Photography tips

Price rise or ripoff?

photography — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:15:49 -0500

Today I headed down to my preferred local photo kiosk only to get a very rude shock when it came to pricing. Let me take a look at a few things before I get to specifices as to why I was shocked!

I usually only print photos at 6x8 or larger and quite a while ago I took a few prepared photos to all of the local places and got prints to compare the quality and service. I found 2 places (out of about 6 or 7 that I tested) that I was both happy with the price, convenience and service. Ok, I really found 3, but the 3rd place is the pro lab that I trust my larger prints to (and only use when I have a large quantity of smaller prints to do).

For the sake of convenience lets just give these places a name - lets call the first kiosk bunny photos, the second one Hardly Normal and the Pro lab - well they are the best place in Adelaide for your prints - Atkins.

The Retail Giant, Hardly Normal, is convenient to my work and I often drop in at lunch time to get prints. They charge a reasonable $0.99 for my 6x8 prints. The service is pretty good and I usually get prints within 30 minutes, or if they will be longer, I pick them up on the way home from work.

The Kiosk, Bunny photos used to have a reasonable rate of about $6 for non Gold club members and $1.99 for Gold club members. The service has been pretty good and prints were usually done well within 1 hour. Yes, they are very convenient to where I live and I used them often. Until today, they were a place that I would spend $300-600 a year at.

Well, the Sticker shock hit me today and The bunny will not be getting very much of my $ anymore.

When I went in today, I found that they have jacked up their prices by a massive 300%! Yes, that is a 300% price increase!

They simply got too greedy - they went from a wonderful 1 hour service for digital prints to a 3 tiered pricing model and decided to really treat their long-term loyal customers with contempt by doing so. Now, for a 1 hour Service I have to pay a massive $5.99, 24 hour service is $3.99 and for a 48 hour service (yes, 2 days) it is still the $1.99 per print. While the 2 day service is stilla reasonable price it is certainly no longer convenient.

Suddenly, they have gone from a convenient and cost effective 1 hour service into a money grabbing ripoff to privide what you used to get.

So, today, I did not get the 4 photos I wanted prints for done - it would have cost me a massive $23.96 for me to have them done. Instead, I hopped in my car and drove about 15km to that Hardly Normal place and paid $3.96 instead. Yes, it was a little less convenient, but a whole lot cheaper.

As an aside, the Pro lab that I use does not even charge this much! Yes, their prices for small prints are a bit dearer and they have a 2-3 day turnaround but the quality of the print is consistent and top quality. Whenever this is important to me I don't even consider one of the 1 hour labs.

I use the 1 hour labs as a way of doing proffs of photos that I am considering printing out larger (at the pro lab of course) as I like to quickly get an idea as to how good a print might look.

Opportunities

photography — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:16:00 -0500

Photo opportunites can be found almost anywhere. When you think of taking photos you do not need to look very far to find some great things to take photos of. I am bringing this up because I often hear and see forum comments that people cannot find things to take photos of.

To that, my usual reply is that you are simply not looking!

I have been taking a bit of a look back thru some of my older photos recently and discovered that over 1/2 of them were taken within 1km of my house. I would have guessed that around 1/4 of them would have been if I had not looked.

The reason I am bringing this up now is that over the last few weeks I have been taking a series of photos of some toadstools as they have grown.

All of them were taken with a long focal length so that the frame could be filled with the subject. If you want to see a bigger version of these photos - head over to my photo blog and look at them there.

Now, how far did I have to go to get this shot? Glad you asked.

Thats Right, 20 feet from my front door!

So, next time you think you cannot find something interesting to take a photo of, go outside, go no further than the extent of your own yard and look. I didn't have far to go and because of that it meant that I could keep taking photos of it every few days and watch it change in front of my eyes.

Toadstools have been growing in the same spot for the last few years, each Year I have been trying to get an acceptable photo and finally, this year I managed to not only get 1 but to get 1 on several different days. I will keep an eye on them and take more photos of them over the upcoming days and weeks and I will probably print 3 of them at different stages of growth.

Rural Panorama

photography — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:26:32 -0500

I have just found the time to get around to processing several photos I took a couple of months ago. The photos were taken as a panorama image and I have finally joined them all together to create the 1 image.

