PictureNewOrleans blog

A word About Accessories

2010-03-11T05:05:00.008-06:00

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.

I've used it in several ways. One day I was loading images from a morning shoot on to my notebook during a lunch break while my wife was on another floor of the house trying to feed information about the project we were covering to some news media. My phone rings and it's Paula asking if I can quickly pick a couple of good shots and get them up to the floor she's on so she can put them on her computer and send them to some people. Zappo! I reduced the file size on the notebook and then was able to quickly load a few images on to my flash drive and run them upstairs to Paula where we loaded them on to her laptoop and she got them on their way to the news media in about 15 min. One of those images was published.

You might also want to use the flash drive as a handy way of backing up your files. You can get a 4 gig drive for around $20. For that money it's a great convenience even when I'm just transfering files from my side of our home office to my wife's side.

You already know you need memory cards (plural) to do digital photography so let me just mention a suggestion or two. Don't give in to the urge to use just one huge card, say 32 gigs, because you can just shoot all day or week on that one card. I say that for 2 reasons; first because you don't want your entire shoot to be lost if something goes wrong with that one card. It's rare but sometimes they do get a bit funky and, secondly, you can use different cards as an organizing tool even if it's only to use a different card each day during a trip. I use 4 or 8 gig cards and carry several to be safe. Even on the industrial shoots it's not often that I'll put more than 4 gigs worth of image files on a card.

Also pay attention to the speed of your cards. The card won't allow your camera to transfer files to the card any faster than the camera's processor but you'll want to take advantage of that maximum speed. A card speed of 133x or 155x is probably as fast as your camera can do even with small files. If you shoot RAW you'll find that there isn't much difference in transferring single shots but the size of the file you're shooting will affect how many files you can fire off in burst mode. Your card speed may also come in handy when transferring your files from the card to your computer or other storage device.

Last thing today is the card reader. You can get a multi-format reader that you can easily pack with your camera gear or computer and connect through a USB port for around $25-$35.

I recommend the mulit-format reader as a fail-safe. You may not use more than one format today but you may find other formats useful in computing or photography or who-knows-what down the road.

My compact camera, the Canon SD780 IS, uses the SD format cards and my full size bodies use the CF format cards. If you're carrying a reader that can handle the major formats you may just be a life saver for someone else who's less prepared.

Messing With The Oldies, Again

2010-03-10T05:05:00.003-06:00

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.

You could argue that this is a treasure in and of itself and shouldn't be altered. I'd agrue that time and the elements have already altered it and I'd like to see what how it appeared in the black and white of its original development. So there...

Anyway I went ahead because there's no one in my house to tell me to leave well enough alone and simply applied the grayscale adjustments available in Adobe Photoshop CS4 along with some selective adjustment to contrast and brightness. I didn't apply a sharpening filter but I think the adjusted photograph looks sharper because my alterations brought out some detail that was not so obvious in the sepia toned original.

Since I suspect that Mr. Burns is not a devoted reader of this blog I won't expect to learn his opinion of my work. That means I can continue to mess with his pictures for my own, and possibly your, amusement. Here's one more from the pictures Burns provided for the OP article.

This one is not in need of a lot of fixing. It retains the grascale look but could use some contrast adjustment

The changes here are pretty subtle but I'm just having fun at the expense of your time.

Just for grins and for those who may use Photoshop in a similar exercise here's a look at the curves adjustment layer I used to pic the tones I wanted lighter and darker.

iPhone Awesomeness

2010-03-09T05:05:00.003-06:00

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.

I find that, just like with my Canon SD780 IS compact camera, I have a hard time holding my iPhone steady for a photograph. One of the ways I've found to reduce the shake induced by holding the camera between your fingers and slowly squeezing is to just leave my finger off the camera until I'm ready to shoot and then just tapping the camera button. It reminds me of the way a compact camera will often work better if you press the shutter button and immediately release it. Then you'll wait a second until the camera takes the photo. The photographs I'm getting from my iPhone are quite acceptable but I haven't gotten to the point at which my iPhone photos look like they were taken with a hand held camera. The camera takes the shot as you remove your finger from the button so another technique that might work to make your shots less shaky is to rest your finger on the camera button and then remove it quickly when time to shoot.

Another thing I learned by reading the instructions is that you can spot focus the iPhone camera. Look again at this picture from the Apple iPhone web site.
Those little squares are focusing points. The Apple instructions say that you can tap on any part of the picture and the camera will focus there

I tried it. It really, really works. I'll admit it's not exactly adjusting your ISO and aperture for a shallow focal length but it does give you the idea that you can make sure whatever caused you to whip out the iPhone and grab a shot will be the thing in focus in the picture.

Waterproof or Underwater?

2010-03-08T05:05:00.000-06:00

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'.

So, of course, I recently decided to see what's out there for us divers even though I really have no intention of doing any extensive underwater photography.

Canon has an interesting offering, the D-10.

It's said to be waterproof to 30'. No thanks.

