Samu's Apple pages

Welcome to my Apple pages where I share my experience as Apple user. I don't see no point repeating myself so please read the blog, the first message in the blog explains my reason starting to use Apple etc.

Apple blog

ICC color management on Safari web browser

2006-12-31 6:55 GMT -6

I have been thinking that the colors of web photos are quite mild and yesterday when submitted couple of my own photos to Fred Miranda forum it really hit me: my photos on web were really lacking the punch they had on Apple Aperture's screen. Then for some strange reason I decided to test with Safari web browser and the colors were again like in Apple Aperture!!! Now I have to reconcider again which browser to use, maybe divide the usage: framed pages with Camino and everything else with Safari.

Camino on left, Safari on right

Processing Cyprus photos

2006-12-26 14:55 GMT +2
Generally Aperture was very helpful on sorting and categorizing pictures. I used it for my 2006 November Cyprus holiday pictures (5 days - 1200 photos). The holiday itself was excellent - within 5 days: no computer, almost no mobile phone, no television and no music - just hiking, photographing, good local food with excellent local bier with it. However I have been in pain with processing the images - "how the hell I'm gonna going to categorize and process those 1200 pictures".

On first photography day I had taken 337 pictures (point-and-shoot day, first day there and to make it even worse luggage was still in some another airport so I didn't even have tripod to slow me down...) and after stacking them I ended up 272 pictures. From these 272 pictures 73 pictures were categorized to "4 starts" and 3 pictures were categorized "5 stars". Processing images took about 14 hours, but during that time I also did also a lot of try something then try something else to get familiar with the program also some parts of the workflow were created while processing these pictures. I also have feeling I have to reject some of these images and not publish all of the 76 pictures.

On second Cyprus photography day I had taken 191 pictures. After stacking I had 93 stacks. From these 93 pictures 15 were "4 starts" and one "5 stars". Going through images took about 6 hours.

3rd day I had taken 216 pictures, which did go to 134 stacks. I selected 32 pictures to be "4 starts" and 2 pictures to be "5 stars". Going through images took again about 6 hours with all stitching in PhotoShop etc.

4th day was 197 pictures, which stacked to 41 stacks. All pictures were from Kaledonian falls or the path going there, I had experimented a lot with shutter speeds to capture the motion of water, therefore so few stacks. 17 pictures with "4 stars" and one "5 stars".

5th and last day was 179 pictures, which I was able to stack to 104 stacks. Processing took about 4 hours and there were 20 "4 stars" and two "5 stars".

Processing of the Cypros pictures took whole weekend (very long days) but I'm very happy to the Apple tools and workflow I developed during the weekend. Now I have narrowed to 170 pictures, but I will go and remove all "travel information pictures" etc. and try to get it to 100 pictures or less. UPDATE 2006-12-31: I'm now at 96 photos and I find it really hard to go below that.

Aperture crashes

2006-12-26 14:55 GMT +2
Aperture crashed again with the spot and patch tool and loupe was used again. There were also another crashes regarding loupe usage. Crash also when removing sharpening from RAW and adding Edge sharpening. And then there were few crashes without obvious reason.

Also I had crash when relocating master for a edited photo - this error is systematic. The image is in same stack with two another pictures. I did unstack the images and even that didn't help - very strange. However I can open the image in external editor and the image is OK. Based on this kind of behaviour I think that those people who use the Aperture Library to store their photos are very brave...Actually this was found out to be that I had two edited versions of same file and Aperture could not add "(1)" in the end of filename, instead crashed.

Also had other problems than crashing - the images somehow corrupted and I had to re-start Aperture or whole computer to get rid off the problem.

And even Apple claims that is stable Unix system, they might be partially correct but the GUI (Graphical User Interface) on top of the Unix system is not that stable. Couple times when Aperture crashed also my Mighty Mouse lost it's scroll button and side button assignments to functionalities. Usually I have scroll button assigned Expose and side buttons to Dashboard, but like in picture below these are after crash assigned to Button 3 and Button 4. However sometimes when Aperture crashed also these functionalities stopped working from function keys and the function key functionality is lost until next restart of whole computer even I restore the mouse assignments and they start to work...

On another hand Adobe PhotoShop CS 3 beta worked very well. Since I have shift lenses I tried the new and improved File -> Automation -> PhotoMerge with very good results for panorama stitching. See example below.

Also I would like to remind that I have in this blog entry list only the negative issues - the truth is that there is no way I could have managed to process same number of photos with my traditional workflow even within double or triple time (this might be the reason why I haven't done any website updates for almost two years now....).

Aperture workflow and settings

2006-12-26 14:55 GMT +2
Initial workflow:
- first stack the stackable images
- give keywords (or do it while stacking)
- if 3rd party lens is used then rename the version name by adding string "_XXX_YYY" where XXX is short name for lens, for example I call Leica Elmarit-R 90mm as L90 and YYY is aperture used when taking photo for example F11
- adjust images, e.g. removing dust specs, making horizons vertical, adjusting colors/whitebalance and cropping (or stiching multiple)
- give ratings
- the presentable pictures within album/project (4 and 5 stars) are optimized to be displayed together (similar pictures) when this is possible

My rating system:
1 star = failed picture
2 stars = technically OK, but subject boring or something similar
3 stars = quite good picture but I'm not willing to put to vahonen.com. Many photos ended up to this category also due to multiple stacks had same subject, taken from different angle or with different lens etc.
4 stars = vahonen.com picture - just good enough to be published or image I want otherwise to share in vahonen.com, for example map of hiking trail or similar
5 stars = very good picture (according to me...)

Problem with Apple Aperture keyboard shortcuts

2006-12-21 12:27 GMT +2
I recognized it as very beginnign that Apple has made the shortcuts of the software very Americanized. Later while using software I found out that they have used shortcuts which require to press simultaneusly 3 or 4 keys or which are not possible at all with Finnish keyboard.

Solution: Use two keyboard layouts - one for typing and one for Aperture.
Hot to: System Prefences -> International and "tab" Input Menu. There you have to select U.S. in addition to Finnish. Also check "Show input menu in menu bar. Then change between keyboard layouts can be done from the menu:

Safari problems

2006-12-21 12:27 GMT +2
This far I was quite happy with Safari as web browser but then I found out that it is not able to resize frames. For the web applications I use, this makes practically the browser useless. Example of this behaviour can be seen on this page.

Due to this and other problems I have to abandon Safari even I really liked it. I'll first try Camino since it should be more compact and "mac look-a-like" than Firefox. Camino screenshot below:

Aperture crashed!

2006-12-21 00:22 GMT +2
I was using loop to magnify the area in which I was doing spot&patch correction. When I had selected the area to copy over with option click the and went back to the place I was fixing Aperture crashed. I send this info to Apple. Hopefully this doesn't happen again.

Aperture library loaded with 2005 and 2006 photos

2006-12-20 22:00 GMT +2
I have about 100GB of photos from last years (excluding scanned film images). I first decided to just load the 2005 and 2006, specially these most of the photos have not yet been uploaded to my picturebank neither I have ordered paper copies - I actually haven't done anything to the photos yet except saved to hard drive(s).

The subset of images consisted about 11000 images arranged into folders. Folders were named "YYYY-MM-DDx event name" type of where x is a,b,c,d... in order to arrange event happened same day to order in file systems. Majority of images were RAW files from Canon D20 (about 8000) and rest JPEGs from Panasonic 5Mpix point and shoot and other cameras. Also there were couple hundred RAW pictures from Canon D30 and Nikon D70.

Images were located at USB hard drive (Seagate ST90000U2) and the library in my pictures folder. I used option to keep masters in the USB drive and used preview size 1280x1280. I started at 9AM, used laptop also for other tasks like emails and web browsing for half an hout. Then left to office and returned home at 4PM. Then I used laptop again for emails, web browsing, writing documents with TextEdit. Finally the preview creation was ready at 9:30PM

During creation of previews laptop got quite hot and the fan made big noise all the time. However processor didn't get warmer than 58°C

macBook purchased

2006-12-21 12:27 GMT +2
First entry to this blog/log. Reason for having this blog is to record my experience migrating from Windows to Apple and experience regarding Apple Aperture as well. Blog will contain majority of the information but I will create sub pages for articles like "Apple Aperture keyboard shortcut problems".

I purchased Apple macBook today to my personal laptop. My main use for it will using it as a my digital darkroom. Main reason to switch from Windows was Apple Aperture since I'm really frustrated to my current workflow provided by Windows tools.

