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Back to Basics

7/23/2014

Panther Beach Sunset

I recently watched a live lecture from one
of the most prolific nature and landscape photographers of our times. It was a real shot in the arm on how to keep motivated and to keep making better images. There was also much discussion on the need to re-invent yourself every so many years to keep your style fresh as well as recognizable. One of the take aways from the lecture was you need to have the passion burning in your belly and have fun with your photography. If this stops it may be time to find another interest. This may be especially true for those among us that do this as artistic expression as opposed to making a living through photography. The other point that was very apparent to me was when we get in to the field and become acclimated to our surroundings, go back to the basics of great image making. Many times we get so caught up in the moment and beauty of our surroundings that we forget the basics.

Simplify our compositions.
Remember the rule of thirds
Compose a strong foreground, middle and background.
Use leading lines, patterns, and light.
Remember that the lightest part of the image is what the eyes see first.
Have a very definite focal point to the image.
Use light to dark and dark to light to keep our eyes moving through the image.
Check your camera settings before staring to shoot. ( sometimes we forget to put our settings back after our last shoot )

Many of these things become second nature the more we practice our craft, but sometimes it's just a good mental review. I sometimes will be so excited to start shooting that remembering these basic rules will slow me down and better prepare me for the shoot. If the TOP pro's do it, it must be a valuable tool. If none of us ever stop learning then keeping the basic rules in mind will help us make better and more compelling images. Until next time I hope the best of light follows you.....

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The Travel or Walkaround Lens

6/15/2014

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Nikon Lens

The travel or walkaround lens has become more of a subject lately in my photography circle of friends. I usually have at least four lenses with me at all times to cover all the focal ranges I may need. How many times do you frame a scene and then realize you need your 24 to 85mm and you have on your 16-35mm lens. It can be a challenge to change a lens in the field, especially if you are a landscape or outdoor shooter. It may be sitting in your bag and the location is not real convenient or the light is rapidly changing. You expose your camera sensor and other interior parts to all kinds of dust and environmental elements with the lens off outdoors. So wouldn't a all in one lens ( 28-300mm ) be a real convenient option?

Usually in photography when you go for a all in one solution your image quality (IQ) will suffer. The lenses I have are all well researched and the IQ is tack sharp if the operator (me) does his job correctly. Do I want to give up a bit of IQ for convenience? Well in some instances I'm beginning to think maybe so.

Being a Nikon shooter, the Nikon 28-300mm FX lens with VR seems to be a great lens and the IQ is quite good. Tamron also makes a similar lens with image stabilization for about half the price, but also seems to have decent IQ. The abundant reviews of these two lenses show many positives to consider. I have seen tons of images shot with these lenses and unless you are going to make a very large print, I'm not sure the difference will be noticeable to most viewers of your photographs.

So this is my recent thinking to possibily reduce the hassle and add the convenience of not changing lenses in certain situations. I don't think I will ever give up my current lineup, but add it to the arsenal. I can envision many times where this all in one lens will do the job nicely. It's also fun to buy a new lens. Any thoughts? Until next time...

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Which Photography Lens to choose and Why?

6/8/2014

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Nikon Trilogy Lenses

Which photographic lens is the right one you may wonder. Why choose one over the other? This is an important question, and to get the image you are looking for requires you to know the answer. With modern digital camera sensors becoming more and more sensitive and dynamic the quality of the lens is equally important to achieving excellent quality results. So let's take a look at the different classifications of lenses and their specific uses.

