ben_goren

<p>Dave,</p>

<p>A typical luxury yacht is about the same size as a fighter jet, yet the jet can go about 50 times

faster than the yacht.</p>

<p>A Canon Digital Rebel is about the same size as a Canon film Rebel, and yet they both produce

results of comparable quality. On the other hand, a Canon 5DII is about the same size as a Canon 3-series film body, and the 5DII blows away the film body in terms of image quality.</p>

<p>Compare a modern medium format digital back with its film equivalent, and they’re about the

same size. But you have to go to large format film before the image quality compares with the medium

format digital.</p>

<p>So, again…which medium has the size and quality advantage?</p>

<p>By all means, shoot film. It’s a wonderful medium. There’s lots of great art yet to be

created with film, and I’d love to see you be the one to create some of it. But do please

let’s be realistic when making comparisons, okay?</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Mauro,</p>

<p>Comparing medium format film against APS-C digital makes as much sense as comparing the output

of a 5DII against a Minox. </p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Even Plato complained that the youth in his day were going to Hades in a handbasket. Things

change, and change is uncomfortable. Especially when change brings the end of something we

enjoyed.</p>

<p>Don’t let your nostalgia for what was good in the past blind you to the good that comes with the

new. And don’t be afraid to continue to nurture that which you cherish. If you won’t, who

will?</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Lisa,</p>

<p>I’m a Canon guy. Canon has a 100 f/2. (It shares a lot in common with their 85 f/1.8 and their

135 f/2.8.) I don’t know Nikon, but I’d be astounded if they didn’t have a fast prime

in that focal length range.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Maddy,</p>

<p>If you find babies interesting, then you should be able to photograph whatever it is about them that

makes them interesting to you. If you can’t, you’ll have failed at the most important point of

the exercise.</p>

<p>If you find the exercise difficult, all the more reason you should do it.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Lisa,</p>

<p>A 50mm f/1.8 can be had for a song, and you should be able to get something along the lines of a

100 f/2 for a fraction of the cost of even a 70-200 f/4. Image quality should be on a par with the 70-200,

but they’ll be a stop or more faster than the zoom. If you’re not printing big, you should

have no trouble cropping the 100 to get your 150mm framing.</p>

<p>The 50 will be smaller than your clenched fist, and the 100 a bit bigger. Both are quite pocketable unless your pants are spray-on. Changing lenses only takes

a couple seconds.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Don’t overlook the 50mm f/2.5 compact macro. It has the best image quality of any 50 prime

Canon makes, and that’s really saying something. It won’t take you all the way to 1:1

macro, but I don’t get the impression that you’re looking for that level of magnification.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>chandler,</p>

<p>The spot you see through the viewfinder is on the focussing screen, or possibly the mirror.

It’s entirely harmless, if annoying. Attempting to clean it would likely damage the camera.</p>

<p>All lenses have dust inside them, even multi-thousand-dollar “L” lenses new in the

box. It, too, is harmless. You’d have to have truly epic quantities of dust (or mold, <i>etc.</i>)

before it would have a visible effect on a picture. That goes for the front and rear lens elements, as

well.</p>

<p>The only kind of dust you need to worry about is dust on the sensor. This will show as a small

fuzzy dark spot in the same position on every frame. If you really want every bit of sensor dust to show

up, shoot a bare patch of blue sky at f/22 (or your lens’s smallest aperture) and zoom to 100%

pixels. But, again, most of that dust won’t be visible in a print. That which is can easily be

cloned out in Photoshop. And cleaning the sensor with a rocket bulb blower is easy, guaranteed to be

harmless, and almost always effective. (When it’s not, Google is your friend.)</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>John’s last sentence reminds me of a super-important point: outdoors on sunny days,

you’ve got two radically different white balances in your scene.</p>

<p>The sun is about 5000K (or thereabouts).</p>

<p>The sky, which is illuminating the shady parts, has a color temperature of about 15,000K. (The

actual sky isn’t anywhere near that hot, of course; the same Rayleigh scattering that makes it

blue causes it to have a spectral distribution very similar to an object that temperature.)</p>