Reader might wonder why I purchased macBook for Apple Aperture and PhotoShop usage. Reason for this is that I'm travelling due to my work over 200 days yearly, and I want to be able to use my laptop on hotels, airports etc. Second question might be why macBook and not macBook pro. Answer to that question is that I have to already carry my work laptop (IBM X41) and most of the time also Canon 20D and some lenses in my laptop bag - so I don't have room for 15" laptop and macBook pro is not available at 13" size.

My macBook configuration when purchased:

Processor:          Intel Core Duo 2 2Ghz
Memory:             2GB
Internal harddrive: 60GB
Accessories:        Wireless Mighty Mouse
Programs:           Apple Aperture

Links

Photography

Manufacturers

Canon
Pentax
Nikon
Sigma
Canon - brochures

eStores

AC- FOTO (Germany)
TechnikDirekt (Germany)
New York Camera (Germany)

Finnish Stores

Kuva Lenita (Raahe)
MR-kamera, käytetyt laitteet (Helsinki)
Rajala Camera Pro Shop (Tampere, Helsinki)
Kallioniemi / Superkuva (Tampere)

General

Photo.net
Fred Miranda
Luminous Landscape
Naturfotograf
Digicamera.net (in Finnish)
Steves digicameras
Thom Hogan
Dpreview - Canon SLR talk
Dpreview - Canon SLR Lens talk
Rob Galbraith - D30/D60/10D forum
Rob Galbraith
Pekka Saarinen
Belgium digital
Lone Star Digital
Matti Valve lähikuvaustietoa (in Finnish)
Dpreview
Blog from Eskelinen-Haili-Helenius
Juza Nature Photography

Galleries

Landscape

Humans

Nature

Pekka Saarinen

Techniques

The Canon Digital Learning Center
Calculators

Depth of field (DOF) calculators

DOFMaster - Online Depth of Field Calculator

Other calculators

FOV Calculator

Flash

Strobist (blog): Lightning 101

Cambridge in colour - Hyperfocal distance
Cambridge in colour - Depth of field
Cambridge in colour - Diffraction
Cambridge in colour - Night photography

Nature

Metsähallitus
Pirkanmaan virkistysalueyhdistys r.y.
Birgitan polun kartta
Luontotupa - Kuvia Suomesta!

Equipment

Canon EOS D30

DLC photography - D30 tips
DLC photography - Chuck Westfall's tips
Fred Miranda - D30 FAQ
Reviews

Dpreview
Luminous Landscape 1
Luminous Landscape 2
Rob Galbraith 1
Rob Galbraith 2
Steve's digicams
Photo.net
Digital Outback Photo
Imaging Resource

Flash photography with Canon EOS cameras
Canon EOS FAQ

Pentax

Bojidar Dimitrov's K-Mount Equipment Page
PDML - Pentax-Discuss Mailing List

Lenses

Van Walree Photography - Optics (many good articles)
Canon TS-E lenses

Tilt and shift lenses (regarding all TS-E lenses)
TS-E 45/2.8 on the-digital-picrure.com
TS-E 24/3.5 on the-digital-picrure.com
TS-E 90/2.8 on the-digital-picrure.com
Sports with TS-E lenses by Vincent Laforet for the NY Times
Fred Miranda - how to correct CA when shift used
Cambridge in colour - Shift
Cambridge in colour - Tilt

Carl Zeiss lenses

digLloyd Zeiss ZF lenses
Zeiss.com - Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm f/2.0
Zeiss.com - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 100mm f/2.0
16-9.net - Test of 28mm lenses including CZ 28/2.8
Pebble Place - Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/100
Pebble Place - Carl Zeiss Macro-Sonnar T* 2.8/100 N
SLR Lens Review - Contax Sonnar T* 2.8/135mm C/Y
SLR Lens Review - Contax Sonnar T* 2.8/85mm C/Y
SLR Lens Review - Contax Planar T* 1.7/50mm C/Y
Pebble Place - Contax Sonnar T* 2.8/135mm C/Y
Some example pictures of Zeiss lenses
pinciuc.com - samples from various lenses

Nikon PC-Nikkor lenses

16-9.net - Test of 35mm shift lenses
mir.com.my - PC-Nikkor 28mm f/3.5
mir.com.my - PC-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8