Looking through some listings from my favorite on line vendors I did find a housing for my compact camera, the Canon SD780IS that costs around $165.
It has good controls and, best of all, it's rated down to 130', more than enough for most SCUBA diving.

Many such housings are available for a lot of the compact cameras on the market.

Here's the most interesting device I've found.
It's a camera built in to the dive mask from Liquid Image. It will also take video. Exposure is automatic. It's a cute idea but it's a 5mp camera and my compact camera is 10mp. It's good to 130' and reasonably priced but, if I were to go with underwater shooting I'd probably get the housing for my compact camera.

I'd love to be able to shoot underwater with my Canon 5D or 5D mk2 but that would require a housing that made the camera's controls available. Here's such a housing offered by Sea & Sea, a very well known supplier of underwater camera accessories.

It's a beautiful piece of equipment and would cost me way more than the camera cost. If I were planning to make money with underwater photography it would be a possibility but no.

A housing for my favorite DSLR is available from Aqua Tech for just under $2000 and, sure enough, it's rated to 33'.

One more alternative is the EWA Marine bag. These bags are available in several sizes and depth ranges and, again, we're getting back to prices in the hundreds instead of the thousands. I've used one way back when I was shooting film SLRs and it works but I found it a little cumbersome. You must get used to having your hand reaching in to the camera through a glove insert in the exterior of the bag. You must control the bags bouyancy by making sure it's inflated before you dive to compensate for the compression of depth. Still, it works and you can get on down to enjoyable SCUBA depths.

In The Works At Sony

2010-03-06T07:49:00.017-06:00

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

2010-03-05T05:00:00.001-06:00

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.

These were people of fairly meager means. My dad's parents were Syrian immigrants who had moved to Detroit from Johnstown, PA, in search of work in the factories. They worked hard and played hard. All indications are that my uncle Sam, handsome devil that he was, played just as well as he worked.

This is another photograph on which I just wanted to remove the color cast. In the black and white converter in Photoshop you have the chance to adjust the look of the photo by moving color sliders representing the colors that were in the original. In this original you have a little red and a little yellow. You can tell which colors are there to work with by moving the sliders in the adjustment window. That allowed me to adjust the brightness of some parts of the image.

With a little spot removal and some brightness adjusting I came up with an acceptable grayscale image. Then I tried a little sharpening.

I'm not sure the sharpening was an improvement. Here's one more probably from the same picnic in 1938.

This one also needs some cleaning and some tonal adjusting. That sky is blown out so I think I'll just loose a bunch of it and crop to highlight the group. That's my dad on the left.

My dad would kill me for showing a photograph of him before he had his nose job around 1940.

To review: you can remove the color cast from B/W originals just by going back to grayscale in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Then you can use one of many adjustments to work on brightness and contrast to try to bring up some shadow detail or calm down some blown out highlights. You will also have a couple of tools for hiding or blending away most of the scratches or tears.

You're pretty much stuck with whatever size at which you can scan your old images. Depending on the resolution of your scanner they won't stand too much enlarging before you start to get blurring and pixels.

Revisiting Color Cast

2010-03-04T05:00:00.001-06:00

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.

I don't know if such an adjustment is available in Photoshop Elements but you can find ways of diminishing or increasing certain colors within an image. In Photoshop CS4 I used the Variations adjustment which gives you several options and allows for some adjustment of the changes.

I chose a coarse adjustment of the midtones that left the image a little under saturated and slightly yellow but not too bad.

I further reduced the yellows and added some noise reduction and ended up with a photograph that looks much better than the totally red overcast one with which I started. I did try using other adjustments to reduce the red and, for instance, move the color balance slider toward cyan but the adjustment wasn't as fine ad in the variations adjustment.

I told you I'd be dealing with photographs taken before I was born in today's post but I think I'll hold that until tomorrow since I wanted to tell you what I learned about correcting a strong color cast in the interim since yesterday. I will, however, tell you about the camera my dad's holding in this photograph.

It looks to me like a Rolleicord, a twin lens reflex camera, as you may have noticed, to which my dad has added an accessory flash attachment. The Rolleicord was a lower priced version of the Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera that was very popular in several models from the 30s well in to the 60s.

My dad probably got that camera used or even as a hand me down from an older brother. He didn't make much money but he and his 8 brothers would get cameras from pawn shops or other sources, some of which were never explained, and share them with each other. I'm reminded of the timeless warning, "Never buy a watch from a man who's out of breath." The same holds true for cameras.

Tomorrow I really will deal with a couple of my favorite photographs from the 30s.

Practial Approach To Old Photos

2010-03-03T04:56:00.002-06:00

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.

This is one of several photographs that really degraded over time. I might have tried to duplicate the color of the grass and the walkway and the skin tones, etc. but no. I decided the best way to improve upon this photo was to remove the color.

It may be that we're much more accustomed to seeing a gray scale photograph so it looks more natural than the red cast version. I just think this is a more easily viewed photograph. The way the red covered the photo in the original version left no way of using the software to just pick out tonal areas and adjust them. I'm not artistic enough to recolor the picture by hand. I tried. Forget about it.

