Lightroom Classic CC Update 7.5 – August 22nd 2018
This morning I updated Lightroom Classic CC to the latest version 7.5.
And likewise I suggest you all do the same thing.
It’s not very often you hear or see me being very positive about Lightroom, but this latest iteration has me impressed for sure.
There has been the usual added camera support, together with some fangled update to the book module with some new Blurb templates – but that’s all inconsequential in my eyes and just so much froofroo.
No, the big improvement on all 3 of my machines here is one of SPEED.
And in particular, large catalogue load-speed.
I have one particular catalogue that sits on a raided pair of hard drives, and it contains just under 70,000 images.
This catalogue normally takes quite some time to open fully and it’s something of a torture-test for Lightroom.
But as of this mornings update not any more it would seem – the catalogue opened and all 69,865 previews were in place in under 10 seconds.
So would I recommend you install this latest update?
You betcha I would….always bearing in mind that Lightroom is notorious for varied performance on different individual systems – so I accept ZERO, NIL, NADA, нуль responsibility!
One negative thing that DID occur twice, but I couldn’t replicate in the video nor since – the infamous PANEL BLACKOUT.
They usually occur in the Develop module and your left and right panels just ‘black out’, and all you can see is your image.
If you do suffer a panel blackout though, don’t panic!
Just hit the G key to take you back to the Library Grid View then hit the D key to go back to the Develop module – you should get your panels back immediately.
I’ll keep you updated if I find any problems over the next few days and weeks, and if you have any problems just let me know.
One of my patrons, Paul Smith, and I ventured down to Shropshire and the spectacular quartsite ridge of The Stiperstones to get this image of the Milky Way and Mars (the large bright ‘star’ above the rocks on the left).
I always work the same way for astro landscape photography, beginning with getting into position just before sunset.
Using the PhotoPills app on my phone I can see where the milky way will be positioned in my field of view at the time of peak sky darkness. This enables me to position the camera exactly where I want it for the best composition.
The biggest killer in astro landscape photography is excessive noise in the foreground.
The other problem is that foregrounds in most images of this genre are not sharp due to a lack of depth of field at the wide apertures you need to shoot the night sky at – f2.8 for example.
To get around this problem we need to shoot a separate foreground image at a lower ISO, a narrower aperture and focused closer to the camera.
Some photographers change focus, engage long exposure noise reduction and then shoot a very long exposure. But that’s an eminently risky thing to do in my opinion, both from a technical standpoint and one of time – a 60 minute exposure will take 120 minutes to complete.
The length of exposure is chosen to allow the very low photon-count from the foreground to ‘build-up’ on the sensor and produced a usable level of exposure from what little natural light is around.
From a visual perspective, when it works, the method produces images that can be spectacular because the light in the foreground matches the light in the sky in terms of directionality.
Light Painting
To get around the inconvenience of time and super-long exposures a lot of folk employ the technique of light painting their foregrounds.
Light painting – in my opinion – destroys the integrity of the finished image because it’s so bloody obvious! The direction of light that’s ‘painted’ on the foreground bares no resemblance to that of the sky.
The other problem with light painting is this – those that employ the technique hardly ever CHECK to see if they are in the field of view of another photographer – think about that one for a second or two!
My Method
As I mentioned before, I set up just before sunset. In the shot above I knew the milky way and Mars were not going to be where I wanted them until just after 1am, but I was set up by 9.20pm – yep, a long wait ahead, but always worth the effort.
As we move towards the latter half of civil twilight I start shooting my foreground exposure, and I’ll shoot a few of these at regular intervals between then and mid nautical twilight.
Because I shoot raw the white balance set in camera is irrelevant, and can be balanced with that of the sky in Photoshop during post processing.
The key things here are that I have a shadowless even illumination of my foreground which is shot at a low ISO, in perfect focus, and shot at say f8 has great depth of field.
Once deep into blue hour and astronomical twilight the brighter stars are visible and so I now use full magnification in live view and focus on a bright star in the cameras field of view.
Then it’s a waiting game – waiting for the sky to darken to its maximum and the Milky Way to come into my desired position for my chosen composition.
Shooting the Sky
Astro landscape photography is all about showing the sky in context with the foreground – I have absolutely ZERO time for those popular YouTube photographers who composite a shot of the night sky into a landscape image shot in a different place or a different angle.
