Wild dogs of Zambia.

Today, subscriptions are everywhere. You must pay by the month. But if you stop, you lose all your tool setup at the end of the month. Nothing is left, nothing is yours.

So, I prefer tools I can buy, that will serve me for years. If the service/cost ratio is good, I’m OK with purchasing a competent tool, but I don’t want to keep my wallet open at all times.

FastStone Image Viewer

The very first step in any processing is sorting. You need to move fast, you need to find the best images, sometimes in a batch of 10 (fast bursts are lethal for the number of images).

FastStone Image Viewer is a marvel in this respect: inexpensive, very competent in display and – above all – it offers a critical feature for sorting: it can display images 4 by 4 on the same screen for quick comparison. For example, you can zoom in on all four images in parallel with a flick of the mouse wheel and compare the quality of detail in the pre-selected images. Use the “Del” key to eliminate unnecessary images, and the “*” key to mark images for priority retention.

Since the software is free for amateur users, it’s even better. But a $35 lifetime license is still an attractive price to support the ongoing development of this indispensable tool.

DxO PhotoLab

Visualizing and sorting images is not enough. You also need to be able to work on them to fine-tune the rendering. FasStone Image Viewer has some interesting correction capabilities, but while this is sometimes sufficient, I can’t rely on it and need a powerful image processing tool (including RAW).

Photoshop has long been considered the benchmark. But the other tools on the market have really come into line. Today, there are only two reasons to choose:

• The user interface must be simple and effective
• Noise processing must enable you to gain ISOs to work in the best shooting conditions.

Adobe does this very well, but so do others. In particular, I warmly recommend DxO PhotoLab (not to be confused with DxO PureRAW plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom). The quality of RAW processing is exemplary. When it comes to noise reduction, it’s often the case that DxO does better than Adobe.

I therefore recommend two options:

1. Either you’re addicted to Adobe and need to add DxO PureRAW to maintain your usual workflow with incredible image quality.
2. Or you’ve discovered (with the trial version) that DxO PhotoLab is a perfectly fluid development environment that’s at least as comfortable as Adobe’s. DxO PhotoLab is French, and for €229, the software is yours for life. Upgrades only cost €109, but are not mandatory if you haven’t changed your camera (my main reason for upgrading).

I can’t get enough of DxO PhotoLab, and version 7 (yes, I know, version 8 is already out) is simply incredible in the detail it extracts from my RAW files.

A word of warning though: you need computing power. On PCs, a graphics card less than 3 years old is highly recommended to drive the processing engine.

IrfanView

This tool is a bit of a “tool bag” for my quicker DIY projects. For example, it’s very fast for image viewing. But it’s also remarkably easy to use for cropping or resizing an image without having to bring out the heavy artillery.

What’s more, IrfanView recognizes just about any image format (photo or not), which makes life easier for quick format conversion.

But it is quite possible to have nice images if you accept the accumulated requirements of a technique ignored by most: multiflash. Even better, for fast-moving subjects, the flash is the only way to stop the movement; Nevertheless, you’d want to render this more elegant, more discrete and ensure that it renders the subject to its best.

Example in hand: Hummingbirds. Impossible to stop wings when they beat between 20 and 80 times per second. Even 1/8000s is squarely insufficient if it does not catch the wing immobile either in high or low position. But, while a big fat flash shot solves the problem once and for all, you get a picture with a splash of white light, and shadows drawn from the light’s axis. Solution: several flashes (hence the name: multiflash).

As a matter of factn using several flashes is not simple, as any studio photographer will tell you. But you will quickly discover that it is all a matter of handling the balance of several items that I could (too?) quickly summarize with:

• Provide lighting source similar to natural light
• Avoid ugly shadows with additional sources
• Provide a setting that enhances the subject

These are three axis I want to follow here. It will not make you an expert. But it may give you some leads to experiment in a more ordered way, if you want to identify the best parameters quicker.

Preliminary conditions

One critical requirement when setting up this technique is often not obvious: Ambient light. It’s too easy to forget that outdoors light is in competition with your flash lighting setup. So, you must start from a relative dark ambiance. To the point that it would feel insufficient for photograph (without a flash).

So, even in the wild, you must set everything up in the shadows. A roof, an awning, a dense tree above, a forest. All is good, since we will want to work with relatively low flash power (often 1/32 power, or even lower). So, te ambient light must be too dark for photo. If not, you risk mixing both lights and getting some kind of ugly “double exposure” in one shot (sometimes confused with a lack of focus).

When shooting at hummingbirds, feeders will be set in darker places, under a tree, or even in the forest shadow.

Natural light

The first objective will always be to try and get a setup which can be considered more natural (or relatively natural). Main light sources must always come from above (the sun shines from above).

Avoid big light from under the subject. The picture would feel weirdly unbalanced.

Soften the shadows

But since a flash will often produce a very harsh light, it is recommended to compensate this with secondary softer light sources to lighten the main shadows (more or less below and opposite to the main flash source).

You may be tempted to avoid adding flashes and use reflectors or soft source like studio umbrellas. The biggest issue is that even a single (usually) black flash is already perturbating animals/birds behavior. Opening a white reflector of 1 meter diameter (or more) and studio umbrellas will probably ensure that you never see your model again in you improvised studio in the wild. Not counting the difficulty of installing up large gear in natural settings. At the strict minimum, you will need to schedule some time for the animals getting used to the presence of your equipment before starting a photo op.