Adapters

Pebble Place - C/Y adapters

Cambridge in colour - Understanding camera lenses
Photo.net - Lens tutorial

Canon EOS 20D

Dpreview 20D review
Luminous Landscape part 1
Luminous Landscape part 2
Luminous Landscape field test
Photo.net review

Canon EOS 1D Mark III

The-Digital-Picture.com
Imaging Resource
Ken Rockwell
Rob Galbraith
Photography-on-the.net

Theory

Digital Outback photo - "Image Sensor Size and Field of View" (good chart of common sensor sizes)
Digital Outback photo - "Pixel size"
Photo.net Effects of the physical size of digican sensors on performance by Bob Atkins
Focal length compression explained

Nature

Finland

Retkikartta
Luontoon.fi
Kansalaisen Karttapaikka

Coppice forest near Tampere / Lehdot Tampereen lähellä

Pälkäne, Äimälän lehtoalue
Akaa, Alhonlahden rantalehto
Hämeenkyrö, Vastajärvenojanlehto
Hämeenkyrö, Sasin purolehdot
Kangasala, Hepomäki-Kalkunvuori
Pälkäne, Hausalon lehmuslehto
Pälkäne, Sarkasen harjulehto
Tampere, Iso-Kuhmon lehto
Ylöjärvi, Valkeenkiven lehto
Tampere, Myllypuro 1
Tampere, Myllypuro 2
Pirkanmaan lehdot (miljo.fi)
Valkeakoski, Pappilan tervaleppäkorpi
Valkeakoski, Sydänniemen pähkinälehto
Valkeakoski, Mälkiäisen lehto
Valkeakoski, Vainoniemen lehto
Valkeakoski, Tunturivuoren lehto

Cliffs near Tampere / Kalliota Tampereen lähellä

Orivesi, Eräpyhä
Orivesi, Vuorijärvi
Tampere, polku Kintulammilta Pulesjärven suojelualueelle
Nokia, Huuhkajanvuori ja Kaakkurijärvet
Valkeakoski, Jylhänniemi ja Lapinraunio
Urjala, Kormuntinvuori
Nokia, Peltokankaanvuori
Orivesi, Sonsarinvuori-Raiskionvuori
Orivesi, Huppionvuori
Orivesi, HArjunvuori
Tampere, Neevuori
Tampere, Ahvenvuori-Helaavuoru-Syvälahdenvuoret
Tampere, Peräjärvi - Mustalaisvuori

Pirkanmaa

Luonnonsuojelu Valkeakosken alueella
Luonnonsuojelu - Kangasala
Luonnonsuojelu - Tampere
Luonnonsuojelu - Ylöjärvi
Luontokohteita - Nokia
Pälkäneen suojeluohjelma- ja Natura-alueet
Luonnonsuojelualueet - Orivesi
Luonnonsuojelu Lempäälässä
Pirkanmaan Virkistysalueyhdistys

Panoramic photography

Panotools Wiki (also lot of information which is not Panotools specific)
Panoramic heads

Nodal Ninja
Really Right Stuff
Virtual Reality Photography
360rage - Panorama hardware and heads

Cambridge in colour - Digital panoramas: part 1
Cambridge in colour - Digital panoramas: part 2
Cambridge in colour - Digital panoramas: Projections
Panoguide: the guide to panoramas and panoramic photography
Software

CubicConverter (QTVR)
PTgui
AutoPano Pro
Panoramafactory
PTmac
Hugin

Panomundo QVTR howto

Infrared

Ever wondered about IR photography (Infra Red)

General

Weather

Ilmatieteen laitos
Foreca
Satelliittikuva skandinaviasta
Tiehallinto current weather

TV programs and channels

Nelonen
MTV3
Yle 1
Yle 2
Yle 24
Yle Teema
Yle teksti-TV
Telkku.com
subtv
Makuuni
Urheilukanava

Time schedules

VR
Tampereen reittiopas

News

Iltalehti
Aamulehti
Tietokone
Tietoviikko

Moottoriurheilu

AKK-motorsport kilpailukalenteri 2008
Ralli.net - kalenteri
Ralli.net - foorumi
Rallisprintin SM-sarja
FIN-enduro - kalenteri
OffroadPRO - kalenteri
Suomen Moottoriliitto - kalenteri
Superrallicross - kalenteri
Future Rallisprintsarja
Rallicrossi.net

