The Discerning Photographer

Unlock the Power of Shutter Speed in Your Photos

DiscerningPhotog — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:00:17 +0000

Learning how to truly control and use shutter speed is one of most important lessons we all must master as photographers. The reason? Your camera’s shutter speed function is the most powerful image-making element in your arsenal of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. It’s the one factor that, more than any other, can make or break your image. So getting really, really good at using this feature to its full advantage will go a long way towards improving your photography. That’s what we’ll start to do here.

Why do I say shutter speed is so important? Because by using shutter speed correctly and with careful intention, you can greatly enhance the power of the images you’re already making. I’ll give some examples below.

Example 1: Sports Action

You’re shooting a football game (or other sporting event) with your 300mm lens. It’s a daytime event and you’re camera is set for 400 ISO, Program Mode. The camera picks 1/500^th of a second @ f8 for the exposure. The resulting photos will be perfectly ok, but just ok. How could you improve these action shots?

First of all, get out of Program Mode! Change to full Manual or Aperture Priority mode. Then open up to minimum (wide open) aperture and a higher shutter speed, in this case, the equivalent exposure would be 1/2000^th sec @ f4 with my Canon 300 mm f4 lens. What will this change do for your images? First, the minimum aperture will help throw elements you aren’t focusing on out of focus much, much better than the former f8 aperture would do. This alone will improve your images. But just as importantly, 1/2000^th sec is FOUR TIMES faster than 1/500^th sec, and the detail and action-stopping quality in the images will be much, much CRISPER. (If you doubt this, go out and perform this very exercise at a local soccer or football game, you’ll quickly see how much cleaner the 1/2000^th sec images will be.) To sum up, for peak action, you want very, very fast shutter speeds with minimum apertures.

Example 2: Cyclist Riding (Pan blur)

Now we go to the opposite end of the shutter speed spectrum: intentional blur.

Besides providing you with the ability to make jaw-dropping, incredibly crisp action photos, shutter speed can be used to create beautiful, amazing implied motion with slow shutter speeds. (The photographer most famous for this technique is Ernst Haas, whose later career was defined by it.)

For this example we’ll be shooting a cyclist. The first shot at left is a standard, straight-up version of someone on a bike. Pretty boring, no? Well, let’s try to do something a big more creative. We’ll imply all of the wonderful feeling of cruising on a bike, the wind blowing through your hair, by panning as we follow the action, attempting to match our pan speed to the speed of the cyclist. This will require a slow shutter speed and correspondingly high aperture. To further slow things down, I’ll suggest setting your camera to the slowest ISO available, in my case, ISO 100. We’ll need to experiment some to find the perfect shutter speed for this photograph, since the speed of the cyclist will have a big bearing on the most dramatic shutter speed to use.

Experimenting with the shutter speed is the best way to determine the correct shutter/aperture combination for your situation. In this case, the 1/60th version doesn't imply enough motion to be effective; the 1/30 & 1/15th versions are better. (Copyright 2010 / Andrew Boyd)

So whether it’s fast or slow shutter speeds that might work in the situation you’re shooting, try to think carefully about all that this feature can do, before you press that shutter button! You want to be making informed and intelligent choices for your shutter speed, dictated by the situation you are shooting.

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Related posts on the web:

Smashing Pumpkins at Pixsylated

Using Blur to Portray Movement at Digital Photography School

Shutter Speed at DIYPhotography.net

Aperture: How It Affects Your Photography & Why You Should Care

DiscerningPhotog — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:20:36 +0000

Aperture: Now there’s a real ‘Photography’ word! Do you understand what ‘aperture’ refers to and how it affects your photography? Here I’ll explain exactly what it is and why you should care.

Simply stated, “aperture” is the hole in your lens that allows light to pass through to your CCD (charge coupled device) during an actual digital camera exposure. The size of the hole has a big impact upon your photos.

So what does this mean for your shooting?

Let’s start with how aperture works in your lens/camera setup.