Good astro landscape photography HAS TO BE A COMPOSITE though – there is no way around that.
And by GOOD I mean producing a full resolution image that will sell through the agencies and print BIG if needed.
The key things that contribute to an image being classed good in my book are simple:
Pin-point stars with no trailing
Low noise
Sharp from ‘back’ to ‘front’.
Pin-points stars are solely down to correct shutter speed for your sensor size and megapixel count.
Low noise is covered by shooting a low ISO foreground and a sequence of high ISO sky images, and using Starry Landscape Stacker on Mac (Sequator on PC appears to be very similar) in conjunction with a mean or median stacking mode.
Further noise cancelling is achieved but the shooting of Dark Frames, and the typical wide-aperture vignetting is cancelled out by the creation of a flat field frame.
And ‘back to front’ image sharpness should be obvious to you from what I’ve already written!
So, I’ll typically shoot a sequence of 20 to 30 exposures – all one after the other with no breaks or pauses – and then a sequence of 20 to 30 dark frames.
Shutter speeds usually range from 4 to 6 seconds
Watch this video on my YouTube Channel about shutter speed:
Best viewed on the channel itself, and click the little cog icon to choose 1080pHD as the resolution.
Putting it all Together
Shooting all the frames for astro landscape photography is really quite simple.
Putting it all together is fairly simple and straight forward too – but it’s TEDIOUS and time-consuming if you want to do it properly.
But I wanted to try Raw Therapee for this Stiperstones image, and another of my patrons – Frank – wanted a video of processing methodology in Raw Therapee.
Easier said than done, cramming 4 hours into a typical YouTube video! But after about six attempts I think I’ve managed it, and you can see it here, but I warn you now that it’s 40 minutes long:
Best viewed on the channel itself, and click the little cog icon to choose 1080pHD as the resolution.
I hope you’ve found the information in this post useful, together with the YouTube videos.
I don’t monetize my YouTube videos or fill my blog posts with masses of affiliate links, and I rely solely on my patrons to help cover my time and server costs. If you would like to help me to produce more content please visit my Patreon page on the button above.
When we shoot ETTR (expose to the right) in bright, harsh light, Lightroom can sometimes get the wrong idea and make a real ‘hash’ of rendering the raw file.
Sometimes it can be so bad that the less experienced photographer can get the wrong impression of their raw file exposure – and in some extreme cases they may even ‘bin’ the image thinking it irretrievably over exposed.
I’ve just uploaded a video to my YouTube channel which shows you exactly what I’m talking about:
The image was shot by my client and patron Paul Smith when he visited the Mara back in October last year, and it’s a superb demo image of just how badly Lightroom can demosaic a straight forward +1.6 Ev ETTR shot.
Importing the raw file directly into Lightroom gives us this:
But importing the raw file directly into RawTherapee with no adjustments gives us this:
Just look at the two histogram versions – Lightroom is doing some crazy stuff to the image ‘in the background’ as there are ZERO develop settings applied.
But if you watch the video you’ll see that it’s quite straight forward to regain all that apparent ‘blown detail’.
And here’s the important bit – we do so WITHOUT the use of the shadow or highlight recovery sliders. Anyone who has purchased my sharpening videos HERE knows that those two sliders can VERY EASILY cause undesirable ‘pseudo-sharpening’ halos, and they should only be used with caution.
The way I process this +1.6 stop ETTR exposure inside Lightroom has revealed all the superb mid tone detail and given us a really good image that we could take into Photoshop and improve with some precision localized adjustments.
So don’t let Lightroom control you – you need to control IT!
If you feel this article and video has been beneficial to you and would like to see more per week, then supporting my Patreon page for as little as $1 per month would be a massive help. Thanks everyone!
A few days ago I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel explaining PPI and DPI – you can see that HERE .
But there is way more to pixel per inch (PPI) resolution values than just the general coverage I gave it in that video.
And this post is about a major impact of PPI resolution that seems to have evaded the understanding and comprehension of perhaps 95% of Photoshop users – and Lightroom users too for that matter.
I am talking about image view magnification, and the connection this has to your monitor.
Let’s make a new document in Photoshop:
We’ll make the new document 5 inches by 4 inches, 300ppi:
I want you to do this yourself, then get a plastic ruler – not a steel tape like I’ve used…..
Make sure you are viewing the new image at 100% magnification, and that you can see your Photoshop rulers along the top and down the left side of the workspace – and right click on one of the rulers and make sure the units are INCHES.
