For Krissy

A few days ago Krissy asked a photography question:

"How do you take great night pictures? I will be doing some photography for a wedding in two weeks and the bride would like an outdoor picture of herself with Cincinnati in the back ground, at night."

My first suggestion was to have them stand really still and take a long exposure (like maybe 5 seconds). People used to have to hold still for much longer times in the early days of photography, but to keep the subject still they would use a clamp on their head - I recommend you don't try that with the bride. Anyway, I think the long exposure would look the most natural, maybe with a little bit of a bounced flash (probably using either the slow-sync or the rear-sync modes) to make her stand out.

That's a tricky shot though, and may be tough to pull off when you're under the gun. If the person moves at all or even blinks, the shot will be blurry. As a backup method, I recommended shooting two pictures and Photoshopping them together. After I suggested this, I wondered how it would work in real life, so I gave it a try. Here's a recap of what I did in my test. While not a full-blown tutorial, it should give you an idea of how to recreate the effect.

Below is a picture I took of myself (using the Nikon ML-L3 remote) a few nights ago while I was out getting groceries. Clicking on any of the photos to see it full-size. (apparently when I'm doing photography tests my mouth hangs open)

Flash Used: Yes - Nikon SB-400 (Auto, return light not detected)
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 0.0050 s (1/200)
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO equiv: 900
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

Yeah, it's pretty awful lighting, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this so it will have to do. The NKU campus is behind me, but because I used a flash to light myself up the background falls off almost completely into the blacks.

I then took a long-exposure (5 sec) background plate, in which you can actually see the campus in the background and even some texture in the sky.

Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 5.000 s
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO equiv: 200
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

I dropped both layers in Photoshop (I wasn't using a tripod, so I had to align them a little) . I added a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All) to the layer of me, and used the paintbrush to paint the mask you see below:

The initial result is pretty bad because of the difference in lighting:

I did a little color correction to my layer to match the look of the background, although if I had spent a little more time lighting myself better this may not have been necessary. While I'm at it let's close my mouth a little:

And finally I'll blend in a little of my layer back into the foreground to make the difference in lighting a little more gradual and make the picture a little more believable:


If I had to do this again and wanted to make it look nice, here's what I'd do different:

• Use a tripod.
  
• Take several shots with the person in the frame at several speeds, maybe 5 sec, 3 sec, 1 sec, 1/10 sec & 1/60 sec. In each of these make sure the aperture is open all the way.
• On the shorter exposures I'd use a flash bounced off a white card, and on the longer exposures I'd either rear-sync bounce flash or use some constant lighting source. That would give me several options, and I'd pick the longest exposure that wasn't blurry (from the person moving).

Let me know if you try this, or if you have any alternative methods. I'd love to see your results.

Backing Up

All three of my regular readers here use Blogger for their own blogs, so you might not be aware about the recent JournalSpace fiasco. Basically the folks at JournalSpace had a rather lousy backup procedure and lost all their users' data. Rather than trying to recover from this, they are simply shutting their doors (probably a wise move) and thousands of users are left without a trace of their blog.. Now I don't want to sound like your mom, but it might be a good time to learn from the misfortune of others and backup your own blog. I trust the integrity of the data I have stored with Google, but you just never know.

Fortunately making a backup of your Blogger blog is a pretty simple process. The first step is to export your blog itself. From your Blogger dashboard click on Settings which will automatically put you on the Basic settings tab. The first item on that page is Blog Tools and you will see three options: Import Blog - Export Blog - Delete Blog. Click on Export Blog. It may take a minute for this request to process, but after it does you will see a page with a button that says Download Blog. Click on that button ans save the file to you hard drive. The file it saves will be an XML file, and if you try to open it you'll just see a bunch of code, so the only way to use this file is to import it into Blogger should something ever happen to your blog. You may want to consider doing this every month or so.

