This is ‘Fudge’, a captive Ferruginous Hawk taken at a display by Xtreme Falconry at RHS Wisley Gardens. This was taken prior to the display when the birds where resting under capture.

A sunset taken at Brackelsham Bay in Sussex on an October evening.  This was a glorious day which was more reminiscent of a summer day than what should have been autumn.

This common toad was found in our garden under a pile of hedge trimmings from the previous day.  Once the trimmings were removed he didn’t hang around long and hopped off to find some shade.

One of the many fallow deer stags that stalks Bushy Park in Surrey.  This was taken during the rut (deer mating season) which usually kicks off in September and lasts 1-3 months.

The deer get most active at dawn and sunset, meaning low light.  However this can give some nice silhouette shots like this one.

Every year RHS Wisley gardens hosts a butterfly event in their fantastic glass house.  This runs from mid January to the end of February, and there’s usually a queue to get in.

This is an Owl Butterfly which was on a nice rusted piece of garden furniture.

I took this last night with an aim to get something slightly different. After some faffing about this is the best of what I got. Not sure if I like this or not what are you’re thoughts?

Tenpa 1.22x on Nikon D50

This was a 2nd attempt at a magnified view after a failed attempt using genuine Nikon parts.  The basics of this can be found here. Though be warned it’s harder than it looks and it’s easy to get glue on the eye piece as I found out.

I ordered my kit from Roxsen on eBay for £29.20 delivered from Hong Kong.  This makes it more expensive than a DK-17m and DK-22 sourced from a UK company.  However the big plus is you get a nice big solid adapter to mount the lens to the camera, along with a big rubber eye cup like the one some pros seem to like for their D3s.

The lens it’s self is clearly a rip of of the Nikon DK-17m, with a few minor differences.  The lens it’s self sits proud of the mount body meaning you have to be careful putting it down, but it does make it easier to clean. This comes fitted with a rubber eye guard similar to the Nikon part and once mounted I can’t tell the difference.  The optical quality seems to be identical as best as I can tell, which was honestly quite a shock.  Both vignette slightly, especially at the bottom of the frame meaning the flash and focus indicators are hard to see with out moving my eye up.  That said I haven’t found this to be an issue yet, time will tell on this one.

The big eye cup fits nicely on both the Tenpa and Nikon lenses with no issue.  It seems to work well to exclude side light but if I’m honest I don’t really like this style of cup.

Here’s a  few shots taken using my iPhone to show the sort of magnification on offer. (click the i to see the lens used)

You can clearly see the difference the 1.2x makes, but you can also see next to no difference between the Nikon and the Tenpa.

The extra 1.22 does seem to make a difference and is quite nice but is by no means world changing.  The vignetting is a touch annoying but so far seems to be a small issue.  This small magnification won’t help much in manual focusing either I suspect as some have made out.

If I ever want a 2nd one of these I honestly see no benefit of the Nikon lens over the Tenpa.  The quality of the view is now so close the extra £22 just isn’t worth it as it may have been in the past.

Adobe have made a few changes to existing features and also add some new ones, including a new Map module.

As stated in the title, this is a beta, so there will be dragons.  To help keep support issues down Adobe don’t let you convert old catalogues.  Instead they recommend you make copies of some files and then import and work on those, never work on the originals as they won’t be there to pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong.

Basic Panel and Rendering engine

Lightroom 4 Beta Basic Panel

Potentially one of the biggest changes is Adobe have updated the basic panel in the develop module.  They have removed brightness and renamed a few other sliders.  The result is a much simpler interface that I feel works well and is much more intuitive in use.

Updated Process Engine Option

Images edited using the old panel (still accessible using the old 2010 process method) will map their settings into the new panel so you won’t loose edits when you update into the new 2012 processing engine.

The new 2012 rendering doesn’t seem to have made any huge leaps forward as with the LR2 to LR3 change.  The Noise reduction seems unchanged and the general result seems to be identical when comparing to LR3, at least to my eyes.

The end result of these two changes to the panel and rendering engine are more of an evolutionary change.  The net result is similar, if not identical, only the route to it has changed a small amount.

Softproofing

One of a few true new features in Lightroom 4 is soft proofing, previously only available via Photoshop this may prove to be a useful addition.