If you’ve ever taken a lens off of a DSLR, held it up to a light and looked through it, the ‘default’ position that the lens will be in is at the largest, maximum aperture(sometimes even larger than the maximum aperture). If you’re looking through a 200mm f4 lens, for instance, then the wide-open hole will correlate with the ‘f4’ position on the camera. This f4 position will let the most light in, and also be the position with the shallowest depth of field. This just means that except for your point of focus, most of the other elements within your composition will tend to be out of focus. (‘Bokeh’ photography is all about this type of shallow depth of field shooting.)

Higher f-stop numbers correspond to smaller aperture holes: f2.8 or f4 will be a relatively large aperture (hole), while f11 or f16 will be a much smaller hole.

With a modern DSLR, you can see this by stopping your lens down to f8 or f11, then peering through the front element and pushing in the depth-of-field preview button. You’ll see the wide-open aperture hole suddenly contract down to a much smaller octagonal shape.

Try different f-stop numbers and you’ll quickly get a sense of how this works.

How does this affect your images? As you stop the lens down, say to f8 or f11, the hole gets smaller, and more things in front and behind your point of focus will appear sharp in your photograph. So large apertures = shallow depth of field; small apertures equal larger depth of field in your photograph. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon the photo you’re trying to shoot. The trick is learning to be in control of this phenomenon.

To really start to see how this can work, I suggest you operate your camera in a fully manual mode. As you change the aperture, making it larger or smaller, you’ll need to make a corresponding change to the shutter speed you’re using, since these two adjustments are dynamic and always work together. For instance, if your exposure is 1/125 sec @ f 8 and you want a shallower depth of field, you’ll need to open up the aperture, say to f2.8 or f4. Since you’re now letting all of that extra light into the exposure, you’ll need to increase the shutter speed to compensate and keep the overall exposure correct. I’ll address the creative and critical importance of shutter speed in another post, but for now, just use your camera meter to make the correct adjustment when changing the aperture.

I have some examples here that illustrate how important this can be. In this first set of photographs, the image on the left was shot at 200mm with an aperture of 2.8. The background is thrown completely out of focus, allowing your eyes to immediately go straight to the faces and butterflies. In the second image, the focal length is still 200mm, but now the aperture is f14. Suddenly all of the distracting detail in the background comes more into focus, in effect competing for your attention with the important foreground detail. So in this case, all of that depth of field would be a mistake, ruining an otherwise decent image.

In the second set of images, the opposite is the case. In the driftwood still life, more depth of field is a good thing.

It helps to know that every time you move your aperture a full f-stop number, you are doubling or halving the amount of light the exposure will use. On older camera lenses, this was easy because the f-stops were the clicks on the lens barrel:

F1.4/f2.0/f2.8/f4/f5.6/f8/f11/f16/f22 was a normal sequence of f-stop numbers. So changing from f8 to f5.6 doubled the size of the aperture, allowing twice as much light in.

This is trickier with modern digital cameras, since most of them provide third-stop increments and there are no more clicks on a lens barrel: between f5.6 and f8, you’ll also have options for f6.3 and f7.1, for instance. Don’t worry about the actual, weird numbers, just know that these are third-stop increments on the f-stop continuum.

So go out and experiment with this yourself! Find images that benefit from the shallowest depth of field (sports action shots and wildlife are two that come to mind) and shoot them at the widest aperture possible. Now stop your lens way down to say f11 or f16, adjust your shutter speed accordingly, and shoot away. What happened? Were your new images better or worse than the originals? Which version worked? Try the same thing with something that needs lots of depth of field: a landscape, a field of flowers, maybe a still life. Shoot some images both with and without lots of depth of field. Which ones work better? As you experiment and play around with aperture and depth of field, you’ll start to see how fundamental this is to all of your shooting.

Now get out and make some great images!

Related articles on the web:

Aperture, Shutter Speed & ISO at The Discerning Photographer

Depth of Field tutorial at CambidgeinColour.com

Six Tips for Controlling Depth of Field at Epic Edits

Nothing Could Be Finer at Serious Amateur Photography

Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO at YourPhotoTips

How to Shoot Great Group Photos

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:47:55 +0000

The group shot. I know what you’re thinking: you hate shooting them!

But it’s something that, as the photo enthusiast in your circle of friends and family, you’ll be expected to pull off on a regular basis. People love great group shots! What better way to document that gathering of distant relatives? The group shot is the answer and something you might as well get really good at.

