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Category: Gear

Sunrise With Snapseed

One of my favorite iPhone/iPad photo editing apps is now available on the Mac App Store, and it’s called Snapseed. It’s more than just an effects application, but it’s strength is that it’s a quick and fun way to add some textures and styles to your images. The people at Nik software are really setting the bar pretty high with their image editing effects, and this mobile app crossover is no exception.

I was up at an ungodly hour this morning (for a Sunday) and managed to catch the sunrise from my back porch. I decided to make lemonade out of the lemony situation and play around with the photo in Snapseed to see what I could make with it. The image above was made using their “Grunge” effects as a starting point. The following is the same photo was using Snapseed’s “Vintage” effects as the starting point:

It also has a mean black & white converter. This version of the image used the “Film” preset as a starting point as well as a green filter effect:

And for the purists out there, it also does some very subtle basic adjustments, such as saturation, cropping & straightening, sharpening, etc. The interface is very simplified compared to more professional editing software such as Adobe Lightroom, which to some might be a selling point. Here’s the same photo straight out of Lightroom as a reference point:

For $20, this application is a steal.

Lightroom 4’s Killer New Feature

In case you haven’t heard, this week Adobe has released a public Beta of their upcoming release of their photo cataloging/editing software Lightroom 4. When I read the announcement on Scott Kelby’s blog, I giddily downloaded it to see what they have in store for us Lightroom users. Besides some new modules I may never personally use (Such as Map & Book), the interface looks identical to Lightroom 3.5. But, as I poked around in the one module I spend 99.9% of my time in, the Develop Module, I found gold.

The panel on the left is from Lightroom 3.5’s adjustment brush settings panel, and the one on the right is from Lightroom 4 Beta’s. Do you see those new sliders? Do you know what they mean? You can now selectively paint white balance adjustments as well as selectively control shadows & highlights, as well as noise & moiré. These new adjustments are also available in the graduated filter. This is the one thing I’ve been wishing for since I started using Lightroom! Lets look at what this means with an example:

You might want to open that image in a new tab or window (ctrl + click it on a PC or command + click it on a Mac). The shot on the left is the original jpeg out of my camera, and the one on the right is a quick edit using the new adjustments. Using the new shadows slider, I’m able to only paint the musician’s face to bring out the details from the shadow caused by his hat brim while leaving the background unchanged. Using the highlights adjustment, I’m able to tame the blown out details in his face and also recover a lot of his shirt’s details. I am also able to enhance the backlighting of his hat to further separate it from the background. The localized white balance adjustment comes in handy in adding some warmth to his face, and by using another brush I’m able to remove the blue tint from his shirt. Add a touch of vignetting, and that’s it.

Let me show you what the same photo looks like as I edited it in the old & busted Lightroom 3.5:

Now, take a look at the same photo as I edited it in the new hotness of Lightroom 4 Beta:

I see a huge difference in the ease of getting that kind of result. Sure, I could do it before by exporting it into Photoshop, but now I can do relatively quick edits when I develop my photos and save a bunch of time in the process! Now as soon as Adobe addresses the bugginess of the beta release (I find it to be very kludgy – it stalls and locks up when making adjustments, much like Lightroom 3’s beta did back in the day), I think Lightroom 4 will be one step closer to photo editing nirvana. Good job, Adobe!

Photo-Tech Update

I was recently “forced” into an upgrade of my iPhone to the new 4S model (by forced, I mean I was eligible for upgrade pricing and the home button on my 4 wasn’t working, so I bought a new one). I have to say that I’m floored by the quality of the new iPhone camera. Combined with the amazing photo editing software available on iOS such as Snapseed, you can make truly stunning photos. I’m not saying anything new here, but the newer cell phone cameras have enough resolution where editing photos is far less destructive (at least it’s less noticeable). Photos such as the one above are now at a resolution suitable for printing at a decent size! The dynamic range seems more realistic, and the image stabilization helps combat Mr. Blurrycam (this is especially effective for taking video). I’m very excited about it.