Lenses are divided into five categories based on focal length:

Ultra Wide-Angle
Ranging from 4mm to 20mm, these lenses have extremely large fields of view. Fisheye lenses fall into this category. Such a stretched perspective can often cause bending and distortion towards the edges of the frame. This type of lens will give you a very interesting close / far relationship to your images.
Wide-Angle
Anything between 21mm and 35mm is a standard wide angle lens, and are the most common focal lengths. They are versatile and allow pictures to be taken close up to a subject while minimizing distortion and still including the background.
Normal
50mm is known as a “normal” focal length because it sees with roughly the same perspective as the human eye. However, this category can include lenses ranging between 35mm and 60mm, which give a very realistic look.
Telephoto
At around 75mm we start to get into “long” lenses – ones that zoom quite far, enabling you to shoot your subject from a distance. They are better for isolating details of a scene, rather than fitting a lot into the frame. Anything up to 150mm is considered a standard telephoto lens.
Super Telephoto
Any lens over 150mm is a super telephoto – including extreme telephotos which exceed 400mm. These are used for isolating small details at a great distance; they are usually used for photographing wildlife, sporting events, but can also be utilized to make very unique landscape images. This type of lens is the largest and heaviest of all lens types.

Prime vs. Zoom Lenses

Regardless of focal length there are two catagories of lenses, prime and zoom. Zoom lenses have a variable focal length and can zoom in for closer and out for wider views.
Prime lenses have a fixed focal length and you must move to change your image perspective. They are a much simplier design and because of this they tend to be sharper and sometimes less expensive than zoom lenses. Many photographers tend to favor prime lenses for their added sharpness.

The proper lens choice and quality of that lens will have a much greater impact on your images than the camera body itself. It is far better to purchase high quality lenses as you can afford to rather than have a bunch of low quality lenses that were inexpensive to purchase. High quality lenses also retain much greater resale value and the" iconic" lenses are always in great demand on the used market. There are several great lens manufacturers, so do your research and go with a reputable company that stands behind their product. Nikon as an example will warranty their lenses for five years from the date of purchase. They are complicated instruments and that warranty is great piece of mind.

Choose your lenses wisely and you will be rewarded with high quality images that will make you proud of your work! Until next time may the best of light follow you...

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Nikon's new sRaw image format.

5/29/2014

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Nikon D4s

With the recent introduction of Nikon's new flagship D4s full frame camera, came a new file format called sRaw. The photography forums have been buzzing about this new file format. What is it and how does it work? Will it be of any real benefit to quality image seekers? With image files getting bigger as sensor technology moves forward, Nikon I'm sure felt the need to find a way to reduce file size. Reducing file size will help with on-going storage problems as well as requiring less processing power to work on the files. In a nutshell this is what happens with a sRAW file.

It contains not RGB but YCbCr data much like a JPEG;
The data is 11-bit;
The tone curve is applied to the data;
The in-camera white balance is applied to the data;
The pixel count is 4 times less than with regular NEF files;
The color information is shared between two adjacent pixels (in other words, chroma is recorded for each other pixel);
The file size is insignificantly smaller than full resolution 12-bit lossy compressed NEF;
Compared to a regular NEFs the data needs additional processing (linearization) while converting it to a TIF/JPEG, that may cause additional problems during the conversion as well as some additional computational errors;
There is some loss of color accuracy in shadows, which negatively affects the usable dynamic range if color accuracy is important.

For more detailed information on sRAW files see www.rawdigger.com. They have a very detailed report on this new file structure there. Credit goes to them for the above information.

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The Backup Plan

4/13/2014

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Western Digital My Book Backup Drive

Having just re-done my computer and image back-up plan, I thought this would make a good timely post. The thought of losing any of my images has always been a big concern for me. So much so that I have most of my images still on their original memory cards. So I thought it was time to upgrade and review what I was doing. It's time to start re-using my way way to many SD cards. I have my laptop that goes with me on all my shoots. At the end of the day I download the SD cards into the computer and then back-up my computer to my Western Digital My Passport portable drive. Now I have at least three copies of the days images. When I return home to my Desktop computer I download the SD cards again to my computer and now back that up with my new Western Digital 3tb My Book. The big change I just made is to image or copy my entire hard drive to my back-up drives. This way my operating system as well as my data and programs will copy over to a new drive in the event of a hard disk failure. I really like the idea of being able to restore my computer without having to re-load all of the programs. There are several good programs on the market that will perform this duty for you. Follow the instructions carefully and make sure and create a boot disk so that you can actually get the restore going on a new computer or replacement disk drive. Now my images reside on four disk drives. The next step is dedicating one more portable drive to store off site in the event of a catastrophe. I'm not a big fan of cloud storge as of yet, though it is a very good way of getting your off site storage needs taken care of. It's just the reliance of someone else storing my images that doesn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling. A very fast internet connection must also be maintained for this application to perform properly. Well this is my current system in a nutshell. Not super sophisticated or very expensive for great piece of mind. I hope this post gives you a little push to examine what you are doing to protect your valuable and irreplaceable images. Just don't forget to backup! I would love to hear about your backup plans and what software and equipment you use. Until next time may the best of light follow you!

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Knowing your shutter speed.

3/2/2014

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Water Patterns

So how does shutter speed affect your images and what you should know to help achieve the results you are after. Understanding this adjustment will help you tremendously to make more compelling and technically correct images. Most photographers want tack sharp images, but want special effects added to their images to blur water, or any type of movement. Sometimes you just want to freeze the fast action that you are shooting such as sporting events. I will hopefully help you understand how to get the results you want.

Fast shutter speeds such as 1000th sec or faster will freeze motion in your image. This is the setting used for sporting events, birds in flight, children playing, or freezing anything in motion.
Mid range shutter speeds of 125th sec to 1000th sec are more normal speeds for everyday shooting of still subjects. It is a balancing act between shutter speed, apeture, and iso, with the goal of getting the right amount of light to your image sensor for a proper overall image exposure.

Slow shutter speeds of 60th of a second or slower are considered slow shutter speeds. Depending on the speed you select will determine how you capture movement in your images, such as blurring water, adding motion to birds in flight, or capturing the movement of clouds. Shutter speeds of less than a second to several minutes are used in this range. Astro and nightime photography are commonly shot in this range.

It is essential when using slower shutter speeds that you use a tripod so as not to induce motion blur into your images. Good handholding camera techniques are possible, especially with the newer image stabilized lenses, but only can be used at the faster end of the range ( 60th to 15th of a second ). I feel there is no substitue for a good quality tripod while shooting any images in this shutter speed range.

The Focal Length Reciprocal Rule. This is the general rule used by photographers to know the minimum shutter speed setting in order to avoid shake in photos when it comes to hand-holding a camera.

This idea is to use a shutter speed that is equal or faster than the reciprocal of the focal length. So if you’re shooting at 300mm, ideally you would need at least 1/300th of a second.

For the digital photographers, you will have to find out what’s the crop factor in order to utilize this rule more effectively.

So let’s take a Nikon D7000 paired with a 70-300 mm vr lens and we’ll be using the formula below.

Minimum Shutter Speed = 1/(Focal Length x Crop Factor)

So assuming you’re going at 200mm with the Nikon D7000 that is of a 1.5x crop factor, the calculation would look like

Minimum Shutter Speed = 1/(200 x 1.5)

So your minimum shutter speed will come to

Minimum shutter speed would be 1/300th

Using this rule can help insure you will always be shooting at a shutter speed that will give you sharp images.

I hope this introduction and short explanation of shutter speed will help you on your photographic journey and shoot more compelling images. Until next time, may the best of light follow you!

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How about those megapixles?

12/25/2013

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Golden Hour

I have been reading and thinking a lot lately about megapixels, and how it might impact my own photography. I use Nikon equipment, but the same applies to all brands. How much is enough and when are other features more important to the photographer. The megapixels, dynamic range, and IQ are all products of the image sensor. I know technology will drive the contest of how many megapixels a sensor can produce forward, but again when is enough, enough? Probably never according to some, and we are there according to others. If you don't print super size pictures, I am of the camp that we are quite good where we are. I considered getting the Nikon D800 with it's 36mp sensor, but many photographers don't want or need files that large. I think it (D800) is the best DSLR on the market as of now. My newer Nikon (D600) is 24mp and is so close to the D800 in IQ and dynamic range I opted for the smaller file sizes. The images it produces are amazing in my opinion. It does use up less computer memory and helps solve ongoing storage problems. So maybe focusing on further improving dynamic range, lower noise with higher ISO's, and overall performance is better than just adding more and more megapixels to the sensor. Just my ramblings for today. Weigh in on this subject, I would love to hear your opinions. May the best of light follow you!

