xmas card 2009

This year we used some christmas lights and long exposure:

Click to view in larger size.

Have a nice holidays and hopefully Santa brings new photography gadgets!

Stolen photo and how to deal with it

I was expecting this to happen sooner or later. Someone copied a copyrighted photo from my flickr account to a blog. He did not ask permission and I have 'all right reserved' as a license. Actually, I could not have given permission as the photo features three students. They are clearly recognisable and I do not have model release from them so using such photo for commercial usage is out of question.

The blog happened to be a marketing tool of a company providing some kind of educational services. I contacted the company and requested to remove it. This happened soon but they ended up replacing it with someone else's copyrighted photo. I don't know if permission was asked... I doubt.

There are couple things a photographer can do to protect his assets. Watermarking is quite common but it adds an additional step to the workflow and distracts viewers. Uploading low resolution version only is another way to prevent photos ending up in magazines but it wont stop bloggers.

In case you see your photo used without permission you should contact the admin of the website. Sometimes they react and the photo is removed. In case of printed media like magazines removal is impossible so you should be able to receive some kind of compensation. I am not an expert so I have no clue how much and so on.

But sometimes the website's admin wont do a thing and photo stays online. Depending where the site is hosted a so called 'DMCA takedown' notice could help. I have not tried it myself but I found good information how to write such and to whom to send it.

Canon EOS utility and tethered shooting preview quality

Canon DSLRs come with a software bundle and one of the applications is EOS Utility. Among other features it allows you to transfer your shots right away to your computer over USB cable and it also displays a quick preview of the photo on the computer screen. This is pretty handy because it is much easier to see results on the big screen. Obviously the USB cable length limits your movements so I guess people will use this for studio shots mostly.

I was playing around with this feature and I noticed that the preview had rather bad quality. After trying out different settings it turned out that shooting in RAW+JPEG mode instead of RAW only resulted better previews. Apparently the quick preview's RAW conversion outputs only low resolution images.

More tips for moon and scenery photographing

If you have read my previous post about moon photographing you already know the basics at least. But photographing the moon with scenery can be tricky. Let's say there is a night time scenery like sea and the moon light casts nice lit path on the waves. Very romantic you know.

First you take a photo so that the sea is more or less correctly exposed. Because it is pretty dark, you have to use long exposure. Naturally this is not an issue because you have brought your tripod. When you check your shots, you will notice that the moon is badly overexposed.



Unfortunately most of the digital cameras have rather limited dynamic range compared to your eyes. This means that you cannot get both the sea and the moon correctly exposed. But you can always cheat a little bit and take two different shots. I used the image above for the sea and then I took another photo of the moon with my telephoto lens. With these two images it was simple to copy the correctly exposed moon over the overexposed one.



As you see, I also moved the moon down and made it bigger compared to the original. How good that looks is matter of taste but at least the moon is not overexposed anymore. Sometimes you have to manipulate your shots a bit and I think it is fine as long as you are not working as a photojournalist.

Becoming a strobist - YN RF-602 ordered

I ordered Yongnuo RF-602 radio trigger with two receivers yesterday. The reason for ordering this set is that I do not have any way of using my existing Canon 430EX II flash off camera. I was thinking buying a remote TTL cord but I dropped that idea after reading about radio triggers.

There are many different brands for radio flash triggers. Some are quite expensive like Pocket Wizards and some are cheaper. In my case I did not want to spend too much so I took a look at the eBay selection. Most cheap triggers like Cactus V2/V4 use 433 MHz frequency but Yongnuo RF-602 uses higher 2.4 GHz frequency. This should give longer range and better reliability based on reviews. RF-602 might be a bit more expensive but 40 GBP for a transmitter and two receivers is not too bad.

At the moment I have only one flash but I am trying to figure out what kind of flash should the second one be. It should have manual power control, reasonable power rating and low price. I do not need any automatic features so there is no point of buying another Canon 430EX II. Yongnuo produces flashes matching my requirements and they are pretty cheap (27-30 GPB ebay). Other option could be a second hand flash unit but popular models are hard to get.

Hopefully my trigger package arrives soon. Waiting new gear to arrive is always difficult...

Edinburgh Photocamp 2009

Today I attended a photocamp event and I have to say it was a day well spent. It was the very first Photocamp event in Edinburgh. Photocamps are very informal seminars and they share quite a lot with more IT specific Barcamp events.

The main idea of a Photocamp is that anyone is free to join, present and collaborate. There are no fixed plans and anyone is free to present a topic. In my case this meant having a quick presentation about camera lens qualities and how they affect the final photograph. I was not too well prepared so I felt a bit nervous. Luckily the atmosphere was warm and welcoming so it was not that bad thing to do after all.

Along many informative presentations there was also a possibility to try out small studio setup with several flashes, soft boxes and reflectors. I ended up in front of camera as well even though posing is not my favorite act. It was a first time for me to try out studio shooting with such a setup so I was a bit clueless what I could achieve but at least I got a chance to try out different light setups and so on.

