Photography

Don't blink

Robb Allen — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:30:54 GMT

Or you might miss it. Here's some pretty kick ass high speed photography

The flashes I have aren't fast enough for this type of work. The on camera flash I have (Nikon SB-800) is reported to be able to freeze a bullet mid flight, but triggering it is a bit trickier.

Still, I'd love to build a sound trigger some day.

Quote of the day - Coworker's email edition

Robb Allen — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:00:04 GMT

So Xavier pointed out this rather bizarre camera which I then emailed to several of my photography oriented coworkers.

4”x5” camera made from Aluminium, Titanium, Brass, Silver, Gem Stones and a 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl. Light and time enters at the third eye, exposing the film in the middle of the skull.

My coworker responds

I'll wait for the 18 year old skull model to come out before I buy. The prices should come down by then.

Making the new old again

Robb Allen — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:27:40 GMT

Just putzing around with aging photographs in Photoshop. I took a photograph from my nephews wedding (I was the photographer - remind me to never do that again) and aged it quite a few years. Let me know what you think (you can click on the images for bigger views)

Original

Aged

Everything you ever wanted to know about photography

Robb Allen — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:29:35 GMT

But I was too lazy to make tutorials about.

Here.

Best I've seen yet.

Hat Tip Joe Healy who, as of the last time I heard, was still the man.

Creativity

Robb Allen — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 13:03:00 GMT

Moonlighting

Robb Allen — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:40:00 GMT

Here’s me, doing what I do on the weekends – Wedding photography.

A moment of silence

Robb Allen — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:47:00 GMT

Shot a wedding this weekend. Some of my best work to date if I do say so myself. The only problem is that I shoot 1000+ pictures each, and I have to sort through them when I get home to cull out the blurry / bad / over-under exposed shots. Most people don't realize that for every picture I take, I have to inspect it for exposure ,focus, and color balance (making the whites look white. Trust me, it ain't easy).

When I first started, I could throw out over half of my images. But now that I've gotten better, such a high ratio of keepers slows me down due to the amount of time I have to adjust. Yeah, it'd be nice to take a picture and have it perfect out of the camera, but unfortunately when doing candids, you don't have the time to adjust before you take the shot.

Well, I'm going through the pictures last night and I realized I had this red dot in every shot. Turns out, my beast of a camera has a dead sensor, or 'hot pixel'. {insert very long line of profanity here} Luckily for me, the noise reducing algorithm in Photoshop pretty much deals with it, but I can still see it in every picture which is annoying to me. It's under warranty, so I can get it fixed (well, not 'fixed' per say. Nikon will simply reprogram the camera to not use that sensor) but that takes time, and I don't have a backup camera to use.

Got a wedding on Friday then 2 weeks before my next one. Don't know if it'd be possible to get it fixed during that time.

Isn't life grand?

Photography Lesson #2 - Step back, zoom in

Robb Allen — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 18:38:00 GMT

Most digital cameras have the ability to zoom. Most use a physical lens to do the zooming with many cameras boasting a ‘digital zoom’. If I ever see any of you actually using that feature, I will hunt you down and force you to revert back to Polaroids. All digital zoom does is enlarge the pixels, giving a grainy, poorly defined image. Don’t use it.

As for the zooming in and out with the lens, I wholeheartedly agree you should be using that button more than you probably are. Most people zoom in when they cannot get close to the subject. For example, when photographing an alligator, it’s probably not the best bet to stand 2 feet away from his mouth. However, a lot of people tend to zoom all the way out when taking portraits of people and then stepping closer to fill the frame. Unless you really don’t like the person, this is not a good practice.

When taking someone’s picture, step back as far as you can and zoom in to fill the frame up with their face. The more you can zoom, the better. Why? Let me show you. (Click on image for a full size view)

This is a picture of my daughter using the default camera lens position which is all the way wide. To fill the picture with her face, I had to get really, really close. Notice how distorted her features appear. This is because of…. well, let’s just say there’s a bit o’ math involved. But wider angles make objects that are closer to the lens appear larger than those at further away. The wider the angle, the greater that difference will appear to be.

Georgia’s nose is not that large, but since it’s closer to the camera than her eyes, it will appear much larger than it really is. Also, notice how wide her cheeks look compared to her chin and how squished the sides of her head appear.

Now, let me take a few steps back and zoom in as far as I can and take the same basic picture (click to enlarge).

Notice how much more in proportion Georgia’s face appears You can see the sides of her hair, her nose is much more in line size wise in regards to her face. She doesn’t look like a chipmunk hoarding acorns for the winter either. And another plus is the fact that the flash didn’t wash her out as well.

When I’m doing portrait photography, I usually zoom in as much as I can in order to flatten the perspective and flatter my subjects. When I’m outside, I use the mac-daddy lens so I can zoom in even more (200mm!). This really squishes the perspective and is flattering to just about anyone.

So, the lesson here is this. Wide angles are good when you need to get a picture of a large group of people or a wide area such as a room or a sunset at the beach. But when you need to take a picture of a person or two, step back and zoom in instead.

Trust me, they will thank you for it later.

A better ratio

Robb Allen — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:25:00 GMT

I had a wedding to shoot on Saturday. It was a 7 hour event, so I got about 1200 shots which is normal. I honestly cannot fathom how it was ever done in the film days as I cannot see having to reload every 32 shots.

Anyway, I was the primary camera. My ‘assistant’ (and I use quotes because she’s the owner of the company that hired me) took a few shots, but it was mainly up to me. I can handle weddings all by my lonesome, but I’m glad she was there for two reasons – It was a medium-large sized crowd and the mother of the bride was a total….um, never mind. I’ll keep this post PG.

Now, I will admit to some laziness as a photographer that I fall into because it is afforded me by the digital format. At times, I tend to shoot like crazy, realizing that most of the shots simply won’t come out and rely on chance to get a good image. Unfortunately, when doing candids that is the norm. With the posed shots, I can take a little more time and compose, check the light, angles, etc., but when trying to catch action shots, you just kind of fire away and hope for the best.

However, as I’ve been doing this for a few years now, I’m really starting to get better at catching the shots I want with the proper lighting without wasting frames. Normally when I hand off the images to the studio, I cull out all the blurry shots, closed eyes, blown out images, etc. I’ve got very few of those in this wedding!

Of course, I used my big lens for most of the ceremony, and that helps. Motion stabilization, large aperture, and the wonderful bokeh made the shots fabulous. Plus, the perspective compression at 200mm made some great shots (the groom seeing his bride for the first time from over the shoulder of the father walking her down the isle. Perfect!).

I’m just happy so far with all the images I’ve got. Tons of great shots, lots of ‘good’ shots (we use these to fix other images if people’s eyes are closed or whatnot), and fewer rejects than I’ve ever had.

Not bad for being self taught!

Free photography advice - Sell your film camera

Robb Allen — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 16:30:00 GMT

From Engadget

Not to be outdone by Nikon, who recently announced a nearly complete exit of the film-based camera business, Konica Minolta has just announced that they're pulling out of the camera biz altogether.

Man, film seems to be doomed faster than I thought. There will always be a specialty for it, but I bet it goes the way of audio tapes before we know it.