Cloud Adobe : j’ai craqué !

Eh oui! Après plusieurs années de résistance, j’ai craqué. Je viens de m’abonner au Creative Cloud Photo d’Adobe, schéma que je considère toujours comme de l’extorsion de fonds, et qui a décuplé les profits d’Adobe depuis qu’il existe.

Mais aussi, que voulez-vous? si seulement les autres éditeurs proposaient des alternatives vraiment crédibles, nous n’hésiterions pas à les rejoindre… mais je dois dire, à mon grand regret, et en dépit de tout ce que l’on peut lire çà et là (et que j’ai lu aussi), que ce n’est pas le cas.

Pourtant, j’ai tenté de résister, j’ai fait tout ce que j’ai pu : d’abord, j’ai conservé mon vieux Photoshop (version CS 5.1) pendant des années. Il fait, et fait encore, substantiellement tout ce dont j’ai besoin en tant que photographe. Ensuite, lorsqu’il n’a plus été capable de développer les fichiers RAW de mes appareils récents, je suis passé sur Lightroom: encore un nouveau logiciel à appendre, oui, mais cela valait la peine puisqu’au moins celui-là, Adobe nous promettait qu’il serait toujours disponible en version standalone, juré-craché, croix de bois, croix de fer, si je mens je vais en enfer.

Devinez quoi? Pas besoin de leur retenir une place au Paradis!

Car bien sûr, cette promesse-là, elle aussi, n’engageait que les gogos (comme moi) qui y ont cru : Lightroom, comme les autres applications Adobe, ne sera bientôt plus disponible que sur abonnement, passée l’actuelle version 6.11 ou 6.12 qu’on nous a octroyée comme si on nous faisait une grâce.

Face à cette tromperie bien digne de nos politiciens, j’ai décidé de passer à la concurrence, et j’ai acheté une licence (à vie, celle-là) du logiciel Affinity Photo de l’éditeur britannique Sérif, logiciel qui, à en croire les éloges qu’on lui tressait sur le web, faisait tout ce que fait Lightroom, et tout ce que fait Photoshop, ou peu s’en fallait.

J’y ai cru, et même si Affinity Photo est un très bon produit, j’ai été déçu. Il lui manque la maturité, les petits côtés astucieux et pratiques que seules des années de développement permettent d’offrir. Ce sera un concurrent sérieux dans l’avenir, si les développeurs continuent sur leur belle lancée, mais pour le moment, ce n’est tout de même pas la même chose que Lightroom et Photoshop.

Je ne donnerai que deux exemples qui me viennent à l’esprit: lorsque vous entrez dans le module logiciel qui permet de redresser des verticales convergentes, ou de corriger de la distorsion, Ligthroom comme Photoshop affiche immédiatement une grille de guides verticaux et horizontaux, afin de vous fournir des repères visuels indispensables. Affinity, non, même pas en option. Et lorsque vous développez un fichier RAW qui fait partie d’une série, il vous arrive de vouloir appliquer à toutes les photos de la série les mêmes réglages que ceux que vous venez d’utiliser pour la première. Lightroom fait cela très bien, Affinity ne le permet pas.

J’ai tenté de «recopier» dans Affinity les réglages et les raccourcis clavier que j’utilisais dans Photoshop, et je dois dire que, dans une large mesure, j’y suis arrivé. Mais il en manquait quand même certains, et la fluidité des algorithmes, la progressivité des traitements, me semblait nettement en dessous de ce que permettent les logiciels d’Adobe. Pour tout dire, j’étais moins satisfait, au bout de deux mois d’utilisation, de la qualité des images obtenues.

C’est pourquoi, à ma grande honte, j’ai craqué ce matin et téléchargé les versions Creative Cloud de Lightroom et de Photoshop, bien que j’avais juré que jamais je ne céderais à cet odieux chantage de l’abonnement.

Cette promesse-là aussi n’engageait que ceux qui y ont cru, il faut croire…

 

Et voilà...! Je ne peux pas dire que je suis ravi...

Capturing the Milky Way is no piece of cake

Having sailed for many years in times when the acronym GPS meant absolutely nothing to anyone, and having made a specialty of positioning the sailboat at all times (well, almost) through strange and complex, mantra-uttering procedures such as dead reckoning and astronomical navigation, I know a little bit about the night sky and its occupants, stars, galaxies, nebulæ, etc. Therefore, when I decided I wanted to give a go at photographing the Milky Way, I thought that would probably not be too daunting a task.