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Safety in Numbers?

11/14/2013

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I had an interesting experience the other day while shooting at a remote location. I had passed this location several times before finding the landmarks. After a bit of a hike from the highway down to the beach, not a single sole was in sight. Nice from a shooting point of view, but a bit disconcerting anyway. So I pick my location and start to set up my equipment and I hear a voice behind me and a gentleman in the buff is right there. I knew that there were some beaches in the area designated as nude beaches, but I was really caught off guard. Fortunatly he was a nice enough individual and declared he was looking for Shark's teeth. Fine with me as long as that was it. He was there for the approx. three hours I spent at this location. He stayed out of my frames and he would occasionally show me his finds. I stayed well after sundown to get those sought after sunset shots and colors. After all the golden hour is what we wait all day or night for!

The question that kept entering my mind was the saftey of shooting alone at remote locations. There was also no cell phone service in the area, so I was really alone. I'm thinking in the future a photo buddy is almost a must for safety reasons.

I'm really curious what are your thoughts on this subject. Do you usually travel at least in pairs? How do you make shooting alone as safe as possible? Have you heard of any examples of Photographers getting attacked or their equipment stolen while out shooting alone? I really want to be smart about this and put safety first! Your thoughts are most welcome.

Best wishes and may the best of light follow you!

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Photography for self expression and enjoyment.

10/17/2013

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I've done a lot of thinking lately about my interest in photography and what it really means to me. Photography has been an interest of mine as far back as I can remember. The nights spent in my home darkroom developing film and printing images with my Bessler enlarger was as enjoyable a pastime as I can remember. I love all the technical aspects and can read and study for hours without getting the least bit bored.

What has got me thinking is how stressed out I sometimes get when on location shooting. I may have traveled some distance, and like all fellow photographers want to get that perfect image and tend to ignore the beauty and peacefullness of the location. Capturing it is all consuming. The light is changing, the wind is coming up, the clouds are going away, the scene is changing too fast, now what? Maybe now is the time I should just sit down, relax and enjoy the view and the company that is with me. I am in nature in some of the most beautiful settings and not fully enjoying the experience.

My images are for me and hopefully those that see them to enjoy. It is my form of self expression and partly my sense of self worth to create an image that is beautiful, interesting, compelling, different, etc. But for me personally I need to work on enjoying the process more and not be so anxious about the final outcome. I have a large investment in time and money in my photography passion and I want to get the most I can from it. I am going to make a real effort to fully enjoy the ride as they say and just to do the very best I can with any given photo shooting situation. I sincerely hope the best of light follows you.

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RAW vs. Jpeg ? It's your decision.

9/5/2013

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Which format should you use? RAW vs. JPEG

When shooting with your digital camera, you have a choice of image formats that your camera will use to store the pictures on the memory card. JPEG is probably the most familiar format to anyone who has been using a digital camera. This is the way it will be set from the factory.

There is nothing wrong with JPEG if you are taking casual shots. JPEG files are ready to use, right out of the camera. Why go through the process of adjusting RAW images of the kids playing when you are just going to post them online or e-mail them? Also, for journalists and sports photographers who are shooting ten frames per second and need to transmit their images across the wire—again, JPEG is just fine. So what is wrong with JPEG? Absolutely nothing—unless you care about having complete creative control over all of your image data (as opposed to what a compression algorithm thinks is important).

A JPEG is not actually an image format. It is a compression standard, and compression is where things can go bad. When you have your camera set to JPEG—whether it is set to Fine or Standard compression—you are letting the camera process the image however it sees fit and then throw away enough image data to make it shrink into a smaller space. In doing so, you give up subtle image details that you will never get back in post-processing. That is an awfully simplified statement, but it’s still fairly accurate. I feel discarding useable data is going in the opposite direction in image quality. Camera manufactures are making cameras with more and more pixels ( or digital data ) why not use all that data you are capturing? You will have a higher quality image.

