Behind the lens ( I learn, you learn, we learn,)

Piclens

2008-04-29T00:21:00.002-05:00

I ran cross this site called Piclens and let me tell you, if you deal with or browse thru alot of photos this is a must have.

Piclens allows you to view thousands of photos in a easy to navigate 3D world.

Pocket Wizards VS. E-Bay trigers

2008-04-24T01:57:00.011-05:00

This has been a on going debate for quiet sometime now are Ebay triggers just as good as the ever so popular Pocket Wizard? Today I will simply put my two cents in the bucket.

First lets start with the champ,
The POCKET WIZARD Retail price $189-$200
These lil puppies come at a hefty price but are still the industry standard for remotley firing off camera strobes or other studio lights. It is much better to put a pocket Wizard on each light you want to fire rather than trying to route sync cords to each light. this creates a mess of wire cables that get dameged easily and causees a tripping hazard that can possibly injure your clients are worst yet cause your expensive lights to go crashing down to the floor.

Another option is to use a master slave set up where one strobe or light synced to your cam can remotely fire other strobes with out having to run additional sync cables. The other strobes or fired by detecting the flash from the first strobe then firing it self. this has a slight advantage over using sync cables but it also has it draw backs. For this setup to work the slave strobes need to be indirect line of site to see the flash or it will not fire.

Both the sync cable setup and the master slave setup or useless if you need to spread out your lights over a long distance.

The best way to fire your strobes is by radio frequency, this is how Pocket Wizard and Ebay triggers fires strobes. The pocket Wizard is a Transceiver, meaning it is both a transmitter and a receiver. I will not go into the specs of pocket Wizards, If you want that goto their site www.pocketwizard.com Everyone I speak to and on almost every photography forum I visit everyone gives the Pocket Wizard the thumbs up. the only complaint is the price. Most lighting set-ups consist of at least 3 lights and at $200 a piece that is $800 just to fire your strobes. Yes that is $200 a piece, you need one for your cam and one on each light. Since I don't own a pocket Wizard I can't speak much on it, But at $200 a piece I had to look for another option.

Cactus Triggers, or as they are more known as
Ebay triggers or Jokingly called Poverty Wizards Retail $25 these economical Pocket Wizard alternatives or a must for any photographer on a budget. They use the same basic principle of Pocket Wizards allowing you to remotely fire your studio strobes but at a fraction of the cost. Now I will not lie and say that the catus system is perfect cause its not, The electronic assembly is real basic as well is the construction of the unit. I don't realy have a problem with the transmitter but the receivers plastic body feels like it is going to break in any second. The lil plastic footing used to atach your hot shoe strobe to a light stand is real flimsy. I have to retighten the lil screw each time I move the light stand cause the weight of my flash makes the unit tilt down. This is a easy fix but they should have done this in production. Another fault is the battery cover for the receiver falls off real easy, I almost lost mine several times. Once again easy fix.

The biggest complaint about the Cactus triggers is the reliability. Most users complaint that the triggers only fire 95% of the time. I must disagree with this I have not had any miss-fires due to the fault of the system it self, all miss-fires were caused by me. I will list the major causes of mis-fires and if you are aware of these issues you should have no problems with your Cactus triggers.

Low battery power in your Cactus unit or in your flash
not allowing your flash proper time to recharge before firing again
your flash/strobe going into stand-by mode
placing your strobes to close together causing interference
trying to remotely fire your strobes over long distances
trying to shoot beyond your cameras sync speed
shooting in a place where a lot of wireless devices are being used causing inference

If you are aware of these seven things you should be able to shoot without any problems.

The Pocket Wizard sounds like a great system but after using my Cactus triggers I just cant see me shelling out $800 to fire my strobes when I can take that same $800 and buy

1 transmitter
4 receivers
4 vivitar 285 flash heads
4 light stands with umbrellas
4 Rosco Gel Swatch books
2 rolls of seamless paper and background stand
and still come out with some change jiggling in my pocket

The world of (SLR) Single Lens Reflex Cameras

2008-04-24T01:35:00.004-05:00

A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that uses an automatic mirror system and pentaprism or pentamirror to direct light from the lens through the viewfinder eyepiece.