The factors in my thinking included the fact that I have plenty of color photos of Rachel, my daughter, and Mickey, her cousin, and my mom that are in pretty good shape. I just like this picture because it's taken at my parents home in Eastern Detroit from which much of my life took place. If the color cast photos were the only ones I had showing these people I might spend a lot more time and effort in restoration but not in this case.

Remember: You can turn any photograph to a gray scale (black and white) photograph in most photo editing software.

I have so many photographs to choose from, in fact, that I'm saving only those that I think show my family in various key moments and give a sense of their personalities. That's because this guy, my dad, was nuts about photography.

Tomorrow's candidates for improvement include photographs taken before I was around. Yes, they had photography then. Also, I think I know which camera my dad's using in this photograph.

Improving On Improvements

2010-03-02T04:54:00.001-06:00

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.

My only real concern after the work shown above was the brightness of the car windows. I wanted to make them a little darker so my adorable little face would stand out more. One way to do that is with Photoshop's curves adjustment. That lets you try different adjustments to diferent levels of brightness. You can leave the middle tones untouched and darken the very brightest tones only. That's what I did here.

Another way to accomplish this would be to use the "burn" tool to darken the window area and the "dodge" tool to lighten the baby. I don't like those tools because I have trouble being as precise as I need to be with them. Others find them the perfect tools for their needs.

Yet another way Photoshop provides for an adjustment like you see above is the adjustment layer. You can click on "brightness/contrast" adjustment, brighten the baby and then use the built in mask in the layer to remove the brightness from the window area. By doing this on a separate layer you can also darken the lower layer, under the adjusted layer, to darken the windows even more.

I did no sharpening at this stage because it just wasn't necessary. Sharpening old photos like this one can just bring out even more noise or "pixel squares". Sometimes it's useful but often it's not. I did do another pass with the noise reduction filter just to smooth the look of the photo a little bit.

I realize that these adjustments are not at all specific to an old photograph but they will apply to many of the photographs I'll be fixing this year as I go through my Mom's collection.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the criteria I'm using to select which of these hundreds of old photos I'm keeping and why some of these old photographs haven't faded or discolored while others have really degraded over time.

Treasures From My Past

2010-03-01T05:10:00.001-06:00

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.

I won't be trying to restore the photographs in the sense that many people take old photos and make them look as if they could be recently made. I'll just be trying to clean up scratches and spots as I did with the above picture.

Here's the result of this first effort. That "car seat" would not pass inspection today.

You see? I just cleaned it up a bit and cropped out the border areas. The process included repairs with Adobe's Photoshop CS4 but I used tools that are available in Photoshop Elements. I'm lazy so I like to use the "healing brush" and the "clone stamp" tools to remove scratches and spots by letting the software blend them in with surrounding pixels. Here's a side by side comparison.

I just cleaned it up and removed the color cast. I really like the look of an old photograph in black and white. I did some noise removal on this one. I don't know if you can do that with Elements.

I'll show you some other adjustments I intend to make to this and a few other photographs during the week ahead. That means this week will be more about photograph editing and processing than shooting but that's half of the photographic process. Many of the photographs I rescued from Mom's house are from the 50s, 60s, etc. and are color snapshots. I'll show you what I did to try to save some of those that have a terrible color cast.

Smokin OPs

2010-02-25T05:22:00.001-06:00

That was the title of one of my favorite Bob Seger albums. I mean a vinyl album on which he sang Other People's hits. Today we appreciate other people's photography.

The Olympics often offer spectacular photographic opportunities if not engaging contests. The Big Picture once again has a great gallery of photos from the opening ceremonies.

I love me some space photos. Here's a gallery of cool shots from a recent space shuttle mission courtesy of the Sacramento Bee.

From LIFE magazine on line, an intriguing look at Haiti, years ago.

From Slate a gallery of skaters from many different places and times.

Carry The Lenses You Want

2010-02-24T05:14:00.003-06:00

I've read too many posts and/or articles lately about the lenses every photographer should carry. Oh, really? Somehow the person writing the article knows just what I'm hoping to shoot and can tell me what I should have in my bag? Will you tell me what to have for lunch, too?

I know what kind of images I want to grab and so I have chosen two lenses that I pretty much have in the bag at all times. If you recognize the Canon 70-200mm f 2.8 L IS above you've already assumed that one of those lenses is this beauty. WRONG.

It is the best lens that I own but it's also the heaviest, heavier even than my 200-400mm zoomer.
I use it often but it isn't in the bag unless I decide it's one of those days that I know I'll want it around.

The two lenses I carry in the bag without thinking about it are both Tamron lenses. They're not as sharp as Canon glass but very few people will ever notice that in my fine art pictures which are highly processed.

