360Photography

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  • Sunset, golf and a fake nuclear missile: How I spent four days taking pictures in Hawaii

    Sony a6500 | 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS @ 95mm | ISO 100 | F6.3

    Being a child of the Midwest a hike, in my mind, is more or less walking across land that is mostly flat. There are trees, usually a dirt path, and maybe the occasional hill. A hike in Hawaii, I came to learn recently, can mean something vastly different.

    I was in Hawaii on a Sony-sponsored trip along with a handful of other photography journalists, on Oahu for two vastly different shooting experiences: shooting pro golf with the a9, and trying out a new 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 zoom for the a6000-series. I was armed with a TSA-approved 3.4 ounces of sunscreen, a handful of memory cards and a pair of running shoes that prove to be woefully outmatched by the “hike” we’re about to embark on.

    My first clue should have been when one member of our party put some spiky, chainmail-type overshoes on top of her street shoes. We walked across a parking lot toward the “trailhead,” a rocky slope where a faint suggestion of a path disappeared into some trees. What followed was 30 minutes of scrambling up a steep incline, grabbing at roots, tree branches and rocks for support. Oh, and did I mention I have a slightly weird thing about heights?

    Suddenly, I was quite grateful for the a6500 and the lens’ small size. The whole kit fit easily into a low profile backpack and didn’t provide an extra physical challenge to overcome. Along the way we found a couple of points to stop off, breathe, and take a few photos. Every time we stopped I considered chickening out on the rest of the climb. Nobody would judge me, and I’d get perfectly nice photos from halfway up.

    Sony a6500 | 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS @ 18mm | ISO 100 | F4.5

    Maybe the morning’s events made me feel bolder (more on that later). Maybe being the only lady journalist on the trip made me hungrier to prove my grit. Maybe it was just the beer I had at lunch giving me some extra courage. I kept going whatever the reason, and I’m pretty darn glad that I did.

    Insert your favorite inspirational quote / rap lyric about making it to the top here.

    Sony a6500 | 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS @ 18mm | ISO 200 | F5.6

    I wouldn’t have wanted to carry a lens/camera combo much bigger than the a6500 and 18-135mm on that hike. For its size, it proved to be a pretty versatile kit. The lens was wide enough for a sweeping view of sunset in the valley, but long enough for a quick shot of a helicopter in the distance when it swooped by unexpectedly. Your standard kit zoom wouldn’t have provided quite as many options.

    Did you instinctively start humming the Jurassic Park theme when you saw this image? No? You’re a liar.

    Sony a6500 | 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS @ 90mm | ISO 100 | F5.6

    I tend to gravitate toward wide lenses and like the convenience of carrying lightweight primes, but I was very happy to have the variety that the telezoom offered. When you’re standing on one 3′ x 3′ rock scared to move left or right for fear of falling to your death, you don’t have too many composition options with a 24mm prime.

    As it turns out, that hike wasn’t the only time I contemplated my own mortality that day. Let me tell you about the events of that morning.

    We all know now what happened, but when you’re woken up by your phone buzzing with this message (special attention to the part that says THIS IS NOT A DRILL) it makes for a very strange start to the day. The short version of my story is that I spent about 15 minutes in a semi-panic, and having only the tornado drills of my youth to call on for guidance, huddled in my hotel bathroom with a single bottle of water. Not exactly your best shot at surviving a nuclear attack.

    I wish I could say I had some kind of profound experience when I found out it was all a mistake. In reality, I just put on some shoes and went downstairs for coffee and a yogurt, and more or less just went about my day. I made time to get into the ocean. That was nice.

    A couple of days before the threat of nuclear warfare appeared on my phone, I found myself in a very different state of mind as I tried to photograph professional golf.

    Sony a9 | FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS @ 121mm | ISO 100 | F5.6

    Golf is a mysterious game. As opposed to the tennis tournaments and baseball games I’m familiar with, the action happens all around you. I’ve thought of it as a game with a leisurely pace, but trying to photograph it for the first time, I’m amazed at how quickly the action unfolds. You have to get into position, pray that a caddy doesn’t step into your way at the last moment, and you only have a few seconds to get your shot before it’s all over. Oh, and you have to keep in mind the direction of the sun, ugly things like trash cans creeping into your backgrounds, and woe betide you if you make even a peep as a golfer prepares to swing a club – you’ll be swiftly escorted off the grounds.

