What we did in Iceland

Some random notes about our recent trip to Iceland.

What did we see?

We saw sheep; waterfalls; puffins; glaciers; more sheep; Icelandic horses; moss; mountains, including volcanos; the place where the continents of Europe and North America meet; sheep and waterfalls; turf houses; boats large and (mostly) small; large plains covered with volcanic rock covered usually with moss; small austerely beautiful churches in beautiful locations and one large austerely beautiful church (the Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik); hilarious huge trucks designed for driving through small streams; geothermal “features” like geysers and hot-spring lagoons that you can bathe in; swans; three or four cows and something I think was a goat; two dogs; more sheep; museum exhibits about the cod and herring-fishing industries; waterfalls and streams. Did I mention that we saw sheep? And waterfalls?

We did not see: trees (well, we saw two or three); reindeer or arctic fox (except stuffed in museums); squirrels (there aren’t any in Iceland); normal pickup trucks; gift shops outside Reykjavik.

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Where did we go?

We drove counterclockwise around the entire island. Most of the time we were on Highway 1, known as the Ring Road. But we got off it to go to the Westmann Islands, into the interior in the southwest to see Thingvellir National Park and Gullfoss (waterfall); and to drive out to the tip of some of the peninsulas. I read somewhere that the Ring Road is about 800 miles long (1300 km). I think our vehicle’s odometer at the end of the trip read about twice that, but we got off the Ring Road several times and digressed.

We did not go terribly far into the wilder areas of the interior. We were prohibited from doing that by our van-rental company because the roads get dicey. We didn’t venture far into Vatnajokull National Park (southeast) and we didn’t go into the West Fjords. We feel that we did the country really well for a first visit but there’s a lot to see next time.

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Getting around

We rented a camper van from CampEasy. The point of the camper van was not to save money (the van wasn’t cheap) but rather to give us the freedom to move without needing to plan more than an hour or two ahead. No reservations. For example, when we left Dallas, we still were not sure if we’d circumnavigate Iceland clockwise or counterclockwise. That decision was made the morning we arrived in Iceland. When we saw that the weather was good in the south we headed to the Westmann Islands first, to see puffins.

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Campsites

Campsites in Iceland were great. No more expensive than campsites in the USA and usually with better facilities. And sites didn’t require reservations, at least when we were there.

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Eating and drinking

Before we traveled I’d gotten the impression that Iceland was a food wasteland like Arkansas or England. Not quite! We went from one terrific dinner to another, always accompanied by good Iceland beer (Gull or Boli were my faves). It was lamb or fish almost every night, fresh, well prepared and delicious. Not cheap, but not outrageously expensive either.

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Clothing

We came well prepared, with clothing to wear in layers, good rain gear (including pants), plus gloves and caps. We were there first two weeks of September — end of summer — and temperatures were between 35F and 55F the whole time, sometimes wet and frequently quite windy.

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Light and dark

We arrived September 1. You have heard, I’m sure, about how the sun hardly sets in the summer in Iceland and hardly rises in the winter. But while we were there — close to the fall equinox — the amount of sunlight and daylight did not seem unusual. I do regret that I didn’t get to some of the sites earlier in the day: Sometimes the light wasn’t as good for photography as I’d have liked.

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Northern Lights

The night sky was cloudy most nights we were there, indeed, many nights it rained at night. We did see the northern lights fairly well one night (out of thirteen). I think that’s mainly luck. Our luck could have been better, although to be honest I didn’t care so much about this.

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Money

I took about $600 US in cash with me. Never used it. And I never acquired any Icelandic currency, either. Paid for everything with debit or credit cards. Most of the time I paid using Google Pay and my smart phone.

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Cell service and internet

There were times when cell service was non-existent or lousy. But generally, we were able to get decent cell service even in areas where we didn’t expect it. Some of the campsites had wifi but it I don’t recall it being very good. I used my phone as a hot spot a couple times to connect my computer to the ‘net. We paid CampEasy (who rented us the van) for internet service and that was a mistake. CampEasy gave us a tablet to take with us and the internet we paid for was just a matter of using the tablet as a hot spot — in other words, no better than using my phone, and more expensive. I use Google Fi so I had no extra charge for mobile service in Iceland. (Google Fi rocks.)

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Crowds? Traffic?

We were there at the tail end of the summer season, or perhaps right after the season had ended. We never ran into crowds. And once we got beyond the gravitational pull of Reykjavik, we never ran into much traffic. I could drive for half an hour without seeing another car. It was wonderful.