The process above backs up all your posts and comments, but not your pictures. To back up your pictures you must have Picasa installed. Fortunately for you Mac users out there Picasa recently became available for OSX. After you have Picasa installed, make sure you're signed in to Blogger and then go to your Picasa Web Album. You may not have even known that you had one, but if you have a Blogger blog then you do. You should see an album with the name of your blog (it will have the little Blogger icon by it too). Click on the album and you'll see all the pictures you've ever posted to your blog. Above the pictures click on Download, then Download to Picasa.

That's it! Now you have all the elements of your blog saved to your computer. Hopefully you'll never need to use them, but it's nice to know you have everything just in case.

Buying a DSLR Part 4: Accessories

Memory - The camera doesn't come with a memory card, so be sure to get one. It takes SD memory, which is just about the least expensive and most readily available type of memory out there right now. A decent quality 2GB card can be had for as little as $5, and will hold about 1000 pictures in Normal quality mode (see the chart below). If you're going to be shooting a lot of RAW/NEF images then you'll probably want to go with a faster card for about $15 (although keep in mind that since NEF images are a lot bigger, you'll only get about 260 pictures on a 2GB card, so you may want to consider a 4GB card). I almost always shoot in Normal mode. With memory as cheap as it is today I could certainly shoot in Fine mode, but the quality is imperceptible and so I see no reason to create files that are almost twice the size.

Quality	Image Size	Pictures per GB*
Basic	0.7MB	1000
Normal	1.4MB	500
Fine	2.6MB	270
RAW	5.7MB	130
RAW+Basic	6.5MB	115

*The actual number of pictures depends on what you're shooting, so these numbers may vary.

Flash - The flash we have is the Nikon SB-400 - it's $100. It's a great little flash that I use constantly. If you're trying to decide between a second lens and a flash, I'd get the flash. The best part about the flash is that it rotates up 90°. This may sound odd, but when used indoors it bounces off the ceiling, creating the effect of lighting your subject with a 10' x 10' softbox from above. The results are amazing - bright, warm and natural. They don't look like they were taken with a flash. Nikon has a pretty nice page that shows some example shots (apparently using the SB-400 also magically makes people smile too). You can also turn the camera 90° and take a vertical shot (the flash will not be pointing sideways). This works best when the flash is pointing at a wall that is between 3 and As long as the batteries have a decent charge on them the flash is very quick to refresh. On a fresh set you can usually take 3 pictures in a row (in burst mode) before the flash fails to keep up (missing the 4^th one), and even then it will usually fire again on the 5^th one.

The flash takes 2 AA batteries, and lasts for at least 100 pictures. I recommend getting a set of NiMH rechargeables and a charger. I got a set similar to this, but if I were buying today I'd get a set of Sanyo Eneloops. Those chargers take about 8 hours to charge a set of batteries. You could also get a quick-charger, but that shortens the life of the batteries. The batteries come 4 to a pack, so as long as you charge 2 while you're using 2, you should never be without a good set.

Remote - Probably not necessary, but fun and potentially useful, the ML-L3 remote does what you'd expect a camera remote to do for about $17.

Camera Bag - We got the Tamrac 5533 which holds the D40, 2 lenses, SB-400 flash, cables adapters and chargers just fine.

Well, that's about all I have to say on the subject of DSLR's for now. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll pretend to know the answer.

Buying a DSLR Part 3: The Lenses

With DSLR's, the cameras isn't tied to a certain lens. This is nice because you have a little more flexibility when you go to buy. In this post and the ones to follow, I'm going to assume you're going with a Nikon D40. There are several things to consider with a lens:

Focal Length - Focal Length is the distance in mm from the optical center of the lens to the focal point, which is located on the sensor. A more simplistic definition is that smaller numbers produce wider images, while higher numbers produce closer images. A zoom lens is also known as a variable focal length lens because by moving the optical elements in the lens you change the focal length of the lens (zooming in or out). The lens in the picture above has a focal length range of 18-55mm, and the lens is currently set to 35mm. 18-55mm is a common zoom lens that covers the range from wide (18mm) to medium (55mm). A 55-200mm lens picks up where the 18-55mm leaves off and provides a much closer shot.
As a side note I should mention focal length multipliers and 35mm equivalent. I'm not going to go into detail on these terms, but rather point you to an article that explains them. You don't need to know about these to buy a DSLR, but if you like to soak up all the information you can then it's good reading.