    “Game changer” has become sort of a joke around the office since it’s a phrase that’s been used to death and rarely lives up to its meaning. But if you’re a golf photographer, you really could consider the a9 to be a game changer. Plenty of resolution, 20 fps and silent shutter – particularly that last bit – is huge for a sport where silence isn’t just golden, it’s mandatory. Jeannette Moses noted this revelation when she photographed the Presidents Cup last year with the a9. I’ve seen it firsthand too, and it really is strange to be so close to a professional golfer raising his club to strike the ball while firing away at 20 fps.

    Sony a9 | FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS @ 100mm | ISO 100 | F5.6

    Sony’s making a clear appeal to pro sports photographers with the a9, and before we set foot on the golf course we got a primer on the company’s efforts to bolster its offerings with Pro Support. If you aren’t familiar, this is a program for working photographers that aims to put Sony on even footing with Canon and Nikon.

    Sony Pro Support members pay a $ 100 annual fee that entitles them to 24/7 phone and email support and access to service centers in Los Angeles and New York. If you need to send a product in for a fix, Sony claims a three-day turnaround with free loaner gear to cover repairs that take longer. To qualify, photographers must own at least two full-frame Sony bodies, three lenses and must be actively earning income from their photography.

    For comparison, Nikon uses a point system and requires at least two camera bodies and two lenses. The system is tiered, but all levels include priority repairs, repair loans and discounts on repairs. Canon also uses a point-based tiered system, but doesn’t require a certain number of lenses or bodies.

    I’m by no means a pro, and shooting golf proves to be a much more challenging experience than I was anticipating. An afternoon carrying two camera bodies, one of them with a sizable 100-400mm lens attached, was a fairly taxing endeavor. I also put my finger on the shutter too gingerly a few times, and with 20 fps silent shutter it’s easy to end up with hundreds of photos you didn’t mean to take. From over 3000 (!) images, I managed to scrape together a handful I feel comfortable putting my name next to. Not exactly a stellar hit rate.

    Sony Open gallery

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    I have a renewed appreciation for the tough job pro sports photographers have, and a respect for Hawaii’s lovely-yet-dizzying hiking trails. I also jump out of my seat now when my phone buzzes too loudly and I’m finally getting serious about putting together an earthquake preparedness kit. But my feeling of having stretched myself as a photographer, and I suppose as a hiker, outweighs my sense of distress over the whole thing. And if you’re going to survive a fake nuclear missile attack, there are worse places to experience it than Hawaii.

    Sony 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS sample gallery

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    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • PowerShot Shootout: Canon’s G1 X III vs G7 X II

    G1 X III versus G7 X II shootout

    Introduction

    In our review of the Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III, we made some pretty bold claims. Namely, that the lens on the G1 X III makes such a compromise in terms of maximum aperture in an effort to keep the size of the camera down, that much of the theoretical advantage of the large APS-C sensor is basically moot.

    Specifically, the lenses on cameras with smaller 1″-type sensors are so much faster in some cases that they have the potential to offer both better control over depth of field, as well as better noise performance in low light. The specs do tell us, though, that the G1 X III should offer better dynamic range at base ISO.

    LensEquivalentApertures([“Equivalent focal length (mm)”,”Canon G7 X II”,”Canon G1 X III”], [[24,4.90909090909091,”Canon G7 X II at 24mm: F4.9″,4.5170606663860564,”Canon G1 X III at 24mm: F4.5″],[26,null,””,5.1623550472983508,”Canon G1 X III at 26mm: F5.2″],[29,null,””,5.646325832982571,”Canon G1 X III at 29mm: F5.6″],[32,6.0000000000000009,”Canon G7 X II at 32mm: F6.0″,6.4529438091229379,”Canon G1 X III at 32mm: F6.5″],[37,null,””,7.2595617852633048,”Canon G1 X III at 37mm: F7.3″],[39,6.8181818181818183,”Canon G7 X II at 39mm: F6.8″,null,””],[45,null,””,8.0661797614036725,”Canon G1 X III at 45mm: F8.1″],[54,7.6363636363636367,”Canon G7 X II at 54mm: F7.6″,null,””],[57,null,””,9.0341213327721128,”Canon G1 X III at 57mm: F9.0″],[72,null,””,9.0341213327721128,”Canon G1 X III at 72mm: F9.0″],[100,7.6363636363636367,”Canon G7 X II at 100mm: F7.6″,null,””]], {“isMobile”:false})

    At 24mm, the G1 X III has a slight advantage over depth of field control compared to the the G7 X II, but either matches it or falls behind its smaller-sensored sibling elsewhere in the zoom range.

