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Photo Contest – Win Adobe Lightroom

May 9, 2009 Jason2 Comments

Happy Saturday all. It’s a rare weekend post here – since Friday was silent. Two things – first off, Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there! Second, as the podcast on Tuesday announced, don’t forget the first ever Learning Digital Photography Contest is under way – all during the month of May, submit your shots to the Flickr group (2 entries per person) for your chance to win a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0! Not only is it a great chance to win this wonderful program, but a great way to get increased visibility of your work and to network with others.

Information is available in the podcast, but you are welcome to just submit your entries directly to the Flickr group. This is a prize package worth $300 retail, so definitely one worth entering! Good luck and happy shooting!

Podcast

Flickr Pool

News and Nuggets

May 7, 2009 JasonLeave a comment

Hey all, just a couple notes and bits of maintenance for everyone this Thursday. The first ever contest for the Learning Digital Photography podcast is now underway, so be sure to post your images in the thread over at Flickr in order to participate.Some lucky listener will win a copy of Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom 2.0. You do have to have a Flickr account to post images there, but registration is free (and if you have a Yahoo account, you already can get into Flickr). A couple links to make note of:

In some other maintenance notes, the podcast has gotten a few more reviews at iTunes and Diggs over at Personal Life Media – thanks to those that have shared their thoughts and feedback, your support means a lot and every little bit helps. Here’s the links for those that would like to add to the support:

Review on iTunes
Digg the Podcast at Personal Life Media

Last but not least, it became official the other day that I will be in attendance at the Lightroom workshop here in Denver coming up on May 20th Being led by none other than Scott Kelby, of NAPP fame, I’ll be getting even more up to speed on how to use Lightroom as the primary means for my photography work flow. I’ll likely have a few posts worth of material to share with the readership shortly thereafter. (Who knows – I might be able to snag a pic or two out of it too!

So, that’s it for today – sorry for the lateness of the post. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Creative Vision – or not!

May 6, 2009 Jason4 Comments

When looking at image composition, many of the things we use as our foundation are the typical rules of the trade – things like the the Rule of Thirds, Sunny 16, Golden Mean, etc., etc., etc. While these rules are all well and good, and they definitely are some of the fundamentals that we all incorporate as we see to create beautiful images – they do not constitute the entire picture (pardon the pun). As photographers, we should also be challenging ourselves to look at things in unique and new or innovative ways.

For instance, take the Eiffel Tower. This particular piece of architecture has been around for so long now that photographers have had an opportunity to capture this from pretty much every angle and in virtually all lighting conditions. You would be hard pressed to come up with a new angle or an unused lighting style for this monument. So, what if you take a trip to Paris – should you not even bother with a picture? Of course not! Snap away, be a tourist want and get your other half mugging next to the Tower.

The same could be said for the Sistine Chapel, the Venus de Milo, or any other of thousands of historically significant and/or interesting works. And seriously – what do you think would happen if you went on a trip to Paris, came back and said “Nope, no shots of the Eiffel Tower, been taken too much already, no sense in taking yet another shot of it.” If your family is anything like mine, people would look at you and wonder – “But, you’re a photographer!”

The point here is that you don’t always have to be “on” and looking for that next great shot. In fact, the minute you stop trying so hard to find inspiration, in general, the faster inspiration finds you. Let the boring snapshots happen – they’re fun, and a great way to connect with others. Imagine being at some social function and you’ve got your camera. Are you looking at the light, wondering what aperture/shutter settings you can feasibly hand hold at without over cranking your ISO, or are you enjoying the time spent with family and friends? Before you answer that – answer this – which circumstance do you think will provide more inspiration and creativity?

Just the other day I was delivering some computer stuff to another building, which happened to be 14 floors up. Sure, I have my camera with me – and I looked out the window. Aerial photography has always intrigued me, but I had never given it another thought – until the other day. So, didn’t really think much and pointed my camera out the window, just having fun and taking a few snaps of the scenes:

denverabove1

Quite the boring shot eh? Certainly not even close to being on par with something like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Venus de Milo, or anything like that. It’s pretty much a scene of nothing. But from nothing, and from not even trying to always be “on” you can find your creativity and inspiration. This shot was taken only ten seconds apart from the previous one:

denverabove2

Okay, so it’s still not as breath-taking as any of the other historical monuments, but you gotta admit, that curved line of the building receding into the distance is kinda neat, eh? This isn’t really looking for props or accolades though. The point here is to not let yourself become too preoccupied with achieving your next great “hero” shot on every capture. That is only setting yourself up for failure because no one can attain that. Sure, it’s important to try and stretch your creative muscle, and try new captures, and experiment with new styles, using different lighting and all the stuff that goes hand-in-hand with being a photographer, but remember, before you can be a photographer, you gotta be a person!

