Lightroom 6 Announcement and Preview
Two new versions of Lightroom are immediately available for both standalone and Creative Cloud subscribers. Lightroom 6 will be offered as an update to Lightroom 5 for perpetual users (both regular and upgrade licenses are already available) and those who subscribe to the Creative Cloud will get a cloud-specific version called Lightroom CC (which in its core is the same as Lightroom 6). This update is a rather significant one, because it brings very important and much-needed performance improvements, new camera / lens support and a few new notable features. Let’s discuss those in more detail now.
So what has changed since Lightroom 5?
New Features
Lightroom 6 comes with a rather short, but very sweet list of features. Let’s take a look at these in more detail:
Panorama Merge
I listed this one first, because this feature alone is worth the upgrade for me and I am sure many others! Basically, instead of selecting files in Lightroom and going into Photoshop to merge panoramas, you can now do it directly in Lightroom without ever opening Photoshop. If you thought that was the coolest part, you guessed it wrong. The coolest part, is that the Panorama Merge file generates a DNG file, or Adobe’s RAW file, instead of a flat TIFF file that Photoshop generates. What does it mean? It means that you now no longer need to fiddle with those massive TIFF files that you can no longer properly edit in Lightroom – instead, you are still retaining all the editing capabilities within Lightroom. So you can edit these merged panoramas the same way you can edit RAW files before you have them merged. I have already played with this feature and I will be honest – it looks darn good! It might not have the full versatility of some of the third party Panorama editing tools, but I tried merging a couple of panos from my last trip to Death Valley and those panos stitched perfectly. Take a look at the below stitched panorama:
Note the right side of the Develop module – I made those changes before I merged the panorama and as you can see, those changes are still there. I tried experimenting with further processing and I was quite shocked to see that the changes were working just like they work when I edit RAW images. Finally, Adobe is making DNG what it was supposed to be in the first place – a versatile format that allows merging RAW files without losing any data. Kudos to Adobe engineers for implementing this much needed feature! I will be covering the Panorama Merge tool in detail in my upcoming review of Lightroom 6, so stay tuned to see more.
HDR Merge
HDR photographers will be also very pleased to see an HDR Merge tool, also built right into Lightroom. This is another huge update and works very similarly as the above-mentioned Panorama merge tool, since it retains a full DNG file that contains all the RAW data for you to be able to manipulate further on, once your bracketed files have been merged. Although I am not a big fan of HDR (I have a severe distaste for “Grunge HDR” and rarely like the look that contains little highlight/shadow definition), the HDR feature within Lightroom seems to produce quite pleasing results that do not look overdone. I have not experimented with this a lot yet, but I am looking forward to seeing what can be done with this feature in Lightroom, and whether it is something I will be looking at for my personal and professional needs. Here is another screenshot which shows a merged HDR from three RAW files:
Again, you can see that the sliders in the develop module are there for me to play with. Interestingly, although I have not made any modifications to the RAW files, Lightroom already applied some adjustments to make the merged HDR look better.
Filter Brush
This is another huge addition for those of us that edit in Lightroom heavily – the new Filter Brush. This one is really neat, because you can actually use a tool like the Graduated Filter to drop it into an area, but then use the filter brush to erase parts of the image that you do not want affected with the filter! This feature is another biggie for me that makes it worth upgrading to Lightroom 6. No more fiddling with separate brush tools to edit your images where there is an object in between the affected areas. So if you rely on something like the Graduated Filter a lot and you wish it did not touch that tree, rock or the mountain, you can now erase parts of the selected area. Take a look at what I did in the below image:
Yup, that’s a Graduated Filter, with an eraser applied to the affected mountain regions that I do not want touched. This is something I have been wanting for years, but I never thought it was possible to actually implement it. What a great and very much needed feature for landscape, architecture and portrait photographers!
Face Recognition
Another new feature is face recognition and this one is also interesting, because you can draw a face recognition area on your subject, name the person and Lightroom will automatically scan through your Lightroom library and show each image where the person shows up. I tried this with my daughter Jasmine:
Then I had Lightroom scan through the entire catalog and look for faces. I was pretty impressed with the results – the software did indeed find a lot of faces. Once I identified some of them, it then automatically tagged and group them and for the images where it was struggling to identify for sure, it gave me a suggestion on the bottom of the image, as seen below:
Now that’s pretty cool! Now you can easily tag people in your catalog and with a couple of clicks you can find them in your images. No more scrolling through thousands of images to find that one photo of your family member, friend or model!