Take your plastic ruler and place it along the upper edge of your lower monitor bezel – not quite like I’ve done in the crappy GoPro still below:
Yes, my 5″ long image is in reality 13.5 inches long on the display!
The minute you do this, you may well get very confused!
Now then, the length of your 5×4 image, in “plastic ruler inches” will vary depending on the size and pixel pitch of your monitor.
Doing this on a 13″ MacBook Pro Retina the 5″ edge is actually 6.875″ giving us a magnification factor of 1.375:1
On a 24″ 1920×1200 HP monitor the 5″ edge is pretty much 16″ long giving us a magnification factor of 3.2:1
And on a 27″ Eizo ColorEdge the 5″ side is 13.75″ or there abouts, giving a magnification factor of 2.75:1
The 24″ HP monitor has a long edge of not quite 20.5 inches containing 1920 pixels, giving it a pixel pitch of around 94ppi.
The 27″ Eizo has a long edge of 23.49 inches containing 2560 pixels, giving it a pixel pitch of 109ppi – this is why its magnification factor is less then the 24″ HP.
And the 13″ MacBook Pro Retina has a pixel pitch of 227ppi – hence the magnification factor is so low.
So WTF Gives with 1:1 or 100% View Magnification Andy?
Well, it’s simple.
The greatest majority of Ps users ‘think’ that a view magnification of 100% or 1:1 gives them a view of the image at full physical size, and some think it’s a full ppi resolution view, and they are looking at the image at 300ppi.
WRONG – on BOTH counts !!
A 100% or 1:1 view magnification gives you a view of your image using ONE MONITOR or display PIXEL to RENDER ONE IMAGE PIXEL In other words the image to display pixel ratio is now 1:1
So at a 100% or 1:1 view magnification you are viewing your image at exactly the same resolution as your monitor/display – which for the majority of desk top users means sub-100ppi.
Why do I say that? Because the majority of desk top machine users run a 24″, sub 100ppi monitor – Hell, this time last year even I did!
When I view a 300ppi image at 100% view magnification on my 27″ Eizo, I’m looking at it in a lowly resolution of 109ppi. With regard to its properties such as sharpness and inter-tonal detail, in essence, it looks only 1/3rd as good as it is in reality.
Hands up those who think this is a BAD THING.
Did you put your hand up? If you did, then see me after school….
It’s a good thing, because if I can process it to look good at 109ppi, then it will look even better at 300ppi.
This also means that if I deliberately sharpen certain areas (not the whole image!) of high frequency detail until they are visually right on the ragged edge of being over-sharp, then the minuscule halos I might have generated will actually be 3 times less obvious in reality.
Then when I print the image at 1440, 2880 or even 5760 DOTS per inch (that’s Epson stuff), that print is going to look so sharp it’ll make your eyeballs fall to bits.
And that dpi print resolution, coupled with sensible noise control at monitor ppi and 100% view magnification, is why noise doesn’t print to anywhere near the degree folk imagine it will.
This brings me to a point where I’d like to draw your attention to my latest YouTube video:
Did you like that – cheeky little trick isn’t it!
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
If I process on a Retina display at over 200ppi resolution, I have a two-fold problem:
1. I don’t have as big a margin or ‘fudge factor’ to play with when it comes to things like sharpening.
2. Images actually look sharper than they are in reality – my 13″ MacBook Pro is horrible to process on, because of its excessive ppi and its small dimensions.
Seriously, if you are a stills photographer with a hankering for the latest 4 or 5k monitor, then grow up and learn to understand things for goodness sake!
Ultra-high resolution monitors are valid tools for video editors and, to a degree, stills photographers using large capacity medium format cameras. But for us mere mortals on 35mm format cameras, they can actually ‘get in the way’ when it comes to image evaluation and processing.
Working on a monitor will a ppi resolution between the mid 90’s and low 100’s at 100% view magnification, will always give you the most flexible and easy processing workflow.
Just remember, Photoshop linear physical dimensions always ‘appear’ to be larger than ‘real inches’ !
And remember, at 100% view magnification, 1 IMAGE pixel is displayed by 1 SCREEN pixel. At 50% view magnification 1 SCREEN pixel is actually displaying the dithered average of 2 IMAGE pixels. At 25% magnification each monitor pixel is displaying the average of 4 image pixels.
