Tilting And Shifting Photographically Speaking

The main purpose for which the Tilt-Shift lens was designed was to give us modern day shooters a tool similar to one that helped pioneers like Ansel Adams get the landscape shots that made them famous and made me crazy about their work.

The front elements of the tilt-shift lens can move independent of the rear elements not unlike the elements of a classic view camera. The purpose of that will be made clear by my typically crystal clear explanation augmented by imagery in case I make absolutely no sense.

Photography On A Beautiful Day

After dropping off two of my giclees for this year's WYES Art Auction (about which I'll tell you more as we get closer) I cruised around New Orleans City Park for a while taking advantage of the wonderful weather.

Some of the trees are still pretty bare but you can see the patches of green starting to show.
This one was shot at 1/320 sec. at f/13 with ISO 800 and focal length 28mm.

Beautiful OPs

Time for a check on some of my favorite sites for photographs taken by Other People.
We haven't referred you to Boston.com's Big Picture for a while. You'll find a gallery of photographs taken in Haiti recently but my favorite among the current galleries is the one devoted to World Water Day.

This image is from the International Space Station looking South from Lake Michigan. Those are rivers reflecting the Sun. Beats the crap out of a 5 ft. tripod.

Be Sensitive To Your Sensor

DSLRs require clean sensors to give you the best photographs. Herein my preferred method of cleaning a sensor. The two necessary items are pictured below.

I'll use a video here for reasons that have as much to do with getting accustomed to embeding video in my blog as with instructing you on sensor cleaning.

What You Can Do With A DSLR!!!

This is a beautiful movie trailer for a motion picture called City Of Lakes. It looks like it might be worth watching for the scenery and photography if not for the story.

Pacific Pictures says on their blog site that they think this is the first "hybrid" film combining photography of an actual event with scripted action in a film production. There is another reason entirely why this movie is so interesting to you and I.

According to the Vimeo web page from which I got this trailer embed City Of Lakes was shot entirely on DSLR cameras, specifically a Canon EOS 5D MK2 and a Canon EOS 7D. If you read my words often you know that a Canon EOS 5D MK2 is my main camera. You've seen a little of the video I've shot with the camera in my blog on Thursday about lenses. Let me be the first to notice that the quality of the video I shot bears almost no resemblance to the video you see in the movie's trailer.

Here are three videos from the Vimeo page for the movie that show more of the cameras and the equipment used by the photographers to customize them for this production.

Prelude to a trailer... Part 1 from PACIFIC PICTURES on Vimeo.

Prelude to a trailer... Part 2 from PACIFIC PICTURES on Vimeo.

Prelude to a trailer... Part 3 from PACIFIC PICTURES on Vimeo.

While I have no intention of getting in to video production I was very interested in getting a glimpse of the production crew to see if any clues popped out as to how they got such high quality video. First thing is they're video pros accustomed to holding and moving a camera for motion pictures. Like most things it's not as easy as the pros make it look. You'll also notice  what look like Steadicam rigs that are amazing in the way they dampen out the vibration of walking around with a camera.

Visit the Pacific Pictures site for some pretty stills. From the Vimeo page you can select full screen and the videos hold their quality pretty well.

Get The Right Lens. Avoid The Math

The toughest part about switching from film to digital SLR photography? I had to remember that my Canon EOS XTi was not showing me everything my lenses were trying to show me. I had to do MATH! Now most companies make lenses specifically for DSLRs with either full frame sensors or the smaller, APS-C sized sensors like the one on my XTi.

Once people get in to SLR photography the urge to add a lens or 2 is hard to resist so keep this in mind. This is a comparison of the image circle of your lens, in gray, the image area of a full frame sensor, in green, and the image area of an APS-C sensor, in yellow.

A full frame sensor is roughly the size of a 35mm film frame. The size of the APS-C sensor miltiplies the focal length of a standard lens by 1.6. 