    This is a pretty big deal. After all, the G1 X III is Canon’s flagship compact, and is the only camera currently on the market with an APS-C sensor and a zoom lens (it also fits in your pocket). On the other hand, the G7 X II is nearly half the price, is more compact, and its smaller 1″-type sensor is potentially offset by a much faster zoom lens with greater reach.

    Of course, this discussion is so far based on specification alone, and those specifications can’t necessarily take into account real-world sensor and lens performance. So, let’s check our theory, and see how these two cameras compare.

    Bright landscape

    This is the main situation in which you’d expect the G1X III to have an advantage. Assuming comparable sensor performance, we’d expect the G1X III’s larger sensor to have greater dynamic range advantage, tolerating more light before clipping and thus allowing more exposure, which should give slightly cleaner tones throughout the image.

    G1 X Mark III
    ISO 100
    F7.1 (F11.5 equiv)
    1/320th    		 G7 X Mark II
    ISO 125
    F4 (F10.9 equiv)
    1/1250th

    For this scene, we set both cameras on the same tripod, and exposed the scene to just barely clip the highlights of the sun’s reflection on the building at center; though the exposure settings differ, both cameras received roughly the same amount of light at each of their respective base ISO values.

    It’s clear to see that in this sort of scene, the G1 X III exhibits less noise in the lifted shadow areas than its smaller-sensored sibling, and there are areas, particularly in the trees, where fine detail is rendered a tad better.

    We should note that these sorts of bright daylight scenes (where you’re not light-limited and can use base ISO), are where the G1 X III will really pull ahead of the G7 X II. In scenes with even more contrast than this, the difference will become even more apparent.

    Close-range indoors

    By 28mm equiv, the graph shows that both cameras sensor/lens combinations are offering the same equivalent focal length and roughly the same equivalent aperture. Which means, in principle, that they should receive the same amount of total light, when shot wide open at the same shutter speed (and whatever ISO is necessary). The only differences should stem from differences in sensor performance and lens characteristics.

    G1 X Mark III
    ISO 500
    F3.2 (F5.2 equiv)
    1/30th    		 G7 X Mark II
    ISO 160
    F2 (F5.5 equiv)
    1/30th

    Click through to see for yourself how each camera renders the background highlights – there is a bit of an ‘onion-ring’ effect from the G7 X II, though the G1 X III image looks just slightly noisier. This is indicative of a slightly less efficient sensor design compared to the backside-illuminated (BSI) unit in the G7 X II.

    Low light, casual portrait

    This sort of situation is usually where people expect to see the benefits of a larger sensor, but this is only true if you can give it enough light. Here’s a shot from the long end of the G1X III’s lens in a situation where you’d need to shoot wide-open. As can be seen from the graph at the top of the page, the G7 X II has a wider equivalent aperture at this point. Let’s see what that means.

    G1 X Mark III
    ISO 12,800
    F5.6 (F9.3 equiv)
    1/60th    		 G7 X Mark II
    ISO 5000
    F2.8 (F7.6 equiv)
    1/60th

    Both cameras were zoomed to ~72mm, and I kept my shutter speed at 1/60 sec to account for any slight subject movement. Because the G1 X III’s lens only opens to F5.6 at its maximum zoom, the ISO value hit the maximum value I’d chosen of 12800, while the G7 X II, at F2.8, called for an ISO value of 5000.

    After checking the difference in exposure value for both cameras, the G1 X III required an additional 0.64 EV boost in Adobe Camera Raw, which is effectively like shooting at ISO 20000. So in this situation, the G7 X II’s image is cleaner and offers slightly blurrier out-of-focus highlights in the background. Overall, the advantage of the larger sensor is essentially canceled out by the slower lens.