Anyway, that’s about it from me until the New Year folks, though I am the worlds biggest Grinch, so I might well do another video or two on YouTube over the ‘festive period’ so don’t forget to subscribe over there.
Thanks for reading, thanks for watching my videos, and Have a Good One!
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My YouTube Channel Latest Photography Video Training.
I’ve been busy this week adding more content to the old YouTube channel.
Adding content is really time-consuming, with recording times taking around twice the length of the final video.
Then there’s the editing, which usually takes around the same time, or a bit longer. Then encoding and compression and uploading takes around the same again.
So yes, a 25 minute video takes A LOT more than 25 minutes to make and make live for the world to view.
This weeks video training uploads are:
This video deals with the badly overlooked topic of raw file demosaicing.
Next up is:
This video is a refreshed version of getting contrast under control in Lightroom – particularly Lightroom Classic CC.
Then we have:
This video is something of a follow-up to the previous one, where I explain the essential differences between contrast and clarity.
And finally, one from yesterday – which is me, restraining myself from embarking on a full blown ‘rant’, all about the differences between DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch):
Important Note
Viewing these videos is essential for the betterment of your understanding – yes it is! And all I ask for in terms of repayment from yourselves is that you:
Give the video a ‘like’ by clicking the thumbs up!
YouTube is a funny old thing, but a substantial subscriber base and like videos will bring me closer to laying my hands on latest gear for me to review for you!
If all my blog subscribers would subscribe to my YouTube channel then my subs would more than treble – so go on, what are you waiting for.
I do like creating YouTube free content, but I do have to put food on the table, so I have to do ‘money making stuff’ as well, so I can’t afford to become a full-time YouTuber yet! But wow, would I like to be in that position.
So that’s that – appeal over.
Watch the videos, and if you have any particular topic you would like me to do a video on, then please just let me know. Either email me, or you can post in the comments below – no comment goes live here unless I approve it, so if you have a request but don’t want anyone else to see it, then just say.
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The Importance of Finished Image Previsualization (Patreon Only).
For those of you who haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, I uploaded a video describing how I shot and processed the Lone Tree at Llyn Padarn in North Wales the other day.
You can view the video here:
Image previsualization is hugely important in all photography, but especially so in landscape photography.
Most of us do it in some way or other. Looking at images of a location by other photographers is the commonest form of image previsualization that I come across amongst most hobby photographers – and up to a point, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that – as long as you put your own ‘slant’ on the shot.
But relying on this method alone has one massive Achilles Heel – nature does not always ‘play nice’ with the light!
You set off for your chosen location with a certain knowledge that the weather forecast is correct, and you are guaranteed to get the perfect light for the shot you have in mind.
Three hours later, you arrive at your destination, and the first thought that enters your head is “how do I blow up the Met Office” – how could they have lied to me so badly?
If you rely solely on ‘other folks images’ for what your shot should look like, then you now have a severe problem. Nature is railing against your preconceptions, and unless you make some mental modifications then you are deep into a punch-up with nature that you will never win.
Just such an occasion transpired for me the other day at Llyn Padarn in North Wales.
The forecast was for low level cloud with no wind, just perfect for a moody shot of the famous Lone Tree on the south shore of the lake.
So, arriving at the location to be greeted by this was a surprise to say the least:
This would have been disastrous for some, simply because the light does not comply with their initial expectations. I’ve seen many people get a ‘fit of the sulks’ when this happens, and they abandon the location without even getting out of the car.
Alternatively, there are folk who will get their gear set up and make an attempt, but their initial disappointment becomes a festering ‘mental block’, and they cannot see a way to turn this bad situation into something good.
But, here’s the thing – there is no such thing as a bad situation!
There are however, multiple BAD REACTIONS to a situation.
And every adverse reaction has its roots buried in either:
Rigid, inflexible preconceptions.
Poor understanding of photographic equipment and post-processing.
Or both!
On this occasion, I was expecting a rather heavy, flat-ish light scenario; but was greeted by the exact opposite.
But instead of getting ‘stroppy about it’, experience and knowledge allow me to change my expectation, and come up with a new ‘finished image previsualization’ on the fly so to speak.
Instead of the futility of trying to produce my original idea – which would never work out – I simply change my image previsualization, based on what’s in front of me.
It’s then up to me to identify what I need to do in order to bring this new idea to fruition.