The two lenses I carry include an overlapping set of focal lengths so that I'm covered for everything from 17mm to 300mm. They aren't very fast. The wide angle 17-35mm lens has a maximum aperture of 2.8 but it closes to 4 at 35mm. The 28-300mm lens has a maximum aperture of 3.5 but closes to 6.1 at 300mm. The Canon 70-200mm lens has a constant aperture and a maximum of f 2.8. That means that it will maintain whatever aperture I set through the focal lengths. It includes two kinds of stabilization and zooms without changing its geometry. It also has 2 types of autofocus settings. All that technology makes for a very heavy lens. That's one reason I don't carry it always. The other is the neatly overlapping focal lengths of the two Tamrons in the bag.

I'm basically an outdoor photographer. I have little interest in documentary photography. I'll take any good shot that presents itself but I may shoot an interesting scene with my pocket point-and-shooter. If I pass a dramatic scene and don't manage to get a photograph of it I really don't care that much. In my mind the world is full of good photographers and great photographs. I want to take and promote the photography that I enjoy most. I don't carry a macro lens as some writers seem to think I should. It doesn't interest me.

Others may carry lenses or other accessories that are required to do their jobs. If you're on a tight budget you'll want to invest in a lens that covers a wide range of focal lengths like my 28-300mm lens. Just let the articles and posts you read be guidelines rather than rules. What you shoot and how you shoot it is your business. The experiences of others should inform but not control your decisions.

These Photos Are RAW!!

2010-02-23T05:28:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I coaxed you along your mode dial to the M mode. Now that wasn't so bad, was it? Well for at least thinking seriously about shooting manually today I'm going to show you how you can shoot in the RAW.

If your DSLR was purchased in the last 4-5 years you probably have the ability to select a file type called RAW.

I'll give you a comprehensive look at the difference between a RAW file and a more common JPEG file after the jump.

A clue: I edit my RAW files in software like this Adobe Camera RAW editor in which you see my granddaughter, Lily, and her friend, Weezie, the boxer.

The basic difference between RAW and JPEG files is, for me, twofold. (I love using words like "twofold") RAW files have a greater tonal range and more can be done with them in editing. Look at my web site, pictureneworleans.com, and you'll see that I do a whole lotta editing of my fine art photographs. RAW files are also much larger.

JPEG files are smaller, readable by most operating systems and software, useable in email and blogs, etc. They are also higher in contrast and sharpened and compressed a bit when they are finished in the camera. JPEGs don't have the tonal range of RAW files which limits how much you can adjust them on your computer.

A short way to think of the differences is: if you want to make great snapshots and don't plan to work on the photograph on your computer, may as well use an automatic mode on the camera and shoot JPEGs. Most of the time you'll get a well exposed photograph.

On the other hand, if you want to see what you can do with the photograph, if you'd most likely be buying darkroom supplies if we were still shooting film, I recommend a more manual shooting mode and RAW files.

In the Adobe Camera RAW editor you can see so many different tools that you may think that's way too much work to do to get a pretty picture. Of course, it depends on how much you want that picture to be pretty. On most images you'll use a few of the tools.

The most valuable of the tools, to me, are the exposure tools on the right of the photo. There you can fill in the shadows, bring down highlights, change the color temperature and basic exposure or brightness and contrast, and we're just getting started.

Actually that may be all you want to do but you have the option of making targeted adjustments to just part of the photograph, cropping, fixing red eyes, leveling and so many other adjustments that, if you're at all like me, you'll waste a lot of time exploring before you ever get in to a sort of routine for processing your photographs.

Here's also where you sharpen your RAW files. They aren't sharpened in camera nor are they compressed at all. Because RAW files are more like data files than JPEGs you'll need to sharpen them in your RAW editor. The good news? When you do sharpen them you'll get some great looking photos if you've done your exposure correctly when you took the shot.

I've really just glossed over the subject here. Here's a good article comparing RAW to JPEG from the Digital Photography School.

Photography A La Mode Dial

2010-02-22T05:12:00.001-06:00

Just a few notes today about that mode dial and why you should venture past the "auto-everything" mode.

As usual I'll be using a Canon example but what I have to offer is about photography regardless of the camera you choose. The basic idea is that you're not just flying without guidance when you choose that M setting.

Simply described the AUTO setting, represented by the green box on this Canon 5D mode dial, means the camera will set the shutter speed, aperture and auto-focus type. You just point, press the shutter button half way and shoot. That's an easy way to get a picture with good exposure but why buy a DSLR if you're going to point and shoot with it?

Canon offers CA and P modes which are sort of the same thing only different. In CA mode you'll get the average exposure settings when you press the shutter button half way and then you can change your settings to achieve certain effects like changing the depth of field of the brightness. In P mode you press the shutter button half way and then you can change one exposure setting, i.e. aperture, to achieve an effect or adjust to the type of scene you're shooting. If you're going to have fun with the settings why not just dive in to the M mode and have some real fun.

The Manual mode lets you take a reading with the TTL meter, that's the Through The Lens meter, and then adjust your shutter, aperture, ISO, whatever to get the exposure you seek. You'll learn much more about how one exposure setting affects your photographs this way and develop some skills and have some fun.

The best part, of course, is that you're shooting digital files. You can't waste film. You can just reformat the card and all your silly mistakes are gone forever.