VR - Nikon lenses with VR in the name have Vibration Reducing technology which compensates for camera movement when taking a picture resulting in less blurry pictures, especially when taking pictures in low light without a flash (where the shutter is opened for longer). Keep in mind that this does not prevent blur resulting from a moving subject (like someone moving thier head during a shot). These lenses cost a little more, but I've heard they're worth it. None of my lenses are VR and I have not used one so I can't comment, except to say that if I were buying new equipment now I'd probably spring for at least one VR lens. (the lens in the picture above is not a VR lens)

AF-S - Since the Nikon D40 does not have an internal focus motor, you'll want to make sure the lenses you get are AF-S lenses, which actually have the motor built into the lens itself. Other Nikon lenses will work, but you will have to manually focus. (the lens in the picture above is an AF-S lens)


Below are some common lenses for the D40, the current price at B&H and my recommendations. For each lens I have a picture of the lens, along with two images taken at both extremes of the zoom range. Click on them to see a larger view.

Basic Lens $119 - 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX or $149 -18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR AF-S DX If you can only afford one lens at first, then it should be an 18-55mm. This will be the best lens for indoor shots and is suitable for most outdoor shots. There is a VR and a non-VR version, although I have not seen the D-40 bundled with the VR lens, so you may be better off going with the non-VR.

Telephoto Lens $169 - 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S DX or $198 - 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX Your second lens should probably be a 55-200mm "telephoto". This will give you much more zoom power, which is great for several things:

1. (Obviously) shooting things that are far away that you can't physically move closer to.
2. Candid close-ups of people. People look the most natural when they don't know they're being photographed (if they know they usually look annoyed).
3. Narrow depth of field (DOF) shots. There are a couple of ways to accomplish the classic portrait look with the background thrown out of focus, but using a telephoto lens is perhaps one of the most practical.

Again, it is available both with and without VR, and you should be able to find both versions bundled with the camera. I would recommend going with the VR version. (If you decide not to get the VR because you don't want to spend the extre $30, go ahead and get it anyway and I'll give you my non-VR lens + $30 in exchange for it)

The Ultimate Lens $619 - 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR II If you have a ton of money to burn, get the 18-200mm VR lens. It costs quite a bit more than the camera itself, but it's a great lens and you can shoot both wide & telephoto without swapping lenses.

Prime Lens $439 - 50mm f/1.4G AF-S The 50mm f/1.4 is a great lens for shooting people. f/1.4 means is needs very little light to shoot. It's also the best way to take shots with very narrow DOF. It doesn't zoom, so you just have to move closer or further away to get the framing you want. Unfortunately it's fairly expensive. Personally I'm waiting and hoping they come out with an AF-S version of their f/1.8 lens which isn't quite as nice but should be under $150.

Used Lenses - There are tons of quality used Nikon lenses out there. There are two problems with them. First is that if you're not an experienced photographer (I'm not) you probably don't know how to check the lens to see if there are any problems with it. Secondly, the D40 needs AF-S lenses, which are newer and therefore harder to find.

Other Brands - There are a few lens manufacturers out there that make Nikon compatible lenses. They can save you quite a bit of money, but I've heard a lot of photographers complain about the quality. I don't have any, so you'll have to decide this on for yourself.

Although you can buy everything a la carte, you'll get the best deal by buying a bundle or kit with the camera and one or two lenses. Right now B&H has 4 kits ranging from $450 (camera & 18-55mm lens) to $650 (camera, 18-55mm lens & 55-200mm VR lens). For every lens you have I highly recommend getting a UV filter. This will protect the actual lens from getting scratched or broken while in the line of duty. It's a very cheap insurance policy.

