Lightning Flashes

Last night at the Meadowvale Photography Club, we opened our collective new purchase – a lighting set consisting of two powerful flashes, two not so strong stands to hold them up plus some odds and ends to make them work.

Almost immediately it became apparent one flash wasn’t working. Carefully going through the manual (not helpful) and trying different ways to set the flash off (using the test button and various cameras which we confirmed worked, swapping out parts) we established the bulb must be shot. It was a great reminder about how even the simplest photo shoot can end in peril with just a minor equipment failure.

Now with even more members than ever, we can have multiple lighting stations and models to shoot. Next month we’ll have Ashley back and hopefully others. Our first studio model shoot of the year!

• Send Andrew ideas for external shoots
• Model shoot for Dec 9th, 2009 at old Meadowvale Townhall
• Send Arun your photos if you haven’t already done so
• Leslie St Spit shoot this Saturday
• Butterfly shoot – but it has to be 7am. Let Andrew know if there’s interest

Accessory 101

No, this isn’t about clothes or fashion. I’m talking about the nifty Asus netbook that I’m using. Pretty much every digital camera has an LCD screen on the back to show the photo you took. The BIG screens these days are about 3”x3”. They’re limited by the camera size, expense and weight but the difference between last generation 2”x2” seems enormous. But what about a 10”x6” screen instead? Impossible? Not with my little netbook.

It’s just not the coolio factor. My netbook works really great. First, it’s light – a mere 2.4 lbs or 1.1kg. My camera and flash might outweigh it. Second – its SD card reader is about 10-17x faster than the one on my desktop. Taking a 5 minute break while on a photo shoot, I could copy them over and show them to the model before they went home… if I wanted to. Third – it runs Picasa or Adobe Elements (barely) should I want to analyze photos while waiting on a train.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not perfect. It’s rather small to use as your only computer. But it’s damn close. And at $290USD fit’s not even my most expensive accessory. It’s a $290 netbook with 1GB of ram and 160GB of hard drive space, and it’s a great way to backup your photos. Buying a devoted backup hdd-with-reader-plus-LCD screen seems quaint in comparison.

I still need to colour profile the LCD screen (or figure out any colour casts) to start fixing the white balance/exposure settings on any photos I take, but I’ll get the bugs worked out. I promise.

NewsU.org - Learning for Free

To improve aspects of my photography, I've been checking out some of the free courses from NewsU for photojournalism courses to analyse what makes a good photograph. It has been educational - I recognize some of the contest winners (well their photos anyway - Obama running up the stairs for instance) and some photos are just spectacular.

Even when you've got the camera in your hands, you still need to look for the one that'll make the most impact.

DPS Advice

I just read this off of Digital Photography School - http://digital-photography-school.com/do-you-have-too-much-camera-gear

1. Keep a list of what you use and don’t use during a photo shoot.

At the Bovaird photoshoot I used (plus my 50mm and 18-55mm lenses):
a) Reflector + tripod to hold reflector
b) my 55-200mm VR lens
c) SB-400 flash backed off slightly to underexpose + rechargable batteries

At the Fall Colours photoshoot I actually used (though I had tripods, reflectors, monopod, reflector plus my 50mm and 18-55mm lenses):
a) my 55-200mm VR lens
b) SB-400 flash backed off slightly to underexpose + rechargable batteries

2. Push the limits of your existing gear. Good advice.
3. Focus on adding knowledge, not gear, to your camera bag. Better advice.

My Favourite Lenses

Ah lens envy. Every photographer has it. Every photographer has another lens they'd like to own, should they be asked. Unfortunately equipment is cost-prohibitive, so most folks can't afford every one. There are lenses that stretch any budget at $25k each, and weigh too much to be carried around. Camera manufacturers (or sellers like Futureshop and Best Buy) are now providing 'suggested lens kits' at a reasonable cost, including a short telephoto (55-200mm) and a short zoom (18-55mm) to cover all the bases.

I didn't get one of those. I bought my lenses in stages, after the 'need' presented itself. First the 18-55mm kit lens. Later on a whim, I purchased the 55-200mm telephoto. Not too long ago, I completed my group with a fast 50mm F1.8 for those low light situations. I consider these the basic lens kit that satisfy most of my needs (for now).