The Soft Proof Screen

Having never used it before I was unsure what soft proofing was and how it would help me, especially as I don’t colour calibrate my monitors.  However after watching the Adobe TV video on the subject I can see this being a useful feature for people who print a lot and are often disappointed with the results or have troubles with jpegs when exported for web viewing.

Map Module

For me this is the biggest new feature in version 4.  Lightroom now supports GPS tagging and viewing on a map natively.  Previously Lightroom only displayed the GPS if it was already in the EXIF from the camera, though there was a plugin that allowed you to map in GPS position from a track.  This is now all handled natively within Lightroom 4.

The Map Module

If you have a camera with GPS you need do no more, your images will show on the maps and you’re done.  If you don’t there’s a couple of ways to add this GPS data after the fact.

The first way is a simple drag and drop onto the map.  This is very similar to what Flickr uses and very simple.  Simply find the location (via search or manually) then drag the image(s) on to the map to add an exact GPS point to the image.  Done.

The other way, which is how the plugin works, is to use a GPS track log and then sync this against the photos.  The idea behind this is you use a GPS device to record a log of your position while taking photos then using the time stamps of the locations and the photos sync the two.  I am yet to try this as I don’t have a GPS log and photo set but I will try it before the beta expires to see how it works.

Personally I like the idea of an external GPS unit as then I am not using camera battery maintaining a GPS lock, the UI is better (can see accuracy and position not just on/off) and I can use it for other tasks.

Remove Location Option on Export

The main concern I had with GPS tagging was that of privacy. While I might want to tag my shots of the kids were at home or where that rare bird was it doesn’t mean I want to share this information with the world. Fortunately there’s a single check box in the export wizard which will remove all location information from the exported image keeping this data private.

Books

Another new feature is the ability to create photobooks direct from Lightroom.  This is a feature provided by Apple in both iPhoto and Aperture. The books are provided by Blurb, I haven’t used them my self but have heard good things.  Had this been in lightroom before I would have considered them when I made a photobook.  Pricing isn’t the cheapest but the quality is supposedly good and if the integration is any good this could be a winner.

It also looks like you can export PDF versions, but I haven’t tried this only seen it in the menus.

Video

Adobe seem to be making a big deal of the new video support.  Though from what I have seen this is primative at best and you’d be far better off using iMovie or Windows Movie maker which can do all that Lightroom can and more.

Conclusions

Based on the March 31st exipry date on the beta, we’re looking at a spring launch of the final product.  Will I be swapping over to the new version?  Well it depends.

Currently Lightroom 3 retails for £240, this is more than 4 times what Apples Aperture 3 costs via the App store (or 2x the price from Apple on DVD).  Unless Adobe cut the price significantly I can’t see me making the change to Lightroom 4, and would probably want to look at getting an Aperture trial working*.  Other than the map feature, which is already in Aperture 3, there is no 1 killer feature I feel is worth the potential huge cost.

Update

Lightroom 4 was released earlier this week (March 6th, 2012), and they have halved the price!  Priced at about £105 (depending on delivery choice) for a full Win/Mac copy or about £60 for the upgrade or Student versions.  As I am eligible for education pricing £60 is certainly worth a purchase especially as it’s now a Win/Mac copy not single platform as before.  All I need to do now is dig out the proof to send to Adobe.

Lightroom 4 Resources

Adobe Labs download page for Lightroom 4 – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/
Adobe TV video introduction series - http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2012/01/4267.html
Kelby media Lightroom 4 site - http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom4

*I squandered my free trial by not using it for the 30days allowed as many often do!

Nikon D4

So how does this affect me at the other end of the market where such bodies are pipe dreams?  Well there will soon be a lot of D3 and D3s bodies hitting the used market as people upgrade to the D4.  This might not happen immediately as people hold on to them until the D4 proves it’s worth, it will happen.

Once this does happen the prices of the current generations of gear will drop, especially at the pro end.  So instead of looking at a used D700 people will look to the D3 or maybe even a D3s. This will bring, what is in fact quite amazing kit (especially if your still running a 6 year old D50 like me), into the realms of the hobbyist budget.

Count me in for a D700 or D3 in about November.

This is a free plugin that will layer lots of shorter exposure shots into 1 startrail.  There is also the ability to add in 1 or more dark frames which allows you to do dark frame subtraction noise reduction.

Version 1.3 adds the ability to save after each layer is added so you can do a cool timelapse of the trail building up.

This is an example startrail timelapse  I have made using this new feature

You can get the plugin from google code: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-startrail-compositor/