Adobe Lightroom & Ecosystem

Since I am an Android and PC users some things may be different.

Those using the ecosystem in Adobe there is an easy way to "download" your cellphone images to Lightroom Classic.

First enable sync in Lightroom Classic. You find that in preferences.

From your phones app store or play store install Lightroom mobile. Configure the app to allow sync, mine are 

In Lightroom mobile create an album which is a collection in Lightroom Classic.

When I take a photo with the native or Lightroom camera they are available in "All photos". Now add them to your album.

Magically, if all is configured correctly, they are in Lightroom Classic in the collection. Expect some delay for the network to do it's thing.

ISO what is it? Why do you care?

Base ISO, extended ISO. Low ISO high ISO.

Yes the lower the native ISO range the better. Cameras and sensors are better and better. Use the lowest ISO to get a sharp photo. 

This video provides insight on ISO.

I frequently use Auto ISO to control my Aperture and shutter speed choice. YMMV.

Lightroom mobile and Adobe ecosystem

In Lightroom mobile you can share your edits to others. You can also see the edits on photos others shared. When others upload photos they may allow others to remix, edit , the photo. A new image will be a copy work the new edits. There original photo is not changed. To see what is available tap the globe icon on the lower right. Select an image and tap play. Thas all I know today. But it is neat way to see what others done and may provide insights to  your editing.

Aperture Priority Usually Fails for Me

 Aperture Priority is likely the most  popular mode on your camera. But it frequently results in a blurry subject. Oh yes I have image stabilization on my camera. That's not the  problem. The background is fine. Its the subject that is blurred. You guessed it, it's Shutter speed being to low. 

The theory behind of using Aperture Priority is to set the ISO and the Aperture and the camera will choose the shutter speed to result in a proper exposed photo.  There are 2 problems, one is that metering may fool your camera and give an over or under exposed photo. Ok you can use Exposure Compensation to over come that. The is using Auto ISO not setting a minimum ISO to insure a sharp photo. Since I usually shoot with natural light I am subject to changes to light levels.  In your camera Auto ISO setting you could set a minimum shutter speed and your camera would automatically boost the ISO to get a proper exposure. That works but what is the minimum Shutter Speed should you set?  One stop higher than 1/focal length? So on my 14-150mm which on my 2x crop that means 1/300 sec as a minimum. I would set my auto iso minimum shutter speed 1/600 sec. So my camera would 1/500 or 1/640 seconds.

My choice is to set 1/125 sec when  using Aperture Priority. But my real choice is use Manual.

Really it would be a semi-auto setting since I would use Auto ISO. I would choose my Aperture based on DoF and Shutter Speed based on subject. The ISO would float to give you a proper exposure. You can usually set ISO levels. Usually it is best to choose the base ISO for your camera and the upper limit based on your ISO noise tolerance. My OM-D E-M5 iii will not go above ISO 6400 in Auto. I believe this is because OM Solutions/Olympus above 6400 is an extended ISO.

Image Stabilization On or Off?

 Should you turn off image stabilization when you camera is mounted to a tripod?

You can find augments for yes or  no. 

I believe yes if you are talking about the first or second generation of digital cameras. I have found it difficult to find reliable information.  I believe that the implementation by a camera manufacture is the real reason for the variance for the belief. Link to Nikon VR this from B & H.

Olympus/ OM Systems provides this and from Robin Wong

For me I always forget to even think about turning off stabilization when I am using a tripod. When I remember to take long exposure photo I'll try to remember to do my own test with my OM-D E-M5 iii.

The best answer is to your own testing on your camera. 

From fstoppers

It's Insane

 My camera, using electronic shutter, will go as high as 1/32000 sec. That's insane.

What about rolling shutter? Lets see if I see it.

I choose a shutting position about 1/4 mile from a highway. Manual, Auto ISO, f/5.6, 1/32000 sec, 150mm. No panning and wait for vehicles traveling 50 mph. Single point focus. I tripped the shutter when a truck was in my view. The focus point it happened to be  the rear door of the truck.

In Lightroom Classic I set the detail tab to zero the sharpen and luminance values. Edit in Topaz De Noise AI then Topaz Sharpen AI.  Back in LR I adjusted the Highlights, Shadows, Whites, blacks and added some Clarity.  

When I look at 200% I see some slight distortion but I don't think it is rolling shutter.

Behind the Shot

The shot,

I think it's important to learn what did the photographer do to create a photo.

