tips and tricks – Page 2

Did You Know…

December 20, 2010 Jason2 Comments

Over the weekend I was down in Tucson, spending some time with the in-laws, and during the getaway, had a chance to catch up on some overdue reading in my monthly magazine stack (it has been growing steadily lately as other stuff has gotten in the way. I emerged from my readings with several “Eureka!’s” and “What a great idea!” so, figured to pass on the new-found or re-kindled knowledge here on the blog. (In the spirit of giving and all that…) So, without further ado, here’s a new feature on the blog:

Did You Know…?

1. Fog is about 1 stop brighter than what cameras detect as 18% gray? To compensate for shots taken in foggy conditions, adjust your exposure settings up by about 1/2 – 1 1/2 stops to compensate, otherwise you’ll get underexposed shots.

2. Cameras are designed for right-handed people…the ergonomics are made to grip and adjust controls with your right hand. Left-handed shooters have it twice as hard as the rest of us so double kudos to you!

3. Pentax was actually the first camera vendor slated to release a full-frame DSLR camera, not Canon or Nikon!

4. As you move light away from your subject, the output drops off by a factor of almost 2 to 1? (It’s actually technically “double the distance, 3/4ths the output…) Which means if you move your subject away, you need twice as much light at double the distance to equal the same output…

5. To shoot a picture of the moon, use the Moony 11 Rule, just like the Sunny 16, but use f/11 and match the ISO to shutter speed

And since I was in Tucson this past weekend, here’s a couple holiday photos to tickle your funny bone…Christmas Tucson-Style:

Got your own DYK tips or photo nuggets? Share ’em here on the blog. I’ll likely start doing this as a monthly feature and would love to hear the ideas, tips and tricks that others have to share as well. In the meantime, keep on shooting, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

The TEN stop Filter DIY Project

October 22, 2010 Jason7 Comments

As promised in the monthly newsletter (you can sign up for it free, by visiting this link here), the article on creating your own 10-stop filter is finally here! Delays with some tripod issues have prevented the final shots showing the effects, but the principles will hold, so without the end results (I should have my tripod fixed by next month, and will share a supplemental post then with the resulting shots and work ups.) So, today, I give you:

The TEN stop filter project

A common problem with shooting landscape photos is that we are limited by the hours of available shoot times. We all know that the best times to shoot are morning and evening for the best light. The overhead light in the middle of the day just does not allow you to drop your shutter speeds much to get flowing water, or a sense of motion in clouds without assistance. Another possible use could be a kissing engagement couple with some blurred motion behind them (like a train, the clouds, or whatever – suggesting a really long kiss!) 🙂

The only way to address that is through stacking MANY neutral density filters (ND). They are made in various stops (defined by the stops of light they block), and stacking can get pretty costly. There are some though that you can get that address multiple stops of light in one filter, like the Lee 10-stop filter. Problem? Cost! (It’s $160 at B&H). I learned a while ago about a way to make one yourself for as little as $20.00 though. Here’s the process I used (let me also apologize for the image quality – some of these were taken with the Droid in low light and studio level shots wasn’t where my attention was…but you can hopefully get the gist from these):

Step One – Find a cheap filter at your local camera store. These can be found for a dollar or so. The one I used was found at a camera store for 50 cents. A Hoya 85B orange filter (77mm).

Step Two – Place it on a paper towel, and wrap a second one over the top (this is for your protection and easier cleanup)

Step Three – Get your favorite hammer out…

Step Four – Do not just go to town….whacking away crazily is not needed. Just a couple firm taps until you hear the glass give way…

Step Five – Once the glass is broken, a few strategic taps around the edges should pop most of the glass out of the filter ring:

Step Six – Wrap up paper towels of broken glass and discard. Then check the filter ring and make sure it is free of any glass shards (I used canned air)…

Step Seven – Buy a welder’s replacement lens from your local hardware/tool store, or perhaps a local welder shop. If you prefer, there are online retailers that sell this stuff too. The problem there is that the cost of shipping quickly ratchets up the price. I found some Hobart #9 at a local store for under $2.50 per pack and some Lincoln Electric #10 at Lowe’s for $5 a piece.

