Nikon's new D3200 and the D600 rumor.

There is a rumor going around that Nikon might be announcing a D600. I am reading a lot of complaint/arguments over where it will fit in the lineup. What camera is it replacing? What camera will it out shine?

Ive realized that where a camera "fits in" and its price tag DOES NOT determine image quality!

With the way technology has progressed, it is almost impossible to release a “bad” camera now. Look at the brand new D3200. Nikon's full frame D700 is nearly $3,000. It is a good camera, don’t get me wrong; In fact, it’s a pretty great camera. BUT it is nearly four years old. Nikon's brand new D3200 is the bottom of the line camera, the entry level DSLR… It is 24MP while the D700 is 12MP. They both go up to ISO6400. The 700 has more FPS and more easily accessible controls but if we are talking pure image quality, the images will be nearly indecipherable, and the $899 D3200 image will be able to be enlarged much larger.

The quality of a camera cannot be based on its price tag. I don’t see the need in placing cameras in a nice and neat line from best to worst. Wherever the D600 fits, I promise it will blow the 4 year old $5000 D3 out of the water. 

Point of the article: Whatever the name of the new camera is, D600/500/400, it will be awesome, simply because it's new. Don't worry about where it fits either. Just buy a camera and go shoot stuff...

Focal point

Every image should have a clearly defined focal point.
When you look at a picture, you quickly (and without thinking about it) scan the image and your eyes rest on a point. In portraits, this is usually the eyes.
The focal point of a landscape is usually the brightest spot of the image (the sun for example.)

While I was framing this shot, there was a clear focal point, the cars head lights OR the lightning.
(I was yet to capture them both at the same time)
So the images were good. It had a clear focal point and it was interesting.

I took hundreds of exposures before I caught the lightning and cars passing simultaneously.
I was ecstatic, I even changed our Facebook status!
I ran inside and pulled up my images in bridge to check them out.
As soon as I saw the image, i realized that the lightning actually HURT the image!!


Close your eyes, then look at the picture. You will notice your eyes bouncing from the lightning, to the the car lights. There is no good focal point, your eyes don't know where to rest.

I quickly "photoshopped" the lightning out so you could see the difference.
With no lightning, your eyes immediately find the focal point.

Moral of the story, make sure your images have a clear focal point. Your eyes should quickly rest on a single spot. Lines (such as moving headlights) help draw your eyes to the focal point.

So what do you think. Lightning or no lightning??

Freezing time...

In this blog/video tutorial I will show you how to use your camera flash to freeze water drops in motion.

The cool thing is, you don’t need to have thousands of dollars worth of gear to get great results.

You can watch my video, read the blog, or both :)

This is my first video, I realize that it is super long... I'll try and shorten them next time. If you have request, let me know!

GEAR-

All you HAVE to have is your camera, some liquid, and something to drop in the liquid.

I recommend having,

Camera, tripod, shutter release remote, off camera flash, glass container, black background, colorful paper/fabric, color gels, food coloring, etc…

Setup-

Place your glass container on a table, you want the container as far away from your background as possible. If you are using fabric or wrapping paper, place it under the glass.

Mount your camera to your tripod and line the camera up level with the container

Use your longest lens and move it as far back as possible while making sure your subject takes up the majority of the frame

How to set up your camera-

You will need to turn your camera to the “M” setting, this allows full manual control. Start by putting your ISO on 200. Doing that depends on your camera model, you may hold down a dedicated ISO button and rotating your thumb wheel or you might have to press the info button twice and change it from that menu. If you cant figure it out, look it up :) Then put your shutter speed at 200, this means it is 1/200^th of a second. If you are setting it on the back LCD screen, it might actually say 1/200. Set your aperture to F/8. Set your flash to 1/6^th power. Last, set your white balance to flash, or the lightning bolt. If you are unsure how to set those settings, look it up on google or your manual.