Enhance the subject

This starts with the background. Several options are available to you.

1. Natural background: Ensure that you have one or several (powerful enough) flash(es) to light the background plants. This may be be tremendously hard if they are far behind. Check and check again to ensure that the appearance is nice and clean.
2. Printed/drawn background: If the natural background is too far, too messy or not nice enough, you can try attaching a printed background. In case of hummingbirds, the size is not an issue. I would not try this for an elephant (!).
   What to draw? everything is possible but don’t overdo it. Less is often better. Less details, less artificial colors, less artificial shapes.
3. Black or dark background: If the background is far behind, not lit, or in low light, you will get a very dark background for your model. The is a very good choice to enhance the colors of the hummingbird feathers.

Setting up the camera and flashes

Finally, let’s setup the camera itself.

1. Compulsory manual mode.
2. ISO 400
3. Speed: synchro-X or 1/200 (These are the basic flash settings!)
4. Aperture: The flash will freeze the model; In order to favor details you will close the aperture too. Start with f/16.
   But, really, it is possible or necessary to vary aperture (and ISO) lightly to ensure the perfect exposure (don’t fiddle with speed, it won’t influence in flash photo).

Your flashes will be set between 1/16 power and 1/128 power, in order to allow fast recharge cycles (a short 3-to-4 picture burst must not be interrupted by flashes recharging between actions).

The balance between the various flash lights is a combination of distance to the subject (it reduces light quantity) and flash power setting. 1/16 for a firm light. 1/64 for the shadows. Combined with distance.

The camera flash (see above) is the Master to control the others (set as Slaves). Generally, you need to use the Wireless mode of the flashes. But it could be even simpler if your flashes can merely shoot when they “see” the main flash light. The easiest setting indeed.

There is a very good paper from Nate Chappell (Multi-flash Hummingbird Photography) that could help understand this specific point. Nate is not only a photographer with a long-researched technique, but he is sharing it with people in his photo-tour company where he is leading bird photo workshops (mostly on the American continents). You will notice that he is using the Nikon SB-26 because they are rugged, powerful, not too expensive, and easy to configure for synchronization with all flashes on the market (including on-camera ones).

This post is certainly too short to explain it all. There is still a lot of space to experiment by yourself (and I recommend this). But I hope it will help you start the journey to multiflash photography of hummingbirds (not in Europe) or of tits (much more common in France) or any other wildlife.

This is clearly one of the nicest big cats that you can find. A large leopard (or panther) with a thick fur and a wide face hosting two blue eyes. This is a dream to photograph. But most people only know such snow leopards from the animals in zoos.

For example, in France, there is a nice specimen in Paris Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (in the Ménagerie) where I shot the photo illustrating this article. There are some nice specimens in the Woodland Park Zoo of Seattle.

The very first thing to remember is that the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an endangered species in the Red list of the IUCN. This means that they are quite rare: In 2003 the worldwide population (see table above) has been evaluated between 4000 and 6500 individuals. This is probably below the limit to allow long term survival of the species, considering that this Asian Panther is found in an enormous area from Mongolia to India or Nepal.

The distribution is quite uneven, of course, but in most places the animal is quite difficult to find. This makes photo safaris a sort of random hunt for the animal. Furthermore, in many cases, it asks for a lot of walking, usually in high altitude and mountainous treks (Tajikistan valleys have little in common with Swiss Alps).

In all cases, the photographer should need to be able to walk for several hours, the snow leopard may be quite elusive (a specialist I met in Nepal a few years ago expected no photograph from such a photo trip; and some scientists spent months before seeing their first snow leopard in the wild).

That being said, it appears that some locations have become much more attractive for photographers since significant efforts have been applied to create a sustainable push for cohabitation between the leopard and the local population. That has allowed creation of a small economy around the tourists that come, attracted by the snow predator. Several locations in Ladak, India or in Nepal, or in Mongolia have developed significant programs where herders get some cashback in case of predation on their animals, reducing the risk of killing-at-first-sight of the emblematic animal. These have been associated with the training of local guides and the creation of the needed supportive economy (transportation, lodging, restauration, etc.) which ensures that the local people started regarding the snow leopard as a source of revenue rather than a major threat to their livelihood.

For example, I found two of these photo tours/safaris from very serious organizations (This is not a mere walk in a National Park, and it is important to include such a photo trek in a wider support for the protection of the endangered snow leopard).

• Snow Leopard Trust: Hemis, India trek for Snow Leopard
• Wildlife Photo Tours: Snow leopard in Kibber, India
• Pamir (India): Snow leopard in High Pamir
• NatHab: Snow Leopard quest
• Discover Altai: Leopard photo in Mongolia
• Wild Images: In search of the grey ghost of the Mountains (in Ladakh, India)
• Wild Images: Snow Leopards & Wildlife of Mongolia tour (In several locations of Mongolia)
• Annette Mossbacher: Photo Tour To Photograph The Elusive Snow Leopards in the Indian Himalayas
• [FR] Un oeil sur la Nature : voyage photo au Ladakh (Inde)
• [FR] Vialala : safari phot en Ladakh
• [FR] EcoSafaris : vallée de Spiti (Inde)
• [FR] Tamera : observation en Ladakh (sans doute moins photo que les autres)
• [FR] Etendues Sauvages : voyage d’observation
• [FR] Objectif Nature : Vallée de Kibber (et voyages sur mesure)

Nevertheless, if all planets align (Mother Nature is not always sympathetic with our requirements), you’ll bring not only pictures of mountain species (blue sheep or owls and eagles) but some images from one of the most elusive and most handsome big cat, the snow leopard.