<p>The two mixed together, in a typical outdoor scene, result in a continuous range of color

temperatures ranging from about 5000K for objects directly lit by the sun to about 5500K for most

things you see to about 7000K for objects completely shaded from the sun and entirely lit by the

sky. (Remember that the sky is very, very dim compared to the sun, so it’s not really the sky that’s lighting your subject so much as the sun bouncing off everything around you.)</p>

<p>So, for general outdoor scenes you’d mostly go for 5500K, since that’s a close

approximation of the sense your brain makes of it all. With the sun right at your back, you’d

generally go for a lower temperature. But, if it’s a mostly shady back-lit scene, you’d

probably go for a much higher temperature.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Kate,</p>

<p>There are vanishingly few good reasons to prefer an SLR with a superzoom over a P&S with a

superzoom. If your photography is well suited to a superzoom, put some serious consideration into a

P&S. For a few generations, now, they’ve offered superlative image quality at the sizes

most people print at. And, they’re smaller, cheaper, and often more user-friendly.</p>

<p>If you need the additional image quality (or other properties) of an SLR, chances are excellent

you’d be better served with a standard zoom in the 18-ish to 55-ish range plus a telephoto in the

70-ish to 200-ish range. (Don’t worry about the “gap” between the two focal length

ranges. You’ll probably never even notice it, and it’s trivial to work around it if you ever

do.)</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Amanda,</p>

<p>That’s a hell of a lot of photos. What do you plan to do with all of them?</p>

<p>I think you’d do a lot better to try to take one single not-bad picture every day. If that means

pressing the shutter button a hundred times, fine, so be it. If it means pressing the shutter button a

half-dozen times, even better.</p>

<p>I’ve never been to Philadelphia, so I can’t help you there. But I can offer you some

general advice: go someplace you consider interesting (for whatever reason) and find the most

interesting thing you can in that place. Try to figure out the most interesting way to make a picture of

it.</p>

<p>Always be aware of the light. Your favorite place is probably lovely all day, but it’s probably

at its best photographically at certain times of the day, at certain times of the year, and in certain

weather. Regularly return to certain spots and compare what they look like, how they change.</p>

<p>And be on the lookout for interesting abstract shapes; perspective, framing, and depth of field can

help make them more interesting. Color is also a good subject.</p>

<p>Look up, and look down. Look at big things, but also look at little things. That fraying abandoned

spider web might be more worth shooting than the monument it’s on.</p>

<p>Most of all, <em>look.</em> You can’t create good photographs unless you see

what’s around you while simultaneously seeing what the resulting print will look like.</p>

<p>And do try to have a bit of fun while you’re at it? Otherwise, there’s no

point….</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Steven,</p>

<p>If the goal is accurate color and if the light is consistent across the scene, a gray balance target

will give you the best results. A $15 cardboard gray card such as what Kodak used to make and what

others still make is surprisingly good, and certainly in the “good enough” category for

most people — and it is also very good for setting proper exposure. If you want something a bit

better and cheaper, get a quart of Laura Ashley “Chimney Sweep” LA1616 paint from

Lowe’s and roller it on some cardboard.</p>

<p>The WhiBal is a better gray balance target, but not $50 better. And it can’t be used to set

exposure. If you want something better that you can also use for exposure, you’re looking at the

X-Rite ColorChecker Mini Gray Balance for about as much as the WhiBal, or you’re looking at

$1500 for a Spectralon target.</p>

<p>If you don’t need to set exposure, the brighter the target the better since the camera renders

it with less noise. The BabelColor Watch Your White target is the gold standard for photographers in

this regards, with 99.5%+ reflectance across the entire visible spectrum. Just make sure you don’t overexpose it! (There are scientific targets

significantly better including ones made from Spectralon. They’re all much more

expensive. They’re also serious mega-overkill for photography. What would almost make the Spectralon worth the price for a photographic gray card is its near-perfect Lambertian reflectance, meaning it’s impervious to glare.)</p>

