New iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode

Back in the fall of 2016 when Apple announced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus they also talked about a new camera mode for the iPhone 7 Plus only, called Depth of Field Portrait Mode.

Using this new mode on the 7 Plus’ camera, you can shoot a portrait and have the great “bokeh” effect for the background while the subject is in sharp focus. At the time it was mentioned that the new mode would only work when the iPhone’s camera recognized a face, so it would only be useful for human portraits. I am happy to say that now that Apple has actually released this feature via software update that it actually works quite well even on objects.

Tiki character shot with Depth of Field Effect on iPhone 7 Plus

This past weekend I went out shooting with my photography club and I decided to try out this new Depth of Field Effect mode on my iPhone 7 Plus. During our photowalk we went to Constitution Lakes Park in Dekalb County, Ga. A man that did volunteer work at this park found a pit full of trash and decided to start using the trash to make art.

One of his pieces is a Tiki character attached to a fallen tree and when I spotted it, I thought it would be an interesting subject to test the new portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus camera system. As you can see in my attached photo, the new mode does work quite well even though my subject is not an actual person.

Fire Hydrant shot with the Depth of Field Effect in Sparta, Ga

 On Sunday I was out shooting for my Forgotten Pieces of Georgia series and stopped in Sparta, Ga to shoot some video of this small town which is turning into a ghost town. Before filming, I spotted a rusty old fire hydrant and decided to test the iPhone 7 Plus camera again and again it worked quite well with the bokeh effect.

Last weekend I was also visiting the family of my girlfriend Janice and while there, I used my iPhone 7 Plus to snap a photo of their hummingbird feeder using the new portrait mode.

Hummingbird feeder shot on iPhone 7 Plus

 If you have an iPhone 7 Plus, I encourage you to give it a try and see what kind of images you can create. It cannot replace your DSLR, but you can make some interesting images with this new tool in your bag.

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Focus Stacking

 This week I wanted to write about a photography technique that I recently started playing with that I learned during my recent View Camera Theory class.

Every seen a photo in a magazine ad for a new watch or other small item and wondered “How do they get the entire item in such sharp focus?” They use a technique called Focus Stacking so that every part of that Rolex is in razor sharp focus, from the numbers and hands on the watch to the band attached to it.

Focus Stacking is where you set your camera up on a tripod so you are nice and stable, then you shoot the product or item, changing your focus point but not moving the camera or changing the focal length.

This is 5 captures of the same scene but with different focus points.

 By shooting multiple captures on the product with a different part in focus each time and them combining them in Photoshop, you end up with a finished image that had every part of the watch in sharp focus with high detail.

Once you have captured your images, import them into Lightroom and then go to the Develop module and activate your Len Profile Correction. Once you have that done then select all of the images in the group that you shot and select the Photo menu item, then go down and select “Open as Layers in Photoshop.”

Once they are opened in Photoshop, select all of the Layers at once, then click the Edit Menu and choose Auto-Align Layers. Then when that has completed, click the Edit menu again and choose Auto-Blend Layers. When the process has completed, you will have a single new image where everything is in sharp focus and with high details.

All 5 shots from above combined into this Stacked image

Now all you have to do is save the new image and you are done. Focus Stacking is a lot of fun and can give you fantastic result so grab your trip, cable release and tripod and give Focus Stacking a try!

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Light Field Photography

This week I wanted to write about a new style of photography that I have recently started playing with, called Light Field photography.

A light field camera, also known as a plenoptic camera, captures information about the light field emanating from a scene; that is, the intensity of light in a scene, and also the direction that the light rays are traveling in space. This contrasts with a conventional camera, which records only light intensity.

In this image, the focus is on the mailbox.

The first light field camera was proposed by Gabriel Lippman in 1908, and he called his concept “integral photography”. Lippmann's experimental results included crude integral photographs made by using a plastic sheet embossed with a regular array of microlenses, or by partially embedding very small glass beads, closely packed in a random pattern, into the surface of the photographic emulsion.

In 2004, a team at Stanford University Computer Graphics Laboratory used a 16-megapixel camera with a 90,000-microlens array (meaning that each microlens covers about 175 pixels, and the final resolution is 90 kilopixels) to demonstrate that pictures can be refocused after they are taken.

Lytro Inc. was founded in 2006 by Res Ng, a graduate of Stanford University and inventor of the Lytro Light Field camera line.

In this version of the same shot as above, the focus is on the car.

Features of a light-field camera include:
    1) Variable depth of field and "refocusing": Lytro's "Focus Spread" feature allows the depth of field (depth of focus) of a 2 dimensional representation of a Lytro image to be expanded after a picture has been taken. Instead of having to set the focus at a particular distance, "Focus Spread" allows more of an 2D image to be in focus. In some cases this may be the entire 2D image field. Users also are able to "refocus" 2D images at particular distances for artistic effects. The ILLUM allows the "refocus-able" and "Focus Spreadable" range to be selected using the optical focus and zoom rings on the lens. The ILLUM also features "focus bracketing" to extend the refocusable range by capturing 3 or 5 consecutive images at different depths.
  
    2) Speed: Because there is less need to focus the lens before taking a picture, a light field camera can capture images more quickly than conventional point-and-shoot digital cameras. This is an advantage in sports photography, for example, where many pictures are lost because the cameras auto-focus system cannot be kept pointed precisely at a fast moving subject.
   