Steps 8a – I tried first to mark a circle with tape and use a Dremel with a regular cutting wheel to slowly cut to the ring dimension. It resulted in a pretty bad crack through the center of the glass, rendering it unusable, so I had to start over.

Step 8b – I tried a second piece of glass with a scoring hand tool. Since the welding glass is about 1/4” thick, it takes several score to make it weak enough at this breakage point to snip off cleanly. My efforts did not result in clean snips, and ultimately, the glass cracked from my impatience (so, add patience to the list of materials needed!).

Step 8c- I went to purchase a 3rd piece of the cheap stuff. This time, I called around and found a place willing to try to cut the glass (everyone will ask and believe the glass is tempered, when in my case – neither was). I took a sheet of the cheap stuff into them and explained what I was trying to do, then asked what size they could cut to. They had a 2 1/2” hole saw and a 3” whole saw with diamond tips for glass cutting. We did the calculations and realized that 77mm is almost 3 inches exactly. He warned me that the saw itself would take a portion out. Thinking there was a lip on the interior of the filter, I said go ahead (after all, it’s only $2.50 here right? 🙂 )

He was able to cut it into a nice circle. I knew it would be close so thanked him and asked how much I owed. He smiled and said “No charge – give me a plug or a print if it works out!”. Since I am happy to either way, the name of the place is CNC Glassworks in Arvada CO! Super nice folks and great attitude toward customer service! I am sad to admit though that the hole he cut out was just a shade too small. I may possibly attempt to sand this down to the next filter size in my gear bag glass and on testing, but it did prove to be too small.

Step 9 – I now knew that I needed to either find a diamond-tipped hole saw and cut it myself, or find someone that had a 3 1/2” hole saw that would be willing to use it on my glass. A little bit of Google research showed that Bosh makes a Diamond Hole Saw in the 3 1/8” size. Problem? None, if you want to pay $60 or more for the tool itself (the cheapest I found was around $60 at Ohio Power Tool, and locally through a company called Tool King for $70). Even if it was half this price, the DIY cost saving approach is quickly ratcheting up. So, a little more in-depth research was required.

Step 10 – Sure enough, after I did some more research via telephone and email, I found a manufacturer online (THK Diamond Tools) that sold the equipment. I was able to purchase the diamond coated hole saw bit for $10 (+ $10 shipping). Since I don’t own a table drill, a quick trip back to CNC Glassworks with a 4th piece of the cheap stuff resulted in in a good cut. I have a piece of the good welder’s glass (the #10 Hobart one for $5 at Lowe’s), but wanted to test the results first. The end result of the cut now fit perfectly into the filter ring!

Step 11 – Now, I just took a little clear silicon glue applied to the inner circle of the filter ring and snugged the new “filter” into place. After letting it dry for about a day, it is now ready to shoot! (Unfortunately, my tripod is still pending repairs, so the final results will have to wait a while longer – but the project is officially complete!

Supplies/Tools Used:

Filter Ring ($1-$10 depending on where you get them)
Welder’s Replacement Glass (ranges in price from $2.50 – $5 depending on market – ymmv)
Paper Towels (50 cents)
Hammer (??? had this forever)
Safety Glasses (required for any DIYer – but $3 from Lowes if you dont own a pair)
Safety gloves (again, required for any DIYer – but $3-$5 from Lowes if you dont own a pair)
Glass Cutter ($3)
*Dremel with cutting bit (ETA – if you have the time and $, get the diamond cutting bit – you may have more success than I did… and sanding bit)
Strong glue (to hold glass in filter ring after completion – $5)
Masking tape ($2)
*If you want to go the more “professional route” and have a table drill, or know someone who does, the cost for the$20 for the diamond tipped 3″ bit from THK is $20.)

*You don’t need both of these, but you should have either one or the other.

Project Time Frame – 1-4 hours total work time, 2-4 days total project time.

So, in totaling all the costs of the project, I probably invested $40. This did involve multiple test cuts which you can avoid though, and if your area has a glass cutting shop with a 3″ diamond tipped bit, then another $20 can be saved. This could drop your cost to less than $20 if you only need one cut and already have the materials. Either way, considering the cost of a Lee 10 stop $160 filter, I’ve saved $120 in my project by going the DIY Route!!