The Web-szied image I ended up with is around 260K in file size and 2715 x 280 pixels. Take a look at the Eden Valley Panorama then take a look at a Google map of the location.

Ok, now you have seen a small sized image I want to discuss how it came to be.

First off, I was shooting with my Olympus E3 and 50-200mm Zoom at 50mm. I took 18 individual photos in portrait orientation and then joined them all together. I metered the whole scen and found an averge that I could deal with, then set the camera to manual and proceeded to shoot the whole scene handheld. Each photo was shot at F10, 1/250sec.

I am quite lazy when it comes to Post Processing and hate having to spend time at it, so I used Auto Pano Pro to produce the stitched image. I simply pointed it at the 18 RAW images and told it to do it's stuff! After around 10 minutes it had produced a preview image and it looked pretty good, so I sent it to work to produce the full-sized Image.

The Pano covers a 173.8 x 17.93 degrees field of view, and the full sized image is 32772 x 3380 pixels or around 110Megapixels in size! From this, I noted that the un-stitched image is 3648 high and this means I was very accurate right across the whole 18 photos in terms of keeping it level - I had less than 8% that needed cropping off to bring it back to a rectangular shape.

When it came to processing the stitched image I could not simply open it with PSE 5 (Photoshop Elements) ans PSE will only open files that are a maximum of 30,000 pixels! So, rather than spending another 45minutes rendering the image in APP again I simply opened it with the Gimp. All I used the Gimp for was to resize the image down to 30,000 x 3094 in size then saved it.

Once I had an image that I could open in PSE5 I then simpy did a little bit of processing - I just told it to use Auto smart fix in the enhance menu, made some very minor curves adjustment then finally sharpened it.

Now, my only problem is going to be printing - as the print size of this photo will be approx 31cm x 304cm! I took a look at the pricelist of the local Pro lab and such a print would set me back $600, so I guess I won't be printing this one.

Food photography

photography — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:08:38 -0500

Everyone at one time has a go at food photography. Yes, I have had a go in the past and failed miserably! Taking photos of food and having it look good is not so easy.

I want to show a couple of my recent food photos and talk about how I made the shot. Over the last week, I set up 2 distinctly different "shoots" and worked them until I got what I was looking for.

Ok, lets jump right in with the Results of the first shoot and a shot of the "studio"

Technical Info of the Chocolate cake photo. ISO 100, F8, 20Seconds with 35mm macro lens.

The "studio" in this case was very simple - I took my trusty white sheet outside and laid it down on a log and chair! Then, I simply set up my tripod to get the shot.

If you examine the cake photo for a moment you will see that cut edge that is facing us is all sharp and in focus. You will also notice that I was taking a photo of a dark cake on a white plate.

I literally waited all day to find the right time to take this photo - it was taken only once the sun had dropped leaving me a wonderful soft twilight to work in. This light had both advantages and disadvantages. Of course, the advantage is that there is no better soft, diffused light than just after the sun has dipped below the horizon! the disadvantage is that you get around 15 minutes a day to make the most of it, and then you will need to shoot quite long exposures.

I received a bit of feedback from a couple of photo forums on this photo and submitted it to my list of micro stock agencies (already accepted in 2 from 4 submissions). The feedback on the forums was invaluable on how to further improve this type of photos.

In processing the cake shot I had very little to do as I made sure I got it right in camera. All I needed to do was to set the white balance correctly so that the plate in fact looked white.

A few days later, I came across another resource online that had several excellent articles on food photography - http://www.foodportfolio.com/blog/

After reading all the articles I decided to put things into practice and see what I could do to get a better photo.

Lets look at the end result and my "studio" for this next shoot.

Technical Details of the Anzac Biscuits photo: ISO 1250, F9, 1/20sec, 117mm (equiv to 234mm on 35mm camera), plus flash.

As you can see, this time I concentrated on not only providing a main subject, but also to "style" the whole scene somewhat.

This time, I was of course inside and my "studio" was the edge of my desk. Being inside in controlled light meant that I had plenty of time to set things up and really work with the subject to get the best possible photo that I could. I tried all sorts of things with the setup and the light and took quite a few photos before I got something I was happy with.

You will note a few things from the scene such as the camera position and the placement of the flash - which were both important to getting the photo.