    3) Low-light sensitivity: The ability to adjust focus in post-processing allows the use of larger apertures than are feasible on conventional cameras, thus enabling photography in low-light environments.
   
    4) 3D images: Since a plenoptic camera records depth information, stereo images can be constructed in software from a single plenoptic image capture.

Wedding side by side, image from PetaPixel

 I have recently started using a Lytro Illum camera myself and I like the camera a great deal. Is it perfect for every situation, probably not, but one of the nice aspects of the camera is if you are shooting sports, you can shoot faster with the Lytro Illum as you don’t have to worry about whether or not the AF can keep up. Since the images can be re-focused in the camera or Lytro’s Desktop processing software, you can just shoot away at a football game and then put the images in proper focus later. Some wedding photographers have begun to embrace the Lytro camera as they can take one shot of a bride and groom like this sample image and shift the focus from him to her in a single shot and then export both versions for print.

I have had my Lytro Illum for a few weeks now and I can say that the camera is certainly worth a try, I have captured some really fantastic images with it. Is the Lytro Illlum for everyone? Of course not, but if you have the extra $350 to spend and want to take your creativity to the next level, go ahead and give it a try!



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Focus Screen Part 1

This week’s blog post I wanted to write about a specific part of the camera system that you may or may not be familiar with, the Focus Screen.

The Focus Screen is a small piece of flat, translucent material, either ground glass or a fresnel lens. It is located inside the front of your camera where the lens mounts and help you acquire focus and frame your shot through your camera’s viewfinder.

Canon Eg-A Focus Screen

 There are various types of Focus Screens for most cameras and they can be either etched or non-etched. There are even Focus Screens which are made specifically for using low light lenses.

Some cameras have plain Focus Screens and others have etched ones that denote the focus points and even have a grid for maintaining your “Rule of Thirds”. Many of the newest mid-range and professional DSLRs have a plain Focus Screen with a monochromatic LCD overlay that reveals the focus points when you depress the shutter button halfway.

One of the interesting things about your Focus Screen, aside from the fact that many people do not realize their camera has one, or that it’s easily replaced, is the fact that if the Focus Screen picks up dirt, many photographers think it’s their sensor that’s dirty when that is not the case. If you are someone like myself that has an OCD thing about even the smallest spec of dust in my field of vision, the Focus Screen can be a source of annoyance.

Image of a dirty Focus Screen, courtesy of Ken Rockwell

Have you ever looked through your viewfinder and noticed little black specs or even tiny black strings? Well, chances are if you have seen this, it is your Focus Screen that is the culprit and not your sensor. Especially if you see the dirt, but it does not show up in your photos.

Cross Section of a DSLR, Number 5 is the Focus Screen

Focus Screens can be a pain to clean and there are specific methods to do so, which I will go into in my next post. For now, either try to ignore the dirt in your field of view if you can, or go on-line and order another Focus Screen and replace your old one. You can generally buy new ones for around $20-$35 a piece, but look up which model your camera came with originally and buy the same one. Most all Canon cameras come with what’s called the Precision Matte “Eg-A” Focus Screen and the new one will come with a special tool to remove the old one and put in the new one. Whatever you do, do not touch the Focus Screen with your fingers. My next post will be on how to remove and replace your Focus Screen as well as how to clean it PROPERLY.



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Memory Cards

One of the most important pieces of your photography set up, even more so than your camera, is your memory cards. I can hear many of you out there now gasping, “How can you say that? The camera HAS to be THE MOST IMPORTANT part of a photographer’s arsenal!”

Well, you would be wrong. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post titled It’s Not ONLY About the Camera, your camera is not nearly as important as you might think or as camera sales people would have you believe. Your camera is your primary tool as a photographer, but even more important than your camera is the memory card that you use.

Why is the memory card so important? Because your camera has what is known as a buffer, which is the amount of internal space in memory that the camera can hold images in before it has to start writing them to the memory card. If you are someone that shoots sports or anything else with action, like wildlife and have your camera on continuous shooting, you can only snap so many shots before your camera starts blinking that it’s “Busy” and the little red light that indicates that it’s writing to the memory card starts flashing like mad. When you reach this point, you cannot snap anymore images until the camera is done emptying it’s buffer.

Your wait time can be seriously shorter if you make sure you only buy FAST memory cards. Now I know the next thing you are all saying is “I thought ALL memory cards are fast, they are faster than hard drives!” Well, you would be right in that respect, except for SSD or Solid State hard drives, which are basically massive memory cards used in place of a conventional hard drive. However, not all memory cards are created equal and you need to be aware of this when you are buying them for your camera so that you can get maximum performance when you really need it.

Whether your camera uses SD cards or CF cards, you need to make sure you are buying the fastest ones you can afford so that you spend more of your time shooting and less time waiting on your camera to write those images to the memory card. Trust me, if you are shooting sports and you miss an awesome shot because your buffer is full and your memory card is so slow it takes 30-60 seconds for your buffer to clear, you will not be a happy camper! Memory cards do have different write speeds and as a result, the faster cards cost considerably more than the slower ones do. If you walk into say your local Walmart and buy an SD or CF card in the photo department, you will get say a 32GB SD card for $12 or maybe even $10, or that 8GB CF card is only $8 and think, “Man that is a great deal!” It’s not such a great deal when that $8 or $10 memory card costs you a once in a lifetime shot.

