dkrashb

Recovering “Erased” Photos

June 18, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in DSLR, Featured, iPhoneography Tips, Photography

Carolina Wrens may not be all that exciting, but I do love when they’re sitting in the sun.

I was very happy to have recovered this image of an Eastern Phoebe grooming

I really like the light on this Green Heron’s legs even though the head angle is not ideal

This guy snuck up on me

A great blue heron looking mighty different head on.

Who can resist adorable baby blue birds peeking out of the box? Another image saved by Image Recovery!

And this is one of many shots of Osprey in flight that I did the crawl through poison ivy for

Just one more from the collection of Osprey shots recovered

The spotted sandpiper I’ve been watching for (and not finding) was found amongst my recovered images–this time in flight

Hopefully, you are all well-organized and have never gotten confused about which images on your memory card have been saved to your computer and which haven’t. In my case, I recently had a brain malfunction known as “brain flatulence” causing me to reformat a memory card containing about 1000 images I hadn’t uploaded yet.

It happened in a moment of distraction. I was checking to see how much space was left on the memory card in my camera in preparation for a shoot just to see if I needed to swap out the card before I started. I knew I hadn’t uploaded the images yet. I made several mistakes:

I went to the format card menu to see how full the card is because it’s easier for me to see the big bar graph displayed on my LCD than the counter that tells you how many images you have room for. Putting on my reading glasses and looking at the counter would have been safer.
I was sitting in my car waiting to meet someone with traffic zooming by and other distractions. In the moment when I should have selected “cancel,” a loud vehicle grabbed my attention.
I use the format card menu every time I want to erase images. My muscle memory is to select “format card,” not to select “cancel”–I have to pay close attention when in the format card menu.

In the moment the loud vehicle captured my mind, my muscle memory took over and gone were all my images! Mind you, I had bushwacked through thick undergrowth, dragged myself through poison ivy, and braved the aerial version of a mine field walking under a heron rookery to get some of the images on that card. I was not a happy camper.

But, here’s the good news! When you delete images or format your card, no data is actually lost. Rather, the existing data is marked as eligible for being overwritten. This means that as long as you set that card aside and don’t write any photos on top of your “deleted” data, your images can easily be recovered with the right software.

The software I chose first was Lexar’s Image Recovery 4. My main reason for choosing this software was because it is a) available for a mac (and windows), and b) free because I own several Lexar memory cards. This software claims to work on all memory cards, but it was a Lexar card I used it with.

Unfortunately, Lexar does not have the best ordering process. You can download the trial version of the software for free, but you can only get a key by contacting support. Alternatively, you can pay $40 for their newest version, IR 5.

I recommend NOT scanning your memory card with the trial version–you can only restore one image. After I had successfully scanned my card and restored one image, I was stuck waiting for a license key. Support told me it could take up to 48 hours to get it. When I finally got the license key and rescanned the card, the software couldn’t find any images. Yes, I freaked.

Fortunately, support provided me with a key for IR5 because I had recently bought one of my Lexar cards. Once I had IR5, I had no trouble restoring all of the images. The interface is intuitive and although running the scan on a full 32GB card and restoring the images does take a significant amount of time to run, all I had to do was click a couple of buttons.

So, if you own a recent Lexar card, download the IR5 version and send support a request for a free license key (you will probably need to tell them what card you have that entitles you to the software). Wait to run the software until you receive the key and then you should have no problems.

If you don’t own a Lexar card, there are other software options out there. I was unable to find a reliable source I’m familiar with for reviews of these software options, so I went with Lexar. My logic was that they have a major stake in making sure I recover my photos successfully and they are a company I’ve already trusted with my images for many years. While they have logistics issues with giving out licenses, they were helpful and supportive, the software worked, and it didn’t cost me anything but time.

By the way, for iPhoneographers, I stumbled across software that is supposed to recover deleted data on the iPhone, including photos. I cannot vouch for the product, but here is a review on CNET: http://download.cnet.com/Data-Recovery-for-iPhone/3000-2242_4-75856767.html

Lesson 110 (DSLRs): How Clean Does Your Lens Need to Be?