Enjoy photography, but don’t forget to live your life!

Don’t forget to pick up the feed for the blog and the podcast – all during the month of May, you could be shooting to win a copy of Lightroom! One of the best ways to do that is to just go out and have some fun. Forget about the details from time to time and just enjoy life – because that is when you will most likely get your hero shots – when you least expect them. So, just enjoy life, and enjoy photography – the rest comes naturally! Happy living and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Win a copy of Adobe Lightroom 2.0!

May 5, 2009 Jason6 Comments

box_lightroom2_150x150

Just last week, I had the distinct honor of interviewing Tom Hogarty, Senior Product Manager for Adobe Lightroom. Needless to say, I postponed the podcast for a few more days so I could include the interview. He really gave a good breakdown of the function of Lightroom, what to expect from it, how to incorporate it into your work flow, and what (in general) we can likely expect to see in the future of image processing development. We spent a good deal of time going over the nuts and bolts, so under the general heading of Software discussions today, I’d like to introduce you to Adobe’s Lightroom.

Lightroom is a very different way of handling your images. Rather than taking a single image at a time through something like Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom allows you to not only address single image edits, but also manage an entire library of images. The key here is management, because that’s what Lightroom really does – it takes the idea of asset management and incorporates it into a program so that you don’t even have to think about it! Rather than belabour the point here though, it would probably be best to encourage everyone to just download the podcast and give it a listen. Not only do we discuss Lightroom, but we also take a lot of listener questions, both specific to Lightroom and general photography questions too – and, oh yeah, a contest!

That’s right – Adobe was kind enough to donate a copy of Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 to some lucky listener. At an estimated retail value of almost $300 ($299), this is by and large, the best contest I’ve could ever come up with! It’s very exciting! I’d love to share the details here, but if I did that, you wouldn’t listen to the podcast. So… want to know the details? Listen to the podcast! In the meantime, here’s the show notes on the things we discussed and where to get the latest and greatest info on the product:

Be sure to stop over at Twitter and start following these folks, because they are the ones who you can really learn a lot from! Then don’t forget to listen to the podcast for your chance to win a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0! Happy Shooting and good luck one and all!

Oh yeah, here’s the teaser link for the contest: Learning Digital Photography Flickr Group

Where oh Where can You Go? (GPS Units)

May 4, 2009 Jason3 Comments

Many of us as photographers are also gadget hounds, and the ability to accessorize our cameras with the latest and greatest gadgets and doohickeys is both a boon and a curse. It’s a boon because we have so many options available to us, and it is a curse for the same reason – because we have so many options available to us. A perfect example of this is the development of GPS attachments.

GPS (Global positioning system) units allow us to add the longitudinal and latitudinal information to the meta data of our digital images. This can help us locate the picture on a map, find the location later, and adds another type of data that we can filter for when managing our images. As the technology has advanced, the price has come down to the point where the ability to incorporate such an accessory is much more feasible.

Here are some of the more popular GPS units on the market these days. While I have not tested these, coming from the article Jack neubart wrote in the May issue of Shutterbug, I would suspect that these are some of the more well-known devices available:

Amod AGL3080
DeLorme Earthmae GPS PN-40
Eye-Fi Explore
ATP GPS Photofinder
GiSTEQ Phototracker CD111
Jobo Photo GPS
QStars BT-Q1000X
Sony GPS CS1KA
Super Trackstick
Wolverine GEO-35

I was able to get some pretty detailed reviews on each of these devices, along with their respective software components by performing a simple Google search of the device name, and rather than regurgitate all that information here, suggest that those who are interested in learning more detailed information do the same.

Special thanks for the collection of all this data to Jack Neubart over at Shutterbug magazine for his very informative article and summary on all of these devices. If you’d be interested in the summary, be sure to pick up a copy or subscribe to the magazine today – it’s one of the better resources on the internet! Happy Shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the Software Review – very exciting one too, so be sure to add CB to your feeds!

When it rains, it pours!

