We all have aspirations of taking our work to “the next level”. How we define our “levels” of success is largely a personal matter. Here I am always happy to share my aspirations and goals with the larger community. It is likely no secret that as a blogger, the written word is an enjoyable “tool” for me. In writing both blog posts here, and articles for the PhotographyBB magazine (and special shout outs and thanks to Dave Seeram, editor-in-chief of said magazine), it has become pretty clear that writing for blogs and writing for magazines requires different approaches. To that end, there is some content on the blog that has never been incorporated into any magazine. Likewise, some magazine content has never seen the light of the blogosphere. Well, that convergence begins today, courtesy of my good friend, Eizabeth Gast (a.k.a. “Firgs” of Design by Firgs).
In looking at her work online with her own blog, and her social presence as well, I thought she might enjoy reading an article I wrote for the magazine. Well, she has helped with editing, and it now also has a great blog form to it as well. Since she was so instrumental in its transition from magazine to blog, I offered it up to her for use if she liked – needless to say, I think she liked it enough because it’s on her blog today! Thanks Firgs! You are the best! If you want to read more about the importance of how social networking can play into photography – stop over and read her blog. Heck, stop over anyway and tell her thanks for me! 🙂
The Comment Contest Winner
In other news, the Comments Contest was a huge success! With only one repeat and one tweeted link, the count totaled 15, matching the highest total ever received for a single post! After taking out the repeat and the tweet, lucky #13 is the number I plugged in over at www.Random.org (another link I picked up from Firgs!). Wit the Random Number Generator (drumroll please…) the winner in the Comments Contest is – believe it or not, lucky #13! That winner is is andie! So, Andie, if you could drop me an email, you are the lucky winner of a $25 gift card to B&H Photo!
The “Win a Wacom” Giveaway
Submissions for this giveaway are now closed. Over the next few days I will be going through all the entries and winnowing out the best of the best and choosing a winner! Be sure to tune in as we move toward Friday!
The Super September Giveaway
Remember the Topaz Labs software I mentioned yesterday? And the Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag System? Yup, it’s now time and they are up for grabs in the latest and greatest giveaway over on the Flickr page. A new thread has been created (yes, a little ahead of schedule), so feel free to start putting your work in there. The direct link to that thread is here. The theme is Think in Color, so I am sure a rainbow will appear in short order, with lots of creativity!
I was going to do a write-up of some more plugins from the Topaz Suite, but time and space just got away from me, so if you wanna see more about this great plugin set, be sure to stop back in tomorrow as I promise to have that review together for your reading enjoyment. On that note, have a rockin’ day and happy shooting!
That’s right – Canon has announced the 7D along with a couple other new lenses. Amazing specs on it are here
Here’s a few shots from the Press Room:
Canon 7D front ViewCanon 7D Side ViewCanon 7D Back
Lots of specs, but most impressive to me:
Spot AF mode reduces the size of a single AF point to focus on small subjects like an animal in a cage.
AF Point Expansion mode uses a cluster of AF points adjacent to the selected AF point to automatically assist focusing on moving subjects, such as an athlete on the run.
Zone AF divides the 19 AF points into five selectable focusing zones and makes it easier to achieve focus with subjects that are difficult to track with Single Point AF or AF point expansion, such as birds in flight.
Fully manual exposure control on the video
The built in flash has a speedlight transmitter for controlling EOS flashes like the 580 EX II that I just bought!
Live view for both video and still frame work (per request in comments)
AND THE PRICE: $1700 RETAIL! OH MY GOD! Definitely counting pennies now!
You can also get it with a kit lens (the 28-135 is hardly “kit”) for only $200 more at $1900
CONS:
Retains the full frame sensor of its predecessor 5D series (per request in comments)
Correction: This has TWO crop sensors: THIS IS NOT FULL FRAME
So, what do you think? Lots of pros, but is it a real step forward when the sensors are the APS-C sized ones? What do you think? Would you pay this price for another crop sensor camera? Sound off in the comments…
Lots to cover today, so rather than banter, let’s get to the news about all the contest stuff going on:
The Comment Contest
Talk about a huge success – had enough feedback and ideas in this one post to really get some great creative ideas in play for the coming months for the blog – after the re-design! Some lucky winner will be announced tomorrow (I am writing this on Sunday, while comments are still being accepted, so a winner cannot be announced right now.)
Win a Wacom Giveaway
The Learning Digital Photography giveaway thread over on Flickr has seen quite an uptick in submissions in the last week. As the deadline approached, more people started getting their “fun” themed shots in, and there’s a lot of creative and fun photos in there. It’s going to be tough to decide this one for sure. Have you got your image submissions in yet? If not, today is the last day to enter, and like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play! You have until midnight tonight (Mountain Time), so it’s now or never!