When you are buying memory cards, look closely at the label and see what the write speed is. For CF (Compact Flash) cards, you really want once that have a write speed of 120-160Mbps, which means Mega-bytes per second. For SD cards, look for ones that are class 10 only and XC with 900x for the speed are some of the best. With either of these kinds of cards, you buffer will empty in a few seconds instead of 30-60 seconds or longer. Now these memory cards won’t be cheap, but they don’t have to break the bank either. Look on sites like Amazon and wait until they go on sale to “pull the trigger” so to speak. The Sandisk Extreme Pro CF with 160Mbps speed is $79.99 for a 64GB model or $44.95 for a 32GB one. The same model in an SD card is $42.99 for a 64GB model and $24.95 for the 32GB one.

Now that you are better educated on memory cards, hopefully you won’t miss that shot! And remember, you don’t HAVE to get them as big as 32GB or 64GB, 8GB or 16GB will do, unless you shoot thousands of shots at a time.

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Photography Gear Luggage

As a professional photographer one of the things you will need to consider at some point and time is luggage for your photography gear. When it comes to packing and carrying your gear there are several ways you can do it depending on your needs at any given time.

1. Waist bags - these are small bags that you wear around your waist like a regular belt, but they can carry your camera and a couple of lenses and batteries. Think of them as kind of a fanny pack for your camera. There are several companies that make them from LowePro to Targus and they can range in quality and price from $20-$100.

2. Backpacks - These are just like they sound, you strap them on your back and carry your gear that way, great for hiking or walking around an event. They usually hold 1-2 bodies and 5-6 lenses and also have compartments for batteries, filters, iPad, laptop, and hoops that hold your tripod. They range in size from small to fairly large, are made by many companies from LowePro, to Targus, to Canon and Nikon and prices can run from $40-$300.

3. Rollerbags - These are similar to the suitcases people use to travel by air, they hold your gear and have a telescoping handle with wheels on the bottom and you pull them behind you. They can hold 2-4 bodies, 4-8 lenses, memory cards, Speedlights, filters, laptop, iPad, tripod and other items. They usually have multiple pockets and compartments and vary in size. Again they are made by the usual camera luggage makers, LowePro, Targus, Canon, etc, and can run in price from $100-$500 depending on the size and materials they are made from. You can also buy special roller cases that will carry your studio lighting for you as well.

4. Briefcase - These cases are usually made of quality aluminum and have foam inserts to protect your gear. The inserts can be ordered custom cut for your gear, but that usually makes them more expensive, or pick and pull, which means the foam is perforated and you can pick and pull pieces out to make your own custom size pockets for your gear. The most common maker of these is Zero Halliburton and they run $200-$800.

5. Durable Plastic Trunk - These are usually make of high strength plastic and again have the pick and pull foam to custom cut your own compartments with your fingers. These are most commonly made by Pelican Cases and range in price from $129-$600 depending on the size. Recently, Pelican started making a version of their trunks that have the telescoping handle and rollers wheels so you can pull it behind you instead of carrying it like a foot locker. They also come with padlock ports on each end to keep your gear secure.

Of course any time you have to fly for a shoot I would recommend the Zero Halliburton aluminum cases or the Pelican ones as they are the toughest and can be stowed in the belly of the plane. Some pros prefer to carry they heavy gear in these cases and stow them but carry their actual body and lenses in a smaller carry-on bag like a backpack to keep them with them at all times and not risk the airline losing their gear en route to a shoot.





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Studio Shooting with Limited Space

One of the challenges you might face while working on your shooting assignments for AI is needing to shoot in an indoor “studio” environment and if you are like I was during school, I had a house full of people, so I had limited space for my shooting.

There are ways to overcome this obstacle, if you have kids that are in school, shoot your assignments in the living room while they are in school during the day, or use a portion of your basement or attic. At the time I was attending classes, I had 6 people living in my home in Georgia and it was cramped even with 1,800 sq ft and 4 bedrooms and a large living room and dining room. I would sometimes shoot late at night while everyone was sleep, but sometimes I had to shoot during the day and if I could not use one of the rooms in the house, I would use the garage.

Simulated outdoor shot using my garage

For one of my classes, we had to simulate an outdoor shoot in soil, but shoot it indoors. This is something you will frequently have to do in many types of photography. It might be a situation where the client needs this shoot done on a deadline and the weather is bad, or for other reasons. For this assignment, we needed to replicate the same amount of light outdoors with our studio lights. I chose to use some small toy dinosaurs as the characters for the shoot and shot them in some of the soil from my flowerbed in front of my house.

Studio set up for this shoot

Now I am not saying these are 100% perfect, but I did get an ‘A’ on the assignment and I think I did a pretty good job considering it was my first attempt. One of the things you will find as you pursue a career in photography is often you have to adapt to overcome situations. One of my favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis is like the king of overcoming obstacles for photography. He shoots a lot of sports action photography and has designed and built many of the customer rigs and mounts that he uses for commercial shoots.

If you have limited space using a small portion of a room for your studio for class assignment, then don’t use your light stands, rig up your lights on the top of a door or curtain rod if you have strong ones. If you still don’t have enough room, try using Speedlights instead. A Canon or Nikon Speedlight on a small stand takes up a lot less space than the full size studio strobes but still give you tons of light power.


