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Tuesday Tech Talk: Canon ST-E2

June 24, 2008 Jason6 Comments

This week, the Tuesday Tip is more of a Tech Talk. I got an email from someone inquiring about the Canon ST-E2 asking about how to use it, and what it is compatible with. Taking a cue from this, I decided to make it a video tip from the MacbookPro,and set things up to give a basic primer on what the ST-E2 looks like, how it mounts to your camera, and how it triggers off-camera flashes electronically. Hopefully this will help demonstrate the purpose of the ST-E2 in a better light (bad pun, sorry)! Because it was recorded from the Mac this go around, there will not be a Flash-based version of the Tip this week.Sorry in advance for any that might prefer the Flash version.

One note on the video content: I said in the video that the ST-E2 supports the entire Speedlight flash family.While that is true, I did get the nomenclature wrong.As it turns out, the 400 series Speedlights are the 420 EX and the 430 EX, with the 500 series ones numbering at 550 EX and 580 EX.The ST-E2 will work with them all, albeit with some limitations on the earlier versions.For detailed specs, there is good information at Canon and the product sheet maintained by BH Photo.Those direct links are provided here for anyone who is interested.

So, that is the tip for this Tuesday: an ST-E2 Tech Talk.If anyone would like to see more gear in action, or has a question about how to use gear, feel free to email me or post in the comments section.Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we will see you tomorrow!

Canon Product Sheet for the ST-E2

B and H Photo Product Sheet for the ST-E2

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Hot and Cold Lighting

June 19, 2008 Jason8 Comments

We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

Subject Light	Background Light	White Balance	Results
Tungsten lights (like a lamp)	Flash or cool window light	Tungsten	Electric Blue Background
Cool daylight or Flash	Tungsten lights (like a lamp)	Daylight	Orange Glow
Tungsten (like a lamp)	Tungsten (like a lamp)	Auto	White (or grey¹)
All light	No light	Auto	Black

¹For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

More coffee Monday

June 2, 2008 Jason2 Comments

Judging from my soreness even today after a weekend of home improvement projects, I would imagine that tomorrow morning will be even more of the same – I will definitely be partaking of more than a few cups of joe to get me on my feet and functional.

I did take some time to do some cleanup work of the weekend on the photo gallery side of things for my website and the project side of things for the blog too though. The lucky readers (lucky possibly being a subjective term in this case) will get a sneak preview of my latest gallery addition as I ran out of time and do not have a link on the site to this yet (or the thumbnail for that matter).

On the blog maintenance, I’ve changed the notice for comments – apparently the spam flag was set a little too severely as people were making comments and it was taking up to a month in some cases before those got discovered and re-tagged. So, your comments should become visible much more quickly now. With that in mind, I thought I’d also share the latest photo gallery that I am putting up on my website with those of you who are tuning in, so now you can comment more easily! Last but not least, I had mentioned an article that was forthcoming both in the video tutorial last week, and in another one of the posts. Well, after going through several re-writes and different takes on it, I’ve decided not to publish that, as it’s just to dense of a topic for a short listen or read. If anyone is interested in it though, the subject is creative development.

I looked at an essay that came out in the most recent issue of Shutterbug Magazine, where Jack Hollingsworth looks at how photographers develop their in the essay The Ladder: In Defense of Imitation . He defines 3 stages or phases of development: imaginative, adaptive, and innovative. While both interesting and logical, it raises more questions than it answers. I found myself in similar shoes when trying to address just a few of those questions ir raised in my mind – more questions, practically all of which were subjective in nature. So, the article will likely not see the light of day here at CB. If anyone is interested in a heavy read, let me know via email and I’ll be happy to forward a copy of that article to whomever requests it directly.

That said, the blog was not a good place for it, so I discarded the idea for CB and went with the photo montage. A sneak peak was done a few weeks ago, and it’s now complete. Visit my photo site for the full gallery here

Hope everyone’s weekends were good ones. Here’s to a new week – happy shooting, and watch that ISO!

Better luck next time

May 30, 2008 Jason3 Comments

Heh – I had been so good lately about planning ahead and recording my video podcasts ahead of schedule and just setting a publish time in WordPress, I got on an automatic pilot routine. When that routine got disrupted from some dental and sleep deprivation issues the other day, I didn’t realize until just a short time ago that the post for Friday had not been scheduled. Not only had it not been scheduled – it didn’t even get written yet!

So, a thousand pardons as I rush to get a somewhat photo-related post out before the end of the day. Since it is on short notice, I will simply relay a funny story that happened to me the other day as I was out walking the dog. I had taken the camera and flash with diffuser attached as the day was actually perfect for photography: late afternon, cloudy skies, and evenly light all around. So, I am bouncing along, trying different settings here and there with various subjects – a flower, a reflection in some water, and I have the bright idea to do a macro shot super close on a flower. But, instead of going wide open to get available light, I figured let’s try the flash here – so I pop the flash on, attach the diffuser and set it to ETTL. Then I dial the aperture down as far as I think it can go on the fill flash setting – f22! I pre-focused on the lower third of the frame, then set the focus to manual. Finally, I shifted the camera up just a smidge, knowing that the lower portion would be in focus and because of the f-stop, I would have a pretty solid dof throughout.

