Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: How do you decide how long a long exposure should be to get the right effect? Is there such a thing as making it too long?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Choosing the right exposure duration involves a bit of experience or a review of shutter speeds used for sample photos, taking into account personal preference for the result and the overall lighting conditions. It absolutely is possible to have an exposure duration that is too long, so I don’t recommend simply configuring your camera for the longest possible exposure just because you want to create a long exposure.

More Detail: A big part of the process of choosing a specific shutter speed for a long exposure involves understanding what options are even possible. Getting an extremely long exposure, for example, will generally require a strong solid neutral density filter.

Next, you need to consider your own preferences. For example, with relatively fast-moving water I’ve found that I prefer a shutter speed that isn’t too slow, such as around one-quarter of a second, because this provides a degree of motion blur while retaining a little bit of texture. Other photographers may prefer a longer exposure time such as about fifteen seconds, which provides a very silky-smooth look with a more ethereal effect.

In addition to your own general preferences as a photographer, you may have a different answer in terms of the right motion blur effect depending on the specific subject you’re photographing. For example, while I tend to prefer a shutter speed that isn’t too slow when photographing moving water, when that water is the ocean along a rocky coast I often like to use very long exposure times of fifteen to thirty seconds.

Note, by the way, that I discussed the issue of shutter speeds that are too long in an article in the May 2021 issue of my Pixology magazine. You can learn more about the magazine here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/pixology-magazine

Today’s Question: Using the built-in camera app with my smartphone, there are 3 different lenses that can be selected. The Lightroom mobile app also has a camera feature that automatically synchronizes images to Lightroom Classic. This is a nice feature, but I don’t see how to use the various lenses with this camera. Is there a way?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The solution in this case is to use the option to automatically import new photos into Lightroom mobile and use the built-in camera app on your smartphone to take advantage of the additional lenses and other special features of the camera.

More Detail: The camera feature in the Lightroom mobile app is certainly convenient, as all photos you capture with that camera feature are added directly into the catalog in Lightroom mobile. Those photos will then synchronize to the cloud and then back to Lightroom Classic (or the cloud-based version of Lightroom) on your computer.

However, that camera feature within the Lightroom mobile app is not able to take advantage of all features of the smartphone camera, such as multiple lens selection or the Portrait mode feature on recent iPhone models.

In the Import section of Settings within the Lightroom mobile app you can enable the option to automatically add photos from your device to the Lightroom catalog. Keep in mind that turning this option on will only affect new captures, not existing captures that are already on your device. There are individual settings for automatically importing photos, screen captures, and videos.

It is also worth noting that adding photos to the Lightroom mobile app with the automatic import feature will not remove the photos from your device. In other words, you’ll have photos both on your device and in the Lightroom mobile app. You may therefore want to delete photos after they have synchronized to the cloud, or consider a different workflow such as downloading smartphone photos to your computer for import to Lightroom Classic rather than making use of the Lightroom mobile app for photos that you capture with the built-in camera on your smartphone.

Today’s Question: All my Lightroom Classic photos are on an external drive. My catalog is on the computer’s internal hard drive. Will the XMP sidecar be on the external drive with the photos or on the internal drive with the catalog?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The XMP sidecar files generated by Lightroom Classic will be stored alongside the original raw capture that the metadata relates to, which in this case means on the external hard drive where the photos are stored.

More Detail: In Lightroom Classic you can enable an option to write standard metadata updates to your source photos by turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog. With this option enabled standard metadata information as well as Develop module adjustments will be saved in an XMP “sidecar” file for raw captures. That information will be written directly into metadata for other supported image formats.

The key is that this information is saved in the same location as your photos, which may be a different location from the Lightroom Classic catalog. The source information is of course still contained within the catalog, but the point is that the metadata updates are saved in the location with your photos, not alongside the catalog files.

Keep in mind that this option to write metadata out to the photos themselves in addition to the catalog is not a replacement for making sure your catalog is backed up. Features specific to Lightroom Classic are not preserved with this option to write metadata to the photos. For example, collections, virtual copies, history, as well as pick and reject flags are only saved to the Lightroom Classic catalog and aren’t saved out to files even with the option to save metadata to photos enabled.

Today’s Question: I’ve noticed that Lightroom Classic is putting the backup in a folder where my catalog is stored. Is it OK to leave the backups there? If not, how can I change the backup location.

Tim’s Quick Answer: I do not recommend keeping catalog backups in the same location as the Lightroom Classic catalog unless you are making sure to back up the hard drive containing your catalog to a different storage device. You can change the location in the dialog that appears when you are prompted to back up your catalog.

More Detail: One of the important features of a good backup workflow is that the backup copy of the original data should not be stored on the same storage device as the original. Ideally, a backup copy is even stored at a separate physical location altogether.

By default, Lightroom Classic stores catalog backups in a folder called “Backups” within the folder that contains your catalog files. If that hard drive is not also backed up, a failure of that hard drive would cause you to lose the original catalog files as well as all backup copies.