Keep in mind that these filters will leave a green tint, so you’ll have to do a little bit of post processing, but if I spend ten minutes in post, that’s worth the savings to me – especially since this is an extremely unusual type of use piece of glass, and hard to justify that kind of expense. Give it a whirl and share your own shots in the LDP Flickr pool! Happy shooting and we’ll see you here again tomorrow!

Can You Shoot Stock?

October 18, 2010 Jason2 Comments

Several readers have asked me about what it takes to be a stock photographer, and not being a stock photographer (at least not a very good one), I had to honestly say, “I don’t know”! I wanted to find out though, partly to satisfy not only reader interest, but also my own interest, so I signed up to become a contributor at iStockphoto – one of the premiere stock photo agencies around. I also picked up a copy of “Taking Stock“, by Rob Sylvan to give it a read and prepare for my foray into stock photography. For regular readers, you may remember an interview I had with him a while back, and the contest giveaway where 3 lucky readers won a copy of the book.

So, for starters – I’d suggest that you educate yourself on how to shoot stock, which means reading resources like Rob’s book. You also need to practice, and be aware of trends in the market place. You also need to be prepared for something else, and that is rejection! Even the best photographers have images rejected from iStock. It’s going to happen, so get used to it. Images can be rejected for any one of a number of reasons. By far, one of the most common ones I’ve seen is worded as follows:

“This image appears to be over-filtered/over-processed which has affected the image quality. This may include Photoshop filters & effects (over-sharpening, excessive adjustments to levels, curves, contrast, hues, gaussian blurs, saturation, added textures, noise reduction…) or other manipulations.”

What can be frustrating about this is that you may have applied very minimal processing, and applied no filters whatsoever, but your images are still rejected. The reason? The next part of the rejection description:

“Inspectors judge images based on quality, composition and usability.”

The key is not to worry if this happens – it can happen to anyone, and images can be rejected for any of many reasons. Here’s a couple examples of photos I’ve had rejected from iStock during this test phase:

One thing I’ve always tried to do when assembling work for stock is to make sure there is negative space available. This allows buyers to have their text or content overlay on the image. Plus, it’s a pretty effective compositional technique – which I’ve talked about in the past…for more details, you can read that full article here.

Here are some other suggestions and approaches for shooting stock:

Try and avoid brand names. If someone is wearing Nike shoes, a Champion sweatshirt, or other easily recognizable logos, forget it. First off, you can’t use them without permission, second, the clean-up work required in post degrades the image quality, and third, it’s just not worth the time to remove when you consider that stock is not just about the quality of photos, but to make any decent revenue, it’s also about quantity of photos!
Incorporate people into your work. This doesn’t mean having someone put on a headset and pretend to be a customer service rep (because this has been done too much already). It does mean to be creative and use people to demonstrate things – like lifting weights, or singing into a microphone, or repairing a computer. These are the types that typically will do well in sales.
Plan ahead. If you are thinking of shooting your Halloween themed photos now and getting them online for sales possibilities, then expect the purchases to start happening around August or September of next year. Buyers of stock work usually are working ahead of schedule to line up ad campaigns, and other uses well in advance, so you need to be publishing your work on their schedule, not in real time.
Make sure you get model releases if people are recognizable in the images. Stock work requires it, and if you don’t have it – then forget even submitting. For more details on what model releases are appropriate and what should be included, visit this location where iStock gives you one to use!

That’s just a couple tips for how to get started in stock photography. For more information, go to the pros that already do it, and know the industry much better than I. As mentioned at the beginning – Rob Sylvan is a great resource as an iStock reviewer and author. Other people you may want to keep tabs on include Nicolesy (who I’ve talked to here on the podcast series!).

Got your own tips and ideas on how to shoot stock? I’d love to hear what others think too, so sound off in the comments. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Quick Tip Day – Photoshop Crop Tool

September 16, 2010 Jason3 Comments

The podcast was supposed to go live today, but I have been sorta swamped with some other stuff (including fixing the RSS feed for y’all – now fixed w/ my apologies for the technical glitch). So, in lieu of that, a quick tip to share:

In Photoshop CS5 one of the JDI (just do it) features that was “fixed” was to add a Rule of Thirds guide to the crop tool. It’s quiet handy to have and is turned on by default:

Most people I know (granted they are photographers and not graphics designers) absolutely love this functionality! However, a few have asked me if there is a way to disable it. Naturally, pretty much anything in Photoshop is customizable for your own purposes. So, if these “Marching Ants” lines are distracting to you though, and you want to turn them off, you can do this from the Options bar at the top of your display. Simply look for the dropdown menu just to the right of “Crop Guide Overlay” and choose the option that best suits your needs.