May 4, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in DSLR, Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

This problem child was shot with the sun in the frame at f/20 and 28mm, guaranteeing there will be some flare, but the polka-dot sky was a shock

Same grass, same lens with the same dirt, but shot at f/5.6 and 65mm and with a different angle to the sun. I did not remove any flare spots in post processing–there was only one and it disappeared when I converted to B&W

For those of you who don’t have time to read a long post, here’s a summary so you can decide what’s relevant to you:

Don’t clean your lens unless you’re actually seeing spots, areas of low contrast or fuzziness in your images. The first part of this post provides an example and links to other examples on what it looks like when stuff on your lens shows up in your images.
If you do clean your lens, be gentle to avoid doing more harm than good. Take the time to go to the second part of this post and read the referenced article before you start cleaning.
Before you have your sensor cleaned, make sure your problem really is dirt on your sensor. The last part of this post provides a tip and a link to step-by-step instructions on testing whether your sensor is dirty.

Recognizing When You Need to Clean the Lens

It always amazes me how much debate there can be over seemingly simple topics in photography. However, most experienced photographers tend to agree on this one: your lens doesn’t usually need to be all that clean.

I confess, I hate to clean a lens. I don’t do it unless I really have to. When it comes to my lenses, when I first started getting “serious” about photography, one of my mentors warned me that cleaning a lens too vigorously could damage the coatings on the lens and cause more problems than the dirt.

This made me so paranoid that I was afraid to clean my lenses. What I discovered was that the crud on my lens didn’t show up in my images, so I was convinced it really wasn’t worth risking damaging the lens to clean it.

Then, a few years ago, I found myself shooting outdoors in the middle of the day a lot more frequently than I would prefer. When this led to experimenting with more shots that include a lot of bright sunlight, I suddenly started getting images with blurry flare spots all over the place. Advised that I had a dirty sensor, I took my camera in and had the sensor cleaned. But that didn’t solve the problem. My problem was the dust on my lens.

Since then, I’ve learned a few things about troubleshooting spots in your images. First, there’s lens flare, which can occur regardless of how clean your equipment is. But, when you have dust on your lens, if light strikes the front lens at the wrong angle, the dust can also contribute to seeing lots of flare spots in your image.

In the following example, some of the flare is not attributable to dust, but the large number of large, bright blurry spots indicate there was dust on my lens and the sun was hitting them just right:

One of the challenges of this problem is that it may occur quite infrequently. This was shot at 28mm and f/20–both the wide angle and the stopped down aperture make it more likely that flare will turn up in the image. The inclusion of the sun in the image also meant my lens hood wasn’t going to block direct light from hitting the front lens element, which is the root of flare problems. However, in this case, I wanted lens flare to show in the image. I wasn’t, however, bargaining for an entire sky full of blurry bright spots!

Since cleaning the lens, the problem has been reduced to “normal” lens flare.

But the caution I received so many years ago remains true–over cleaning your lens is more damaging than under cleaning–you really only need to clean the lens if your images are affected.

Here is an amazing article that shows just how little stuff on your lens may show up in your images–it’s definitely worth the read: Dirty Lens Article.

In spite of what the Dirty Lens Article demonstrates, this is not a justification for abusing your lens.

First, just like the dust on my lens did not show in my images the vast majority of the time, damage to the lens will also show up under different circumstances. Note that Munger’s examples with named aperture settings were all at f/5.6. As mentioned earlier, flares are more likely to show up when you’re stopped down.

Second, even if you don’t care if your lens is in pristine condition, should you ever want to sell your lens, your buyer probably will.

How to Clean the Lens

When you do clean your lens, remember that less is more. You don’t want to rub at the lens like you’re cleaning a window. Instead, try starting with a fun little toy called a blower. I particularly like the Giottos Rocket Air Blaster. It doubles as a fascinating conversation piece should you decide to keep it on display in your living room.

By using a blower, you can shoot dry air (unlike when you blow with your mouth) across the lens to blow away any loose dust on the lens. Dry air does a better job lifting away dust than moist air. Plus, do you really want to know how much spit you spray when you blow on something?

