Copystand Tutorial - Lightroom Tethtered Capture - Nikon D800-E

Here is a page from a step-by-step illustrated guide to assembling a copystand and how to use Adobe Lightroom's tethered capture feature with the Nikon D800-E camera.

You can view or download the complete guide here

Windows 7 Won't Refresh - How to fix

If your Windows 7 Explorer or Desktop does not refresh when you move or create files, here is a helpful trick I learned on The Windows Club.

Go to the Start Button and type "regedit" in the field that says Search programs and files. Then double-click on regedit under programs to open your Registry Editor.

This is what the Registry Editor looks like.

Press the "Ctrl" key and the letter "F" key at the same time to open the Find dialog box. In the "Find what" field, type "dontrefresh" and press the "Find Next" button.

Your Find result will probably look something like this. Notice that "Dontrefresh" has a value of 1. Double-click on "Dontrefresh" to open an editor.

In the editor dialog, change the 1 to 0 and press the "OK" button.

You will now see that "Dontrefresh" has a value of 0. You can now close the Registry Editor and your computer should refresh as you work.

Free - How to Detect DNS Changer and Fix Your Computer

Will your computer lose the internet? Fortunately, it is quick, easy and free to find out if your computer is infected with DNS Changer malware. If it is infected, there are easy to follow instructions to fix it.

"The DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG) was created to help remediate Rove Digital’s malicious DNS servers." Click here to find out if your computer is infected with DNS Changer malware and fix it for free.

Buy Kapersky anti-virus software for $59.99

METRO - Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Workshop

Download from Google Docs

Moon Over New York City

May 4, 2012 Supermoon over the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge

Last night I went scoping out locations to shot tonight's supermoon. As recommended below, it is best to use a tripod and a telephoto lens. I did not use either. 

This exposure was 2 seconds at f4, ISO 200. I braced the camera on a guard rail and used the time release to trigger the exposure. Of course, this blows out the moon, so I merged the moon details in Photoshop. The correct exposure for the moon that I used for the detail was f5.6 at 1/125 of a second at ISO 200.

This was shot with a Nikon D50 with an 18-55mm zoom - a stronger zoom would have made the moon look larger. The moon was also a little too high in the sky - the closer to the horizon, the larger it looks.

Nikon D7000 Black Digital SLR Camera Kit

How To Photograph the Supermoon

Supermoon over New York City by bg2b

Tonight and tomorrow night should be excellent opportunities to photograph the moon. Tonight in New York City, moonrise is at 6:30pm and tomorrow is a full moon with moonrise at 7:45pm.

According to TZPlanet, to get a good picture of the moon, use a tripod and a telephoto lens. A good starting guess at the aperture and shutter speed would be f11 at 1/125-1/250 at ISO 100.

Hopefully the weather cooperates.

For more tips on phoographing the moon, check out the discussion on 365Project

Canon 70-200mm F/2.8 Telephoto Zoom Lens - $2,299

Zeros in Excel 2007 - How to

I often have lists of file path names in Excel 2007 and I want to eliminate all the text except for the file name. The file names I deal with are eight digit barcode numbers, often with leading zeros. Unfortunately when I eliminate the text, Excel gets rid of the leading zeros. 

Here's on way to preserve leading zeros in Excel 2007:

Here is a list of file path names.

To get rid of text, under the data tab, select Data To Columns.

Shown here, delimit to a fixed width of 8 characters.

This eliminates the leading zeros.

Select the column of numbers, and under the Home tab/General click the small arrow next to Numbers.

This opens the Format Cells dialog. Under Category, select Custom. Under Type: type in zeros for as many digits as you want you string of numbers to be, in this case, eight digits so eight zeros.Press OK.

The leading zeros are shown.

More flowers to follow.

HP ProBook 4730s Keyboard Not Working - How to Fix It

I was just working on an HP ProBook 4730s and the keyboard stopped working. None of the keys worked. I figured maybe I had hit the Alt key and some other key and inadvertantly changed a setting.

I went to another computer and looked up keyboard settings and fixing a broken keyboard, keyboard not functioning, etc..

I don't know what caused the problem, but it was really simple to fix. If this happens to you, shut off the computer, unplug the AC cord and remove the battery for a couple of minutes. I don't know why, but it worked. I am typing again.



Image Quality Control Using Adobe Lightroom

Image Quality Control requires that each image be visually inspected for content and, well, image quality. At NYBG there are several Curatorial Assistants shooting photographs of specimens every day, producing hundreds, if not thousands, of images. As a result, I am very interested in efficiency just to keep up with production.

I am familiar with using Adobe Photoshop for image editing, but with Photoshop I am limited to working on one image at a time. When it comes to working with large numbers of files, Adobe Lightroom is a better option.

In the past few days I have QC'd thousands of photographs - this just wouldn't have been possible using Photoshop. Lightroom is still new to me, so I am learning new tricks every day. Here are the steps to image quality control that I use at the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium:

(I am also fortunate to have a dual monitor set up. This allows me to see a lot of information at a glance.)

Because of the orientation of the camera and copy table, the specimens are photographed horizontally. In the thumbnail view on the left, I can quickly rotate all of the images so that they are right side up.

Thumbnail view

The three main factors in image quality are exposure, focus, and color balance. I check these before I check content.

While it is easy to see if am image is too bright or too dark, the histogram in the upper right hand corner of the Library provides confirmation, making it easy to see if an image is properly exposed. Thanks to the overlapping color channels in the histogram, I can also easily confirm color balance.

Histogram

I can get a good sense of whether or not the image is in focus using the loupe view on the right hand monitor, but to check critical focus, I zoom in to 100% magnification, or 1:1 view on the left monitor.

1:1 Magnification

Every specimen is cataloged and bar-coded before it is photographed. In order for the image to be searchable in the collection, the file name must match the bar code number. I use the Navigator window to find the bar code in the image (this also gives me a good view of focus).

Navigator

I match the bar code with the file name, which I have displayed over the window. And finally, I confirm image content in the view on the right monitor. I am looking to confirm that the whole specimen is showing, that all the specimen labels are visible and legible and that the color bars and ruler are included in every shot.

Confirm content

I use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move on to the next image.

I also use Lightroom to process RAW files to Tiffs and Jpegs. There are several considerations in image processing that will be discussed at length in future posts.