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Strobist Boot Camp 2, Assignment 2

July 10, 2009
The Entry Shot: With the first assignment only just over http://marcelvanderhorstphotography.blogspot.com/2009/06/strobist-boot-camp-2.html the second was announced last week. To add to this crazily busy month, the closing date for submission was this Saturday (only one week later). So I had to hop to it, conceptualize, organise, shoot and process all in a very small time window.

This time around the assignment centered around food.

A possible entry that didn’t make the cut.

The Setup Shot (Pretty simple eh?)

The aftermath!

Earlier in the week when the assignment was announced, I searched for inspiration in some cook books and cooking magazines. I tried to dissect how the lighting was done on each photograph that caught my attention. I noted nearly in every photograph of food, whether it was an ingredient or a complete meal, the lighting was either from the back right of the food (about 2o’clock to the camera) or shot hard left or right with one light source. Most food photographers go for the look of natural and neutral light shining through a window, by using a strobe (flash) with a light modifier like an umbrella, soft box or a diffuser panel, like the ones from Lastolite.

First thing I had to do was get all the props together. As I am not a brilliant pastry chef like they have at McDonalds McCafe, I decided to buy my food pre-made. I searched high and low for something indulgent like this croissant, as I was going for a dessert for one look. Most pastries I found were pretty un-inspiring, but my humble McDonalds a short walk from my house had the goods. It was the last one they had too, as it was 9 in the evening. I wish the 15 year old behind the counter would handle it a little more carefully, little did he know it was going to be photographed though.

To prepare the croissant, I shook off all the original icing sugar with the idea to replace it with fresh stuff. I placed it in the oven to get a little glisten to the chocolate, to make it look hot and straight from the oven. I dusted some new icing sugar over it and the plate to look ala-restaurant and placed a dollop or cream next to it. I wet the spoon in hot water to make it look like a clean dollop. I filled the little cup I bought from the $2 shop with the remaining cream. Sucessful food photography stems down to the styling of the food. If it looks flat and bland it won’t be appertising.

The coffee was easy as I am an avid coffee drinker, so I had all the facilities already on hand. The cup and saucer was purchased for $5 from Spotlight as I wanted something small as not to dominate the picture. The beans were fresh ground and made like a real coffee and luckily for me the crema in the coffee held nicely throughout the shoot. As the shoot wore on, the coffee was loosing its steam, so I replaced it with a candle just out of frame and blew it out just before I took the shot. I know it isn’t really visible, but in the test shots you can see the steam is not there.

Now to the fun bit. I set up a Nikon SB-28 Speedlight on a stand with an umbrella on it. The flash was gelled with a 1/2 strength CTO (colour temperature orange) and I placed a LumiQuest diffuser on it to further soften the light. I can thank Joe McNally’s book for that one. The shadows were filled with a white foam core board camera left. A simple setup but very effective. You can easily over light food.

The setting on the flash was f2 at about 1/4 power ISO100 and the camera shot at f2.2 to control the highlights and at 1/160th of a second to kill the ambient light from the kitchen. Very little post production was done to the photo as I was quite happy with it straight out of camera. A few minor Lightroom tweaks, a LAB colour and contrast boost and sharpen in Photoshop.

So if there are any local restaurants in the eastern suburbs of Victoria that needs some food photographed, drop me a line.

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Advice for the Advanced Holiday Photographer Part 6

July 9, 2009
Digital Image Protection and Backup

In the old days of film (film’s not dead yet by the way) there were a couple of factors that possibly could destroy your photos forever. The film in your carry on baggage could have been damaged by the X-ray machine at the airport, you could accidentally open the camera back after a big night and expose the film to light, you could even loose your negatives at the lab when the new trainee mixed up the chemicals wrong.

In today’s day and age of digital photography there are an equal number of things that can go wrong with your digital files. There are literally thousands of resources on the Internet that talk about file management, but I’ll keep to brief and simple to suit people that would just be going on holidays with their camera, whether it is a digital compact, a new camera owner or even an advanced amateur.

So, you have your camera, your bag, your plain tickets, your hotel bookings and tours planned. You now have to think of a strategy to manage your digital files, so one: you don’t lose any photos and two: you have a realistic amount of memory cards. Lets face it, no one want to lose once in a lifetime travel photos or miss an opportunity for a shot when your memory cards are full.

I’ll generally talk about both the person starting out with a new camera (or is new to digital) and people like me that would take a case load of gear and 80% of the reason of the trip is to take photos.