What follows are my thoughts and techniques to help you consistently achieve great results.

EQUIPMENT

Before shooting any group shot, decide about your equipment in advance: which camera and lens is needed, will you need to add any strobe, etc. Make sure you have fresh, charged batteries in camera and strobe and a fresh memory card in your camera. You want to have these details worked out ahead of time, since fumbling around with your group assembled is a sure recipe for a bored and uncooperative bunch.

APPROACH

Having shot literally thousands of group shots, I start with the known fact that most people, when put into a group for a photograph, have the attention span of a hamster. Maybe not even a hamster! So it’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you work quickly!

This is the foremost fact of life for group shot shooting. You have only a tiny window of time in which people will really be paying attention, so you must be READY and SHOOT QUICKLY.

COMPOSITION

Usually, for most straightforward, safe group shots, I shoot either full-length or waist-up. This is a ‘rule’ to be broken, when you have a great idea for a composition, but for the safe, bankable shot, full-length and waist-up are where I always start.

When directing people into position in a large group, make certain that you can clearly see everyone’s face from camera position. This is so important! They may think they are visible, if THEY have a clear vision of YOU, but they may in fact be partially obscured behind Uncle Charlie. It’s up to YOU to make sure you have composed a photograph with all faces visible.

Once you have everyone composed and where you want them, shoot at least three frames of each version. I do this with the motor drive on my camera. Someone will always be blinking or looking away in some of the shots, but getting three cuts down on your overall number of unusable images.

I find that I have my ‘group shot patter’ that I turn on for a group shot. You need to be talking to the group, schmoozing them, making them feel relaxed, reminding them that ‘this will only take a minute,’ as you get them all lined up and ready. Keep smiling, keep talking as you get them where you want them. You want them concentrating on YOU, not on the tiresome fact that they’re having to stand or sit still for a boring group photo! Remember, in this situation, IT’S YOU WHO ARE ON STAGE. KEEP THEM ENTERTAINED. Then shoot quickly! Check your results very carefully on your LCD before letting them go, or moving on to another version.

Look carefully for who isn’t smiling: the guy who’s going to ruin the entire overall shot. Look up from your viewfinder, smile directly at that person and ask if they plan to smile for any of these? Then when they sheepishly grin, quickly shoot that better version, before they have time to think about it. You may get a couple of decent shots off before their nervousness takes over and they return to scowling!

Once you have this perfectly decent, acceptable and ‘safe’ version of the group shot, think about something more creative: ask them all to loosen up, or make them all get their heads in tight together—anything that comes to mind that throws them off balance and not thinking: then shoot quickly! You’ll only have a split second to get this more spontaneous version of the group shot, and sometimes this will be the best one.

That’s it! Instead of thinking about group shots as a chore, think about them as a challenge—something that you can improve upon as you become a more seasoned photographer.

Start to look and pay attention to great group portraits when you come across them. How did the photographer get that photo? What do you think he did to cajole that group of people into jumping straight up in the air in their ball gowns? Look at how he incorporated the background into the photograph: is there something there for you to use? All of these little things play a role as you learn to shoot this most fundamental of photos, the group shot.

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Related articles on the web:

Shooting Group Photos at Digital Photography School

Shooting Group Portraits at Light-Shoot-Print

The Ulitmate Photo Shoot: Portrait of the World’s Leaders

New Pages at The Discerning Photographer!

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:55:13 +0000

One of the facts of blogging life, whether you’re writing about widgets or weight loss, is that you tend to write a lot of spur-of-the-moment content…after all, we need to keep our material fresh! While I have lots of general areas within the various fields of photography that I like to write about, the end result of this approach tends to be a bit scatter-shot, hodge-podge. I may get inspired with two or three ‘How-To’ articles, followed by some inspirational piece about light, followed by a technical post that explains some esoteric aspect of studio lighting…in other words, I’m all over the place!

Recently I was thinking about this problem and got really, really excited about the solution that’s before you now. Starting today, there’s a new masthead tab called ‘Techniques.’ Hovering over the Techniques tab brings up nested pages for ‘Beginners‘ and ‘Advanced Shooters,’ where lots of the rich content on The Discerning Photographer has been organized by subject matter. I’ll update and add to this organized content on a regular basis, although every article on the site won’t end up there.