The Focal length of 117mm was just what worked for me to capture the scene I was looking for and to additionally totally avoid any unwanted elements in the picture.

You will notice that the flash was at about a 10 O'clock position and very, very low - probably about 5 degrees above the level of the plate. Also, you can see where I have propped up some white card to reflect some of the flash back into the plate to minimise the amount of harsh shadow and keep everything a bit soft.

As the room had a large fluro light in it and I was shooting with a fairly high ISO I only needed very low power on the flash to literally rake the light just over the surface. I was using remote wireless triggers to trigger it and opted for a 2nd curtain sync. The final shot, I was using a GN (guide number) of only 3 to provide the necessary highlights.

Processing this photo was fairly minimal as well - after all, I spent a lot of time getting it right in-camera. What I did need to do was to adjust the White balance and warm it up a little. I wanted to make it look like the sun was shining onto the food. I had prepared the look with the very low lighting angle. I also needed to adjust the colours a little to bring back the rich golden shades that were a bit washed out under the fluro lights.

I hope I have shown you that even though food photos are difficult to get that with a bit of effort the results can be pretty good! I still need to take more photos of food at room temperature to get my techniques right before I attempt to take photos of freshly cooked food - as this can be a lot harder to get a great shot when you literally only have 1 to 2 minutes where the food looks it's best.

Supporting structures

photography — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:29:24 -0500

Well, tripods to be exact. In the last week I finally got around to going out and getting a new tripod. For too long I have been getting by with a good tripod that has a lousy head on it and finally did something about it.

I went along to the local store with my Camera with my biggest, heaviest lens attached to it to find a suitable combo for my needs. I came home with a Mafrotto 190XPROB with an 804RC2 Head and a couple of extra Quick Release plates. My needs for a tripd are fairly modest and the biggest lens and Camera is a total of less than 3Kg in weight. I wanted a tripod that was going to be sturdy, give me a lot of options in relation to height and not too heavy in itself.

The 190XPROB is made from alloy and has 3 section legs plus a center pole that can easily be moved from vertical to horizontal. The legs can spread to 3 positions to allow the ultimate in flexibility. With the center pole horizontal, and the legs at their maximum spread I can get way down to 8cm from the ground or right up to around 165cm high as well.

The 804RC2 Head is a 3 way pan/tilt mechanism. The head has a couple of large easy to twist handles - one for pan and one for tilt, along with another knob to rotate the head.

On the night I bought it, I headed into Adelaide to take some night photos of the Northern Lights - which was a wondeful display as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. I had used my old tripod to get some photos the week before and was not really happy with the results. On my first outing, I found that the head was really easy to use to allow me to align everything - even in the dark. This was a huge step-up from my older tripod.

So, yes, I was pretty happy with all aspects of the new tripod and head.

This afternoon I went back to a location I recently visited with my new tripod in order to take a few pictures of something that caught my eye. First off a couple of photos, then I'll explain.

The first photo is the shot I had visualised and wanted to get, and the 2nd shot I took to show How I got it.

For interest sake the top photo was shot at 100ISO, f9 1/50sec at 11mm using center weighted average metering.

I wanted to get in nice and close to the Grass tree and have it fill the frame. Additionally, I wanted only sky in the background.

So, the tripod allowed me to position my Camera quite close to the base of the grass tree on the uneven ground on the side of the hill. I positioned the center column horizontally (as I wanted a portrait shot). One leg was extended almost horizontally and the other 2 were set to the required height. Once I had the right spot, it was a fairly simple matter to adjust the pan/tilt to get the image square. I was able to get the phoo with just the sky in the background. I guess it also hels that my camera has Live view so I could see what I was shooting without getting down on the ground as well.

My old tripod would not have helped me to get this shot at all - as it does not have the flexibility in terms of setup as the new one. Additionally, without a tripod would have meant I would have had to lie on my back and try and get the shot.

So, a good tripod should allow you to get the shot in any conditions and I think that mine has already been a great investment.

Let the pictures tell a story

photography — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:56:33 -0600

Using a series of photos to tell a story sounds like something that is pretty easy to do. As the theme for Assignment #1 at fourthirdsphoto was to do just this I decided to put together a story in images.

Ok, straigt into the images - which tell a story.

Making Capsules.

Well, the story is pretty obvious - the step by step of making capsules.