What memory cards to take:
Well this totally dependent on how trigger happy you are and whether you can off load digital files along the way. A good starting point is two cards. On my 5 week trip to the USA I only really used my 8GB card and on seldom occasions used a 4GB card for backup. Please buy them at home at your local department store or at a camera specialist as they charge an arm and leg at the airports and tourist spots. Make sure you get good name brand one designed for cameras, much like the Sandisk Extremes III or IV, Lexar Pro, Hoodman etc.

Handling the cards:
When you get a new memory card or empty a card onto your computer, you should always format it in the camera. Simply refer to your camera’s manual to see how to do this. Get into this habit every time you go out to shoot as well as having your batteries fully charged. I make it a ritual to do all those things every time I go out on a job or a photo expedition.

Formatting a card sets up the appropriate file structure suited to the camera to allow accurate file placement when the camera takes a picture. It also deletes any other data that doesn’t need to be there and any old photos so the card is not littered with fragmented files. Because simply deleting them off the card still leaves a trace of the file, so much of it can still be recovered by special data recovery software. But before I format my cards I always check that I have two copies either on my separate hard drives on my PC or on any other storage media (like DVDs).

The card is full what now?
If you have a second card you can continue to shoot with that until you have an opportunity to transfer your images files to something. When I travel or I have an important location shoot like a wedding I take a laptop with two hard drives. This is so when all my cards are full I can back them to my portable hard drives and feel safe when I need to format my cards. Try to do it one card at a time (as in one per night) because it takes a long time to empty 16GB worth of shots onto a PC (I shoot RAW files and a small JPEG for easy identification on my PC).

Travelling with a laptop is not always practical for many people, so there are other ways to successfully backup your images. There are numerous portable card reader/hard drive storage units, but these are usually left to the professionals and it’s beyond the scope of this article.

Unless you are shooting deep in an Asian jungle or in a remote desert, you surely will have access to photo kiosks or shops. This maybe problematic in countries you don’t speak the language of, but in many cases there would be self serve digital kiosks in tourist areas or shopping centers to back up the images on to a DVD. I would suggest doing this twice as I have read of cases where the DVD used was faulty or the files didn’t write properly. If you have the opportunity, verify if the files are on the disc/s before formatting your memory cards.

Summing up the risks:
Losing digital files is easy. It’s something that is not thought about too much by people these days, but when it happens to you, you would be devastated. A photo in most cases can’t be taken the same way again, especially a travel photo. We never in the past thought so highly of the safety of photos as it was a rarely publicised and talked about topic. But with the increased saturation of digital photographers out there and the ability to buy a camera for under $200, image loss is more common than ever.

It will happen to anyone and at anytime. On my trip to the USA I brought a laptop and a 160GB backup drive, along with 16GB of memory cards. I often filled two of the cards over the course of a few days. I would backup to both the laptop hard drive and the backup drive. On the last night of a 5 week trip, the laptop hard drive crashed. After a re-boot it reverted back to factory settings with a blank hard drive, so all the photos disappeared. Luckily we had a backup on the other drive and we got that home safely. I only lost one folder The old saying goes: “its not a matter of if the hard drive fails, its a matter of when.”

The risks don’t stop there. If you have backed up you images on a DVD, can you make sure that disk gets home safely? Your bag could get lost or stolen at the airport, the bag could get crushed by that person that over packed their suitcase. Get two copies, one for carry-on and one in the suitcase.

USB drives are a great storage alternative and very reliable as they don’t use moving parts like in hard drives. But being so small they can be easily get lost, sat on or stolen.

Now, what to do when you get the images home. Don’t be like most people and leave them on the camera until the time you buy a new camera, get them backed up, printed into physical prints, put them in a photobook or a DVD slideshow.

So there you have it, image protection is easy, it just takes a little thought and discipline. In the next article on travel advice I’ll talk about whether to shoot RAW or JPEG files in the space of a few paragraphs.

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Strobist Boot Camp 2

June 23, 2009

As a dedicated follower of the Strobist blog http://www.strobist.com/ I was very excited to see the announcement of the Strobist Boot Camp 2 Assignment 1 http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/06/boot-camp-ii-first-assignment.html It not only gives us photographers a chance to exercise our creativity and get off our butts and shoot something, there is an awesome prize up for grabs also.
 
I’ll let you read David Hobby’s explanation of what Boot Camp is, but I’ll take you through my entry into the foray.

This is my final entry that shows my subject Belinda on the left and myself on the right, shot in the same lighting conditions. All shots were taken hand held to allow the freedom of movement with the camera. Camera choice is my trusty Canon 50D with a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens, which is a very capable lens providing it nails the focus properly. Lighting equipment consists of a Nikon SB-24 and a Nikon SB-28 triggered with my modded Gadget Infinity wireless triggers. More details on the setup are with the photos.

My official entry was shot with the SB-28 mounted to an umbrella swivel mount on a studded alligator clamp. The clamp was attached to a painters pole found in the garage, but it rotated due to the weight of the flash, so that was reinforced with two spring clamps. The pole was mounted to my flash stands at full height with another two spring clamps. The flash had a Lumiquest Velcro Diffuser on it to further soften the light going through the umbrella. The flash was choked a bit into the umbrella to control the light spill a little and the feathered light was used to light the subject so it wasn’t so over powering.

To light the background (a white Holland blind) I used the Nikon SB-24 gelled with two full CTB (Colour Temperature Blue) on a mini flash stand pointing at it at an angle to feather the light. I only needed to set the flash to about 1/4-1/8 power at f4 as too much power kills the colour. I probably could of gone lower but I was more concerned with the subject exposure. I tried various power levels and flash angles/feathering and resulted at a lowly output so i could get fast recycle times on the flash. With well used batteries I still got about 1-2 second recycles. I changed my aperture between f4-f5.6 to control the exposure. My shutter speed was generally 1/160th of a second, fast enough to avoid motion blur and camera shake but slow enough for the flash to sync. This also to kill the ambient kitchen light and the shadows it cast on the blind. To fill in the shadows a foam core board was used that I bought from Riot and Craft for AUD$15. This is the best priced white reflector you can use.

This was another variant of lighting technique I explored, though I was happy with the result, it wasn’t challenging enough for me. The SB-24 was used camera right propped up on some boxes set to 1/16th power zoomed out to 85mm with one CTB gell.

 Here is another photo that made the short list. The SB-24 was used camera left about 3/4 back over the shoulder. Again the flash was propped up on some boxes and a home made gridded snoot was used to give the light some directionality, but remaining soft at the same time. The only problem i felt was the uninspiring background.
This is the same technique as the blue background shot, but with a double red gel. The colour appears magenta because of the white background, but would look more red if the background was close to a neutral grey. Our cat Sooty dropped in to see what we were doing so we had to get shot of her.

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Advice for the Advanced Travel Photographer Part 5

June 18, 2009
When to shoot and how to organise your time.
Going on a sightseeing holiday usually means being constantly on the move or you have very little down time. So planning a trip before you leave home is essential to picking up some great photographs. We all know the best photos are taken very early in the day, at and around sunset or when it is overcast with clouds, but we can’t plan for that one all the time.

Our holiday to the USA consisted of a lot of driving, so we weren’t locked into any times determined by catching planes or buses. The occasions we did take tourist buses on tours, they were in the middle of the day and the resulting photographs were mediocre at best. Before even leaving home I planned the driving route meticulously to make sure we’d be at our chosen destination at the best times of day to photograph. This was especially important in the mid-west where I’d see some of the best places on earth to photograph.

It was planned in such a way, we’d be driving between destinations during the day which was also good for safety, and arriving at our destinations in the late afternoon. This gave us time to look around, check into a motel or grab a meal. In the cases of the places we would stay, I could get up for a sunrise shoot as well, getting more photographic value out of the place.

Getting there early is something I need to stress greatly. Mainly you are there for a holiday, so rushing place to place just to get a photo is not the way to enjoy a sightseeing holiday. Take the time to look around, take in the sights, scout locations and angles. Sometimes the camera doesn’t leave the bag until I’ve taken a good look around. This always applies to a landscape shoot for me as it calms you down from the walk there and gives you time to visualise your photographs before they are even taken. Some places you will have to battle for the ideal tripod position like I had to do at Monument Valley in Utah. More tripods than a camera store at that place, so it is important not to be rude and sit in front of people’s vantage points and crowd their space.

To assist my planning for a successful landscape/landmark shoot, I even go as far as checking the sunrise/sunset times in that locale on the Internet beforehand and also the direction the sun will rise/set (I carry a compass for this purpose, but you can do it with an iPhone now). These factors can easily make or break a photo, by having too much sun and bright sky in the picture and causing exposure imbalances between the sky and the ground. The sun cross lighting a subject will bring out detail and texture and add some considerable interest to a photo.

The photo above was part luck and also part planning. I new what time the sun would set, in what direction it would set and most importantly how to get to the park. The moon placment was pure luck. Being on Indian land, there was a charge to get in the park, so checking beforehand to see if you need to pay to get in anywhere. I was surprised by the fees associated with Antelope Canyon in Arizona, first a charge to just get into the car park then a huge tour charge on top of that. But it was worth it in the end.