We’ll see how it goes, how it evolves as an element here. My hope is that this will make the main content on the site easier to find and digest.

Let me know how you like the new pages!

Photoshop Alternatives, Part II

DiscerningPhotog — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:53:26 +0000

Gimp and Photoshop Elements: Is one of these your low/no cost solution?

In Part I of this series we looked at Picnik and Picasa, two free or almost-free image editing solutions. Today we’ll look under the hood at Gimp, the open-source answer to Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements, Adobe’s own cheaper version of its iconic image editing program. As I said in Part I, this won’t be an exhaustive investigation of these programs, but simply a look. I’ve gotten my hands on both of these programs and tried them out. Here I’ll give you my reactions and thoughts about both; hopefully this will help you make your own decision about what to use.

Gimp, an open-source editing program.

Let me start by saying that unlike Picnik or Picasa, Gimp comes at image editing/toning from a serious, Photoshop-based approach. By that I mean that nothing is dumbed-down or easy about the program. You can go into Levels and Curves, burn, dodge, sharpen, etc., just like you can in Photoshop. There are layers and layer masks that you can design and use. There is also extensive online instruction available at the Gimp website. Lots of people are using Gimp and seem to find that it works for them; I particularly like what Jennifer at iffles.com offers in her Gimp postings.

What I found hard about the program is that all of these functions are just different enough from Photoshop to make the entire toning process feel disorienting. The Levels and Curves features, for instance, are located under the ‘Colors’ menu, for some reason I could never fathom, instead of under the Image menu. (There is an Image menu, it just has other stuff located there.) The burn and dodge functionality, while it works, is nested within the ‘Tool Options’ of something that looks vaguely like the Photoshop Dodge tool icon; I found this a bit hard to get at initially, although once I had it figured out, it worked ok. All of the tool icons struck me as weird, ugly versions of their more elegant Photoshop counterparts.

Unlike Picasa or Photoshop, there is no IPTC-based captioning function in Gimp. (There is a Text tool for adding type directly to an image, though.) . This is a huge, huge problem for me. I write captions, add keywords, etc., to virtually all of my photographs during the editing process. Not simply for journalistic use, but also for myself: where I shot something, when I shot it, etc. Why would I want to give up this vital functionality?

Unlike Photoshop, Gimp has no ability, at least in the current version, to create Actions. I use custom-made Photoshop Actions, little bits of scripted automation, in my regular toning workflow and can’t imagine doing any serious work without them.

I guess my biggest overall problem with Gimp is aesthetic: it’s UGLY. Why not just go ahead and make the thing prettier to look at and use? Who wants to work with ugly software? I know there are Gimp users out there who are happy with the program, and I’ll probably get slammed by them for this, but to me, Gimp feels like Photoshop built by the old Soviet Union (think about those old Russian cars that used to be manufactured in their state-run facilities.) I don’t like using it. I don’t like the way it looks or feels. It’s clunky and awkward.

Gimp feels like Photoshop built by the old Soviet Union (think about those old Russian cars that used to be manufactured in their state-run facilities.)

This is such a big disappointment, because I really am a big, big believer in open-source software. I use Firefox as my default browser, for instance. I think it’s beautiful and trouble-free. I think it’s superior to Internet Explorer. Or consider Wordpress, the blog platform that I create The Discerning Photographer on and which you’re looking at my creation with right now. I consider it the best blogging platform out there, bar none.

So I love open-source software, when it works as well or better than its expensive retail counterpart. Unfortunately, I don’t think Gimp is even on the same planet with Photoshop. At least not yet.

Photoshop Elements, or Photoshop on a tight budget.

Photoshop Elements, like Adobe Premier Elements, (the cheaper version of the Adobe Premier Pro video editing program), is a surprising robust little piece of software. If what you’re doing with your photos is mostly burning, dodging and sharpening images, and then maybe recropping and saving them at higher or lower resolutions (for printing or the web), you’ll be surprised by Elements. It can do all of these things and more. In fact, if you’re a veteran PS user and run a few pictures through your basic toning workflow in Elements, you may find that it can do almost everything you normally do in its much bigger, much more-expensive Older Brother.