Digital Darkroom

General

Software

Dave Coffin's RAW converter
Phase One - DSLR One
Breeze Systems (BreezeBrowser, Downloader...)
Digital Workflow - Converters link page
Pekka Saarinen's Linear Sharpen photoshop action
DCRAW - converted to Mac
DCRAW tutorial by Guillermo Luijk

Technique

Panoramas

Panorama Tools

Panorama Tools (Mirror)
Panorama Tools
Panorama Tools (Mirror)
PTGui
ePaperpress insructions for Panorama Tools
ePaperpress insructions for Panorama Tools
Caldwell photographic - Correction distorsion and color fringing
Correction distorsion and color fringing
Caldwell photographic
Max Lyons - PTAssembler tutorial
Big Ben's Panorama tutorial
John Houghton PTGui tutorial
panoguide.com

Taking panorama pictures

DIY Pan/Tilt-head
Home Built Panorama Head
Jasper-Engineering: Pano head
Big Ben's panorama tutorial
10D tutorial (8mm Sigma lens)
Kaidan - Kiwi-VL panorama head
Panoguide - Setting up to shoot panorama

Canon D30 and 15mm fisheye
Photo.net - Fisheye to rectlinear conversion
Luminous Landscape - Imagealign

AIM-DTP
Sharpening

Outback photo - Edge Sharpening
Luminous Landscape - High pass sharpenign

Exposure / Dynamic range

Luminous Landscape - Blended exposures
Luminous Landscape - Digital split neutral density filter
Luminous Landscape - Local Contrast Enchancement
Luminous Landscape - Hybrid conversion
AIM: The Linear RAW Workflow

Color

Luminous Landscape - Making better Black & White photos

Luminous Landscape - Instant PhotoShop
AIM-DTP - Color Dither Gamma (how to adjust gamma for monitor)
High Dynamic Range (HDR)

Naturescape's HDR tutorial

Apple

Forums

Mac Forums
Hopeinen Omena (in Finnish)

Aperture

AUPN Aperture Users Professional Network

Audio & Video

Music

Finnish

Metal

Rock & Pop

Spinefarm

Not Finnish

Metal

Rock & Pop

Equipment

Manufacturers

DIY (Do It Yourself)

HTPC

Digital TV

Nebulus DigiTV

PCI version
USB version
Nebulus
Good info from forums and related pages

DVD plaza - Nebula yleisthread (erittäin pitkä juttu)
DVD plaza - poltto DVD:lle
DVD plaza - poltto DVD:lle (ohjelmat ja vaiheet selkeesti mainittu)
julaakso - Digipakkaus ohjeet
DVD plaza - Ylen tekstit irti?

Software

Offeryn - PVAStrumento
Elecard - Player and decoder (Shareware)
Pegasys Inc - TMPGEnc DVD Author, TMPGEnc Plus, TMPGEnc
Inmatrix - Zoomplayer
ProjectX (Java)

Car audio

Powerset
Audison
Xetec
SPL Dynamics
AutoSound Technical Magazine
JL Audio
Hifistudio 17
KS Illusions
CDT Audio
Augustin imports
Diamond Audio
Harman International, Finland
JBL
Infinity
Hertz (South Africa dealer pages since manufacturer has years old info..)

Computer

Programming

Graphics

Finnish hardware stores

Verkkokauppa
Bulldog
LJH
MBnet hintaseuranta

Web (HTML, PHP etc.)

HTML help
HTML help - HTML 4.0 elements
HTML help - CSS
HTML help - HTML Validator
PHP.net
PHP.net - PHP manual
MySQL
MySQL manual

Hardware testing etc.

Muropaketti
Tom's Hardware Guide
Anandtech

DVD burning

MPEGit (Finnish)
Doom9.net
DVDRhelp.com
Nec ND-1300 - Bulldog.fi
NEC skandinavia
NEC UK
DVD-netti
NEC firmaware at NECD.de

About me

Eura

Euran kunta

Metso Minerals
Pintos
Cars

Saab 900 OG (my former equipment for moving long distances inside Finland)

900 Klubben (Swedish)
900 Aero
Saab Net

Saab 9000 (my current equipment for moving long distances inside Finland)

Saab9000.com
Saab 9000 at Wikipedia

Tampere

City of Tampere