    Maximum zoom portrait

    So that’s how the two cameras compare within the range that both lenses cover. But now, let’s look at how the G7 X II at 100mm of equivalent reach compares to the G1 X III at its maximum of 72mm.

    G1 X Mark III
    ISO 400
    F5.6 (F9.3 equiv)
    1/125th    		 G7 X Mark II
    ISO 125
    F2.8 (F7.6 equiv)
    1/125th

    Here, you can see just how much of a difference the extra reach on the G7 X II’s lens can make. Both images were taken from the same location moments apart, with each lens shot wide open.

    To us, this really exemplifies that, though the 24-72mm focal range of the G1 X III is indeed quite versatile, the extra zoom range on the G7 X II can really be a big advantage for those looking for a small camera for casual portraiture. Of course, if you’re into artificial lighting, the G1 X III’s hot-shoe will allow you far more creative options than the G7 X II, which has a built-in flash and no other flash synchronization options.

    Takeaways

    This comparison is, of course, purposely limited to the image quality impact of the lenses and sensors on these two cameras. There’s a lot of other features that separate the G1 X III and G7 X II, including that the former offers better dynamic range, weather sealing, an electronic viewfinder, a flash hot shoe, a fully articulating screen, and Dual Pixel AF (and, disappointingly, Canon hasn’t updated its G5 X model, which would have been a closer match to the G7 X II in the first place).

    If all those other aspects of the G1 X III are worth the price premium to you, by all means, pick up a G1 X III. It’s a lovely camera, with excellent handling and is capable of great image quality under a wide variety of scenarios.

    Here comes the ‘but’ though… if you’re looking for (in our opinion) a better value, or you’re looking for an even smaller camera, or you shoot in low or marginal light more often than bright daylight, the G7 X II is almost certain to be a better fit, at a cheaper price. And this is why we just weren’t blown away by the G1 X III in our review; you greatly reduce the benefits of such a large and expensive sensor if you restrict its access to light to squeeze it into such a compact body.

    But what about you? Have you used one or both of these cameras? Let us know what you think of our comparisons in the comments.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Preset Brewery drag-and-drop tool converts Lightroom presets for Photoshop

    An application for macOS 10.10+ called Preset Brewery makes it possible to convert Lightroom presets into Camera Raw presets for use in Photoshop by simply dragging and dropping them—it really doesn’t get any simpler than that.

    Preset Brewery was recently updated to version 1.1, which adds support for exporting the presets directly into Camera Raw so that they’re immediately available; however, the option remains to save the converted presets into the folder where the Lightroom presets are located.

    Preset Brewery was created by developer Adam Bardon, who tells Fstoppers that a future update will add support for batch processing presets. Unfortunately, the application is not available for Windows, but Mac users can purchase Preset Brewery through the company’s website for $ 7.90 USD.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Canon patents innovative lens adapter with built-in electronic ND filter

    A Canon patent from October, 2017 resurfaced on the Canon rumor mill today, and it describes something pretty innovative from the Japanese camera giant. The patent shows a lens adapter—ostensibly designed for a mirrorless camera—that features a built-in variable-voltage ND filter.

    The ND filter component is “formed from an electrochromic device [or a liquid crystal element] which changes light transmittance on application of a voltage.” That way, you could electronically and silently change the amount of light hitting your camera’s sensor without stopping down the lens.

    As Canon News points out, this would be particularly useful for video shooting, since it’s silent, and it would allow you to separate depth-of-field control from brightness (i.e. shoot with a shallow depth-of-field in bright light).

    We could see this technology more readily appearing in a Cinema EOS system, but Canon has (naturally) written the patent as broadly as possible so that no one else can use the idea for stills. Canon Rumors also speculates that it might be the patent behind a rumored EF/EF-S to EF-M adapter specifically designed to adapt cinema lenses to an EF-M mount camera.

    As always with patents, it’s impossible to know what parts of this idea—if any—Canon plans to bring to market. But it’s a rather innovative design that we wouldn’t mind seeing in action.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • How to capture a classic perfume product shot with a single speedlight

    Dustin Dolby, the photographer behind the workphlo YouTube channel, is great at breaking down product photography into the simplest possible bits. By using Photoshop to mask together multiple exposures, he’s able to capture professional looking product photos using extremely minimal gear.