As with most tools in Photoshop, the Options menu gives you a lot of flexibility to configure things however you like for most purposes. So, be sure to check the Options bar the next time you are inside of Photoshop!

Got an idea for another Photoshop or Lightroom tip? Feel free to share your own ideas and questions in the comments section! Have a great day and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow…

It’s Not Too Early to…

September 7, 2010 Jason3 Comments

Start thinking about plans for 2011. Typically, you want to be planning months ahead of time for the business world. Whether you are a professional photographer for events such as weddings, a stock photographer or a portrait photographer, or even just a hobbyist. Here are some tips to planning ahead for the holidays and beyond! Continue reading “It’s Not Too Early to…” →

Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting

September 1, 2010 Jason5 Comments

A common question I get here is how to deal with harsh or low light situations. This is a great question, and for event photographers, it’s simply part of the job to recognize various lighting conditions and address them accordingly. Today, I’d like to share Five Ways to Deal with Harsh/Low Lighting:

1. Cranking the ISO and hoping to fix in post

With advancements in technology, noise handling both in camera and in post production has resulted in some astonishing results that in previous years would have been literally unrecoverable. While we should always endeavor to make our images shine as best we can in camera – advancements in tools of the trade simply give us more options and we would be foolish not to use them.

Here’s a good example of a shot that was done at a high in-camera ISO setting, that was recoverable to a good quality image. It may not necessarily be of “stock photography” caliber (you really need every pixel to be perfect for stock photography), but for event photography, I would consider this acceptable quality.

2. Implementing additional light sources (Flash, video lights, etc.)

3. Using a tripod/monopod in conjunction with longer exposures to increase odds of sharp captures

4. Use a gray card to get good white balance/off-set the ambient lighting conditions.

Having your subject hold a color balance card (or even just a gray card) in the scene for one shot is a great way to counter-act the effect of difficult lighting, including everything from halogen lights, to fluorescent, tungsten-florescent mixes, and the garish hue from sodium vapor lights common in locales like stadiums and street light settings.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/images/Charts/MacbethCC-sRGB.jpg — Gretag Macbeth Color Wheel

5. Use supports from the surroundings to brace your camera

Using a tree, a wall, or even the ground to help stabilize your camera can reduce the shutter speed considerably to help when shooting in low light situations.

As much as we may try to hand hold our cameras, blur is unavoidable due to our heartbeats, finger tremors, breathing, and a host of biological factors, the best we can do is help to minimize that blur by using supporting mechanisms and techniques to get as stable a shot as we can. Even when we can hand-hold, matching that color from the scene is much easier to do when you start from a known vantage point, whether it be your own flash, or a controlled ambient scene. So much to think about and so little time…where do you want to go from here?

Hint: Sound off in the comments – would love to hear others thoughts, tips, and tricks for dealing with low and/or harsh lighting! Special thanks to Kerry Garrison of Kerry Garrison Photography for sharing a sample image from his own portfolio when I couldn’t track my own down in the library (bad me for not keywording fully!)…

kL2HNZVO

Episode # 49 is in your podcast feed!

August 3, 2010 Jason2 Comments

As we approach the half century mark in the Learning Digital Photography Podcast series, Erik Bernskiold joins us on the show for another session of doling out some good photo tips – great ways to take and make better pictures and take your photography to the next level. For those that are grabbing from the iTunes feed it should be published shortly… you know the drill! 🙂 For the rest of the world, here’s a direct link to the show for listening to during the day or your workout/commute/etc.

