A question from a reader of my Lightroom 2 book:

“Dear Mr. Coalson,
I just recently purchased your book, Lightroom2. I notice that many of your beautifully printed images are done with small aperture settings.

For years, I have shot many landscapes at f22. This seem to go against the grain of conventional wisdom. Many serious photographers refer to a sweet spot in the lens, about f8 or f11.

I shoot with Minolta professional glass; all of my lenses are 2.8s. now I’m using them digitally with a Sony A700 body.

What is your opinion?

As I develop a work flow, I find myself unsure of how much to stop down my exposures on landscapes. I want to keep as much as possible in any given scene in sharp focus.”

My reply:

“Thank you very much for your email, and for purchasing my Lightroom book.

I will be happy to answer your questions re: apertures.

What we’re dealing with here is depth-of-field (DOF). DOF refers to the range of “acceptable” sharpness (or maybe better said “perceptible” sharpness) within the photo. The lens settings for focal length and aperture determine the DOF, based on the distance at which the lens is focused. Read more…

Alberto submitted this image of a sunset on a beach in Mauritius:

My comments: Read more…

This is a good example of choosing the appropriate orientation (horizontal, “landscape” or vertical, “portrait”) and aspect ratio (the ratio of length of the two dimensions of the photo).

Read more…

A question from a friend: I accidentally did a sync settings and it affected everything in a library.  Is there a way to force an undo back to “as shot” on all the JPGs and DNGs in the library?

My response: This is easy to do, and you have a couple of options for how to approach it.

Option 1: Undo the Sync by pressing Cmd-Z or Ctrl-Z, or selecting the Undo command under the Edit menu. Read more…

A couple of days ago, I moved all my photos and Lightroom catalog to new hard drives. It was easier than I had anticipated; let me tell you how it all went.

First, some history. As outlined in my Lightroom book, I work from one main drive that contains all my image files as well as the master Lightroom catalog. This master drive is frequently synchronized with two identical drives; one which remains on my desktop and one that is stored securely in a fireproof box. (I am considering renting a safe deposit box for this, instead.)

Up to this point, I had been working with 500 GB drives. And I was running out of room; down to about 16 GB free space. Read more…

For those of you who follow Scott Kelby’s blog, you probably know that most Wednesdays he has a guest blogger. He’s done a good job of finding great guests; people who are truly experts in their respective fields.

This week, Scott’s guest is Deke McClelland… one of the “old-timers” in the Photoshop world. Deke has been writing and teaching about Photoshop for nearly 20 years.

Deke’s guest post is a masking tutorial, and it’s excellent. I’ve been using these same techniques since the early 90s – and this is one of the best tutorials I’ve seen on the subject.

If you use Photoshop, I highly recommend you check it out.

A question from a reader: Hello Nat, I hope you can help me out as I have a question regarding a LR issue.

When I load LR, it brings up the ‘Select Catalog’ option where I can choose a catalog to work from in LR.  I have 3 catalogs listed…my primary catalog, my wifes primary catalog then I have my backup catalog showing in the list.  How do I remove my backup catalog from the list?  I am afraid that I am going to select the backup catalog do some work then when the scheduled backup runs at night it will wipe out any work I do as my backup is set to mirror primary catalog to
backup catalog.

Any help is much appreciated.  I wish LR would make it easier to remove a catalog from the ‘Select Catalog’ option.

My answer: Hi Chris – Thanks for your email; I am glad to help. I understand your concern about making sure not to accidentally open your backup catalog.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way to manually remove a catalog from the suggestion list. However, I do know catalogs that have not been opened using that menu for a long period of time will eventually come off the list on their own.

Here’s what I’d recommend:
Under Preferences > General > Default Catalog, specify your main working catalog to open every time Lightroom starts, and turn off the option for Lightroom to prompt you. Read more…

A recent question from a student: Hi Nat, I just got back from a shoot and want to look at all photos that I took in a certain range of focal lengths.  (Yes, I know how to filter by lens type but I want to look at a range of focal lengths that span the boundaries of one of my zoom lenses.)  I was able to do this in in LR1.  I suspect I can do it in LR2.

You showed me a shortcut that gave me an advanced query panel in LR2 which is where I think I can do this.  However, I cannot find a reference or note that points me to this.  Can you refresh my memory?

My answer: In Lightroom 2, what you’re looking for is called the Filter Bar. It is activated in the Library Grid by using the \ key. (It’s also under the View menu > Show Filter Bar)

You can create complex sources using the filter bar, and you can combine different types of filters to produce the exact selection of photos that you want.

You can also save filters for later use.

Keep in mind that the settings on the filter bar are specific to the current source, so make sure you have clicked on the Folder or Collection etc. that you want to filter.

Also, you can use Smart Collections in similar ways but with even more power… we will cover this in future classes.

And there’s lots more about Filters and Smart Collections in my Lightroom 2 book.

Tim Armes has just released the newest version of his indispensable Lightroom plug-in, LR2/Mogrify.

LR2/Mogrify is an export plugin that provides all kinds of extremely useful functionality, such as custom watermarking, sharpening and other advanced image processing routines.

If you’ve been using LR2/Mogrify, you will definitely want to take a look at this new release.

If you’re new to LR2/Mogrify, do yourself a huge favor and get it. You will love it!

A question from a client: where is the best place to buy a canon macro lens?  Best deal for good quality?

My reply: Here are a couple of good options for Macro lenses for Canon:

1. The Canon 100 mm Macro is very popular for its sharpness and quality at a good price
http://bit.ly/epXMq

2. My buddy just bought a Sigma macro (for Canon cameras) and he likes it a lot
Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX APO Macro EX DG HSM Autofocus
http://bit.ly/gJzYp

I almost always buy all my camera gear from BHphoto.com, however, the following web site is quite a bit cheaper on the Sigma lens:
http://bit.ly/twPri