See also

• Snow leopards on Flikr
• Wikipedia: Snow Leopard

• Canon EOS RP Advanced User Guide (English)
• Canon EOS R Advanced User Guide (English)
• Canon EOS RP Guide d’utilisation avancée (Français)
• Canon EOS R Guide d’utilisation avancée (Français)
• Canon EOS RP Guía para usuarios avanzados (pdf) (Español)
• Canon EOS R Guía para usuarios avanzados (pdf) (Español)

With these, you should no longer hesitate if you did not know whether one of these cameras was the right one for you.

Wild Focus

This is the web site of my portfolios. There, you will see the subjects I really fell in love with and some more personal projects (often still a work in progress, like my half-portraits).

We all know about wildlife photography. Most of us have seen nice pictures taken of hummingbirds (their colors are often impressive and changing with light). Most photographers will try and make good images of a flying hummingbird (not easy with these little speed demons!). But did you notice how pretty their feather are?

Why not try and do macro-photography of the plumage of these birds always in movement and whose wings flap 50 times per second? It would be nice picture, wouldn’t it? It can’t be too hard, right? Right? Oo maybe it’s a bit difficult…

I won’t forget that hummingbirds are only present in the Americas (Sorry! none in Europe, Africa or Asia) and mostly hiding in the tropical forests (though you may find them in cities and up to Canada).

For my own first successful trials, I worked from hummingbird refuges in Ecuador forests. It’s always easier when your models are present in large numbers.

Also, Ecuador has the advantage of hosting many locations where the hummingbirds are not too afraid of human presence.

Also notice that in most Ecuador locations, hummingbirds are not too easily afraid of human beings. They would not leave the place for hours when you appear. This is important because the photographer will introduce a significant perturbation as you will see.

The general rule is that we want to bring the bird to the camera, not the opposite (it would be useless trying to run after a hummingbird to try and stick your lens in its face). So, we will use a location the bird loves to go to and set our “photo trap” up, before waiting for the model to jump into the camera field.

All hummingbirds need to feed nearly continuously and they prefer very high energy drinks, flower nectar or the next best thing: Sugar water delivered in feeders installed by their human friends in a garden.

One of the big hurdles is ensure that the bird is staying right where you need it to be. I would never try this with a branch or a flower. But you can use a feeder. Just be sure to choose one where the bird can easily stand while drinking (like on the left) and not one where the bird will need to hover in front of the drinking holes (like on the right).

In the second case, the bird may appear stationary at first. But it really keeps moving slightly, making your focusing ever so slightly more difficult. And you don’t need this additional trouble!

If you observe hummingbirds, you will notice that when they will stop at a feeder to drink, there are a limited number of “feeding holes” (you can temporarily limit this with tape) and this means a limited number of preset positions for the bird.

Setup your camera and macro lens (or even better, your long focal lens attached in front of a macro extender) on a robust tripod. Pre-focus where the head of the bird will appear when it lands on the feeder. Then wait.

Several things will quickly appear critical at this juncture. Let’s go through them.

• Hummingbirds are attracted to red and orange colors. Avoid wearing these colors. It may confuse them, or distract them.
• Your movements must ALWAYS be very slow. You are so big and so near! The aim is to look like a rock, not a huge predator.
• Your tripod head must be set to allow minor side movements: You want to be able to reframe easily, and you cannot move a hand, just a slight push on the camera.
• Here, a pendular head (Wimberley-type) becomes a real asset.
• Whatever happens, don’t move for at least ten minutes. The hummingbirds must get used to your presence.

From this point, you will (merely) have to do with the “usual” difficulties of macrophotography (mostly a lack of depth of field – you will need to wait for the sun shining on the feeder ; don’t move the feeder, let the sun come to the feeder).

Then, you should be able to produce some interesting photos showing the marvelous details of the minuscule feathers of the small hummingbirds.

Sometimes, I am somewhat dissatisfied with the size of my digital photographs. The simplest way to improve (after the fact) is to run any Photoshop-like program, and apply a resampling (resize) preferably with the Lanczos method, in order to get 2x or 3x or 4x more pixels. It is fast and efficient, but it usually generates a slightly blurry but bigger picture. If the target is a large format print that could be watched from a short distance, or for something like printing on a very large canvas, I should have more details in the picture (more than what was initially collected by the camera). The image is still too small.

The other approach would be to use a software tool like Topaz Photo AI or the all-new Adobe Photoshop “Image Enhancer AI”. Those are Pro tools (“Pro” means “expensive”): Topaz costs 199$, its competition often relies on monthly subscriptions. For a normal guy (who only needs it a few times per year, at most), this is not applicable.

Why not look toward (free) Open Source tools? Fortunately, some are existing.

And I added another constraint: I want it to run on my own PC (no cloud resources and/or cloud subscription like what StableDiffusion requires).

