Straps and stuff
I've graduated from bag-aholics anon and moved on to strap-aholics.
You see, there'll be this period in your life where there doesn't seem to be one bag that'll work for you (and the honest truth is that there probably isn't a single ideal bag unless you always shoot the same stuff day-in day-out). You'll battle with it. You'll want the latest model. And just when you think you've got it all settled, suddenly you need room to fit that extra lens. Or flash. Or other accessory you wish you could've had with you.
I've come to terms with my addiction, thankfully quite early in the process.
Unfortunately, I now have the problem of straps. I got a Rapid strap and have been using that a little lately. The problem is, it's an attention grabber for when I'm not on a job and lately I've been trying to take it out more for general evening shooting and a bit of street.
I do have an Industry Disgrace from Crumpler, but that too is a bit of a stand-out piece. On the other hand, the stock strap is horrid.
I gave it a bit of thought and started going down the path of, "Oh, what if I combine R-Strap and a hand holster or something!" before realising this could all end horribly like my bag craze.
So perhaps the answer lies with simplicity. Just a simple leather strap or something along those lines.
For now though, I think I'll dig out my Industry Disgrace again.
On the slow front
Haven't been posting in a while guys. Sorry about that.
It's the usual reasons - work and deadlines, but thankfully also a holiday!
I've been getting a little more diligent with putting up snaps on Seven in Sydney, and I've decided to start a tumblr account for all my random pieces in order to stop polluting this site and my Twitter stream with junk.
Currently organising a trip out to Western Australia for next month. With any luck, I'll have some interesting snaps to take.
In the meantime and so that you're not left empty handed from your visit, here's a random tip for all you night owls. Go and grab yourself a copy of F.lux and save your eyes. It basically changes the colour tone of your screen according to the time of the day so at night you're not straining your eyes (but you can also temporarily disable it for when you're doing colour work). It's been so much better on my eyes.
The basics: Workflow
Only a few years ago there wasn't much involved in storing, editing, publishing (printing) and backing up your photos. These days, with huge file sizes and the ability to store everything digitally, it can be a little unwieldy.
So it's no surprise that one of the things newcomers to photography obsess over is workflow.
It doesn't have to be complicated, just consistent.
I'd recommend using Lightroom to manage all your files. Just be sure to only move files around within the program - be consistent.
I organise my physical files by date (year, then month/day) and let Lightroom take care of the actual content in the way of collections, flags and tags. This way you can daily dump your files while being able to add them to a larger collection that you may be building over several days or longer.
Publishing photos is possible either in Lightroom or by exporting to a separate folder. I export high resolution copies for client use or to send to the printers, otherwise built in publishing plugins for Lightroom allow you to publish straight to Facebook, Flickr or any of the other popular publishing platforms.
Backing up is simply a matter of making sure you have a copy of your physical files and your Lightroom catalog. This can be as simple as making a duplicate or as sophisticated as copying to multiple locations or to a cloud-based service.
Just be sure to back up regularly!
I use a little program called Syncback to periodically mirror my files on to a few drives and an online service.
Get into a system that you feel comfortable with and requires the least input from yourself. You'll be amazed how much you can automate everything, and the less impedance there is to getting your photos in an form for editing, the less likely you are to put it off.
Happy holidays!
Just a quick update to wish you all well for the holiday season and the new year!
I'm still working on processing photos from the shoot earlier this month, albeit at a slower pace as I've managed to injure my hand.
Fellow photogs, take care of your hands! Especially if you have a heavy kit to carry around!
Essentially, I slipped and impaled a gardening tool between my middle and ring finger. I don't think it went too deep, but the bandages do make using a stylus and taking pictures quite awkward. It seems to have closed up (and I've had the pleasure of getting a tetanus shot for my trouble) and I'm hoping for a speedy recovery to get back to work on those photos.
Plans for 2011 are a bit sketchy at the moment. I have a few jobs lined up, but what is really exciting me is the beginning of my mentoree session with my industry body. AIPP have a pilot program running in Sydney for the first time this year. Really looking forward to learning even more and passing that on.
Quite a few personal new years resolutions for 2011, mostly around getting fit, but photography will still be a very large focus of mine.
The basics: Using flash
It's a huge subject, but here we'll talk about just your everyday pop-up flash. And if you read the post on ISO, you'll be able to use that too!
There are many circumstances in which you won't want to use flash. Most notably is when you have a reflective surface in the background of your shot or nearby.
These cases are pretty obvious; just turn off your flash when shooting in front of a window. But what about when you can't avoid it?
Reflections are only an issue when the light is directed back into the lens. If you can angle your shot or the object, many times you can continue to use flash.
For people with glasses, you can often have them turn or tilt their head, tilt their glasses, or do a combination of both. Similarly, watch out for jewelry and other accessories.
The other thing to look out for is distance. Especially with point and shoots, the little in-built flash is simply not going to have enough juice to light up distant objects. Save your batteries and push your ISO.