Well…there’s always something you forget, and in this instance, it was the ISO setting. You guessed it – 1600! ARGH! Well, I cleaned it up a little with NN after the fact, and yeah, it’s okay, but imagine how this shot would have been without the noise and tack sharp?

So, it seems another one that got away from me! I think I am going to tape a label to the back of my LCD and write on it in big fat letters ISO! Long story short – always double check your settings, and always take a few shots. I only took the one, so it’s all I had to work from. Oh well…better luck next time! Hee’s your traditional WTD episode for Friday:

Hope everyone has a good weekend. Happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Back to Basics – Rule of Thirds Grid

May 28, 2008 Jason3 Comments

After I recorded and started production on this tutorial my mind began to remember that perhaps I had covered this subject before. I reviewed the subjects I have posted over at the Tutorial Resource Center and did not see it covered there, so figure I am not repeating some tutorial I have already done. Having said that, this is kind of a return to the basics. Continue reading “Back to Basics – Rule of Thirds Grid” →

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Another Photo Finish Friday

May 16, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

With another Friday coming to an end, I am squeaking this one in under the wire too. After a deluge of rain delayed dinner and a few other odds and ends, I find myself finally sitting down to write the Friday post at 10:47 pm. Thankfully, the details are all worked out in advance so it really requires no additional work on my part.

As promised, my latest web gallery is up and viewable on the photo site directly at this link here: A Day in the Park, but a few previews of the ones I really loved have lightbox versions below:

Also of interest, and just in time for the weekend, the latest installment of the TOP test has been compiled and published. I still have a few questions to finish, and 2 of these I am culling from my image library for samples, so you will have to examine pictures this go around – so it’s real life shots that need evaluation, not just textbook definitions…although there’s plenty of that too. Hopefully this one will be a little more challenging, so take it and share your scores today: Top Test – Advanced Photography Exam

The portal page is also new, and the original exam page has almso moved relative to the folder structure movement from outside CB to inside CB (makes tracking easier)…Enjoy the exams and let me know if you have any ideas (An Expert or Pro level exam is also something I am considering compiling but I really would need some pros help in putting that together).

Until Monday then, here’s your weekly installment of WTD;

Until Monday, then, enjoy the weekend, happy shooting, and watch those apertures!

Photoshop Reloaded – Web Galleries with a twist!

April 8, 2008March 31, 2017 Jason4 Comments

A couple weeks ago I did a tutorial about how to create web galleries using Photoshop. As one of the steps, I advised to sort through your images first and pick out the ones you want to put in your web gallery into a dedicated folder to make the process easer once you start in Photoshop – well, that advice was a little short-sighted.

I got my most recent issue of Photoshop User (from the great folks over at NAPP), and read through an almost identical tutorial, with one notable exception – they used Bridge! That’s right, you can use the companion software to Photoshop, Bridge, to select your photos rather than sorting them before hand. Well, hey that’s cool, right? Saves you a step. Well, it could – depending on whether you have any sort of file management in place. See, in photography (and with most disciplines that use a lot of digital files), there’s an idea called digital asset management (or DAM), that gives you guidelines on how to save, store, archive, and design an effective means of managing your digital imagery. If used properly, any image you want is only moments away. It involves a lot of pre-planning, effort, and discipline to implement and maintain. So, this week I re-did the Photoshop Web Galleries tutorial with that in mind.

You get a peel into some of the basics of how I implement a DAM system that works for me, and an explanation as to why using the Bridge method for selecting your photos for a web gallery is better than the first method I used. *cough/duplicates/cough* Having said that, there are still a few nuances that Lightroom has where Photoshop lacks a little in this regard, but, if you have PS, you can streamline things a little more by incorporating Bridge.

So, without further ado, check out this week’s episode, which I am admittedly naming for perhaps a little visibility:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Creating Web Galleries

March 25, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

In keeping with my latest project of putting together instructional materials on how to create web galleries, I took advantage of the video tutorial this week to go through some of the basics of how to do the task in Photoshop. It’s not as smooth as Lightroom as some of the CSS doesn’t work right in Firefox (Firefox 2.x is not W3C compliant.) Nevertheless, it does get you through the bare bones of it, and addresses some of the issues that you should consider while putting together a set of images for displaying in a web gallery. It’s a little longer than your average tutorial (11:22) but the content I think makes it worth the time spent. As always, it’s in both Flash and Quicktime varieties for both web and iTunes/iPod viewing. Enjoy!

Oh yeah – anyone know how to cure hiccups?

ETA: Posting some of these on YouTube now, so adding links back as they go live on there as well: