First, let me say a big congratulations to BullDogMom who earlier this week found out that she was the winner of the Nikon D60 contest! Congratulations! I’m sure we’re all looking forward to seeing the pictures from the new camera.
Weekly Assignment
Last week’s assignment was Angles and there were a lot of great entries which made the job of choosing 3 to show this weekend very difficult! The angle shots were hard angles, soft angles, acute angles and obtuse angles, and lots of things in between. Our winner was Teewinot for her shot of a State Street building in Madison. The angles combined with the reflected clouds really made it stand out for us. Our first runner up was Cemil97 for the picture of angled raindrops falling on strawberries. It was the hard angled lines of the rain that stood out here against the strawberries. Our second runner up was Japaslavian for his incredibly disorienting view of a staircase, which had some great angles once you got your composure back.
This week’s assignment is Converging Lines. There’s still a few days left for the assignment, so if you’re still trying to come up with ideas, why not check out the blog post on converging lines to learn what they are and how they can crete an interesting picture.In order to be eligible for the mini contest to have you photos featured in this weekend write-up, your exif needs to still be intact, your picture must have been taken between 23 April - 6 May 2008, and your post must include the words “Assignment: Converging Lines” to show your consent to participate in the contest. Next week’s assignment is “Wide Open” so, whether your camera’s largest aperture is f/1.4 or f/4, just shoot it using your lens wide open!
Weekly Poll
This week we asked forum members whether most of the pictures that they post or show to other people were straight out of camera or post-processed. The results were closer than I would have expected with a lot of people using their pictures straight out of camera.
RussHeath said “I shoot RAW, convert to JPEG, and tweak from there. I definitely think that PP and work with the camera are distincly different skill sets, each very important to photography. While I enjoy shooting more than editing, a photo in the camera is only a starting point. You always want the best starting point possible, but it seems a waste not to adjust contrast, sharpness, and color — if you don’t do these in post then you’re really just letting the camera make these decisions for you.”
dmvp, however, said “Almost all of my shots are SOOC. I’m one of those “purists” that like to get it right in camera. I’m not against PP. People can do what they want, but I like to not use it if possible. I’ll crop or convert to B&W every once in a while, sometimes I’ll adjust exposure, but I don’t like to take the time to shoot in RAW and adjust everything later. Takes too much time.”
Watch for a new weekly poll posted later this weekend. Read the rest of this entry
Neil Creek is a regular contributor to DPS, authoring Photography 101 which is temporarily on hold. While trying to find the time to continue the series, he’s managed to write a quick post or two for you in the meantime. Please visit his blog, and check out his prints for sale on the Fine Art Photo Blog.
My 8mm f4 Sigma Circular Fisheye lens is my absolute favorite piece of gear!
It may surprise you, but this ultra-wide angle lens is incredibly versatile, and gives a unique perspective on just about any subject you turn it to. Even more important than that, it is simply the most fun I’ve ever had with my camera.
Due to the unique properties of fisheye lenses, the resulting images are unlike those taken with any other lens:
- A super wide-angle of 180 degrees gets everything in the frame - great for giving context
- The distortions resulting from such a wide angle can be used to artistic or humorous effect
- Combine the incredibly short focal length with a small aperture, and even objects touching the lens can be in focus!
- A huge field of view combined with a relatively small camera means you can get very unusual perspectives on small or inaccessible spaces
- With good stitching and de-warping software, a fisheye lens lets you easily capture full spherical panoramas in just a few shots
I’ve always shot with a circular fisheye on a cropped sensor DSLR, which results in black round corners, but this has never bothered me. On the few photos where this is a distraction I can cover them up with Photoshop, or crop them out. I look forward to experimenting with the lens on a full-frame sensor one day, when the whole circular image will appear in the frame.
Here are fifteen examples of fisheye photos from my collection that show the versatility of the lens, and will hopefully inspire you to try one for yourself:
Inside the Dishwasher © 2008 Neil Creek
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Today portrait photographer Christina Dickson looks at the topic of Model Releases and gives some tips on photographing people in public spaces.
The previous post (on Urban Street Portraiture) I described my experiences photographing the street of Portland for a book and documentary project of Revolutionary Media. As I mentioned, there were many technical factors to consider in street portraiture. However, when shooting street portraits there are also other social factors to consider that can either make or break your time.
1. Be friendly: Find a common discussion topic. Sometimes the easiest way to feel out a potential portrait subject is by striking up a conversation with them about a relatable subject. Good coffee. The behavior of a neighboring pedestrian. The weather. Let people see you as a genuinely interested individual and you can’t go wrong.
2. Have a purpose before asking permission: If you are going to shoot portraits on the street, its’ best to have a reason you can give explanation for. Without question, people will ask why you want their picture. “Just because” simply won’t suffice. When I was shooting, I was up front about why I wanted to take someone’s portrait; I needed portraits for a project on the street culture of Portland. Most often, I received very receptive responses.
3. Acquiring model release forms: It wasn’t difficult getting street people to sign model releases for the Revolutionary Media project. I simply took the time to explain the parameters of the release and people were generally at ease with the idea. Once again, if you have a valid purpose and reason you can give explanation for, you should not have trouble getting permission. Read the rest of this entry
Over the last month we’ve been running our biggest ever competition here at DPS. At the beginning of the month I announced it with a post called Win a Nikon D60 DSLR. The prize up for grabs was a Nikon D60 (complete with kit lens) worth around $700.
The month is over and it’s time to select a winner.
Before I do - let me say thank you to all of those who’ve been posting comments, photos, questions, reviews and more in our forums. It was a big month of activity in the forum with thousands of new members and lots of great discussion. Thanks also to our moderation team who worked so hard this month to cope with the extra activity.
So the winner of the Nikon D60 is…. BullDogMom
Congratulations! I’ll be in touch very shortly via email with details of how you can claim your prize.
Yesterday Tom Pickett from www.tpickettphotography.com began to explore the topic of External Flash Units. Once you’ve read part 1 continue reading the second part of the External Flash Unit series below.
Fill Flash
Now let’s talk a little about fill flash. Fill flash is when you are outdoors for example and the light you are getting from the sun is the main light. Fill flash is just that. Flash that fills in the shadows caused by the bright sun (like those rabbit eyes) on people.
Let’s take a situation. You learned from someone to place people in the shade on bright sunny days. So you have found some shade but there is some strong backlight in the background. You take a shot without the flash on and discover that the backlight has caused your camera to read the backlight, expose for it (and not the subject) and guess what happens? The subject becomes a silhouette. That’s nice if you wanted to make the subject a silhouette but in most cases that is not nice if the subject looks and says, “how come I cannot see me”.
Answer? Fill flash. You turn on the flash, focus on the subject. The camera’s light sensor reads all the light, ambient, background etc. Then, you take the shot again. This time the flash fires just the right amount of light to “fill-in” the subject with the flash produced light. Now you have a rather nice shot where you can see the subject and the background.
That’s not all. The sensors in the camera automatically tell it to look at the backlight, read the value and then the camera tells the flash to produce that amount of light less 1.2 to 1.4 stops below the background light. This algorithm is built in and is automatically done for you. This feature allows the shot to look more natural since we found out long time ago that if you tell the flash to produce the same light value, the result is a “fake” looking photograph. We all should write the manufacturers engineers and thank them for this feature. But wait. There is more.
Let’s now say that the backlight is strong…very strong. What will happen with that? The answer lies in your camera in what are called custom functions. You simply go to your custom function menu and find the one that says “auto reduction of fill-flash” and turn it OFF. (It is always on until you turn in off). The result is the flash puts out a full burst and is no longer reduced. Result? Another properly lighted shot!
For those of you lucky enough to have purchased a high-end flash unit such as the Canon 580, you can also pump up the light output directly on the back of the flash unit to increase the duration thereby yielding the same result of turning off the auto reduction in the previous paragraph. You can also tell your camera to instruct the flash to give you more output. This is covered in your manual and is called flash-compensation. You can increase or decrease the amount of flash by using the camera’s built in flash compensation by as much as two f-stops of light either way…up or down.
Consult your manual as it differs from manufacturer to manufacturer.
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In this post Tom Pickett (from www.tpickettphotography.com) responds to some of the questions we’ve had lately here at DPS on using External Flash Units. His post was so long and detailed that I thought I’d break it down into two posts. Stay tuned for a follow up one tomorrow.
It never ceases to amaze me. The camera manufacturers have a remarkable staff of engineers and those engineers, based on input or suggestions from actual users throughout the world continue to develop some amazing gear.
The equipment continues to help us produce outstanding images and it makes our jobs easier, makes us better or both.
One of the areas of remarkable and accelerated achievement is in external hot-shoe mounted flash units. Yet, as a professional photographer for 23 years, I can still admit to using at times a MANUAL electronic strobe. More on that later.
One of the most requested subjects at DPS is about “hot-shoe” flash units. After reading the questions, I can see that there is quite an array of inquiries on how to use these units correctly to achieve the desired results. One query even asked about high speed sync on flash units. This is rarely asked about and I was surprised there was interest in that area since I am personally a user of high-speed sync quite often in my work.
This article will focus on the dedicated flash units by the primary manufacturers such as Canon.
Most of the latest units are given the acronym E-TTL which means “Evaluative-Through-The-Lens” operation. There are several other ways to use these newest flashes including manual operation where you decide how much flash it should put out. Even 3rd party companies such as Sigma and Metz make E-TTL flash units that are specific to Canon, Nikon and other name brands.
Before we start, I apologize to those of you that do not have a DSLR as this article is written with those people in mind. Those of you who have any one of the many fine point-and-shoot digital cameras will be covered in the future on how best to use your built in flash units.
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