Speaking of ISO, doesn't that mean your camera is more sensitive to flash? That's right. So if you don't want to kill your batteries or you need to get more out of your flash, push it up a bit.
Finally, be aware of how close your subject is relative to you and the background. If they're close to you and far from a background, you'll get a "person in a black hole" effect. You want them to be close enough for your flash to reach, while close enough to a background to allow spill light to give you a point of reference.
If all else fails, find some better light and/or bump your ISO up. No more excuses for deer-in-the-headlights shots!
The basics: ISO
I'm going to be starting a short series on the basics of photography in (hopefully) just a few short paragraphs.
So to kick things off, one of the things I often hear questions asked about is ISO.
ISO is a way of measuring how sensitive your digital sensor in your camera is. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive it is to light. However, this also means it is more sensitive to noise.
If you're getting a lot of blur in your low light photos, try increasing your ISO so that you (or your camera) can use a faster shutter speed.
On the other hand, if your photos have a lot of noise in them, try lowering it and holding your camera steady.
As a general rule I like to follow, if in doubt, go for the higher ISO than risking camera shake. There are plenty of tools out there for removing noise, but it's much harder to fix a blurry picture.
Have a go next time you're out in the evening and don't want to use a flash. You'll soon get the feel for how far you can push your ISO before the noise becomes noticeable.
Canon vs Nikon vs the world
When I wad asked the other day what brand I shoot with, I responded that while I'm a Canonite, I like to try out other brands every so often.
Now the topic of which brand to go with is not a new development, but I think that something that is quite often overlooked in the "mine is better than yours" battle is how fortunate we are that things are balanced, even to a limited extent.
I would be horrified if Canon took complete market share as this would no doubt put them in the position of being able to charge almost anything they want while not being pressured to keep up with the competition.
For example, I don't believe Canon would have released an in built wireless flash trigger in the 7D if this feature wasn't already available in Nikon units. Why would they if they can easily make money from their existing solutions of purchasing a separate wireless master, or better yet, their flagship speedlite?
No, I'm glad that Nikon is out there, because everyone needs to be kept in check and ultimately, competition fosters innovation and in many cases improves value for money.
The less reputable companies may well be scoffed at and may not contribute as much to the heavyweight competition, but they are the ones who can really drive new innovation.
Canon's own line of point and shoots aren't that great considering they are leaders in the SLR market, and does Nikon even make one? Bring on slim-line, but feature-packed cameras like the Panasonic LX series. What about the micro 4/3rd system?
So a little brand rivalry is healthy, but remember, be careful what you wish for.
On the move
Since moving over to a smart(er) phone, there's been a host of things that I've been able to do while on the move.
I'm hoping that this will mean I'll be posting more often in bite-sized segments.
My side experiment with 7 in Sydney is making use of my phones camera now also and has come back from the dead. Well I guess ill see how long it'll last.
Studio space
I've managed to find a great location for shooting that is close by and has heaps of room.
So I dropped by last night for a bit of an inspection and to fire off a few test shots with some of the new gear I received lately.
I'm looking forward to many awesome shoots there.
New gear
I received my set of wireless TTL triggers in the mail the other week as well as an RS-5 R-Strap. Really loving this strap, not that my Industry Disgrace one was bad, but there's just so many more options for storage.
There's some studio space in my area that I'm looking at hiring out in the upcoming month or two for an impromptu weekend or evening of portraits. I'm still tossing up the idea of going the full hog and purchasing a support system for some seamless. At the moment, there's not enough room where I shoot for it to be of much use unless I go and regularly hire space. On the other hand, I am a bit of a gear-head! =D
If you've been following my Seven in Sydney project, you would have noticed it's also been a bit blank lately. One of the problems I have is that I tend not to upload every-day stuff to Flickr in order to keep it clean and Seven in Sydney works by taking photos from Flickr. I'm hoping to re-work it to take images straight from my camera phone rather than my DSLR, which I normally post-process. A fast workflow is more important for that than looking pretty (and hopefully it provides a raw stream of photos that have to be based on composition rather than technique). So I've got an 8MP camera phone also on the way.
I'll be out in the bush this weekend, so I'll take a few snaps with a lightweight cam if I can. Will see you next week!
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Twitter (mukimu)
- Clocking off this arvo with a #technolatte podcast -- Facebook's IPO, Optus TV Now and cyber crooks' tips and tricks. http://t.co/7upIRDEw 2 days ago
- http://t.co/MbDSdFG4 My SO: "went to make tea, came back to this" 2 days ago
- Saw Tower Heist last night. My fav line: You've only been a lawyer for 3 days and you're trying to bribe the FBI? / Sharks are born swimming 2 days ago
- Love it when peeps let me know they got my enquiry and are on it. Prevents that limbo-ness of not knowing if anything is actually happening. 2 days ago
- Do you think it's time we did more about mobile malware? Commentary: http://t.co/CuUSwPgM 3 days ago
