Photodigitary

Upcoming Podcasts

There are a couple of podcasts coming up next month that you might be interested in. First, I’m going to be doing a live show this Tuesday, February 2nd at 8:00 p.m. EST with Juan Pons, Rick Sammon and Dave Warner. We will talk about lighting, flash photography, studio lighting and all things photography and answer your questions via telephone at 646-721-9811 or Twitter (by using hashtag #LF35-photog). You can also email your questions to editor@lensflare35.com ahead of time. If you just want to listen while we’re live, then go to www.blogtalkradio.com/lensflarelive and click on the Play button, which will only show up when the show is actually on the air.

If you can’t make the live time period, the show will be archived and available for play as a standard podcast from the dpexperience website at www.dpexperience.com later. I have also completed a podcast on the myths of digital imaging with Juan Pons that will also be available on dpexperience.com (DPE) early next month. Check out DPE for regular blogs from a whole bunch of fine photographers, including me.

Posted in Uncategorized, Workshops and Classes | Comments Off

Noise and Dfine

I have often mentioned that Adobe products only do an adequate job with noise. Lightroom 3 has some promising improvements, but from what I have seen so far, I still find Nik Software Dfine to be superior. There are other good noise reduction programs on the market, including Noise Ninja and Imagenomics Noiseware, but I find Dfine is easier to use and offers one thing that no one else does, the ability to control where and how much noise reduction is applied based on color and tone. Often noise is stronger in certain colors and tones, plus sometimes you don’t want to reduce noise in a color or tone because that can help hold sharpness better.

Now I have said these things before and once got a comment from a photographer who felt that the program wasn’t that good and the only reason I said it so was because I must be paid by Nik. I am not paid by Nik, although I admit that I think so highly of their products that I would never feel bad about doing any work for them. From what I have seen of Dfine on my images, I have to think this critic either had not used Dfine or did not know how to use it. But to be fair, I should show you real results rather than just talking about it.

I took my G11 to a banquet yesterday and decided to shoot a cheese cake sitting in front of me at ISO 3200. That ISO is really not usable straight from the camera, I think, which is why I used it for this test. The resulting image is not all that great (it has had some basic adjustments). Small, it will look okay here, but look at the magnified portion of the image. This would be good if you like special effects!

Then I put this into Dfine. Look at the difference.

That is actually now a usable image.

I did feel that the leaves were a little overprocessed, so I reduced the amount of noise reduction on the leaves. I am not sure you will be able to see the difference here, but there is a distinct difference on screen that will translate in the print as a better leaf.

To me, this is significant. It means that higher ISOs on the new cameras become even more usable.

Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts | 4 Comments »

An Important Question

I think that one of the most important things a photographer can do as he/she is looking at a subject or at images is ask a simple question, “What is this photograph about?” When you know the answer to that question, then you can decide what you need to do to make the photo clearly about what it is supposed to be about.

I see this all the time in student’s  work from my classes (especially at BetterPhoto.com where everyone submits photos for critique in each lesson). Compositions get confused because the photographer is taking a picture of a subject rather than looking to see what the photograph is really about. If you photograph a subject, you simply surround the subject with your viewfinder. The problem comes if the light, color, focus, etc., does not support that photo.

You see, the viewer looks at your image not as you do (with your history of actually taking the photo and being with the subject), but as a unique entity that they can understand only from what is in the photograph. If your subject is a stream, but the light is highlighting a rock at the bottom right corner, the composition is conflicted. The viewer thinks you mean the stream, but that rock is getting a spotlight on it, so obviously it is very important (just like in the theater, a spotlight emphasizes what we should look at), so the viewer looks at that. Yet the rock doesn’t seem all that important to the stream other than another rock, so the viewer is confused.

This happens all the time. You think your subject is the bird you have focused on, but there is a bright red shape in the background (from a stop sign, perhaps). The bird has its drab winter colors, so guess what attracts the viewer’s eye — the red shape. Or maybe there is a cut-off, odd shape that is very sharp in a corner (you know it is a tree branch, but the viewer cannot tell) — that again becomes a distraction because the sharpness implies that it is important to what the photograph is about.

Another problem that can come when you are not considering what a photo is about is too much stuff in a photograph. This comes when the photographer says the photograph is about this … and this … and this — but they are all unrelated things. So you end up with a  kid holding a rabbit in one part of the frame and her brother digging in the sandbox in another part of the frame. The photo becomes confusing. What is the photo about? “Well, it is about my daughter and her rabbit plus her brother playing.” Visually, it looks like they were pasted together. There is no visual connection. If the photo were to be about both things, the answer to the question would be, “It is about my daughter and her rabbit showing how this is all part of our family activities.” Notice it is not about A plus B, but about A integrated with B, which requires a different mindset for the photograph and will more likely result in a photo that looks like everything in it belongs together.