Some people like to use a very soft brush after the blower to brush away more stubborn dust. The idea is to remove anything that might be abrasive gently so that it doesn’t scratch the lens or the coatings on the lens. When you start rubbing at the lens with a cloth, you can effectively turn dust particles into sand paper, abrading those special coating that do things like reduce flare.

I skip the brush step and do the next step very, very gently.

When I first attempted lens cleaning, I bought fancy lens cleaning fluid and cleaning papers. I put a few drops of cleaning fluid on the paper and gently wiped the lens. Later, I adopted Ken Rockwell’s approach of breathing on the lens to fog it up instead of using cleaning fluid. (That article is still available and includes additional tips for using methyl alcohol to clean stubborn spots: How to Clean Lenses, Monitors, Filters and CCDs.) I also switched from using cleaning papers to microfiber chamois clothes–the main problem with the paper for me was gently getting rid of streaks without having my fingers slip off the paper and create new fingerprints. But then, I have below-average coordination.

If you are going to go to the trouble of cleaning your lens, clean the back element as well as the front (at the end that attaches to the camera). According to Nasim Mansurov, rear element dust shows up as dark specks in the out-of-focus portions of the image. He shows an example in this article.

Dust on the Rear Element vs Dust on the Sensor

Since dust on the sensor also shows up as dark spots on images, it’s probably worth cleaning the rear element before having your sensor cleaned (or cleaning it yourself). If you want to be positive whether it’s the lens or the sensor, take test shots using two different lenses based on the instructions in this article from Jeff Guyer, Got Sensor Dust? Check. See if the spots show in the same places even when you switch lenses. This will guarantee there’s no confusion between lens dust and sensor dust.

Lesson 109 (DSLRs): Lightening and Long Exposure

April 29, 2014October 8, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons

I am testing the Noiseware noise reduction plug-in–all of these images were very noisy before post-processing. Notice the tilted building in the background–this is caused by a combination of using a very wide lens and an upward-pointed angle. It can be fixed in post, but would require severely cropping the image. 16mm (slightly cropped), 9.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

This is an example of a strike in the clouds with no landscape showing in the frame. I prefer images with landscape to show scale, personally. 16mm (cropped), 17.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 400

I used both the Noiseware and Nik Color Efex Pro plug-ins with some minimal post-processing adjustments in Aperture no this one to try to pull out the 3 dimensions of the clouds as well as eliminate noise. Not quite happy with it, but the lightening strike was amazing. 16mm (cropped), 9.8 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

16mm (cropped), 10.9 seconds, f/16, ISO 200

1.9 second exposure using bulb. ISO 200 and f/11.

It took 16.5 seconds to get this strike (ISO 200 and f/11)

Using bulb, I held the shutter open for 2.7 sec when this bright strike came along. (ISO 200 and f/11)

Since I promised more examples of things you can do with long exposures in Lesson 108 and then we had a storm that offered a great opportunity to shoot lightening, here’s the first follow-up example.

Before we go into how to shoot lightening, let’s start with a little background on the shutter setting I prefer for this.

For lightening shots, I think it’s easiest to use that mysterious shutter speed called “Bulb.” The first step is to find how to turn it on. In some cameras, the shooting mode dial on the top of the camera has a “B” for Bulb and turning the dial to B is all you need to do. In other cameras, “bulb” is at the end of the shutter speed options just past the setting for 30 seconds. In this case, turn the shooting mode dial to “M” (for Manual) and then set the shutter speed to “Bulb.”

So now you’re in “Bulb” and you may be wondering what the heck that means. This setting let’s you to open the shutter and keep it open until you decide to close it. To do this, you either have to hold the shutter button down the entire time you want the shutter opened or you need to use a remote.

I am currently using a Pixel Pro Oppilas wireless remote, which was amazingly cheap. In fact, I accidentally ordered 2 and decided for the $20 price tag, it was worth keeping the second one as a backup.

In any case, whether you choose a cheap 3rd party wireless remote, a wired remote, or a high-end wireless remote, you will definitely want a remote for bulb exposures. There are two reasons for this: 1) It’s very annoying to have to stand around holding the shutter button down for extensive periods of time, and 2) It’s extremely difficult to hold the shutter button down without introducing camera shake, which will cause blur in your images.