    In his latest episode, he shows how a single speedlight and some reflecting material can be used to capture a professional-looking photograph of perfume. What’s more, the exercise of capturing these exposures helps explain some basic lighting tenets when shooting products:

    Lighting a perfume bottle in a studio setting, requires the photographer to understand the angles the light is coming from. The substance of a few key lighting techniques can be boiled down into a few tips. Backlighting is a great way to show the volume of a translucent object, which couples nicely with frontal lighting.

    Here’s a look at the high-res final render, composited from a few different exposures you see him capture in the video above:

    Photo by Dustin Dolby/workphlo, used with permission.

    As Dustin explains in the video, you can do a lot more here—both compositionally and with different lighting techniques if you really want to have some fun—but this tutorial is more about explaining the basics and capturing a “classic” perfume shot with very little gear.

    Check out the full tutorial up top, and if you want to see more of Dustin’s ‘workphlo,’ head over to his YouTube channel or follow him on Instagram and Facebook.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • The US Copyright Office is ‘modernizing’ group registration of photos

    Photographers in the USA wishing to register groups of images for copyright protection will find the process much simpler and easier starting on February 20th.

    According to the US Copyright Office, ‘modernized’ practices will let people register either published or unpublished work via a new on-line application system (no more paper applications…) that will allow you to submit up to 750 images at a time. The new rules also re-define the word ‘Author’ to include individual photographers OR groups of photographers employed by the same person or organization.

    The filing process will require those submitting images to title the group and each image, and to create an Excel or PDF list of each image within the group. The group of images can’t occupy more than 500MB, but compression can be used to reduce file sizes, and the registration fee for each group will be $ 55.

    Unpublished and published images can’t be registered together, and all published works in an application have to have been published within the same year (but not necessarily in the same country).

    A key point about the process, according to a detailed explanation by artists’ attorney Leslie Burns, is that under the scheme, each image within the group will be registered individually, so damages will be paid in full for any single image use. Infringers won’t be able to claim that using one image from a group attracts only a fraction of a claim against the registration.

    The new rules go into effect February 20th, and can be read in full on the Government Publishing Office website (PDF). Or, for a more easily digestible take on what’s changing, visit the Copyright Alliance website.

    Copyright Office Summary

    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
    U.S. Copyright Office
    37 CFR Parts 201, 202
    [Docket No. 2016–10]

    Group Registration of Photographs

    AGENCY: U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress.

    ACTION: Final rule.

    SUMMARY: The U.S. Copyright Office is modernizing its practices to increase the efficiency of the group registration option for photographs. This final rule modifies the procedure for registering groups of published photographs (GRPPH), and establishes a similar procedure for registering groups of unpublished photographs (GRUPH).

    Applicants will be required to use a new online application specifically designed for each option, instead of using a paper application, and will be allowed to include up to 750 photographs in each claim.

    The ‘‘unpublished collection’’ option (which allows an unlimited number of photographs to be registered with one application), and the ‘‘pilot program’’ (which allows an unlimited number of published photographs to be registered with the application designed for one work) will be eliminated. The corresponding ‘‘pilot program’’ for photographic databases will remain in effect for the time being.

    The final rule modernizes the deposit requirements by requiring applicants to submit their photographs in a digital format when using GRPPH, GRUPH, or the pilot program for photographic databases, along with a separate document containing a list of the titles and file names for each photograph. The final rule revises the eligibility requirements for GRPPH and GRUPH by providing that all the photographs must be created by the same ‘‘author’’ (a term that includes an employer or other person for whom a work is made for hire), and clarifying that they do not need to be created by the same photographer or published within the same country. It also confirms that a group registration issued under GRPHH or GRUPH covers each photograph in the group, each photograph is registered as a separate work, and the group as a whole is not considered a compilation or a collective work.

    DATES: Effective February 20, 2018.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Google teamed up with pro photographers to train its Clips lifelogging camera

    Google debuted its $ 250 ‘Clips’ lifelogging camera to the public during the October 2017 launch event for the Google Pixel 2. Now, with the camera becoming officially available in only a few weeks time, the company has published a blog post that explains how the Clips camera’s underlying algorithms were trained to identify and keep the best shots, and discard the leftovers.