If you start asking yourself regularly, “What is this photo about?”, it will become an automatic thing that you don’t have to think about. Ask it while you compose the shot, when you review the image in the LCD and when you look at the photo back at the computer.

Posted in Digital camera techniques | 1 Comment »

Composition and Focal Point

I have often been asked if a photo has to have a focal point in its composition. Ask this question at a camera club and you will surely get a lively discussion. It is actually not an easy question to answer because … it depends!

Good composition is about creating an image that is clear and directly connects with the viewer (unless you are doing obscure fine art photography, which is a whole different discussion). That can happen with one focal point or many. Frequently, landscapes have either multiple focal points or none that stand out. The key is to create some sort of underlying structure to the image that shows clear relationships among the elements of the photograph. That simply means that the photograph is clearly understandable as to what it is about.

One composition might be muddled and unclear with multiple interesting points of interest, while another might be perfect. One composition might be muddled and unclear with one focal point (because of a distracting light or background that has no focal points, though), while another might be perfect. The key is not to think “rules” — i.e., does it or does it not have a focal point, but instead to look at the photograph and see what it is really about. And then, is that clear. Photos often get muddled because the photographer did not made a clear decision as to what the photograph is about. This can happen even with a single, clear-cut subject when there is something else in the photo that the photographer wanted to include but did not integrate it into the composition or with the subject.

If you were to look at the work by Eliot Porter, the great nature photographer of the middle of the 20th century, you would find that very few of his photos had a single, clear-cut subject. However, everything in each of his photos belonged there and there were always clear relationships among the pictorial elements within the composition. Relationships are key.

Sometimes what is more important than a focal point are these relationships. They cause the viewer’s eye to move around the photograph (which also happens with a single focal point — there are still relationships). A viewer’s eye should move around the photo, but not to competing picture elements, but to related picture elements. That is important. Research has shown that when a viewer’s eye moves throughout an image, the viewer will stay with that photo more and get more from it. That does not mean an eye moving from unrelated things that compete with each other. Then the viewer gets annoyed and moves on. That also tends to happen with centered compositions using a single focal point. What happens then is that the viewer sees what the photo is all about in a single glance, is done with it, and wants to move on.

The first photo is from a class I worked with last spring on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. The last photo is from the chaparral in the Santa Monica Mountains outside of Los Angeles (it is also HDR — no camera can handle that tonal range).

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, landscape photography, nature photography | 1 Comment »

Canon G11

If you have followed my writings here and in print, you probably know that I like small cameras. I am tired of carrying big cameras with their associated big lenses. And with all of the flurry of new or possible TSA regulations, being able to travel compactly is likely to become increasingly important.

Last fall, I noted Canon’s announcement of the G11. I thought it sounded like it had a lot of potential. After thinking it over, and thinking about the TSA, I decided to buy one. I am very pleased that I did, although I have only just started playing with it. This is no “point-and-shoot” camera. I am not sure why some photographers call all small cameras point-and-shoots. A point-and-shoot is a camera that has very few controls and can literally only be used to point-and-shoot. The G11 is no more of a point-and-shoot than a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III shot all on automatic. The G11 has a full set of controls from manual focus to all standard exposure modes, including manual, RAW, and more. I really like the way many controls are laid out (similar to the G9 and G10) in an “old-fashioned” way that uses dials instead of buttons and LCDs.

I was not real fond of the G9 or the G10 for several reasons. First, I was really disappointed when Canon removed the swivel LCD so that the camera only had a fixed LCD. The swivel LCD is back with the G11 — that is such a great feature for a camera like this. You can put the camera up, down, point it sideways, etc., and still see what the lens is seeing with that tilted LCD. Second, I think Canon bought into the megapixel race to the detriment of image quality. The G10 had this mushy look to its images due to overprocessing of the image files because of the high noise that came from too many megapixels in a small sensor (I have no doubt that we will see quality megapixels in small sensors in the future, but this was not the case for the G10).

I am quite impressed with the image quality of the G11. Canon actually went “backwards” in megapixels to 10 megapixels, but took a jump forward in image quality. At the ISO setting of 100, images are outstanding with little evidence of noise. Colors and tonalities look excellent, and the little lens on this camera continues the image quality that Canon is known for. This is a very capable little camera that is absolutely capable of professional work (and I will use it for that, too). I really like the IS (image stabilization) and f/2.8 lens on the camera which increases its usefulness for high portability.