Skype gave us a few issues so there is one point where the audio gets a bit garbled, and there was just no good way to clean that up, so if you hear a little scratchy noise, it goes away after a few seconds (and a cheesy soundbite transition) Just remember, two hands on the wheel if you’re driving! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Show Notes

1. News

Firmware Updates for Ricoh, Samsung and Canon from DPReview
Firmware Update for the Canon 1D Mark IV
Lexar Giveaway on Facebook
The Learning Lightroom 3 Workshop – Denver Edition (August 28th)

2. Photo Tips

Landscapes
Portraiture
Flowers
Architecture

3. Listener Q&A

The iPad and Flash – Mark
Different Photo Editing Application Pros and Cons – Christine
Photos are washed out in browser – Seth

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

49 Photo Tips – The Sequel

July 15, 2010 Jason1 Comment

About eight months ago, I cobbled together a laundry list of almost 50 photo tips and tricks to help with everything from gear to composition, photoshop, and more. Given the penchant for sharing these things online, I decided to launch it as an eBook – but in the interests of keeping it simple, didn’t add much of anything. It was basically a spreadsheet with a category on the left and the tip or trick on the right. Given the minimal overhead I had put into the design, decided on a bargain basement price – $1.99. Half a cup of coffee, and easily digestible!

After a few months of feedback and suggestions, it seemed the idea was pretty good, but people wanted examples, or at least something to liven things up a bit – the “spreadsheet style” was a little tedious on the eyes. So began the latest project for me (as if I don’t have enough projects, according to Tracy)! Well, after 6 months of blood, sweat and tears, it’s finally here – 49 Tips, The Sequel!

All the tips are new, just as useful, and even more in-depth, but here’s the best part – it’s really an eBook now! With a cover page, a prologue, epilogue and, as you can see, there’s a photo for every tip! Okay, so some are screen captures so technically not photos, but each one gets the point across quite well (I think anyway). A few of these tips have been shared out via Twitter and Facebook in recent weeks to give everyone a sneak peek of sorts, but it’s “out there” now, and very excited to see what people think.

So, let me know what you think of the new style and layout! It’s only $4.99 , which is less than a grande white mocha at Starbucks (at least that’s what I’ve heard…b/c I don’t drink Starbucks…right?)! And for the time being (through the end of July, anyway), there’s an additional discount code for $1 off if you use it in your shopping cart: “Sequel“

Since it was 6 months between Part One and The Sequel, my guess is it will be another 6 months before I come up with a third installment, so feedback, thoughts and input are always welcome! There’s a link in the feature product are on the blog, or you can go to the full store here to see all three product downloads! 🙂

Apparently the WordPress eCommerce does not work as advertised as several people have gone through the process and not received their digital download email. So, to hopefully make things easier for everyone, I’ve signed up with a company friends have used called eJunkie, and after a little configuration and setup, it’s available for purchase through their system (still using Paypal). My apologies for the hassles initially, here’s the new download location:

Enjoy, and we’ll see you back here again next week!

Creating a Monthly Desktop Calendar

May 4, 2010 Jason1 Comment

I alluded to it yesterday, and have already had several people inquire about the procedure to create this desktop calendar. It’s really quite clever, and kudos go out to Jeffrey Friedl over on his site for the script: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/calendar He does a decent job at the basic explanation, but since we are a visual world, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to run things from beginning to end! Fair warning – this does require Photoshop as the script (I don’t believe anyway) will run in Lightroom because it uses layers…

1. Download the script from the link above (I downloaded to my desktop on Windows XP)

2. Copy the script from your desktop (or whatever download location you configured for your browser) to your Photoshop folder, as indicated in the screen shot.

3. Open Photoshop (if it was already open, you should probably close PS and restart it)

4. Open the picture you want to apply the script to (I started with the largest size desktop I wanted to configure it for, in this case 1600 x 1200.

5. Navigate to the Presets option in Photoshop and open the script

6. The interface lets you select certain information such as the month it will run for, when the week starts, etc.

7. Special mention here to include certain holidays – if you have custom days (say birthdays, anniversaries, etc) to add, create a text file for reference and point the script to that txt file location. If you don’t want certain days highlighted,you can leave this option un-checked and proceed with the script.

8. It may take the script some time to run (it took me about 58-61 seconds to run it on my computer, but I was multitasking with other things at the time…). When it’d done, you’ll get a stack of a lot of layers that looks like this, with the default layer selected of “Picture Mask”. Note: I’d also recommend checking the option to rasterize most text layers otherwise you’ll have up to 30 additional layers of text (one for each day of the month)! The layers underneath this are where all the really cool stuff is, and the other layers are dates and effects that you can change to suit your own tastes.