Remember, these settings are what worked for me, in my house, with my lights, at my working distance… it might be different for you. Change the settings as necessary. I recommend changing your aperture to adjust the exposure.

Close your flash, take a picture, it should be almost all black. Your flash should be the only light source.

Next, you are going to want to have a IR remote or a shutter release cable, if you don’t have those, have someone else drop the object in the water. If you don’t have a friend or a shutter release, you might be able to get by with the self timer.

If using off camera flash-

Set your flash to remote or slave mode. Place them on either side of the glass and out of the frame, pointing towards your glass but not straight into your lens, about a foot from the glass. I set my popup flash to 1/64^th and my two remote flashes to 1/32 or 1/16

Again, all situations are different, adjust as necessary.

Drop!

You’re all set, start dropping stuff! Timing is critical, just keep trying.

Post processing-

Honestly, with these types of pictures, there is a lot that can be done in post processing. I shoot all my images in RAW (which I will most likely blog about later) which allows my to produce an image the way I like it, not the way my camera thinks it should look. I recommend you turn the contrast way up on these kind of shots and adjust the curves dramatically. I might talk more about this later.

-Feel free to ask me questions. I am passionate about what I do and I can talk about it all day!

Nikon vs. God

So, Nikon is rumored to launch THREE new PRO cameras in 2012, TWO of three in January! I am super excited about upgrading some of our equipment, I check on Nikon Rumors every day :) While looking over the leaked specks for the hundredth time, something intrigued me. First, I’m going to give you some quick background info. The new professional cameras that are coming out have extremely sensitive image sensors, which means they can work in less light. The higher the ISO, the less light is needed to make a picture. When I read that Nikons new camera (along with canons) has a high ISO of over 200,000 I was completely blown away. You will be able to shoot in near darkness!! I was thinking about how far technology has come and how amazing it is… then I started thinking about the human body. How awesome are we? Not because of us, but because of our creator!

When you see an astonishing camera such as the Nikon D4 or Canon 1DX that can take 11 pictures a second in near darkness , you know some extremely smart people had to create and build that complicated piece of equipment, it did not just magically appear one day. When I look at the human eye, I can’t help but think about the creator that created it as well.

As I’m sitting in my living room this evening, I can see just fine. I can read, I can focus on a book that is 6 inches from my face or on a refrigerator magnet in the kitchen. I have no issues looking at my bright computer monitor then glancing over at my beautiful wife. But when I pick up my camera and click off a few shots, all I get is a black LCD. I raise my ISO to 6400 and I get a faint image with plenty of grain. Let’s bump my ISO up to about 100,000… now I get a properly exposed image but at the price of plenty of grain and lose of image quality.

Cameras simply cannot perform anywhere as good as the human eye!!!

God created the human eye out of DIRT a few thousand years ago. There haven’t been retina upgrades, our pupils haven’t gotten any bigger, nothing has changed about our eyes since Adam was made. Scientists have been rolling out brand new $5000 cameras every few years and they have not even got close to touching the quality and efficiency of the human eye.

My camera’s image sensor 4 times bigger than my eyes retina but it can’t gather anywhere near the same amount of light. My camera lens has an aperture 10 times bigger than my pupil, but it cannot let as much light through. My camera has 50 autofocus points, my eye has infinity. I have to adjust my camera for different colors of light, my brain does that automatically. My camera cannot focus in dim light, my eyes focus instantly. Some of my lenses can’t focus closer than 10 feet! Again, my eyes don’t have a problem. Shooting a computer screen and shooting a dark kitchen would require many changes to my camera settings. Guess what, we don’t even have to think about it. Don’t forget to change your camera batteries and fix it when the image sensor goes bad… Our eyes last a lifetime.

Our eyes are infinitely better than the cutting edge technology of today but our eyes were formed from the dust of the ground thousands of years ago.

I do not see how anyone can look at the complexity and efficiency of the human body and say, there is no God.