Now the assignment suggested 3-6 and I only went 1 over, but I thought it needed the 7 to truly tell the story.

Of course, there was another side to this - the actual taking of the photo's of course.

The "studio" for this shoot was once again very simple. I just set up a piece of neutral coloured wood on a table then put my piece of smoky gray perspex on top of it for my work surface. I choose to use perspex as the background for the reason that it gives a muted reflection. I wanted a shiny, but not to reflective surface and this time the piece of Perspex was a good choice.

I used all natural lighting with indirect light from a nearby large window. The light level was in fact fairly low so long shutter times were needed. The time varied for each shot between 2 seconds and 8 seconds. I also chose to use 100 ISO.

The Camera was set up on a tripod so that it was looking down almost but not quite square to the working surface. I chose to use my 14-54mm lens at 54mm for this shoot. A quick look at dofmaster.com and I came up with a required Aperture setting of f9. This gave me around 5cm DOF for my focal length and working distance.

I simply set up the camera, attached the remote calble shutter release and proceded to make the capsules, stopping from time to time in the process to take the photos. I took around 20 shots and then culled it down to the 7 that I chose to tell my story.

So, did the photos tell a story? or did I need to add a few words?

Motion

photography — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:14:21 -0600

Taking a photograph that implies something is moving can be a bit of a challenge. There are few ways of actually doing it and from some photos I took a few days ago of the Adelaide Classic bkie race - a pre-cursor of the Tour down under, I will demonstrate 2 different techniques that imply motion.

The Bike race was a great opportunity not only to see some of the best cyclists in the world go head to head in 25 laps on the street circuit but to grab a camera and take some photos of the event as well!

Now, the 2 techniques of implying motion are very different and almost completely opposite. The 2 techniques do have 1 thing in common and that is the use of fairly slow shutter speeds in the range of 1/20sec to 1/100 sec depending on the subject etc.

In our case, I used 1/30sec and 1/60sec for both techniques.

Firstly, there is panning - that is following the action with your camera and taking a photo. By following your subject they are sharp and the background is blurred.

Secondly, (and easier) you simply shoot at a slow speed whilst your subject moves thru the frame.

I have actually talked a bit about panning in previous posts, but here is a bit of a recap on the technique.

Set your camera to manual, choose an appropriate shutter speed - a good place to start is probably around 1/60sec. Set a medium aperture in the range of f4-f8, then set the ISO as required depending on the light. Focus on a position square from you.

You will probably want to get reasonably close to the action and choose an appropriate focal length so that the subject will fill the frame - a short tele lens in the range of 50-100mm (35mm equiv) is ideal.

Once you are ready, simply watch the riders (in this case) and follow them with your camera - moving to keep them in the frame. When they are directly square of you where you previously focussed, trip the shutter and capture the photo. The most important part here is to keep following the moving object and don't stop just because you press the shutter!

You will take a lot of duds before you master the technique so don't be dissapointed if on your first try you only get 1 or 2 out of a hunderd or more photos that you are happy with.

The second technique is much easier! simply foucs where the action will take place, use a slow shutter speed and wait for the riders to move thru your field of view and capture the shot.

Enough of me going on - lets look at a few pictures that demonstrate both methods of capturing motion.

This (Above) is obviously a panned shot, I tracked the rider who is sharp, and the background is blurred because I was following the Rider.

Below, I simply waited for the Riders to "ride thru" the scene - there is little detail of the riders.

Both of these 2 photos used exactly the same camera settings - ISO125 f5.6 1/60sec at 54mm (108mm equiv 53mm)

Above, I was concentrating on the rider in white on this paned shot. The background has almost no detail and nearly all the other riders are blurred as well - this is a combination of the shallow DOF (medium to large aperture) and the fact that they were moving at a slightly different speed to the rider I was concentrating on.

Below, is another shot where I kept the camera still. As the riders were spread out and coming towards me. the closer riders appear to be moving faster than the more distant ones.

Once agin this pair of photos used the same camera settings - ISO200 f5.6 1/30sec at 54mm

The 4 photos capture a sense of speed, yet all are just a single frame. They use different techniques and camera settings to acheive the objective of capturing motion.