The whole Elements interface is dark and slick, a combination of dark grey and black. The Tools icons remind me of the regular Photoshop versions, only these are more colorful and slightly cartoon-like in overall appearance. The look and feel is a consistent and polished experience, what we’ve all come to expect from Adobe products.

And for me, YAY! It has a Captioning function! By now you know how important this is to my workflow, so enough said. Elements can handle this task in its simple version of IPTC captioning.

Interestingly, one of the things it can’t do is create sophisticated Photoshop Actions. Starting with Version 7, there now is an ‘Action Player’ function in Elements, which seems to mostly be designed to do some special effects on images (sepia toning, for instance). Web sources indicate that some actions created in full-blown Photoshop can now be imported and run in Elements, although this will be on a trail-and-error basis as you test your particular actions for their usability.

Overall I would say this is software aimed at the casual photographer: there are plenty of shortcuts and built-in ‘effects’ that the new photographer may find fun to use. Unlike Gimp, this software is designed with an easy learning curve for the beginning user. However, the tools and their usage mirrors ‘real’ Photoshop, so the beginner who eventually moves up to Photoshop will find that they already know how to drive the car when they get behind the PS wheel.

Conclusion: if you can’t afford Photoshop, get Photoshop Elements for now. It retails for $79 at Amazon, but you can find legal copies at Ebay for substantially less. When you eventually find that your photographic passion requires Photoshop, the skill set that you’ve developed on Elements will help make your transition easier.

Related content on the web:

Jennifer’s Gimp articles at iffles.com

Computer Hardware and Software for the Photographer at Your Photo Tips

How Much Would You Pay for Photoshop? at Epic Edits

Quick Tip—Always Keep a Camera ‘Locked and Loaded’

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:13:34 +0000

This is an extremely simple, but essential, Quick Tip: always have a camera completely set up and ready to shoot pictures, close at hand. This means that when you put that camera bag in the trunk of your car or in the back seat before you set out for the day, have at least one camera inside that bag completely set and ready to shoot photographs.

You must decide upon a set of ‘default’ settings. Not the settings you would ideally use for a specific shooting situation, but rather some settings that will work for the most number of situations, most of the time.

For me, here are those settings:

Lens: my 50mm Canon macro. I love this lens, and I ‘see’ lots of photographs from this perspective. For me, it’s a great place to start, and my preferred ‘default’ lens.
Flash card: a 1 or 2GB flash card, cleaned off and freshly formatted.
ISO: something that will work in most situations: ISO 400.
Shooting mode: one of the automatic settings. The point here is that you should be able to pick the camera up, turn it on and shoot photos, no further adjustment necessary. I’ll usually leave my ‘locked and loaded’ camera in shutter priority ‘TV’ mode or the program ‘P’ mode;
Battery: freshly charged, or at least, not almost-dead. I want to know that it’s going to work if needed.

So what’s the point of all of this?

As someone who has earned his living for the past many years as a photojournalist, this may seem obvious: you never know when you’re going to stumble upon a really amazing, profound photograph, which is happening right then, right in front of you.

But I would argue that the exact same thing can be true for a wildlife photographer, a landscape or nature photographer. For that matter, almost anyone who depends upon seeing great photographs to make their living or feed their passion. Landscape photographer Jeff Lynch talks about this in a his post, ‘Never Put Your Camera Away!’

Think about it: you love to shoot landscapes. You’re driving through northwestern New Mexico, late in the day, and the light is suddenly and dramatically becoming amazing. You top a hill on the two-lane road that you’re driving, and up ahead, the light is hitting a mesa in the most incredible way, just as the shadow of a cloud comes across a distant outcropping. You literally have seconds, not minutes, to capture the beauty that is before you.

This is why we all need to be ‘locked and loaded’! As photographers, we are granted the privilege every day to make truly awe-inspiring images.

But we sure better be ready when they appear!