I was wrong.

First, I had to ingest and digest a hefty amount of basic knowledge about astrophotography (thank the gods for Youtube tutorials!). I had to learn about (and, as the case may be, procure, then learn to use) PhotoPills (stunning application!), didymium filters and “Sharpstar” focusing devices, dark sky maps, exposure stacking and median software filtering, LED panel foreground illumination and red headlamps, and even the electronic front shutter curtain, a concept I had never needed to really master before.

The Arca-Swiss “Cube” geared head

 

The Hoya “Red Intensifier” didymium filter

The PhotoPills application

The SharpStar focusing aid

The Petzl headlamp that I use

All of this, and much more, before I even went out for the first time to try and shoot the Milky Way, and why is that? do you ask: well, simply because the only time of the month when you can get good pictures of the Milky Way is during the new moon, and that lasts about a week, and if the weather is not cooperating during the said week, well, better luck next month...! And it’s not even all year round, but only between, roughly, March and November.

So, having studied a dark sky map of my region of France, having, a few days ago, dutifully spent hours on small and twisty mountain roads to scout out a possible location suitable for shooting, having found one (not great, but OK darkness-wise) 35 kilometers away from home, I headed out Sunday night with my 24mm ƒ/1.4, my big tripod, my Arca-Swiss geared head, my filters and all the rest of the equipment, including a comfortable folding armchair to watch the immensity of the skies while thinking great thoughts about the Universe.

The weather application on my iPhone said that the sky was clear at my chosen location... but weather forecasting is a difficult science at best, and when I arrived there, the cloud cover was in fact quite thick.

I parked the car, slid open the sunroof and started watching the skies from my reclined seat. There was not much wind, and the thick clouds did not move. Sometimes, a little window of darkness opened between two clouds (it’s amazing how clouds reflect light from the ground, however little there is), allowing me to see how black the sky was, and how sparkling were the few stars I could briefly glimpse... until the cloud cover was drawn back again.

I waited until one in the morning, then decided to call it a night. No need to unfold the canvas armchair, nor even to pull the tripod out of its bag, let alone set it up in position: there was not even a glimmer of hope in the heavens above.

So, that’s about where I am in terms of shooting the Milky Way: nowhere. I still have a few days left until the Moon begins to invade our night sky again and make our galactic core fade away in its reflected light, so let’s keep hoping!

EDIT: I wrote this in July 2017, and even though I tried again a couple of times, I never managed to get a decent photo of the Milky Way last year. I will try again this year...

Zooms or prime lenses ?

[Ceci est de nouveau un article en anglais que j’avais publié à l'origine sur Ipernity en juin 2015, et que j’ai récemment mis à jour. Pour mes lecteurs français, désolé, mais rappelez-vous que c’est bon pour votre anglais...! Promis, je reviendrai à la langue de Molière sous peu!]

A photographic lens is a compromise between the various contradictory imperatives that engineers and opticians must face when they design a new device. Forcing light to go through a certain path or channel and through a certain number of polished glass elements will always induce distortions of the light rays. To combat these distortions, more and more sophisticated elements and techniques are used, and quite successfully, too. However, when you read a lens review, you see that, for example, coma has been beautifully mastered, but at the price of a significant light falloff at wider aperture values. It is always a trade-off between this and that, and even when the price point is not a problem, super expensive lenses have a very hard time getting it right in all departments.

The difficulties are such that, over the past few years, camera manufacturers have enlisted the help of on-board, in-camera software to automatically “correct” some of the distortions before the photographer even gets to see its photo on the back LCD screen.

When you consider all the optical challenges that need to be faced for a lens of a given, fixed focal length, you can only imagine how such challenges grow and multiply when one designs a zoom lens, meant to cover not just one focal length, but a more or less wide range of different ones...

All things being equal, a zoom lens will obviously be more complicated than a single-focal length (or “prime”) one. It will also be bulkier and heavier, and “slower” than a prime lens, meaning that when wide open, its iris will not let in as much light as a prime. Finally, in most cases, a zoom will not perform optically as well as a prime. Therefore, the trade-off for the user will be some degree of convenience (only one lens instead of several) versus some degree of quality.