In between sessions attendees were busy chatting about their interests, expressing their opinions and sharing their flickr contacts. For some people it was the first time they met their online contacts in real life. Such event is very good for networking and I also got plenty of advice for my plans to get couple radio triggers.

I understood that this kind of Photocamps are relatively new thing in the UK so you might not heard about such before. But if there is one being organized near you do not hesitate to participate. Having a presentation is not compulsory.

Edinburgh Photocamp

Photography podcasts

I have to spend around 1.5 hours commuting every day so I have plenty of time to listen podcasts. Recently I found out that iTunes store has many photography related podcasts. There are even some videos in addition to ordinary audio podcasts.

Because I discovered existence of these podcasts only very recently I cannot recommend any yet. But there seems to be some good ones and at least TWiP (This week in photography) sounded interesting based on one episode. I guess after couple weeks I can publish my favorite list.

Lens stacking

Sometimes I read about strange sounding ways of photography and lens stacking is one of them. The idea is to connect two lenses together in order to get higher magnification for close up shots. This can be done with a cheap stacking ring but it requires lenses to have the same filter thread size.



I tried out combining my Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS f3.5-5.6 and Canon EF 70-210mm f4.0. I attached the 70-200mm to the camera body. The problem with this kind of setup is to find suitable settings for each lens. I left focus to manual on both and did not try to adjust that at all. The zoom settings define the magnification and it should follow this simple formula: magnification = focal length of the primary lens / focal length of the reversed lens. So in case of my lenses I have range of 1.27 - 11.7 magnification - in theory.



There are some practical issues with this combination. Setting the focal length of the primary lens to 70mm vignetting occurs and cuts a good amount of corners off. At 210mm vignetting is gone but the lack of light makes focusing difficult. A good live view helps a bit but I ended up using bright led lamp to lit up the target during focusing. The actual photo is then lit by a flash.

Focusing is done in practice by moving the camera until the right part of the target is sharp. The depth of field is extremely shallow and high magnification shows up any camera shake. Shooting handheld with this long stacked lens is pretty tricky.

I uploaded some of my experimental shots to flickr under stacked tag

More information about the theory
http://www.peterforsell.com/macro.html#Magnification_of_stacked_lenses

Cheap tripod is better than no tripod

I think the first accessory I bought for photography after the camera was a tripod. I had no clue how serious I will be with photographing so I did not feel like investing in an expensive tripod. Instead, I bought the cheapest one.

My choice was a brand new Hama Star 63 and I paid around 12 pounds for it. After half a year usage it is still in one piece but I am somewhat fed up with it. As one might guess, it is not the lightest one. Most of the parts are made of cheap plastic and it is somewhat unstable no matter how much you tighten it.

But even this low level tripod allowed me to take photos which would have been impossible to take hand held. Long exposure shots became possible as well as light painting. I think a tripod is one of the most cost effective photography gear.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory...

I just realized I have been downgrading my photos because of a low quality UV filter. The bokeh looked horrible and focus seemed to be off so ended up setting up a test setup and shooting plenty of frames with different settings. Soon It was quite clear that cheap Jessops branded filter was the culprit. But I also learned quite a lot about how autofocus works and what might cause it to miss the spot. But more later with example photos.

My next purchase

My colleague lent me his Kenko Extension tube set for couple days and I have to say that it is a must have. An extension tube is just an extender without any lenses inside. With the extension tube attached between the camera body and the lens you can sharpen closer and therefore photograph things in bigger size. Unfortunately long extension tube usually prevents auto focus so you have sharpen manually. A set of extension tubes is relatively cheap because of the simple construction and it takes less space in my camera bag than a proper macro lens. 

But how sharp photos you can take with extension tubes? I think it depends how good your lens is. A good prime or a very sharp zoom lens are good candidates. I shot this example with Canon EF 70-200mm F4 L IS USM. The photo of 1 Swiss Franc coin year digits is cropped to show 1:1 size.

f8, 70mm, 1/100s, ISO 100 and full stack of Kenko extension tubes.

As mentioned above I do not own  such tubes, yet. I have been postponing the purchase as I made a promise not buy more photography gear this month. Luckily it is already 18th...

How to photograph the moon

Taking a decent moon photo is not too difficult but you need to have some equipment for it. The most important one is a proper tripod or similar support for the camera. Almost as important is a decent telephoto lens. A sharp 200 mm telephoto lens is a good start for photos like this:

But even if you have the best possible gear you still need to see the moon. So, check the moon phase calendar, weather forecast and head to a dark location. Usually cities have way too much light pollution and this reduces the contrast between the sky and the moon. Find a dark area with solid ground for your tripod.

Then set up your tripod as stable as possible. Do not extend it completely unless really necessary. Select your telephoto lens with longest focal length and remove any filters you have. Even high quality filters can cause unwanted flare.

Use low ISO setting to avoid noise - ISO 100 works well. I do not pay attention to white balance as I shoot on RAW which allows more post processing options. Use mirror lock up if available and use long timer to trigger the shutter. These help to reduce camera shake and therefore improve image quality. The choice between manual and automatic focus is up to you. When using a lens without distance view the autofocus might be a better option.

