Category: tutorial

Monday Morning Quarterback

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After a rather exciting weekend photographically I thought today might be a fun way to share my experiences with the readership in the form of an audio podcast!  That’s right, I am going to try and get established again with a weekly podcast you can listen to.  Today, I talk about my experiences with the Colorado Strobist group over on Flickr.  Also, I hit on the subject of learning on your own versus in a community.  It’s kind of an interesting mix of two related schools of thought, and hopefully will get me back on the band wagon for audio podcasts on a regular basis.  You’ll recognize the theme music, and that should stay consistent, but it will likely stay in audio format for the forseeable future.

For a few of my shots from the outing, stop over at the Flickr pool and look at the contributions from CB_Jason.  It’s always fun to get feedback, and I do listen to what everyone has to say.  I thought the lighting was good, but my post processing left a little to be desired (in retrospect).  Comes from having not the best monitor to work with in my 5 year old Dell 19″!

Anyway, give a listen, it’s much more portable now, and I only ramble on for about 5 minutes or so.  Let me know what you think and if there are any subjects you would like to see discussed in future episodes!  Happy shooting, and I’ll have another new topic for your reading pleasure back here again tomorrow!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Three Thoughtful Tips

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As the day starts to fade into the last few hours, I realized nothing had been prepared for posting today.  At times like this, I either decide to make it a “no blog” day, or put together a few brief thoughts, that are tied to photography.  The latter won over today, so for the readers who continue to visit on a regular basis, you are in for a treat (or a trick, since we are getting kind of close to Halloween!).  So, here’s my three thoughtful tips for the day:

  1. If you’ve got some blown highlights or high contrast pictures that just aren’t working – try a black and white conversion.  Add a vignette and you may actually have a shot worth keeping.
  2. In a pinch, your on camera flash is still a flash…granted not the best one, but with even a piece of regular copy paper in front of it, you can diffuse it and spread the light a little more.  It may not be ideal, but better than the glaring brightness of direct flash light.
  3. In tough lighting and no gray card?  Stick your hand out.  Yup, it may not be the best metering source, but your skin can be used to neutrally balance a shot.  From there you can find the rest in post process…

Got any other ideas off the cuff?  Share them in the comments!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

What’s This? – Week 14

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If you post it, they will guess…that’s the theory I’m going with this week.  Anyone have any ideas?  I took a different approach to it this go around, hopefully a little more abstract…  Good luck, and Happy Shooting!

Take your camera with you!

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I was driving home from work yesterday with my camera bag in the seat next to me when I saw this on the opposite side of the road.  So, I swung around, popped out of the car, set up and used the roof of the car for stability and snapped off a few shots wide open and about 800 ISO.  As a full-size image it is a bit noisy, but here it looks pretty good.  To me, that’s proof positive that it always pays to have your camera with you.  That’s the “Tuesday Tip” for this week.  Enjoy and Happy Shooting!  We’ll see you back here again tomorrow.

Tuesday Tricks

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Orange
Orange

Jason Moore has his bi-monthly Photographic Compostion posted today, so be sure to stop over there and see the others (I am sure they were more creative than the one I came up with at the last minute yesterday…)

Rather than record a tip or trick for this Tuesday, I thought I’d share a few ideas and suggestions I’ve picked up from various magazines, forums, and photo communities for managing and handling your gear in the field.  These things have become almost second nature to me now and I can’t tell you how helpful these tips and tricks have become in helping me keep everything organized.  So without further ado, here’s my Tuesday tricks:

  1. Pack a large plastic ziploc or other sealable bag in with your camera gear.  When it’s windy or there’s lots of dust around, you can change your lenses from inside these bags to minimize dust.  Additionally, it serves as an additional layer of protection should mother nature decide to dump a deluge of water on you with little warning.  (I keep several sandwich bags in my pack for protecting things like CF cards, wide angle lenses, TC’s and other items.
  2. If you must change lenses in the field, keep the body of the camera pointed down so as to prevent dust from falling into the opening (dust won’t wall up…).
  3. Keep a notepad and pen in your pack, in case you find a location that you want to remember, meet someone and want an email or phone number, or to get an address to send prints or perhaps a resume to!  On the same note, having some business cards and model releases handy for handing out and in case you have a willing model…
  4. Turn your CF cards around backwards when full, so you always know which ones are used versus unused.
  5. Buy a car converter for AC to DC.  This way you can charge your batteries while en route to a shoot.  They’re only like $20 at Wal-Mart or Radio Shack and can add a certain peace of mind that you are going into your shoot with as much of a charge on your portables as you can get.  (Just make sure you add the battery chargers to your packing list…)
  6. Speaking of packing lists – make one!  This can help ensure you leave with everything you brought to a shoot.  I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s been a while, so bears mentioning again.
  7. Pack a micro fiber cloth for wiping off lenses in a pinch.  (Better a microfiber cloth than your shirt!)  These can be begged off any eyeglasses store (try Wal-Mart, they are pretty liberal with handing these things out..)
  8. Need a better way to store your gear at home?  Try shoe boxes.  You can get them for a buck a piece from a dolalr store – makes a great way to compartmentalize short lenses from long lenses, accessories, flash equipment, battery chargers, CD media, gray cards, lens cloths, etc.  A few labels from a Dymo label maker and everything is neat, and easy to find in your bedroom closet!
  9. Dress in layers – weather can change, especially if you are shooting at sunrise or sunet.  It can change from cool to warm or warm to cool very quickly and having a layer to take off (or put on) can extend your shoot time before you start getting uncomfortably warm (or cold).
  10. Take a bottle of water and a granola bar in your pack!  You’d be surprised how quickly you can dehydrate and how hungry you can get while shooting.  I’ve been on shoots where there is so much creativity and so many shooting opportunities, I can often forget to eat or drink.  When things finally end you can be very hungry and or dehydrated where even a bottle of water or a granola bar (or both) can give you the needed boost until you can get to Starbucks or the house for more healthy refreshments!

So, that’s my ten tips/tricks for the day.  Got any of your own to share?  Sound off in the comments – I’d love to hear what others have to say about shooting preparations.  In the meantime, happy shooting, watch those apertures and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for the Week 13 episode of “What’s This?”

What’s This? – Week 12

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Here’s one for everyone…what’s this?

I had to go through some archives to find one that fit what I was looking for this week, but I found it.  This is a crop of a larger image.  The only thing I did was a little levels adjusting, the crop, and then some sharpening.  Can you identify this?  Share your thoughts in the comments!  The winner – wins!

As always, happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

A few of the Creative Suite 4 Features!

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Before the release of CS4 in Adobe’s announcement this morning, I happened to see a post in the NAPP member forums of someone thanking the Photoshop Guys for their top ten of the new features for the latest edition of Photoshop Creative Suite 4!

So, for those who want the early bird news, here’s a hint of what Adobe will be talking about later this morning:

  1. Better scrolling with less jaggies as you zoom in and out of images.
  2. The Adjusment Panel – Adobe has added a dedicated panel for your layers adjustments
  3. On-screen image adjustments – you can now control hue/saturation, Curves and Black and White adjustments directly on your image
  4. Camera Raw saw some significant upgrades because now you can apparently do post-crop vignettes, apply gradient filters, and yes, that’s right, also the very-Lightroom like adjustment brush!
  5. Addition of the vibrance slider to CS4 – this previously was in LR and camera raw, but not as a layer adjustment in CS3 – they’ve ported that element over to the inside of CS4! Yay!
  6. Tools improvements for the eyedropper, dodging, burning, the brush engine is more responsive, and the clone and heal now allow for vanishing points
  7. Customizable GUI – that’s right, you can now customize your own panels in CS4! The Configurator 1.0 feature (flash-based) allows you to create and use your own customized panels! Truly amazing.

Kudos to the NAPP staff for taking the time to put all this together – 17 video tutorials in all – (and this is just proof positive that membership has its privileges…because by learning from those on the cutting edge means you are getting cutting edge technology too! I am not sure if it’s publicly viewable, or if it’s a members-only thing, so will refrain from providing the links to the CS4 features they talk about, but I must admit, this does have me more buzzed about the announcement than I was before. Make sure you stop in to Adobe to watch it as I am sure there will be much excitement across the blogosphere about this!

Anyway, back to the regular blogging – I’ve got some announcements of my own to share, but they kinda pale in comparison…

Eureka! Tutorial Tuesdays Triumphant Return!

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For those that have been visiting the blog, you know that Podpress, my plugin of choice for putting out podcasts has been broken for some time as the developer has not released an update that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.6  Well, since it has been several months now, I am officially parting ways with it as my method for publishing.

Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger.  So, in the interests of getting the content posted to iTunes and to those feeds that had not been updated from web references, I am going to spend the next few days providing some video content updates.  The expanding ease of the .mov format not only in this interface, but also for portability purposes also seems to suggest that I am going to stick to that format exclusively for the foreseeable future.

For those that had been coming to the blog for their content, you will already have seen this video, but for those who have been waiting on the feed for new multimedia, this will be new material.  Today, I am re-publishing the tutorial on reducing noise in your images. Enjoy!  For the rest of you, see if you can tell the differences between some clouds shot with and without a circular polarizer.  Share your thoughts in the comments on which one is with and which is without.

Image A:

Clouds

Image B:

Clouds

I think I can…think, and thank!

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The cloud and haze of my head cold has lifted and I find myself able to think clearly for the first time in several days…almost a week.  With the fervor and excitement of the 5D Mark II hitting the blogosphere, and the requisite discussions now settling to a dull roar, it’s time to get back to the business of blogging on everything photography!

To start, I’d like to call out for thanks fellow NAPP member Erik Bernskiold.  Not only is he a talented Photoshopper, but he knows quite a bit about web design too (and he’s like 1/3rd my age!).  Anyway, I was quite flattered when he asked me if I would be willing to participate in a short interview for his blog/website.  Needless to say, I accepted.  You can see the Q&A on his blog here.  Talk about tutorials – he crosses outside of Photoshop and does a lot of Adobe tutorials, so definitely a good guy to watch.  (Plus, he’s super-nice and always helpful.)

Next up, I’d like to also send out some thanks to Michael Johnston over at The Online Photographer who linked back to the blog here on his discussion of the Canon 5D.  For anyone who has read CB for any length of time, you know that TOP is where I go for my daily read of insightful, educational and theoretical musings on the industry of photography.  Always a cool thing to get a nod from one of the elite, so thanks Michael.

Finally, since yesterday I skipped over the “What’s This?”, there’s no better time than the present to insert another photo opportunity.  It should be fairly easy, but you never know…so, what’s this:

That’s it for today.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you here tomorrow.

Hot off the Presses: Canon 5D Mark II announced late yesterday!!!

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Stop the presses! No What’s This today! CANON ANNOUNCES THE 5D MARK II!!! Here’s the first pics Canon released. The specs are pretty impressive and pricing is already amazingly low!  I saw this over on TWIP, and verified it on Canon’s site.  Here’s everything about it, specs, pricing, and photos!  I didn’t want to jump on the 5d Mark II rumor bandwagon, but with this being public, I must say…”Holy Crap!”  There’s also links at the end of this post to some video samples with audio in 3 of them from the camera.  They look and sound pretty darn good to me!  The last video was taken at night and shows some great noise handling…

5D Mark II Angled View

5D Mark II Front View

5D Mark II Back View

Here’s the nuts and bolts of all the specs:

  • HD Video @ 1920×1080 and 30 fps
  • SD Video @ 640×480 and 30 fps
  • video capture up to 4 GB or 29min, 59 sec
  • Video recorded in .MOV format
  • Input terminal for microphones
  • HDMI output
  • 3 Live View Modes
  • Peripheral Illumination Correction
  • Two Small raw formats
  • Silent shooting in Live View
  • Integrated Cleaning System
  • 21.1 MP
  • ISO from 50-25,600 (not a typo!)
  • 3.9 fps
  • UDMA card compliant
  • 15 point auto-focus
  • 3″ LCD (920,000 dot resolution VGA)
  • 150,000 shutter count cycle
  • Price: $2699!!!!!

I guess the only thing that surprises me is the frames per second for still captures.  Yeah okay, it’s capturing 21.1 megapixels and at a full frame, but it is also able to capture 30 fps in HD video!  Why is the still frame rate so slow comparatively speaking (at 3.9 fps)?

That being said, the video features are astonishing, as is the low price point!  I would expect the older Canon 5D’s to drop into the $1000 range shortly…start checking the auction sites!  For the full story that gives all the hype and glamour of Canon news announcements, check out the press release here with all the above shots also in high resolution:

Canon Announces 5D Mark II

Anyone else want to salivate over it with me?  What are your thoughts on this new release?  Will this answer the gauntlet of the D3 that Nikon threw down a short while ago?  I would tentatively say yes – but only time will tell!

Video clips:

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop01.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop02.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop03.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop04.html