The Av and Tv modes on the Canon cameras indicate Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes. These are not without value.

In these modes as you change one setting the other changes to maintain the acceptable exposure setting. I might use the Av mode to change my depth of field, DOF, with the aperture and watch the camera reset the shutter speed to maintain the exposure.

Another value of the more automated mode settings is the ability to use the camera's TTL meter just as you would a hand held light meter. Take a peak at the settings chosen by the camera using the P mode and you'll get an idea of where you can start your settings before switching to the M mode and getting crazy.

Example: if you're attempting to shoot a bird in flight you can take a reading with the TTL meter and immediately start ramping up the shutter speed from that point and opening up the aperture. You see in this shot that I didn't quite get the shutter fast enough to freeze the wings.

This is also where you can use a priority mode, in this case Shutter Priority, and let the aperture set itself in response.

True confession: many are the days on which I run out to try something, run back in to the computer, load the pictures in to the computer, gag in disgust at my results and wipe out the whole bunch. Actually I'll probably take note of my settings to try to learn something so my time has not been wasted.

Digital means never having to admit you screwed up.

The Value Of A High Priced Camera

2010-02-20T18:12:00.008-06:00

I often have difficulty describing to others who may not think about photography most of their waking and sleeping hours what makes an expensive professional type of camera worth the money.

The Canon 1D Mark 4 is a $5,000 camera body, that's without a lens. The last time I bought a camera body with a lens on it was several years ago when I bought my Canon EOS Rebel XTi with an 18-55mm kit lens. I still have and use that camera but the Canon EOS 5D and 5D Mark 2 were purchased as bodies. I have a selection of lenses that I've purchased to do the kind of work I'm in to now.

So the question comes up, "What could make a camera worth the thousands of dollars you folks pay when my camera has the same stuff on it." Well, not quite the exactly same stuff.

The 1D Mark 4, for instance, has a 16mp sensor. That's less than my 5D Mark 2's 21 mp sensor but that's plenty for the shooting typically done with the 1D Mark 4. This is a very weather and dust resistant body; very valuable to a professional who's shooting in whatever condition present at the event.

I'm a Canon shooter so I can relate to Canon products and I'm going to use quotes from photographers which were included in a recent press release from Canon headquarters to show you how the advanced focusing features of the Canon 1D Mark 4 make it worth the investment to someone who's trying to make a living shooting photographs.

“Ever since I’ve been shooting with it, I find that I’m able to get entire sequences of sharp images instead of just individual frames. That’s a huge improvement,” remarked Tom Hauck, of Tom Hauck Photography, who photographed the Super Bowl on assignment for ESPN the Magazine. “The autofocus and tracking are razor sharp. After the NFL Wildcard Playoff game I was submitting 10 to 12 shot sequences all in crisp focus.”

Rapidly changing autofocus and autofocus servo which continues to refocus on a moving subject are present on many cameras but really refined on the more expensive ones.

Turns out Tom Hauck was shooting right at Tracy Porter when he made that wonderful interception:

“I was in the end zone using a 500mm lens on the Mark IV for the game defining interception and I aimed at the cornerback and started firing as he jumped the route. Once the camera locked on, he remained in focus as he ran the full 70 yards to the end zone. Even as other players came horizontally into frame in an attempt to tackle him, the camera never lost focus. When he cut back, breaking free and getting closer, I rotated the camera from horizontal to vertical without taking my hand off the shutter and even the shots taken while turning the camera remained tack-sharp. I don’t believe I have ever fired a consistent 68 shot burst of a single play like that before and produced so many perfectly focused shots.”

Ronald Martinez, staff photographer, Getty Images, had similar sentiments: “The AF tracking is excellent in all the lighting conditions I’ve experienced, ranging from football and basketball to hockey and press conferences. The 1D Mark IV camera’s AF system grabs the subject very quickly and stays with it. It’s been very dependable.”

You and I may think it would be a thrill just to be on the sidelines taking photographs at a big game but these guys only get paid if they turn in great photographs. For them the investment in a great camera body is pretty much mandatory. As I've said so many times before, unless you plan to make fine art photography, there's no need for the average shooter to invest more than $600-$700 in a camera and probably less.

How Firm Is Your Firmware?

2010-02-19T09:35:00.000-06:00

If you know what firmware is you probably know that you can bring it up to date from time to time. Even I, with all my wisdom, must be reminded to check now and then to see if firmware updates are available for my cameras.

Firmware, for those or you who need reminding, is the operating system of your digital device. It's a small, fixed set of operating instructions that let your camera take a picture and transfer it to the memory card with the settings you make. If you've registered your camera you may be notified by email of the availability of firmware updates.

Many more devices in your house use firmware than you might think. Your hand held remote controls, for example, use firmware. You won't be able to update their firmware, in most cases, but you can update your camera's firmware using the memory card.

The simple "how to" is: download the firmware to your computer, transfer it to the memory card and put the memory card in the camera and use the camera's on board menu to transfer that updated firmware to the camera. You can check to see what version of your camera's firmware you have now in the LCD menu under something like "tools" or "utilities".