I'll leave you with one final thought on lenses. Consider that while your camera will become old and obsolete in a matter of a few years, your lens will most likely remain relevant for at least a decade. The next generation of Nikon cameras will work just fine with the lenses you buy today. It is not uncommon for photographers to upgrade thier camera body but keep thier collection of lenses, some of which may be literally decades old. This, combined with the fact that your lens has more to do with the quality of your images than your camera, and you have a very good case to spend less on a camera and more on a lens.

Tomorrow: Accessories

Buying a DSLR Part 2: The Camera

In May of 2007 I started looking for a digital SLR. We were expecting our second child in a few months, and the little Canon S230 point & shoot that had served me well for several years just wasn't cutting it anymore. Also, we had tried a couple of professional portrait places and for the cost and hassle we weren't satisfied with the results. We figured that with a good camera we could do our own portraits and have great everyday shots at the same time. After quite a bit of research I settled on the Nikon D40. Since then Nikon has come out with the D40x and the D60 (among others). They both cost quite a bit more and the only significant difference is that they're 10 megapixels whereas the D40 is 6 megapixels. As I pointed out in Part 1 though, megapixels don't matter much.

I also looked at the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi, but they were quite a bit more expensive and didn't really offer anything that the D40 didn't except a few more megapixels (see below). In my opinion the most formidable opponent to the D40 is the Sony DSLR-A200. It's close in price to the D40, and although there are a few advantages to each, the big advantage of the A200 is that it has in-camera image stabilization which eliminates the need for having lenses with image stabilization. If you decide to go int this direction, B&H has a great package on the A-200 and 2 lenses.

Since I bought the Nikon D40 and still recommend it, that's what I'll be focusing on for the rest of this series of posts

The D40 is actually pretty small light as far as SLR's go, and is natural and comfortable to shoot with. I used Ken Rockwell's D40 User's Guide to learn about all the buttons and menus and make some adjustments to the default settings. If you're used to using a point & shoot, the first thing you'll probably notice is that you have to look through the viewfinder, as there's no real-time image displayed on the LCD screen. This has always been the case with DSLR's, although they are starting to make models that offer what's called live view. In my opinion it isn't worth the cost to step up to those models, and using live view typically adversely affects the speed of the camera.

The D40 comes with a battery and external charger. I usually only charge the battery every month or so (unless we're taking a ton of pictures, like on vacation), which equates to maybe 500 pictures. It will last less if you use the built-in flash, but you're still good for a couple/few hundred pictures. I could go on forever about all the different features, but I'll stop here and let you ask questions about anything that I didn't cover here.

Drawbacks - The camera obviously isn't perfect, so I'll let you know about the few things I've found to nit-pick about it:

• There's no auto-focus motor built into the camera, so you won't be able to auto-focus with older lenses, only the newer AF-S(or AF-I) lenses.
• No Auto Bracketing. This is a more advanced feature and it's not like I'd use it every day, but it would be nice to have.
• Most of the time the internal color correction is great, but occasionally the images come out a little dark. It's a simple fix in any image editing program like Picasa, but it's an extra step.

Here are a couple of professional, in-depth reviews of the D40 that I used before making my decision:

• Ken Rockwell
• DP Review

We bought ours online from from B&H. B&H has been around forever, I've bought from them many times before and will continue to buy from them. They have a great website, good prices, they're reliable and have good customer service (and no, I don't get kickbacks from them, although if they're reading this they should know that I would certainly accept). They occasionally have used or demos available for a reduced price. Typically I wouldn't be crazy about buying a product like this used online, but I would recommend it with B&H. That's actually how we got our D40 and lenses. Having said all that, don't hesitate to shop around, but beware of places that offer a ridiculously low price and then try to sell you overpriced add-ons.