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Drinking water

The water in Iceland is without question the best tasting water I’ve ever had anywhere. We did not buy bottled water. We just got water from the tap at the campgrounds or wherever.

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Language difficulties?

If there is a country whose official language isn’t English that is easier for English-speaking tourists to visit, I haven’t been there yet. Everybody speaks English.

The main problem I had was finding Icelandic speakers! I had thrown myself into learning Icelandic before we traveled. I managed to acquire some basic conversational skills and was eager to practice. But that meant I needed to find somebody who wasn’t busy. I did have a number of these opportunities and they were really enjoyable: Takk! to all the Icelanders who chatted with me, answered my questions and helped me with my grammar. But often, I’d approach somebody and address them in Icelandic and get the response in English, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Icelandic.” Quite a few people who we met in restaurants and shops were from Czech Republic or Poland.

Why DxO Optics Pro 10 stays in my toolbox

I’ve used over a dozen apps in the last decade to convert my raw files and process my digital images. Today I rely on four main tools to process my images: Lightroom 5.7, the Nik suite of apps (now owned and published by Google), onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 9 — and DxO Optics Pro 10. I want to talk about Perfect Photo Suite some other time; it’s my replacement for Photoshop and I really like it. But today, I want to say nice things about Optics Pro 10. Might seem an odd thing to admit, but I don’t really want to use Optics Pro. It can’t hold a candle to Lightroom for browsing and managing images. And it doesn’t support layers (like Perfect Photo Suite) or much in the way of selective editing (like Lightroom, Nik and Perfect Photo Suite do). I’m able to get what I want from most of my images using Lightroom, or Nik or Perfect Photo. So most of the time, I don’t need Optics Pro. But for certain kinds of problems, nothing else does as good a job as Optics Pro. It’s major strengths are:

• lens corrections based on extensive research into various camera-lens combinations;
• noise reduction with almost no loss of detail;
• correction of perspectival distortion, especially when paired with DxO ViewPoint 2.5; and
• pulling detail from images.

I seldom use it for portraits or people-shots generally. But for architecture and landscapes, Optics Pro 10 is indispensable. If I were mainly a landscape photographer, Optics Pro 10 might be my main tool. In this article I want to show why I feel the need to have many tools available to me — and in particular, why I keep Optics Pro around.

Little River Canyon National Preserve

Driving back to Dallas after spending spring break in Washington, D.C., my wife and daughter and I decided to detour near Fort Payne, Alabama, to see the Little River Canyon National Preserve. We’d never been there, and I’m glad we went. It’s said to be the deepest canyon east of the Mississippi, which mainly proves that there aren’t many deep canyons east of the Mississippi. Of course, nothing in the world competes with the Grand Canyon in Arizona; but Little River Canyon doesn’t compete with Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado or even Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. Still, the Little River Canyon runs along the top of Lookout Mountain, which is interesting in itself; and it’s really quite beautiful in its own way. If you can find the entrance to the park (bit of a challenge, that), you’re in for a treat. The day we drove through the preserve, the weather was cool and damp. I had only my 14mm and 25mm lenses with me. That’s for the micro-four-thirds Olympus E-M1, so these focal lengths translate to 28mm and 50mm lenses respectively in full-frame terms. In other words, “medium wide” and “normal” angles of view. NOTE: You can see all the images below in a gallery here. I recommend viewing them in a full-screen slideshow. I’m afraid that some of the subtle distinctions I’m trying to make here won’t be visible if you’re viewing on a small or poorly-calibrated screen. Here’s a picture of one of the signature attractions in the Preserve, a 130-foot waterfall called Grace’s High Falls. If I’d had my Sigma 60mm or even the Olympus 45mm lens with me, I’d have been able to take a photo that really focused on the waterfall. But I didn’t, so instead I took a photo of the canyon, showing the waterfall “in context,” as it were. Here’s my first quick edit, done in Lightroom 5.7.

First attempt in Lightroom 5.7. Decrease contrast, increase clarity, play a little with the tone curve, et voilà! A so-so rendition.

The scene was lovely, and mist always adds something to an image (“mistery”). Anyway, I thought there was something here worth working on. What I really wanted to do was make those ghostly trees on the other side of the canyon a bit more visible — to rescue them from the mist. This first draft didn’t do that very well. So I threw myself at it again, still in Lightroom. This time I tweaked practically every setting Lightroom gives me access to, and the result is somewhat better.