9. Once you have tailored the layers to suit your needs, simply flatten, save as a jpg and configure your desktop to use that image! Since I typically will save to multiple desktop dimensions, I start with the original and re-size to each output, from largest to smallest saving each as a jpg then letting the script use that to create the desktop calendar.

There you have it! The nitty gritty details on how to create a really slick looking desktop calendar for you and your clients. Simply print as pictures through your favorite venue if you like and watch the sales come in!

One final little news note that is time sensitive – DIY Photography has a very creative approach to contests and the prize package is worthy of a nod (don’t know how he/she/they managed to come up with this big bag of goodies!), so stop over here and throw your hats in the ring: http://bit.ly/aRQa9l

See you back here tomorrow for the latest in photo goodness! I’ll also bring up a couple tips on how to tweak the layers to your own ends, but feel free to begin exploring your own creative approaches! 🙂

Software Review: PrintKey2000

February 16, 2010 JasonLeave a comment

Many times I have been asked what kinds of software I use to do various things for the blog, especially things like videos, screen captures, audio recording, and all that sort of stuff. One thing that I’ve never really talked about is screen captures…not the videos but actual still shots of things as seen directly on my screen. There are many programs available to do this, some paid for, and some open-sourced, with some being Mac or Windows specific, and a few scattering that cross both platforms.

Well, today, I am going to give a little nod to a Windows-only program, called Printkey. Specifically titled PrintKey2000, and under specific note that this is a freeware program (meaning it is not supported – to use at your own risk.) While I have never had problems with it, the mentality of “let the buyer beware” should always be a consideration when downloading applications, especially freeware.

Those in Apple-land know that there are keyboard shortcuts to do a screen capture of either your entire viewing area, or a specific window, and these can either be copied to the clipboard memory for inserting in an application like Photoshop, or saved outright to your desktop. While in Windows you can always use the Printscreen and ALT+Printscreen to copy either a full screen or active window to your clipboard, the ability to save directly to your desktop does not exist natively. Instead, you have to capture the screen to memory, paste into an image editor, and save out as a JPG if you want to use it. What PrintKey does is fill that void of directly saving to the desktop. This is especially handy if capturing things for posting in a blog, in creating documentation, and other useful learning resource outlets.

To use Printkey, simply download the free application from here, run the executable, and let the program start in your system tray. The entire packaged zip file is half a megabyte, so the footprint is super for those that are space conscious. Here’s a capture of the software itself in action (don’t ask me how I got it – that took a few minutes to figure out! LOL):

While there are many features wrapped up in this handy little application, the ones I use most often are the Save, Rectangle, Print, and then the dialog screen at the bottom of the screen (click the image above to see a larger view). These should be pretty straightforward to those who are familiar with the concepts, but here we go regardless:

Save – saves the current capture to an image file…you can specify whatever format you prefer (jpg gif, etc.)
Rectangle – gives you a + sign that you can drag and drop around a custom area for capturing only part of your desktop
Print – sends the captured image to your printer…(hope that was explanatory enough)

The last one is the bottm details area…I am talking about this little section here:

It’s very handy because it will tell you the dimensions of the image, how large the file is in terms of storage space on your computer, and how much free memory is left out of the total memory. While some many not need all this info, the geek in me likes to have this!

So, there you have it, Printkey2000 in action. I feel that I should also mention another really good counterpart and that is the program, SnagIt from the folks over at TechSmith. With that handy application, you can not only capture images on both Windows and Mac, but you can edit them on the fly, including inserting text, arrows to call out an area, and other fun stuff. Alas, it’s not free though – 30 day trial is allowed before you gotta cough up the $50! (Which for me is not worth it for something like this. I have some friends that use other applications too, especially for video screen captures on both Mac and Windows platforms which include names like IShowU, Camtasia, and much more. Here though, was just a little scoop on a little known application for the Windows crowd out there.

Got your own favorite little unknown program? Have you used PrintKey? Like it, love it or hate it? Sound off in the comments as new little handy utilities are always welcome. Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow! 🙂

One last thing all – don’t forget the Height themed contest for the month of February – get your photos in while the gettin’ is good! Deadline is a week from Friday!