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Two Ways to Make Lightroom Faster

This week I thought I’d blog about something a little bit different than photography itself. This week’s post is all about ways to improve Lightroom’s performance for when your Libraries are 30,000+ photos for a single year like mine are.

One of the first things you should be doing is using an external drive for ALL your photos. Don’t put your photos on your OS drive as it will fill up and max out too quickly along with all your software. I personally use a 4TB external drive with USB 3 for best performance and as soon as I finish a shoot, I copy all the images off my cameras memory cards and into this drive by year, month and day. Once that is done, you have to import them into Lightroom, now the way to improve Lightroom performance is to use SmartPreviews all the time. SmartPreviews takes your large RAW files and makes small versions of them for Lightroom to use and in turn make scrolling through Lightroom’s Library Module and loading Lightroom faster.

Notice the red circle around SmartPreviews

There are two way to deploy SmartPreviews, the first is on Import, so when Importing, under the Import dialog where you can add Copyright info, Keywords and such, check the box to use SmartPreviews. As Lightroom imports your RAW files it will then run the SmartPreview builder and make SmartPreviews of all your new images. The second way to activate SmartPreview in an existing Library of images is to select ALL images from the Library Module and then click the Library menu item, go down to Previews, and then choose Build SmartPreviews.

Deploying SmartPreviews from the Library Menu

 Now since you are deploying SmartPreviews for an existing Library of images in the second option it will take some time for them to complete, especially if your Libraries are huge like mine, but the nice thing is, once it’s done, it’s done and you can move around in Lightroom so much easier. The only catch is when you have SmartPreviews of an existing Library, you will now have doubles of every image, in a way, but the way around this is unplug or just unmount your drive as you work in Lightroom and make your edits and exports. You only need the drive mounted when you are adding new images from your camera and when you want the edits permanently saved to the original RAW file, then just mount the drive and Lightroom will sync the edits AUTOMATICALLY, that is a NO BRAINER ;)

Now, the next thing you can do to improve Lightroom performance is increase Lightroom’s cache. For those of you who don’t work in I.T. like I do for my day job, cache is a portion of your hard drive that Lightroom uses to augment the memory in your system. So if you are editing say a batch of 1,000 50Mb RAW files. That’s 6GB of files you are working with at once time and let’s say your laptop only has 4GB of RAM, how does Lightroom work under these conditions? By using some of your say 1TB hard drive as cache to supplement your system RAM. Now by default, Lightroom only uses 1GB of your disk drive for cache, which is nowhere near enough, so bump that setting up to 50GB. How do you do this? Well, click Lightroom, then Preferences and on the pop up window, cluck the File Handling tab and at the bottom you see Camera RAW Cache setting, in that box delete 1GB and type in 50GB. Why 50, well, I have tested 20GB and with both an SSD drive and a regular hard disk I noticed no improvement, but at 50GB I noticed improvement. In the screenshot you see I have mine set at 100GB, that’s because I have 12TB to work with so I figured why not double mine from the 50GB I recommend to you. Can you use 100GB, sure, but make sure you have ample space free on your system drive to do so first.

Changing the Camera RAW Cache size

That’s it folks, two ways to improve Lightroom performance in your workflow!

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Your Signature & Your Style

One of the things you have to understand about photography when you are starting out is that your style is unique. If I take a pen and sign my name it is my name in the style that I write. It doesn’t matter if I use a pen, pencil, crayon, it’s my signature and unless you are a world class forger you cannot duplicate it and even then a forensic signature expert will be able to tell that it’s not mine. The same is true for photography, my style and yours is unique and cannot be totally duplicated.

The camera companies don’t want you to know this, they want you to believe that a LEICA will make you shoot like Cartier-Bresson, a Hasselblad, or 4x5” will make you shoot like Ansel Adams or a Nikon will make you shoot like Galen Rowell or Chase Jarvis, because if you think like that, you are more likely to buy their camera.

My style for shooting Forgotten Pieces of Georgia

They don’t want you to know that the it’s you that make the image, not the camera. An image is as unique as your personal signature on a piece of paper, when it comes to photography, your images are your signature.

Cameras don’t know what to do and all cameras do pretty much the same thing when it comes to photography. Except for using filters, camera lenses are clear glass, and except for the Holga “toy” lens, all lenses are sharp when properly used by you. On the other hand, pens come in fine point, medium, heavy, gel tip, and so on, so not all pens will write your name the same way.

If I hand you my pen, will your signature look like mine? Of course not, no more than if I hand you my camera will your images look like mine. A moment ago I mentioned Ansel Adams shooting a 4x5” or a Hasselblad, Adams, used large format, usually 8x10” in the 1930s to the 1950s when he shot his most memorable work. But as he got older and maybe lazier, he usually settled for 2 1/4” Hasselblad after the 1950s, but did this make his images look any less like his own? Of course not, an Ansel Adams is an Ansel Adams. 2 1/4” and view cameras are as different as two cameras can be from each other and yet his work, his style stayed the same, because his style is as unique as his signature.

All photographs are reflections of the photographer who created them and good photographers are artists who have a style all their own. Crappy photographers are crappy because they spend their time trying to copy everyone else’s style or don’t think at all before they press that shutter. Buying the best camera in the world and leveling it on the most stable tripod and spending hours working over that RAW file in Photoshop is the best way to make completely forgettable images, but being yourself and showing the world your way of seeing things is how you make truly remarkable images.

Why are so many images boring? Because they lack a unique style and all look the same. Now get out there with whatever camera you have and make the world see things as you see them!

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Always Be Prepared!

Once of the biggest things that you have to learn to do as a photographer is to Be Prepared! Just like the Boy Scout motto, you need to be ready all the time to capture that image when you are working in the photography field. This is especially true when you are a photojournalist but it applies to anyone who is making their living with a camera. You want to be ready all the time so you don’t miss a shot. Here are some tips for making sure you are always as ready as possible.

I was shooting a car show one Saturday and came across this house fire

1.) Batteries - Make sure you always have your batteries charged fully and ready to use. It is also recommended to have spares with you wherever you go.

2.) Memory cards - Like batteries, memory cards are another item you can never have too many of and with the low cost of memory these days, you can easily carry several spares on you at all times.

3.) Lens caps - Leave them off when you are carrying around your camera. Nothing more embarrassing then pulling up your camera to snap a once in a lifetime shot and then realize you left your lens cap on. An easy and inexpensive way to protect your glass is a UV filter on the end.

4.) Carry more than one camera - If you look at pros out in the field, especially photojournalists, they never waste time changing lenses out in the field, they take two bodies, one with a wide lens and one with a telephoto so they are ready for anything that may happen.

5.) Turn off Image Preview - I never use my image preview when shooting and I don’t recommend anyone does. If you spend all your time looking at your shots on the LCD as you take them, you are going to miss a great shot sooner or later. Again, watch a pro out in the field with a DSLR and you will never see them looking at their LCD. They know their camera and they know how to use it, so they know without looking if they got the shot or not.

One of the firefighters from the house fire I came across

 6.) And last but not least, make a checklist. Just like a pilot, if you make a list of all the items you need with you when you go out and check it the night before and again the day of the shoot or when you leave the house, you will be prepared for anything that happens and be able to just shoot away. And if God forbid a meteor falls and takes out both your cameras, just laugh at the irony and whip out that iPhone and snap away, you can still get that shot!

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Using Aperture for Your Sharpest Images

An item that new students that are also new to photography get confused on is how to get the sharpest images. Often times new students believe that getting the widest aperture lens possible if they can afford it will give them the sharpest images, this is NOT true.

If you ask any of your professors or any other professional photographer, they will tell you that your sharpest images happen around 2 stops below your widest aperture. As an example, I have the Canon EF 50mm F/1.4 USM lens, but I never shoot this lens at F/1.4 as it performs much better sharpness-wise at around F/2.8 on a full frame camera or F/2 on a 1.6x crop body.

Shot on EOS 5D Classic with EF 50mm F/1.4 @ F/1.4

When you shoot with this lens wide open you get very strong halation aka dreamy look with some Chromatic Aberration in your images as well. After the dreamy look diminishes at F/2-F/2.8 you get very strong colors and contrast, which in turn will make your images really “pop”. When using a really wide lens, you don’t want your aperture smaller than F/8 because then diffraction starts to soften them again.

This sharpness is how things apply to prime lenses, which have extremely wide apertures. When dealing with zoom lens, it works a little different, on a zoom lens, the optimum sharpness range might be smaller but they are generally sharpest at their widest apertures of F/3.5-F/5.6 or even F/6.3. Now with a zoom lens as I mentioned the sharpness range is usually smaller but you can generally count on sharp images from the starting aperture to around F/8 or maybe F/10, anything past that and again you get diffraction again.

Shot on EOS 5D Classic with EF 50mm F/1.4 @ F/2.8 notice even the bokeh is better

 Now that you are more informed about using aperture to get sharp images, get out there and make some great ones!

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The Diopter

Another question I have been asked a number of times is “what in the world is this small wheel by my viewfinder?” That “wheel” is called the diopter and it serves a very handy purpose for those that need it.

That little wheel circled in red in your vision diopter

 Not everyone has 20/20 vision, many people wear glasses or contacts to make up for our eye’s natural failings and this is where the diopter comes in. When using a camera, it is often not comfortable to wear your glasses as they tend to get in the way. I personally have glasses but only need them for reading and only then because my right eye is slightly weak.

The diopter allows people that normally wear glasses to use their viewfinder without them and still see clearing, although it’s use is primarily only for shooting using manual focus. The diopter has no marking index or starting point, you simply look through your viewfinder without your glasses and if the viewfinder seems to be blurry then adjust the diopter slowly one way or the other until the readout becomes clear.

On the left is before adjustment, on the right, after adjusting the diopter

The diopter only has adjustment from -3 to +3, so it might not be able to compensate for everyone’s vision, some people who are extremely near or far sighted might need to purchase a custom diopter lens to be added to their camera to make their viewfinder clear and sharp for their eyes. It is also possible for the diopter to accidentally get bumped and out of whack for your vision, just tune it back to your eyes and everything is back to normal for you. If you are in a situation where you share your camera with a friend or family member, the diopter will need to be adjusted each time one of you uses the camera.

Now that you have a better understanding of that tiny wheel next to your viewfinder, adjust yours to your eyesight and then get out there and make some great images!


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Shooting with "Creative" Lenses

In this week’s blog post I wanted to write about something more on the creative side of photography, so I am writing about using “creative” lenses. The two that I am talking about today are the Lensbaby 2.0 and the Holga “toy” camera lens.

These two lenses can be fun to play around with and can help you create some interesting shots to say the least but they are not for the faint of heart. Since these are third party lenses and fairly inexpensive, they don’t come with all the “luxury” items you are used to with your standard Canon or Nikon lenses or even third party lenses such as Tamron and Sigma, which are engineered to work with your camera. These lenses have no aperture blades and no auto focus so you need to be fairly comfortable using your camera in full manual mode to play with them.

Looking at the Lensbaby, this lens is all manual and is designed to create blur effects. There is no focus ring and instead you squeeze the lens to get your focus. You literally grab both sides of the front ring plate on the lens and pull back towards your camera body to create your focus. At the same time, the lens will create neat looking blur effect to everything else that is not in focus. As you can see in my sample image, I didn’t get the focus totally spot on, but to be honest, I wasn’t trying to. The Lensbaby also comes with removable aperture discs, and each one is for a fixed aperture, depending on the size of the hole in the center of the disc. The discs are inserted into the front of the lens using a special tool that comes with the Lensbaby and mine is called the Lensbaby 2.0 as that is my widest aperture if I leave the disc out. Lensbaby has become fairly popular with people that like to create the “effects” that it can give you and Lensbaby makes a few different model lenses with different focal lengths, from 35mm to 50mm to 80mm. The Lensbaby also varies in price depending on which model and focal length you want. I bought mine used on Craig’s List for $30 but they can run as much as $500 new.

Shot with Lensbaby 2.0 at F/2 using Canon 5D Classic

The second lens I am writing about is the Holga “toy” camera lens. This lens you can buy new from around $20-$30 on Amazon and various other sites and it’s designed to give you the “old camera” look to your photos. The Holga only comes in a 60mm focal length and a fixed aperture of F/8 so you will need plenty of sunlight or very high ISO to get your images to come out at all. The Holga does have a slight focus ring but it only has three positions, portrait, small group and landscape and they are marked with little white icons. The Holga does have decent focus in the center so that is where you want your subject, but because it’s plastic, there is quite a bit of distortion and purple color fringing but you can remove that in post processing.

Shot with the Holga "toy" camera lens at F/8

 Both of these lenses are for more creative, “artsy” photography and you can take some really amazing photos with both lenses but as I mentioned earlier, you have to do EVERYTHING manually. There are actually groups and clubs out there where all the members shoot with a Lensbaby all the time. I personally think it’s silly to go to that extreme and I refer to those photographers as “One trick ponies”. It’s also sad as I have seen some Lensbaby photos that would have been a million times better with a regular 50mm lens. The silly distortion that you get with the Lensbaby is in my humble opinion cool at times, but not something I would use everyday. I love to shoot landscapes and it saddens me to see something shoot a beautiful lake scene with a cabin, etc and ruin the whole shot because they used the Lensbaby.

So, what do you the readers think? Is the Lensbaby or Holga “toy” camera lens something you’d like to play around with? If you want a Lensbaby, you can head over to http://www.lensbaby.com.au but as I mentioned at the beginning of my post, I would pick one up off Craig’s List for way under the $300-$500 they cost new. A lot of people buy them, then hate them and dump them on-line cheap. The Holga lens you can easily buy on http://www.amazon.com.

Comments/Questions

Camera Carry Systems

One of the toughest decisions you’ll make as a photographer is what carry system is best for your camera?

Today there are a multitude of camera straps and slips and other items for carrying your camera. What one is best for you is a matter of taste and versatility. One of the things that has always bugged me is why do the camera manufacturers give you such a crappy camera strap for your new camera? I mean if you are spending $500+ why don’t they throw in a good, well padded camera strap? The frees ones they give you are cheap thin straps that are very uncomfortable and it annoys myself and many other photographers.

Today am going to talk about some other options for camera straps and carry systems. One of the first I can personally recommend is called the Indigo Marble Soft Padded Black Neoprene Quick Release strap. Some of the things I love about this strap is the fact that it is heavily padded so that it does not cut into your neck or shoulder even with the heaviest camera and lens system attached. It also comes with a quick release system and instead of attaching to your metal strap loops, it attaches to your camera’s tripod mount on the bottom. You don’t lose anything because the strap attachment has it’s own tripod mount so you can use the strap with your tripod. I can wear this strap for hours on a photowalk and have no discomfort at all. It also has quick release clamps so you can set them and the camera will only slide so far up or down on the strap. This makes it quick and easy to slid your camera to just the right position to shoot and then release back to your hip. This strap is a little more expensive at $45 on Amazon but remember the old adage, you get what you pay for.

Indigo Marble Neoprene strap

The second item I will mention and recommend is the Spider Pro holster system. I also have one of these and it’s great as it has a quick release system with a lock to it. You can wear your camera on your hip like a gunslinger in the wild west and raise, release and shoot very quick and easy. Once you are done shooting, slid it back into the holster, lock it and no one can snatch your camera in a crowded street or park. Spider also makes a double camera belt which will allow you to have a camera on both hips, as well as a less expensive Black Widow system which has a velcro fastener instead of a locking belt buckle but it is only for light cameras with a small lens like a 40mm STM Pancake lens. The Spider Pro and Spider Duo Pro are $125 and $250, but the Black Widow is only around $60.