I say “some degree” because if the zoom lens will replace several primes and allow you to select any focal length within its range, it will still be bulkier and heavier than primes, so some of the benefits will be thus offset. It will also be less discreet, which can be a downside. The fact that zooms are “slower” (not let as much light in) also means they will be less usable in low light situations (unless you seriously bump up the ISOs —but then, at the risk of generating noise, another trade-off) and that the auto-focus will work more slowly because of less light coming through the lens. Your ability to use shallow depth of field to isolate your main subject from its background will also be severely hampered when using small aperture zooms, even more so with variable aperture ones which become very dark indeed towards the longer end.

“Fast” (or sort of fast) aperture zooms do exist, but they are expensive. And when I say “fast”, I only mean ƒ/2.8, when wide primes routinely open at ƒ/1.4. That may not look like much of a difference, but in fact, it means allowing four times as much light in...! A very big difference indeed.

Between 2007 and 2014, I mostly relied on zoom lenses, as I'm a Nikon user and Nikon had released, together with its D3 camera, a set of three zooms that all opened at ƒ/2.8 and covered focal lengths from 14mm to 200mm. Those zooms were so good, sometimes even better than existing primes in their focal range, that they came to be known as “The Holy Trinity”, and were (and still are) the daily workhorses of most Nikon-using pros.

Nikon's 14~24mm, ƒ/2.8 Nikkor zoom lens

Then, in 2014, I felt the need to use primes more often, like I had done in the days of film, when good zooms simply did not exist (there were very few exceptions as of the 1980s). I also diversified and bought some Zeiss lenses, as well as a Sigma of the so-called “Art” lineup.

Zeiss' 15mm, ƒ/2.8 Distagon lens, the equivalent of the "shorter end" of the 14~24mm Nikkor

Nikon's 24mm, ƒ/1.4 Nikkor prime lens, the equivalent to the"longer end" of the 14~24mm zoom.
In between 15 and 24mm, you zoom... with your feet!

Switching from zooms to primes means, of course, more lenses in the bag. As it happens, they remain rather bulky, even though they're lighter, because unfortunately (for my back), I insist on good image quality, and in optics, quality inevitably translates into heavy glass, and very often all-metal lens barrels. In terms of fast lenses, I haven’t gained anything at the widest end (the Zeiss being ƒ/2.8 like the Nikkor), because ultra-wide angle lenses cannot be much faster than that without becoming enormous —as regards the size of the front element— and totally unwieldy, but at the 24mm end, I have gained two stops.

Nikon's 24~70mm, ƒ/2.8 Nikkor zoom lens

   

To replace the 35~70mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor zoom, I once had Sigma's 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens (today replaced by a wonderful, small, lightweight manual-focus Voigtländer 58mm ƒ/1.4), and of course my trusty 85mm ƒ/1.4 Nikkor; here, I have gained two stops over the whole range.

Sigma's 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art lens

Voigtländer Nokton 58mm ƒ/1.4 prime lens

Nikon's 85mm ƒ/1.4 prime lens

In the telephoto department, I completed my lineup with a Zeiss 135mm ƒ/2, a truly outstanding lens, and most recently with a 300mm ƒ/4 Nikkor prime. This last lens does not really comply with my “fast primes” requirement, however I bought it (a) because I needed the extra reach beyond 135mm, (b) because it is an extremely compact and lightweight lens (using a Fresnel element), and (c) because it was said to be professional quality, albeit not professional build. My copy was affected by a factory defect that had to by fixed via firmware update.

Zeiss' 135mm ƒ/2 prime telephoto

Nikon's new 300mm ƒ/4 prime telephoto

Those two lenses replaced my 70~200mm ƒ/2.8 VR II zoom lens, while giving me increased reach in case of need (not mentioning the TC-III 1.4× teleconverter which does quite a passable job with the 300/4).