The basic operation of a DSLR is as follows: for viewing purposes, the mirror reflects the light coming through the attached lens upwards at an approximately 90 degree angle. It is then reflected by the pentaprism to the photographer's eye. During exposure (when the photograph is taken), the mirror swings upward, and a shutter opens, allowing the lens to project light onto the image sensor.

OK, that is all you realy need to know about SLR cams, if you want more techy stuff you can do a google search for the history, how they are made, etc... but for now lets move on to exposure

Histograms

2008-01-23T05:05:00.001-06:00

Histograms

Now from these Two Videos you should have a pretty good understanding on how your cam records a image and why the Histogram is so important. But if you still don't get it let me dump my two cents in to your learning bucket

A properly exposed picture will have a somewhat even spread of pixels through out the histograms X axis, form Zero the darkest pixel your camera can record to 255 on the right side the brightest pixel your camera can record. for a total brightness scale 0f 256 (0 to 255).

If you under expose a picture you will have most of your pixels to the far left side with most of your image falling out side of your cameras range (PIXELS THAT ARE BEYOND 0) this means your camera did not even see that part of the picture, the image was so under exposed that the darkest shadows of your pic has no detail at all it's just black

and If you over expose your picture the same thing goes for the right side of the histogram if you over expose to much the high lights in your image (THE BRIGHT AREAS ) will show up as pure white with no detail to them at all, We call this blown high lights or a washed out pic.

The key is to try and use your camera full range from the darkest dark to the whitest white, this will give you a pretty even exposer, giving you detail in your shadows as well as your high lights.

But sometimes you can't reach the whole scale with out changing the mood of the pic, you don't wanna shoot a night scene where you can't even tell it's night time.

When you are capturing a image and most of the image is dark or in shadow most of your image pixels will be to the left of your histogram. This is fine as long as you don't touch or go past the 0 pixel mark, for every pixel you go over 0 that means that pixel is lost and will not be represented in your image. once again same thing for real bright pictures go as far to the right as you can with out passing 255.

Well How do I move my pixels when i take a pic?

Simply change your aperture or shutter speed. your image was under exposed because you didn't let enough light hit your film/sensor. And since you have read my other post you know you can let in more light three ways, shoot at a longer shutter speed, open up your lens aperture , increase your cameras sensor sensitivity to light by raising your ISO.

I'm back

2008-01-23T04:51:00.000-06:00

I know I know, I have been gone for awhile. I had alot going on but I'm back now thanks to a new friend, a fellow photographer re inspired me to pick this project back up. So lets go. I think we left off on ISO, we are now moving on to The Histogram. The Histogram is on e of the most powerfullest (lol, IS THAT A WORD?) and most unused misunderstood features on our cameras.

I guarantee you after you learn how to read a Histogram you will never take another over/under exposed picture again you ready? watch this lil Video then join me has we dive into the Histogram

ISO and Noise Ninja

2008-01-03T22:21:00.001-06:00

Level 1

Back in the olden days before cameras went digital there was this thing called Film that photographers used to record there images on.

I remember one day Back when I was around 11, I found this old 35mm camera in my sisters room and After hunting around a lil longer I scraped up $5.00 and headed to Eckerds to buy some film.

as I turn the aisle where the film is located I am blown away with the choices in film. I'm not just talking about brands I'm looking at about 4 different brands and they all have these numbers on them 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 etc..

So now I'm lost, I just want a roll of film to take some pictures of me and my friends trying to look cool, I don't know what al these numbers mean, I just want one that will fit in my cam. I know these numbers mean something but i don't have a clue. I know I'm just a kid but I'm still a man and asking someone to help is not a option.

So I use my basic knowledge and reasoning skills and come to the conclusion that the bigger the number the better. LOL come on give me a break I'm 11.