So, you’re in bulb mode and you have a remote attached to your camera. You will also need to put your camera on a tripod. This is a must. And a solid tripod that won’t allow your camera to vibrate helps tremendously. Alternatively, you need a really solid place to set your camera. A fellow photographer friend says setting the camera on a large bean bag will help keep it stable if you have a flat surface to put it on.

Next, you need a safe vantage point to shoot from. A safe vantage point is not, for example, the middle of an open field, under the one tree in said open field, on a roof top, or anywhere above timberline on a mountain. A safe vantage point generally means that you are indoors. Some folks shoot lightening through car or home windows using a polarizing filter to remove glare from the glass. This is definitely the safest thing to do. For recommendations on lightening and safety, go here: http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls.html

I will make no recommendations and I am not going to tell you where I shoot from because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone besides myself when it comes to lightening safety. 🙂

That said, let’s assume you’ve found a good, safe place to shoot lightening from. Now that you’ve found your place, you next need to be there at the right time.

Since night time lightening is more dramatic, if you are at home in the evening, having a spot you can get to on a moment’s notice increases the odds that you will be able to capture some great shots. Otherwise, watch the weather forecast and be prepared to go to your favorite location only to be disappointed.

Let’s say all has aligned and now you have your camera in Bulb, with a remote, on a tripod, in a safe location, and there is lightening! You are 90% of the way there!

There are lots of different opinions on what to do next. This is my personal preference:

Use the widest focal length you’ve got. It greatly increases the odds that lightening will be captured inside the frame since you cannot predict where it will strike. The examples for this post were shot at 16mm on a camera with a full frame sensor (meaning 40% wider than if you’re using a crop-sensor camera). Images were then cropped in post-processing.
I use one of two options for focusing. If there is enough light to focus either automatically or manually, I like to focus on an object in the landscape that will result in getting everything in the frame sharp. I like to include foreground objects (like buildings) for scale. If it is too dark to find focus, I set my lens to manual focus and then turn the focusing ring until the mark aligns with the infinity symbol (this is called focusing at infinity). If everything in the frame is at the hyperfocal distance or further from the camera, this will keep everything sharp as well. (If you don’t know what hyperfocal distance is, it just means from that point on, everything to infinity will be acceptably sharp. You can use a Depth of Field calculator to get an estimate of this distance. See Lesson 106 for more info on calculating this.)
Stop down the aperture to something around f/16ish. I like f/16 because it gives me so much depth of field that I don’t have to worry about everything being sharp and, more importantly, allows for very long exposure times without overexposing the image between lightening strikes. That said, when you are shooting with a very wide angle focal length and your subject is far away, you don’t need to be on f/16 to get a lot of DOF, so feel free to try opening up the aperture if you find that works better for you.
Set the ISO as low as you can. I started with ISO 400, over exposed a strike that was very close, turned it down to 100, under exposed several strikes that were further away, and then turned it up to 200. This is not an exact science, but be aware that long exposures, especially at night, tend to get very noisy (speckled and grainy). Setting a high ISO will also add noise, but decreases the length of time the shutter needs to stay open. In this case, what we’re trying to do is keep the shutter open as long as possible with the least exposure until lightening actually strikes. So, we really want just enough light amplification (what the ISO setting controls) to allow for a great exposure during the lightening strike.
Get your camera all set and pointed at the sky (don’t forget to level it) and then take a comfortable seat.
Some people claim they can sense lightening before it strikes. I suggest that if you find your arm hairs standing on end or have some sense of an electrical charge, it’s time to move–quickly! I open the shutter with my remote and watch and listen.
I leave my shutter open for a while and watch how many flashes there are in the sky and how bright they are. If they are not very bright, I will wait through several flashes and then close the shutter (by pressing the remote shutter release a second time).
This next step is critical: look at the exposure you got. I do not have a scientific way to predict what exposure you will need for lightening. This is very much a feel thing. The longer you sit there watching the storm, guessing at how much light has reached your sensor and checking to see if you guessed right, the better you will get at this. The important thing to bear in mind is that when lightening strikes, if it’s very bright, it’s time to close the shutter and start the next exposure. Conversely, if you’ve been getting lots of flashes in the clouds but no bright strikes and you’ve had the shutter open for a while, it’s probably time to close the shutter and start over. If the sky gets too exposed before the lightening strikes, the lightening will not show up as well.