Nikon's 70~200mm, ƒ/2.8 Nikkor zoom, VR II version

So, after a couple of photo trips, how is this new set working out? From a strictly “laziness-oriented” viewpoint, of course, it is somewhat more cumbersome. I do have to change lenses more often, and if I were in, say, very dusty situations such as an African safari, it would be a less advisable option than the zooms. Secondly, having only primes forces you to keep mental pictures of how each of the lenses in your bag “sees”, because you want to minimize the occurrence of cases when you think you need the 85mm, where in fact you need the 50, or the 135. Carrying primes makes it necessary to memorize the angle of view of each of them, which is good for your photography anyway, not to mention your brain cells. Not having the convenience of just turning a zoom ring, but having to “zoom with your feet” instead also makes you a better photographer by forcing you to move around, look at your subject in a different way, think about other possibilities instead of simply snapping a shot from where you happen to stand.

Finally, the outstanding image quality produced by good primes is very rewarding.

Will it, overall, be worth the extra weight under hot summer conditions? I will see in a few weeks in southern Italy, where I will be taking this whole complement with a Nikon D810 body. Compared to the small Fuji X-Pro 1 kit I took to Turkey last year, and to Greece the year before, it will be a change, certainly. We'll see if I return with a broken back, curse myself and say "Never again!", or if I managed to enjoy taking pictures in scorching heat with heavy primes and a full-size DSLR body

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 2018

This article was written in June 2015 and today, in February 2018, I have not (yet!) gone back to using the “Holy Trinity” zooms which I, of course, kept in my safe. I have now upgraded from the D810 to the new D850, and even though I will admit that I don’t always take the full complement of my primes (especially now that I’ve also added an ultra-big and heavy tilt-shift 19mm ƒ/4 Nikkor!), except when I know I’ll be traveling by car, I still very much enjoy the incomparable image quality that those primes give me, and which I am not about to give up.

The Postal service is one of the most hated French bureaucracies...

[Reprint from my Ipernity article of September 2015]

... And with good reason!

The guys/gals who deliver the mail used to be very nice and friendly, now they're more and more often curt (if not altogether impolite), in a hurry to be finished, and thus neglecting their duties. For example, when they have a signed-for package to deliver, they'll give you a quick ring, and if you've not appeared on the doorstep within 10 seconds (at the most), they'll have scooted away on their shiny new mopeds (paid by our taxes), leaving a note in your mailbox for you to go pickup your package at the Post Office..

Then, there is the Post Office itself, and the civil servants there... First, the opening hours are simply ridiculous. In my home town, the Post Office will open at 9:00 in the morning (of course, everyone is already gone and at work by that time), then they'll close at 12 sharp (often a couple of minutes ahead) and take a... two-and-a-half-hour (yes!) break for lunch (talk about time for gastronomy...!), to reopen at 14:30 and close at 17:00 (on the dot, too), i.e. waaaay before everyone has had a chance to come back from work.

Which means that, if you need to go to the Post Office, your only option is to wait until Saturday morning, when everyone else is going as well, for the aforementioned reasons!

(And if you're curious to ask, no they will not be open on Saturday afternoon, and to compensate for Saturday morning, they will be closed all of Monday morning too).

Then, if and when you manage to get in, you're as likely as not going to deal with a frustrated and brooding employee behind the counter, who will do what you ask with great reluctance (and certainly no hurry whatsoever), and who will show it openly, to the point of becoming frankly unpleasant, not to say discourteous.

No wonder the Postal service has, over the past ten years or so, lost most of the general public's sympathy! Good service, good spirit, politeness, assistance to others may still happen in the countryside, but for us in the residential suburbs of big towns, those days are definitely over.

Well, then don't deal with them at all if they're so painful and lazy...! Yes, but unfortunately, you don't get to choose... I mean, the moment you're a client of Amazon, or order stuff online, of course you'll deal with the likes of UPS and DHL who are still client-minded and professional, but you will also have to use the Post Office, because Amazon uses the services of Post Office-owned Chronopost parcel delivery service... Chronopost people are more or less OK (some agencies are worse than others, like the one in Corbas, near Lyon, which is awful), but if you're not at home when they come to deliver (and that happens often when both husband and wife have a job), then they'll leave your package at... yes, of course: the Post Office!

They just did it to me again, and it took me two days —count them— to manage to wrangle my package away from their smelly claws! I hate them so much now that it almost (almost) negated the pleasure of unpacking my new Fujinon 16mm f/1.4 lens... Almost, but not quite.

My .02: stay away from the French Post Office as much as humanly possible! And pray they are soon privatized like in Germany! That'll teach ’em.