Looking At Lenses In The Future

First I want to revisit the idea of a constant aperture. It's a wonderful development in zoom lenses. I own only one constant aperture lens but after I win the Powerball I plan to own one or two more. Here I am inviting lens envy with my Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS USM. (the alphabet will be defined)

More on the lenses I hope to own in the future and why but first I want to give you a demonstration of something I've discussed in this space a couple of times; the difference between a variable aperture zoom lens and a constant aperture zoom lens.

Looking At Lenses

You won't be taking many photographs if you don't have a lens on that camera. Being the photo guru means I am, on occasion, asked about my favorite lens. I must answer in the plural. Here's one.

Canon's 70-200mm f2.8 L IS USM is one of their most popular lenses. It's razor sharp and has adjustable image stabilization as well as very quiet auto focus which is also adjustable. It's very fast meaning that it has a very wide maximum aperture, f2.8, and that's a constant aperture. Whatever aperture you select on this lens you can maintain it throughout the focal lengths.

All those features require some circuitry and motors and lens elements so this is a heavy motha. I love it but it's not the lens I use most often.

New Sensor Is (of course) More Sensitive

It's called Quantum Film and it's said to be oodles better than the currently common silicon in dynamic range and overall performance. It's being developed and promoted by Invisage Technologies.

It will be a while before we start seeing it in DSLRs so there's no telling what combination of camera features and sensor capability may be in store around a year from now.

Shooting In The RAW, part whatever

The reason I bring RAW up again today is that I just read another post on a very good site, Your Photo Tips, which dealt with convincing people of the benefits of shooting RAW files.

I love RAW files and shoot them always. I can also think of reasons you won't want to shoot in the RAW.

2 Reasons You Can't Judge Image Quality On The Internet

I show you images in every post to help me make a point but I would never tell you to make a decision about the quality of an image or the output of a device based on what you see on the internet.

This image looks well focused with full DOF on my computer. How about on yours?

Depth Of Field Fully Revealed

I love accidental poetry. Today I'll show you a way to adjust your depth of field independent of your aperture.

Our subject today is another of the lovely blooms that are popping up around our house.

Depth Of Field Demonstrated pt. 2

Again today I'll ask you to look at two photographs of the same subject shot with different exposure settings, the most important of these being the aperture.

Again we'll be looking at arrows to see how our DOF changes but today I'm attempting a video.

Depth Of Field Demonstrated pt. 1

Today's brilliant idea is to take a couple of photographs of the same thing using different apertures to show you the change in the Depth Of Field (DOF).

The first spring color is popping up in our yard thanks to the Azalea bushes.

Non Photo Essentials For Photographers

Some of this will be repetitive but that's how we learn, kids. If you want to save your documents you'll need a lot less storage capacity than if you want to save your photographs. That's why I keep looking for small storage devices with huge capacity.

I use 500 gig Verbatim and Western Digital drives as backups.

River Photography

Yesterday I showed you street photography so today I want to show you river photography by which I mean some of my photographs of the Mississippi River.

I am to the river as some are to trains. I remain fascinated by it but unable to explain exactly the fascination.

Street Photography

The digital age has made street photography more affordable like the rest of photography. Many seem to think you need a compact camera to get natural street shots of people who remain unaware of or unconcerned about your presence with a camera.

Contrary to expectations I took this shot with a full size Canon 5D mk2. No one cared.

Motion Or Lack Of It

It's a weekend so I'll just take it easy and share some of my favorite photographs incorporating motion or capturing things in motion. The point is to share my settings with you in case you wonder how the shot was captured.

This is taken at 1/1250 @ f 6.3, ISO 100. It's my Canon 5D with a Tamron 28-300mm lens with vibration control and the lens it at 300mm.

A Little Photoshop Magic

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a tutorial or just showing off. Don't care. I want to show you what I was able to do with the most widely used and versatile photo editing software on the market, Adobe's Photoshop CS4.

Our story begins at the March 4 meeting of the Rotary Club of Metairie, of which I am a proud member. Our guest at that meeting was the painter, George Rodrigue, and a fine speaker he was, too. After the formal meeting I asked George to pose for a picture I intended to publish in our club newsletter. He posed along with the 3 people he brought along, his son, Jacques, his friend Wayne Fernandez, who works for George's Foundation for the Arts and Marney Robinson, who is the educational director for the foundation. It was only when I got to my computer at home that I took a good look at the photograph of the foursome.