Also in regards to timing a good photo of a landscape for example, some people think when the sun dips below the horizon, it’s time to pack the camera and head off. Hang on people! The best time is the 20 or so minutes after the sun has gone down. The photo above was taken 10 minutes after the sun was gone, well after 80 percent of the people with decent camera gear had taken off to get dinner. It must of been the freezing temperature that evening. The glow on the rocks is not from the sun itself but the glow of the sky from behind me. The long (ish) exposure, a polarizer filter and some careful adjustments in Camera RAW have resulted in a warm, colourful photo with a well balanced sky. If the sunset was in front of the camera it would have resulted in a blown out sky and a dark featureless subject.

To also help plan our time over the trip I created a daily running sheet. This contained our departure time, approximate travel time, a place to stop for lunch, shopping or sightseeing and the arrival destination as well as what time that we would arrive. This was done for every stop we drove to and it proved very valuable, because it also contained the addresses to punch into the GPS navigation.

To offer anymore advice, feel free to add a comment.

If I’m not following my original topics that I’d thought I’d cover, I apologise, so I’m just rolling with what comes to mind. Still to come: Holiday data storage and displaying or showing your images.

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Strobist photo shoot for UpDown Apparel

June 8, 2009

Hi folks, here are some pics of a photoshoot for founder of UpDown Apparel, Lachlan Hale. I’ll start with a sample pic from the shoot and then some setup shots.

This is one of the shots after it was edited in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. This photoshoot was a good test to practice with off camera flash. The ambient light was under exposed by one to two stops in manual mode, and the flashes were used to brighten up the subject, again using manual exposure.

Camera left is a flagged Nikon SB-28 on a light stand and camera right is a flagged Nikon SB-24. This shoot was entirely shot in manual mode, as I had a bit of time to experiment and chimp the LCD on the camera to check exposure. Now I typically select AV mode (Aperture Priority) on the camera and play with the exposure compensation to control the ambient light to some degree (as long as I can keep it under 1/200th of second shutter speed).

Both the flashes were triggered with modded Gadget Infinity radio triggers giving me the freedom to move around without being tied to sync cables. The camera I used was a 15MP Canon 50D with a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens. I also had a polariser filter mounted for most of the shoot to chop out two stops of light, so I could control the ambient light easier and kill the reflections on the car as much as possible.

Getting some low down angles.
Minitruckers
Most importantly, you have to have fun on your shoots. Thanks to Lachlan for being a patient subject while I got my exposure right and to Belinda for the setup shots and adjusting my flash output.

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Back to the Old School

May 31, 2009

For some reason my interest in film photography has risen again. I sold my old film camera a while ago because it was on the blink, it would miss frames by not opening the shutter intermittently and after having it serviced once before, I decided not to do it again simply because of the great cost involved. Once I made the move to digital I never looked back…..until now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
I spotted on eBay this Yashica Electro GS 35mm camera and I thought it was the coolest looking camera I ever saw. I started reading into old rangefinder cameras and found this was the under dog in terms of performance because it was way cheaper to buy than a Leica or Canon Canonet Q117 but was excellent in quality. It came with a sharp f1.7 45mm lens, Aperture Priority, a PC sync port and an ultra quiet leaf shutter. Now this puppy is a favorite amongst collectors fetching a reasonable amount on eBay. There are even Flickr Groups dedicated to the Yashica Electro as well as a big following by well known camera collectors. Just Google it to see what I mean.
 
 
 
 
 
 
When I got this one home I had to do some work to it to get it going again. First I had to remove the toxic and leaking Mercury battery and clean up the battery tube with vinegar on a cotton bud (Q-tip). The battery type that was used in those days are no longer available at your local battery supplier, so I had to improvise with a smaller battery, but adapted it by spacing out the battery tube and using a home made spring from solid copper cable to make contact with the battery door.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Next thing to do was give it a good clean. Rubbing alcohol was recommended to give it a clean in all the grooves and around the dials and buttons etc. I used an old paint brush and some cotton buds to remove all the grime. The lens and the view finder was cleaned with a micro fibre towel with a little glass cleaner on it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The hardest part and the most necessary was replacing the light seals. Because of the age of the camera all the foam light seals had crumbled away to nothing. I removed all traces with alcohol and various tools like cotton buds, tooth picks and cotton pads. Once it was all clear they were replaced with some ultra thin felt that was adhesive on the back. Now the back closes firmly, reassuring me that I can put some film in it and not ruin it because of light leaking in.
 
 
 
 
 
 
All I have to do know is find a good black and film and someone to develop it!
 