I buy a roll of 800 and another roll of 50 just to be safe I load my 800 and head out to the local park where I know they are sure to be playing baseball like we did everyday.

The minute they saw the film I had a line of kids around me asking me to take there picture I fired off shot after shot With a 32 roll exposure I was quickly out of film. I still had my roll of 50 but I was saving that for Friday when we all head to the local pool I might see a nice lil honey dip I want to take a photo with But the kids who I photographed offered to help me pay to get the photos developed so I collected money from the 15= kids at the park and took up a grand total of $26.00, WOW!! I was floored. Not only did I have enough money to develop the film I had enough money to lace my pockets and by more film to continue my lil business.

So now I'm heading home feeling real good, I got a new cam pocket full of money and a neighborhood girl who wants me to take some photos of her in her swim suit Friday HOO Hoooo, I'm on top of the world.

As I sit back and plan out my new business i remember that I have another roll of film in my Fanny pack "come on, it's the 80's everyone had a Fanny pack". I load my new roll of ISO 50 film and head to the back yard and take a few shots of the neighbors mutt. it's around 6:00 pm. I took a few more shots of other random objects around the yard until my mom calls me in cause it's getting to dark.

To make a already long story short I wake up the next day and head to the store to develop my prints and the guy doing my photos tell me all of my images are ruined, either washed out over exposed are dark under exposed. I was shocked and scared cause everyone gave me there money for photos and I had already spent the money on more film and junk. When i asked the guy what happened he said

From what I can see you tried to shoot with ISO 800 film at a baseball field and the sun was to bright. If you wanted to shot in this kind of situation you should have bought a slower speed like the one you use in these underexposed photos. What were you shooting with these? I told him what I was shooting and what time it was and he informed me with a smile and a slight grin you bought the right film but used them at the wrong times .

After that lil blunder with photography I hung it up for years but now I'm back so let's move on.

Film Speed or as we know it now ISO, determines how sensitive your cameras sensor is to light
the lower your ISO the more light is needed to develop a print, the higher the number the less light is needed. my cam goes from ISO 200 - 3200 some of today's DSLR start at 100 and go as high as 6400

Film Speed ISO scale

Slow small grain 25 50 100 200 400 800 1600 3200 6400 Fast large grain

If you shoot film you would need to chose your film speed according to what you will be shooting that day. If you know you are going to be shooting in dim lit areas you would probably want to bag a few rolls of ISO 800 film. and if you were going to shoot portraits in a well lit studio ISO 100 or 200 would work well. Just remember the faster your film speed is the more noise you will have in your pics.

Think of noise as this when you put on you headphones and put a tape into the tape desk and crank the volume all the way up that hissing sound you her is the noise from the Walkman trying to amplify the sound to meet your request your asking for more sound so the Walkman has to work harder to produce it resulting in a hissing, crackling, popping sound, Noise.

In a cam it is the same thing in a way. The more light you request to expose your film the harder the sensor has to work to get you that light resulting in a noisy pics. this noise is illustrated in your photos by grainy textures when blown up. Noise is more noticeable on the Red and Blue channels.

One way to to handle unwanted noise is a Program called Noise Ninja It is kinda the standard for noise removal. O.K., are we ready for the next lesson?

Shutter Speeds, To Freeze or Not To Freeze? That is The Question.

2008-01-03T15:24:00.000-06:00

Learning Level 1

Shutter speeds, I think this is alot easier to explain and grasped than Apertures and ISO. Is simply a matter of time . Most cameras on the market today gives you the option to change your shutter speeds. This is a typical shutter range on a DSLR.

<--Slow /Blur Fast/Freeze-->

1 sec. 1/4 1/8 1/15 1/30 1/45 1/60 1/90 1/125 1/180 1/250 1/350 1/500 1/750 1/1000 1/1500 1/2000

This is just a sample scale, my cameras shutter speed goes down to 30 seconds, it also has a Bulb setting that allows you to hold open the shutter for as long as you want by keeping the shutter release button pressed.