Here are some sample images from RAW files. They have had minimal processing that does include standard sharpening that I normally do (a reminder — RAW files need sharpening because of the way digital imaging works; otherwise you will not get the sharpness that your lens captured):

Full size image, shot at a local farmer’s market. The subject of cauliflower in early sun is challenging for any sensor and the G11 did a great job with it.

Next is a detail from the center of that shot showing excellent sharpness and tonal rendition as well as little sign of noise. Shot at ISO 100:

Now one thing Canon has done is gotten onto the ISO bandwagon. Everybody’s got to have high ISO settings whether they are practical or not. So I took the G11 to dinner with my wife and daughter. First is an overall shot to give you an idea of what the size of the frame is. Then I will show you details. For a grab shot, the image looks pretty good and handles colors and tonality well in mixed lighting.

First is 400 — all of the photos below are cropped from the size you see above so that you can actually see detail. Noise shows up, but is reasonable. It won’t match a camera with a physically large sensor, but the results are very useable (there is a little camera movement causing some unsharpness).

You can’t see much here. The noise that is there would probably be helped with a little work with Nik Software Dfine (an aside — I really do use and like Dfine. I wrote an article that included it for PCPhoto/Digital Photo and got a comment on the Digital Photo website how I must have been paid a lot by Nik. It is sad when someone cannot genuinely like and use a product without this snarky commentary that one could only write good things about something if you were paid for it. That’s both annoying and rude.)

Here’s 800. The noise starts to look more obvious, but the tonalities and colors are holding pretty well.

At 1600, the noise really becomes strong although I am surprised at how well tonalities and colors are holding up. Even noise reduction software is going to have trouble with this. On the other hand, this does give a faster ISO for faster shutter speeds that may mean the difference between a sharp photo or not.

Next is the 3200. Now unless you were after special effects, I find this pretty unusable. Although, truthfully, it could be an interesting effect with the right image. The noise is extremely strong and colors and tonalities are adversely affected. Look at the black sweatshirt! It is now turning blue! And look under my poor daughter’s chin! I am not sure why Canon includes this ISO setting other than for marketing reasons — “Wow! With the G11, you can even shoot at ISO 3200.” Well, shoot you can, but don’t count on great results.

I look forward to being able to take this little camera with me everywhere and not feel limited by it. I typically take a camera everywhere I go when traveling, even if simply doing a quick workshop. I am really beginning to dislike air travel, and I never did in the past. If I can take a short trip with capable, but small, camera gear like this G11, maybe the air travel won’t be so bad.

Posted in Equipment thoughts | 2 Comments »

New Software

I want to tell you about some new software I am using, but before I do that, I feel a need to qualify this blog. I love software that helps me get better results from my photography and makes it easier and faster to work with photos — so I get excited about anything that does this. However, I realize that not everyone will share my excitement, and that’s okay. I don’t think everyone needs to do the same things with their images. I also cannot tell you if you will like this program, if it fits your workflow or your budget. I can only tell you what I like and how it affects my work. I say these things because I know that it is easy to get excited about software and not appreciate that the cost may be a significant factor for people who don’t work with these things for a living like I do.

Okay, the software. Nik Software just introduced Viveza 2, the latest version of this software. I like a number of things about it, including its original technology for carefully controlling adjustments in a specific area of the photo. I saw this technology, U-Point, in development years ago and was quite impressed with it at the time. U-Point technology is in a number of programs now for Nik Software, including Nikon Capture (also made by Nik), Dfine and Color Efex Pro (all very good, highly photographer-centric programs). Viveza uses the technology to create what is essentially an alternative to Photoshop’s adjustment layers and layer masks. You click on something in the photo you want to adjust.

You then adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation (which, by the way, is a far better saturation control than the one in Photoshop) and an area to be influenced. The U-Point technology finds similar color, tone and texture to what you clicked on and limits adjustments to that. You don’t have to do any selections or work with layer masks. In addition, you can add minus control points to places that are being adjusted to prevent them from being adjusted. This is just a click on the photo and you have control. The U-Point technology is very good at finding just the colors, textures, etc. that you want without a lot of work on your part.

Viveza 1 did all of that. What 2 does is add some very nice global controls that allow you to quickly and easily adjust the overall image, plus you gain a new adjustment parameter called Structure. I am so impressed with Structure (which can be used overall or with selected points using U-Point technology) that for nature photography, I find it alone is worth the price of the program.

