I get questions all the time from people using NiMH Rechargeable Batteries that don’t last very long or that don’t seem to put out full power. The obvious question is whether there is something is wrong with the batteries, the charger, or both. These batteries are pretty expensive and it can be really annoying when they don’t do the job they are needed for.

Unfortunately, rechargeable batteries continually lose some of their power in a process called self-discharge. This process occurs at different rates in every type of battery, and it occurs very quickly in standard NiMH batteries. In my experience they only hold enough charge for a few days before the reduced charge levels becomes obvious. When I try to use them in my Speedlite flashes I find that I really have to charge them the same day, or maybe the night before, if i want to get decent life out of them.

If you need your batteries to last longer then you need to get low self-discharge batteries (often marketed as Pre-Charged batteries), such as Sanyo Eneloops. I find that these batteries, even at only 2000 mAh, last far longer and are much more useful than any of my 2500 – 2900 mAh standard NiMH batteries. I now have enough of these batteries for use in all of my flashes plus a spare set for each flash as well. You can leave these in your camera bag for months and they only lose a small percentage of their power.

For more information and to learn about other brands of batteries, check out the Low Self Discharge NiMH Battery article over at Wikipedia.

There are many resources on the internet that help new and experienced photographers alike to learn more about their craft. These range from websites, to blogs, to iPhone apps, and to online training services. While some of these resources do cost money, many of them are relatively inexpensive, or even free. And the simple truth is that the cost may have no bearing on the quality. Some of the most expensive resources aren’t as well produced or as useful as some others that are free.

Because I spend so much time in my car, my favorite class of learning resource is the Podcast. If you aren’t familiar with podcasts you owe it to yourself to check them out. Basically podcasts are audio or video files that are released in a series of episodes similar to syndicated radio or TV programming. They are generally (always?) free and they often command huge audiences.

Over the last several years I have been a regular listener of many photography related podcasts. As I mentioned above these are great resources for learning about technology, art, business, marketing, and just about any other aspect of photography you could think of.

These shows come and go, so the list of podcasts is always changing, but here is my current list of favorites. Most of these are weekly, but some are produced biweekly, monthly, or even randomly:

1. This Week in Photography – Audio
2. PhotoNetCast – Audio
3. Camera Dojo – Audio
4. The Pro Photography Show – Audio
5. The Digital Story – Audio
6. The Image Doctors (Nikonians) – Audio
7. LightSource – Audio
8. Exif and Beyond – Audio
9. Photoshop User TV (NAPP) – Video
10. D-Town TV (NAPP) – Video

NOTE – I shoot Canon but the Nikonians are still very interesting. They do occasionally talk about very specific Nikon topics, but most of their shows contain broadly photography related information and even the Nikon stuff can generally be applied to everyone else…

All of these shows have their own website, to which I have linked above, but they can also be subscribed to in an RSS reader or in iTunes. There are many other photography podcasts out there in addition to these. A quick search of Podcast Alley, iTunes, or even Google will surely help you find more if this list doesn’t have enough good stuff for you!

I’d love to know about any other really great podcasts that I should be listening to. What are your favorite shows? Please drop me a comment down below to let me know what you’re listening to.

I don’t typically get too excited about beta software, particularly for my production environment, but this is one that I’ve really been waiting for! The first public beta of Lightroom 3 didn’t get me too excited. It didn’t really offer enough new stuff for me to bother with the hassles of the fact that it was beta, and in fact it had certain features that were disabled that made it problematic to use (like luminance noise reduction). But the new beta offers several new features that I’ve been hoping to see in Lightroom and I will definitely be giving this version a full workout.

One final word before I talk any further… This is Beta software. Your results may vary, and there is significant potential that you could really do some damage to your photography collection if you use this software. It hasn’t been released for production yet because it’s not ready. Be careful.

• Video Support: We didn’t get full on video editing yet, but at least we finally have some rudimentary management tools that allow viewing, flagging, keywording, and captioning of video files in exactly the same way that still images are cataloged. I certainly hope that they expand this further to include basic edits (clipping, exporting, and global exposure adjustments) but for now this is a huge step over the old version!
• Tethered Shooting: With this version they have added support importing live images directly into Lightroom when shooting while a camera is connected to the computer. This is a studio and product shooters dream. I won’t use it a lot, but every once in awhile it will be very useful.
• Performance Improvements: I haven’t tested the new version enough to fully buy into this one yet, but I really hope that this one is true, and the new version does seem to be a little bit snappier. I will definitely be watching to see how this pans out.

For a complete list of the new and upgraded features the best place to go is the Lightroom Team Blog. You can also check out the release notes included with the update.

To download the program head on over to the Adobe Labs site.

Here are a few more sites you can check for additional information and commentary:

• Jeffrey Friedl’s: Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and My Plugins
• The Lightroom Queen: What’s New in Lightroom 3.0 Beta 2?
• Terry White: Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2: What’s New?

Photographic workflow is a massive subject and is probably the hardest thing for new photographers to get right as they take more and more images, and as they get deeper into post-processing those files. It is so easy to shot in rapid-fire these days, and there’s no added cost to creating more photographic files, so getting the whole workflow thing nailed is very important.