Related posts on the web:

Never Put Your Camera Away! at Jeff Lynch’s Serious Amateur Photography

11 Tips for Candid Street Photography by Brian Auer at Epic Edits

The Art of Travel Photography by Darren Rouse at DPS

Photoshop Alternatives, Part I

DiscerningPhotog — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:19:56 +0000

Picnik, Picasa, Gimp, Photoshop Elements: Is One of These Right For You?

I was asked by a reader of The Discerning Photographer, who had just plunked down good money on a Nikon D90 and was feeling a bit pinched, which image editing software program I would recommend, if he wasn’t going to go ahead and buy Photoshop. It is really expensive after all, and does everyone really need all of its bells and whistles right away?

The answer, of course, is no.

Photoshop is the most amazing piece of software I use on a regular basis, bar none. It makes my work possible, makes image editing fun and enjoyable. I’m a HUGE fan. But most of what I use it for is fairly simple. If you’re not working with lots of custom actions or layers and layer masks and/or doing other advanced image toning and manipulation, you probably don’t need the full-blown Photoshop to do your work. But if not, what should you use? On a budget, what’s the best alternative to real Photoshop?

I decided to look at a handful of alternatives which span a range of options and approaches to image editing. Specifically, I have taken a quick drive around the block with Picnik (Yahoo), Picasa (Google), Gimp (Open Source) and Photoshop Elements (cheap, Photoshop Lite). What follows are my impressions of these pieces of software. I’ll tell you what I liked and didn’t like for each software package. I’ll compare how they work and what I missed, in each case. Not full-blown, exhaustive reviews, but just my gut reactions after a bit of tinkering with each product. Hopefully you’ll find this helpful if you’re trying to make this decision. Today we’ll look at Picnik and Picasa, the offerings from Yahoo and Google, respectively.

Picnik, from Yahoo.

Picnik is designed to look inviting and easy, 'Photo editing made fun.'

Picnik is part of Yahoo’s group of photo-related products. I came to learn of its existence while using their related and immensely successful Flickr photo sharing software. (As many of you are aware, The Discerning Photographer has a Flickr group pool.) Picnik reminds me a little bit of Picassa, which I’ll talk about next; but it’s different in a few distinct ways as well.

First of all: Picnik is truly web-only. To edit photos, you first sign up for a free Picnik account, then upload the images you want to edit to the Picnik site. This is straightforward and easy to do, but if you try to upload more than five images at a time, this message pops up: “We’re uploading 5 of your selected photos. Go Premium to upload up to 100 photos at a time (for as little as $2.08 a month!)” While it’s cheap at a starting price of just 2 bucks, I really don’t like the idea that to edit images, I have to be online before I can start…what if I’m out of range of a high-speed internet connection?

Buttons on the main tools window take you into different aspects of image editng.

Once uploaded, the controls for image editing are basic but work nicely. You can crop your photos, adjust color, sharpen, then save back to your own computer or send from within Picnik right to your email, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Photobucket or Flickr account. On the negative side, there’s no way to write real caption information to travel with your photos as metadata. This is something that I would find to be a real limitation, since I like to make notes about my images and frequently include full captions and keywords embedded with the images….more on this later.

My grade for this product: C+. It’s attractively packaged but too limited to be of much use to anyone but the most casual of photographers. AND I really don’t like the fact that it’s web-only with no module for editing while offline.

Next: Picasa, the Google flavor of free.

Now let’s consider Picasa, Google’s image editing program. This is different in several fundamental ways from Picnik, both in terms of how it works and what you can do with your results.

First of all, Picasa is editing software that downloads and installs on your computer. So right away I see something I like: the ability to work on photos without the need for an internet connection.

When you first launch Picasa, it begins to scan and catalog all of the images on your computer, without ever asking you if this is okay! Seems very ‘Big Brother’ to me, and knowing what we all know about how much Google likes to gather data on all of our tastes, likes and dislikes, this leaves me….less than happy.

Anyway, once the scan is done, a Windows folder tree structure is displayed. The main contact sheet is in the middle with the navigation structure on the left and and a range of action options at the bottom(‘email,’ ‘print,’ etc.) Picasa calls this the main ‘Library’ view. By clicking on different folders in the left folder tree, different groups of related photos will appear. Double-click on any image and you’ll be taken into the image toning module.

