Digitalopia

PictureCode have announced the availability of the popular Noise Ninja noise and grain removal application as a Aperture Plug-in.

Noise Ninja has a wide following among professional photographers, and is popular when shooting in low light or fast moving conditions, as it can help to remove unwanted noise associated with shooting at a high ISO.

You can download the plug-in from from the Apple Web site. A license for the Noise Ninja plug-in costs $79.95 (Pro Bundle). Until the licence has been purchased, the plug-in will operate in trial mode, displaying a grid patterned watermark on all images processed.

After a successful beta test, Adobe has officially released Lightroom 2.0.

Lightroom 2.0 offers some minor bug fixes and improvements over the beta version, however most of the features should be familiar if you have been following along with the beta. I will not be drawn into debates of comparisons with Aperture 2, as I fully agree that competition is key to drive innovation. However, it seems that Adobe are copying Aperture’s version numbers !!!

Lightroom 2.0 costs US$299 outright or US$99 for an upgrade from Lightroom 1. A 30 day trial is also available.

A comprehensive comparison between Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2.0 is available from Adobe.

Not a major feature release for Aperture, but version 2.1.1 resolves general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.

As with the previous updates to Apple iLife, support for the MobileMe service has been added.

The update is available here. The update is recommended to all users and is available as a 48MB download.

I received an email from a friend in New York that has just received their D700. The D700 is Nikon’s second full-frame DSLR, and is targeting the pro-sumer market or where people are looking at an upgrade to their D70/D80 models.

Our friends at Ritz Camera have announced a number of deals on the D700. To read more about the Nikon D700, I recommend the comprehensive hands-on preview by dpreview.com.

The following deals are currently in stock at Ritz Camera.

Nik Software have today released the Viveze Plug-in for Aperture 2.1. The plug-in was one of the original plug-ins listed by Apple as being in development upon the release of the Aperture Edit Plug-In SDK.

I will be interested in looking further at the features of the plug-in, and to be honest, the descriptions do not really tell me how the plug-in differentiates itself from the features already available in Aperture.

A 15 day trial is available to allow you to try out the plug-in and it is available for purchase direct from the Nik Software Web site at $249.95. Yes, this is another Aperture plug-in that is more expensive than Aperture itself, as the Tiffen Dfx Digital Filter plug-in costs $299.95.

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It seems that since Apple released Aperture 2, there have been ongoing debates on photography forums regarding Aperture’s tethered shooting support of the newer camera models from Nikon and Canon.

As a Nikon user, I was oblivious to the debate when I first wrote about the new tethering features in Aperture. However, after hearing about the lack of support for many Canon models, I decided to do a brief exercise looking at their support. What amazed me was the lack of support of not just the most recent Canon models such as the 1Ds III, but also models that were released over 2 years ago like the 30D.

I started to dig a bit deeper and found 2 sides to the story. I have not yet received a formal statement from either Apple or Canon (see below), but I thought I would share both sides of the arguments. Most comments are from various forums, and obviously give bias, so should be taken lightly.

What Evidence Supports Apple

The issue lies with Canon… I’ve heard different reasoning for this (Canon putting some proprietary blocks in the way or Canon’s SDK having some bugs that still need to be corrected). Hopefully, it’s the SDK issue or a firmware issue that can be updated or corrected.

The next comment was made from an Apple spokesman at a trade event.

… each camera needs to be reverse engineered for tethering because Canon is not willing to let go of the coding.

The Macworld review of Aperture 2 states the following.

Tethered shooting in Aperture works using a standard called Picture Transport Protocol (PTP), and as such, it requires supported cameras.

What Evidence Supports Canon

This comment was received from Canon’s customer support.

… while the transfer protocols for the camera and the image files are available to the software designers.

The Bibble software seems to support most, if not all of the Canon models. I guess the question here is that if Bibble can, why cannot Apple ?

The Follow Up

This is obviously not a closed case, so I have subsequently written to both Apple and Canon asking if they would be able to supply a comment that I can share with my readers. Fingers crossed they will respond.

For a more comprehensive list of supported cameras, take a look at this site. As you can see, Canon is very poorly supported by Aperture.

If you read my previous article on Aperture Tethered Shooting Tutorial, then you will know how much I enjoy using the new tethering features of Aperture 2.

However, one thing that I get asked often is how well supported are the newer camera models. In this article I will look at the support for the latest Nikon and Canon camera models, namely the Nikon D300 and D3, and the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi), 40D and 1DsIII.

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I am always looking for ways to improve my digital workflow, and I have been recently interested in refining the white balance I set for my photographs. I have previously had pretty good success with either the camera’s automatic setting for the white balance of my RAW images, or I would make small adjustments in Aperture (and previously with Adobe Bridge.) However, I have recently been shooting in artificial light and with flash, and I have not been very happy with some of the results I was achieving. It was also taking me far too long to fine-tune the ideal white balance in post processing.

So started my search for the ideal gray or white balance card. I was looking for something that was small enough so it can be carried whilst shooting outside, but sturdy enough to withstand the knocks and bumps it will get. After poring though numerous reviews of various products, I decided upon the range of WhiBal G6 White Balance Reference Cards.

They are available in three sizes, Pocket, Studio and Reference. I have ordered the pocket sized WhiBal G6 White Balance Reference Card from rawworkflow.com. The pocket version looks small enough to be able to fit into a pocket, and I have read positive reviews about its sturdy construction and relatively scratch resistant surface. There are a very good set of videos from the creator of the WhiBal, Michael Tapes.

I have also found a really informative article describing how to use the WhiBal with Aperture. It is definitely worth reading.

I will provide my personal comments on the WhiBal in a subsequent post.

There is something pure and simple about a black and white photograph. Perhaps it is its common use among the classic photographers such a Ansel Adams and its adoption in fine art photography. It may be that to create a ‘good’ black and white photo is harder than a ‘good’ colour photo; reason being the lack of colour information forces you to focus more on the image content, detail and contrast.

Most image editing applications support the conversion of an image to black and white. However, not all are created equal and some simply support a ‘convert to greyscale’ option that does not give you the flexibility to adjust the image further. Both iPhoto and the software bundled with most cameras do a reasonable job of converting an image to black and white, but the greyscale images they produce can be quite flat and it can be hard to get the effects you desire.

New Zealand - Milford Sound

Aperture provides a set of adjustments for black and white conversion that will be common to photographers that use filters to achieve their black and white effects.

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Many people have turned to Rob Galbraith’s Compact Flash Performance Database when looking for new CF cards for their camera. Rob evaluated literally dozens of CF cards across most of the popular camera models from Canon and Nikon. It was a valuable source of information, and would help with the ‘is the SanDisk Extreme actually quicker than the Ultra ?’ questions. However, there have not been any updates to the database for quite a while.

Today, Rob has relaunched the database, with new features including sortable tables and test data for the Canon EOS 40D, EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III and the Nikon D300 and D3. An archive is also available for older camera models.

The new Card-to-Computer transfer speed page shows the performance of popular CF card readers when connected to a Mac laptop and desktop. Is Firewire 800 actually quicker than USB 2 ? (well, yes, but you knew that.)

The CF/SD Performance Database is a valuable asset to both amateur and professional photographers, and is recommended to anybody shopping for a new CF or SD card.