One word of caution: leaving your shutter open for extensive periods of time will drain your battery quickly. Make sure you have a fully charged battery (and a spare if you have it).

In a nutshell, my approach to get lightening shots is to have the right equipment, show up in the right place at the right time, get ready, and then open my shutter and adjust as things happen. Kind of like life. 🙂

Lesson 108 (All Cameras): Long Exposures

April 27, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhonography, Photography, Photography Lessons

1/320 shutter speed (Cane Creek Falls in Fall Creek Falls State Park)

Hunter Museum above the Riverwalk switch-backs on in the Bluffview Art District in Chattanooga

1/6 shutter speed (Cane Creek Falls in Fall Creek Falls State Park)

The water cannons at night at Coolidge Landing in downtown Chattanooga, TN

From under an overpass looking up the Riverwalk switchbacks leading to the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga

Note for iPhoneographers: the SlowShutter app will allow you apply this information to the iPhone, although stabilizing the iPhone (even in an iPhone tripod) can be challenging. See Lesson 101.

When I teach beginning photography workshops, one of the things I spend a lot of time working with students on is the relationship between exposure and artistic expression. Shutter speed is one of the big ways in which we control both exposure and motion showing in our images.

Slow shutter speeds leave the shutter open for longer periods of time, allowing more light to reach our sensors for exposure. They also allow any motion in the subject to blur. Most of us strive for tack sharp images, so why would we ever use long shutter speeds?

First, sometimes you have to use a slow (long) shutter speed if you’re shooting in low-light conditions. Second, allowing motion to blur can create some cool artistic effects. And third, if you need lots of depth of field, you’re going to need a small aperture. The age-old analogy for the relationship between the shutter speed and the aperture size is to think of a water faucet. How long you turn the water on is like your shutter speed. How wide you open the valve is like your aperture. If you turn a water faucet on wide open for a split second, you can get the same amount of water as if you turn the water on at a trickle but let it run for a much longer time. That’s how aperture and shutter speed work together to control the total volume of light that will reach your sensor and why using a small aperture usually means a slower shutter.

Let’s start with an example that was both low-light and a small aperture, but with no motion:

This example was shot at twilight with a 1 second exposure at f/18. F/18 is a small aperture opening and 1 second is a slow shutter speed. By using a tripod and a 2-second delay on the shooting mode, I was able to keep the camera still and avoid introducing motion blur. I got the exposure I wanted and kept everything from the rail in the foreground to the building in the background sharp.

Now let’s take a look at what happens if you don’t keep your camera still:

In this example, I literally picked up my camera/tripod and moved it in about the last second of a 25 second exposure. Because the building in the background is so much dimmer than the lights going up the path, the building did not blur while the lights, being so bright, created trails across the image.

Now let’s talk about using long shutter speeds to show motion in the subject itself. Waterfalls are a popular subject for this technique. By putting the camera on a tripod again, everything in the image that is still remains sharp but the moving water blurs to a soft “flow” through the image, visually communicating the movement of the water.

Compare this image (shot at ⅙ of a second) to the one after it (shot at 1/320 of a second):

1/6 shutter speed (Cane Creek Falls in Fall Creek Falls State Park)

1/320 shutter speed (Cane Creek Falls in Fall Creek Falls State Park)

The fast (1/320) shutter speed freezes the splashes of water while the slower shutter speed (⅙) allows the water to blur into softness. Which one you prefer is a matter of taste (in this case, I like the faster shutter speed better, but that’s partly because it’s slightly less exposed and has less flare from the sun).