After using the D40 for over a year and a half now and taking about 8,000 pictures with it, I'm completely extremely satisfied. Sure there are a few high-end features it doesn't have (see below), but I don't really need them and I'm not willing to pay twice as much or more to upgrade to something like the D90 or D300. If for whatever reason I were in the market for a DSLR today, I'd pause to look at the Sony A200, but probably end up with a Nikon D40.

That's it for the camera. If you have any questions about anything I covered or something I didn't, ask in the comments.

Tomorrow I'll talk about lenses.

Buying a DSLR Part 1: Why a DSLR

This is the first in a series of posts about what I've learned from buying a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR). I'll start with the reasons why some people might not want one, but also give my reasons for ignoring these reasons.

1. They're big and heavy - yes, but we have kids and are already carying around several extra pounds of accessories anyway, so what's a few more.
2. They're expensive - yes, but they're not as expensive as they used to be, and if you can cut out a couple of trips to a professional studio by taking your own pictures, it'll pay for itself quickly.
3. They're too confusing to operate - this is actually a myth. While DSLR's have the ability to manually override just about any setting you can think of, they almost all come with "point-and-shoot" modes that are pretty fool-proof.

Got any other hang-ups about buying a DSLR that I forgot? Post them in the comments.

Now for the reasons why DSLR's are so nice.

1. Speed - Shutter lag is the delay from the time you press the button to the picture actually being taken. For most compact point & shoot digital cameras this can be quite a long time, and can be quite a problem when you're trying to take pictures of kids (your kids). Another factor is the delay after picture is taken but before the camera is ready to take another picture. Combining these two delays mean that most point & shoots can only take one picture every several seconds. Most DSLR's have almost no shutter lag, and can take multiple pictures per second. This really helps when shooting fast-moving subjects like kids.
2. Image Sensor Size - Below you can see the difference in the sizes of the image sensors from a Nikon D40 SLR and an Olympus Stylus 1200 compact. As you can see, there's a huge difference in size. Why does this matter?
   • Image Quality - Point & shoot digital cameras often boast seemingly amazing numbers like 10 or 12 megapixels, but in reality that doesn't mean a whole lot (and don't let the salesman at the store try to tell you otherwise). For an in depth technical explanation of why megapixels don't matter that much, read "The Megapixel Myth" by Ken Rockwell (a professional photographer). Much more important is the actual size of the image sensor. Notice that while the Olympus has twice as many megapixels, the Nikon's sensor has almost 9 times the surface area. I guarantee that the D40 takes much clearer pictures than the $250 compact.
   • Depth of Field (DOF) - Volumes could be (and have been) written on this subject, but I'll keep it short & sweet, so stay with me here. Depth of field refers to the part of the photograph that is in focus. In many cases (such as portraits) it is actually preferable to have part of the picture be out of focus, so that your attention is drawn to the subject (example - notice the out-of-focus christmas tree & lights in the background). There are many factors that affect DOF, but one of them is the sensor size. Larger sensors provide a narrower DOF and produce images that just look more professional.
     
3. Lenses
   • Quality - The quality of the lenses on SLR's are almost always superior to the lenses on compacts. They are much larger and have more glass (and usually higher quality glass) than compacts. Lenses are arguably the most import element of your camera. If the incoming light is distorted at all by a low quality lens, it doesn't matter how nice the sensor is or anything else, it will simply be capturing a blurry, distorted image. Because of this truth, most professional photographers spend much more on their lenses than they do on their cameras.
   • Variety - One of the nicest features of DSLR's is the ability to change lenses. Wide angle, telephoto, macro, prime, etc. While this can get expensive it's nice to have the flexibility, and you can add to your collection of lenses slowly as your budget allows.
     
4. Accessories - In addition to additional lenses, SLR's are typically compatible with a larger range of accessories including remote controls, filters, external flashes and many others.

Questions? Post them in the comments and I'll answer as best I can.