 
 
 
 
P.S. I case you are wondering the shot of the camera was done on a big sheet of white card. A Nikon SB24 and SB28 was used either side of the camera shooting through a sheet of regular copy paper to diffuse the light. The flash was set to f11 1/16th power and the exposure was around 30 seconds to burn in the rest of the white card that wasn’t exposed to the flashes. It was shot with my Canon 50D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 on a Benro Pro tripod and Manfrotto Ball head. The flashes were triggered with a modified Cactus V2s radio Trigger.

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Photo Retouching Before and After

May 27, 2009

  Before
 After

Here is one example of a retouched image that I provide to a client as part of my Creative Image Styling Service. Unfortunately I don’t have a step by step tutorial with pictures or a video screen capture (will come in the future though) so I’ll just explain the steps I go through to get the finished result for the client.
  
After the images are backed up and transfered from the memory card I do basic image adjustments in Adobe Lightroom. Here I can select a preset where I can make the image look completely natural and accurate and also make further tweaks, like brightening the shadows, adjusting the white balance etc. I do this with every image that gets taken to ensure all the photos that get delivered to the client are of high quality and not all flat looking, like when they come straight out of the camera. That service is included with all of my packages.
  
After the basic adjustments, I export the image into Photoshop as a High Res 16Bit file (to maintain the most colour information) and this is where I start the major pixel pushing. In this case the image was already converted to Greyscale (Black and White) in Lightroom with a colour mix that is suited to the photograph and mood.
  
Every image I work on is different, so using presets and actions in Photoshop are not always prefered, so the client does get their money’s worth. I start by using a Levels Adjustment Layer to brighten the midtones, darken the shadows and bump up the highlights a little. This adds a little punch in the contrast. I then noticed some distracting reflections in the lady’s glasses so I cloned these out by using the clone stamp tool (Shortcut ‘S’), making sure I was sampling all the layers (The check box in the tool bar).
  
To introduce some more character to the image I used a Curves Adjustment Layer and used the ‘Strong Contrast’ preset as a starting point. I played around with the levels to get the look I wanted.
Next I wanted to selectively brighten the lady’s face. I used my favorite Blend Layer Dodging Procedure featured here: http://www.zoom-in.com/blog/photography/sophia-betz/adobephoto/career-cliff-notes-dodge-burn I selectively used this method to brighten the skin areas and the flowers on her dress, concentration more around eye, nose and lips areas.
  
I then added a further Curves Adjustment Layer, and used the medium contrast preset as a starting point again. This time using the layer mask provided with the Layer Adjustment inverted (click on the layer mask icon in the layer pallet and press CTRL+I to invert the mask to black) and using a white low opacity brush (B) over the facial region and hair, bringing out more detail (in a bridal portrait this wouldn’t be the case). I call this selective contrast and by re-naming the layers in the layer pallet I can keep a track of what I’m doing. I adjusted all the layer opacities to get a good mix of all adjustments to make them look like a natural blend.
  
Next I wanted to colourize the image by giving a sepia toned look. This look can be overdone when applying it to every picture in a shoot, but I only ended up using it on a handful of photos in this client’s case. It usually suits pictures of older people to give the image a little warmness and to make it timeless. I achieved this using a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and clicking on the colourize check box. You can now introduce a colour hue of your choice and its saturation level. I used an orange hue at a low saturation level to add a subtle colour cast. This effect can also be achieved with other methods, but this is the quickest and easiest.
  
Once I was happy with the overall look, I flattened the image by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+E. Many people would say ‘nooooooo!’ when it comes to flattening layers here, but I will never return to this image again to work on it again as a PSD (Photoshop Document). Why would I choke up 400-500MB or more of Hard Drive space or even bog down the computer’s CPU, when I have the original DNG file anyway. I have found I rarely return to a PSD file unless I save it for working on later when a photo is not finished.
  
Next is a vignette, you can do this a number of different ways, including in Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW by using the vignette sliders, in Photoshop by using the Lens Correction Dialogue (Filter ->Distort -> Lens Correction) or by using the inbuilt vignette action in the Actions Pallet. This way you can make a selection with the Marquee Tool (M) to whatever size and input the amount of pixel feathering (150-200 pixels on a high res photo). After the action has done its thing, I click on the white layer and invert it to black (CTRL+I) and reduce the layer opacity to make the edges look burned in. I sometimes darken a photo deliberately, then brighten certain areas to draw the viewers eyes to the subject. This method is as old as photography itself. I usually do this using the same techique I use to brighten eyes (see above), but I use the Multiply blend mode to darken the photo then paint back with a black brush on a white mask the area I want to have brighter. I then adjust the layer opacity to get the right balance.
  