<p>Two dirt-cheap alternatives to the BabelColor target are Tyvek (used in many tear-proof envelopes)

and PTFE (Teflon) thread seal tape. Both have very similar spectral characteristics to the BabelColor

target.</p>

<p>But…perhaps better still is a styrofoam coffee cup. It’s not quite as bright, but

it’s much brighter than the WhiBal — and, more importantly, it’s a much, much,

much more neutral color. But what makes it probably your best bet is that it’s <em>not

flat.</em>Put it upside down in your scene, and you get a nice gradated sampling of the color of all the light

sources. If you want to balance for the light coming through the window on the left, click on the left part

of the cup. If you’d rather go for the warmer incandescents on the right, click on the right part of

the cup. Click inbetween to target a blend of the two.</p>

<p>Or, if the cup is big enough, stick it over the end of your lens and use that for a custom white

balance both in-camera and in post processing. You’ll get an average of all the light sources

blended together in their actual proportions, resulting in a white balance essentially identical to what

your brain would have seen. (Be sure to increase exposure to get a nice, bright sample.)</p>

<p>Some of the worst choices are “white” paper and clothes. Paper is typically yellow

with added fluorescent brighteners to give it a blue tint to compensate. The result is decidedly not-white.</p>

<p>Laundry detergents have similar agents to whiten and brighten clothes — and that’s

assuming that the fabric itself is white, which it rarely is. And skin and undergarments often give a tint

to clothing. If you want to make sure the bride’s dress is white, start with a good white balance

from a neutral target; that’ll get her skin and flowers (basically) correct. If the dress isn’t

neutral, selectively desaturate just the dress…assuming that the dress isn’s

<em>supposed</em> to be subtly off-white.</p>

<p>Other found objects are also problematic. That “white” wall in the background

probably isn’t, and it’s certainly getting illuminated differently than your subject. The

dinner plate is throwing specular reflections and is completely unreliable. The wall clock is a bad

combination of the wall and the dinner plate — and so on.</p>

<p>Lastly, if you don’t use a target (for whatever reason), you can still get excellent white balance in post-processing pretty easily. Just crank up the saturation all the way. If the white balance is off, it’ll look hideous. Adjust the white balance until it just looks over-saturated, not hideous, and then return the saturation to normal. Hey-presto! Perfect white balance.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Mark,</p>

<p>The best explanation for what’s going on would come from a bit of studying of the

manual.</p>

<p>Your best bet for on-camera flash is to shoot manual. Set your aperture for the desired DoF. Set

your shutter to the maximum sync speed (probably 1/200). Set your ISO for your desired exposure of

ambient / background light (usually a couple stops too dark, but that depends on what kind of effect you’re

going for). Set the flash in ETTL mode and trip the shutter. If you don’t like the exposure from

the flash, adjust it with Flash Exposure Compensation. If you can’t get enough power out of your

flash, boost the ISO and / or open the aperture.</p>

<p>See Planet Neil for all you need to know about getting a good exposure with flash as well as how to

effectively bounce flash to eliminate the dreaded hard, flat, straight-on look that on-camera flash

gives.</p>

<p>And then see Strobist to learn how to get the flash off the camera for even better results.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Nadine,</p>

<p>More megapickles should help, but I don’t think moiré will be a complete non-issue

until the sensor is diffraction-limited at f/1.4 (or whatever your fastest lens is). According to <a href="http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm">one online

calculator</a>, that’s about 250 megapickles for the 135 format — quite some time in the

future, I should think. But, when we finally get there, there won’t be any more antialising filters in

front of the sensor any more because there won’t be any point in them.</p>

<p>(And, yes, a 100% pixel view will be noisy as all get-out, but the noise will be so fine-grained in

prints as to be truly invisible. Higher ISOs will mean fuzzier pictures, not blotchy, noisy pictures.)</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Nadine,</p>

<p>I’ve got a 5D and a 28-75. Offhand, I can’t think of any fabric I have that would be likely

to induce moiré, but I’ll wander around the house with my eyes open this weekend and

report my findings.</p>

<p>Any chance you remember what subject distance and focal length were you at?</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Nadine, I have a thought.</p>

<p>See if you can find out where the suit was rented from, and then see if you can rent it (and a

mannequin, if you don’t have a spare teenager handy to model for you).</p>

<p>And then spend an afternoon shooting it, under all sorts of lighting conditions, to try to both

reproduce the moiré and eliminate it. Be sure to test with different lenses and different bodies.