Now let’s look at an example of low-light, moving water, and lots of depth of field:

This was a 20 second exposure shot at f/16. The small aperture not only provides more depth of field, but it also turns the lights on the bridge into stars. The slow shutter allows the water coming out of the water cannons to blur into soft streams. Also notice the surface of the river–the splashes and ripples have also smoothed out into soft lines.

There are many more fun things you can do with a long exposure, but I’ll save those for future posts. 🙂

Lesson 107: Depth of Field Through the Lens

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Same Dandelion at f/16

The inside of the dandelion (f/2.8)

I taught a Beginners class on macro and close-up photography on Saturday. Macro teaches us a lot of great skills as photographers. Because shooting subjects life-sized or bigger magnifies the mistakes we might get away with if our subjects didn’t loom so large on our sensors, macro serves to remind us and help really bring home some basic photography concepts in a whole new way.

Depth of Field is of primary concern with macro photography. When you’re shooting practically on top of your subject, DOF is reduced to fractions of an inch–sometimes DOF is so tiny that it’s easier to think of it in millimeters, even for metric-adverse Americans.

One of the things that often confuses beginning (and even more experienced) photographers is that the depth of field you see when you look through the lens is not the depth of field you’ll get when you create the image (unless you happen to be shooting with your aperture wide open).

For example, during class, I was shooting with the Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens. When I looked through the lens at a dandelion, this is what I saw:

Pretty cool, huh? When you are looking through the lens, the aperture is wide open regardless of what aperture setting you have selected for exposure. This allows the maximum light through the lens for you to see as well as for functions like autofocus to work better.

Some cameras have a DOF preview button that stops the aperture down to what you’ve set it at so you can theoretically tell how much DOF you’re actually going to get. I find this button to be only marginally useful. I rarely can tell how much DOF I’m getting by pressing it, partly because of the loss of light.

Instead, I tend to take a shot and use a magnifying loupe to look at it on the LCD. I may also zoom into the image to enlarge it for more careful viewing. Then I decide if I like the DOF I’m getting and adjust if not.

In the next example, I shot the same dandelion at f/16 instead of f/2.8 (as in the first example). Notice how we see the full ball of fluff instead of getting a horizontal view of the inside of the dandelion seeds? That’s because there is enough DOF for the foreground portion of the seed ball to not blur completely out of view.

Personally, I find the very shallow depth of field more interesting in this case–it’s like having a view of the inside of the flower. However, if I wanted a shot of dandelion that looked more like what we see in life, the second example would be my pick. In fact, I’d probably want a little more depth of field to keep the tufts of the closest seen “fronds” sharp.

Lesson 106: Canon DSLRs – Focusing in the Dark

March 2, 2014March 2, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography Lessons

The lights on the bridge in the foreground provided enough light that my Canon 5D Mark III was able to autofocus with my f/2.8 lens

To focus on the trees in the foreground, I pre-focused on something approximately the same distance away using autofocus, then when the moon started to rise and provided enough light to see the trees, adjusted manually using live view at 10x magnification and a 2x magnifying loupe

Because I was far from this relatively flat scene, by focusing on the bright reflections on the water, I was well past the hyperfocal distance, keeping everything to infinity in focus

I was able to autofocus with an f/2.8 lens on my old 40D body because of the contrast provided by the last rays of light from the sun

With the 100-400mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter, the max aperture was at f/8. The Canon 40D wouldn’t autofocus with an f/8 max aperture, so I used live view at 10x magnification and a 2x magnifying loupe to focus manually. This is a case where focusing at infinity might have been easier.

Recently, I had a participant in one of my workshops ask about focusing troubles while shooting in caves. It’s always difficult to diagnose a problem without actually being in the situation and knowing what the variables are and what the photographer has already tried and not tried, but here is a go at answering some of the questions that came out of that conversation.

Focusing at Infinity

Someone had suggested the photographer focus at infinity to solve the problem. Focusing at infinity is something you can do when you can’t see to focus by turning your focus ring to the infinity symbol on your lens. The problem with using this technique inside a cave is that the closest thing that will be in focus will likely be further away than anything inside the cave, leaving everything in view out of focus. This can work well for very far away subjects at night, however, and is often used for lightening shots, for example.