    It turns out Google relied on the expertise of a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist, and a fine arts photographer to train the AI and feed some high-quality photography into its machine learning model. The group collected and analyzed recorded footage from members of the development team to try and answer the question: “What makes a memorable moment?”

    “We needed to train models on what bad looked like,” said Josh Lovejoy, Senior Interaction Designer at Google. “By ruling out the stuff the camera wouldn’t need to waste energy processing (because no one would find value in it), the overall baseline quality of captured clips rose significantly.”

    The learning process includes basic elements of photography, such as an understanding of focus and depth-of-field, or the rule of thirds, but also some things that are obvious to most humans but less so to an algorithm—for example: don’t cover a lens with your finger and avoid abrupt movements while recording.

    Google admits that there is still a ways to go before perfection. It says the AI has been trained to look at “stability, sharpness, and framing,” but without careful calibration, a face at the edge of the frame will be appreciated just as much as one at the center, even if the focus of interest is really somewhere else in the image.

    “Success with Clips isn’t just about keeps, deletes, clicks, and edits (though those are important),” Lovejoy says. “It’s about authorship, co-learning, and adaptation over time. We really hope users go out and play with it.” More detail on the development and training process is available on the Google blog.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • It’s not the low light king, but here’s why we’re excited about the GH5S

    There’s no getting around physics. The GH5S uses an oversized Four Thirds type sensor – pretty big for a video camera – but still kinda small when compared with the 36 x 20.3mm expanse of silicon the Sony a7S II uses to shoot video. As you’d expect, the GH5S can’t simply leap this vast chasm using only some sensor improvements, better noise reduction and a little moxie. It’s good but, in spite of anything you may have read, it’s not magic.

    Read our analysis of our side-by-side shooting with the Sony a7S II

    And yet, the more we test and use the camera, the more excited we are by it.

    For a start, our shooting suggests that GH5S can outperform the a7S II whenever you require a depth-of-field that the Panasonic can offer. That alone means the GH5S will perform better than the Sony in some circumstances and can work across a greater range of lighting conditions than its IS-enabled sibling, the GH5.

    But that’s not the end of it. The ability to shoot Log footage in 10-bit means that it can retain a lot more subtle tonal information than the 8-bit output of the Sony. So although the deep shadows might be more susceptible to noise than the a7S II, the quality of the midtones in the final footage may well be better preserved and more tolerant of grading.

    That’s before you consider the features such as waveforms and vectorscopes that the GH5S inherits from the GH5, features that really aid setting exposure when shooting Log. Add to this the existing ecosystem that’s grown up around the GH series and the full picture reveals itself. We’re currently shooting the GH5S with a 0.71x SpeedBooster and a Sigma 18-35mm T2.0 CINE lens and can’t wait to show the results. If only Seattle would drop out of Log mode for a moment…

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Samsung promises to ‘reimagine the camera’ on the Galaxy S9

    We’ve been expecting the upcoming Samsung flagship smartphone Galaxy S9 to be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (the last week of February) for a while now, but today the Korean manufacturer has made things official by sending out invitations to the launch event.

    The event will take place on the 25th of February, the press day before the official start of MWC, and mobile photographers should be particularly excited. That’s because, according to the invite, this phone is all about “The camera. Reimagined.” There have been rumors about variable apertures and super-slow-motion video, and it seems like there’s a good chance at least the larger Galaxy S9+ will come with a dual-camera setup, similar to the Note 8.

    As usual, there’s no way of knowing what exactly to expect, but we’ll keep an eye on the rumor mill, and we’ll definitely be in Barcelona to report from the show as well. If you can’t be there, no worries—Samsung is planning to livestream the ‘Samsung Unpacked’ event.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • How one photographer built the ‘ultimate’ PC for Adobe Lightroom

    The finished product, a computer designed to be as fast as possible in Adobe Lightroom.