For bonus points, try two different suits….</p>

<p>Bob’s list makes me think of another option: rather than stopping down to the point of

diffraction (probably at least f/16 to do enough on the 5D, but that’s what the rented suit would

be to figure out), open up all the way and go for razor-thin DoF, with the problem fabric out of the plane of focus.

It’d be harder technically, but perhaps preferable aesthetically for certain scenes.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Nadine,</p>

<p>The only sure way to figure it out would be to find something that exhibits the problem and

photograph it under lights with differing amounts of UV. Sunlight and incandescents should

be sufficient to get a quick idea, and using a fluorescent blacklight would be a clincher.</p>

<p>But my gut says that this isn’t likely to be a problem at all. Whiteners work by

absorbing ultraviolet light and reemitting it as visible light. The camera will generally see

exactly what you see with regards to fluorescence.</p>

<p>More likely to be a problem would be the other end of the spectrum — infrared.

Cameras are generally more sensitive to IR than humans. If you’ve ever tried to

photograph a red flower and had the red channel blow out without realizing it, you have first-

hand experience. (Red flowers tend to be very bright in the infrared part of the spectrum we

can’t see but cameras can.)</p>

<p>And, more likely still, I should think, would simply be whether or not the pattern of the

fabric happens to be at a very close scale to the pattern of the sensor. If you can compare a

5D and a 5DII, you could probably find a way to frame the scene such that the 5D has

moiré and the 5DII doesn’t. Then, magnify the scene (by zooming, either with

the lens or your feet) and the problem should switch to the 5DII and no longer be present on

the 5D.</p>

<p>Do please let us know what you find?</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Is this blogspam?</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Jiti,</p>

<p>Rent both and try them out.</p>

<p>Just as you wouldn’t think of buying a car without taking it for a test drive first, you’d be

nuts to not try a $5000 lens before buying it. Only then can you tell if the extra weight of the 400 is really

that much of a burden, or if you find your teleconverter permanently affixed to the 300, or whatever.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Lawrence,</p>

<p>Anything worng with the hits here?</p>

<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=standard+panoramic+frame+sizes">http://www.google.com/search?q=standard+panoramic+frame+sizes</a></p></blockquote>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>sean,</p>

<p>Get the cheapest body you can bear to use and spend the rest on glass.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Bob has it nailed.</p>

<p>The 5DII is a <em>large format</em> movie camera, twice the film / sensor size as what

is used for everything on the silver screen outside of an IMAX theater.</p>

<p>If you know the importance of a good focus puller (and if you know that said focus puller

is a human being), you’re either drooling over a 5DII or you’re already thrilled to

death with yours (and probably a bit frustrated with some of its limitations, too). And the camera

is one of the cheapest pieces of gear in your kit.</p>

<p>But, for countless reasons, you’d be nuts to try to shoot your kid’s birthday

party with one. The dedicated vidcam is far superior in such situations.</p>

<p>There’s also a lot to be said for the 5DII (and 7D) for photojournalists who are increasingly being

expected to shoot a video clip or two (usually for the Web) to accompany the stills

they’re on assignment to get.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Joseph,</p>

<p>Another thing to consider is that, while you can correct for illumination losses at the extremes, you

can’t correct for the resolution losses. Depending on what you’re shooting, that may or

may not be a problem.</p>

<p>A while back, in <a href="http://www.photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00VzTa">this

thread</a>, I posted some examples from the new 24. It’s a superb lens, my new all-time

favorite. But there’s no denying that the extreme corners with maximum shifts are…sub-optimal, shall we say?</p>