If you back up your catalog to a different hard drive than the catalog is stored on, a failure of one drive would only cause you to lose the catalog or the backup copies, but not both.

Of course, if you’re backing up the hard drive that contains your catalog, then there is less of an issue with storing the backup copies on the same drive. However, I recommend that you still configure Lightroom Classic to put the backup copies on a different drive. Doing so ensures that the backup copy of the catalog is immediately stored on a different drive from the catalog, even if you are also regularly backing up the hard drive that contains the catalog.

When you are prompted to back up your Lightroom Classic catalog you’ll find a Choose button to the right of the Backup Folder label. You can click that button to select the location where you want backup copies of the catalog to be stored.

Today’s Question: I use Hoya Fusion Antistatic UV filters [https://timgrey.me/hoyauv] on my lenses. Should I remove them and screw in my variable neutral density filter when the need arises? Or can I screw the neutral density filter onto the protector filters?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I recommend removing the UV filter from the lens before attaching the neutral density filter, simply to reduce the risk of lens flare caused by having multiple filters stacked together.

More Detail: You can most certainly stack more than one filter together if you have a reason to do so. For example, if an exposure would benefit from using both a graduated neutral density filter along with a solid neutral density filter, you can absolutely stack those two filters together on the lens.

However, there are a couple of reasons to avoid using more than one filter if you can. First of all, whenever you add a filter, you are reducing overall sharpness and detail in the images you capture at least a small amount. This isn’t generally a significant concern with high-quality filters, but it is worth keeping in mind that if a filter isn’t really providing a benefit, it is probably better to not use it.

When stacking more than one filter you are also increasing the risk of lens flare caused by light reflecting back and forth between those filters. This can result in bright spots in the image, just as you might see with lens flare caused by the internal lens elements, when the sun or other bright light source is in front of the lens.

If there isn’t a strong light source in front of the lens this lens flare with the filters won’t be a concern. But I recommend avoiding the stacking of filters in general to avoid this risk, so that you’re in the habit and don’t forget to remove an unnecessary filter when there is a risk of flare.

Today’s Question: I have started using Photo Mechanic when I shoot wildlife because it is so much faster than the Lightroom Classic import. A friend told me I should do my sort of the keepers and rejects from the card itself, then erase the rejects directly from the card using my computer. My workflow is to then import the remaining images into Lightroom Classic. I know it is bad to erase images from a card using the trash button on my camera. But is it OK to erase individual images from a card via the computer?

Tim’s Quick Answer: It is perfectly safe to delete photos from a memory card, either on your camera or using your computer. However, I don’t generally recommend this approach because it involves deleting photos without having made a backup copy of the photos first.

More Detail: First and foremost, I don’t recommend deleting photos directly from a media card because doing so often involves deleting photos without having made a backup copy. If you later decide you wish you hadn’t deleted a given image, it would likely be too late to recover it (though there are still possible options for recovery). In other words, I don’t recommend deleting photos from media cards for pragmatic reasons, not because there is an inherent risk in doing so.

Whenever this subject comes up, I can count on hearing from photographers who insist that it is very dangerous to delete photos directly from a memory card, and that doing so will somehow scramble all the other photos on the card or cause other damage.

I’ve heard a lot of interesting explanations for why it is risky to erase photos from a memory card. All of those explanations have either relied upon anecdotal experiences that don’t prove a causal relationship between the deletion of photos or outdated information.

For example, a related piece recommendation suggests that media cards should never be formatted on the computer, but rather only in the camera that the memory card will be used in. As long as the format used on the computer, such as FAT32, is supported by the camera, there is no problem formatting on the computer.

The bottom line is that today’s cameras are well-designed and capable of managing data on a media card. There is no inherent risk in deleting photos directly from a media card, even though I don’t generally recommend the practice.

Today’s Question: I’m intrigued by the PhotoPills app you’ve referred to for planning photos featuring the moon or sun. In your experience, how accurate is the planning in terms of being able to precisely determine what the moon or sun will align with at the horizon?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The PhotoPills app is surprisingly accurate when it comes to planning for the specific position of the sun or moon. That is especially true when it comes to dealing with terrain. Dealing with man-made objects such as buildings.

More Detail: PhotoPills includes extensive detail about the position of the sun and moon, so you can plan for the specific timing and direction for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. This enables you to determine, for example, the specific direction you will need to look to see the moon rise over the horizon.

That information can then be used to plan for an optimal location from which to photograph the sun or moon, so you can include a specific object within the frame along with the sun or moon. The map in the Planner pill within PhotoPills makes this possible, including satellite photo maps and terrain maps, among other options.

Of course, dealing with the height of objects that appear in the frame adds a layer of complexity. For example, even if the sunrise is at 6:00am, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily start seeing the sun at that time. If there is a mountain range in between you and the horizon, for example, you’ll need to take the elevation of the mountain range into account. This is relatively easy to accomplish with the geodetics feature in the Planner, so you can determine when the sun will rise high enough to get above the mountain range, for example.