TechCrunch brought this service to my attention. CameraTrace claims to be able to find your lost camera based on an embedded serial number in your EXIF data. The concept is very interesting, but it seems to me the type of person who is stealing photo equipment will not be uploading pictures to Flickr. It’s more likely that the camera will be sold on Craigslist or in a WalMart parking lot to an unassuming poor photographer who will be the one who gets caught with the stolen goods (I know, because I recovered my stolen camera in a WalMart parking lot from a guy who was reselling my D40 on Craigslist that he obtained in a WalMart parking lot). Still, you might get your camera back! The issue I have is that sites like Flickr and 500px are not nearly as popular as Facebook has become for the average person sharing their photos. If they can find a way to search against Facebook photos, then I’d fully support this service. $10 is a pretty small amount to register your camera though, and it will give you an edge in case you do ever fall victim to camera theft.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the Nintendo 3DS and its 3D camera. As far as I know, this is the first widely distributed 3D camera in the world. It’s unfortunate that Nintendo was cheap in the actual camera quality, because the potential is far greater than the reality. Regardless, a 3D still camera is an amazing tool. As photographers, we’ve been forever battling to interpret 3D reality in only two dimensions on film, paper, and/or digital screens. We struggle to find compositional tools to define depth, but with an actual 3D camera, you can see the depth. The cool thing is that it challenges you to exploit that depth, which actually carries over into a 2D conversion of the same photos. By trying to make a better 3D photo, you are actually making a better 2D one as well. I know that sounds crazy, but it makes sense when you really think about it. By trying to isolate and draw the eye to your subject, you instinctively use the techniques that photographers have been practicing for years. From using the rule of thirds to moving closer to finding leading lines, those techniques become second nature when composing in 3D because you are seeing the actual depth! I think the Nintendo 3DS could be a great training tool for teaching composition.

BarCampCHS Session Wrap-Up

Group Photo of the BarCampCHS attendees

Yesterday was the 3rd annual BarCampCHS event, and like last year it was held over at the College of Charleston campus in downtown Charleston, SC. As mentioned in an earlier post, I held a session on Off-Camera Flash. Before I talk about the highlights of my presentation, I wanted to share a bit of the BarCamp experience.

30 Seconds To Pitch

After you register and get your bag o’ swag, the attendees gather in an auditorium and the people who plan on holding sessions get 30 seconds each to pitch their idea. As you tell everyone what you plan to do, a counter is counting down behind you (a few people did have to get the mic taken away from them mid-thought). In reality, you only got about 25 seconds to pitch since people started counting down the final 5 seconds. I found it quite entertaining, especially when some mouthy participant trying to hawk a couponing network-marketing scheme went over his 30 seconds and tried to continue without the mic. He was followed by @CaananTully who pitched a session on saving money at the supermarket without using coupons. The crowd applauded loudly. Afterward, the attendees lined up to vote on which sessions they’d like to attend.

With that, sessions began about a myriad of topics, although it was highly concentrated on computer programming. Some of the more popular sessions focused on geek culture, including a session about modifying old Nintendo Entertainment System games such as Super Mario Brothers.

Eugene Mah Flaunts His Bathrobe Style

Eugene Mah took a lot of great photos of the days events, and they can be seen here. There is a BarCampCHS Flickr Group to check out, as well as my full set of photos. Twitterer @Pataford has a Ustream channel with some video he took. If you have some content I missed, please let me know in the comments! Now, on to my creative session:

Off-Camera Flash 101 Session

Slides from my BarCampCHS presentation

I started off the presentation by a short introduction and recap of my session from last year on photo editing. I showed some of the photos we made and edited and started talking about the creative use of lighting in the shots. This led to a brief discussion on why you would want to use off-camera flash. I also touched a little on why you would ever use your on-camera flash, and showed an example of fill flash outdoors during a bright and sunny day.

Next, we talked about shooting in manual mode – both on the camera and on the flash. We talked about the benefits of TTL as well as its shortcomings and why it’s important to know how to use manual flash, especially when working with light modifiers. I explained how when dealing with off-camera flash, you can control your ambient light with your shutter speed and your flash power with your aperture settings. Someone asked about ISO settings, and I explained that you want to shoot in your camera’s native ISO when dealing with lighting to produce consistent and clean images.

The next part of the session dealt with the different methods of getting your flash off of your camera. The first method was using bounce flash. I explained that even though the flash is still technically on the camera, the light source is now whatever you are bouncing the flash off of, which is indeed off of the camera. @TheKingOfGames volunteered to be our model as we took some sample shots. We started with a shot with the flash on the camera to reference the difference.

Straight Flash on the Camera

As you can see, the shot is not all that flattering. Someone in the class said “It looks like something you might see on Facebook”. I then showed the differences when bouncing the flash off of the ceiling or wall. In the following shot, I used the projector screen to bounce off of, which was really bright and reflective:

Bounce Flash Off A Wall

You can immediately see the difference in the quality of light. I talked about the softness and direction of the light, which made for a more defined image whereas the straight flash shot was very flat.

