September 29th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
“The camera is not the same as a person” may seem like an obvious statement, yet a common mistake many photographers make is that they want the camera to act like they do in terms of seeing the world. It is very important to understand that the camera does not see the world, and consequently, a scene the same way that you do. The camera is restricted by technological limitations that your eyes and brain do not have.
This is especially important with exposure. Photographers see a subject and take the picture with the expectation that the “right” exposure will give a good picture. When the photo does not cooperate and results are poor, they think that they just did not adjust the camera right. In fact, in many situations, it is impossible to get a good picture. The scene is simply beyond the capabilities of the camera, even though you can see it perfectly.
This is most common in extreme lighting conditions. Your eyes can handle a huge range of detail from dark to bright in situations such as a scene where the light goes from brightest sun to dark, dark shade. The camera simply cannot handle such conditions and no exposure will be “right.” While HDR can be helpful sometimes in such a situation, often it is important to recognize when a good photograph is not possible and then you move on to something that is.
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September 25th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I am up in Maine to help my parents move into an assisted living place. Not much time for photography, but I am glad I made the trip. My sister lives here, but I think having both of us here has helped.
My sister lives in Freeport, and if anyone has been to Maine, they will typically associate Freeport with L.L. Bean. The store here is huge and open 24 hours a day. I love to just walk through it, especially at night now, because the main tourist season is past and the fall color season has not yet started.
I love L.L. Bean bags, especially the small bags. I am not sure why, other than they are nicely made, well-designed bags not specifically made for photography, but work well for that purpose anyway. I was looking specifically for a small bag because I had just purchased an Olympus E-620 as a small back-up camera for my E-3. Turns out, I love the E-620. I took it with me, and while I have not had a lot of time to use it, I am glad I brought it with me. I did get out at sunrise yesterday and it was a beautiful morning to be out photographing.
I had put the E-620 and a couple of accessories in a small bag I had. The bag was fine, but it was typical of most camera bags, over-padded and large for what it carried. I think the padding is fine for larger bags, but when I want to travel light and compact, which the E-620 lets me do, I want a smaller bag. At L.L. Bean, I saw a Continental Field Bag on the wall in the hunting department (hunting departments often have really great outdoor accessories). It looked to be the right size, but to be sure, I went back to the car to get my camera. It fit with room to spare. I know I can put the camera, an extra lens and a flash in the bag as well. It would fit most small digital SLRs. This bag is smaller than the padded bag I did have (which I gave to my sister), yet it holds more! And only cost $59.
The bag is a tough canvas bag and quite rich looking in brown and brown trim. Another big reason I like it is that it does not look like an obvious camera bag. I hate traveling with bags that look too obviously like camera bags — they are targets for thieves.
In addition, I went up to the fishing department. L.L. Bean has these great flyfishing reel bags that are perfect for small lenses and other accessories. I had a few neoprene bags I had gotten before, but I found some excellent small, zippered canvas reel bags that will work great, especially when carrying an extra lens in my new Continental Field Bag. These bags allow you to completely protect small gear thrown into any sort of bag.
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September 21st, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Web portfolios are becoming an increasingly important part of photographer’s work, regardless if amateur or pro. These can be a place to display and share your images with others, from family and friends to the whole world. They are definitely a way of using and showing off the photography that you are doing. For nature photographers, they can be a way of highlighting something important about the world around you, whether that is a specific location or if you have more spiritual goals.
So it was with great interest that I discovered one of my workshop groups, BetterPhoto.com, has a special sale on their Deluxe and Pro portfolios. For the price of one years worth of web display, you now can get two years for the next two days. On-line portfolios can be tricky because many sites offer little variety in presentation, or the opposite, you get no help on your display at all. With the BetterPhoto.com portfolios, you can upload an unlimited number of photos, plus you get to choose from a decent variety of designs. It really is a quick and easy way of getting a very professional web presence for your photography. Check it out at BetterPhoto.com.