The PhotoPills map doesn’t include information on the heights of buildings and other man-made objects, but you can still work around these issues by either looking up or estimating the height of such objects, and otherwise dealing with those objects in much the same way that you would deal with terrain.

These various topics are covered in my comprehensive video course on PhotoPills, which I encourage you to view before setting about the task of planning a photo with the app. You can get all the details of my “Photo Planning with PhotoPills” course with a discount included automatically by using this link to get started:

https://timgrey.me/pills19

Today’s Question: Have you seen the new tablets from Xencelabs, and had a chance to test them? If so, how do you think they stack up to the tablets from other manufacturers?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I have indeed tested out the tablets from Xencelabs and am very impressed. I’m using the medium size bundle (https://timgrey.me/tabletbundle), which includes the Quick Keys remote featuring a series of buttons and a dial that can be programmed for fast access to commonly used features.

More Detail: A tablet can be tremendously helpful for a variety of tasks, because it enables you to use a pen as an input device rather than a mouse, for example. A tablet can be especially helpful for photographers who are using Photoshop to optimize their images. To some extent a tablet can also be helpful in the context of Lightroom Classic, especially in conjunction with the Adjustment Brush for applying targeted adjustments.

The way I generally describe the benefit of a tablet is to suggest that you try to sign your name with a mouse, and then try to perform the same task with a pen on a tablet. You simply have better tactile control when using a pen rather than a mouse.

For tasks like dodging and burning, tracing along the edge of an object to define a selection, or painting in targeted adjustments, a tablet can be invaluable.

I’ve been using the Xencelabs medium tablet bundle and have been very impressed. The quality and accuracy of the tablet is excellent. The bundle also includes a Quick Keys remote, which I find very helpful. I typically use the dial control to adjust brush size, for example, with the other buttons providing the equivalent of keyboard shortcuts for commonly used tasks.

For me personally the tablet doesn’t completely replace a mouse, in part because I’ve gotten so used to using a mouse for other tasks over the years. But for tasks that involve any degree of drawing, a tablet is invaluable. The Xencelabs tablet medium bundle is now a fixture in my digital darkroom, and you can learn more about it here:

https://timgrey.me/tabletbundle

Today’s Question: Over the years I have developed a very strong keyword system, with many levels of nested keywords. When I am doing backups of the Lightroom Classic catalog, does the keyword file also get backed up?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When you back up the Lightroom Classic catalog the keywords are included as part of that backup. However, you may prefer to periodically create a discrete backup of just your keyword structure in addition to the catalog backup.

More Detail: While a backup of your Lightroom Classic catalog will include all the metadata assigned to your photos in the context of the catalog, that catalog backup still depends upon Lightroom Classic. In other words, the only way to make use of a backup catalog is to open that catalog with Lightroom Classic.

If you’d like to preserve your keyword structure beyond the scope of Lightroom Classic, and also make it possible to import those keywords into another catalog at any time, you can export your keywords from Lightroom Classic.

In Lightroom Classic you can go to the Library module and then from the menu choose Metadata > Export Keywords. In the dialog that appears navigate to the location where you would like to save your keyword backup, give the backup a name, and click the Save button.

The exported keywords will be stored in a text file that preserves all keywords represented by your Lightroom Classic catalog, including keyword hierarchies. You can later import that keyword list into a Lightroom Classic catalog with the Metadata > Import Keywords command on the menu.

Today’s Question: For some time now whenever I’m using a brush tool in Photoshop the paint stroke lags way behind my mouse cursor. I assumed this would get fixed in an update, but the problem remains. Do you know if there is a way to resolve this issue?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The behavior you describe is a result of the Smoothing setting for the brush (on the Options bar in Photoshop) being set rather high. You can use a lower value for this setting to avoid the lag between the brush and your mouse cursor but note that your brush strokes won’t appear quite as smooth then.

More Detail: The Brush tool (and the related Pencil tool) include a Smoothing setting, which enables you to have Photoshop smooth out your brush strokes. For example, if you draw a basic “S” shape with the Brush tool you’ll likely find that the curves of the “S” don’t have perfectly smooth curves. Instead, you will probably see that there are minor bumps along the curve, depending on how smooth a hand you have.

For photographers who are using the Brush tool for things like dodging and burning, modifying a layer mask, and other tasks that involve general painting without necessarily needing perfectly smooth curves for each brush stroke, a high value for Smoothing is probably not going to provide much benefit. More to the point, a high value can cause a frustrating lag between the mouse cursor you’re painting with and the actual brush stroke that appears in your image in Photoshop.

Therefore, for photographers I recommend using a very low value for Smoothing, perhaps as low as 0% (which is what I use) but probably not higher than about 10% or so. This will minimize the behavior of Smoothing, so the brush strokes will follow your mouse cursor more closely.