Now do you see why I qualified this blog in my opening paragraph? I know that some people will think I am crazy saying that one small feature is worth the price of software that is not inexpensive. It all depends on your work and what you like to do. For me, Structure solves a problem I have long struggled with, and that is getting good detail and tonal rendition in the mid-tones, especially the dark tones. Clarity in Lightroom and Camera Raw is a good addition to those programs and does that to a degree. However, I find that clarity can quickly make a subject look harsh and you can lose subtle tonalities. Structure doesn’t do that. It gives great “structure” to tonalities without making them look harsh or destroying subtle tonalities. And to have that in both overall and local adjustments is great.

In the photos I have uploaded, you will see a first photo as it might come from Lightroom or Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Then you see an overall adjustment to structure — notice how the granite rocks really become defined much better. Then I added some local adjustments to just the sky and the flowers. Bright yellow flowers can be difficult to really define because of the way that digital cameras handle bright colors, but Structure has allowed me to bring out their detail and even add some quality saturation (you can see this well in the preview at the bottom right — the left side is before, the right side is after).

Viveza 2 works with Lightroom as an export plug-in, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements as normal plug-ins. Frankly, the average photographer could use Photoshop Elements and Viveza and do work better and faster than most photographers working with Photoshop alone.  Nik Software is at www.niksoftware.com.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | Comments Off

New Stuff

My goals are always to help photographers master digital photography and gain better and more satisfying results. I have completed a couple of new things that you might find of interest. First, I have a new class at BetterPhoto.com called Composition Boot Camp. Based on a lot of workshops I have been doing, I felt a need to really challenge and help photographers get better and more effective compositions. This class is a little different than most because we have a little fun with the boot camp theme. But it will challenge any photographer to better use composition to more effectively communicate about their world and affect their audience, whoever that might be.

Second, I have a couple of new books out. First is How to Take Great Photos with the Canon D-SLR System from Lark Books. This is a book about better photography with a Canon slant. There are lots of tips about dealing with all sorts of things from exposure to choice of focal length and more. Second is almost out: Photoshop Elements 8: Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks, a book designed for photographers who want to get the most from Photoshop Elements 8. This book is not available in stores yet, but will be in January.

Posted in Books | Comments Off

Black-and-White and More

I just got a copy of George DeWolfe’s new book, B & W Printing. George is a very fine nature photographer who should be a lot better known. I think this book has a lot of great ideas that go beyond black-and-white printing. I was really impressed with the book. It talks a lot about midtone tonalities that are so very important for nature photography especially, regardless if you shoot color or black-and-white. This is one problem I see a lot with many digital photographers’ color work, especially in the dark midtones. They are often dark and muddy and have little definition.

Also, he gives some great stories about how he has analyzed and looked at the tonalities of great artists. His discussion of tonalities gets maybe a little esoteric, but the photos illustrating this are great, showing both before and after, and are worth the price of the book alone. He talks quite a bit about the difference between how we see the world versus how the camera sees the world, a really excellent discussion, although maybe not everyone will stay with it because it gets a little academic. Still, even if you just look at the photos and the captions in that section you will get a lot from the book.

Posted in Books | Comments Off

An Easy Special Effect

This photo is our family’s Christmas photo. The background “angels” are a special effect that can be easy to do and can be used for all sorts of photos beyond Christmas.

This is essentially an optical effect related to depth of field. Let’s first look at depth of field. The following shots show a street corner at night — the first image shows it in focus, the next images show it progressively out of focus. This was shot with a telephoto focal length to increase the depth of field effect, i.e., the circles getting bigger. The circles are the lights out of focus. Any out-of-focus bright lights or highlights will take on the shape of the inside of the lens. They become more pronounced with more telephoto and a wider aperture. In this case, the lens was shot wide open, which gives the circles. A lot of lens designs now strive for a circular aperture (or f-stop) at more than the widest f-stop so that this effect shows up at more f-stops, although the largest circles at a given focusing distance will occur with the widest f-stops (f/2.8, f/4, etc).

This can be done during the day, too, by deliberately using bright, out-of-focus highlights behind your subject — this especially works well with close ups. I’ve done this a lot around water, looking for a sparkle in the water from backlight, then shooting flowers in front of it with the lens wide-open to get this effect.