The September Giveaway – Think in Color!
Announced briefly and teased on post #500, September’s contest is a pretty big one. Two significant items are up for grabs this month. First up, the winner of this contest will receive a Think Tank Multimedia Bag System (5 bags total). For more information on this latest bag system to hit the shelves from ThinkTank Photo, you can read the review I did here, or visit their website for the specifics here. The retail value of this set of bags is easily $350!
Second, Topaz Labs has offered up their plugin suite of actions for Photoshop to the winner of the September giveaway. You may recall my review of the Topaz Labs Adjustment plugin here on the blog, and more of the Topaz plugins will be reviewed here during September, so stay tuned to see all the cool stuff this set can do. The retail value of this software set is valued at $150 for the Adjustment, Denoise, Simplify, Detail, Clean and DeJPEG plugins.
So, let’s see – $350 in bags, and $150 in software = $500 in giveaway items for the September run. That’s a lotta loot! This means the setup will be a little more competitive than last months. Here’s a rundown of the guidelines:
Longest side of the image should be between 600-800pixels. This makes for consistency in galleries, and also for equal view-ability in the judging phase.
One photo per person, submitted through the Flickr thread, which will be created tonight at midnight.
Photos must be taken within 30 days of the contest start date. So, if you have something you took just last month, that is acceptable, but earlier archives will not be accepted.
All images must be work-safe/family-friendly.
This go around, the theme is: Think in Colors (for ThinkTank and the color Topaz). Incorporate the theme of the giveaway somehow into your photos.
Since we’re talking Photoshop and plugins, it makes sense to also note that image editing is permitted, so go ahead and punish those pixels!
Image submissions will be accepted starting September 1st, and will continue through Sat. Sept. 26th.
The other cool thing about the Thinktank/Topaz Labs giveaway is that the folks at Topaz Labs have offered to the winner that their photo be displayed on Topaz Labs website (along with photo credit given, naturally). This is, of course, totally optional, but definitely a cool feather to have in ones’ cap. The caveat here is that the submitting photographer would have to be at least 18 years old.
Phew – that is a lot of contest news! In one sidenote about the blog, a little administrative note that the B&H Photo affiliate link is back, so if you are thinking of purchasing some gear through B&H, if you use the link above, though your price stays the same, B&H will send a few cents back this way to help offset the expense of hosting. (It literally is just a few cents per purchase, so go ahead and spend a fortune!) 🙂 So much for a hardware review today…I’ll be back tomorrow with the last post for August, and the announcement of the Comment Contest winner! In the meantime, happy shooting!
After a short (and unexpected) break from blogging yesterday, here’s a Friday Free-For-All for you!
Here’s where reader input is going to be what makes or breaks the content – that’s right, I am putting it all on the reading audience. You can link to your own site in the comments, and the “Comment Luv” plugin will show the most recent post for fellow bloggers too. Here’s what the content topics are to chose from (you can pick one, two, three, or all of the topics to address in your comment):
What are your favorite iPhone/iTouch applications (for photography)?
Who would you like to see guest-write here on the blog (you can include yourself too)?
If Canon Blogger were to start a monthly newsletter, what would you like to see in said newsletter?
If Canon Blogger were to start publishing eBooks for download, what topics would you like to see addressed?
What one photo tip would you share with others above all else to help improve their photography (and “Take off the lenscap” is not allowed! LOL)
The best part of this? Some lucky commenter will win a $25 gift card to B&H Photo from yours truly! Yup, no sponsors, no tricks, no gimmicks, no nothin’ but free moolah to the best photo store on the planet! All out of my pocket! What am I looking for? Useful content and ideas that will help me generate more resources to share with everyone. So, get your thinking caps on and get to commenting. If you post a comment and think of something later, feel free to add it – but your name can only be “entered” in the Comment Contest once!
When does it end? Midnight Sunday! (August 30, 2009 – so if you are reading through archives and this is like March 15th, 2035, sorry, the contest is over…)
And speaking of contests, you also only have three days left to get your shots into the Flickr thread for the “Win a Wacom” contest! The contest pool of entries has increased a tad bit, but you can’t win if you don’t play, so get a shot or two in over the weekend – as they say at the Lotto – “Hey, ya never know!”