Finding the right aperture for your lens needs some experiment. Most lenses have their sweet spot around f8-f11. Any higher aperture number causes diffraction which reduces image sharpness. Too low aperture number leads to soft photos especially on cheaper zoom lenses.

After all this setup the last step is to aim the center of the moon and select the right exposure. There are calculators for moon photography but couple test shots give you a good idea anyways. Depending on your camera its exposure metering it might give totally misleading results so feel free to ignore it.

Take plenty of shots with different aperture and exposure times. At the post processing I use only green color component because it seems to have less noise compared to red. I also reduce saturation so the end result is black and white. Apply some sharpening, crop tight and upload to your favorite image gallery for feedback.

Edit: I added more tips for photographing the moon. Take a look!

Photographers legacy

Recently I got to know about Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and his photographs. What makes his photographs really interesting is that they were meant to be color photographs at the time when color film did not exist. 

He travelled around Russia taking photos of various places using his special camera around 1905-1915. His camera took three exposures for each light component. These sets of three black and white photos were very difficult to merge to a complete color print on his time but couple years ago they were scanned and processed using modern technology. Library of Congress has 'The Empire That Was Russia' exhibition and many of the processed photos can be seen online.

I wonder if Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky thought his photos would have such an important historical value after so many years. In our current lifestyle photos usually became useless as soon as nobody remembers where it was taken and who were on it. In case of digital photography I am not too sure how well digital archives survive for one hundred years. And how to write all the important information on the back of the digital image? In any case, I would be very curious to know what kind of piece of history future generations will find as fascinating as these old color photos.

Depth of Field calculator

Most photographers know the effect of different apertures. The smaller aperture (=bigger f-value) the longer depth of field. But how long is the depth of field precisely?

I was quite surprised how much the distance from the subject affects the length of the depth of field. Let's imagine that we are taking a photo of a flower from one meter distance with 100mm f2.8 on 1.6 crop frame. Based on an online calculator the depth of field is 9.7 mm. But we want to double that because the flower is not completely sharp.

Stepping down to f5.6 gives depth of field of 19.3 mm. Now the dof is twice as long but the exposure time has become four times longer. In case of hand held photography this might be too much.

Another option is to keep aperture at f2.8 but take one step backwards so that the distance is 1.4 meters.  This will give the same depth of field as above but without the expense of longer exposure time.

Canon 500D introduced

Today I realized that my less than a year old Canon 450D is obsolete. Canon published new Canon 500D which replaces 450D in their product line. But after checking the specifications and preview from dpreview.com I did not rush to a camera store to pre-order it.

The camera shares same form factor as Canon 450D so there is no improvement in ergonomics except the new and sharper LCD screen. The internals of the camera have received some updates including a sensor with more pixels and a processor allowing video shooting. But the video shooting is clearly limited compared to 5D mark II and there is no possibility to connect external microphone. 

The only feature I really would like to have from Canon 500D is its ability to shoot on higher ISO settings. I haven't seen any example shots with ISO 1600 or 3200 yet so I am curious how noisy they are compared to 450D's ISO 800 or 1600. Apart from this I think there is no need to upgrade for 450D owners - especially after checking 500D's price tag.

Bad weather for photographing

Some time ago I was complaining about cloudy and dull weather on a photography forum. I was not happy how boring everything looked compared to brighter day. I received some feedback but I did not expect anything as I was just ranting. But that is the whole point. The camera records what you see. If your mood is already pessimistic there is very little chance to take photos telling the opposite.

Getting involved with photography

One day I was thinking how and by whom I have been affected in the sense of photographing. I did not simply go to closest photo store and buy DSLR with lenses and other equipment. Instead, there has been slow progress going on for long time. But only until very recently  I did not call photography my interest.

My father used to shoot a lot on slide film but I was only involved being a subject. Later on I did experiment a bit with his Minolta 7000i but photos were just casual snap shots. The interesting point with that camera was its broken autofocus so I ended up focusing everything myself. 

A distant relative used to shoot much more and talk even more about photography. He also demonstrated the black and white developing and print process. I did not understand half what he said but I did read many camera magazines while visiting him. Maybe those artistic photos featuring women got my attention as a boy.

I did not have my own camera for a long time and the first one was a simple point and shoot. I chose the camera based on its size and ease to use. So I bought Canon IXUS 60. Being such a small camera it served well as a travel camera. I still have it and it is in good condition. But because of its limitations came the need for something else.

Actually, the topic of buying DSLR was brought up by my girl friend. She started to talk about how much better DSLR would be and she also listed up suitable models. I was rather hesitant because of the high price and I did not really see the need for such a camera. However, she managed to plant the idea in my mind and one day I bought Canon 450D with 18-55mm IS lens on the way home.

She has been giving quite a lot of comments about composition and style and I have been commenting her technical skills. Sometimes things get a bit heated but there is only one DSLR at the moment so we have to be able to co-operate. But we are both improving and for my surprise, I am the one spending time studying and trying out new things.

Welcome

Apertoire is a blog about photographing and related matters. The author is relatively new in the world of photographing so every moment with the camera or photos teaches something new. Talking about your interest is a powerful way to learn - therefore this blog is established.