May 1, 2009 Jason3 Comments

Well, yesterday I had a great conversation with Tom Hogarty, senior Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for inclusion in the upcoming podcast. In my excitement to finish the post production side, I came downstairs at 3am to my man-cave, and found that Jason Moore had finished an article I sent him for possible inclusion in his “Workflow Friday” series, and posted that out there. Egads! Thanks to Jason for that outlet as well.

What’s kind of exciting about that article, is that not only did Jason find it interesting enough to include with the collection of folks that have been featured thus far on his blog, but the good folks (Hi Dave!) over at Photography BB have released their latest free online magazine, and the article was included in there as well! (I must be doing something right! *grin*) Be sure to download that magazine as well, because there really are some talented writers and photographers sharing their perspectives. I’m also honored that Dave has included the CB Learning Digital Photography podcast in his list of favorite online media sources for photography (we’re #1 in the audio section – woOt!).

When it rains, ir really does pour! However, because of the interview with Mr. Hogarty, the podcast is thus delayed again, because the two themes of Listener Questions and Answers and Questions with Adobe seamed together pretty well. I may have it compiled early enough to post before the weekend, but don’t expect any miracles there. More likely that will be published next week Tuesday under the software heading of the new schedule (since it’s about Lightroom – there’s also some great links you’ll want in the show notes).

For today though, I do have a little maintenance announcement as well: for those of you picking up the blog via Feedburner, you will likely be getting a double dose of images, because as promised, I am also uploading the images from yesterday’s post to share on Flickr, so you will likely see some repetition there. It’s also a little exciting to share that the feedburner subscription hit an all time high not once but twice this week of 691 listeners/readers. So, thanks to everyone that has signed up – it really means a lot that so many have found the CB resource useful!

That’s about it for this first Friday in May – have a great weekend everyone! Happy Shooting and we’ll catch you back here on Monday for the latest in the hardware reviews. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite selections from this past week in the What the Duck series:

Comparison photos from 10-22mm

April 30, 2009 Jason4 Comments

Earlier this week on the blog, the 10-22mm Canon was reviewed, and in the comments, Julie asked if I could provide some comparison shots. So, in the interests of demonstrating the perspective change (and provide a few sample shots of things I thought came out well), here’s a plethora of photos. First, the comparisons… all shots were done at 1/50th, f5.0 and ISO 800 from a range of 5 feet, 10 feet, and 15 feet, and pointed straight on at the door. No post processing was done in order to preserve as “raw” a comparison as possible…

At 5 feet on the kit 18-55mm

_mg_9396

Now5 feet with the 10-22mm:

_mg_9397

Notice how much more of a range of view the 10-22 has even at 10 feet? So much more can be seen now both high and low (notice the tape measure I have in there for scale?)! Moving right along…

Here’s 10 feet on the kit 18-55

_mg_9401

And the 10-22 at 10 feet:

_mg_9398

Again, even more range of view both top to bottom and left to right (see the book case?) But as we go wider the differences get even more pronounced!

Finally, the kit 18-55 at 15 feet:

_mg_9400

And the 10-22mm at 15 feet:

_mg_9399

So, you can see why wide angle lenses work well in real estate, eh? Wide angles are particularly useful in capturing architecture, and their prominence in this specific field is very well known!

Other genres of photography can benefit from its use though. Remember the HDR shots I put up last week? These were both taken with the wide angle:

final_hdr_blog1

2a_blog

So, landscapes can also benefit from using a wide angle lens. But what about portrait work? Here is where the “group” mentality can come into play. Here’s a shot from a family reunion I took after acquiring this lens (that’s me on the far side, camera right):

gang_web

You want to be careful about using it for close-up portrait work though, because distortion can work against you, producing unflattering looks (I am intentionally using a super small file size here because it’s really not flattering at all if used wrong):

bad_wide

But of course, this is how the now famous “dog” pictures were developed, so you can try it yourself for unique looks:

moo_wide

So, that’s the ups and downs, the los and highs, the pros and cons of the 10-22. In closing, here’s a parting shot I took from the island in SC where we were having family photo ops and fun!

wide1

Try getting that without a wide angle! 🙂 Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Adobe’s DNG Converter

April 28, 2009 Jason8 Comments

For many of us, an upgrade of one element in our tool kit comes with many unforeseen consequences and additional expenditures. Just as a new camera body can necesitate the need for larger memory cards, hardware upgrades can also come with software upgrades. The reason? Camera file formats! As camera vendors develop new proprietary formats for their raw file formats (CR2 for Canon and NEF for Nikon as the two predominant players in the game), the need has always existed to update your software to accommodate the new formats for body upgrades.