The general idea

For a few months, I have been impressed by the multitude of Artificial Intelligence solutions (Didn’t you hear about something named ChatGPT?) and not only to generate human-readable text. Tools like StableDiffusion, Dall-E, or Midjourney generate spectacular pictures from a textual description (a prompt). But they often include a mechanism to extend their text-to-image activity to a much larger scale (usually they produce small pictures to sparingly use computer resources).

My solution – in details

I won’t detail the steps taken to reach that solution. But here it is.

One strong PC, with two options/directions that could be imagined.

• A powerful graphic/video card (not always, but often based on nVidia GPU).
• A super-powerful PC with (most critical) a lot of memory.

In my own case, I chose:

• i9-13900K (with a good AiO liquid cooler, because this beast can heat up quite quickly when running 100%),
• 64 gigabytes of DDR4-DRAM memory (you will hear that this is the limiting factor for the image size).

But, you could work with a smaller CPU (with a lot of patience), or a Mac computer.

Nobody would claim this is a cheap PC, but it definitely works reasonably well.

EasyDiffusion installation steps

EasyDiffusion is a free version of a tool very similar to StableDiffusion. You may install it on your PC, and it will run either on the CPU or on the video card.

• Download the installation program from the EasyDiffusion home page (according to your needs, you’ll choose the binary for Windows, Linux, or Mac).
• Follow the installation steps from the page, don’t worry about changing any option right now. You will need some patience (it goes and download additional models and other packages, it will build some of the files during the installation).
• Run the program from the Windows “Start” menu. This will open a Command window to run a few background things (no need to even look at this), then a browser window giving access to the EasyDiffusion user interface.

• For the first configuration, I would recommend clicking at the top of the page on “Settings” and selecting the following program settings:
  • Auto-save Images: YES
  • Save Location: select the appropriate directory to save your creations.
  • Open browser on startup: YES
  • GPU memory usage: High (with 64 GB of DRAM, you want to use it all or as much as possible).
  • Use CPU (not GPU): YES
  • Beta channel: NO.

Create a text file whose name should be YR_MoreResolutions.plugin.js with the following text contents:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Ski-SDUI-MoreResolutions
// @version      0.1-YR
// @description  More Resolution Options
// @author       Super.Skirv, JeLuF, YR
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

	options="";
	for(i=6; i<=32; i++) {
		options += '<option value="' + (64*i) + '">' + (64*i) + '</option>';
	}
    options += '<option value="' + 3072 + '">' + 3072 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 4096 + '">' + 4096 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 4640 + '">' + 4640 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 6960 + '">' + 6960 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 8192 + '">' + 8192 + '</option>';
    document.getElementById('width').innerHTML = options;
    document.getElementById('height').innerHTML = options;

})();

• Install the plugin, by copying the YR_MoreResolutions.plugin.js file in the C:\EasyDiffusion\plugins\ui directory.

Operation and typical use

When arriving at the EasyDiffusion page in your browser, you will need to feed it with a source picture to enlarge and the right upscaling options:

• Choose the source image with the “Browse” button.
• Custom VAE: None
• Image size: 3072 (width) by 2048 (height) – for 64 gigabytes of DRAM.
  • This parameter is dictated by:
    • The need to work on an image as large as possible
    • The memory size limitation. If you have only 16 gigabytes of DRAM memory, you will need to reduce these parameters each in a ratio of 2: 1536 by 1024. But you can explore the optimum for your configuration.
  • Swap the parameters if the image is in portrait (vertical) orientation.
• Inference steps: 50 (this has practically no influence, you can leave the default value)
• Prompt strength: 0 (This is the critical value: It will ensure that EasyDiffusion AI never tries generating a new artificial image from the prompt text, but concentrates on the upscaling job).
• Output format: choose the right file format for you.
• Show a live preview: NO
• Scale up by 4x with RealESRGAN_x4plus (Avoid RealESRGAN_4xplus_anime_6B which is totally not for photography)
• The prompt (at the top of the page), and the Seed value (in “image settings”) are not used, except when naming the output file.

If you don’t have enough memory, you can always reduce the “Image size” or you get a message like the following:

The message tells you what memory size it tried to allocate/reserve. This will guide you when reducing the “Image size”.

If you are correctly configured, after a few minutes, you will see the result like in:

Notice: the new resolution is now 12288 x 8192 pixels (we left from 6960 x 4640 pixels, to reach no less than 100 mega-pixels). But, above all, the Artificial Intelligence (of the ESRGAN network) determined new pixels not only interpolated but imagined as complementary to the existing ones and totally credible.

In the picture used for this example, don’t spend time checking the blurred background. But take a look at the fine details in the structure of the dragonfly wings. It may not be perfect (from the professional entomologist’s point of view, there are anatomy errors), but the ribs/veins and the light reflections are very natural-looking, even in areas where they are only half-drawn or half-blurred. The same remark applied to the eyes and antennas of the dragonfly.

On the opposite, don’t even believe the proposal from the software: It’s no use clicking the button to upscale again to 20032 x 13376; You already reached the maximum size allowed by the available memory. You can’t go further with only 64 GB.

If you want to check the results, I made the files available:

• Original
• Upscaled x4

• The Art of Waves: A Lifetime of Awe-Inspiring Surf Photographs talks about the book of Clark Little which demonstrates that you can shoot photos of waves during 15 years: The Art of Waves. And he is interested in the wave itself, and what is below.
• Photographing Waves: One of The Most Rewarding Subjects is another PetaPixel post wirtten by Rachael Talibart. There she describes her passion and how she invites us to dive into wave photography.