Finally, on this last Friday of August, I’d like to share yet again, an absolutely hysterical strip from What The Duck (I shared it earlier this week), but this just floored me, so had to give another shout out for those that haven’t picked up WTD in your readers yet (and you should!). So, have a laugh, then have some fun and share your thoughts – the sky is the limit. Have a great weekend everyone and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
There’s no denying it – we’ve all deleted countless shots both off our camera and off our computers because they were just even to horrible to admit to publicly. And while filtering out the chaffe from the wheat is a good thing, if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we’ll continue to get chaff and never be able to make bread (take great pictures)! So, don’t just look at blurred photos and toss them instantly without thinking. Don’t immediately delete out of focus subject matter, and most importantly don’t blindly drag your less than stellar work to the trash bin.
So wait – does this mean to keep our bad pictures? For a short while – yes it does. You certainly are not going to go back and create photo galleries for clients with their mouth firmly clamped onto a forkful of food, but in seeing bad pictures and recognizing what makes them bad, helps you to avoid errors in the future. And to help illustrate what I am talking about, you’re going to see something here today that is a cardinal sin in photography – I am going to show you a terrible shot! Take a look at this:
The Virgin Star Tracker Voyage
So, why is this terrible? Well, it was taken from my recently built star tracker. As you may recall from the DIY video on YouTube, the whole purpose of a star tracker is to minimize star trails…to keep the stars bright and in one location as your camera moves relative to their position in the night sky. So, when I saw the above image, needless to say I was disappointed. But in seeing not only the blurred star, I also noticed that the star was much more blurred than it would have been from even being on a stationary tripod. This told me that the problem could be one of several things:
There is a flaw in the design of my tracker, or…
There is a flaw in the execution of the shot, or…
There is a flaw in the design of the camera, or…
There is a flaw in the design of the photographer!
So, back to the drawing board I went, hoping it wasn’t #4! What did I do wrong? Off to the web I went – first stop: Wikipedia on Barn Doors. As it turns out, I learned that while the barn door I built was the simplest in design, referred to more scientifically as a Haig Mount (characterized by a bolt or screw that rotates vertically as it pushes the one door up. Advances in the mathematics show that if you tilt the screw and have it push the door up at an angle, you are using the Isocoles method, which translates to less shift as your exposures get longer. Finally, the curved bolt mount minimizes shift even further. As the details explain at Wikipedia though, the shift only occurs in exposures as your shutter length increases past the 5 minute mark. Since I was doing a 30 second exposure, the design should not have been a factor. Other links off of Wikipeda pointed me to a several sites on how to build better barn doors, using a different method, but one note struck a chord with me:
“The double arm mount shown in the photograph uses a 6mm (M6) threaded rod to drive it.”
The more I thought about it, the threads on the bolt I used were awfully thick, so one revolution in a minute likely pushed the top door more than it should have gone, thus causing the significant star trail. The little jig in the line also told me I was not moving the screw smoothly and that I should probably motorize this if possible. Clearly the project is growing more detail-oriented, and mistakes have been made. But, as I (we) learn from mistakes, our chances of capturing better images only increases with time. As I make the modifications, I’ll report back with more details, but some additional points to consider that I learned through all my additional reading if you’re interested:
Polar alignment is critical – this means you have to have some understanding of the stars and where they are in the sky (time to brush up on the astronomy class I took in college…)
If you want to build a DIY kit – an average to intermediate grasp of math and formulas helps because your dimensions are dependent on one another for proper configuration (I am going back to check my cuts and drilling points on the first kit, but I am happy to know I have some spare parts in reserve…)
Wider lenses are more forgiving on trails, and longer zooms are less forgiving – if you are just a hair off, that movement will be even more pronounced on a field of view that is narrow… (I was shooting on my crop sensor, with a t.4 TC and my 70-200 zoomed all the way in (448mm) – a pretty narrow field of view).
For today though, (and this holds true whether you are into astro photography, landscape, wildlife, portrait, event, or any genre of photography) the instructive point is to learn from your mistakes.As the old saying goes – those that don’t learn from the mistakes from history are doomed to repeat them. I had an economics professor in college say something very similar to the class once too: “I don’t care how many mistakes you make in this class – just don’t make the same one twice!”
So, look at your bad photos – find out whythey did not come out well. Was it the camera? Was it the subject? Or was it the photographer? Learn from your mistakes so you don’t repeat them! Kind of an odd post for today, and for those that are not into astrophotography, I promise to return to some content tomorrow that has a wider interest base. But I figured that when I learn something, the whole point is to share that newfound knowledge with the reading and listening audience. On that note, how about the rest of the CB faithful? Anyone out there have any mistakes or goofs they learned from? Share your mistakes if you dare in the comments! (Or with me privately if you’d like to contribute, but remain anonymous – jason <AT> canonblogger <DOT> com.) Thanks for stopping in all – keep on shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow! Happy shooting!