Last thing is the sharpening, which is what I do to all the images that are destined for the print lab. First I duplicate the layer by pressing CTRL+J. I enlarge the image to 100% pixels using my CTRL+’+’ command to zoom in and then go Filter ->Sharpen ->Unsharp Mask. A dialogue box opens and I usually leave the .9 to 1 pixel setting and dial in about 100-120 on the ‘amount’ scale. This is to personal taste this, but I dial in a suitable amount for print (slightly over sharpened). After I have committed the sharpening, in the Layers Pallet, while the 2nd layer is selected, I change the layer blend mode to ‘Luminosity’ to reduce halos on high contrast edges in the photo. Reduce the layer opacity if you went over board on the sharpening. To go that extra step you could apply a layer mask to that layer and invert the mask to black (incase you don’t remember its CTRL+I). Then paint in, using a soft edge brush, the eyes, nose, hair and lips to retain the detail there and leave the rest soft.
  
In the case of this image I merged the top layer into the main one by pressing CTRL+E as I didn’t do the selective sharpening. I duplicated it again (CTRL+J) and applied a Blur Filter. Go to Filter ->Blue ->Gaussian Blur and input around 5-6 pixels. Then reduce that layer’s opacity to around 30% or to taste. With this technique you still get a sharp image, but with a slight dreamy, blurry glow which is pleasing to the eye when it comes to portraits at weddings. Remember, not too much blur or it will look way too 1985.
  
There you have it, the image is flattened (CTRL+SHIFT+E), coverted to 8BIT (Image ->Mode ->8BIT) and sRGB if it already isn’t (Edit ->Convert to Profile and select sRGB in the drop down box). Now it is ready to save and print by my photo lab.
  
Next time I’ll endeavour to get at least screen shots, but hopefully in time video capture.

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Advice for the Advanced Holiday Photographer Part 4.5

April 20, 2009

What gear to pack and not to pack.

In the first part of this post I told you what I thought what you might not need on a trip. I found I didn’t need a flash or fast primes, but if you photograph lots of people you would certainly need these items. At the end of the day what not to pack is up to you, but I think in the interest of travelling lightly, lenses with overlapping focal lengths maybe useless and if sharpness and big printing is not a big concern, a swathe of lenses is not necessary, so just take a super zoom.
There is nothing worse when your thousands of miles from a camera store or from home, and you forgot to pack something. A checklist, whether it be a mental one or written down, is essential for making sure you have everything you need.

Some of my essentials consists of a range of filters (pictured above, Neutral Density Graduated and Dark Blue Storm Grad Cokin filters with filter holder and lens adapter rings http://www.cokin.com/, UV filters for all lenses and a quality circular polarizer for each lens. All this was stored in my bag in a Tamrac MX5388 filter wallet to protect them all).

The above photo shows some other essentials you should pack for holiday. The most used item was the micro-fibre cloth that folds into a little pouch. I even bought an extra one in B&H Photo in New York http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ to add to the other bag I took. Also in there is a Giottos Rocket Blower, which is absolutely essential as the cloth to blow out any dust or fibres in the mirror cavity of your camera body www.giottos.com/Rocket-air.htm a shower cap swiped from a hotel room just in case you really need to have your camera out in the rain (it’s not as good as the one you buy, but its free), a felt tip pens so you can right on anything, a notepad for recording details like notes from the destination, thoughts etc, business cards in case anyone asks if you are a professional and have a website (it happens), a model release if you plan to take pictures of people for sale to stock image websites or image libraries, and lastly the handiest thing I had was a torch. My first torch was a basic bulb type that fell to bits when I dropped it at the Grand Canyon while setting up for a sunrise shoot. I later then bought a LED torch from a convenience store near Monument Valley in Utah and paid a massive US$10 for it.

Other bits and pieces I would suggest taking would be spare batteries for just about anything. Imagine the prices they charge at gas stations in the middle of the desert and if they are still any good. Even take spares of the proprietary batteries your camera takes, because buying overseas you maybe paying very high prices in tourist areas and its valuable spending money too. Other things I pack in the bag is a couple of elastic bands, band-aids and tissues for that just in case moment.

That’s all for today, but tune in next time as I will be talking about when to shoot and how to organise your time.

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Advice for the Advance Holiday Photographer Part 4

April 16, 2009

What gear to pack, or not to pack

Going on holidays with a slew of photographic equipment can be quite a challenge and a burden. Not only on your back but also for your travelling companions. If you go with the idea you are going on holiday just to take lots of fantastic photos, think carefully about what you are going to take as far as gear is concerned, how its packed, how easy is it transport (especially through airport security) and how all of these factors impact on your travel experience.