<p>The old 24 isn’t as good, of course. I don’t have any experience with the other TS-Es, so I

can’t comment except that common wisdom is that they’re all comparable.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Lisa,</p>

<p>You’re looking at this entirely backwards.</p>

<p>Figure out what your customers want. Give it to them. Set your prices in such a way that you make

your money from selling the customers what they want, not by low-balling them on a few things they need (like your time) and

making up for it in others they don’t want but you’re going to strong-arm them into buying anyway (like prints).</p>

<p>If your clients want you to retouch 200+ images, do so with a smile — and charge them $10

/ image, $100 / image, whatever it takes for you to put that smile on your face. Be sure to let them know exactly what they get for their $10, and why it’s worth that much to them. Also consider partnering with somebody to do the retouching, and either subcontract the work or refer your clients directly.</p>

<p>And don’t hesitate to use your experience and a bit of salesmanship to steer them in the

direction you’d go if it were your wedding. If they decide to not get any prints from you, for

example, include a complimentary 8″ × 10″ with the disc. When they get their

prints back from the local print-it-yourself kiosk and compare, they’ll either realize they really should

have had you do the prints, or they really won’t care about the quality and will be happy

to have saved all that money. If they then get prints from you, great; that’s an extra job

for you, and an easy one at that. If not, fine; you’ve already made your desired profit from

everything else you’ve sold them.</p>

<p>There’s also a bit of a balancing act. Choice is good, but too much choice is bad. Offer a few package deals, and have your price list handy to customize everything from there. But be sure to give your customers a starting point and to make it easy to get exactly what <em>they</em> want (not what <em>you</em> want them to want).</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>

<p>Naveen,</p>

<p>“It’s all about the light.” Specifically, it’s about the ratio of light on your

subject to the light on your background.</p>

<p>You can achieve that effect outdoors, on a bright sunny day, with no additional artificial light. Just

position your subject in the sun and make sure your background is in deep shade. An open cardboard

box, laying on its side with the open end facing you, can do the trick (so long as it’s big enough and close enough

to fill the frame).</p>

<p>There’s an excellent exercise you should do with a $15 cardboard gray card. (If you

can’t easily get your hands on one, go to Lowe’s and get a quart of Laura Ashley LA

1616 “Chimney Sweep” paint and roller it on a piece of cardboard.)</p>

<p>Set the camera on a tripod and fill the frame with the gray card. Shoot in manual mode. Set the

aperture to f/8 and leave it there. Adjust the shutter speed so the bug in your camera’s meter is

on the middle stop and take a picture. Increase the shutter speed by three clicks (one full stop) and

take another picture. Continue that process until you’ve taken a picture at least three stops

<em>below</em> the bottom of your camera’s meter (you’ll have to keep track of how

many times you’ve clicked the wheel). Also do the same thing but slow the shutter speed to get

brighter pictures.</p>

<p>When you’re done, examine all the pictures on your computer. You should be able to gain an

excellent understanding of how the position of the bug in the meter relates to the tone of the final

image.</p>

<p>Pick an exposure that’s dark enough for you to be happy with it as your background,

keeping in mind that it’s pretty easy to make a near-black background completely black in post-processing. Examine the subject you wish to photograph — your lemon, for example. Decide

what exposure corresponds to the average tone you want in your lemon in the final print (two full stops

above middle would be my rough guess). Count how many stops separate the two.</p>

<p>Now, put your lemon on your stage. Use your camera’s spot meter on the lemon to set the

exposure to whatever you picked (two stops above middle if you agree with my guess). Point the meter

to the background and count how many stops separate the two. If it’s not enough, add light to

the lemon or make the background darker.</p>

<p>Press the shutter, and you should have exactly the effect you want, right out of the camera, with

only minimal post-processing necessary.</p>

<p>Of course, you’ll have to experiment a bit to get the hang of it, but it’s really quite

straightforward and is the same basic technique you’ll want to use for all manual exposure.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>b&</p>