Next we talked about using a wire to move the flash off of the camera. The benefit being reliability while being able to cheaply transmit TTL information, with the downside being limitations of the cable’s length. We briefly talked about the different standards in cables, including PC Cables, 1/8″ Audio-Style Cables, and TTL Cables. I had a TTL cable that I use with my bracket, so we took a test shot using the bare flash:

Bare Flash Using a TTL Wire

Since I only had a short cable, I was able to demonstrate the limitation of the distance I could place the flash away from the camera (about arm’s length).

We then talked about wireless flash. I covered the three main methods of shooting wireless: Optical, Infrared, & Radio. We discussed the benefits and issues with each method. Optical is cheap but unreliable. Infrared can transmit TTL information, can be cheap depending on the hardware you already own (it also can be quite expensive if your camera doesn’t support it), and how you can control the flash settings from the camera. It’s also limited to line of sight and is very unreliable outdoors. I took a test shot using the pop-up flash on my D90 in commander mode to fire an SB-600 on a mini tripod to camera right:

IR Wireless Flash Test Shot Using an OmniBounce Diffuser

I spent the most time on radio triggers. I talked about the Pocket Wizards and Chinese knock-offs. I explained that you can buy about six Cactus v5 triggers for the price of one Pocket Wizard Plus II and according to many reviews and tests, the Cactus v5 is more reliable! I also touched on the newer Pocket Wizards and Radio Poppers that are able to transmit TTL information. I explained that for the cost of that convenience, you could be investing in some great lights! Sure it would be nice to justify having the top of the line triggers, but there’s no shame in buying a set of reliable knock-offs when you can achieve the same end-result for a fraction of the cost.

Photo by Daniel Vice @sharpstick on Twitter

I started doing some shots using an umbrella. I demonstrated how to control the flash power by changing the aperture, and then mixing ambient light with flash by adjusting the shutter speed. I showed how to match the ambient florescent lighting and flash lighting by gelling the flash with a green gel and setting the white balance in the camera to florescent.

Umbrella Look

I also talked about sync speed. I demonstrated what happens when you shoot faster than your sync speed:

Shooting Faster Than Your Sync Speed

I then changed the umbrella and set it up as a shoot-through umbrella and showed how it created a different look.

Photo by Daniel Vice @sharpstick on Twitter

I took a few shots as I moved the light around to get a softer look.

Shoot-Through Umbrella Look

I also altered the model’s position a bit and added another flash onto my camera at its lowest power setting to try and achieve a small catchlight in his eyes. This was our final result, which will hopefully make for a nicer Facebook profile pic than what we started with 😉

Final Shot

We did some Q&A, and I shared some resources for learning about camera lighting. Here’s my list:

joemcnally.com – Joe McNally
strobist.com – David Hobby
zackarias.com – Zack Arias
kelbytraining.com -Scott Kelby

I also wanted to add a pair of new eBooks by Piet Van den Eynde on Craft & Vision. You can pick up each of the two eBooks for $5 each, or buy them both at the same time for only $8. He’s done an excellent and thorough job in the first book of introducing the reader to off-camera flash, and takes you much further in the second one. I think it’s definitely worth more than $8!

Tech Specs For My Presentation

Gear:
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 VC
Flash: Nikon SB-600
Light Stand: Manfrotto 5001B
Umbrella: Photek Softliter II
Wireless Triggers: Cactus v5
Gels: Cokin Photogels
Mini Tripod: Jobi GorillaPod

I ran the presentation on an iPad hooked up through a projector using Keynote for the slides and Photosnitch for the live demo. I used an EyeFi wireless SD card to transmit the photos to the iPad sans cables.

DIY Speedlight Diffuser

As I mentioned in Saturday’s post, I have a wedding shoot on the beach this coming weekend. The challenge is that it is going to be an outdoor event – both the wedding and reception! I’m going to be thoroughly tested on my lighting skills because I’m going to need to light most shots in some way. It gets even more challenging when you realize that it’s a whole hell of a lot windier on the beach. That means umbrellas and soft-boxes are going to be near impossible. Not that I won’t try – I ordered a set of tent spikes and rope to add to my sandbags. I also ordered some stronger metal umbrella brackets.