I use an OM-D E-M5 iii with a 14-150mm lens. I used Manual mode with the Aperture as wide the lens allows. This lens is a variable Aperture f/4.0-5.6. when set at 14mm I set the Aperture to f/4.0 since I zoom the Aperture stay wide open.  Usually, for BIF, I start with a Shutter Speed of 1/1250s. Knowing I would be photographing  hummingbird's I chose to it use the Shutter mode pro-capture H. I set it to 30fps, 14 per-capture images and limited to 50 total images. The shutter speed was set to 1/12800s. Since I use auto ISO I knew the ISO would be 200-6400.

I set-up a tripod to a wide enough field of view so hummingbird would be in flight and focused on the feeder.  I then enabled WiFi to I could remotely trigger the shutter with my cellphone.

On my cellphone, while sitting in a comfortable chair, I enabled WiFi and connected to the camera. In the Oi.Share app I enabled the half way setting. Using the remote shutter feature I pressed the Half Way button. The camera began storing 14 images. When a hummingbird was in the frame I pressed the shutter button. 

50 shots. 

I repeated  it l until I felt had enough. From time to time I would tap the Half Way button to stop and restart the sequence.

Importing images into Lightroom classic I set cap locked and used the x, p, u keys to mark delete, pick, unmark and advance to the next image. I used P to mark those birds is right. X was empty frame or otherwise bad images. U for any just to advance to the next image that I wasn't interested for this review.

Sorted to the picks and press 3 or 4 for those I wanted to edit and 1 just to advance to the next image. Then the best 3 or 4 we're choose to editing.

In the Develop mode, crop, white balance to daytime, exposure Auto. Then hold the Alt and set white point and black point then  Vibrance.

Remove distractions if necessary in Photoshop. Then Topaz De Noise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI. 

Back in Lightroom, set to 5 and a Green label. Export.

Remember "show your best".

Mechanical and Electronic Shutters

 I posted a photo of a Hummingbird and included the meta data. I showed a shutter speed of 1/12800 seconds. I was questioned that I had that high a shutter speed. I mentioned that I was using electronic shutter. I thought that a mirrorless would be able to allow very high shutter speeds. I was told that their mirrorless was limited to 1/8000 sec.

That confused me that so off to Google to get some results.

"Distortion (also called rolling shutter effect) happens because the camera isn’t able to “scan” the sensor quick enough when fast movements are involved."

Basically the electronic shutter is limited to the camera sensor read time. Some manufactures mirrorless  sensors exhibit  what is called "rolling shutter". This is where image is skewed, weird. Some reviewers warn about the problem using electronic shutter. Like many things you read you may need to dig a little deeper.

One article, Canon, shows the issues, rolling shutter, in their camera. Another states that Olympus OM-D E-M1 ii and a couple others state that there is little to no rolling shutter.

As you consider purchasing a new Mirrorless camera consider the rolling shutter on your specific brand and model. Not all Mirrorless are equal.

In a follow up post another poster mentioned they could not get the Hummingbird wings that sharp. Of course my comment was raise your shutter speed. Easy to say but knowing the posters camera I went searching again. It turns out that their mirrorless is limited to 1/4000s even with the electronic shutter. Wow, many mechanical shutters are limited to 1/8000s. 

The articles are here, Canon, Omsystems/Olympus, Sony and Lumix

How Do I Cull +-1200 Photos?

You might wonder why I have 1200 photos in a Mornings shooting? My Olympus OM-D E-M5 iii has a feature called Pro-capture. In normal use the Pro-capture buffer is cleared when the half press is released. No excess photos are written to the SD card.

So why did I take 1200 images? PBCCO error. Problem Between Chair and Camera Operator. I didn't understand the function.

 and

I thought I had to tap the Half Way button and lock it then tap the shutter, casmera icon, to start the half press. Then tap the camera icon to the it.

So wrong. When the camera is set to a pro-capture mode tapping the Half Way tea l starts the Half Way mode. When Half Way is pressed again the buffet is cleared. If I pressed the shutter release the buffer is written along with the images, to the configured max images, to the SD card. 

I have my camera set to 14 preframes and a total of 50 frames.

Culling? In Lightroom Classic I pressed the Caps Locks.  Then used the x and u keys to reject, X, or unmark, U them. I rejected all with no bird, and other junk image. I then erased them. I then went through the remaining using the U and P, pick flag. My picks were those with a bit in flight. Then I went there the Picked ones and assigned stars, 4 and 5, that I would edit in the Develop module. The ones i choose to publish were given 5 Sears and a green Label 

Social Media Posts

There are a number of social media outlets. I use Facebook and Instagram which are rife with advertising. So since they are so large I don't think I can drop them.