Sometimes, cameras come with the 55-200mm lens or something else (18-70mm, 18-105mm or 18-200mm). Though I'd love those other 'kit' lenses, at this point they wouldn't add anything to the focal lengths I already have, nor are they much faster to warrant the extra cost. The recent Nikon addition - the 35mm F1.8 would be great if I didn't already have the 'nifty fifty' 50mm lens or if my camera didn’t have the internal auto-focus motor like the D5000, D3000, D40 or D60.

Some shots are 'off-limits' or require flash. I have no awesome fast, long lenses (like a 70-300mm F2.8 for $2,000) and some day I might pick up its slower macro cousin (70-300mm F4-5.6 for $250 or the OS version for $600) when my kid starts organized sports. But until that day comes, I can summarize my needs as: 1) 18-55mm - wide angle shots of landscapes and cityscapes 2) 55-200mm - short telephoto for portraits and unobtrusive photography and 3) 50mm F1.8 - for low light situations or super-sharpness of action (like my daughter in a swing).

All of these will fit nicely in a camera bag without weighing you down or breaking your budget.

Unforgiven

I don't normally run into confrontations while taking photographs. Most of the time it's pointed at my daughter who seems mostly oblivious to it. But recently I've had to explore the rules and laws in Canada. I was looking to upload a few pictures taken of the Toronto skyline recently to a stock photography site.

Reading the site http://ambientlight.ca/laws.php made it clear that taking photos in any public space is allowed in Canada, however there are special rules governing Toronto. I had to make a few calls around to the Toronto Parks and Toronto Island before I got a straight answer. As long as I wasn't coming with a 'studio kit' or taking wedding photos, I was fine. The same photos could have been made in a boat two yards away. I actually suspect I was at the waterline - technically not private or park land, but alas it doesn't matter.

The point is, know your rights. For non-Canadians I point to http://digital-photography-school.com/im-a-photographer-not-a-terrorist-how-to-shoot-in-public-with-confidence. It was a good read regardless, for those times you're accosted by security guards and actual cops. I've heard more than a few stories of police officers forcing photographers to delete photos or confiscating cell phones in order to remove pictures of arrests and shootings.

Of Birds and Parks

I uploaded my first 18 photos to Fotolia last night and attempted to find my way through the maze of keyword requirements to finalize my submission. They have not, as of yet, been accepted though I'm sure I'll get feedback soon either way. I noticed that when I searched using my keywords, a rather large selection of types of photos were returned. Somehow, pictures of hummingbirds found there way into 'conservation park' or 'forest' and I'm clueless on why this occured.

The cynic in me might think that photographers just upload every single dictionary word they can find in order to get their pictures included in every possible search. This is unfortunate. How do I get my pictures of 'rocks and forests near lake' to the top of the list? Ken Rockwell's suggestion that, "if you can't see why the picture is interesting as a thumbnail, it's not interesting" is true. Potential buyers will scan through looking no further than the thumbnail.

Clearly this will dictate some of my composition decisions going forward.

Digital Processing - the Work

I've avoided taking photos in RAW format for many great reasons. 1) the files are bigger and take forever to copy to the computer 2) JPG is easily shared 3) JPG is quickly displayed by every photo editor known to man 4) there weren't many free editors/organizers that read in RAW 5) Nikon does a great job of getting the picture right in JPG format if I do an adequate job of photographing...

Google Picasa does read in RAW format but for the D50 NEF - it's just a little dull. The colours aren't vibrant. Sometimes the exposure for the RAW is horrid. Picasa does a lot of great things well. It's great for uploading and sharing to web albums like Flickr and Facebook. The thumbnail display is super fast. It continues to improve the easy editing like retouching (getting rid of skin blemishes, dust spots on the sensor or snot in baby's noses), red-eye reduction and if I was using JPG entirely, I would never use anything else.

But I got my hands on Photoshop Elements - which I recommend you try the free trial. Picasa has spoiled me on a few things. In Adobe Organizer, the thumbnails are slower, the interface is far less intuitive, and the editor brings my computer to an absolute crawl... However a LOT of my RAW photos that would have died in the recycling bin in Picasa have been completely revived. For absolute vivid control around colour, Adobe's RAW Converter is top of the line.

So when I'm in the field, and I know that I'm clipping highlights or I know I need a little flexibility when I get the shots home, I'll shoot RAW and have some lattitude with Adobe Elements to save those few mistakes that I would not have kept before. And for those perfectly exposed, perfectly composed and perfectly shot photos that would have been great even as JPG? Well that's what the Save As is for.