Second effort in Lightroom. Threw the kitchen sink at the image this time, tweaking HSL sliders, adding a graduated filter to the top half of the image, adjusting black and white points, shadows, messing with detail and sharpening, etc. Lot of effort for a slight improvement.

But I wasn’t happy. So I turned to the Nik apps, which have done wonderful things for me in the past.

I was actually pretty happy with this, and I still like it. The trees are better defined in the mist, and the black and white treatment emphasizes the white slash of the waterfall, while preserving lots of detail. But the more I looked at it, especially on the big display, the more I worried that the treatment was a tad extreme. My daughter’s comment was, “It looks ‘shopped,” meaning, the processing is too obvious. (Give yourself 10 points if you noticed that the crop is a bit different on this one image.)Next, I tried Perfect Photo Suite 9. I like it a lot and it has done some really nice things for shots of the monuments and buildings in Washington, but it struggled with this image. The skyline here is too defined and the overall effect is artificial and generally unsatisfactory. (The black and white preset here, by the way, is called  “Ansel in the Valley.”)

Optics Pro 10 to the rescue

And that is about when I remembered the big new feature in Optics Pro 10: the “ClearView” tool. I sent the image from Lightroom over to Optics Pro. Just enabling the ClearView feature produced an image that was immediately better than anything I’d gotten so far.

Processed in DxO Optics Pro 10, mainly by enabling the ClearView tool.

It’s very hard to see on a small screen, but on my iMac’s display, the impact of the ClearView was wonderful to behold. There is one small weird problem with this image: the clump of foliage in the foreground on the right is abnormally green. Not sure what happened there and I’d fix it before printing this image. Otherwise, I thought that was the best result so far. But I wanted to try a black and white treatment, as well. A minute or two later, after a few tweaks to exposure and microcontrast and the imposition of a black and white preset, I decided I’d just about gotten what I was looking for in the first place.

Again, processed in DxO Optics Pro 10 with help of ClearView tool — plus a little exposure and microcontrast adjustment and the addition of a black and white preset.

I don’t know whether I like the color version or the black and white better. The black and white version is possibly too dark, although I’m thinking about that. I think it’s “moody” and will make a good print. But the bottom line is, it’s definitely a choice between the two DxO treatments. For display on screen, the Nik treatment is my runner up. You are of course free to disagree!

Lens corrections, no extra charge

In this photo, at least, this is a relatively minor issue, but I want to mention one other advantage that DxO gives me more or less automatically, namely, the correction of distortions inherent in just about every lens. DxO has done more than anybody else to test almost every combination of body and lens and understand each combination’s weaknesses and strengths. Since it’s not obvious, let me show you once again the Lightroom second draft (which has no lens correction) and the first draft in Optics Pro 10 (which does).

Lightroom: no lens correction.

Optics Pro: with lens correction.

It’s not so obvious so don’t feel bad if you can’t see it, especially on a small display. But a simple way to describe the difference is that the Lightroom image seems flatter, as if the middle of the image is pushed toward the viewer a bit, while the Optics Pro image (after lens correction) seems to have a little more depth (as if the center of the image were ‘pushed in’ a bit). Lightroom doesn’t actually serve Olympus bodies or lenses especially well. You could get pretty much the same correction Optics Pro provides by using the Olympus Photo Viewer that comes with Olympus cameras. But aside from the lens corrections, it’s an unpleasant app to work in.

Quick is better than slow

Whenever I switch from Lightroom to Optics Pro, I have the feeling that Optics Pro is really slow. I certainly wouldn’t want to use Optics Pro to review and edit all the images from a wedding. But the slow processing of each edit reflects the fact that Optics Pro is actually doing a lot more than Lightroom with every single pixel — every piece of data supplied by the raw negative. I think I’m pretty good with Lightroom — I’ve been using it since the beta of version 1 — but it took me many minutes of experimentation to get that second draft above and as I said above, I touched just about every slider and option available (add even added a graduated filter). But — to pick another image from Little River Canyon National Preserve — it took me exactly 1 second in Optics Pro 10 to go from this —

— to this:

Those are screenshots straight from Optics Pro 10, and the only thing I did in the second image was enable the ClearView feature. You don’t need it on every image, not even on most images. But sometimes, it’s just what the doctor ordered.•Addendum on the matter of skinning cats. As the saying goes, there’s more than one way. (My cat Mao is looking at me funny as I write this.) No program does everything well, there’s something that every program can’t do at all, and yet, if you know what you’re doing, you can take any program and use it to get great results. When you’re talking about feature rich programs like the ones mentioned above — not to mention Photoshop, or Athentech’s Perfectly Clear — a really skilled user can almost always get the job done one way or another. I bet I could have done a better job in Perfect Photo Suite 9 (or Photoshop) by using layers, masking and selecting the appropriate blending mode.So in the end, we all pick what works for us and what we like to use. What I like about DxO Optics Pro iis that it solves certain important post-processing problems almost effortlessly. I might be able to get pretty close to the same results in something else, but not without breaking a sweat.

Changing name and address on the web

Effective more or less now, my old domain (william-porter.net) is out and the new domain (william-porter.com) is in. While you’re at it, please update your email for me. It’s now wp at william hyphen porter dot COM. No change to phone.

Why, you ask? Well, it’s tiring enough to have to  go over that hyphen in the middle of the address every time. Now at least I won’t also have to emphasize the domain type, too, because now it’s a perfectly “normal” .com. Yay!

Other good changes coming, too, but that’s the main one.

Roger Deakins

A supercut showing a handful of magnificent scenes from the work of my favorite cinematographer, Roger Deakins:

Roger Deakins supercut

Sometimes it depresses me that guys like Deakins can create these magnificent images as part of a movie. I mean, the overhead shot of the snow-covered parking lot in Fargo should be framed and hung on a museum wall, but instead, it appears on screen for a couple of seconds and then it’s gone.

On the other hand, there aren’t many “guys like Deakins,” and most of them work with mega-million dollar budgets. In any case, in my book, Deakins is one of the Immortals.

Whose your favorite cinematographer?

An Excuse to Remember (thanks to Robin Williams and Woody Allen)

I never saw Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, in which the late Robin Williams has a small part as Mel, an actor whose life is such a blur that he himself literally goes out of focus. I didn’t hear good things about the movie but this idea is pretty funny.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/3KZ6mIsbDc4&source=uds

This is an excuse to remember. No, ma’am, there wasn’t anything wrong with my camera or my technique. It was you. You were blurry that day. Come back in and we’ll reshoot. In the meantime, get some rest and sharpen up a little.

Happy Independence Day!

My wife and I enjoyed the morning in the company of our two younger daughters, but the oldest daughter (in her second year as a resident in obstetrics and gynecology) had to answer the call of duty: she is working all day at the hospital. The younger sisters wanted to let Big Sis know they were missing her, and they thought of a patriotic way to do it, by standing in front of the flag on our porch and striking the “I want you!” pose.

We’ll all be together for pizza tonight. What’s more American than Friday night pizza?

Here I am in Texas, in the United States of America. As my late mother-in-law used to say, “How lucky can you be?”

Happy Independence Day to you all!

Aperture’s out to pasture. Life goes on.

A year ago, I wrote a post here explaining “Why I switched from Lightroom to Aperture.” I outlined some of the relative advantages of Aperture, as I saw them at the time. But even then, I knew that it was an iffy decision. Indeed, already a year or more ago it seemed likely that Apple had lost interest in Aperture and the product had no future.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise last week when Apple made it official: no more updates for Aperture. They set out to make a the best raw workflow app for pros. In the eyes of many, for a while, that’s just was Aperture was. And then Apple got bored with it.

Maybe it wasn’t just boredom. One old observation about Apple is that it’s a hardware company, not a software company. Its software is created to sell its hardware. I have no inside info, but my guess is, the decision-markers at Apple felt that Aperture wasn’t selling enough Macs.

What’s for certain is that Aperture wasn’t selling any iPhones or iPads, and that’s what Apple really wants to sell these days. Apple knows that it’s now one of the biggest marketers of cameras in the world, since every iPhone and iPad is also a camera. Rather that continue to develop pro-level software that manages and processes photos taken by the small number of photographers using high-end third-party cameras, Apple has apparently decided it wants to concentrate on supporting the users of its own mobile device cameras. The money is where the mass of iPhone snappers are.

On a related note, see this earlier post: “Is it a great time for photography?“

Four ways to test a lens

This is what photography is all about: lens testing! Good news: As this photo demonstrates, the Olympus 25 f1.8 is an excellent lens. Bad news: I need a new vacuum cleaner. (View at 100% to see why.)