A word About Accessories

This is actually several words about just a few accessories. The number of accessories you could consider for your DSLR seems to increase exponentially by the month. Today I'm writing about flash memory and data transfer. Even if you're not a photographer a flash memory can really be handy. For the photographer it's a very handy way of making sure some images get where you need them to be quickly. I use this 4gig flash drive from Ativa.

Messing With The Oldies, Again

I was reading a very interesting interview of Ken Burns done by Outdoor Photographer magazine about the influence of photographers in promoting our National Parks. Burns recently completed another of his many excellent productions which you may have watched on PBS: America's Best Idea. I got the idea to take the old photographs provided by Ken Burns for the article and apply my recently honed improvement skills. Here's one now.

iPhone Awesomeness

I'm a little befuddled by the thought I just had that, as of now, I own several cameras that take good photographs, 2 of which will record video, and my third source of video is my cell phone. It hardly works to call it a cell phone anymore. It's a wireless phone with all those other things on it.

I did some reading on the Apple web site about taking photographs with the iPhone. As you may know, it's pretty straight forward but a few quick tips couldn't hurt.

Waterproof or Underwater?

I'm a diver. I really only dive once every couple of years but my wife and I remain certified and enjoy a dive or two on trips during which diving is an option. With that in mind I was interested in a new "waterproof" offering from Pentax.

 

Then I read the specs and learned that it is waterproof to 20 feet. Not nearly enough to be a good camera for SCUBA diving. The typical 2 tank SCUBA excursion includes 2 dives, one around 60' and a second around 40'. 

In The Works At Sony

Here's a very boring yet interesting presentation of Sony's concept for a small body/large sensor camera with interchangeable lenses. If I understand the guy they expect to put it on the market in 2010.


Here's the same thing only I think it's already on the market from Samsung.


In both cases you're getting, or will get, a sensor the size of the one in, for instance, the Canon Xs but in a much smaller camera and you'll have a selection of lenses. I did not see any explanations of the lens selection that will be available.

No Sweating With The Oldies

Here's another look at my family's past as I show you what I do to fix up and clean up some of the wonderful old photographs I saved from my mom's house as we prepared it for sale last week.

This is my uncle Sam, actually my dad's cousin, on a sunny day on Belle Isle, in the middle of the Detroit River. This was taken in 1938, probably during the Summer.

Revisiting Color Cast

In yesterday's post I showed you how I just turned a photograph of my daughter, nephew and mom to a black and white picture rather than try to correct a dramatic red color cast.

I'm still quite satisfied with the B/W version but I've discovered that Photoshop does offer an alternative.

Practial Approach To Old Photos

I am not in the retouching business so, as I said Monday, my intent is to fix up my old photos so they look a bit better. I did encounter a quandry when I came upon this photograph and others from the early 70s when my oldest daughter was my only daughter so far.

That's my daughter, Rachel, pushing her cousin, Mickey toward my mom.

Improving On Improvements

I know you're probably thinking "He did such an amazing job of fixing that old photo yesterday, what could he possibly do to make it even better?"

The answer is "Not a hell of a lot." but I'll show you a few things that you can duplicate in Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS4.

Treasures From My Past

Many of you have been through the sad task of clearing out your parents' house prior to putting it on the market. That's what I've been up to the last 2 days of last week. The process is slowed by the unavoidable lingering over souvenirs and photographs. The brighter side of the experience for me is the huge pile of photographs I brought back to my place which I'll be scanning and organizing the rest of this year.

 I'll be showing you some of the oldies and my attempts to repair some of their looks this week. This one, as you can see from the note on the left, is a remarkably cute little boy photographed by my father in April, 1946.

Lucky for me my dad was an avid photographer. He always had a few cameras and lenses laying around his makeshift dark room in our basement (I grew up in Detroit, MI, where everybody has a basement). That means Mom had a bunch of old photos.