    When professional designer and hobbyist photographer Paul Stamatiou got back from his last trip to New Zealand and set about culling and editing his photos from the trip, he quickly realized that his 2-year-old 5K iMac was just not keeping up with Adobe Lightroom Classic CC and the high-megapixel Raw files he was importing. In fact, he spent over a year of spare time editing the 848GB worth of 42-megapixel RAW photos and 4K videos to create the resulting nine photosets.

    And so Paul decided it was time to build his own computer. Specifically, his goal was to:

    Build a fast, yet quiet and understated desktop PC with a healthy overclock aimed at improving my photo workflow while giving me the ability to upgrade parts of it later on.

    Fortunately for all of us, he chronicled the entire journey to this goal in a massive, 32,000-word blog post filled with footnotes and links to all the parts and incredibly detailed descriptions of exactly why he picked the parts he did, how he put them together, and how he optimized it all once it was set up.

    This is, I’m comfortable saying, the most comprehensive custom photo-editing computer build breakdown I have ever seen. If you’re at all considering building your own editing PC, bookmark it. If not, we spoke to Paul yesterday and have penned a bit of a TL;DR summary below.

    For the Mac lovers out there, note that Paul did consider building a dual-boot Hackintosh, but ultimately decided the annoyances wouldn’t be worth the time. His experience in the past—”randomly have bluetooth stop working and have days where the machine just won’t boot,” he told me over email—just wasn’t worth risking. It was time to build a PC.

    This beautiful piece of technology is what he came up with:

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    What’s impressive about this computer isn’t its sheer power. The parts he used (full list here) won’t make it the most beastly desktop PC you’ve heard of this week… or maybe even today. What makes it impressive is how Paul designed the PC so that it would run Lightroom’s Develop module and his personal workflow as efficiently as possible.

    As Paul explains in his post:

    As you know, there are a few main levers that affect the majority of a computer’s performance: storage, RAM, GPU and CPU. To be more precise: storage throughput, RAM size, RAM speed as well as the number of CPU cores and clock speed. In the case of Lightroom, CPU plays the most important role in overall application performance and to a much lesser extent GPU.

    […]

    For my needs Lightroom loves the highest clock speed it can get, as opposed to a ton of lower clocked cores.

    So rather than spend money on a chip with a crazy number of cores, all of which would be running at a lower clock speed, he picked a 6-core Intel i7 8700K, then had it ‘delidded’ and set it up to be water-cooled so he could overclock it safely to 5.2GHz on all cores.

    We spoke to Paul about the build yesterday, and he was kind enough to offer this little summary for those of you who aren’t keen on reading all 32,000 words of the full article:

    I was most concerned with performance in the Develop module of Lightroom as opposed to other actions that are more efficient with multiple cores and are not GPU accelerated. For me that meant that instead of opting for a machine with a ton of cores at a lower clock, I’d do better for Develop module tasks with fewer cores that were clocked higher, much higher.

    With this build I wasn’t particularly concerned about cost and decided to make a full-blown project out of it (along with a high-end graphics card I could use to try out some 4K gaming and Oculus Rift as a side benefit—I’m a designer by day and lots of my friends have begun designing for VR so I was curious to learn more about it). I definitely recognize the build is overkill in many aspects, including having the CPU delidded and running an aggressive overclock.

    While the build definitely sped up the Develop actions I was used to—it’s important to note that much of the future improvement will need to come from Adobe optimizing their software even more. […] Until Classic CC gets some performance optimization updates, I think my next step will be integrating something like Photo Mechanic into my culling workflow to do some of that outside of Lightroom so I end up importing, generating previews and managing fewer shots inside Lightroom itself.

    And that last bit, really, is the disappointing epilogue to what is a really fun computer build: even with a great system built specifically to run Lightroom well, any major performance improvements will have to come from the Adobe side of the equation. Not that it doesn’t make us want to build something similar…

    The final build cost Paul $ 5,931, including all of the peripherals and accessories—$ 1,500 27-inch Dell UltraSharp 4K display, Logitec mouse, Apple Magic keyboard, Bose bluetooth speaker, and Vesa monitor mounting arm.

    For a full parts list, or if you want to dive deep into how this computer was built and optimized, check out Paul’s massive article at this link. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself sourcing parts for your own custom-built photo editing PC once you’re done.

    All photos by Paul Stamatiou and used with permission.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)