 user, and with the G9 I can capture up to seven images up to one stop apart on a single button push. Most cameras have a similar feature. This is handy so you don’t have to bump the camera changing settings which can affect the outcome when merging the photos. Aurora HDR 2019 As you may know I was not a fan of earlier versions of HDR software due to the cartoonish look and halos many images had at that time. I’ve been working with the Aurora HDR 2019 software for a number of years and each version has gotten better and better at allowing you to create a natural and realistic HDR image from multiple captures. Luminar Flex Aurora puts the images together well and has a number of Looks you may add within the software which is perfectly fine. One thing I’ve tried with good success is to process a neutral image from the exposures using Aurora. Then take the resulting image into Luminar Flex for some finishing touches. The AI filters make working on separate areas of the image quite a bit easier. For example, the foliage filter and sky filters will isolate changes to those areas with no masking needed. Enhancing the sky and foliage was a piece of cake. I warmed up the scene and red rocks a bit. This was accomplished with adjustment layers and a quick mask with a different Look. One more time Here is another set of images using the same techniques as used above to tame the dynamic beast. Yours in Creative Photography, Bob P.S.: A tripod isn’t totally necessary — I have handheld HDR captures. Aurora HDR 2019 software does have a setting that will auto-align images. Just note that it will add time to the processing and may cause errors. If I don’t have a tripod and need to make a quick HDR, I boost the ISO to make sure the lowest shutter speed will not go blurry and take the brackets a couple of times in case the capture was a little too shaky during during one sequence.
Commercial architecture: Photographing office spaces - Some of my favorite photoshoots over the past year have been office spaces. It’s pretty incredible what some of these new offices look, nothing like what I experienced when I had a corporate job. Not only is the design usually great, but I also get to collaborate closely with my client’s team during the photoshoot, as their staff often serve as models. Showing the space in use in the most important part of office photoshoots. One of the easiest ways to achieve that is to have a person walk through your frame. With the slower shutter speeds you get with interiors, they look blurry and it conveys motion. I recommend shooting several frames to be able to pick an image with the person in the right location and with the right posture. With larger spaces, it’s good to showcase the different uses. Below, we had people occupy the various spaces of the kitchen. Having props (like a phone and a coffee cup) always helps people feel less “staged.” To add some interest to the image, I asked someone to walk on the side, as to not take hide too much of the space. When shooting meeting rooms, it’s important to show people interacting. Giving them a laptop or a tablet can give them something to talk about. The goal is for the interaction to look as genuine as possible, even if they’re talking about sports or something else. If you have a large conference room to shoot, you will need to bring enough people so it doesn’t look empty. Spread people to occupy more space, and have someone give some sort of presentation. An alternative is to show several groups working together. If the space you’re photographing has screens, make sure most of them aren’t just black screens. Display some graphics or images related to what the company does. In the image on the left, we used brain scans for a neuroinformatics department. If you have someone sitting in front of a computer screen, it can’t be a black screen. In the image on the right, I actually added graphics on the screen in post-processing. Finally, with whiteboards, have someone drawing on the board. While people are important for office spaces, sometimes clients want some shots without. In any case, don’t forget to play with perspective: get some one-point perspectives (straight-on) and some two-point perspectives (at an angle). Finally, a few detail shots are important to highlight the main features of the space. It’s also good to get some images of the graphics in the office, such as signs, murals, etc.
Big, fast, protected storage is here! The Drobo 8D - Creating photographs is a lot of exciting fun. Making sure all of those images are stored safely is another matter altogether. Photographers, myself included, love making images both behind the camera and in front of the computer. We want all of them in a place that sends them to the computer at high speed while still offering protection against hard drive failure. Oh. It has to have enough room for years, even decades of photos and, yes, we want that for our video too. Let’s get the disclosures out of the way up front. I received one of the first of the new 8-Bay Drobo 8D units because I am a DroboPro ambassador. I have had it running in my studio now since late October. Here’s what I know about how it solves my working drive/protected storage requirements. What I want in a storage device My overarching requirement is that a storage device has what I call “protected” storage — if one of the array’s hard drives fails, it can be hot-swapped with a new drive. My data must be available during the process. In other words, it must give me access to my files even while a new drive is being added to the system. The amount of storage in the device is expandable without buying a new enclosure. It’s gotta be fast! Video editing requires speedy data transfers. So does working on 50-megabyte RAW files. It has to plug into my desktop Mac Pro directly. That’s a big part of the “fast” requirement. A reasonable size would be nice. Desktop attached storage (DAS) has sit on the desk for the most part. The Drobo 8D Drobo’s new 8D enclosure does everything on my list and more. Here is a feature rundown starting with my requirements. Protected storage The 8D can hold up to 8 hard drives. Out of the box it is set up to protect against single drive failure by default. A checkbox in its free management software, Drobo Dashboard offers a dual disc redundancy option. While choosing this does reduce the capacity of the unit, for anyone using bottom of the line or old drives this is a small price to pay for the additional peace of mind. The 8D — along with all Drobos — indicates a drive failure with a bright red indicator next to the bad drive. Additionally, Drobo Dashboard automatically posts a notification on the MacOS and offers email alerts regarding critical situations. When a red light shows up, replace the drive with a new drive the same size or even larger if you’d like. This is done while the Drobo is running. During the process all of the data on the Drobo is available. Expandable storage There are three things to know about getting more room for digital media with a Drobo. The number of drive bays in the enclosure. The 8D has 8 drive bays. The size of the individual hard drives in the Drobo. Hard drive capacities continue to grow. Bigger drives equal larger storage capacity The price of the hard drives. Higher capacity drives are a lot more money. Good news: The prices continue to fall. 14TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $549.00 each 12TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $368.88 each 10TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $279.99 each 8TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $239.99 each 6TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $179.99 each 4TB Seagate IronWolf drive – $119.99 each Speed This baby is fast. I’m talking fast and furious fast. It has two Thunderbolt 3 ports that deliver more speed than my Mac Pro can handle. Even using a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter the throughput is fast enough to edit 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro. The 8D has a slot in the back for a 2.5″ SSD drive that acts as a live cache that speeds data transfers from the drive array. Additionally, the 8D cascades data to its drives speeding write and reads. There’s more Power failures during data transfers are a problem in most systems. The 8D and the current line of Drobos all feature an onboard battery backup to protect against data loss during an outage. Any data that is in the Drobo when power is lost is automatically moved to onboard flash storage in the Drobo unit. When power is restored, the transfer completes seamlessly. The battery is charged automatically while the Drobo is running and it lasts the life of the unit. The second Thunderbolt 3 port allows daisy chaining up to six other Thunderbolt devices or five of them and a monitor at the end of the chain. The port also provides 15W of slow recharge for USB-C laptops. A new feature that’s exclusive is the log it creates in Drobo Dashboard showing the unit’s uptime. Under the hood The Drobo 8D features intelligent volume management. Ok, you say, What is that? The onboard computer in the 8D allows up to 16 volumes to a total of 128TB of storage. A volume is like a hard drive on the desktop. The difference is that the Drobo manages this depending on the number and size of the drives in the bays. Best of all, any Drobo will work with just two hard drives. Additional drive capacity happens as more drives are added or when smaller ones are retired and replaced with larger ones. This Drobo has the power supply built into the chassis. No external power brick is required. Dual fans keep everything cool dynamically and with quiet efficiency. 8D pricing The Drobo 8D lists for $1299.00 without drives. While almost all 3.5″ SATA hard drives will work, Drobo has a recommended drive chart on its website. This is a conservative chart. I have HGST 7200 rpm along with some Seagate IronWolf 7200 rpm drives in various sizes in my Drobos and have yet to replace one due to failure. My Drobos run 24/7/365. Drobo 8D with drives bundles For those who don’t want to buy drives separately, there are several
Why did you buy that lens? - A couple of years ago, I purchased a new lens, the Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3. Why? Well, I got a great deal on it at WPPI and my Canon 70-300mm, while still working perfectly, was 10 years old. I thought the extra reach would be nice. Also, I rarely buy new gear so I was a bit impulsive. A moment of weakness if you will. I went to a couple of local forest preserves just to get out for a bit. At the first stop as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw two Sandhill Cranes in the grass. So cool. Good thing they were there as there wasn’t really much else of interest to take photos of. I took a few of the dew drops on the grass and that was about it. Just a quick stop and all with my 100-400mm lens. The next stop was one of my favorite places to wander so I parked and went down my usual path. I captured some spring growth. Leaves, dandelions and just was enjoying being outside. Then I caught sight of a Red-Breasted Grosbeak building a nest. I am not a birder, nor do I have any interest in becoming a bird photographer. I am an opportunistic photographer. I photograph what I see. As I walked back to my car I found these Barn Swallows (cover image) hanging out on one of the signs in the parking lot. How can you not photograph them if they’re right in front of you? Especially since I went out with no real plan, no subjects in mind and just wanted to get out of the house and be in nature for a while. Having no clue what types of birds they were, I posted a few of the images on social media and asked for help identifying the birds. Jokingly I said that “I get a 100-400mm lens and all of a sudden I’m a bird photographer.” In reality, there is no chance of that because while they are beautiful and I enjoy seeing them, they are of no real interest to me. That statement prompted someone to ask, “If you aren’t planning to shoot wildlife photography with it, what do you plan to use it for. Just curious.” Lens use and why this lens Fair question I suppose, since the 100-400mm is considered a “wildlife” lens. Though that thought never entered my mind when I purchased it. I shoot mainly architecture, detail shots and landscape-type work. Why do we have to limit what a lens is ‘supposed’ to be for? Well, we don’t of course. This made me think how sometimes we need to not listen to the advertising. Don’t listen to what they say a camera and/or lens is best used for. Use it for what you want. Be creative. Think outside the box and all that. If I had thought of the 100-400mm as a wildlife lens I never would have purchased it. No matter what gear you have, camera, lenses, phones, tablets, etc. shoot what you want, what you feel, what you’re passionate about. Don’t let the gear you have dictate what you take photos of. You are in charge, your creativity, your passions, what and how you see. Push the limits of your gear, ask what if, can I do this, what happens when? Of course, there are limits, but testing those limits and pushing yourself to see the possibilities will make you a better photographer.
Securing your photos with cloud backup - Throughout my photographic career, I’ve tried several backup solutions both on-site and in the cloud. Having lost some photographs in the past, it was important for me to get a system I could count on to not only back up my files but do so in an efficient way that wouldn’t bog down my machine. While I used on-site solutions like multiple external hard drives, I ended up with a Drobo 5D3. But on the cloud side, I had a little more experimentation, going from the now-defunct Mosaic service to Amazon Cloud, to CrashPlan and finally to Backblaze. And six years into my career, I couldn’t be more pleased with where I ended up. I had had a few lost files when I had CrashPlan, due to the fact that it took so long to backup my files. It would constantly lose a connection on my end for whatever reason, and the Mac application was very difficult to set up and use. When I switched to Backblaze, it was like a breath of fresh air, and I got started setting it up right away. Initial setup Like any backup solution, there’s definitely some initial setup that needs to take place. For me, I didn’t want my entire machine backed up — after all, I had a Time Machine backup and kept most of my important files in the cloud. Out of the box, Backblaze is set up to backup your entire system, and there’s no easy way to turn that off. When I went into Settings and clicked General, I started by checking my Drobo and Samsung SSD for backup. Then I went over to the Exclusions tab to customize it even more. You can see I excluded multiple folders on my main Macintosh HD labeled hard drive. There’s some redundancy here to make sure that absolutely none of my hard drive files are backed up. Lightning fast From there I knew I had a ton of data to upload, and that it would take a while. To speed things up, I clicked on the Performance tab and turned off Automatic Threading/Throttle. Then I slid the Manual Throttle all the way to the right where it said Faster Backup. Finally, I changed my Backup Threads to 20 (you can go up to 30). If you do this step, you’ll be alerted that Backblaze recommends no more than 6 threads used. But with my beefed-up iMac, I knew it would be able to handle it, and the upload time was sped up significantly. With no other network activity occurring, I could upload over 1 TB of files with this change, instead of just 56 GB when on the Automatic Threading/Throttle settings. If you have a slower machine and network, you might want to limit this to 6 threads as recommended. After you upload your entire photo library, you can definitely scale this back as well. Other settings to consider Schedule I have my backup schedule set to run continuously, but depending on the power of your computer and network, you might want to run a custom schedule so it backs up only when you’re asleep. Settings > Temporary data drive Backblaze creates temporary copies of files over 30MB during backup. These are by default stored on your internal hard drive, but you can move them to an external drive if you’re running out of hard drive space.