In this particular instance, the photographer is shooting with a Canon 30D. If he were shooting at 50mm and f/4.0 (the maximum aperture of his lens) and focused at infinity, the closest object that would be “acceptably sharp” would need to be at the hyperfocal distance, which is 108 feet away (per SetMyCamera App DOF calculator). I haven’t been in many caves where what I wanted to shoot was 108 feet away, so this is not likely to be a workable solution.

While focusing at the hyperfocal distance (108 ft) instead would make things 54 feet away “acceptably sharp”, that’s still quite a distance inside a cave and is not something you can set blindly on a lens without a distance meter (his does not have one).

This means the only way to get sharp focus inside the cave is to actually find focus either automatically or manually. Manually is tricky because it requires him to have someone else shine a flashlight on the subject while he focuses; autofocus is preferred.

So, if you’re doing a lot of shooting in dark scenarios and autofocus is really important to you, here are a few things to consider:

AF-Assist

This (other than using a flashlight) is the cheapest solution if you have a built-in flash. Even the 30D has a built-in AF Assist beam with a few constraints:

You must be in Single Shot or AI Focus focusing mode (not AI Servo)
It only works up to 13.2 feet away
Ken Rockwell (a great resource for to-the-point info about gear and photography in general) said this about the AF-Assist on the 30D: “This is a trick: the 30D has NO AF illuminator! Sadly, the 30D instead fires off the flash numerous times, blinding your subjects. My wife kicked me out when she thought I was going to blind her dogs. The little light near the shutter button on the front of the body is only for the self-timer, not the AF illuminator. Sorry.”

For the 30D, to turn AF-Assist on, refer to page 169 in the 30D user manual:

To prevent the flash from then firing, you’ll also need to turn it off, which is on page 170:

If blinding the bats and your caving cohorts is not acceptable, the next choice would be to use the AF-Assist on a Speedlite. As it turns out, the aforementioned photographer owns two and they both have AF-assist that uses a much less annoying red grid to provide something to focus on.

The AF Assist setting is in the Custom Function menu for each of these flashes and you will want to set the C.Fn-05 setting on the camera flash menu to 2 (see the first excerpt from the manual above).

The next step is to disable the flash from firing, which is going to be in the camera menu for External Speedlite control on newer Canons and C.Fn-07 in the 30D the photographer is using (the same setting shown above for the built-in flash). This will allow use of AF assist without using the flash if you prefer to avoid flash.

“Faster Lenses”

People usually associate having a “fast lens” with getting faster shutter speeds because they can open up the aperture further. However, an additional benefit of fast lenses is the amount of light they make available for focusing. This can make a big difference when focusing in dimly lit settings.

When a camera is focusing, the aperture opens to its maximum size regardless of what aperture value you’ve set for exposure. For this reason, even if you’re exposure setting is f/5.6, your lens will admit 4x as much light during focusing if it has a max aperture of f/2.8 vs f/5.6, 2x as much with an f/2.8 max aperture vs f/4.0. Once you find focus (or release the shutter in continuous focusing mode), your camera stops the lens down to the f/5.6 setting you chose for exposure if you’re using an f/2.8 or f/4.0 lens and doesn’t change the aperture if you’re using an f/5.6 lens.

This can help with low-light focusing scenarios. A larger max aperture also allows your camera to use its better focusing capabilities. The Canon 30D manual says the following (p. 78):

This means that if you have a smaller max aperture than f/2.8, your camera is unable to take advantage of its higher precision focusing capability. All cameras have different focusing capabilities with different max apertures, but as explained here (“Canon EOS DSLR Autofocus Explained”), these capabilities have less to do with finding focus and more to do with refining focus.

If you decide to look at a new lens, here is another article from the same site that might be helpful on choosing lenses: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Aperture.aspx

Upgrade the Camera

Since the photographer having this issue is currently considering purchasing a 5D Mark III, I thought it worth mentioning that this may help quite a bit. The 5D Mark III claims it can autofocus down to EV -2. The 30D, by comparison, claims it can autofocus down to EV -.5. This means the 30D needs 3x more light to find focus than the 5D Mark III. Add a fast lens, making more of the available light also available to the focusing system, and you’ll find you can focus in more low-light conditions.

