My wife recently decided that she wanted to get a bunch of images of the kids printed. I wasn’t around and she didn’t know what the best way would be to make a list of those images for me to print. She had lo res copies of all of the images of the kids that I’ve put out for public display over the last year and so she decided to copy the ones she wanted printed into a new folder on my hard drive. I then had to find all of those images in Lightroom in order to prep print quality versions to send to the printer.

In this case there were only a few images so I could have manually searched for them all pretty quickly. But I didn’t do that. Instead I figured out the “right way” to do it so that I could very quickly repeat the process in the future…

There are two broad steps involved:

1. Create a text file with a listing of the directory contents. I use “Karen’s Directory Printer” for that.
2. Tag the images in Lightroom so that they can be sent to the printer. I use a Lightroom plugin from Timothy Armes called LR/Transporter for that.

Note – If you haven’t used any of Tim Armes’ plugins before, you owe it to yourself to check them out. They are all free for limited use, or by donation for the full feature list. You can find them at Photographers-Toolbox.com. My personal favorite is LR/Enfuse, which allows you to blend multiple images made with multiple exposures (somewhat like HDR photograpahy, only not quite).

I have decided to join a global movement that is bringing much needed attention to prostate cancer. I’m doing this by growing a Moustache this Movember, the month formerly known as November. My commitment is to grow a moustache all November and I am hoping that you will support my efforts by making a donation. The funds raised go directly to Prostate Cancer Canada.

What many people don’t know is that 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer to afflict Canadian men with 25,500 diagnosed and 4,400 dying from the disease each year.

Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved.

To make a donation, you can either:

• Click this link http://ca.movember.com/mospace/378916/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
• Write a cheque payable to ‘Prostate Cancer Canada’, referencing my Registration Number 378916 and mailing it to: Prostate Cancer Canada, 145 Front Street East, Ste. 306, Toronto, ON M5A 1E3, Canada.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law (in Canada).

Prostate Cancer Canada will use the money raised by Movember for the development of programs related to awareness, public education, advocacy, support of those affected, and research into the prevention, detection, treatment and cure of prostate cancer.

For more details on how the funds raised from previous campaigns have been used and the impact Movember is having please go to http://ca.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs/.

Thank you

Almost every new SLR camera shipped in the last few years has included a feature known as “Live View”. For Point and Shooters it has been a given that you would be able to see a live image of your intended subject before you squeeze the shutter, but for digital SLR’s it has always been a little bit more complicated.

The thing is, there’s a darn mirror inside the camera that gets in the way, and it has to be moved before the camera sensor can see the same scene that the lens sees. It took the manufacturers a few years to figure out how to make it all work elegantly (in fact it’s still not perfect because autofocus performance takes a big hit in live view mode, but that’s a subject for another article). In the mean time SLR shooters never got used to having live view on the back of their cameras, and it’s one of those features that gets used very rarely (almost never) by most serious photographers.

Here are 5 reasons why you should use Live View for landscape photography:

1. Bigger Viewfinder: Let’s face it, the viewfinder in your SLR is small. Even if you’ve got one of those fancy-pants professional cameras that shows 100% of the image that the sensor sees (most non-pro SLR’s only show 90-95% of the scene), it’s still very small. With a bigger view you can get better compositions and more easily see the distractions and annoying backgrounds that you might not notice otherwise. Simply put, bigger is better baby!
2. Testing Critical Focus: While in live view mode you can zoom the image on the LCD (typically 5x or 10x) to get a much better idea of what you are actually focusing on. This is particularly helpful for macro photography, but it’s also great for landscapes.
3. Stronger Compositions: The image displayed on the LCD during Live View typically includes grid lines to help you compose your image. These lines can help you check that your horizons are straight and level and that your trees and buildings are vertical. They can even help you improve your composition by clearly showing guidelines for compositional rules of thumb such as the “Rule of Thirds.”
4. White Balance Preview: When you change the white balance setting in your camera, the image in your viewfinder doesn’t change, so you really can’t be sure how it’s going to look. Fortunately the image on the LCD changes instantly to show how your white balance affects the image. Sure, you can change the white balance in software (such as Adobe Lightroom) later (if you shoot RAW), but why not get it right in the camera instead? I find this feature to be invaluable when I’m trying to decide if I really have a good image in front of me…
5. Exposure Simulation and/or Live Histogram: For some users the single biggest reason to use Live View is for the exposure simulation (the live preview image in the LCD will automatically adjust based on the exposure settings to display the brightness of the final image). Alternatively you could simply choose to show a live histogram (which would also represent the final image rather than what you’re seeing on the screen) overlaid on the live image. Both of these features are very useful for preventing blown highlights or underexposed images. You can even use both at the same time.

