Digital Camera Colour Management - Which Colour Space?

An area of colour management which seems to cause particular confusion (is there only one?) relate to camera setup. Mainly the questions of, what is the colour gamut of RAW and what colour space should my camera be set to?

The net is awash with information most of which is mind blowing so I am copying here a couple of paragraphs from a website which goes by the name of TheLightroomLab.com. These words made sense to me and as I could not put it better myself I repost them here with due recognition of the origin.

Digital camera raw files do not have a fixed color space because these file’s do not yet contain pixels. Raw files are a record of the unprocessed “sensel” data which exceeds all gamut limits. Flexibility of color, and of color space, is one of the greatest advantages to digital camera raw files. Serious photographers often shoot in raw so that they can pick the appropriate color space for each processed copy of their original capture using post-processing software. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom makes this process completely painless since color space is one of the parameters that we can control, and automate, inside of the Export dialog.

My advice is to keep life simple. I suggest that photographer’s of any level shoot Jpeg images using the sRGB color space. Using sRGB in camera will give you files that can be printed directly off the memory card. If you need more control over color, if a wider gamut will help with your work, then bring home Raw files and learn to use post-processing software like Lightroom or Photoshop 

To summarise: I have my camera, a Sony RX100 II, set to shoot jpeg and RAW and the colour space is set to sRGB. Yes a compact, I have given up lugging DSLR's around!

Link to full article here.

Free Up Disk Space on a Solid State Drive (SSD) in Windows 7

Like many folk these days my main PC main drive (Drive C:) is a Solid State Drive (SSD).  Due to the cost of these devices it is tempting to fit a much smaller capacity than a typical mechanical hard drive (HDD),  mine SSD is only 120GB. This small size means you have to be very careful about conserving disc space. For example I locate most of my non critical software on a second mechanical hard drive (Drive D:). Drive C: is reserved for the operating system and the likes of Adobe Photoshop. This means that rather sooner than later you will face the "not enough free space" problem no matter how careful you are. Which is the problem I just ran into. I have been quite strict about running the standard Windows 7 Disk Cleanup utility. I have also been careful to delete or relocating any unwanted software.

When searching for a solution I came across a very good blog post: 7 Ways to Free Up Disk Space on an SSD in Windows 7.  The post suggested followin these steps:-

1. Disable hibernation 
2. Decrease the size of the page file
3. Turn off System Restore
4. Perform a Disk Cleanup regularly
5. Use a third party disk cleaning tool regularly
6. Uninstall programs you do not use
7. Disable File Content Indexing

I followed most of the instructions and managed to release 12 GB of space, that's 10%.
I missed out steps 3 - Turn Off System Restore and 5 - Use Third Party Cleaning Tool. But I will look into these options later.The two steps that seemed to make the biggest difference where steps 2 and 7.

Follow this link to the original blog post.

The Perfect Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

I know cooking is not normally the subject of my blog posts but I think I may have cracked the Yorkshire Pudding bogey that has been blighting my culinary efforts for years! So I need to record the recipe for future reference.

The general principle is copied from here. But like so many recipes there is always a snag, the way that recipe is worded could lead to the wrong amount of flour being used. But as I have a scientists mind the way the ingredients in recipe from the link were proportioned made sense to me. I have rewritten the recipe to make it clearer, hopefully avoiding any possible pitfalls.

Ingredients:-
This sufficient to make about 12 puddings using a standard size muffin tray .

• Crack 4 fresh eggs of any size (I used large) into a measuring jug, note the volume and tip into your mixing bowl.
• Measure the same volume of skimmed milk and add to mixing bowl. If you use semi-skimmed or whole milk dilute half and half with water. Whisk the eggs and milk together (I did not bother).
• Weigh as many grams of plain flour as you had volume (ml) of eggs ie 150 ml eggs = 150 grams flour. Add to the egg and milk using a sieve (don't worry if you don't have a sieve).
• Whisk by hand or with an electric whisk until just single cream consistency with no lumps, don't over do it.
• Add a half a level teaspoon of salt and optionally, a shake of pepper.

Allow to stand for at least 30 min. Before use add 2 tablespoons (30ml) water and stir in thoroughly.

You can use a 12 portion non-stick muffin tray or a roasting tray about 12x8 inches, 10x10 inches.

Add a teaspoon (5ml) of of Rape oil (this is what I used because it has a high smoke point), light olive oil, sunflower oil or beef dripping to each well or 30 ml oil to roasting tin. Place in oven at 230C, (220C fan oven) until oil/fat is smoking takes about 15 min.

Remove hot tray from oven (CAREFUL). I hold tray over the gas hob to keep oil sizzling hot while I add the batter. Fill each compartment about two thirds to three quarters full.

Immediately return to oven for 25 min. When time is up turn off oven and leave in for another 5 min. Keep warm until served.

Using this method the Yorkshires I produced were voted my best effort ever. I thought so as well!

Prep time = 15min, Resting time = 30 min, Cooking time = 25 min, Total = 1 hr 10 min