here’s a run through of the latest from adobe on the lightroom front. version 3 beta 2 came out a week ago + i took it for a test run on a shoot for top secret project called broken. adobe’s refined a handful of things with this beta + there’s something like 350,000 of us current users waiting for the real thing sometime this summer. among other features is a revamped tethering capability that is solid so far.

to get tethered shooting working you’ll need a few things:

first, make sure your camera’s compatible. the canon 5dII is good to go as are most recent bodies.

next you’ll need either a usb or firewire cable (should come with camera). at this time it doesn’t look like the wireless transmission units currently on market are compatible. i imagine this could change in the future.

then download lightroom 3 + it’s as easy as file/tethered capture/start tethered capture.

overall it couldn’t be smoother. granted i was working with a short cord + raw images + all was solid. i would definitely like a few more things, however;

the ability to have the raw images on both the card + the hard drive. better yet an option to toggle back + forth so that if you’re ever card free you could always shoot tethered. better workflow wise though to have all the images in one place. if you start tethered + then jump off you’ll have images in two different place but not in a completely redundant way.

like to see more options on the shoot bar within lightroom. great to see the camera controls + have a nice lg shutter but the horizontal bit takes too much room. i’d like to be able to opt for a vertical stack as well.

this would be brilliant for video as well. when’s that out adobe? you’ve gone far enough with this beta to include video import + metalogging into lightroom so how far off are we? be way smooth to pull a histogram up with live video while you have one subject interview another etc, without you even being in the same room. the day that comes around + works wirelessly i’ll be one happy puppy as canon already has video doable over their WFT-E4A.

if that isn’t enough of the future for you in one day, try this from the photoshop front or this from ol’ pogue himself on the iphone front.

and lastly, rip jim marshall

in a bold bit about the changing of the guard, there are at least three things that i see coming. actually one already has to some extent + i’ll bring up more then three but as i had another major prediction come to fruition this past week better put a hold on the doubt.

1. the three elements we have as for control as photographers + filmmakers have always been aperture, shutter speed + iso. can’t do much with the first two in most situations but i’ve always wondered what happens when we blow the roof off of iso limitations (this is the one i was saying was already on the table). to some extent it’s not really future but now. nikon + canon, among others, have especially has pushed up to what, 12,800 most recently with readings depending on how you measure over six figures. that’s not iso that’s some poor wall street salary. the crazy thing being it’s only bettering exponentially.

what i see this doing is really altering the way we collectively shoot in many environments. dark + you’ve got this thing with depth of field, now it’s doable. hate the blur? game over. i’m not saying this is happening overnight but i know i can’t wait to really use iso variations in my work. think about the days shooting film – how many of you actually used to use that funky film puller to extract a role midstream ’cause you were heading inside (or vice versa)? (that’s it below in case you never had the pleasure.)

2. the altering + increasing tech assistance working with imagery will forever change the way we compose as well as the final product. like something out of csi or whatever the latest tech oriented crime drama maybe here’s a very real, though not photo specific, example via wired. this idea of compressed sensing could vastly change the landscape of storage + battery life for us. if the industry starts to see, “instead of steadily improving compression algorithms …steadily improving decompression algorithms that reconstruct the original image more and more faithfully from the stored data”, well then, hell, the future has arrived.

i’ve also read about researchers + uber geeks playing with computer technology that could lead to variable focus done in post production. the two together make you wonder how long craft will be involved with visual media.

3. i claim no brain power on this this last one but picked it up somewhere along the way from a communciation among shooters on what the future holds some time ago. the actual opinion (if this is yours feel free to claim) was that images would be wirelessly transmitted (i’m down with that) via satellite (ok) directly to editors anywhere in the cubicle world (have to try this to believe).

that said, i do see the bottle neck of transmission + after the fact editing losing ground quickly to the efficiency of technology. while eye fi may be a good start, it’s just that – a start.

so give it some time + we’ll see if i need to head to vegas at some point down the road. you’ve got better predictions?

during the course of any give year i do a handful of talks + presentations that vary from teaching style to pure fun, from stills to video mash ups. if there’s one thing that comes with these it’s that you’ve got to have a nice little kit together to make them all successful as each location has it’s own challenges.

due in part to these presentations i’ve acquired a huge number of cords, plugs + adapters that no normal person should have in their possession. design in general is too underrated these days but why we can’t see more in the way of streamlined collaboration for the sharing of imagery i’ll never know. imagine if we had a system wide plug + play setup…

apple hasn’t helped with their ongoing port extermination (mini-dvi, firewire 400, etc). here’s the history if you’re into it but with any 2009 mac you’ll be looking at a mini display port. your output with most projectors is usually vga but definitely look before you leap. before any show, like a shoot, do a scout if you can. at least talk to the host about the set up, equipment, sound system.

here’s my kit:

pelican 1490 case
freitag mac sleeve
mac book pro (with guts + a remote)
imovie, quicktime (7 over latest) + keynote
laser pointer
mini display port to vga adapter
mini display port to dvi adapter (for apple cinema displays + the like)
mini dvi to vga adapter (for your friends with macbooks, powerbook G4′s, etc)
extra mac battery
pc audio cable 3.5mm (the longer the better)
belkin mini surge protector
duct tape – cord coverage

if you’re looking for more, try this.

though in all seriousness, this might even be more interesting then the whole free phenom. thanks mel.

lastly, have to hand it to start up evernote (see my tools sidebar), as i thought phil libin the ceo did a fine pitch via mass media here in the times last weekend.

here’s a take on the histogram vs light meter debate via ‘digital imaging expert’ tim grey of microsoft fame. this was from his near daily q+a posting with readers.

One of the most useful advances of digital photography is the histogram. If one still uses film, say in large format photography, a histogram is available only after the film has been scanned. Is there a light meter that produces a histogram that would be useful in large format photography?

Tim’s Answer:

I completely agree with you that the histogram is incredibly valuable, which is why I’m including an in-depth article about histograms in the upcoming issue of my print publication, Digital Darkroom Quarterly. Histograms provide extensive information about the exposure in an image, and are valuable for evaluating that exposure for a given image, or for evaluating what an optimal exposure would be for a given scene.

Light meters, on the other hand, simply measure a specific luminance value. That value is averaged for the field of view being observed by the light meter. This is useful for determining appropriate exposure settings, but it is only based on a single luminance value. This is very similar to using the meter in your digital camera in order to evaluate the light levels in the scene you’re going to photograph.

As you’ve no doubt realized when using the meter in your camera, you can get very different results depending on where you point your camera (and depending on what metering mode you use). This is the limitation of a light meter. A histogram, on the other hand, shows you the range of tonal values present in a scene in a relative sense (by indicating the relative number of pixels at each luminance value in the scene captured in a given digital image).

So, to answer your question, no, there isn’t a light meter that will provide you with a histogram for large format photography. You can view a histogram of the scanned image (which is affected by the scan settings, obviously, and thus not necessarily a completely accurate histogram relative to what was present in the original capture), but there isn’t a light meter that will perform as you’re hoping.

However, you most certainly could use another digital camera to give you a good sense of what a histogram would look like for a given scene you plan to photograph with film using a large format camera. There are certainly many variables here to create challenges for you, but if you could frame the scene on a digital camera exactly as you will frame it for the large format film capture and then capture the image digitally, you could get a pretty good sense of the exposure situation. Obviously you would need to apply appropriate compensations based on the behavior of the film and the desire to maintain density with film rather than the brightest possible exposure without clipping for digital, but the point is that you could use a digital camera to provide you with a much better sense of what to expect within the scene you’re photographing, which can help guide your exposure decisions.