The best example of this was when I did my upgrade of the Canon XT to the Canon 40D just last year (or was it two years ago now?)…at the time I was using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to process my files. Well CS2 development stopped as CS3 development started. My Canon 40D was stuck in between application life cycles, and as a result, I was no longer able to process my CR2 files from the 40D natively in CS2. Granted, I did upgrade to CS3 because of my interest in the field, but for those that either may not be interested in the software upgrade, or cannot afford to upgrade, there is a free alternative from Adobe – the Adobe DNG converter.

This is a really cool utility and it gets updated on the same schedule as the Adobe Camera Raw utility that is unique to the image-editing applications of all Photoshop applications (CS4, LR, etc.). The Adobe DNG stands for a Digital NeGative so it may help to think of this as a way of preserving your original data, yet still making it accessible, regardless of what other developments happen in the software world down the road. I know, we all think that Adobe will be around forever, but the same was also thought of Kodak 20 years ago – and now those Kodak CD’s are becoming difficult to manage. With that little nugget, it may be useful to consider the Adobe DNG option. Additionally, the Adobe DNG negative has been submitted to the ISO standards setting organization for acceptance as a universal conversion utility, and are releasing it under the GNU licensing, so it will hopefully always be available for anyone.

With the stage set then, for those who are not able to or not interested in upgrading, here is a brief tutorial of the Adobe DNG converter (in it’s current iteration as of 4/27/09), with screenshots. If your folders of images look like this:

dng6

Then the Adobe DNG Conversion Utility may be for you. It starts pretty easily…you can download the Windows or Mac versions of it from here:

Windows DNG Converter

Mac DNG Converter

Once you download and install this utility (did I mention it’s free?), start the application to get this screen:

dng1

First off, specify the path where the images are that you want to encapsulate into the DNG format. You can specify one folder, or you can specifiy a folder and all its sub-folders (in case you want to convert an entire library or set of images at once). Then specify the output folder and naming convention you want to use. Once that’s been decided, it’s time to select your preferences for how you convert your images.

dng2

Click on the “Preferences button” to specify how you want to conversion to occur: Do you want full size conversions or do you want to reduce the image resolution sizes for smaller storage requirements? (I always choose full size for maximum flexibility.) What about compression? Adding compression can further reduce the footprint that each DNG file has on your hard drive. (It’s a judgement call, but I choose not to compress, again to maximize flexibility down the road.) What about conversion methods? You can convert to a linear format, but I don’t like this option because it’s a one-way street (you can’t go back). Last but not least, what about inclusion of the original raw file? In most cases I would actually recommend that. It may increase file size, but this way you have access to the original raw date if your software needs ever change and you have access to software that can better handle the raw data you currently may not be able to manage. All these are things to consider. Hopefully, this short explanation of your options and the pros/cons will help in deciding how to proceed.

From here it’s pretty straightforward – you’ve specified everything from your input folder to your output folder, naming conventions, and conversion preferences, so now, simply click the button on the lower right to start the conversion process. You will get a dialog window showing you the progress:

dng3

If you like, you can always click the button in the lower left to stop or abort the conversion process in case you specify the wrong folder or for some other reason. Once the process is complete, the window will show all converted images. Simply click “OK” to close the DNG converter utility from that window, as shown below:

dng4

Finally, open the destination folder, and voila! Your image files will now have thumbnail previews again:

dng5

There you have it, your files are now prepped for one of the easiest, simplest, and most cost effective ways (did I mention this is free?) for both management, archiving, and accessibility – 3 very important things to consider in your image management workflow.

Granted, as with anything else, the Adobe DNG converter utility is not for everyone, as we all have work flows that call for different approaches. So, what approaches do you use? Feel free to share your own thoughts, processes, and suc in the comments or via email. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Nine is better than none…

April 22, 2009 Jason2 Comments

I had been working on a list of some of the more popular listener/reader questions and some answers to share for the podcast this week. Since it is late getting out (notice the lack of a post at all yesterday), I thought it might be helpful to share an abbreviated list of some of the Q&A here…

1. What color space should I shoot in with my camera, Adobe RGB or sRGB?

A. Neither, shoot in Raw! Since defining a color space is only applicable if you are shooting in jpg rather than raw, if you shoot in raw, color space won’t matter. However, if you absolutely must shoot in jpg (or if you prefer to due to massive amounts of images for easier mass processing), use the widest possible gamut when you start for maximum flexibility. In this case, that means Adobe RGB. If your camera offers the Pro Photo color space, that is even wider so choose that if available. However, the best answer is to shoot in raw, and then specify your color space during post production.