The range of things you can do to a photo is actually similar to Picnik’s: crop, lighten and darken, sharpen, make some global changes to color temperature. You also have the option of writing some basic caption information directly under the photo. You can add tags to images to help organize them by any criteria you choose as well.

Once you have your image toned and captioned, you can save it back to your computer, email it, send it to a service for printing, send to your Blogger-based blog (run by Google, of course) or upload it to a related Picasa web album. (Web albums are cool. You can save your images in online albums, which you then can share with specific people you choose, who can go online to view them.)

So my grade: B. More useful and versatile than Picnik, free, with software that allows you to work without being online. But the image toning choices are still extremely limited and of a basic nature. Beginner’s tools but not much more. (The Picasa web albums, mentioned above, deserve their own post, they are very powerful.)

Next time: we’ll look at the open-source Gimp software and Photoshop’s own Elements version.

Related articles on the web:

Picnik instructions at Flickr

Video tutorials for Picnik

How to use Picasa at The New York Times’ Personal Tech

Picasa instructions at eHow.com

Why Do We Photograph the Things We Do?

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:21:21 +0000

As in, why do I like to photograph some things while you are attracted to others? Better yet, what is the mental/creative/visioning process we all go through in order to ‘see’ a photograph we want to shoot? Is this process the same for everyone, or is it unique for every individual?

These are some of the thoughts banging around in my head today. I’m thinking especially about the process by which we ‘see’ photographs to shoot, where maybe yesterday or the day before, in exactly the same location, we walked right by without seeing a thing. Why is this so true? Fascinating, don’t you think?

I was reminded of this central fact about our photographic process yesterday. I was in the laundry room of our home and glanced to see a small, tight bundle of dried roses my wife had saved. The bundle has been hanging there for two, maybe three months, up under a dry erase board we use to write grocery lists between trips to the store. I’d never really thought much about these dried roses, other than thinking it was vaguely attractive and wondering what my wife was planning to do with it.

Well, yesterday the light was very diffused and soft in the room, and as I went to write something on the board, I glanced down and saw the most incredible softness and detail in the bundle…something fragile and beautiful in all of those petals….I rushed to get a camera and spent the next 15 minutes or so looking and shooting.

What had changed? What was there that day that wasn’t there before?

The answer, I think, all lies between our ears: what we’re able to visualize and photograph is entirely dependent upon what we’re capable of seeing in this amazing world we live in. And that, of course, is very dependent upon our frame of mind at any given point in time. Some days (maybe most days) we’re in such a rush we can’t see a thing. Trying to shoot when you’re this preoccupied can be a mechanical and unproductive activity. Other days, when the planets are aligned for you just so, the photographs are everywhere! This is when life is good and you give thanks for being alive and being a photographer.

May we all have more of those days!

Related articles on the web:

‘Seeing Photographs’ at Shutterfreaks

‘Seeing Photographs’ at Outdoor Photographer

‘Seven Ways to Improve Your Photographic Vision’

‘Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision’

Quick Tip: Shoot With Two Cameras

DiscerningPhotog — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:17:20 +0000

Maybe you have a few lenses in your collection now and you’re happy. Maybe you shoot nothing but landscapes or still life photos and don’t see the need. Maybe you just don’t see what you’d do with a second camera body, except to have it as a backup.

I’m here to tell you that, except maybe for studio work, without a second camera body, you’re missing pictures.

Here’s what happens: you’re shooting, moving around, and suddenly you see the composition in a totally new light. You change lenses to accomodate your new vision…and while changing the lens, the shot changes and is no longer there. You miss it.

Typically, for any situation with lots of movement, changing situations, etc. you should have two cameras around your neck and shoulder: the one you’re using around your neck, the one you’re not shooting on your shoulder. This works for news, sports, wildlife, portraits, even nature/landscapes sometimes.