Even if you've just purchased your camera it may have been sitting on a shelf somewhere while a firmware update was issued so it pays to check the manufacturer's web site once a month to see if an update is available. The updates often fix little bugs that you may think are just a problem with which you must live. Very often those little bugs are experienced by many customers and are addressed in firmware updates. Even if the details of the fixes in the update don't look like they'll affect you I recommend updating firmware so that future updates, which may affect you, will be easier.

Here's a site listing available firmware updates for Nikon products. Here's one for Canon EOS cameras. The best thing to do is go to the manufacturer's site and search for product support for your camera. You may find a firmware update for your compact camera, too.

OBTW the same recommendation applies to your printer and any software you may be using on your computer. When you open Photoshop, for example, you may be notified that an update is available. If you haven't registered your product you'll need to check for yourself. The software will do that for you if you click a selection under the HELP button near the top of the screen.

More Black & White Adventures

2010-02-18T05:05:00.001-06:00

Photo editing software makes converting a photograph from color to black and white a rather enjoyable and adventurous exercise. The software gives you the chance to make more than one black and white image in the same way you can change the look of the color photograph. Here's the photograph on which I'll be working this time.

This is the Bollinger dry dock on the West Bank of the Mississippi river seen from the Algiers Ferry just after sunset.

Call me crazy (as so many people do) but I like this photograph. I like the reflections on the water and the perspective (there's that word again) created by the Crescent City Connection and the Riverwalk just visible on the East Bank.

Since I shoot RAW files for my fine art photography I had the option of creating my black and white version of this in Adobe's Camera RAW editor or in Photoshop CS4. I also could use Adobe's Lightroom which has the same RAW processor as the Camera RAW editor. I chose Photoshop CS4 because I'm more comfortable doing most of my work there even though I do a lot of editing in Lightroom and ACR. It really depends on the status of the photograph. If I'm just importing the file from the camera I'll do so with Lightroom and make my initial adjustments there. If I'm revisiting a photograph to try something different I'll probably make my adjustments in ACR and/or Photoshop.

Wherever you decide to make your black and white adjustments you'll be given the option of changing the intensity of the basic colors that were in the color photograph. Those colors will show up as shades of gray but you'll be changing them as individual colors. That gives you a world of possibilities. Here's my favorite version of the photograph of the dry dock.

Using the Photoshop version of the black and white converter I was able to darken the sky and brighten some of the lights on the equipment. I was even able to darken some of the reflections on the river and increase some of the lights on the bridge and the Riverwalk.

Here's the black and white version of the photograph with the black and white conversion dialogue and its color sliders.

Look at the blue slider. You'll see that it's set at -44 to darken the sky. The -61 setting on the magenta slider darkened some of the reflections on the river. I like this look but...

just for grins here's the black and white conversion with the blues increased.

Everything you do in Photoshop is non-destructive but it's even nicer if you do these things as an adjustment layer so it's easier to revisit the adjustment and try new things.

The same is true for Photoshop Elements. The difference is the reduced number of sliders in the black and white conversion dialogue box.

In this image from lynda.com, my favorite learning site, you can see that the Elements conversion offers you several presets which you can then tweak with the sliders on the right.

3 Types Of Perspective

2010-02-17T05:22:00.000-06:00

If you've looked at my photographs much (and I hope you have or will) you'll see all kinds of perspective being used. The most common technique for doing that in my photographs is the use of converging lines.

All those lines on the buildings and in the street in this photograph from Old San Juan, PR, point directly to the old gate in front of which a young couple is being photographed while an accordion player, looking stooped and forlorn, plays to one side of the street.

That convergence technique doesn't always apply to straight lines.

NOTE: A tilt-shift lens helps keep those vertical lines from converging in a photograph like this one from the Old Square in Siracusa, Sicily, Italy. You may take some photographs in which you want vertical convergence.

Another technique that creates perspective is the placement of objects or people in the photograph that define the distance involved.

In this photograph from the TPC, in Avondale, the tree in the forground combines with the shore of the water and the size of the trees farther away to give me the perspective I sought.

The size thing is the third and, I think, most subtle technique for creating perspective, the variable sizes of things in the picture.

This is a photograph taken in Arlington National Cemetery. The headstones diminish in size as they form lines that seem to diverge but really converge in the background. The people also are larger near the lens than farther away.

So this whole perspective thing is accomplished with variations on the 3 themes I mentioned using whatever is at your disposal. In most scenic photography, outdoors, in large rooms, anywhere that presents the chance to describe distance or space in your photograph, the means of doing so will probably be in the scene itself. Your use of aperture and angle will translate that sense of perspective in to the photograph.

I was trying to get a shot of a cleared lot in Houston, TX, for a client who wanted documentation of efforts to clear debris from said lot. The presence of the flower close to the front of the lot gave me the opportunity to dramatize the perspective and make, I think, a more pleasing photograph. The abundance of sunlight meant I had no trouble using an aperture that would increase my depth of field to the necessary length.

