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Walter Smetsers over at Dutch Business Intelligence Blog tagged me as part of a kind of round-robin posting designed to stimulate traffic and provide insights into the Bloggers who have been tagged.

Here are the rules…

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are the eight things about me:

1. For the first six years of my life, we had no indoor toilet facilities in our house. Instead we had an outhouse in the backyard.
2. For seven years, I commuted three hours each way to get to and from work. That’s six hours of travel each day if the train ran on time, which it often did not!
3. For eight years, I was an independent computer consultant and wrote applications for a wide variety of customers using several programming languages and tools.
4. In 1991, inspired by the work of компютриGrady Booch, I wrote a paper entitled Introduction to Object Oriented Theory and Concepts.
5. I have another Blog entitled A Layman’s Thoughts.
6. I became a grandfather at the age of 44 and now have three wonderful grandchildren, the oldest of whom is five.
7. I plow snow from my driveway with a little Farmall-Cub farm tractor that was built around 1947.
8. In July, I will have been very happily married to the most wonderful woman in the world for 30 years.

Now I have to tag eight other Bloggers. I tag:

1. Mrs. Meg Logan at Meg Logan’s Blog
2. Steve Mann at AbleBrains
3. Bill McCann at What Did We Learn Today?
4. Brian White at Background Exposure
5. Arthur Eiss at Art vs. God
6. Mickey Grackin at OIC Productions

Well, that’s all I can come up with, so I guess I’ve broken the rules!

My magical photographer friend from Australia Roy Hopwood sent me a message after my last post on RAW vs. JPG . In it he mentioned a few reasons why he has favored JPEG over RAW. I was reminded by his statements that I had the same concerns before finally deciding to shoot RAW.

Size Matters:
One of the biggest problems with which both Roy and I struggled is the fact that RAW images, especially if you add a JPEG as well, take up a lot of space on memory cards.

Both Roy and I shoot the Nikon D50. This camera uses SD cards and is old enough that it does not support the new high capacity standard. That means that the largest card that can be used is 2 Gigabytes (GB).

When I shot JPEG only, even 1GB cards would hold nearly 1000 images. Shooting RAW plus JPEG as I now do, a 2GB card holds fewer than 250! Size is an important problem and a difficult one to handle.

I have addressed it in two ways. I now have multiple 2GB cards; and carry more than one any time I am out shooting. 2GB cards are very inexpensive now that the high-capacity cards are available. I also move images to my computer at every opportunity. I have a laptop that I can take with me on vacation, but there are devices (not cheap) that can substitute for a laptop.

Needed Skills:
Another issue is the fact that RAW images need more manipulation than JPEGs. When you shoot RAW, each of your images must be loaded into an image editor to be converted to JPEG so people can see them on their computers easily and so they can be printed or used on the Web. The first time I tried shooting RAW every image I loaded into my editor looked terrible.

At first I thought that this was because I had been taking terrible pictures all along, but the camera was fixing them for me. RAW images have absolutely zero processing done to them in the camera. They are nothing more than the “raw” representation of the photons captured by the image sensor. Of course they also contain some very significant metadata; some of which we see as EXIF information even in our JPEG images.

But I also noticed that no matter how I processed them I was unable to make these images look as good as the JPEGs had looked. It turns out that the problem was with my software, Corel Paint Shop Pro. The RAW converter they provided was terrible. (Newer versions of Paint Shop Pro are much improved, by the way.)

The Right Tools:
Even so, software is very important when processing RAW images. It is critical to use software with a good RAW converter. I can’t speak to the converter in The Gimp, but the latest versions of Paint Shop Pro work well as do Adobe products such as Lightroom, Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements.

If you shoot Nikon like Roy and I do, I’d strongly recommend that you get a copy of Capture NX. This software is available from Nikon and is created by NIK software. There is a 30-day trial you can download for free as well.

It’s great for a lot of reasons that I didn’t initially understand. Most importantly NX never touches the original bits in your RAW image. It always makes a copy and works on that. The copy is stored in the same file as the original image, so this behavior can be less than obvious at first glance. This means that anything you do to the image can be undone completely and harmlessly. That simply isn’t the case with any JPEG image unless you use layers for every change you make.

More Reasons:
When you shoot RAW you can make any adjustment available within your camera (other than stuff like zooming out or changing aperture or shutter speed) after the fact.

So if you accidentally left the camera in Manual, or if your flash wasn’t ready, and you underexposed the most important shot of the day by two stops because of it, you can just adjust the exposure. Take a look at this example.