So, as everyone is likely already aware, Topaz Labs approached me recently to sponsor a giveaway and generously donated their entire suite for some lucky listener/reader. As is always the case, I like to say “thanks” in my own small way by giving the vendor some “air time” on the blog with a personalized review of whatever it is they are contributing.
In the case of the Topaz Suite – boy did I bite off more than I could chew! The Topaz Labs package consists of 7 different Photoshop plugins with somewhat descriptive names for each plugin package, ranging between:
Adjust
Denoise
Simplify
Detail
Clean2
DeJPEG
Vivacity
There’s also two video plugins available: Enhance and Moment. I’ll address those in another post, just because, well… even just the 7 plugins for Photoshop was going to be a lot of plugins to review in one blog post! Thinking I was up to the challenge, I powered on and installed each package, then fired up Photoshop. Wanting to find an image that had some depth, color and tonal range to it, I picked one from a photo walk I did in Boulder a month or so ago of the tulips:
Boulder Tulips
Kind of a neat image: one flower all by itself ina sea of red tulips. The green stalks and purple base also served as a nice contrasting set of colors to see how things progressed. So, into the first plugin I went – the Topaz Adjust. Lo and behold, within this one plugin are 21 different photo adjustment presets! That’s right – 21! Here’s a quick look at the interface:
See that left-hand column? There’s 21 different variations of creative adjustments done to your photo to give you a specific look and feel to your images – all at the click of a button. To the bottom center are all the slider controls for exposure, details, color, and yes – even noise handling. You can select a creative style, then edit within that style to go for a unique look and feel all your own! This is a very clever and unique approach to photography work flows, because now you can look at your photo with various edits in an simple and easy preview to see how various adjustment styles will look on them. I’d like to give some face time to each style but there just isn’t room here in the blog to do each justice. So….enter the photo gallery!
That’s right, I took my one image and ran it through each of the 21 possible adjustment styles. On each style I just left the default sliders in place, but what’s especially cool is that these slider values change from one style to another, so if you are paying attention to the numbers, and you like a particular style, but want to drop just a touch of the contrast, or bump a touch of the noise, you can do so easily and intuitively! Pretty darn cool in my book. The styles go alphabetically in order in the gallery:
Clarity
Color Blast
Crisp
Detailed
Dramatic
Enhanced Contrast
Equalize
Exposure Color Stretch
Exposure Correction
Mild Color Pop
Mild Contrast
Mild Detail
Neutralizer
Photo Pop
Portrait Drama
Portrait Smooth
Psychedelic
Simplify
Small Details
Smooth and Flat
and Vibrance
To see the overall effect each adjustment style has on your images, visit this companion photo gallery here that shows each – the original is listed first, followed by the 21 different adjustment styles!
This alone would be worth a giveaway prize – but this is just one of the entire suite that Topaz Labs has donated to the blog/podcast for our next giveaway. The rest of their various plugins will have to be reviewed individually on the blog, so this means during September, I’ll take a more detailed look at each of the plugins – clearly more than one will have to be addressed each week, and I’ll try to post an image gallery so you can see the effects of each plugin on some photos. This is definitely a product to consider as a part of your arsenal of tools though – I’ve already seen so many possibilities for photo galleries and output options on my own collections that I could be busy for months just reviewing what these plugins have to offer.
One downside to the Topaz plugins is that they are only functional in Photoshop and Aperture. From what I understand, a LR set is in R&D right now, and should be released in very short order. But for the time being – Photoshop and Aperture are your installation options. The only other downside I can see to all these options is the risk of decision paralysis – when prompted with too many options, it can often lead one to indecision. For this reason, I’ve designed an action to use in my own work flow when using the Topaz Labs Adjust plugin. Here’s what the action does:
It takes my original file and creates 21 duplicate layers.
Each adjustment style is then applied to its own layer, and the image is flattened and saved by that style name as a lower-resolution jpg file.
I then go into Lightroom and look at all 21 (and the original) in either the Library module or in a web gallery module to see which one or two I like the most.
I’ll then go back to Photoshop and find those two layers and delete the rest.
Save that resulting file as a PSD
On each adjustment style, I then tried some various tweaks on the sliders to see if there were minor adjustments that I found more appealing to my tastes.
This is just my work flow that I am thinking will work well for me – I like having at least a few options available, and since different scenes call for different adjustment styles – the action will help expedite my work flow. It took a while to create the action as you have to be methodical and pay attention – but the resulting options for workup are worth it in my opinion.