If the light is low you'll have to try things like higher ISO settings and using a tripod to reduce camera shake. Sometimes you can meter for a bright light in the distance and let the near objects be silhouettes against it.

This tug was photographed pushing a line of barges along a canal near Galveston Bay. This is another example of how the elements of perspective are part of the scene and you get to decide how to use them.

Carnival Elsewhere

2010-02-16T04:41:00.003-06:00

Just did a little searching, web style, and found several pictures from Carnivals in other places. All photographs are OP's.

Such as Brazil, of course.

But that's not all:

Also Brazil, Rio to be exact, but it looks a lot like home

Does this look familiar? It would be if you've been to Carnival in Nice, France.

Really nice masks. These are from somewhere in Columbia.

Heck, I gotta go back to Rio one time. The girl's got some feathers.

Mobile, AL.

I know you've been waiting to see Karnival in Malta. They don't look like they're having fun.

Prilep, Macedonia

Trinidad

Ovar, Portugal
Maastricht, Netherlands
Canary Islands

Here's where I got most of these. Thanks again to Boston.com's Big Picture.

4 Reasons To Consider An EVIL Camera

2010-02-15T08:08:00.005-06:00

Horray! I got your attention with the catchy acronym. There's a new camera in town, folks, and its acronym is EVIL which stands for Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. Here's one now.

These may very well start replacing DSLRs as we know them on people's wish lists because of 4 key factors:

1. size

2. performance

3. the aforementioned interchangeable lenses

4. speed

These cameras lately include the Olympus E-P1 (above) the Panasonic GF1 (below) and the Samsung NX10.

They take very good pictures since they've achieved their small size by reducing the camera and not so much the sensor. The Olympus and Panasonic cameras use a "four thirds" sensor that's smaller than one in a DSLR but bigger than one in my pocket sized Canon SD780. The Samsung uses a sensor the same size as a DSLR. The cameras are smaller in part because the flip up mirror and prism that feed the DSLR viewfinder have been replaced by the LCD and/or the electronic viewfinder, the EV in EVIL.

The EVIL cameras are faster than the pocket sized compacts in the basic functions of starting up, processing pictures and changing adjustments. In those ways they compare to your DSLR.

There are two key factors that may delay their addition to your wish lists:

1. Price

I'm seeing prices from $600 to $1000 for the camera with a 14-45mm kit lens. Considering that you'll want to add a lens or two to your collection (why else by an interchangeable lens camera?) you won't be spending less money than if you bought a DSLR.

2. Size

Yes, they're smaller than the DSLRs and the lenses are smaller, too, but they're still not really small enough to hide in your pants pocket; a larger jacket pocket maybe but in warm weather (do we have that here?) you'll find the EVIL camera difficult to hide.

Compare my Canon SD780, on the left, with the Olympus E-P1.

The E-P1 is a pocket camera the way the old Kodaks were pocket cameras.

EVIL cameras are probably going to catch on with pros who must be very mobile and want to travel light. One thing several writers have said is that the EVIL camera hanging at your side doesn't look like an expensive pro's camera.

Many people are willing to spend some money to enjoy photography so I may be selling the cameras short. I've made too much of an investment in my full size DSLRs and my one little pocket camera to venture in to EVIL territory. Some time down the road Canon and Nikon may get in to the EVIL business and that may bring renewed pricing and even more features.

More Fun With OP's

2010-02-14T04:49:00.000-06:00

Here's another enjoyable site of 360 degree panoramas. Panoramas.dk includes 360s of New Year's Eve in Times Square and a 360 from atop Mt. Everest. Thanks to John Nack's blog for the link.

Winning News Photos

2010-02-13T05:25:00.002-06:00

Take your time looking through this gallery of winning photographs from World Press Photo, a non-profit organization with offices in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Here's the Winners Gallery from their annual contest. Thanks to Katrin Eismann's tweet for the link.

Looking through this gallery makes me feel like grabbing a camera and just running out to take photographs of anything I see. This being a particularly cold morning, I probably won't. It is, nevertheless, an interesting and often moving look at work from around the world which we might otherwise never see.

Canon is a sponsor. Here's Canon's report on the contest.

A Flash Worth The Money

2010-02-12T05:00:00.003-06:00

This just in from the world of retail: The more you pay, the more you get. I did some test shots with different flashes to see if I could get results that were easily displayed and explained. I used my Canon EOS Rebel XTi, which is now a rather out of date 10mp DSLR that's still a damn good light weight, easy to use camera.

I know several photographers who'll tell you never to use the pop-up flash on such a camera. To them I say "Never say never." Ignore the low resolution of this picture. The point is the flash exposure. It's not bad with the sync set to 1st curtain.

The sync setting tells the flash to fire at the instant the shutter opens (1st curtain) or the instant before it closes (2nd curtain). In some situations the 2nd curtain allows for the exposure of background or other non-central elements before the flash exposes the central element of the picture. Here's the same shot with the sync changed to 2nd curtain.