Open this in Capture NX and drag the slider to show +2 EV…

…and out comes this:

If, like me, you also occasionally leave the world of automatic white balance, and then fail to check it before shooting, you might end up with a color cast you don’t want. This too can easily be corrected completely in post with no degradation of the image quality and zero skill on your part beyond knowing how to make a selection from a drop-down list.

This was shot using flash with the camera set to tungsten white balance by mistake.

A quick change just as simple as the one above in Capture NX…

…yields this:

For more information see:

Thom Hogan at ByThom

Scott Kelby

Moose Peterson

Back in October of 2007, I wrote an article here entitled Food Safe Wood for Cutting Boards in which I said that I think all the concern over which woods are food-safe is overkill. I referenced there a study done by Doctors Cliver and Ak of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This study was, according to Dr. Cliver, conducted after the U. S. Department of Agriculture told him that they had no scientific evidence to support their position that plastic cutting boards should be favored for home kitchen use.

I thought I had said all I have to say on that topic, but this week my daughter read me an excerpt from a book she had borrowed from the library. The book is entitled Green Housekeeping and was written by Ellen Sandbeck. On pages 118 and 119, Ms. Sandbeck recounts the Clive and Ak study in a much clearer way than the version of the information to which I had earlier linked. Consequently, I thought I’d mention the book here so that people searching for information on food-safe woods can find it more easily. Google has scanned this work, and you can see the referenced pages here.

As it turns out, other sites also reference the study. One such site is that of cutting board maker, BW WoodWorks®. There are a number of others as a quick search on “Cliver and Ak” will attest.

Given the apparent lack of any scientific evidence to the contrary, coupled with the experiential evidence of cutting board users themselves, it appears that wood is the way to go. One important question that always arises is, “which species of wood is safest?” The study tested at least seven species and found very similar results.

As I said in my earlier article on the subject, “I am certainly not an expert in biology, nor am I a doctor or anything remotely connected to those professions. I am simply still living and healthy after showing no concern about my wooden cutting boards.”

Please; go and read this information for yourself. I’ll be using wood.

I have changed my opinion about shooting in Raw format. Since I posted on the subject back in September 2007, I have come to what I think will be my final conclusion on the subject. Since my opinion has essentially reversed from my initial position, (articulated back in September of 2006) I thought I’d take some time to talk about what led up to the change.

While Ken Rockwell remains a fan of JPEG, I have converted to shooting Raw. The final straw came as a result of two images I needed to process.

The first image is this one of a quiet morning on Seventh Lake in the Adirondack Mountains:

While this is a nice image, it needs to be brightened slightly to add shadow detail in the trees, and the light at the peak of the boathouse roof gets distracting when you do that. Here is the result I needed:

The problem is that I only have this image in JPEG format. I wasn’t shooting Raw when this was taken. I wanted to print this image 20×30 for my portfolio. After manipulating it a couple of times (because I wasn’t clued in to the ramifications at first) I sent it to Shutterfly for printing. What came back was good, but has significant pixellation and artifacts due to resizing.

The original image is 1.74 megabytes on disk. The manipulated copy I sent for printing was 535 kilobytes due to lossy JPEG compression! I lost approximately two-thirds of all the data captured by my camera’s sensor! Of course the image I got back was less than perfect.

The second image was this one (I only show a crop here because it’s of my granddaughter and I don’t post images of our grandchildren on the Web):

As you can see, the image is too dark. This happened because she was playing and I was shooting, but the best image happened at a moment when the flash wasn’t ready. So I needed to brighten the image. Here’s the result:

Note that terrible noise behind her hair. Removing that meant a lot of work using layers and further degrading parts of the image. This noise was noticeable even in a 4×6 print.

JPEG images delete some of the data captured by the camera. Raw images allow it to be preserved no matter what I do–assuming I use intelligent software. I can’t afford to throw away image data, so now I shoot Raw. Since my Nikon has the option to shoot both Raw and JPEG at the same time, I actually do that so that I can quickly print some images or show them to family without processing them.

I won’t be going back.

I was in Helsinki Finland (on business) recently and ran into John Jordan, a photographer who chronicles extreme sports and the Finnish countryside and culture. John is a great guy and has written a book entitled simply Finland containing some of his work. I encourage you to drop by John’s site. Tell him I sent you.

After I wrote the first installment of my favorite photography sites, a few others came to mind that need to be mentioned. Here are some other sites I enjoy:

Don Ellis - Don’s site, called Kleptography is a great reminder that it isn’t all about equipment. What Don does with a point-and-shoot is some of the best work you’ll see anywhere. His descriptions of each shot are good reading as well.