The software is not perfect and you will see some false positives. But you can click the “X” button to make those false positives disappear and the software will move on to the next image.
Advanced Video Slideshows
You can now combine still images, video and music, then add effects like pan and zoom to slideshows:
I will go over this in more detail in the upcoming review.
Performance Improvements
All this is great, but the icing on the cake is Lightroom’s performance improvements. And I am not talking about minor improvements – my biggest complaint with Lightroom being unbelievably slow on my fast PC has been finally addressed, because folks at Adobe finally incorporated GPU acceleration right into Lightroom. Now my fast NVIDIA GeForce and Quaddro video cards can actually help render Lightroom screens faster and the difference is like night and day. Everything feels faster and more responsive than ever. Take a look at the System Info screen from my secondary PC, where you can see that Lightroom recognized the NVIDIA GeForce 970 video card and shows OpenGL support:
Don’t underestimate GPU support, because using tools within Lightroom’s develop module is now MUCH faster on my PC. Whether I am using the crop tool, spot removal or any of the brushes, everything appears lightning fast compared to how it used to be before. In fact, after using Lightroom 6 for a few hours today, I literally cannot stand Lightroom 5 anymore – that’s how big the difference feels for me.
Please note that the generation of thumbnails and other processes that access files might not have improved significantly, as those still depend on how fast your hard drives are and how big your RAW files are in your system.
Lightroom Mobile
Along with the above changes, Adobe also rolled out updated to Lightroom Mobile, so you can now combine the power of Lightroom desktop with an app on your tablet or your phone. If you have been happy with these apps, then you will probably be excited about them, but I personally have not fully explored this area yet to see how practical it is for my needs. I will be looking at this in closer detail in the future and will provide some updates if there are some big benefits.
Upgrading
The upgrade process is pretty straightforward. If you are already a Creative Cloud subscriber, all you have to do is close the Adobe Creative Cloud application and reopen it and you will see all the updates, including Lightroom CC. If you do not own a copy of Lightroom, . If you own a Lightroom 5 license and want to upgrade, go to this page, then once full version of Lightroom is added to the cart, click “Edit”, change Full to Upgrade, select your current version of Lightroom and then click “Save”. As before, upgrade is priced at $79.
If you upgrade, let us know what you think about the new version of Lightroom. I would be very interested to see if you experience performance improvements with the new version compared to the previous one!
The most basic of all Nikon Speedlights, the Nikon SB-300 is also the lightest and the most compact one. It is designed to be used only on top of the camera and cannot work in master/commander or slave/remote modes. Certainly more powerful than the on-camera pop-up flash, the SB-300 flash head can only be tilted upwards up to 120 degrees for bouncing light. Unlike all other Nikon speedlights, the SB-300 cannot rotate from left to right and vice versa, limiting options for bouncing light off various lighting accessories. While it fully supports Nikon’s i-TTL and various sync modes, it does not support some of the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System) features such as High Speed Sync and Autofocus Assist. The SB-300 is a very lightweight flash that takes only two AAA Alkaline or Ni-MH batteries. T
The Nikon SB-400 is another very basic flash unit. It is very similar to the SB-300, except it only allows the head to be tilted 90 degrees upwards (which is pretty limiting). It also won’t work in master/commander or slave/remote modes. Just like the SB-300, it cannot rotate side to side either, making it impossible to bounce the light off walls and other vertical surfaces, unless the camera is positioned in a vertical orientation. The SB-400 has a faster recycle time than the SB-300, lasts longer and is slightly larger in size. Nikon’s i-TTL is also fully supported, except for High Speed Sync and AF Assist.