Do you see the difference? Me neither. With the camera holding the exposure settings at 1/60 sec. at f 4.0 the exposures look identical. In a moment I'll show you how 2nd curtain sync can really be made to work for you. So far we've seen that the pop-up flash can produce an acceptable photograph with the camera doing the exposure settings.

Here's a shot with an add-on flash, a small Sunpak that's not reading the camera settings.

It's not a bad exposure but you'll notice that the background is not as exposed as in the shots made with the pop-up flash. The sky was pretty consistently overcast so I don't think cloud cover was variable. I tried a couple more using the Sunpak and adjusting the exposure settings in manual. I used a scale printed on the back of the flash but ...

Never mind. I got nothing that was more pleasing than the shots with the pop-up flash.

Then I brought out one of my favorite accessories. The Canon Speedlite 580EX 2. This flash reads the camera settings and adjusts the flash output accordingly. Canon calls this flash an E-TTL 2 flash. TTL generally refers to Through The Lens metering and this is a second genertion of Canon's E-TTL flashes.

The flash uses an infrared beam from the flash body to take a reading off the subject and adjust itself to the cameras exposure settings. In the above shot I'm exposed nicely but the background is a little dingy. With that in mind I adjusted the cameras exposure settings.

The flash maintained its output according to the infrared reading off my body but the wider aperture lit up the background some. Here's one more with another change to the camera settings to get more of the background.

Here the slower shutter lights up the background even more while the dedicated flash just keeps the output set for me. Remember that the sync was set to 2nd curtain. Check your owners manual for your camera's sync settings. They're usually in the custom functions but I don't see a reason not to leave the camera on 2nd curtain sync all the time.

I think this shows the value of using what's called a dedicated flash unit, one whose electronics talk to your camera. The flash unit maintained the correct output for me even as the camera's exposure settings were letting in more and more light. Even with that great technology it took several tries to get an exposure that I liked.

BTW; if you're thinking that the first exposure using the pop-up flash is still the best, we're in disagreement but it is a matter of taste. I think the last exposure taken with the Speedlite 580EX 2 is much more pleasing but you can see here that you have many options.

Returning to my opening cliche, the cheapest option here is to just use the pop-up flash and spend no more on an external flash. Your 2nd option would be to purchase a relatively inexpensive flash that's not dedicated and probably find your self doing more adjusting and taking more trial-and-error shots to get a good exposure. Your 3rd option is the most expensive; to purchase a high quality flash that's dedicated to your camera and makes getting great exposures much more likely.

Note that the 580EX 2 was made to communicate with cameras produced after the Canon EOS Rebel XTi was made but it still used the basic information transmitted from the camera. When I slide it in to the shoe on my Canon EOS 5D Mk 2 it works almost effortlessly and it has many options built in so I can get all manual and experimental as I often do. You can find earlier EX flash models (or the counterparts for your camera) at some retailers and some outlets like e-bay or Amazon and you'll get many of the benefits of TTL flashes and save some bucks.

On Monday: how to evaluate your f stops

Creative Blurring

2010-02-11T09:45:00.002-06:00

This morning a quick "How He Do Dat". I like the effect of blurring some elements in a picture to show motion while other things in the picture appear still. This is an example I shot in Rome in 2008.

If you've ever tried crossing a street in Rome you know the bravery of that guy on the median. BTW no one in Rome knows what a neutral ground is.

I was shooting with my Canon EOS 5D in manual as usual. I had to find a shutter speed that would blur the cars but not the pedestrians. There was enough difference between the speed of the cars and the much slower movements of the pedestrians that 1/15 sec. did the trick. The aperture was f32 and the ISO was 125. Although shadows are not evident in this photograph you can see by the partly cloudy sky that I did have plenty of sunlight to work with. I shot this hand held which meant I couldn't go too awfully slow with the shutter. I just don't like carrying a tripod around when we're on vacation. I do always take some time to go out on purely photographic walks when we vacation but this wasn't one of those walks.

I tried several shots to see if I liked having cars close and tourists in the background or different vehicles moving at different speeds.

I settled on the shot below largely because all the vehicles were moving at similar speed and one was passing just in front of the crossing pedestrian. I confess that no one has agreed with me that the effect makes this shot outstanding but it is an effect I plan to use whenever the situation seems to offer such an opportunity.

The last thing I tried was cropping the photo in to a more horizontal orientation. I thought that might focus more attention on the contrast between the cars and the guy on the median.

I've also sharpened the picture and lowered the luminance setting of the blues to give the sky more depth.

Interesting Sugestions

2010-02-10T08:18:00.003-06:00

A quick post to begin today. I must attend a funeral this morning.

Here's an interesting article from Digital Photo Pro about the way we now use ISO as another exposure variable. In film days, for those who don't remember, you were stuck with the ISO of the film roll.

Click the pic

It's always interesting to see someone's views even if it's about something we already knew.

In case you haven't see it; here's a link to NOLA.com's Saints photo pages.

NOLA.com offers an embed code for their Saints parade video so here it is.

New Orleans Saints Video: Victory Parade