Brian White - At Background Exposure, Brian White provides rare, but interesting posts. I keep him in my RSS reader and drop by whenever he has something to say. I get a fair amount of referral traffic from Brian’s site, so I know that I am not alone in valuing his observations.

Beyond Phototips - Photography for the Serious Amateur is the tag line used by this site. The content comes from several people, and the tips are often excellent.

Udi Tirosh - And several contributors have created a great site called DIY Photography.net. The site is mainly about ways to handle lighting, etc. without buying a lot of expensive equipment.

Photopreneur - Is a Blog about ways to make money with your photography. It’s written by a team of experienced folks who share a wealth of knowledge.

Haje Jan Kamps - Writes Photocritic, an excellent site full of useful information.

Michelle Knight - A multifaceted photographer, Michelle writes Shutter Fug when she’s not designing clothing or anything more interesting :-). Her site is full of great tutorial information for anyone interested in improving their work.

Tim Solley - Tim’s site is called Sublime Light and I first found it when his tutorial on portrait lighting was mentioned on another Blog. Good stuff.

Marek Uliasz - Of Pixels Away is a good source of guidance if you are thinking about microstock photography. He’s also a kayak paddler, and has a personal style.

I hope you find some of these sites as interesting and beneficial as I have.

I spent last week in Stockholm Sweden and Helsinki Finland on business, but I was able to squeeze in a little time for shooting. I’ve posted seven shots from the trip in my Gallery. I’ve included my favorite below. I hope you like them.

I have read a lot of books on various aspects of photography, and I should write a lot more reviews of them, but that task seems daunting to me, so I put it off. Maybe that tells you how strongly I feel about most of the books… Being honest, there is a book I’ve finished recently that has done great things for my photography. I probably should review that one, and perhaps I will. It’s entitled Light Science & Magic by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua.

But while I was sitting in a hotel room in Helsinki Finland earlier in the week it dawned on me that I’ve never written a post with links to my favorite photography sites. I was actually quite surprised, so here is my list:

Strobist - David Hobby has improved my photography at least as much as Bryan Peterson or Hunter, Biver, and Fuqua. Check out his wonderful Lighting: 101 and Lighting: 102 series.

Joe McNally - Joe is one of the top photographers in the world, a “Nikon Legend Behind the Lens,” and provides some good insights at his site. He has also recently released a book entitled The Moment It Clicks, which I own, but haven’t finished reading.

David Ziser - David’s site, called Digital Pro Talk, is a great source for example photos taken throughout Davids long career as a Wedding photographer.  He also provides numerous links to information around the Web and tips on shooting and the business of photography.

Laurie Excell - Laurie has several interesting areas of focus, including dealing in used equipment and teaching photography workshops.

Moose Peterson -  Moose provides a lot of great information and his blog is a regular source of the latest news on his shooting.  He’s down to earth and very good at what he does.

Scott Kelby -  Scott is president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and a great shooter in his own right.  His site is worth tracking even if you don’t use Photoshop.  I’ve gotten lots of tips and insight into equipment from him.  In his spare time, Scott is the top selling author of computer and technical books.  I’ve read two of Scott’s Digital Photography books, and need to review them here, but suffice it to say that he deserves the title.

Thom Hogan -  ByThom is the name of his excellent site.  His reviews are thoughtful and well written.  He deserves to be in your list of regular places to monitor.  He does not update unless he actually has something to say, and when he does, it’s worth paying attention.

Well, these are the cream of the crop for me at this point.  Darren Rouse’s Digital Photography School  is worth a mention, as well.  I go there less frequently, but some will absolutely find it more useful than I do.

I uploaded ten new images to the Gallery this afternoon.  Please drop by and take a look!

The most wonderful woman in the world and I went to southern California on vacation last week. One of the places we stopped was Antelope Valley. I really wanted to visit because the hills can be completely covered in blossoms and appear orange, yellow, and purple. We were early, but I got a few decent close-up shots there nonetheless.

Anyway, as we were leaving I saw an interesting hillside with more blooms than the surrounding area and decided to stop the car and get a picture. I was on a curve in the road, the speed limit was 55MPH and I was hurrying to get out of the car with my camera in one hand and the wide-angle lens in the other. Wouldn’t you know it? I dropped the lens on the pavement and it rolled about ten feet down the highway!

I ran over and picked it up and began to inspect the damage. Amazingly there was very little. I had a Tiffen UV Protector on the lens and the threaded ring was dented enough that my polarizer could not be properly mounted, but that was it! If that filter had not been there, it is almost certain that the lens would have been scratched. As it was, the accident only cost me about seven dollars.

Use UV Protectors on your lenses.