As I mentioned in the last post, taking two bags is a godsend. Having your main kit in a carry all bag and a little day pack to take on small excursions or where a large bag will be in the way, like on a tour bus, in busy streets and inside buildings.

Obviously your bag choice will depend on the kit you have, as some travellers will find they can fit a whole kit in a compact shoulder bag. When travelling with a large compliment of equipment it raises issues such as personal safety, gear safety, personal injury, sanity of you and others around you and the most important part the ability to focus on picture taking, not taking 3 minutes to fumble around mounting your special sharp lens, polarizer filter and Cokin ND Grad filter.

First up is your camera body. Something that has a reasonable performance in the high ISO department will be a benefit (mainly to limit use with tripods and flash), Mega pixels don’t really matter unless you want to print really big, but if small to A3 sized pictures are adequate, anything up to and around 12MP will be more than enough. The more mega pixels you have, the more hard drive space you’ll use on your computer and the files will take longer to transfer. There are some great DSLR cameras out now, including some with video capability, like the Nikon D90, D500 and the amazing Canon 5D MkII.

Lens choice is always difficult for travellers, just search a few forums and Flickr groups and there are many photographers stumped with this issue. Its easy if you grab a lens like the new Tamron AF18-270mm F3.5-6.3 XR Superzoom lens http://www.tamron.com/lenses/prod/18270_vc.asp and be done with it. It covers a monstrous zoom range (equivalent to 28-435mm on a 35mm camera) , fits in a small bag along with the camera body and it doesn’t make people run for cover when you pull it out. But some people are not content with a lens like this (I actually purchased a super zoom for my trip, a Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 OS lens).

The problem with these super zoom lenses, whether they are optically stabilised or not, they are not the sharpest tool in the shed. The optical performance of the Sigma was below average (compared to the other lenses I have), especially on a 15MP camera. It maybe OK on a 6-8MP early DSLRs or for 11×14″ or 12×16″ prints, but not for big poster prints, which I regularly do and also for the fact I am a stickler for sharpness. The only super zoom on the market that I know will produce a decent result would be Canon’s 28-300mm, which is very pricey and Nikon’s 18-200mm VR lens which is a good well priced solution for the Nikon owners. So a compromise might have to be taken for the sake of travelling light (I did find taking just the 18-200mm for general travel snaps just fine, and saved the good lenses for when I sharpness was critical).

Besides the all in one zoom, other considerations are two zoom lenses, one standard zoom and a tele zoom. Again a myriad of lenses are available but on a cropped sensor DSLR (APS-C 1.6x Field of view) I’d recommend something as wide as 17mm up to around 70/85mm. Popular choices are the Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.5, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8, Canon 17-85mm f4-f5.6 and for the Nikon owners the 18-70mm f3.5-4.5. If your budget can stretch it, the Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS, Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L or 24-105mm f4 L IS if you don’t mind missing out a little at the wide end. I’m not sure what premium offers Nikon has at the moment.

As for tele zooms, there are a couple of different focal lengths to choose from. Canon offers the 55-250mm f4-5.6 IS, 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS (also in the higher end DO series). There are numerous offerings in the Sigma, Tamron and Tokina camps for Canon, Olympus, Pentax and Nikon. Some of the photo nutters will like the 70-200mm ‘L’ lenses offered by Canon (the f2.8 IS being my favourite), as well as the fast options offered by Tamron, Sigma and Nikon. These lenses will cover all the important focal lengths for just about any type of photography.

As for specialist lenses like your macro lenses, super fast primes, super wide angle and tilt shift lenses, these are really left to the super enthusiastic amateurs of the pros on assignment. Every lens you take, along with its own range of filters adds unwanted weight. Saying that, I brought along a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 for super wide landscapes and a 50mm f1.8 prime for my Canon 50D to round out the lens choice. I found I used the prime very little, but the super wide angle heaps, because I’m a bit of a landscape buff.

Other hardware you might want to consider is a speedlight (flash), but I found there was little opportunity to use it and it would have stuck out like sore thumb anyway.

I’m going to wrap it up for now, but in the next half of this chapter, I’ll talk about the camera bag essentials and accessories.

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Advice for the advanced holiday photographer Part 3

March 3, 2009
Packing Tips

The series of travel photography articles is back after a small hiatus. This time we are looking at tips on what and how to pack your gear.