2. What is the difference between full frame sensors and cropped sensors?

A: Full frame are built to mirror the traditional size of 35mm film, so the mirror is 24x36mm

3. What does “Bulb” mode mean on your camera dial?

A: The term “bulb” is a carryover from days of film when flashbulbs would have to be triggered manually after the shutter was opened but before it was closed. The process was to open the shutter, fire the flash, then close the shutter. Since advances in technology now allow us to fire flashes automatically as the shutter is also tripped, we no longer need to manually actuate the shutter in order to allow a flash to fire. However, we still may want to manually control how long the shutter stays open, so that feature persists.

4. What’s the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop?

A: I get this question a lot. At a fundamental level, Photoshop could be considered a pixel-based image editor where you have the ability to alter or edit the actual pixels of the image. Lightroom, on the other hand, is a vector-based editor where the information does not alter or edit the actual pixels. Lightroom would be considered more of a photo management software tool. While the latest developments have incorporated more features of photo editing in addition to the management tools, at its basic level, Lightroom is still a vector-based program, where changes are not made to the actual image, but to how vector based criteria are applied to the image.

5. What’s the difference between metadata and exif data?

A: Not much. When we talk about one set of data in this capacity the two terms are often used interchangeably. However, if you want to get technical, exif data refers to information about the shot such as shutter speed, aperture, ISO settings, camera body, etc. while meta data is more about other information like photographer name, location of photo, image editor used, tags that are applied for searchability, copyright information and other information that can be inserted into the tag fields for images.

6. What is geo-tagging?

A: Geo-tagging refers to adding the geographic location information to your photos, usually as a set of meta data tags. This practice has become more commonplace as GPS (global positioning system) units have come down in price and both hardware and software have seen developments where the information can be applied to images either directly in camera (from a GPs unit that is attached to the camera), or where it can be added afterward via special software programs.

7. What is sync-speed?

A: Sync speed refers to the fast shutter speed you can set your camera to and not get the typical black bars from the shutter closing before the flash is finished firing. Typically the sync speed is 1/250^th of a second, but with the development of high-speed sync, this traditional rule of thumb will likely become rapidly obsolete.

8. What color space should I save to?

A: Another very common question – and the answer does depend on how you will be outputting your images. Because most web browsers are not color-space aware, they will default to the web norm of sRGB as it has the narrowest color space. So, if your output is to the web, sRGB is your best bet. If you are outputting to a printed version though, Adobe RGB is the best option. More and more though, as printers are able to print to wider gamuts, Pro Photo is becoming more feasible as well. However you plan to output your images though, it’s always best to work in a color-calibrated environment, so make sure you calibrate your monitors and printer profiles for consistency!

9. Which is better, APS-C, CMOS or full-frame sensors?

A: None of these sensor types are inherently better than any other – but they serve different purposes. The full frame sensor is the digital equivalent of a single frame of 35mm film (although technically it is just a smidge smaller). An APS-C sensor is often referred to as a crop-sensor and generally has a crop factor ratio of either 1.5 or 1.6 depending on the vendor. APS-C stands for Advanced Photo System, type C and is just one of several different ways of building crop factor sensors. Other ways include the CMOS sensor and the CCD sensors (which mean Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor and Charge Coupled Device, respectively). The differences here are more in the manufacturing process, and really are technical considerations that most photographers shouldn’t even worry about. The only difference that 99% of photographers need to concern themselves with is whether they want to shoot full frame (where one substantial benefit is that due to the lack of a crop factor on their lenses, so wide angle lenses are really that wide) or on a cropped sensor (where one benefit is that zooms have an effectively longer zoom). Analyzing past this level is really something beyond the scope of most photography. With the differences explained you can hopefully see that one is not inherently better or worse than another – just that there are pros and cons for each, and those must be weighed against your needs.

If anyone has any questions that are not covered here, feel free to email or comment. Thanks for all your continued support. As always, happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!