So I found this, Vero, no ads, no algorithms.  It seems ok. YMMV

ICM, Intentional Camera Movement,

Photos were added to the photo page. 

Port extension problems

 Over the  years I have had problems with external hard drives that I have added to my laptop using port extenders, also called dongles.

Basically the issue is power. An expensive dongle/extender uses power only from the USB port you attach it to. When you add power hungry devices like spinning external hard drives you may have problems with the drive dropping out or corrupting your files. I have had that problem for a couple of years. I thought it was cheap or faulty external drives. 

Wrong. Get a powered dongle/extender. I actually have one back in a drawer but haven't used it since I need 115v adapter and cable. Duhh.

How did I come to this knowledge? I watched this from Rocky Mountain Photography School.

What Shutter Speed?

It depends on the scene you want to capture.

To slow and you have blur? Maybe you want that.

Use a high shutter speed to freeze motion. What is high? 1/2000sec?

The thing is there is no one answer. You the photographer need to figure it out.

A shutter speed of 1/2000 sec didn't get the job done to freeze motion in this photo.

I don't always us Manual Mode But when I Do

 I don't always us Manual Mode But when I Do I'm usually photographing things with sudden movement potential and I want total control of both the Aperture and Shutter speed.  Also I'm usually using Auto ISO for most of my photography since my camera tops out at 6400 in auto ISO which is the native hi ISO.  I can manually set my ISO as high as 25600.

The Auto ISO settings on my camera have a "Auto" setting for Shutter Speed, S/S, and I have been unable to learn what "Auto" really means.

To day we were at the Kentucky Train Museum in New Haven.  The museum has a nice model train setting and I decided to try a few pictures. I did not bring a flash attachment and my camera does not have a popup flash. So it was native light.

I choose these settings; f/8.0, Aperture Priority and Auto ISO.  The photos of stationary items had ISO of 6400 and S/S as low as 1/4 second. The stabilization did a fantastic job but at below of about 1/20s there is motion blur.

Since there are models running I thought I would try to capture a couple. That meant I needed a faster S/S. ISO to the rescue. I went to the top 25600. But the noise the noise. Yep but deal with it.  I wanted the shot. Get the shot, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead".

After a couple of test shots I set the focal length to 56mm. In Aperture of f/8.0 the shutter speed was 1/60s. Good but not great. I used Lighroom Classic to set the exposure to where I was satisfied. Then in to Topaz to clean up the noise and sharpness. 

f/8.0, 1/60s, ISO 25600, 56mm focal length

Topaz DeNoise AI + Sharpen AI

After review I found that the Aperture of f/8.0 was soft on the top and bottom edges. The focus point was in the middle of the frame. Using PhotoPills DoF pill showed that I estimate the DoF with my lens settings to be 2 feet or less.  If I had used f/16.0 the S/S would have been 1/30s to maintain the same exposure.

Yes it is still noisy and soft but I got the shot.

it's boring but RTFM

In an email from "Picture Correct",  we've heard this many times BUT ...

10 Common Composition Mistakes in Photography

They show this as 10. I think is should be first. You also remember what you read. For example when you are bracketing consider using Sequence shooting. So you don't have to remember the number the times you press the shutter release

10. Not Knowing Your Camera Controls and Functions

You MUST read your camera manual. Knowing your camera and all of its buttons and settings is vital. Being able to do that takes practice. You should be able to adjust ISO, shooting mode, focus point, exposure compensation, aperture, and shutter speed without taking the camera away from your eye. Believe us, it will make a difference that you can’t afford to miss!

Windows Drive Letter

WINDOWS USERS. In the last few weeks the concern of USB attached storage drive letters come up. The following is from a response to another,

Windows users Should, I would say Must, assign specific drive letters for an EHD to be used for Lightroom pictures. I recommend to assign reverse alphabetical order starting Z. Read this on how to assign,

Watch your background

I've made the same mistake and likely do it again. Hopefully I don't publish it on social media.

Often when attempting to photograph wildlife I'm so intent on the animal I forget the background. You can, in post, select the subject and put it in a better background.  Yes I've done it, usually when a blah sky.  

But thank about the background. Often you can wait and try again. Either way don't post when when it's difficult to separate the subject from the background.

Why Lightroom?

Lightroom is so much more than a photo editing program. It is a Digital Asset Management tool. A database that allows you to organize your photos a Library;  edit your photos a Develope module; tag your photos on a map using the Map module; create a book, the Book module; print your images using the Print module;

Using the library module you can add Metadata such as keywords,  Titles, Comments, and much more. Since Lightroom is a database, the catalog, you can search for information in the database.