I will say one thing that is very important; don’t trust baggage handlers. I’ve seen occassions where I book onto a flight ‘special baggage’ that is either heavy or fragile still be handled like it was a football when it comes off the plane when you land. The only difference is I think they send it on a different conveyor belt with a fancy sticker that no one can see.

Unfortunately that doesn’t leave much choice but to bring you gear in the cabin with you as carry on, or invest in some expensive Pelican cases http://www.pelican.com/ like the military does. Really if you are taking enough gear that won’t fit in a carry on bag, you are a pro and don’t really need to be reading this.

First things first you have to plan what gear to take, as like me and many others, you collect gear faster than you collect DVDs. In another post I’ll talk about what gear is essential on a holiday without ticking off the spouse too much. If you are going on a holiday that has many scenic views and you plan to do a few sunrise and or sunset shoots, I will suggest taking a tripod.

If you Google “what travel tripod should I take?” you get 301,000 results as this is a question that bothers many. I won’t go into details here as I will talk about that in the ‘What gear to take” article. This tripod either has to go in the cabin or down below, so size does matter. I took one that is a little too long to qualify as carry on so it had to travel with the rest of my luggage down below. I had a suitcase that was long enough to fit the tripod in its own carry bag and then I could pack other items around it.

Next thing to consider, and I highly recommend it, especially if you have a bit of kit to take on your trip, is to use two camera bags. Yes two. The reason is simple; one large one to take as your carry on bag containing all your gear and a smaller shoulder pack to take on small excursions on your trip. This system works well, if you have a hotel or a car as a base and you can leave bits and pieces back at the room and with many hotels featuring room safes, this is definitely possible.

I would suggest taking a carry all back pack like this one from http://www.lowepro.com/ which can handle up to two camera bodies, many lenses, your battery chargers and even a laptop.

A smaller day pack is a godsend compared to carrying 20 odd pounds of equipment on your back walking for miles (and you do a lot of walking on a holiday believe me). This is good when walking around a city or when you need to walk a long way. Sizes can vary from a holster that will just carry a SLR with one lens mounted or a shoulder bag big enough to carry a couple of lenses, a set of filters, spare batteries and memory cards.

Many bag manufactures make a great choice of bags that fit in this category, but a personal favourite of mine is the Crumpler range of products from http://www.crumpler.com.au/ because they are inconspicuous looking, are well made and flexible.

With many of us living a very electronic existance, this will result in us having many cords, chargers and USB adapters. I found the perfect solution to store, carry and organising these items at a K-Mart department store. It was simply a bathroom toiletry bag with a zippered compartment for the large items like chargers and wall socket adapters and numerous loops and pockets to store cables. This is the item pictured below.

Next time I’ll talk about what gear to take and what not to take.

Have a great week.

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Photoshop Tutorial featured on Zoom In Online

February 22, 2009

I had a guest blog post on Zoom In Online, a well known Photography Blog with a short Photoshop Tutorial.

Check it out here: http//www.zoom-in.com/blog/photography/sophia-betz/adobephoto/career-cliff-notes-dodge-burn

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Advice for the advanced holiday photographer (part 2)

February 17, 2009

Part Two

Researching you destination before you go.
Many things I mentioned in the last post can be found out about your destination/s in advanced by doing some research from magazines or by using the best tool, the internet.

Many of you will be going on your trip wanting to come home with winning images that warrant being hung on your wall or selling them on your website etc. So its imperative to find out where those images can be shot.

My first port of call was my good old favourite http://www.flickr.com/ which is a gold mine for checking out where to take a good shot. IN the screen shot below you can see if you type ‘Grand Canyon’ in the search bar you get 638,402 results which would take you years to browse through. I typically narrow my search by adding more ‘tags’ which are the searchable words that is associated with the photo. E.g. Grand Canyon Sunset Desert View. By adding the sunset and desert view tags I have narrowed the search to a more managable 296 photos.

It helps to narrow down certain spots that may or may not be worth visiting on your trip. If you’re lucky you’ll find photo descriptions that tell you the exact spot where the photo was taken and at what time of day.

Another important factor to consider when travelling abroad is to check the expected weather. There are many websites that will cater to this need and even tell the expected climate months in advance. Just do what I did and just Google your destination and the weather and start searching.

Besides the weather and where is the best location to take a photo, there are numerous other things to consider. Personal safety, access to certain areas, other traveller’s experiences, cost of entry to parks, buildings etc. All these things can be researched by looking up official websites of the cities, countries or districts you plan to visit. A popular global site is http://www.tripadvisor.com/ which has an extensive database of free travel guides, traveller experiences, photos and video, hotel and accommodation reviews.


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