October, 2009 | Photocrati

Better Habits for Better Photography

Kali Climber, Eastern Sierra, California. Developed habits allowed me to get this shot off quickly after diving for the dirt to create this unusual composition.

Today over on twitter someone reminded me of something Galen Rowell taught me many years ago, and I realized the subject required more than 140 characters to explain. The basic idea sounds simple to start with: Essentially, after you shoot, the idea is to leave the camera back at some “default” set of settings. In my case, that’s typically auto-focus, ISO 100, aperture-priority, f/16, RAW, mirror lockup enabled. (Except when it’s something else.)

At first glance that’s sensible enough on the face of it. Those are some pretty reasonable “will work with a lot of landscape images” sorts of settings, and having relatively reasonable settings in the camera will reduce the chance that I forget to change some setting (ISO 12800, or f/32) that I won’t want on the next shot.

But the benefits of this habit go deeper than that.

Galen took this idea to the next level, in what he described as expert systems for photography. If I know (because I have great habits) that my settings are what I’ve described above, I can respond more quickly. Imagine that I’m walking down the trail with my camera backpack, and I turn a corner, and there it is. “Celene Dion riding a unicorn through a field of baby animals under a big blue sky“, (warning: link is a silly video digression) and I’ve only got three seconds to get the shot. (more…)

Sunrise & Set Pro for iPhone/iPod Touch

Like many in this industry, I started as an assistant to other photographers. One cold and wet afternoon while cleaning the cases of one of my clients I came across a curious set of plastic laminated cards with the word “Sundicator” printed on them. Being the complete geek that I was (am,) I recognized the terms Azimuth and Inclination and figured that these cards were a way of estimating where in the sky the sun would be at a particular time and place. Each card was specific to a range of latitudes on the globe. In order to use the set properly you needed the correct card for your latitude and a compass. It’s worth noting that this photographer had lost the card for our home latitude.

Jump ahead 15 or so years and you have the age of gps and hand held computing. Hence the iPhone app Sunrise and Set Pro. This wonderful little app will read your current gps location and tell you the Azimuth (heading) in inclination (angle above horizon) of the sun for any given time. It will also give you sunrise and sunset times for that location on any given day. The app automatically computes daylight savings time issues which is great because I can never remember whether to add or subtract and hour. And it will also allow you to save custom locations for later review. This is a great option for location scouting. With saved locations you can easily change dates and times of shoots from home and know what the sun will be doing before arriving on location. (more…)

Traveling with Equipment

One requirement of being a corporate photographer is travel. Fortunately most of my travel is fairly local, or at least what I consider local, Philadelphia to Washington DC and on occasion, New York. I tend to be in DC a couple times a month, sometimes a couple times a week. Most of my trips are by train so I try to travel light, and by light I mean two Nikon bodies, four lenses, three speed lights, Pocket Wizards and batteries, so not really light. I needed to find an easier way to carry my gear. (more…)

The Tuesday Composition: Telephoto Compression

Layers, Yosemite National Park, California. A classic viewpoint, 300mm focal length. While we intellectually understand that the elements of this image are at quite different distances from the camera, telephoto compression seems to take away some of the cues our brain uses to perceive depth.

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

Just as I often turn to wide-angle lenses when I want to create images with a sense of depth and perspective, when I purposefully want to lose a sense of depth, when I want to compress elements of an image in order to abstract or combine them, then I’ll often look to the longer end of my over-abundant collection of lenses.

First, it’s worth acknowledging that, pedantically, telephoto lenses don’t change perspective (warning: PDF document). Seen from the same point, two objects will change in size, but proportionally, when you change lenses. Of course, if you change your shooting position to compensate for the new focal length, that’s a different matter entirely. So I’ll avoid saying that telephoto lenses change the perspective in a scene.

But there is a real, identifiable “look” to images we extract out of a scene using a long telephoto lens. We often talk about telephoto images as looking “flat” or “compressed”, these images do not seem to trigger our visual system into perceiving an illusion of depth in the image the way that many wide-angle shots do. Where does that look come from? I believe it primarily comes from two factors. (more…)

Sony Alpha A850 Digital SLR Review: Field Test Report

The World’s Most Affordable Full-Frame DSLR

Boasting the highest resolution available in a 35mm size DSLR, the latest Sony camera is also the most affordable full-frame model on the market. Priced to sell at about $700 less than the Sony A900, the Nikon D700 and the Canon EOS 5D Mk II, the A850 is a downright bargain (from Amazon Sony Alpha DSLRA850 24.6MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only); from B&H Photo).

In spite of the moderate price, it’s identical to the A900 in most aspects, including the 24x36mm CMOS sensor with 24.6 million effective pixels. Each light-sensitive dot is quite large: 5.9 microns squared. In addition to excellent light gathering ability, analog-to-digital conversion and noise reduction processing- right on the sensor-combine to provide optimal image quality.