Two examples:

You’re shooting a wide shot at a big house fire, using a wide angle lens or zoom on one of your bodies. Suddenly a firefighter bursts out of a second-story window onto a porch roof, needing a new air tank. You grab the 80-200mm on your shoulder and get the photo.
Without two cameras, you'll miss those rare, unexpected photographs. (Copyright 2010 / Andrew Boyd, The Times-Picayune)
You’re shooting a basketball game, sitting courtside to the left of one basket. As the players work the court near you, you shoot with your 80-200mm lens. When the play goes to the other end, you grab the 300mm f2.8 lens on a short monopod at your side. When a sudden loose ball results in a mad scramble, you’re ready with the longer lens.
Loose balls make some of the best basketball action photos, but you have to be ready with the proper lens to catch them. (Copyright 2010 / Andrew Boyd, The Times-Picayune)

The second lens/body setup gives you options. It allows you to respond to changes in your shooting situation. It allows you to be more successful as a photographer. And that is what we all want, isn’t it?

Megapixel Mania

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:03:29 +0000

The megapixel—which, incidentally, is one million pixels—has become an advertising and marketing person’s dream metric—keep adding more of ‘em, and they’ll keep buying more of ‘em. No matter whether this is actually the most important measurement of quality in the world of digital photography cameras—it no longer makes any difference. The public now equates more pixels=more quality, end of story.

I think this is an incredible marketing feat that has been foisted upon us, the photographic equipment-buying public. For the most part, we all accept this as the gospel when it comes to making our camera buying decisions: I need more pixels!

But do you? What camera are you using today? How old is it? How many megapixels does its CCD sensor capture? What other features on this machine were key to your original purchase? Are those features outmoded as well? What other factors did you consider when making your purchase?

I like to remind myself (and others) that cameras today are simply computers with lenses on the front of them. And like all other computers, they continue to get faster, smaller, better, roughly every 2 years as predicted by Intel’s Gordon Moore with his now-famous “Moore’s Law”: The number of transistors on a microprocessor will double about every two years.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to buy a new computer every 2 years, and I certainly don’t buy new cameras that often either. I need both of these computing machines to last quite a bit longer than that.

One of my favorite true-story tidbits about megapixels and image quality is this: the highest-resolution digital photographs ever (so far) produced were made by a one-megapixel camera! That’s right. One megapixel!

The highest-resolution digital photographs ever (so far) produced were made by a one-megapixel camera!

The Mars rover 'Spirit,' which, with its one-megapixel camera, shot some of the highest resolution photos ever taken.

Not just any megapixel camera, though. And as it turns out, not just any CCD either. (The CCD stands for ‘charge-coupled device,’ the sensor that gathers the light information and converts it into digital 1’s and 0s’.) The cameras capable of shooting such amazing photographs were on the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

The Mars Rover Camera Lenses were only 1 Megapixel, yet they produced the highest-resolution digital images ever recorded. As Space.com explains:

“Anyone who has ever agonized over whether to buy a 3-megapixel or 4-megapixel digital camera might be surprised to learn that Spirit’s stunningly detailed images of Mars are made with a 1-megapixel model, a palm-sized 9-ounce marvel that would be coveted in any geek’s shirt pocket.

Spirit’s images are IMAX quality, mission managers say.”

The secret for Spirit and Opportunity has to do with the custom-made, incredible lenses that were attached to those cameras, and the huge size of the CCD itself—over four times the size on an average consumer camera. So the pixels themselves are huge, hitting a huge CCD, resulting in super-high resolution photographs.

So what should you be concerned about if not simply pixels? In a word: lenses! The quality of the glass that you’re shooting through is easily the single most important variable that you have a lot of control over. Are you shooting through professional glass or still using the consumer glass that came with your first DSLR? Before replacing your camera, think long and hard about upgrading your lens collection if you haven’t already addressed this issue.

Beyond that, things that affect quality get more esoteric. Each camera manufacturer has their own proprietary software and hardware used to process the information collected by the camera’s CCD. Even if you’re shooting RAW files, there will be some differences between manufacturers on how things end up looking.

So the moral of the story is: don’t get swept up in the megapixel hype! Upgrade your cameras when other camera features require you to do so. Otherwise, look first at your lenses when trying to improve image quality.

Related Stories on the Web:

Prime Lenses at Epic Edits

Megapixels and Image Quality at Digital Camera Resource

The Megapixel Myth at KenRockwell.com

Megapixels and Image Quality at B&H Images