Spider Pro holster system

The third option I recommend is a camera wrist strap such as one by Opteka. These are handy little gems and attach to your camera’s tripod mount just like the Indigo and the Spider do. You do need to still use one of the camera’s factory strap mounts and then you slide your hand into the strap and fasten the lock strap around your wrist. This system is nice as you can shoot street photography and someone cannot run up and snatch your camera as it is locked to your hand and wrist. The Opteka can be purchased on Amazon for around $9, which makes it the most affordable camera carry system.

Opteka camera wrist strap

Do you have a preferred camera carry system that I have not mentioned here? Feel free to post in the comments and let me know. Now get out there and make some great images.

Comments/Questions

Should I Upgrade My Gear?

So many times I get questions on whether or not a student should upgrade their gear. “Should I go buy the latest body or lens or upgrade my entire camera platform with a new brand?” If you are asking these questions then the answer is NO.

The T3i (now T5i) camera that students get through the Art Institute is an awesome camera and the 18-55mm lens that comes with it although one of Canon’s inexpensive lenses, takes awesome photos. When it comes to gear if you need a fast 70-200mm F/2.8 to shoot sports of your kids then you will buy it, providing you can afford it and the spouse doesn’t say No.

One of the greatest hangs up that photographers have is always wanting to upgrade their gear when it’s not necessary. They think they need to have the latest and greatest at all times but if you play that game you will be broke and spend less time taking photos and more time learning your new gear.

Now, if you are rich and want to always have the latest gear then by all means, go for it, there’s an old saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” But if you are asking me or anyone else if you need to upgrade your gear than you are just looking for an excuse to buy something that is not needed and trying to justify the expense with your significant other.

I personally shoot with older gear myself. Why, because I love to shoot full frame and they are the most expensive bodies. I currently use 2 Canon 5D classics, a 1D Mark II, a 50D and a Sony NEX 6. All of my cameras are older, the 5D classic came out in like 2007, the 1D Mark II came out in 2005, the 50D was new in 2009 and the Sony NEX 6 was new in 2012 I believe.

                                          Female Bald Eagle, shot with Canon 50D and 70-200mm F/4 L

A lot of people have the newer 5D Mark IIs and Mark IIIs but they have more money to burn than I do. I make awesome money at my day job but, I figure, until my photography gets to the point where it pays for the newer gear, I will stick to what I have. The 5D classic, if you read up on it, in comparison, takes better landscapes than the Mark II or Mark III. The newer bodies have more bells and whistles and high megapixels, but if you know anything about photography, megapixels means nothing once you get past 6 anyways.

So, in conclusion, if you are asking “Should I upgrade?” the answer is No. Spend more time shooting, less time worrying about what the next photographer has or the hype of sales people and learn to use what you have. The quality of your images has less to do with your gear, and more to do with whether or not you know how to use it. Remember this quote by the great Ansel Adams, “The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!”

Now, as my mentor and friend Professor Jill P Mott says, “get out there and make some great images”!

Comments/Questions

Get out of Auto Mode

Happy Sunday Everyone, my name is Bill and I am the new Sunday Ambassador. I am a Senior at AIOP and will be here with you at least until I graduate in January. If you have any questions or need to reach me you can email sundayambassador@gmail.com. Now, let's get into my first Blog post!

One of the challenges when starting out as a photographer is getting yourself out of your comfort zone. Many students find themselves using their Auto mode on their cameras because they are intimidated by the Manual mode.

    When using Manual mode, you have to know how to use all of the settings on the camera, what is known as the “Holy trinity” of photography. What I mean by this is ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. Once you have the hang of these three settings on your camera and how to use them to create the proper exposure, you are well on your way to becoming an accomplished photography professional.

    Now it doesn’t matter if you shoot with Canon, Nikon, Sony or another manufacturer’s camera, they all have these three basic settings and balancing them is how to create the proper exposure. Additionally, all of these cameras have whats known as an exposure meter and it is usually visible on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, as well as in the viewfinder.

The exposure meter in the camera is the set of tick marks toward the top of the screen with the numbers from left to right starting with -3 and moving to +3 on the right. “Perfect” exposure is the point in the dead center with the 0 and each tick mark is 1/3 of an F-stop. When your exposure meter is to the left of the 0, your shot will be under exposed and when it’s to the right of the 0, your shot will be over exposed. The next thing you are probably asking is “ok, how do I move my indicator to the 0 when I am taking a photo, is there a proper sequence?” Yes there is and I am going to share that with you now.

    One of the things that throws new photographers off is figuring out how to adjust their settings under Manual mode so that they get a nice, clean shot with “perfect” exposure. I will share the formula that I use. The first thing you want to do is set your shutter speed and the best shutter speed to use is one that is proportional to the focal length of your lens, especially if your
lens doesn’t have IS (Canon’s Image Stabilization) VR (Nikon’s Vibration Reduction) to compensate for the shake of your hand as you hold your camera. Many students don’t realize that if you set your shutter speed too low it will actually emphasize hand shake and their images turn out blurry. So, let’s say you are using a 70-300mm lens and you are shooting at the 300mm end of your focal length, you want to set your shutter speed to 320 or 400 as it will compensate for the camera shake and your photos should turn out nice and clear and not blurry.