There are four ways to test a lens.

1. Look at the price you paid for it. If you paid over US $600, it’s a good lens. Over $800, it’s a very good lens. Below $300, it’s okay. Between $300 and $600 is a gray area and you might have to go one of the more advanced tests that follow. 
2. Look it up on DxO Mark. They’ll tell you if it’s any good or not. Favored by the pros!
3. Obtain or make for yourself a test chart, and try to replicate DxO Mark-style tests, taking measurements. If you can’t find a chart, a brick wall will also work. Be sure to view all the photos only at 100% or you might miss something important. (The popularity of this test keeps the makers of tripods in business.)
4. Take a number of photos with the lens: different subjects, different shooting situations and types of light. Look at the photos on a good computer display, or better yet, make prints. If you have a similar lens or lenses, make comparisons based on various photos. Does the lens seem to do what you want it to do?

Test #3 will help you find defects in the lens. In fact, if you do it right, it’s nearly guaranteed to find defects. On the up side, once you find the defects you went looking for, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you have incredibly high standards.

Test #4 is deprecated in nearly every internet forum, for several reasons. First, it’s not scientific. Second, in order to answer the question “Does the lens do what I want it to do?” you have to know what you want it to do, and that’s not covered in this lesson. And third, because there’s too high a risk that you’ll accidentally take a photo that you really like, which will only lead to unhappiness, since you know from test #3 that the lens is crap and you have to return it.

Originally posted 24 June 2014 over at DPReview, in response to a question about how to test a lens.

Sun goes down, moon comes up

I find sunsets depressing. They go by so quickly. On my recent vacation in Colorado, I got lucky with a couple.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Here’s a shot taken at the aptly named Sunset Point, at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Three versions of the same shot follow.

This first one was created with the help of the Google/Nik apps.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison at sunset. Olympus E-M1 + Olympus 25 f1.8 lens.

Unfortunately the Google/Nik apps create a border that eats into the picture’s margins, and this photo didn’t have enough of a margin. That open bit of sky at the top got cut too much. So I reprocessed in DxO Optics Pro 9, twice — creating the following two versions. The main difference between them is obvious: white balance.

I’m not sure, but I think I actually prefer the darker or “colder” of these two images. In the second image, the reddish glow that fills the picture gives the entire canyon a warm, fuzzy feeling. But that’s not the way it really was or is. It’s a deep, forbidding whole in the ground. That’s why I like the first, more austere image of these two — with that little kiss of red glow of the setting sun on the walls of the canyon.

But as I said, I’m not sure.

Rocky Mountain National Park

The key to happiness at Rocky — as at so many national parks — is to get into the park either very early in the day or very late in the day. That’s when the animals are most likely to be out. It’s also when the light in the park is most beautiful. On our recent visit to Rocky, we drove up to the top of the park at the end of the day. We were rewarded at around 11,000 feet with a show by a pika, a marmot and a weasel. And on our way down, we saw these beautiful sunsets. It didn’t hurt that the moon was almost full.

These shots were all processed in Lightroom with the help of the Google/Nik add-ons.

Above the clouds at Rocky. Panasonic LX7.

Sunset and moonrise at Rocky. Panasonic LX7.

Sunset at Rocky. Panasonic LX7.

Moonrise at Rocky. Olympus E-M1 + Olympus 70-300 lens @ 70mm.

Memory of an afternoon

I was going through old photos in Lightroom looking for something else, and came across this pic I don’t think I’ve ever posted anywhere. I would title it “Memory of an afternoon.”

Taken with Sony A580 on an afternoon drive down towards Waxahachie to look for wildflowers, in April 2011. Processed in Lightroom with help from Google/Nik Analog Efex.

I’m never sure what I think about using filter effects. The one thing I’m sure about is, filters can’t help an intrinsically worthless photo. But I like this shot. Here it is, processed more simply in Lightroom 5.

I like that too but comparing it to the more aggressively “art-ified” earlier version makes me ask myself, what do I want from a photo like this? If you muss the photo a bit, but in the process, give it a little more emotional punch — by adding the fake aged effect — is that wrong?

Here’s another photo, giving you an idea how busy it was out there in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to call it, “These memories, too, will fade.”

“These memories too will fade.”

 Finally, this shot. Unfortunately, it really needs to be seen big, bigger than Blogger will permit.