Now to the angels. Remember I mentioned that out-of-focus lights and highlights will take on the shape of the inside of the lens? If you shoot with your lens wide open, then put a cover over the front of your lens with a cut-out shape in it, that will take on the shape of the highlights. So what I did was take a paper punch with an angel shape (I had gotten it on sale after Christmas last year), and cut an angel hole in the middle of a piece of cardboard that fit over the front of my lens. I actually cut a circle of cardboard to fit inside a lens shade, then punched the hole in the middle of that. So now the lens acts as if its aperture or f-stop had the shape of an angel!

The blurred shapes are moving car tail lights. You can do this with any shape you like. I knew a photographer who did this once with the logo of a company he had as a client. Detailed shapes can be done by making an inverted tone shape (i.e., do the shape in Photoshop, then invert it so the background is black and the shape white) and printing it on clear plastic (there are some special “overhead” sorts of media that this can be done with using a printer). You then cut out this new “filter” and put it in front of your lens.

Now the people. I have done this effect by simply having my subject in front of the lights and giving the subject a good exposure from flash. The problem I had is that our kids no longer live at home and so I had to get the family when I could. I didn’t have the perfect background for the lights yet, so I shot them at night with no background nearby (this allowed me to make the background completely black while they looked fine from flash). I cut them out in Photoshop and put them against a background. This had an advantage in that I could pick a favorite family shot and a favorite background shot (the moving cars meant this changed) and put them together. One trick to this, besides working to clean up the edges, is to create a new, top layer in Photoshop over the subject and background layers. Then use the eyedropper to select a color in the background (you might have to do this multiple times as I did). Take a small, soft-edged brush (how big depends on the photo) and paint over the edges of the subject. Change that layer to a Color blending mode (click on Normal and select Color from near the bottom of the big list), then change the opacity of the layer as needed to help it blend in. This layer really helps connect the background and the subject.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Photoshop techniques | Comments Off

What are the rules, anyway?

This past fall, I had a great group of photographers with me on a GAPW workshop in the Eastern Sierras (I will have one on the wildflowers of the Eastern Sierras next June). One morning we went to Mono Lake a little before dawn. Some of the group went right down to the water, some did not. I hung out with some photographing tufas not down by the water. The sun came up and there was beautiful light on the tufa formations. Then I decided to walk down to the lake and see how the rest of the group was doing.

On my way there, a whole mess of people were leaving, heading back to their cars. One person says, “You’re too late. The light is all gone. The good photos are over.”

Now let’s think about this for a moment. The light was still low and creating some wonderful shadows, and creating some excellent textured light on the tufa. The man who spoke, who seemed to reflect the whole group, was that there was only one possible way of photographing at Mono Lake and the tufas. I heard later from one of my students that there were a whole horde of folks all lined up facing the same direction, the sun rose, they finished shooting and all left.

I found this rather sad (as did my group who merrily continued shooting). Yes, light and color are affected by sunrise and conditions do change. And yes, it is possible to get to a light that is unattractive on a landscape. However, the latter had not happened. What seemed to be happening is that these folks were photographing according to some unwritten rules about how to photograph Mono Lake. Which is probably one reason why I found a lot of Mono Lake photography pretty, but also without a lot of originality. How often do we need to see the same sort of pre-dawn colored tufa? Or their silhouettes against the sunrise?

Whenever you do anything of a creative nature, whether that is photography, writing or somethings else, there are no absolute rules to guide you. Sure, there are things you must know about the craft of photography, etc. You need to know how to get a sharp photo, for example, or how to expose properly. But beyond that, “rules” tend to be more ideas that someone else wants you to do either because they have a limited sense of right or wrong or they are scared they are wrong if no one else follows what they are doing.

This can be very restrictive to a photographer’s growth, a photographer at any level, from beginner to expert. It is very true that as you try new things, you can feel a bit insecure about them. So when someone comes by with the “rules”, it is easy to quit doing what is true and right for you, just because it seems to be “against the rules.”

The photo above is not the typical shot of Mono Lake and I like it because of that. Before I ever visited Mono Lake, I thought that the tufa were so common that you saw them all over. Wrong! They are only in a few select areas. This photo shows Mono Lake and some tufa in early light, light that shows the lake and the setting well, and shows largely an open lake (which is truer to the location than many shots of only the tufa). To make the lake look stronger in the composition, I had to make the tufa look less dominant. Because they are tall, they cut through the lake and into the sky from normal camera heights. I put my camera on my tripod, set the self-timer, pressed the shutter and hoisted the camera on the tripod high over my head. I had to do a few shots to get it right. And to do this, you often need to shoot manually. But it does give a different view of the lake and its tufa, giving a perspective of what the place is really like. I like the strong, early light after sunrise here.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Uncategorized, Workshops and Classes, landscape photography, nature photography | Comments Off