Choose your lens carefully

Look at these two pictures, can you see the difference? Alright, now can you tell me what lens was used on which? I’ll give you a hint, one is a 14mm and one is an 85mm.

It is pretty easy to notice the difference in these two images. One is much less distorted and has a much less distracting background.

When shooting portraits, it is important to choose the right lens. I personally love doing portraits because I can move, the subject can move, and I can try different angles and lenses and not miss a shot.

Let’s look at this scenario, you are doing outside portraits, and you have your choice between two common kit lenses, the 18-55 and the 55-200. What one should you use?? They both have a maximum aperture or 3.5 and have virtually identical optics inside. The 55-200 is usually the best choice for shooting one or two people outside and here is why.

As you can see above, longer focal lengths give you less distortion and decrease your depth of field, making your background more blurry and less distracting.

With the wider angles, like my 14mm, the person looks pretty strange… I can see the tops of his shoes and sometimes you can see up the subject’s nose… never flattering.Human sight is about like a 50mm lens, so anything wider than that begins to look unnatural.

Sometimes you are in a situation when you must use a wider angle. If you are inside or simply cant separate yourself from the subject, you will have to use a wider angle. If you are photographing many people, you might have to be obnoxiously far away to use a telephoto lens, which means you should use your wide angle. Wide angles are also great for capturing more of the surroundings.

By no means am I saying you should never use a wide angle for portraits. I use mine pretty often. Wider angles are great for shooting down on subjects, like if they are laying down. I also use wide angles when I want to see more of the scenery. Wide angles are great for inside portraits because you cant always get far away from the subject.

Remember those few tips when shooting your next portraits!

Macro Photography

I recently got asked about some of my macro shots and how I go about macro photography.

Anyone who has been around photography for a long time knows that there are MANY ways to shoot macro.

First off macro or micro pretty much means close-up, or life sized.

If you want to get technical, macro lenses are categorized and rated by the ratio of the actual size of the subject vs. the size it is on the image sensor or film. A 1:1 lens is about the best you can get. If you take a picture of a 35mm rectangle with a 1:1 lens at the minimum focusing distance, it will cover the whole frame. If you do the same with a 1:2 lens, it will cover half the frame. Most lenses are about 1:6 which means that a 10mm bug on a 35mm piece of film (or full frame image sensor) covers only 5% of the frame!

Of course, you have seen images that have a ratio much better than1:1, where a fly’s eye may take up the entire frame!! We are going to discuss some methods used to make a 1:1 lens a 4:1 lens or better! Or maybe you just want to make your kit 1:6 lens a 1:1 lens.

The great thing about macro photography is that you can get decent results for basically next to no cost.

The first thing I am going to talk about is the cheapest but also EXTREMELY simple. These handy gadgets are called macro filters or close-up filters. They are simply a filter that screws on the end of your lens. These filters look and act just like a magnifying glass. They come in different strengths from +1 to +4 to just stupid close. The great thing about macro-filters is that you can use them on auto-exposure mode on your camera. You can find a set of 4 with a nifty case for under $20 on e-bay. Some disadvantages are a slight sacrifice in image quality (especially along the edges) and it shortens your depth of field which can make it extremely difficult to get a sharply focused image. Also, you have to make sure that you get the right diameter filter for your lens (which is fine if you only plan on using one lens or lenses with the same filter size.)

The next fun macro toy is an extension tube, which is a…tube… that extends your lens. The difference in this and the macro filter is that an extension tube goes between your lens and your camera body rather than on the end of your lens. There are no optics (glass/lenses) in an extension tube, it just moves your lens farther away from the camera body. Like the macro filter, you can get different sizes or strengths of tubes. The more expensive tubes have electronic contacts that allow autofocus and auto exposure mode to be used. Some tubes cost less than $5 but they are nothing but a piece of metal, which means that you must use manual exposure mode and manually focus. The biggest drawback to the cheap tubes is that they MUST be used with a lens that has an aperture ring (you can change the lens aperture by turning a ring on the lens not just a dial on the camera.) If you put a cheap tube on a lens without an aperture ring, the lens will be stuck at its smaller aperture and render is useless. I like extension tubes because you do not lose any image quality. Some negatives are that they are more expensive than the filters (about $75 for the tubes with electronics) and like the macro filters, they decrease your depth of field.

