The Digital Photo Guy

Why a Good Flash is a Good Investment

Which photo below resembles your photos on eBay or Craigslist? If you said the one on the left, not to worry, most online ad photos look like that.

The one on the right was taken with the same flash with the same camera on the same tripod at the same time. The difference is Multi Mode (Nikon – Stroboscopic.) You’ve seen photos where a gymnast is captured in multiple positions throughout a jump. The first photo is taken as the athlete leaps up, the second a moment later in mid-air, a third as he/she tucks into a spin and so on until the gymnast sticks the landing. The flash fires a series of bursts, each freezing the gymnast at a point in the tumble. That’s cool but not something many people do on a regular basis. However, Multi (Stroboscopic) is very useful for making photos like the right vase. More

Persistence Pays Off

Butch has taken a bunch of classes with me over the past year. Like many people, he just wanted photos of his grandkids and dog, nothing too strenuous or complex, or so he thought. He bought a Nikon D90, an assortment of lenses and jumped into the deep end. In the beginning, his effors were so painful, I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I really thought.

One thing about Butch is that he’s persistent. He never took offense when, after realizing he had a skin like a rhino, I started critiquing his photos as I would any student. I could essentially tell him his latest attempt sucked as long as I also added why it sucked so badly. He took all my critiques in stride.

Last week, he sent me a photo that knocked my socks off. It’s not perfect but it was head-and-shoulders above anything he had previously sent me. The one thing that really made this photo “pop” was his use of fill flash. Notice how the sun was almost directly overhead. Without fill, the sax player’s eyes would have been lost in the shadow cast by his eye brow. With fill, he has that ever important catchlight to highlight the intensity in his eyes. Combined with the puffed cheeks and furrowed forehead, this is a “decisive moment” in this guy’s day. He’s in the groove and Butch captured that moment.

There are four little things I’d edit in this photo. See if you can spot the four issues and leave a comment below. Otherwise, this is a major milestone for Butch and I applaud his persistence. More

What Do All Those Numbers and Letters Mean?

Each time I teach a class, I’m reminded that photography, like most disciplines, has its own strange jargon, acronyms and codes. This article hopes to be the “secret decoder ring” for Canon lenses.

Let’s take a typical Canon lens like the venerable EF28-135/3.5-5.6IS USM. EF stands for Electro-Focus, Canon’s trademarked term for an electronically controlled lens focusing system. The EF is usually left off unless it it the EF-S, a version designed specifically for Canon’s crop sensor line of entry level to mid-range digital cameras (all Digital Rebel variations and xxD series and 7D). EF-S lenses cannot be used on the 1D, 1Ds or 5D. Nikon uses DX to identify its lenses for crop-sensor digital bodies.

Next, the numbers 28-135 indicate the focal length range of the lens ON A FULL FRAME BODY. On a crop frame bodies such as all Digital Rebels and xxD/7D series, these numbers are multiplied by 1.6 to get the true field of view. Therefore, on a Canon Digital Rebel T1i or 7D, the actual field of view range is 28×1.6=44.8mm to 135×1.6=216mm. In 35mm photography, a 50mm lens is considered “normal” in that it closely matches the field of view of a human eye. So, the 28-135 ranges from just about normal to nearly 5x normal. For Nikon crop frame bodies, use 1.5 as the crop factor.

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Photoshop Elements in 6 Weeks, starts Feb 16

Flash Photography in a Flash, Feb 26

Palomar College – Spring 2011

Spring Desert Wildflowers, late March 2011

Free Photo Critique

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Photoshop Elements Webinar

Digital SLR Webinar

FREE MeetUp at Cibola NWR

FREE Topaz Labs Webinar

Wild Animal Park Workshop

2011 Workshops

The Lust in My Heart Has Been Fulfilled

To paraphrase Jimmy Carter, “I’ve looked on a lot of camera bodies with lust. I’ve committed camera adultery in my heart many times….” Ever since I learned about Nikon’s Commander Mode for wireless remote flash control, I’ve had flashes of lust and envy. I wanted the same in my Canon bodies without paying an extra $250 for a single purpose Canon ST-E2 Transmitter (below left & middle). The Canon Off-Camera Shoe Cord (OCSC, below right) was a limited option, especially when trying to handhold at slow shutter speed while holding the flash in the left hand.

When the Canon 7D was announced, that was the one feature that jumped off the spec sheet at me. The 7D had a wireless remote control mode. Being cheap, I waited until 7D prices came down and initial reports from early adopters were in. Well, I can honestly say, Canon’s integrated wireless remote is a wonderful technology that puts my camera lust under control for the moment. The advanced AF system also helps.
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Marvelous Model, Super Students, Fantastic Fun

The flash workshop yesterday was outstanding. Those who have taken my classes know I don’t normally take many photos during workshops because I spend my time teaching. Yesterday was the same except that, of the few photos I made to demonstrate fill flash, one actually came out well enough to display.

The first photo below is a typical snapshot with the subject wearing a hat outdoors. I hated asking Melanie (she’s a psychologist) to cover up her gorgeous hair with her husband’s cap but she was a good sport. The middle photo shows the first attempt at the “By Guess and By Golly” method of flash photography. There’s now a catchlight in her eyes but it’s still too dark.  The last image is after dialing in FEC (flash exposure compensation).

I overdid the last one a bit so the students could easily see the difference on the LCD. The first two are SOOC (straight out of camera) and the last one I added a bit of sharpening. I hope you agree that using fill to soften the shadows and add catchlights really made a dramatic difference.

The first hour was spent just learning what all the various modes and controls do on a Canon 580EX II Speedlite. It was time well spent as the students had very little flash experience. In fact, one had just bought the 580EX II and this was the first time she’d ever used it. We had several “teachable moments” such as when one 580EX II went “wonky” (a technical term) and wouldn’t come out of Manual Zoom mode. After playing with it for a few minutes, we discovered the “kicker” had come loose and the flash thought it was being bounced.

The next Flash in a Flash Workshop is January 2011. Stay tuned for details to master your flash.