Because the A850 employs a sensor that's the same size as a 35mm film frame, there's no field of view crop. Hence, even a 24mm focal length includes a very wide portion of any scene. The 24.6 MP CMOS chip provides superlative resolution at commonly used ISO's, making this camera an ideal choice when huge prints are required. (Carl Zeiss 24-70mm zoom at 24mm) ©2009 Peter K. Burian

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A First Glance at Lightroom 3.0 (Beta 1) Image Processing

Shot converted with LR2. Compare with the shot below, but bring both up-full size to see the differences I describe in the article.

A couple days ago, Adobe released Lightroom 3.0 Beta 1, which introduces a variety of new features, but also introduces a new RAW processing engine. While many of these features are fairly simple to appreciate, the changes to the RAW processing engine are just as exciting, and worth a look as well.

I will intentionally avoid talking about performance differences. While I haven’t noticed particular performance differences between LR2 and LR3B1, I haven’t looked and wouldn’t consider any such comparison valid until it was made on a “release version vs. release version” basis, the performance of beta versions often differ from that of release versions for a variety of reasons that I won’t belabor here.

But if history is any guide, we can start looking at image quality, particularly with promised improvements to noise reduction and sharpening. Be careful not to read too much into these results, Adobe has intentionally turned off luminance noise reduction in LR3B1. Since it’s off by default in LR2, that shouldn’t impair our comparisons too much, but it is something to keep in mind.

To compare the two, I looked at differences in the results of the raw processing engines on a few ISO 3200 images of a camera bracket from my Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. I’ve included a pair of 100% crops of raw conversions from the same file for your comparison. These samples are illustrative of the sorts of changes I’ve seen in the handful of other files I’ve examined so far. Both samples were converted entirely “as shot” with default settings for each version of Lightroom. (more…)

Q and A: How can I get rid of spots on my photos?

Question

Recently all the photos taken with my digital SLR have obvious spots at two fixed places. Can I get rid of them by cleaning the sensor? Also, I see a lot of colored spots in my night photos but I guess that’s a different problem; how do I solve that? M.K.

Answer

Yes, it’s quite likely that the two dots are caused by specks on the sensor. You can send the camera to a service, or consider cleaning the sensor yourself with one of the products from VisibleDust such as the Zeeion Blower (from B&H Photo; from Amazon). For more stubborn spots (such as water droplets) you would need to use the special swabs (from B&H Photo; from Amazon) plus the SensorClean liquid (from B&H Photo; from Amazon).

But take maximum care not to scratch the sensor; follow the accessory manufacturer’s instructions to the letter! (more…)

DSLRemote for iPhone and iPod touch

In order to be successful in this business you need a lot of tools at your disposal. I mean not only physical tools like gear and software, but also intangible tools like a positive attitude and a penchant for keeping clients happy. Also, the ability to keep clients in awe of you is always a big help. I’ve stated here many times that I’m not a gear head. I’m perfectly willing to spend money on necessary gear. But my bar for what I deem necessary is very high. It’s a rare day when I’ll go buy something just because I think it’s cool or fun. Last week I made an exception to my “˜not unless it makes my work better” rule and purchased DSLRemote Pro for my iPhone. (more…)

The Tuesday Composition: Both Near and Far

Bleached bush skeleton, Mono Lake, California. This image would have been more effective if I'd used a bit of flash to highlight the dead bush to emphasize that it's the subject of the image, I'll almost certainly dodge up (brighten) the bush in printing.

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

One of the more common idioms in landscape of photography is the near-far composition, a powerful technique for creating depth and relationships within a photograph.

In a near-far composition, a small foreground element is emphasized and placed in a background that establishes context for that element. For example, the dead bush in Bleached Bush Skeleton, the bush remains are the subject of the photograph. The lake, the tufa in the lake and the Sierra Nevada all tell us something about the location the bush remains are in.

Put another way, if you were to try and write a sentence describing what a near-far photograph is about, it would usually be something like, “This foreground (thing) is in the background (environment).” The foreground object is the subject of the sentence, it is in general the more important of the two elements in a near-far image.

When I say that the foreground is emphasized, it’s important to be clear about how that’s done. For the foreground to be comparable in size to the background, it needs to be much closer to the lens than the background. While it might seem in theory that this could be accomplished with almost any sort of lens, the smaller depth-of-field of telephoto lenses often make it impossible to keep near and far objects both in focus. As a result, the most dramatic near-far compositions are usually made with wide-angle lenses. Hyperfocal focusing is often used to create the greatest depth-of-field. (more…)

Nikon D5000 Digital SLR Review: Field Test Report

Peter Burian tests this affordable 12.3 MP DSLR with variable-angle LCD, D-Movie mode and sophisticated Nikon technology

Nikon’s most affordable enthusiast-level DSLR-the 12.3 megapixel D5000-is positioned between the D3000 and the D90 and offers the best of both worlds. The D5000 is as easy to use as the entry-level camera and provides even more Scene modes but it employs powerful technology and advanced features developed for the larger prosumer-grade model.That includes D-Movie mode in Live View, although the LCD screen is slightly smaller and provides lower resolution when compared to the D90. (more…)