Two New Things

Contrary to various philosophies of the camera manufacturers, your photography will not improve simply by buying a new camera, lens or flash. If your composition, exposure and subject matter sucked before, it will probably suck after whatever purchase you've made. Investment in the craft will push personal improvement far higher than throwing money at it. Even sucky equipment has the ability to make great photographs with a little patience and skill.

What I love about photography is that I keep learning new things about my camera years after I bought it. For instance, almost every new camera out there has ISO speeds of between 100-3200. These ISO speeds are often crappy past 1600 but the camera makers offer them anyway. Ken Rockwell pointed out along with some guy on Flickr that a D50 can do the same thing - sort of. By underexposing an image at ISO 1600 by one or two F-spots, you can work the image once you get it home with the S-curves etc in Photoshop to push or pull the sensor (like they used to push/pull film) to extend the ISO on the D50 from ISO 100-3200. There will be more noise in the image - but that would be true too in the new cameras that offer the ISO 3200 (or 6400+). Taking a 'free' version of noise reduction software like Neat Image would improve it further.

Should I ever find myself out in the field without a fast enough shutter speed, this is definitely an option to try.

Second thing I learned: you can set the D50 to PRE for the White Balance. Take a photo (like aiming it at a 18% grey card or something pure white (OR just aim it directly at your light source if it's not the sun) and from then on, your camera will use that white balance. Great for those lighting situations where you have no idea what kind of light it is and can't quite seem to get a 'balance'.

So now my D50 is now taking pictures just like it did before, but now I have no reason or goal to buy something new for the features my D50 already has.

Expose Yourself

Every SLR photographer deserves to learn how to properly expose a picture in their camera. So far, I've slowly accumulated knowledge in a series of steps.

1) There are usually 3 metering modes in your camera. Leave it on Matrix until you know what you're doing.

2) When using the Manual mode, there's a small graph you can see in your viewfinder. Changing the Aperature and Shutter Speed cause the little meter to move left or right. If you're too far one way or the other, an arrow points away from the centre. When you're in the middle, the picture will be exposed correctly - as guessed by your camera. Once I figured this out, I happily centred the (Matrix) meter before pressing the shutter, feeling marvelous that I was taking photos just like a professional.

3) Then I realized that my photos at night or in snow weren't turning out. That's because the meter works as it was engineered but not as expected. The meter wanted to make the photo average - and around cloudy winter days the meter's centre made the snow dirty grey. John Shaw's book "Nature Photography" corrected me. Using the spot metre and determining what would be exposed as light (like snow) or medium (like grass, sky, skin tones) or dark (like shadows), I now choose what should be exposed correctly and choose the settings appropriately. You can really mess up the Aperature/ Shutter Priority settings if you leave it on Spot and aim it at something light or dark. Be aware.

4) Shooting during mid-day causes unwelcome, ugly shadows to show up on subject's faces. Using flash (on-camera first, then off-camera TBA) can change the exposure again, leaving the settings you select to only capture ambient lighting. I haven't mastered flash yet.

5) Now I find out (from Understanding Exposure by Bryan Patterson) that shooting in RAW can fix exposure settings by 2/3 of a stop to reduce/soften clipping (jagged over-exposed highlights). This is another tool to fix the photo should you miss it in-camera.

Good luck. May the light shine soft and inviting.

Mr. Microstock

I've never really thought about doing this, but there are professional photographers out there who sell their photos for a few dollars each up to thousands of dollars for indefinite exclusivity rights for full sized 24MP photos.

See the strobist article on Yuri Arcurs here or read his own blog.

In any case, there are quite a few rules you need to follow, and the real money doesn't start pouring in until a few thousand photos have been downloaded. Photographers can get better photo prices if they only sign up with one stock site, but it'd be a while before much money started to flow.

But the thought of earning money for photos I've already taken is appealing. Perhaps thousands upon thousands of dollars by reaching out to the Internet and letting it work its sales magic. That's real magic.

Honing Your Craft

I recently picked up an autobiography of Ansel Adams, probably the finest creative photographer ever. He was already an artist seeking perfection on the piano long before he ever made his first photograph. He firmly believes that this anal-retentivity from his musician days [my paraphrase] helped to make him a photographer that searched for that perfect photo and not be simply satisfied with an approximation.