Continue to Part 2

Image Editing Tools

For those of you out there interested in image editing, I thought I'd pass along what I know about the best tools available. A few weeks ago friend asked me for recommendations on an image editing tool, so I thought I'd share what I compiled with the world.

The best photo editing tool out there is Adobe Photoshop. If you're looking for the short answer you can stop reading and go buy it. I've been using it for a long time and I highly recommend it. It's not just another program, it's a tool that's been the industry standard for about 15 years so there's a lot of information available online.

The current version is Photoshop CS4 and it's $700. If you can find the previous version (CS3) you may be able to get it for cheaper. If you find it for a lot cheaper check to see if it's an "Educational Version". Educational Versions are pretty much the same as the regular version, except that you're not allowed to use it for profit. If you're ok with that you can probably get CS4 for a lot less.

Photoshop also comes with an application called Adobe Camera Raw. It enables you to do amazing things with pictures from your digital SLR, especially when you shoot in NEF mode (Nikon's RAW image format). Boosting certain colors, changing the hue of certain colors, altering the way color photos are converted to black and white and all sorts of other stuff. If you do a lot of photography this feature alone might be worth a couple hundred dollars.

Photoshop is great, but it'll take some time to learn. Here are a couple of resources:

• Here's a crash-course in Photoshop
• Lynda.com - this is a subscription service. $25/month, but it has a wealth of information. There's well over 100 hours of training materials specific to CS3 and over 40 hours of material specific to CS4. If you subscribed for only a month or two and "crammed" it would be a great value.
• Me - post your Photoshop questions in the comments of this post, and if I know how to do it I'll do another post on it.
  

If you're looking for something more economical, there are a couple of free choices. I haven't used any of these myself so I can't vouch for them, but they're free so you have nothing to loose (except of course your time) by trying them out.

• GIMP is a popular image editing application that's been around for a while.
  
• Artweaver is supposed not only have a lot of the same features as Photoshop, but also has the same layout.
• SumoPaint is a web based Photoshop clone. It certainly doesn't offer anywhere near the functionality of the real thing, but for a simple little project it might be worth a try.
  

Picasa on a Mac

For a few years now I've been using Google's free application Picasa to keep track of all our digital pictures. I used to be an image-editing snob who did everything in Photoshop, but since we've had kids I have a lot more pictures and a lot less time, and I just can't keep up using Photoshop. Luckily Picasa does 99% of what I need to do and makes it all easier and more efficient. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.

And the really good news is that for those of you on a Mac, they finally released a version for OSX! Here's a little preview for you.

If you give it a try (Mac or PC) let me know what you think.

Christmas Pictures

Christmas pictures of the girls.

Taken with our Nikon D-40 with the 55-200mm lens and SB-400 flash.

Private Blogging

A couple of you out there have recently made your blogs private due to concerns about perverts finding your blog and leaving inappropriate comments about your kids. While making your blog private (viewable by invitation only) is the most fool-proof method of keeping the creeps out, I just wanted to let everyone know (in case you didn't already know) about a few things you can do to increase the security of your blog without making it completely private. (This applies to Blogger blogs only, but most other blogging products should have similar functionality)

After logging into your blog, go to "Settings", which should put you on the default sub-section of "Basic". The fourth entry down is "Add your blog to our listings?" Make sure it is set to No. Right under that is "Let search engines find your blog?" Make sure that is set to No also. Be sure to click on "Save Settings".

These steps don't actually prevent anyone from seeing your blog, they just make it so that your blog is not being listed in the search engines, which is the way that creeps find stuff 99% of the time. This will also keep harmless people from finding your blog, but that's the trade off you make. Happy blogging!

Headlines

The Cincinnati Business Courier had a story a few days ago titled "Macy’s surges, Cincinnati stocks jump in finale to bad year". Nothing particularly funny about that all by itself, but about a half-hour before that they had a story titled "Macy's customers might be overcharged" - apparently Macy's had been accidentally double-charging some purchases.