Lets get back to the subject at hand. As I ran through the day’s schedule I started envisioning each setup. when I thought about the reception, which will start around sundown, I realized that I will not be able to rely on a light stands and off-camera lighting. I spent some time researching various methods. I have a Flash Bracket, which allows me to move the flash up and off the camera at about arms length (I usually have it set about 12″ to the left as well). This is perfect for these kinds of events. The light is still pretty hard, but at least it has direction. I also have a Sto-Fen Omni Bounce, which is fantastic if you’re indoors as it lets you bounce the flash off of the ceiling or a wall while throwing some light 360˚. Alas, I’ll be outside!

Sto-Fen Omni Bounce

I started doing some research. There are quite a lot of solutions out there, and the ones that looked most promising were also well over $100.00. I liked the idea of the Lastolite 20″ umbrella that’s meant to be handheld. My bracket actually has a hole for an umbrella shaft and I could easily mount it. Perfect! Except it’s no longer available. B&H does have a kit with it, but from the reviews it would appear that there are quality issues with it and that makes me think there is a valid reason that it’s on backorder. What to do now?

I started to look for DIY softboxes and modifiers, There are a lot of great options out there, and I was going to have to try something. I have a week to get ready, so that gives me time to figure it out. After dinner, we stopped at the local Publix grocery store and I saw this plastic flask hanging on a hook in one of the isles. The curvature of the white translucent bottle reminded me of a modifier by Graslon. Speedlights started to pop in my head (OK, lame), and I threw the $4.00 flask into the cart.

The Pedrini Wine & Bar 10oz Plastic Flask

I was delighted to see that the silver cap was false – a much smaller white plastic cap was hidden underneath (which makes it look slightly less obvious that I’m sticking a plastic bottle on my flash). I grabbed my flash and outlined the two longer horizontal sides on the back of the flask with a Sharpie. I then put a line in the center to make an H. This is how I marked my incision:

Mark Your Incision

I used a locking straight razor to cut the H. The plastic is pretty thick, so I had to give it a bit of pressure to make the cuts. Take it slowly and cut away from your body. I still have a 1″ scar on my wrist from a razor incident that I got from cutting up a cardboard box when I was a teenager. 1/2″ to the left and I might not be here today!

Ready to Attach

Now, slowly fold the two flaps outward. You should be able to snugly slide your flash head right in. Self-adhesive velcro or gaffer’s tape would work perfectly to hold it on. I actually put my Omni Bounce on my flash and slid that inside the flask. I shook it pretty hard and the thing wouldn’t budge! It’s not necessary if you don’t have an Omni Bounce, but it sure does make things easy.

Attached

It Works!

OK, now it’s time to test it. I put the flash on a Cactus v5 wireless trigger and fired her up. She’s a thing of beauty. The flask adds about 5x the surface area of the Omni-Bounce to the flash. Larger light sources = softer light. Let’s try it on a person. My daughter was practicing her keyboard in her room, so I shut her lights completely off and snapped this:

Test Shot of Mac

She looks great! There’s direction to the light from being on my flash bracket, there’s an even spread, and it’s a bit softer than a bare flash head. Mission accomplished! Now I’ll have to see how she performs in a real shooting situation. More to come…

Gear Porn

Photography is all about capturing moments, interpreting scenes, and showing images of the world with your own unique vision. Lets face it though, every once in a while you just like to drool over some technological smut.

I’ve been talking so much about my new Nikon Coolpix P7000 lately that I thought I’d share some pics of it. Here it is all tricked out with a Nikon SB-400 Sppedlight and a Joby Gorillapod Tripod.

The diffuser on the SB-400 is a Sto-Fen Omnibounce. That flash/diffuser combo works so well indoors that I use it more than my SB-600 for indoor on-camera flash!

I love the addition of the optical viewfinder. When it’s sunny outside that thing is a life saver! The level is pretty cool, and so is the built-in ND filter effect. You can see that I have a very busy LCD screen, but that’s no problem because all I have to do is press the shutter halfway and it goes away. Alternatively, I can press a button and it shows me just the scene I’m framing.

The physical dials and buttons are what makes the camera truly attractive to me. I like being able to control the settings while I’m composing, not before. Every movement of the camera alters the exposure because the direction, volume, and quality of light changes, and I don’t want the camera to make all of the decisions for me all of the time. If I have to go into the software of the camera to change important settings, the moment will most likely be lost!

I also recently ordered the Nikon case for the camera. While I was shooting at the Archers of Loaf show a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the effect of dirt on the lens covers – they get stuck! This case lets you use the camera’s straps (I use the Domke Gripper strap) and is quite minimal – something I cherish with this camera.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Gear Porn! No SD Cards were harmed in the making of this post.