Ok, lets move on. Being able to adjust your shutter is valuable in two ways, it allows you to shoot in low light with out the aid of a flash, and it also allows you to apply artistic effects to your photos.

IT can even tell Lies....

Yes a mechanical non living device has the ability to lie.

The shutter allows you to show motion in two ways, by freezing it or letting it blur.

Lets say you or at a NASCAR event and you wan't to show your friends back at home your adventures if you snap your shots at 1/500 and greater you will have a nice sharp boring picture. I say boring because shooting a car at a shutter speed that fast will completely freeze the car making it look stationary lol you are at NASCAR shooting some of the fastest cars on the planet and your photos makes the cars look like they are parked or broke down on side the road.

Wouldn't a shutter speed of 1/125 that allows a lil motion blur to show be a more appealing picture?

Ok , so shooting to fast is bad right?

nope, that's not what I'm saying, you as the artist and the writer of light has to know how you wanna tell your story. let's say you or shooting flowers after a nice rain and you pull out your new fancy Marco lens and see a shot you wanna capture. there is this one flower that is getting a rhythmic drop of water on it's petal and you know this is a money shot you chose a small aperture because you wanna isolate the single flower from the rest of the cluttered background. For this shot I would chose the fastest shutter speed I could use while still retaining a correct exposure. I want a fast shutter speed cause i want to catch the explosion right as the rain drop makes contact with the flowers petal. I want to freeze the smaller water fragments in mid air as they explode from the main droplet. one good use for a slow shutter speed on water is what we call a angel hair effect.

Phot by: doniedsilva
See how the water looks soft and milky, this is accomplished by a slow shutter speed allowing the waters natural movement to be relayed to your photo by a slow shutter speed.

Another great use for slow shutter speeds is night photography. I shot this image at 2:00 am in thick fog. Both of these were shot at slow shutter speeds of a minute are longer do to the fog and I was using a aperture of F22 for maximum depth of field and ISO 400 to cut down on noise.

Noise, lol this dude is off his rocker what is he talking about noise for? This isn't a TV broadcast or radio, why is he talking about noise?

LOL, yes indeed, a photo can be real noisy, especially in a dimly lit stadium full of screaming fans. But don't worry, When you are forced to take photos in a potentially noisy place I will introduce you to the photographers secret Assassin The Noise Ninja....

Follow me to ISO/Film Speed

Wait a minute, you told us the shutter can tell a lie, did you lie?

Well I did explain how the shutter can tell it's own verion of the truth but if you want one more example here it goes.

There were these two neighbors who always got in to it over a new motorbike that was bought Tom use to always complaint to Jim about the noise that Jim made early in the morning when he was heading to work. After a few weeks of fussing back and forward over the fence and trips and calls to the police Tom decided to set Jim up. One Sunday evening Tom set up his tripod and cam in his living room opened up the window and waited for Jim to pull up. as Jim turned the corner and headed down the street to his house Tom fired off a few shots.

The next day the police were at Jim's house responding to a report of speeding in a residential area. Of course Jim denied everything knowing that his street is populated with many kids who like to play kick ball in the street on the weekends and he never would speed. But after the police produced a photo of him zooming by a clearly posted 15 M.P.H. speed sign his jaw dropped, The photo showed Jim going so fast that you could see streaks of color trailing behind him.

Now to a untrained eye this would be a very believable photo. But little did they know that Tom had set his shutter speed so slow that even if a kid would have rode by on a tricycle the pic would give the illusion of the lil kid doing well over 50 M.P.H.

ok, now can we head to ISO?

Apertures, Equal half going down and twice as much going up? WTF

2007-12-30T09:23:00.002-06:00

Learning Level 1

We will now talk about the aperture in more detail. If you read our previous post on The Exposure Triangle you now know that the Aperture is the size of the opening in the lens that lets light pass thru it to expose a picture.