The capture workflow for both ‘anticipated’ and ‘reality’ would involve bracketing due to excessive subject brightness range, but there the similarity ends.
The ‘anticipated’ capture workflow would only require perhaps 3 or 4 shots – one for the highlights, and the rest for the mid tones and shadow detail.
But the ‘reality’ capture workflow is very different. The scene has massive contrast and the image looks like crap BECAUSE of that excessive contrast. Exposing for the brightest highlights gives us a very dark image:
But I know that the contrast can be reduced in post to give me this:
So, while I’m shooting I can previz in my head what the image I’ve shot will look like in post.
This then allows me to capture the basic bracket of shots to capture all my shadow and mid tone detail.
If you watch the video, you’ll see that I only use TWO shots from the bracket sequence to produce the basic exposure blend – and they are basically 5 stops apart. The other shots I use are just for patching blown highlights.
Because the clouds are moving, the sun is in and out like a yo-yo. Obviously, when it’s fully uncovered, it will flare across the lens. But when it is partially to fully covered, I’m doing shot after shot to try and get the best exposures of the reflected highlights in the water.
By shooting through a polarizer AND a 6 stop ND, I’m getting relatively smooth water in all these shots – with the added bonus of blurring out the damn canoeists!
And it’s the ‘washed out colour, low contrast previsualization’ of the finished image that is driving me to take all the shots – I’m gathering enough pixel data to enable me to create the finished image without too much effort in Lightroom or Photoshop.
Anyway, go and watch the video as it will give you a much better idea of what I’m talking about!
But remember, always take your time and try reappraise what’s in front of you when the lighting conditions differ from what you were expecting. You will often be amazed at the awesome images you can ‘pull’ from what ostensibly appears to be a right-off situation.
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Important – if you are reading this post about the new Guided Upright Tool via subscription email PLEASE view it directly on the blog instead.
Yesterday Adobe released updates for Lightroom CC 2015, Lightroom 6 (non CC) and Photoshop CC2015.
These updates reconciled a few bug fixes and added new camera support BUT, Lr CC subscribers got themselves a new tool – yeah!
And what a useful tool it is – the Guided Upright Tool.
Below you’ll see a video of me showing how to deploy the tool, but basically it makes a damn fine job of getting rid of awkward and complex distortions from wide angle lenses that I’ve always had to resort to fixing with the Photoshop Warp Tool.
Firstly, lets take a look at the develop module panel where it lives:
Compared to the old Lens Correction Panel in previous versions of Lightroom:
As you can see from the comparison image at the top of the page, this tool does a fine job of quickly and effectively removing the skewed field curvature from the lighthouse – watch the video below on how I did this – really simple!
You might want to click the YouTube link at the bottom of the video to view at full size.
Caveats:
Something I forgot to stress in the video – you MUST check the ENABLE PROFILE CORRECTIONS in the lens corrections panel in order for the Guided Upright Tool to function.
You can only use a maximum of 4 lines, so choose them wisely!
When you add a third or fourth line you MAY get a warning “ ! Invalid Guide Configuration” – if you do, simply hit the backspace/delete key to remove the line causing the conflict.
Because the resulting correction can result in a major ‘crop’ to the image, you may loose vital pixels and end up with a less than desirable composition.
Plus Points:
Fast, effective and a time-saver; giving you the ability to correct for distorted horizontals and vertical at the same time.
I rate this as one of the best tools Adobe have added to Lightroom in ages, though I can’t give it 10/10 because we end up with a cropped image, and as I hinted at earlier, there are ways to do this in Photoshop that maintain ALL the pixels in the image.
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OK, so I’ve made a tentative start on my new Photoshop video tutorials and I thought I’d upload this Colour Range Selection Tool Basics one to my Tube of Me channel – just so that everyone can see what the Fuzziness, Localised Colour Clusters and Range “do-hickies” actually do for your workflow process!
The colour range selection tool can be used for many different purposes within Photoshop where you want to make a selection based on Colour/Hue as opposed to a selection based on luminosity.
In this video I use it to effect a colour change to a specific object within an image; but in the previous video post I used it to ‘remove’ a black background.
But both cases amount to the same thing if you think about it logically – it’s just a way of ISOLATING pixels in an image based on their colour range.
Overall, this is a bit of a “quick ‘n dirty” way of doing the job, and I could do a little extra brush work inside the mask to tidy things up that little bit more!