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September 18th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Camera calibration is part of the right panel of Develop in Lightroom. In my work, I have not had a lot of use for it. I hear and read all about folks who do use it, but it always seems like it takes you away from the photograph into computer tech, yet I know some photographers love it. I had found that I did not like the standard calibration Adobe builds into Lightroom for my Olympus E-3, so I had been turning off Camera Calibration using the little switch at the left of the panel section title. That actually seemed to help my images and got rid of a color cast that I did not like, so I saved it as a user preset. Just as an aside, I don’t really like the Tone Curve coming in at Medium contrast for nature photos as a default for RAW, so changed that to Linear and included it with that no calibration preset.
Still, I thought there had to be more to calibration than I was giving it credit. Then I read an article on camera calibration by Kevin Ames in Photoshop User that was quite well done. It explained how to use Adobe’s calibration software to create a camera calibration for Lightroom. So I decided I needed to do it. I got a Color Checker chart and shot a few images of it with my cameras (both Olympus and Canon). Back at the computer, I used Ames instructions to use Adobe’s DNG Profile Editor camera calibration software and Adobe’s camera profiles (labs.adobe.com).
It all went well except one exposure of the chart could not be read properly by the software, so I redid it. I was impressed with how the profile was set up.
Sadly, I was not overly impressed with the results. Yes, there was a difference that you really could see, but I honestly could not say it was “better.” I think sometimes photographers who love technology will say something is better simply because the technology seems to do such a good job, when objectively, it is a different, not necessarily better, job.
So what does that mean? It means I am unlikely to use camera calibration in Lightroom. It could work for other photographers and give them outstanding results. I am guessing that it could be quite valuable for studio work where light is constant and colors have to be carefully managed for client work. I did that work years ago, but not today, so that isn’t a need.
To me, bottom line, is that camera calibration is not a necessity for photographers. I am sure it works for some, but I can tell you from experience that you don’t have to do it in order to get the best results from Lightroom. In some ways, I think it overcomplicates the process for most photographers and takes them away from their real goal of making better photographs (vs. making better profiles which may or may not lead to better photos). I am never one who believes just because there is software or other photo tool available that it is necessarily worth using by all photographers. I am more interested in helping photographers have fun with Lightroom and succeed with it than having them follow some arbitrary procedure just because someone else likes it.
Posted in Digital camera techniques, Lightroom | 1 Comment »
September 14th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
As many of you know, the national parks are coming up on 100 years in 2016 and you will begin seeing a lot about the national parks, including Ken Burns new documentary at the end of September (I am really looking forward to watching that). It is true that there were parks established before 1916, but that was the year that Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation to establish our National Parks System. It is a phenomenal system that is a model for the world. There are some challenges to the system that we must also be aware of, but it is still a popular and important part of our national identity.
A friend of mine, Ian Shive, has just come out with his book, The National Parks, Our American Landscape, and I highly recommend you check it out. I have long discussed the need for nature photography to go beyond simply repeating the pretty pictures that we have already seen. There is so much good nature photography available today that when it looks like just another pretty picture that you have seen before, audiences tend to tune out. Ian’s book brings a very fresh look at the national parks. You will see photos that do not look like every other park photo you have seen. This is really a phenomenal book for photographers, nature lovers and anyone who cares for the national parks. You can also see more about Ian at www.waterandsky.com.
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September 9th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
The big Station fire outside of Los Angeles has gotten a lot of attention from the media, and for good reason. It is a very big fire (still burning) and quite dramatic.
Fires can definitely be scary. They can threaten lives and homes. Fire is also critical to our lives. We need fire for energy. It is fire that creates steam for many electric power plants. It is fire that provides most of our energy. It is fire that we use for grilling those hamburgers on holidays like Labor Day.
And fire is also an important part of many ecosystems. In some places, such as the wiregrass-longleaf pine ecosystems of Northern Florida as seen in this photo, fire is a critical part of that ecosystem. This image shows part of a prescribed fire that clears out the brush that has invaded this plant community and allows the natural ecosystem to thrive.
As nature photographers, we are the eyes of so many people. Most people don’t see all the things we do, and they especially do not study the subjects the way we do. A photo of a subject, whatever it is, is then something to be seen in a whole different way because it is now emphasized and “cut out” of the world for all to see.