Fortunately there are some really great pieces of software such as Adobe Lightroom (Windows or Mac) and Apple Aperture (Mac only) out there that help to make life easier and workflow faster.

I get asked about this all the time so I thought I would share my workflow here. By no means would I ever say that this is the best or most efficient workflow; rather, it’s just what I do. It work well very me and it is actually possible to go through hundreds of images pretty quickly.

1. Download all files from memory cards to the computer using Breeze Downloader Pro. The software automatically applies metdata including my name, address, copyright info, and a few keywords about me. It also creates date based folders on my computer that fits into my existing storage hierarchy, and it renames every file so that I will never ever have images with duplicate file names. Note that this is a real possibility as most cameras only go as high as 10,000 images before reusing old file names.
2. Import all the images into Lightroom. I automatically apply a preset with a few develop settings that I’ve found to be a good starting point for my images. The applied preset is specific to the camera that was used to make the images.
3. First pass review of the images. I mark all the bad ones (out of focus, massively over or underexposed, or just plain ugly or boring images) for deletion, and also mark some of the very best as “Picks”.
4. Second pass review. Very similar to the first pass, only this time I do some minor image adjustments (Cropping, White Balance, Exposure, and Contrast) to see if marginal images can be improved or if I should just delete them. At this point I also use the color flags in Lightroom to mark images for upload to my various websites, online galleries, and stock agencies. I also use the Lightroom Stacking feature to group images that were shot in a set for processing as HDR or Panoramic images later.
5. Add additional metadata to all the remaining images. Includes generic keywords for all images about the shoot, the location, the weather conditions, and anything else that might apply to every image in the folder. I also apply specific keywords to individual images about the subject matter, people, and places involved so that I can easily find the images later.
6. Add a Title and a Caption to every image. For the images marked earlier as “Picks” or with color flags these titles and captions will be very specific with lots of detail. For the other images the title and caption will be very generic, and may be identical for many images.
7. Every image that will be uploaded or printed will then get additional processing. Final edits to Cropping, White Balance, Exposure, Sharpening, Saturation, and Vignetting. At this point I will also remove dust spots and do any local editing to smaller areas of some images. I will also play with some images to see if they look better in Black and White or with some added special effects. I don’t do a lot of this, but Lightroom makes it extremely fast and easy, and most of the time edits to one image can be very quickly and easily applied to a whole series of images that were shot under the same conditions.
8. At this point I will process any images that will be merged as HDR or as Panoramic images. I do lots of both of these, but I use automated tools to do most of the work that make this process very simple. These processes can be time consuming, but for the most part I set them up in batches and walk away while the computer does the work. Any merged HDR or Pano images will also need another pass of editing similar to step 7 to finalize them.
9. Upload to my online galleries. Post to Twitter, Facebook, or my Blog. Upload images to stock agencies for sale.
10. Backup everything. This is automated and happens overnight.
11. Backup everything in 3 more places. This is automated and happens gradually over the following two weeks.

That’s just about it. This probably sounds like a lot of work, but honestly Lightroom makes it fast and easy. I can go through a batch of 100 images in under an hour. And it scales up easily too. I’ve done 1000 images in under two hours before. There are always individual images that that may need additional work, or images that I really like that I may go back to and revisit from time to time, but this is the main part of my workflow.

What do you think? How is your workflow different? What do you see here that I could improve?

In another widely anticipated move, Canon has finally announced an update to the firmware for their extremely popular Canon EOS 5D Mark II SLR camera. This update is mainly aimed at the video users that have been very disappointed (and very vocal about it) with the video controls that were included with the original camera.

This update brings several updates and improvements to the video controls for the camera, including manual control over the audio input level, and several new recording formats as well:

NOTE – Firmware Version 2.0.3 was very quickly superseded by 2.04 which fixed a few bugs that were introduced in 2.0.3. The major changes in 2.0.4 are the same as in 2.0.3.

Firmware Version 2.0.4 incorporates five enhancements to the
movie function and a fix to the manual sensor cleaning function
of the EOS 5D Mark II camera.

1. Adds or changes the following movie frame rates
   NTSC:
   1920×1080:30 fps (changed – actual 29.97fps)
   1920×1080:24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
   640×480:30 fps (changed – actual 29.97fps)
   PAL:
   1920×1080:25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)
   1920×1080:24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
   640×480:25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)
2. Adds a function for manually adjusting the sound recording level (64 levels).
3. Adds a histogram display (brightness or RGB) for shooting movies in manual exposure.
4. Adds shutter-priority AE mode (Tv) and aperture-priority AE (Av) mode to the exposure modes for shooting movies.
5. Changes the audio sampling frequency from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz.
6. Fixes a phenomenon where communication between the camera and the attached lens is sometimes interrupted after manual sensor cleaning. (This phenomenon only affects units with Firmware Version 1.2.4.)

For all the details about the firmware update including a download and installation instructions head over to the official Canon site.