So what do you get with RAW?

First and foremost, RAW images are not compressed. (Some cameras offer a compressed RAW format, but it is lossless compression, which means there is no loss of actual image data.) Note that RAW image files will require you to perform post-processing on your photographs. This is not only necessary—it is the reason that most photographers use it. Think of a RAW image as a film negative that yet needs to be developed.

RAW images have a greater dynamic range than JPEG-processed images. This means that you can recover image detail in the highlights and shadows that just aren’t available in JPEG-processed images.

There is more color information in a RAW image because it is a 14-bit image, which means it contains more color information than a JPEG, which is almost always an 8-bit image. More color information means more to work with and smoother changes between tones. With a Raw image you have all the digital information to work with to achieve better image quality while not damaging or discarding information your camera created.

Regarding sharpening, a RAW image offers more control because you are the one who is applying the sharpening according to the effect you want to achieve. Once again, JPEG processing applies a standard amount of sharpening that you cannot change after the fact. Once it is done, it’s done.

Finally, and most importantly, a RAW file is your negative. No matter what you do to it, you won’t change it unless you save your file in a different format. This means that you can come back to that RAW file later and try different processing settings to achieve differing results and never harm the original image. By comparison, if you make a change to your JPEG and accidentally save the file, guess what? You have a new original file, and you will never get back to that first image. That alone should make you sit up and take notice.

If you are new to shooting RAW

Don’t give up on shooting RAW just because it means more work. If it takes up more space on your card, buy bigger size memory cards. Memory is coming down in price almost daily. Will it take more time to download your images? Yes, but good things come to those who wait. Don’t worry about needing to purchase expensive software to work with your RAW files; Nikon, Canon, and most other manufactures supply software when you buy your camera that will do this for you.

My recommendation is that you shoot in JPEG mode while you are learning your camera and its settings. This will allow you to quickly review your images and study the effects of setting changes. Once you have become comfortable with all of the camera features, you should switch to shooting in RAW mode so that you can start gaining more creative control over your image processing. After all, you took the photograph—shouldn’t you be the one to decide how it looks in the end?

Image resolution

When discussing digital cameras, image resolution is often used to describe pixel resolution, or the number of pixels used to make an image. This can be displayed as a dimension, such as 4912 x 3264. This is the physical number of pixels in width and height of the image sensor. Resolution can also be referred to in megapixels (MP), such as 16 MP. This number represents the number of total pixels on the sensor and is commonly used to describe the amount of image data that a digital camera can capture. The highier the pixel count of the sensor the highier the image resolution will be. Always remember the highier the pixel count the more memory your image will occupy. The pixel count is another whole area of discussion within the photographic community, which I will discuss on another post.

Conclusion

If you are serious about your photography and want the very best image quality, shoot RAW. Your images will look better and the creative control alone is a very compelling reason to shoot RAW. There is certainly a learning curve to shooting in the RAW format, but in the end the image will be how YOU envisioned it. I hope this piece gives you a better understanding of RAW vs. JPEG and helps you on your photography journey. May the best light follow you.

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Author

I have always been interested in photography and worked in 35mm film medium as a start over 30 years ago. Since life has allowed me to have more time lately, my photography passion has taken on a new meaning in my life. I enjoy reading, studying, and practicing my craft as often as possible. I have been fortunate to have been on workshops with some of the best modern day landscape photographers. I love the digital world for it's many abilities to provide outstanding quality images. Did I say I love,love,love landscape photography. We have such a beautiful and amazing world, it is a joy to capture it in it's best presentations. I hope you enjoy the blog and post comments so that we can all learn together!

Back to Basics

The Travel or Walkaround Lens

Which Photography Lens to choose and Why?

Nikon's new sRaw image format.

The Backup Plan

Knowing your shutter speed.

How about those megapixles?

Safety in Numbers?

Photography for self expression and enjoyment.

RAW vs. Jpeg ? It's your decision.

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