Yet it is interesting that you see so little nature photography showing fires or the effects of fires. One reason why mountain lions are protected and not persecuted through their range is that there are many photographs of them. People see these beautiful creatures in pictures even if they are unlikely to ever see one in person. Photographs of fires and effects of fires could also help us see fire as a part of the natural environment, not as simply something destructive.
Smokey the Bear probably hurt us a bit because the U.S. Forest Service was once very aggressive in promoting the idea that forest fires were bad. That agency wanted to protect the forests for lumber, for harvesting. Yet many of these forests now have a build up of fuel that will make fires far worse than they were in the past when they occurred naturally every few years in such places.
Some people confuse the idea of build up of fuel in Western forests with the growth of chaparral in Southern California. That is understandable because few photographers have spent time photographing and celebrating the chaparral. This is a shrub-based ecosystem without big trees (which is one reason a lot of photographers have trouble photographing it). It is also an ecosystem that burns, but normally, not frequently. The plants in it are adapted to fire. Most of the woody plants resprout quickly after a fire. Some seeds actually need fire or smoke to stimulate germination. And many wildflowers will come out and bloom the spring following a fire. Fire is a natural process of the chaparral, and this ecosystem is never “destroyed” (as the media likes to sensationalize it) from a single fire. It can be severely damaged, however, with fires that come too frequently (often from man-made causes).
Still, we see little photography of this regeneration of life after a fire. There is so much opportunity to do this. Fire is part of many, many ecosystems around the country. When a fire occurs in one near you, find out more about its true effects on the ecology of the area and if there might not be some cool photo opps there.
Posted in Nature, nature photography | 1 Comment »
September 8th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Photographers choose cameras for all sorts of reasons, some good reasons that will be helpful to the photographer, some bad reasons that can keep a photographer from getting the most from his or her gear. Last week I was at a talk by my friend Dewitt Jones and he talked a bit about cameras. I have also seen the announcement of the Canon PowerShot G-11, which I talked about here, and I am eagerly anticipating. Then I noted the Canon EOS 7D, which has some features that make me want to get it to replace my 40D (although I am not excited about the megapixels, which I will explain later in this post). All of this made me think about cameras and why we choose one or another.
I think there is always a comfort reason that most of us will use when purchasing a camera, and I don’t think this is a bad reason. You need to be comfortable with your gear. If a certain camera just strikes you in a certain way that makes you love handling it, then this is a camera you will enjoy using. This is a factor that publications like Consumer Reports don’t mention. Yet, I guarantee that if you love your camera and gear, you will take better photos than any “top-rated” camera that you might try. If a camera just does not feel comfortable to you in any way, you are less likely to use it frequently and have fun with it. This is why I think it can be a serious mistake for an amateur to do research about cameras (on-line or otherwise) and simply order a camera from a low-priced Internet site without ever having held the camera.
One of the worst reasons for buying a camera today is “more megapixels.” Cameras today pretty much have enough megapixels — few photographers really “need” more than 10 megapixels to do whatever they need to do. High megapixels really only offer the ability to make really large prints (and we’re talking much bigger than 13×19) or extreme crops of the image area (you would be better off putting the money into new lenses rather than high megapixels as megapixels really start to get expensive as they increase — for example, the thousands of dollars difference between a Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III and a Canon EOS 1D Mk III is in the size and megapixels of the sensor and little else).
That brings me to the 7D. Sometimes you may want a camera that simply has great new features that similar cameras with fewer megapixels don’t have. I am unconvinced until I see the results that the 17+ megapixels of the 7D is going to really give me anything I need, and in fact, could produce images with less quality than my 40D (I would doubt that because this is a new sensor with new technology, but I wouldn’t bet on it giving significantly better quality). However, the camera does have a new autofocusing system that promises better results and it offers some excellent HD video features. I am really interested in doing some HD video with interchangeable lenses, which I cannot do with my existing video gear. This could make for some really cool wide-angle video and macro video.
So it is possible that a new camera with more megapixels is worth considering if there are new features that can help you do something you could not do before. But I am very suspicious of megapixels alone.
Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts | 2 Comments »