This is a typical aperture scale

BIG/FAST F1.4, F 2, F2.8, F4, F5.6, F8, F11, F16, F22, F32, F45, F64 SMALL/SLOW

I'm not going to bog you down with why they are numbered like this and give detailed info on the construction of lenses. I'm not saying don't learn this but to be honest I don't feel knowing all that is needed. I will always try my best just to give you what is needed to operate your camera and take better pictures.

ok moving on, the size of the aperture is the key factor when most photographer buy new glass, faster is better, simply put. lol just look at the price of some fast glass. the bigger your aperture the less light you need to take a photo.

PLACES AND SITUATIONS WHERE FAST GLASS IS NEEDED:

Concerts
Sports Photography
Shooting at night
Weddings
any place that doesn't allow flash photography
when you want a shallow DOF Depth Of Field

Depth of Field, what's that?

Depth of Field is basically how much of your picture is in Focus.

Ok, well don't I want my entire photo to be in focus?

well nope, not all the time. I know you have seen the photos of flowers in a Field and... Well let me see if i can find some free stock photos I can use to help demonstrate DOF and why it is important.

ok, I'm back and I can't find what I'm looking for so just watch this video on Apertures and DOF.

Video on aperture

Depth of Field Video

We all still on the same page? Ready to move on to Shutters?

Cool lets go.......

The Exposure Triangle

2007-12-30T07:22:00.000-06:00

I will try to keep all post as simple as I can,

this is just a entry level look at basic photography terms and procedures

I will offer more advanced blogs after I complete the basics.

This is a new blog I'm starting so give me time to write this stuff,

I will try to wright at least two articles a day

until I have the blogs caught up to match my current level of

knowledge on photography

Learning Level 1

I know you have heard of the Bermuda Triangle where countless plane and boats have gone missing. But today I will talk to you about another mystifying triangle unknown to alot of armature photographers, where pictures are completely lost in darkness, the very pixels your camera has tried to captured or so frighten they turn pale white. This god forsaken triangle has ruined many pictures with no predigest. I'm talking about

The Exposure Triangle

All though this triangle is so destructive all photos must travel through it and, we as Photographers are the pilots that must provide the correct coordinates to ensure our photos a safe voyage.

What three things make up the The Exposure Triangle

The three things that make up The Exposure Triangle are

Aperture - the size of the opening in the lens that allows light to enter your cam

Shutter - the amount of time that the shutter is open to allow light to enter the cam

ISO - the measure of a Cameras digital Sensor's/Films sensitivity to light

Each one correlates with each other and even if one is set wrong it can ruin a picture. Many photographers will argue me down when I say this but "There are at least 3 Aperture, Shutter ISO settings you can use for 90% of the photos you take," each giving your photo a correct exposure but at the same time giving your photos a different effect. We will go over this more when we take a closer look at Apertures Shutter speeds and ISO

If I can shoot a photo at F5.6 1/250 at ISO 200 the two settings below will work as well.

Aperture F 4 with a shutter speed of 1/500 at ISO 200

Aperture F 8 with a shutter speed of 1/125 at ISO 200

Now onto my lil metaphor on exposure before we move on to our next lesson.

I like the metaphor using the kitchen sink. Ok, Imagine your taking a photo, think of the faucet where the water comes out as your Aperture, the knobs to turn on the water is your shutter, the flow/speed of water is your ISO and the entire sink represents a properly exposed pic.

Ok, your cam is set to auto and it tells you that in order to properly expose this pic/Fill up the sink, we need to set our aperture/faucet opening to f8 set our shutter speed/leave water turned on for 1/90 of a second with a ISO of 100. (YOU STILL WITH ME?)

now set your cam on manual what would happen if we left the faucet open for 1/30th of a second? we would have water all over the floor equaling a over exposed pic. now what if we turned on the water then turned it off real quick, say 1/500ths of a second? we would only have a few drops in our sink equaling a under exposed pic.

Did any of that make sense if not just post a comment explaining where you got lost and I will try to get you back on the road. and for thoes of you ready to move on follow me on to Apertures