The newly announced SB-500 is the first Nikon speedlight to come with built-in LED lights for use as continuous / video light (the LED light can function independently from the main flash). With a guide number of 24m, it might not be as powerful as the higher-end speedlights, but it is still a pretty capable flash that can be used as a commander to trigger other flashes, or as a slave. Its head is quite flexible and can be either tilted up to 90° or rotated from 0° to 180°, just like the higher-end models. Due to its limited power comprising of 2 AA size batteries, the recycling time is quite poor at 3.5 seconds. Not a bad flash to get into flash photography with and could be fairly useful as a slave in combination with the camera pop-up flash operating as a master. Fully compatible with the Nikon CLS system. 
Discontinued a couple of years ago, the Nikon SB-600 is a very capable flash that has a flexible head for both tilting (up and down) and rotating (left and right). It can only be used either on-camera or off-camera as a slave (no master / commander mode). The Nikon SB-600 supports most Nikon CLS features and uses four AA batteries with a good recycle time. Unlike the Nikon SB-300, SB-400 and SB-500, it has an LCD screen on the back of the flash for flash setup options. When compared to the higher-end SB-700, the SB-600 does not come with a diffusion dome (useful for indoors shots) and color gels. It does come with a stand though, which can be put on a flat surface or mounted on a tripod when used as a slave unit (off-camera flash). The Nikon SB-600 will automatically zoom in/out for focal lengths between 24-85mm. It has no sync port, which means that you cannot use it with triggers like PocketWizard Plus II / III (a separate adapter for the sync cord would have to be purchased). New PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 units can be used with this flash. 
The new Nikon SB-700 is a major step-up from the Nikon SB-600 with a completely redesigned user interface, which is much more intuitive and easier to use than the one on the Nikon SB-600. It fully supports all Nikon CLS features and in addition, can be used as a master/commander to trigger other slave flashes. Compared to the Nikon SB-800/SB-900, the commander mode is somewhat limited, with support of only up to two groups of flashes (Group A and Group B). Its recycle time is fast and the flash can automatically zoom in and out for focal lengths of 24-120mm. It comes with a bunch of accessories such as diffusion dome, colors gels and flash stand. Similar to the Nikon SB-600, the SB-700 also does not come with a sync port, so only the newer PocketWizard triggers like MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 can be used with it without any additional adapters. 
The Nikon SB-800 was discontinued in 2008 after Nikon SB-900 was introduced to the market. It is a great flash that also fully supports all Nikon CLS features such as i-TTL, High Speed Sync and much more. A heavy duty flash that was designed to be used for demanding professionals. The head is very flexible and can be tilted and rotated for bouncing the light off ceilings, walls and other surfaces. It is a fully-featured master/commander and a slave that supports up to three wireless groups (Group A, Group B and Group C). Thanks to the sync port, the Nikon SB-800 can be used with all radio triggers/transmitters, including the traditional PocketWizard models. The nice thing about the SB-800, is that it comes with an extra battery compartment for the fifth battery, which significantly helps in reducing the recycle time and it can take external battery packs for continuous flash shooting. The SB-800 also comes with plenty of accessories such as the diffuser dome, color gels and a stand for off-camera use. 
Before the updated SB-910, the best and the most expensive Nikon speedlight was the Nikon SB-900 – a high-end flash unit that replaced the SB-800. The Nikon SB-900 is a very flexible device that can be used both as a master and a slave and fully supports all current Nikon CLS features. The SB-900 has a similar intuitive user interface as the SB-700 and also comes with all accessories for on-camera and off-camera shooting. The flash zoom feature covers 17-200mm, which means that you can cover a very wide area or zoom in and cover a much smaller area for a more defined flash look, similar to a mini-snoot. The PC/sync port is included and just like the SB-800, the SB-900 can also work with external battery packs like SD-9. In terms of recycle time, although the SB-900 can only take 4 batteries maximum, it outperforms the Nikon SB-800 with the extra battery option.
When the Nikon SB-900 came out, it had an issue where it would shut down and refuse to work when it overheated. While this was not an issue for me, since I never abuse my flashes and try to keep them cool by firing at lower power (prefer to stay at 1/2-1/4 max), many photographers started to complain about it. There was no way to fix the overheating issue with a firmware update, so Nikon updated the model with the newer SB-910. In addition to this hardware modification, Nikon made a few other changes to the SB-910. It made slight modifications to the body and control layout, brightened up the LCD, replaced the soft plastic gels with hard plastic ones and made some tweaks to the speedlight menu. 
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