Anyway, back to the Topaz Labs Adjust plugin – this thing rocks and I could easily see it become a part of my work flow (who am I kidding – it really already has since I built an action to support it! LOL) Don’t forget, next month you can WIN not just the Adjust plugin but the entire suite from Topaz Labs. Keep checking in for details and the theme announcement. Thanks to the good folks at Topaz Labs not only for their generous contribution to the LDP podcast, but also for the R&D they’ve invested in this entire series of plugins! Judging from my review of the first component – this is sure to become part of the standard set of utilities for photographers and creatives!
Okay, that’s probably enough for today. If you’re still chomping at the bit for more info about Topaz Labs software – go check out their blog – it’s got some great info on there too and really goes in depth from Product Manager Eric Yang (this is his Twitter link – follow him, very cool guy!)! I’ve already added it to my own list of RSS feeds! Check back tomorrow as we get back to the previous project I started – the manually adjusted Star Tracker! In the meantime, you also have only a short time left in the Wacom Giveaway – Friday is the last day to submit your photos! So, if you want to Win a Wacom (Bamboo Fun) – enter today over at the Flickr Thread!
Happy shooting everyone and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
It’s rare for me to post twice in one day, but saw this from a friend on Twitter (I normally pick up WTD via my feed). It goes to show how complex (or simple) photography can be:
As you may recall from the video announcement on Friday’s post #500 – the giveaway product for September includes the newest bag system from Thinktank Photo. You read that right, it’s a bag system! Totaling $320 in value retail the bags include the following: Continue reading “Post #501: Hardware Review – Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag”→
Not sure where to begin really – this is all kind of surreal, because I really didn’t think that this milestone would see me where things are today with the blog. Needless to say, the blog has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, so thanks to everyone who’s made that possible. Without further ado, here’s the big news (via YouTube video, so feed readers, stop in and get the news by taking a few minutes out of your day for this exciting video news bulletin!):
For the data hounds, here’s a rundown of some of the stats for a snapshot of what’s that’s happened thus far on the blog:
Posts = 500
Comments = 1107
107 Categries
544 Tags
Total Visitors = 231,000
Single Highest Traffic Day: Thursday, April 10, 2008
Subscribers: 1006
Highest Subscriber Count Ever: 1018 (4 days ago)
That’s a lot of stuff when you think about it. So, for all the thousands of you that have been tuning in regularly, thanks so much for all your kind thoughts, words, and contributions over all this time. Tune in to the YouTube video for the contest news and some other fun stuff! In the meantime, keep on shooting – you know what’s coming up in the next 500 posts! Happy shooting everyone. Have an awesome weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday for post #501!
As promised, as we gear up for magical #500 tomorrow – more content has been added to the blog. This is not something that can be gotten from the feed though, so for you feed readers out there, stop over the the blog and check out the new widget in the side panel that has links to… AudioBoo!
So, what is Audioboo? AudioBoo is a unique way for people with iPhones and iPod Touches to share their short audio recordings – courtesy of the folks at Audioboo.fm It’s kind of a cool concept, because the recordings (called “boos”) are typically short – 2-5 minutes in length, and if you visit the site, you can see there is quite a bit of content there. If you’d like to pick up my audio feed from that directly, you can grab the RSS for that by following this link: http://audioboo.fm/profile/CBJason.
The whole premise behind this is that I can deliver audio tips and tricks, thoughts and ideas relating to photography to you whenever a good idea strikes! It should be a fun experiment and I can promise that there will be some personal stuff to give a little more variety too (like my favorite brew at a local microbrewery!) Fair warning – as football season rapidly approaches, you may here more Broncos talk too! I’ll try to stay on point with photography ideas though, so either pick up the feed there, or (preferrably) visit the blog regularly for content updates. This is definitely in a beta stage and may grow or fade away depending on interest, time, and other factors.
In other news, I’ve had a number of people as about photos taken from the star tracking station I built and recorded onto YouTube. Unfortunately, the astrophotography gods have not been kind thus far as the night sky has had a lot of cloudiness. Hopefully this weekend will be more favorable – but I am planning on packing it into the bottom of my checked back on my upcoming trip.
Speaking of which, thanks to everyone who gave their thoughts on what the last book should be for the trip. I’ll likely be making my book purchases through Amazon this weekend (unless the library comes through for me again! 🙂 ), and I’ll have an announcement on Monday of who wins the B&H gift card, so be sure to stay tuned for that!
Given the title of this post – you should at least have an idea of what’s coming tomorrow – but it’s a two-fold announcement, and because it’s just so cool, I am going to be announcing something big for the September Giveaway too! And how’s that for a great segue to let you know that there is little time left in the August Giveaway – where you can Win a Wacom! (Click the link for the Flickr thread and details.)
Well, that’s enough for today – happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the big one!