Last is one of my favorite photography toys, a teleconverter. They (like everything else discussed) come in different “strengths”. You can get a 1.4x a 1.7x or a 2x. These numbers correspond to the amount of focal length added. A 2x teleconverter DOUBLES yours focal length, making a 50mm lens a 100mm or a 70-300mm a 140-600mm!! What is fun about a teleconverter is that it doubles your focal length but still allows you to focus at the same distance. This is fun for telephoto shots along with macro shots. If you have a 50mm lens that can focus at 1 foot, put a teleconverter on your lens and it is a 100mm lens that can focus at 1 foot… awesome :) A teleconverter looks almost like an extension tube because it goes between your camera and lens. Unlike an extension tube, it has glass in it, which means that it can lower your image quality because it magnifies any imperfections your lens may have. Another disadvantage is that it cuts your aperture in half which means that your awesome F/2.8 lens is now a so-so F/5.6 lens. A teleconverter can be found for about $75 also.

Now, let’s take a standard 50mm F/1.8 lens. This has a reproduction ratio of about 1:6. With this 50mm, you can focus at about 1.5 feet. Let’s put a 2x teleconverter on it and make it a 100mm F/3.6. That makes the lens have a 1:3 ratio. Let’s put an extension tube on it, allowing it to focus at .75 feet meaning it’s a 1:1.5. Hmmmm, let’s now add a macro filter and allow our lens to focus at about 4 inches!! A disadvantage of all of this is that your depth of field is going to be stupid small… like, half of a fly can be in focus but the other half completely blurry. Some ways to combat this is stop down your aperture (because that increases your depth of field.) You can also just lean back and forth to focus rather than use autofocus or try to manually turn to focus ring.

Macro is cool because you can do it anywhere, you do not need a busy city or a beautiful country landscape. All you need is a bug, or an eyeball, or a flower… anything God created looks amazing close up :) Buy a cheap set of macro filters and see what you come up with!

Shoot simple and stunning silhouettes

A silhouette is the image of a person or object consisting of the outline and featureless interior, usually being black.

Have you ever tried to take a silhouette picture of a palm tree or a friend jumping against a beautiful sunset and all you get is a blown out white sky?? When I think of a silhouette, I usually think of a beautiful sunset landscape with a tree or two.

Snapping a stunning sunset takes some knowledge of photography and your manual exposure settings. The first thing we must understand is that your goal is to properly expose the sky and to capture its vivid colors. When your camera is on anything but manual exposure mode, your camera usually tries to properly expose the person or the tree, so it allows the shutter to be open longer or the aperture to be bigger, which causes the sky to be blown out and white. What I do first is make sure that my ISO is set around 200 and I usually close my aperture up to increase my depth of field. Start with an aperture of F/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/200s and see what you get. Too light? Stop down your aperture to F/8 or speed up your shutter to 1/400s. If your subject is moving, speed up your shutter, if you want your subject and the background to be in focus, close up your aperture. If your subject is not completely black, that it is fine, it is very easy to correct with any basic photo editor.

Try getting down low and get the grass in the bottom of the frame your subject off center. With landscapes, you want to have multiple “layers.” A foreground, such as grass, a middleground such as a person or tree, and a background like your sky.

The great things about silhouettes is that you can get gorgeous pictures almost anywhere. Try getting a cityscape or a barn; some power lines or just a tree. Almost everything looks cool when it’s a silhouette. Here are a few examples we took in our own backyard.

I want to see some of your silhouette pictures. Post them here!