I also once played the piano. I did not, however, achieve a skill level that would impress anyone. Indeed, I followed a philosophy of always wanting a new song to play, and never enjoyed replaying a song after I had already tired of it, regardless of its level of perfection.

My recent photoshoot with a model in Erindale Park made me realize a couple of things. First, I do not know what I'm looking for in the perfect photo. I'm sure I took hundreds of photos in the span of 2 hours. After taking them home and pouring over them, I pared the list down to 50 photos. Then after printing the shots, I cut it down to 10 by eliminating poses that were beautiful but had harsh shadows or points of blown out highlights. These last ten were what I'd consider adequate. Better poses had been cut but the lighting on each of these was satisfactory. However only two were what I'd call good. Lighting was nice, composition was strong and the model's expression touched something like genuine. But it was only after the fact that I knew what I wanted.

Although I'm sure Ansel Adams never took as many photos as I did in such a short time, I also believe that he often had many unusable prints that were never shown to anyone. I've heard before that a sign of a great photographer is one who only shows his great photographs. But I don't want to take several hundred pictures to get one or two good ones. I simply want:
A) Perfect exposure every time
B) Perfect poses from my model (having a few unusable photos when it’s the model's fault might be okay)
C) No crap in the background.
These are the three main reasons why any given photograph was cut.

I'm starting to view my camera, not as a magic box that takes nice photographs, but instead as a tool that has limitations, weaknesses and deficits that need to be recognized and worked around. Buying a new camera won't help - the problems faced are more to do with physics than camera construction. Getting what I want has gotten harder recently. Is this what the road to perfectionist feels like?

Model Shoot - June 2009

Oddly enough this site keeps coming up as the first link in Google for "Meadowvale Photography", so I figured I could update it once or twice a month. Keep in mind that the events are kept updated at the Meet-Up Group Calendar at:
http://www.meetup.com/Meadowvale-Photography/calendar/

We had an outdoor model shoot at Erindale Park on Sunday. For those who attended, send the photos to Arun.

Also - a Toronto night shoot is on June 19th, 2009. Meet at the Queens Quay terminal. Further details at:
http://www.meetup.com/Meadowvale-Photography/calendar/10621787/

Cheers.

For up-to-date events see:

Meet-Up Group Calendar

The Meet-Up Group provides a gallery, forums to discuss with other members, tips & suggestions and an Event Calendar for up-coming events.

This site will no longer be maintained, until further notice.

April 8th AGM

This is our last formal meeting of the year.

We will vote for our new board for the 2009-2010 season, discuss a calendar schedule for that season (i.e. what we would like to do) and plan events for the summer months.

We will also share photos. Please bring prints or your laptop/memo stick as we will have a digital project to display and share our work with eachother.

March

What: March Meetup - Flash Photography

When: March 11, 2009 7:30 PM

Meetup Description: Flash photography using multiple flashes and diffusers.

Using other members of the club as "models" we will experiment with flash photography using multiple flashes and diffusers. Flash photography can be a less expensive means of model photography than purchasing a dedicated strobe lighting system.

John will be leading the discussion.

February Saturday Outing

Meet up at Tim Hortons at Britannia/Mavis for carpooling at 9am on Saturday for a trip up to Belfountain for landscape photography.

RSVP via the Meadowvale Photography Association Meet-up group, and for the latest details.

February Outing

February's Saturday outing was postponed.

On February 11th, members did a macro shoot of various interesting things. Thanks to John who brought an extra macro lens. Some photos here.

Possible studio session with a model for March. Bring lighting.

Reminder that April is the Annual General Meeting.

January Mid-Month Photo Outting

We'll carpool up to the Hockely Valley, Mansfield area and stop to take pictures of the rural landscape in winter. This area has some great scenery. Please RSVP in the Meet-Up Group if interested in car-pooling and more detailed instructions.

Jan 14th - Candle Light Shoot

Ever shoot in low level light? How about by candle light?
This table top shoot at the club's facility will show members that you don't need expensive gear and lighting to turn out some great fine art photos.

You will need a tripod. (I will have an extra of two to lend). And if you have reflectors please bring.
Remember to lable your equipment.

Update: some photos can be found here. The album at the Meet-Up Group should have more.