Maybe, this will push you into photographing some waves during the Summer vacations.

One of its endangered sub-specie is the Iberian lynx, whose name reminds you that it comes from Spain and Portugal only. Protected and quite shy, it is not always easy to catch pictures of the Iberian lynx (the photographer should better be quiet and patient). There is a photo gallery on Wild Focus (Iberian lynx page) where I assembled a small portfolio of this cute cat.

However, both of them did a great job of showing them in ways that make them shine.

Warren Keelan

You should visit his website, Instagram, Facebook, 500px, and Twitter.

Even better, you can buy the 2020 calendar edited by Warren from some of his best pictures. A good way to keep looking at these photographs all eyar long.

Rachael Talibart

Growing in Southeast England, Rachael spent quite some time in her father’s boat. Apparently, she did not find the experience very pleasant and she did not grow into a great sailor, but into a great photographer, both fascinated and inspired by the waves of a furious sea.

Several major storms gave her the opportunity to go and shoot waves in violent conditions, leading to superb images that most people would not know how to create in most cases. Her website is full of gorgeous such pictures.

• User manual of the Canon EOS 90D in English
• Manuel utilisateur du Canon EOS 90D en français
• Le maximum avec le 90D (Amazon)
• Canon EOS 90D: Guía para usuarios avanzados (pdf)

Now, you are ready to purchase the newest and brightest Canon APS-C DSLR, the replacement of the Canon EOS 80D and the Canon EOS 7D Mk II. Go and shoot pictures!

There are many of them, but I looked at one of the most famous ones:
The Dogwood 52 Week Photography Challenge.

Major advantage: It does not concentrate on the technical side of photographic but extends to all ways to improve the resulting image. A good way to bring me out of my confort zone. Maybe to improve my work within the three main directions of the challenge:

• Story telling
• Composition
• Inspiration

If you want to know, my own 2019 results will be published on Roumazeilles.net (in the #Dogwood2019 category). I’ll try and comment about the experience at the end of 2019 (If I succeed at keep the impetus).

1. Petapixel’s A Field Test of the $12,400 Nikon 180-400mm f/4 TC1.4
2. And the even better Shooting polar bears with the $12,000 Nikon 180-400mm F4E TC1.4 FL ED VR

Such a beast of lens is not for everybody, but you can’t beat reading real-world testing.

wouldn’t it be great if we had a simple way to recognize them? Yes, of course. The simpler solution? Put a different name on each drive, each memory card, each USB thumb drive, but this is very small step. We know that graphical interfaces work better. Why not replace all these ugly grey icons with something ore meaningful (and more pleasant)?

A simple process

The only requirements are:

• Access to Google image search (but you can use another one, of course)
• Use of a simple image editor able to save to “Windows .ICO” file format – I use IrfanView which is very feature-rich, but simple to use and perfectly free (as in free beer).

Step-by-step process:

1. Define an image which is representing the drive well,
2. Collect this picture,
3. Set it to the right format,
4. Set it up on the USB drive.

Step by step

Define the image for your icon

I recommend several possible and complementary approaches. Keep in mind that the objective is to easily recognize the USB thumb drives or the disk drives connected to the computer USB port(s). Nota bene: This works with internal hard drives too.

Solution #1: If the USB thumb drive is very recognizable, you can find on the web some good photo representing it nice and well. You can even collect a press release photo form the manufacturer if you have the manufacturer name and the product model. For example, I can look for photos of external hard drives from Western Digital, MyPassport model, red color. Google result is offering a wide choice of good pictures:

It works very well with memory cards. Plenty of good pictures from Sandisk, Lexus, and other manufacturers.

Even if you don’t have the exact name of the thumb drive (not all of Chinese-sourced drives are named properly), it is quite easy to look for a good description like “orange USB drive”. Less precise, somewhat more error-prone, but it works astonishingly well.

Solution #2: With the same Google Image Search, look for a nice photo that would represent the disk contents (or its name). Try looking for “photography” or “black and white photography” or even the name of a famous photographer (I tried with “Man Ray”, “Helmut Newton” who have very symbolic images to offer) for a hard drive to hold your photo archives.

Choice reduction

In front of so many options, I recommend intelligently reducing choice with some specific search filters. (on the Google page, press the “Tools” button and choose the following filters):

1. Only take large size images (you’ll see it is important)
2. Select public domain pictures that you can modify: “Labeled for re-use with modification” (Why steal a photo? What good photographer would steal the photo of another one? Use a freely available one).
3. Most critical: Chose a very simple, pretty but easily recognizable picture (an icon may be very small).
4. Last recommendation: It is often better to start from an image with a white or very lightly colored background (it “works” better in most cases, as you will see).

Collect the picture

Download the image from Google.

Create the icon

After all, an icon is merely a square image brought down to a small size and in special ICO format. the walkthrough is rather simple, you’ll see.

Load the image into the IrfanView application.

Modify the size of the picture to move to a square ratio (change canvas size). You can do it by either enlarging or reducing the canvas size (choosing the right background color).

The result should be a nice square picture but you may feel that it is rather large for an icon.

As a matter of fact, size does not matter much here. The larger, the better to keep the icon looking good when changing display sizes. Now comes the time to make sure that the size is exactly a multiple of 2 (eg. 2048×2048 pixels). It is not useful to go further than 4096×4096 pixels, but do not go below 1024×1024 pixels. IrfanView will do this easily, from Image>Resize/resample... menu.

Then, you need to save the picture as .ICO file (be sure to use “Save as type” with the “ICO – Windows icon” option).

Setup on the USB drive

This icon (this ICO file) must be saved at the root of the USB thumb drive (in the  D:\ directory), preferably under the autorun.ico name (but we can accommodate any other name like Lynx.ico).

Last, copy or create a text file named autorun.inf with the following contents (also in D:\ directory), :

[autorun]
ICON="autorun.ico"


This small file will allow Windows finding the icon named autorun.ico (or any other name that you previously chose)).

One comment about memory cards: You can do the same for your SD or CF Flash memory cards. Just remember that this will disappear any time you format the card in the camera. Have a copy handy to put it back on the Flash card.

Result

After that, your icons will be perfectly distinguishable. Only empty slots are exhibiting the default ugly non-images. All the rest is animal pictures, photographs from major artisits (Doisneau and Man Ray), pictures of the thumb drive actually used, etc.

Bonus: This is applicable to your company logo (see the example above). If you give USB thumb drives away, better than putting any photo, install your company logo for a fully personalized thumb drive! If you are a wedding photographer selling digital photos on a USB thumb drive, this is a minor improvement to have the drive look more professional than ever.

With Darktable, like with Lightroom, you can organize, store, visualize. But you also can modify/edit your photo pictures (in RAW as in JPEG), including in a non-destructive way.

It’s worth trying by yourself (with this kind of price, there is no downside).

• Download Darktable (in English).
• Download Darktable (en français).

It’s been years that I was tracking this product with great care. Here is the best photo news of 2017 (it will compensate the worst one from Adobe Lightroom).

The original appeared on https://xkcd.com/1855/ (a web site perfectly suited to geeks, photographers or not).

This is now an official proposal from the US Administration to make this globally compulsory. In a few months, we may see the prohibition from checked luggage of any gear containing a battery (photo or video camera, laptop, smartphone, etc.)

Of course, I would never advise you to leave anything of value in checked luggage (too much risk of theft or violent handling). This may make things clear and simple: All cameras go in cabin!

So, many photographers are wondering what to do in order to keep protecting ther images. I have a few more ideas to share with you now (usually coming from some other web sites) in light of these recent events:

• CrashPlan itself offers their customers to move to Carbonite, another solution from (previously) competitor and whose reputation is not usurped.
• Obviously, CrashPlan also offers to move to a professionnal and more expensive offer. I did not try but I am afraid that performance may not be there (what was acceptable at CrashPlan for Home price may become less attractive in the future).
• ArsTechnica recommande chaudement BackBlaze (et leurs arguments semblent tout à fait sensés, même si je n’ai pas pratiqué).
• Personally, I propose (on my other Roumazeilles.net web site) to explore a more complete and more extensive solution base don a NAS server from Synology at home and a cloud hosting from Amazon Cloud Drive: Synology-based synchronization solution

I hope it will help you.
It may be a long reading.

1. Always format the memory card in-camera (formatting on a computer may not be right for your camera, same thing about formatting on another camera)
2. Always wait 3 seconds before ejecting the memroy card (or check the red LED flashing on the camera body and wait until it defintely stops blinking)
3. Copy/backup the contents as soon as possible (a portable hard drive is the best option; Do not wait for time in front of your portable PC), then immediately re-format the card (on the camera!)
4. Never apply image selection in-camera (judging image quality is nearly impossible on the camera LCD; Always edit on your PC/Mac)
5. Personal routine: Store empty and exposed cards in separate bags (different sleeves in the backpack, different colors/texture for different card cases or bags)

I find several advantages to it:

1. At 5 frames per second on my Canon EOS 70D, the animal moves are decomposed enough to chose the best attitude (e.g. avoiding blinking eyes);
2. I also learned a long time ago that optical stabilization is not the perfect tool to remove strictly all the fuzz and inside a continuous shooting set, the second or the third is often a tad bit more precise, more crispy than the first one (the small move induced by pressing the shutter button will produce a minuscule imprecision that is not welcome on a large-sized  print when the tripod is not available).

Of course, this forces me in comparing thousands of photos. Two by two or three by three, I must choose the best one and dump the other(s). On Adobe Bridge, it goes very fast. But, if -like me) you started regretting the time of simple software prices (instead of monthly license rental costs), you want to go and look elsewhere.

On Windows (it would work on MacOS too), I tried Lightroom but its library management is definitely not living well with my (bad?) habit of transferring files from disk to disk, grouping and backing up in many locations (while handling more than 2 TB of archives). So what can I do? I had to find a better solution, preferably a low-cost one. Since I don’t like the idea of pirating a big executable version (is it still happening today?), I rushed into photo forums  and found FastStone FSViewer which is free for personal use on Windows.

The user interface is not the same as Bridge, of course. But you can easily and quickly compare 4 images. Maybe somewhat faster than on Bridge.

This is a free download and it is a good replacement for Adobe Bridge on Windows (I will no longer need to keep this old version, I can go freeware).

Travel bags content

Yes! I wrote bags because I strongly recommend having separate bags to split your gear in two categories:

1. Items you need upon arrival; For example, the main DSLR camera body, one or two critical lenses, the battery charger.
2. Items that could be replaced or that would void the trip if missing; For example the monopod, the tripod, replacement cables, the second backup hard drive, some gear bag, etc.

Sorting into these two categories must be less than subtle. It must be draconian and ruthless. Only needed items will go into the first category (the first bag). When arriving at destination, it will be easy to re-organize yourself and spread equipment differently in various bags. Your aim is to reduce drastically the weight of your cabin luggage -it will certainly go other the prescribed limit of the air line. So, before negotiating with the company, you must be able to show that you did your job. And it’s better to sort it out with a cool mind rather than in front of the check-in counter.

For your information, here is my own split (when I go and prepare a photo trip/safari):

1. Essentials:
   • Main DSLR body
   • Long tele-lenses, lenses
   • Battery charger
   • All empty memory cards (they weight nothing!) in a clearly labelled bag
   • Portable hard drive (Hyperspace Colorspace UDMA or similar), a first backup disk and attached connection cables
   • Laptop and charger
   • Invoices of all the gear (You never know when Customs will want added scrutiny)
   • Medical drugs (With prescription, possibly in several languages)
2. Replaceables:
   • My GoPro camera (I mainly shoot pictures; Video is an additional fun, not a priority)
   • Lens bag (like the LowePro Lens Trekker 600AW : The tele-lens will return to its own bag only upon arrival)
   • Extension tubes, optical additions
   • A monopod and/or a tripod (you may want to keep a microscopic Gorilla-Pod in cabin luggage)
   • All replacement batteries
   • The second backup drive (Never keep all your backups in the same bag)
   • The laptop bag
   • Replacement cables
   • Replacement battery chargers and corresponding cables like the 12V car plug connection
   • Sensor cleaning kit, gear cleaning kit(s)
   • A repair kit (neoprene glue, cyanoacrylate glue, knife,scissors, mini-screwdriver)
   • All replacement USB cables (I always have a full set of cables to be able to connect to nearly anything I can find)
   • Most of your clothes
   • Possibly, user manuals (but I prefer the electronic version right on the laptop drive)
   • Headlight and flashlight
   • Gaffer tape
3. Those I can’t decide:
   • Second DSLR camera body
   • Lens filters

Trip Preparation

Some issues are better handled a few days (weeks) ahead. Some are obvious, some may come as a surprise to you.

• If you have a press card from a known newspaper or agency, you may want to contact directly the air company before flying. Some have specific policies (and assistance) to press members, including options to transport expensive gear in cabin (a pro video camera is the first example I would give). But if you only are a well-equipped enthusiast, don’t even try asking…
• Think about country visas for countries you will enter. Two common traps:
  1. If your have a connecting flight, you may have to checkout in a country with different immigration rules than on your destination (even if you stop for only an hour). Check with the airline company beforehand.
  2. Regulations may have changed between reservation and your flight. You’d better check on the Internet ahead of time.
• Some countries accept to establish a visa upon arrival at the airport, but they usually require an immediate payment. Do you have enough cash (in the right currency) ? Is it in your cabin luggage?
• Are your immunization shots perfectly aligned with local regulations? Forget your opinion about the innocuity (or not), local officers will not engage in scientific controversies.
• Some dollars and local cash (spit between different pockets)
• Sun tan
• Non-critical drugs (including drug purse with blisters dressing, burns soothing cream, insect repellent)
• Prepare some reading and entertainment (movies, video games, etc.) pre-loaded on your laptop or iPhone (with headphones to avoid annoying your neighbors and to isolate yourself from the background noise in the plane or the bus).

Finally, it becomes more and more important to ensure that your computer gear and software will work even far from home and without an Internet connection. For example, if you have 2-step validation on your email, be sure to also have replacement safety codes from your service provider (if you are not recognized when far from home or on a different network).

Test your software package without an Internet connection, too. Would your photo software still work when 5000 miles from home? Nothing funny or silly! It happened to me once and this is a real pain in the neck…

Last-minute check

But there are also some last-minute reminders to avoid being caught by surprise. Some items to collect when closing the home door. Check that you have…

• Your passport number (if you lose it, it will be easier to communicate with your consulate); Better, send a scanned copy to yourself or on your smartphone.
• Address and telephone number of your contact upon arrival (not the travel agent at home).
• Address and telephone number of your hotel or lodge.
• Address and telephone number of your rental car company, and the contract number.
• Copies/scans of the tickets and check-in boarding passes on your smartphone.
• Airport parking access code (if you reserved/booked a parking for your car).
• One or more Frequent Flyer program cards (FlyingBlue at Air France, Mileage Plus, or any other similar card program).
• Credit cards (you’d better have more than one in case the main one fails to work, for any reason – It happened twice to me and the failure correction is always waiting for you… at home)

Finally, I recommend to spread dozens of business cards in each and every bag you own and bring with you. If lost, the airport or the company will have no difficulty finding you again, even if the external labels, stickers and attachments are all lost.

Bonus: A free bean bag

Sometime, the airline will distribute a small bag with amenities to assist you during the flight (toothpaste, face mask, ear plugs, etc.) Grab the socks. They are one of the best possible small bean bag, when you fill them with rice or wheat bought on a local market.