    The next piece of the formula is the Aperture of your camera/lens combination. You want to start with your lens at it’s widest Aperture, or lowest number if it’s easier to remember that way, so on your 70-300mm lens, let’s say the Aperture is F/4-5.6. This means that when you are shooting at 70mm your widest Aperture is F/4 and as you zoom in with the lens the widest is F/5.6 at 300mm. So on your 70-300mm lens at 300mm you start at F/5.6 and you can narrow the Aperture from there to reduce the amount of light that enters your lens. Now I don’t like to go too small on my Aperture, so I will usually top at around F/8-10. At this point you are probably wondering what ISO you should use. Well if you ask most professional photographers they will tell you that you want to use the lowest ISO you can to get the shot. Most pros won’t use anything higher than ISO 800 and the reason is as you raise your ISO you introduce more noise into your photos. What is noise you ask, noise is the little speckles you see in your images when the ISO is too high as in the example photo below, which I took in my office with low light at night time.

If you look you will see the little speckles of noise in this shot because I used ISO 3200, which on my older Canon 5D causes noise as it does not have the newer electronics of the Canon 5D Mark III, which can use ISO 3200 with less noise in the final image. But in order to prevent noise entirely, I recommend starting with your ISO at 100 or 50 if you have a Pro body that can do ISO 50, most consumer cameras like the Canon T3i you can get through AI has ISO 100 as it’s bottom end.

    So now that we have talked about ISO if you start at ISO 100 and you are shooting outdoors in good daylight, then you want to only adjust your shutter speed and Aperture to get your shot to “perfect” exposure. Now, let’s say you are shooting in low light and want to get to perfect exposure and you are using say the Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM portrait lens. In this case, again start with ISO 100 and your shutter speed at 100 and then open your Aperture wider to introduce more light, so instead of using F/5.6, open those blades and get your Aperture down to F/2 or F/1.8 and see if that will get you to the 0 on your exposure meter. If Aperture does not do the trick, then start adjusting your ISO higher but I would recommend capping it as ISO 800. If at ISO 800 you are still too under exposed then it’s time to introduce a flash to your shot. The flash will help raise the amount of light in the room, but I do not recommend using your camera’s built in flash, I would recommend an external flash preferably one that has bounce and zoom and turn the flash to point behind you at the ceiling or a wall so that the light will not be too harsh. Equipped with the flash, you can now set your ISO much lower and reduce the possibility of noise in your images.

    Now you know the formula for using your camera in Manual mode, so get out there make some awesome images! Please feel free to comment and ask any questions you might have.

 

Comments/Questions

Learning How to See Without a Camera

"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera." -Dorothea Lange.

This week, I was thinking of topics to blog about and stumbled across the above quote (and will be reading the biography discussed in the NPR article soon!). It got me thinking about how my perceptions have changed since starting the Photography program. Though I've had a camera within arm's reach for as long as I can remember, the program has helped teach me how to see differently. Now I notice changes in light temperature, city lights that would create gorgeous starbursts at a narrow aperture, and moments around me in my daily life that would previously have gone ignored. Early on in the program I would struggle to think of a subject to photograph. Now, it's incredibly rare for a day to go by on which I do not photograph something that strikes my eye!

Enough about my journey. How have your camera and your classes changed the way you see the world around you? Have you been inspired by an historic photographer's style or a genre you previously took for granted? Share your story in the comments, and happy shooting (and seeing)!

-Friday Ambassador

Work Cited:

NPR Staff. "Dorothea Lange: Drawing Beauty Out of Desolation." NPR Author Interviews. NPR, 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 27 May 2014.

Sunday Spotlight On: Getting It Right On Site

My first day in “Art School” as my daughter calls it, I was given a camera and told to go shoot and come back. I started off at The Art Institute of Raleigh Durham and I thought that I was the best student photographer amongst my peers. After I arrived back in the classroom and loaded the photos onto the screen I was mortified by the gasps and the critique that I had received.  I didn’t know what was wrong! I mean certainly my images were on the level of a professional who charges $1000 an hour. In actuality I was so wrong! The images were blurry, camera shake, white balance was off and just all around terrible! One thing that I will never forget is a Professor of mine telling me that if I do not know it, then to cheat. What?! Yes, cheat. She advised me to write down almost everything from the white balance, aperture and shutter speed and always refer to it when I am shooting until I no longer need it. Today there are tons of websites that offers the same thing.

Courtesy of lifehack.org

Photoshop has spoiled a lot of photographers out there. Making things too easy to edit in post production limits some photographers to "get it right on site." Proper lighting is essential to a good photographer's practice. I could only imagine photographing a session and you let your clients view the photos on your camera and they are all wrong. Imagine what they will think if they see themselves too warm or too cool on camera.

Courtesy of lifehack.org

F-stops are numbers that all real photographers must know. Don't be caught without knowledge of what each one of these mean! These numbers depends on your DOF and how much light your camera is letting in.

Courtesy of lifehack.org

As students and professionals we are always learning every time we pick up our camera to shoot. I will admit that if I am in a class that is a studio setting and then I go back and shoot outside of the studio I have to think for a minute on what my settings should go back to. I have made it a habit for me to daily check my settings on my camera and take a shot in the conditions that I am in and time myself on how fast I can get to the right settings. I like to keep my skills sharp because I never know when I might come across the one event that I need to capture but I missed it fumbling with my camera settings.

Happy Shooting!

I am your Funday Sunday Ambassador!



Work Cited:

Life Hack. "The Ultimate Photography Cheat Sheet Every Photography Lover Needs." Life Hack. ND. Web. 29 March 2014.