But now you know how the tool itself works.
A purer way of changing localised colour involves a very different method – see these other videos on my channel:
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Simple Masking in Photoshop – The Liquid Chocolate Shots
Masking in Photoshop is what the software was built for, and yet so many Photoshop users are unfamiliar or just downright confused by the concept that they never use the technique.
Mask mastery will transform the way you work with Photoshop!
Take these shots for instance:
Wanting a shot to look like liquid chocolate and cream on a black or white background is all well and good, but producing it can be either as simple or hard as you care to make it.
Trying to get a pure white background ‘in camera’ is problematic to say the least, and chucking hot melted chocolate around if fraught with its own set of problems!
Shooting on a dark or black background is easier because it demands LESS lighting.
Masking in Photoshop will allow us to isolate the subject and switch out the background.
Now for the ‘chocolate bit’ – we could substitute it with brown emulsion paint – but have you seen the bloody price of it?!
Cheap trade white emulsion comes by the gallon at less than the price of a litre of the right coloured paint; and masking in Photoshop + a flat colour layer with a clipping mask put in the right blend mode will turn white paint into liquid chocolate every time!
A tweak with the Greg Benz Lumenzia plugin will finish the shot in Photoshop:
A final tweak in Lightroom and the whole process takes from the RAW shot on the left to the finished image on the right.
The key to a good mask in Photoshop is ALWAYS good, accurate pixel selection, and you’d be surprised just how simple it is.
Watch the video on my YouTube channel; I use the Colour Range tool to make a simple selection of the background, and a quick adjustment of the mask edge Smart Radius and Edge Contrast in order to obtain the perfect Photoshop mask for the job:
Like everything else in digital photography, when you know what you can do in post processing, it changes the way you shoot – hence I know I can make the shot with white paint on a black background!
Masking in Photoshop – you mustn’t let the concept frighten or intimidate you! It’s critical that you understand it if you want to get the very best from your images; and it’s a vast subject simply because there are many types of mask, and even more ways by which to go about producing them.
It’s a topic that no one ever stops learning about – nope, not even yours truly! But in order to explore it to the full you need to understand all the basic concepts AND how to cut through all the bullshit that pervades the internet about it – stick with me on this folks and hang on for the ride!
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PURE SEX – and I’ve bloody well paid for this! My new SW150 MkII filter system for the Nikon 14-24. Just look at those flashy red anodised parts – bound to make me a better photographer!
I’ve just finished part 1 of my video review of the Lee SW150 Filter holder system for super-wide lenses and uploaded it to my YouTube channel:
First off – please forgive the shirt folks!
The SW150 Mk 2 filter holder is designed to fit a list of different lenses:
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
Nikon 14mm f2.8 D AF ED
Canon EF 14mm f2.8 L II USM
Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC
Sigma 12-24mm f4.5-5.6 DG HSM II
Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f/2.8 PRO FX
and according to the Lee website, additional lenses will be catered for; as the need arises I presume.
I never subscribed to the original incarnation of the SW150, for two reasons:
It ‘leaked light’ at the rear surface of the filter (though that was fairly easy to correct with a home-made baffle mod).
But that was of no consequence to me because Lee always gave the impression that:
They would not produce the Big & Little Stopper filters in 150mm square format.
So I’ve always stuck with either the 100mm Lee system or used a B&W 77mm screw-in filter on the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 or a wide angle prime; and I’ve shot many a well-selling image.
But, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens has more than one advantage over its sister lens:
It’s sharper – by a country mile.
It resolves more ‘line pairs per millimetre’ than the 24-70mm.
Its focal length range is more ‘in keeping’ with landscape photography.
And, like all the other lenses in that list above, that vast front element collects SO MANY MORE photons during the exposure.
So, now that I’ve got the opportunity to use the advantages of the 14-24 f2.8 from behind high quality 10x and 6x ND filters – well, let’s say the purchase of the Lee SW150 Mk2 system is a bit of a ‘no-brainer’ really.
The main improvement to the holder itself is the inclusion of a new baffle or ‘lightshield’ as Lee call it – this can be purchased separately as an upgrade to the original Lee SW150 Mk 1.
But you’ll have to do without the sexy red anodised bits that come with the new Mk 2 version if you go that route – these have just got to make me a better photographer!
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A final tweak in Lightroom and the whole process takes from the RAW shot on the left to the finished image on the right.