There are many other great reasons to use live view for all types of photography. These are just a few of the best reasons that are most applicable to landscape shooters. Do you use live view? Please leave a comment telling me about your experiences with it… If you haven’t used it before then you should definitely give it a try on your next shoot!

In a widely anticipated announcement, Canon has provided a firmware update (to version 1.1.0) for the brand new Canon EOS 7D.

This update includes all previous firmware updates, and a new fix for an odd ghosting issue that was widely Twittered and Blogged about last week.

The update “Corrects a phenomenon that in images captured by continuous shooting, and under certain conditions, barely noticeable traces of the immediately preceding frame may be visible. This phenomenon is not noticeable in an image with optimal exposure. The phenomenon may become more noticeable if a retouching process such as level compensation is applied to emphasize the image.”

I’m definitely taking it as a positive sign that Canon jumped all over this issue and provided a fix so quickly! They have been exuding a much better, more customer friendly, attitude about this sort of thing recently. It seems that they have really taken it to heart after being lambasted so soundly for the past couple of years after repeatedly denying that there was an issue with the autofocus system on the 1D Mark III for months (or it seemed like months anyway)! I really don’t know if there was an issue or not, but the customer base certainly perceived that there was, therefore Canon had to do something. And they should have done it faster. Hopefully this is the start of something new!

For more information about how to confirm whether you need this fix or not, head on over to the official Canon web page for the firmware update. You can download the necessary files and see detailed instructions on how to install it.

The controversy over “Net Neutrality” is all over the tech media these days. If you haven’t heard about it there are some great articles on Wikipedia to help you learn more:

• Network Neutrality
• Network Neutrality in Canada
• SaveOurNet.ca

The second Wikipedia article specifically about Canada is important because the Canadian telecommunications companies, who happen to be the largest Internet Service Providers, are on the leading edge of Internet Throttling (aka Bandwith Shaping) technology and they recently won a landmark ruling by the CRTC allowing them to continue this practice. The ruling does place some rules around the practice and also puts the onus on the telcos to prove that they are doing it only when required (eg. “as a last resort”) and only after fair warning has been given, but it still allows a practice that many users find abhorrent. This decision is precedent setting and will likely become the template for other government regulatory bodies in the near future.

My summary of Net Neutrality: Net Neutrality is a principle that argues that a given user should be able to access any web site or service with equal bandwidth as any other site or service, within the limitations (eg. bandwidth caps) of their internet access service plan. This means that ISP’s should not be able to limit or reduce the bandwidth available for access to certain types of service (eg. video on demand, torrent streams, or audio files) preferentially over other types of service (eg. email, searches, or blogs).

My Take on Net Neutrality: In this day and age of tiered internet access packages, where users pay different monthly fees depending on the instantaneous and monthly bandwidth quotas allotted to them, there should be no need for bandwidth shaping or traffic throttling. To do so is a form of discrimination. If a user pays for a certain amount of bandwidth then she should be able to freely choose how she distributes her use of that bandwidth. If she exceeds her monthly bandwidth cap then of course she should be charged more than another user that lives within his quota. But her decision on what sites or services to access should not be dictated by her internet service provider.

A Concrete Example: I choose to pay for the Hi-Speed Extreme package offered by Shaw Cable in Alberta, Canada. This package gives me up to 15 Mbps for downloads, 1 Mbps for uploads, and a monthly quota of 100 GB. Shaw also offers a Hi-Speed package (7.5 Mbps down, 0.5 Mbps up, 60 GB/month) for a little more than half the price of the extreme package, or a Hi-Speed Warp package (25 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 150 GB/month) for 4 times the cost! If my neighbor is paying 4 times as much for his internet service shouldn’t he be able to access whatever sites he want? Shouldn’t he be able to use all of his 25 Mbps right up to his 150 GB per month? If he exceeds 150 GB in a month then I totally understand charging him more, but if not, then what right would the ISP have to decide that a Video on Demand service offered by one company is more important than a similar service offered by another company?? It shouldn’t matter what package a user chooses to pay for; we should have the right to access the full bandwidth we’ve paid for, right up to the monthly quota included in that package.

If an ISP simply can’t accommodate users actually using the bandwidth they have paid for, then they should limit how much bandwidth they are selling, not what their customers do with it!

NOTE – I’m not getting any kickbacks from Shaw to post this here, and by no means should this be considered an endorsement OR a criticism of Shaw. I have been totally happy with the service I get from them and I haven’t seen any personal impact of Traffic Throttling or Bandwidth Shaping in the few months that I’ve been a customer of Shaw. I have heard a few complaints from other users though…

This may seem overly simple, but why should somebody else decide what sites or services are more important than others?? How do you feel about this? Am I missing something? Please use the comments to tell me how you feel about this.