Have a nice photo trip!

Again this month, I walked by a pro photographer on a mission to convince everybody to use (Roger, you know who you are!)

Even though the story is rather simple and fast becoming simpler.

What’s a RAW file?

When a digital camera catches a photo it takes raw data from the image sensor. If it does not do much, it stores them in a RAW file (easy, eh?) If it tries to handle them, it will try an improve them, reduce their size reasonably and it will store them in a different file format (99.99% as JPEG format).

Except in specific cases (entry-level smart-phones), all cameras are able to store a RAW file (if you ask). All cameras will know how to give you a JPEG file.
Except in specific cases (e.g. Linux), all common Operating Systems (MacOS/OSX and Windows) are able to read RAW files as well as JPEG. But even on Linux, it’s easy to find cheap (or free) tools reading RAW Files.

Advantages of JPEG

Really! All! tools can use it.

Files are compressed: They are as small as reasonably possible, use as little memory space as possible on the memory card or on the hard drive.

Drawbacks of JPEG

Compression is at the origin of some issues more or less perceptible depending on the original image:

Advantages of RAW

A RAW file contains all the range of informations captured by the sensor. On the real photo cameras (not smartphones), there is often a wide margin because the sensor is much more sensitive than what is normally needed by the snapshot. But tis is exactly what is needed to “save” some pictures which came out over-exposed or grossly under-exposed, where a JPEG has already lost the important information.

You probably noticed that some picture taken inside a building can come out very yellowish or that some landscapes can appear quite blueish. It comes from the color management automatically applied by the camera on the JPEG photo. For a RAW file, the color management is always kept as an external option that you can modify or choose at the last minute if you are not 100% happy with the engineers choice. You can decide in RAW while a JPEG will forfeit your possibility of choice.

Drawbacks of RAW

RAW are bigger than JPEG files (roughly ten times). So, you can store less pictures on a given memory card, or on a given hard disk drive. But, let’s recognize than this is getting negligeable in front of the permanent progress of capacities/sizes (and the corresponding plumetting prices).

Recommendation from YLovePhoto

Most cameras allow you to store both formats at the same time. Do it!

Then, you will choose which one to use according to the application. I recommend to start working on the JPEG (after all, engineers worked their head off to cover most situations). But, in some few cases, you will be happy to use the RAW version.

• to save an over-exposed picture
• to refine the details of a large size print
• to correct color shift on a tough picture (inside building with complex lighting, high in the mountain, sunset)

You’ll get the most of both worlds at the only (minimal) cost of size. But looking at Amazon prices for memory cards…

Sources and information complements

• PetaPixel: Why you should shoot in RAW
• These Are the Advantages and Disadvantages Of Shooting Raw (LightStalking)
• The Online Photographer: JPEGophobia
• Should you shoot in RAW or JPEG? (DIY Photography)
• RAW Software: What is Available and What Should You Use? (LightStalking)
• A RAW Feast on the Linux Darktable (Photo Editor)
• Photoshop CS6 et le RAW par la pratique : comprendre les courbes

Roger Pimenta on Facebook.
Roger Pimenta’s side company RejectionMedia web site.

• Pentax K-1, Operating Manual (English)
• Pentax K-1, Manual de Instrucciones
• Mode d’emploi du Pentax K-1 en français

Have fun reading these Pentax K-1 documents.

• User’s Manual English (for customers in Europe)
• User’s Manual English (for customers in the Americas)
• User’s Manual English (for customers in Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and Africa)
• Benutzerhandbuch (Deutsch)
• Руководство пользователя (Русский)
• Manuel d’utilisation Français (pour les clients en Europe)
• Manuel d’utilisation Français (pour les clients en Amérique)
• Manual del usuario Español (para los clientes en América)
• Manual del usuario Español (para los clientes en Europa)
• Manual do Utilizador Português (para clientes na África)
• Manual do Utilizador Português (para clientes na Europa)

Read it well with your Nikon D500.

• User’s Manual English (for customers in Europe)
• User’s Manual English (for customers in the Americas)
• User’s Manual English (for customers in Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and Africa)
• Manuel d’utilisation Français (pour les clients en Asie et en Afrique)
• Manuel d’utilisation Français (pour les clients en Amérique)
• Manuel d’utilisation Français (pour les clients en Europe)
• Manual del usuario Español (para los clientes en América)
• Manual del usuario Español (para los clientes en Europa)
• Benutzerhandbuch (Deutsch)
• Руководство пользователя (Русский)
• Manual do Utilizador Português (para clientes na África)
• Manual do Utilizador Português (para clientes na Europa)

• International User manual for Sony A77II
• Sony A77II brochure in English
• Sony A77II User Manual in English

Paris:

Bonjour Paris | A Hyper-Lapse Film – In 4K from Tyler Fairbank on Vimeo.

Saigon:

So, I collected a few excellent guides or tutorials which provide good summaries (I think) of the possibilities of these cameras when it comes to autofocus or AF.

• How to use autofocus with moving subjects (all brands)
• Action photography: AF modes (for Nikon cameras)
• Canon 5D Mark III: Autofocus (AI Servo) for Birds in Flight
• Understanding Canon EOS 1DX Autofocus
• Sony A6000 and A5100 Autofocus Guide
• Sony: Autofocus (AF) modes

Good reading!