I could have just cranked up the shutter speed and captured the riders in great detail, but I would have lost all sense of speed and the fact that they were wizzing past at around 50km/h!

so, next time you are out and you want to try and capture a sense of motion or speed give these 2 techniques a try and see what comes of it!

Post Processing - beyond the RAW

photography — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:34:33 -0600

I recently got a copy of Photoshop Elements 5 and have been looking at how I can use it to add to the quality of my photos. Firstly, I have been very happy with just using a RAW processor on nearly all of my photos and rarely see the need to go beyond that.

Well, Since I have the software I have been exploring some aspects of it and there is just 1 thing that I have been using on a few photos and that is the Correct Camera Distorion Filter.

The easiest way to look at this is by jumping in with an example.

Anyone who has taken a photo of a building will get an effect similar to what we see here - the top "dissapears" into the sky and it looks quite distorted.

Well, I have been able to get a different result from the same original photo

Take a close look at the vertical lines - you will see that they no nolnger converge towards the top and it looks a bit ore "natural"

Of course, you may have heard of a specialist lens called a tilt-shift lens that could do this in-camera - but they are rare and very expensive!

Now, onto the processing!

I processed the original image as usual from the RAW in Lightroom - making the necessary adjustments then saved it as a full-sized tiff image which I imported into photoshop.

In Photoshop, I then opened the filter dialogue and adjusted the little slider to my liking - trying to align the verticals in this case as close as possible to the grid overlay. Once I was happy with the adjustments I went back and needed to apply a crop to bring the image back to a square(well, rectangular) shape.

Once I had cropped it, then I saved it out once again as a new tiff image before finally resizing it to the required size and outputting a jpg image.

Now, the whole process took around 2-3 minutes extra and gave me a result that I am much happier with.

True, I usually try to keep all processing to a minimum, but I think you will agree that by doing just a little more work you can make use of the available tools and produce a photo that is closer to what you saw.

New Camera

photography — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:31:11 -0600

About a week ago I got a new Camera - I moved up to the Olympus E3 DSLR. The Olympus E3 is the new Flagship pro DSLR and has a whole lot of advanced features compared to my ageing E300 Camera.

I won't go into an in-depth review on it as there are plenty of reviews to be found on the net. What I will say is just a simple statement:

The E3 is a wonderful tool that doesn't get in the way of taking photos.

I have only just started to make use of it and I must say that there has been some huge advances over the last few years. The image quality is excellent as I would expect from Olympus.

I did a simple product type shoot a couple of days ago for someone looking to create a new banner for their website. The task was simple - take a photo of Memory cards on a white background so that they could be incorporated into the Banner.

I simply set up the Memory cards on a white background and took a couple of test photos. I was using flash and found that the mostly white scene was confusing the metering. I simply bumped up the EC (Exposure Compensation) on the flash to +1.7EV and got a usable shot within a couple of minutes.

My "Studio" was nothing more than my trusty white sheet draped over a lounge chair and a white piece of paper. The finished shot was used to form part of the website logo and the designer was delighted that the photo really suited the purpose.

Now, I have taken many similar types of photos in the past, but I reacon that the E3 made it very easy to get the desired photo very quickly. The tool is simply better than what I previously used making the job easier!

Once I was done, it was simply a matter of sending off the processed photo so it could be used in the banner on the site. The site is Mr Memory Card - an online Store where you can buy all sorts of Memory Cards - useful for me as I am always buying cards!

Ebook Review

photography — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:36:03 -0600

I came across an e-book recently that I thought is worthwhile.

The e-book title is "YOUR GUIDE TO DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY" and it has 5 major sections in it.

This book is aimed at the beginner to intermediate photographer who wants to learn how to use their Digital Camera to take better photos. What I liked about this book is that it is easy to read and basically takes over where your Camera manual leaves off. Your camera manual will tell you all about your camera controls and how to download your photos to your computer and not much more.

Well, this e-book takes you beyond that in an easy to read style and starts with the basics and builds on them to have you taking better photos in no time. I really wish that this book had been available all those years ago when I got my firts (and second) digital Camera - it would have made the learning so much easier.

The book is not expensive and you can get a copy of "YOUR GUIDE TO DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY" with instant download available.

EDIT: If you want a preview of this book there is a Free Mini version available. The free version covers just 1 topic out of each of the 5 sections and will give you a good idea as to the way the book is written and the information is presented.