That said, no matter what, a certain amount of light must reach the lens for the camera to find focus. Total darkness, obviously, won’t allow for focusing (or capturing an image) regardless of your equipment. But, if our caving photographer points the light on his helmet at what he wants to focus on, it might be enough, for example, with one camera/lens combination and not enough for another.

If you found this article interesting or helpful, please like and share. If you have photography questions or challenges you’d like help with, please comment and I’ll see what I can come up with. 🙂

Lesson 105: All Cameras: Planning for Wildlife

February 3, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, Photography, Photography Lessons

Lounging bison

Fledgling Eastern Kingbird

Red-shouldered hawk watching for prey

Chatty elk

Great Blue Heron shaking off the water after diving for a frog and missing

Triplet of Sandhill Cranes

Giving the snow a shake

Peregrine falcon (2 weeks after being released following rehab)

Ring-necked duck

Hooded warbler

Grazing in the snow

Singing Eastern Towhee

Magnolia warbler

A Mocking Bird pointing the way

Look over there!

Seeing double

Not quite a collision of Sandhill Cranes

We often approach photography from the perspective of capturing the moment as the moment occurs. While on vacation, for example, unless we are specifically on vacation to shoot, we rarely plan our activities around the best opportunity to make images. Instead, we plan our activities as they best fit in our schedule and capture images whenever the opportunity occurs.

Sometimes, however, getting the photos we want requires a little planning. In lessons 16 and 17, we talked about timing outdoor photography around the golden hour (or magic hour) to get the most appealing light. Wildlife photography is another type of photography that requires planning.

While I do not recommend using an iPhone for wildlife smaller than buffalo, regardless of which camera you’re using, if you want to capture wildlife, there is significantly more planning involved than for most subjects. Predictably, sometimes the best laid plan goes awry and, conversely, sometimes the best wildlife shots happen by accident. But, most of the time, having a plan helps.

Time of day. Many wildlife are most active around dawn and dusk. This works well since it usually corresponds with the best light. Knowing if the wildlife you seek falls into this pattern and planning to arrive at the best time increases the odds of not only seeing wildlife, but also seeing them do interesting things. Checking to see when the sun will rise and set on the day you’ll be shooting will help get your there on time.

Location, location, location. This is the real trick. Knowing where to find the wildlife you seek can sometimes seem like magic. In the days of the internet, it’s gotten a lot easier to get tips on locating popular hangouts for your favorite critters and even what they’re up to (like hatching eaglets, birthing elk, migrating rare birds). Sometimes the best source of this information is from posts by other photographers on Facebook or Flickr. There are also organizations who provide updates: for birds, check out a local chapter of the Ornithological Society and/or Audubon Society–ebird.org also provides migration hotspot updates; park websites often mention wildlife viewing areas; and the National Wildlife Federation seems to be trying to use social networking for sharing sightings via their Wildlife Watch program.

The Weather. Birds are tricky. During migration, they will move when winds are favorable and hang out in appropriate habitat along their migration route when winds are not. Here’s an article that explains the basics of weather and bird migration. My best birding day ever was in high winds and misting rain. Many types of Warblers had moved into a migration hotspot and then hunkered down in the understory of the woods for protection from the weather. Large mammals will move from higher elevations to lower ones as the seasons change, but day-to-day weather tends to affect how active they are more than where they’re found. However, the weather, especially in mountain areas, can have a very big impact on whether you can access the location you’re trying to get to or not. If you’re counting on driving to a wildlife viewing area in the winter in the Smokies, for example, check the road status. In the more South-Eastern mountains of the US, there is little snow clearing equipment and remote roads remain closed for much of the season. Additionally, rain, snow, and overcast skies will change the light and may even affect your subjects’ behavior. The less intense sunlight behind clouds means even, gray light all day long (which is not as nice as golden light, but means you can shoot in the middle of the afternoon without the harsh effects of overhead sun). Additionally, cooler, cloudy weather may increase the level of activity of the animals at times of day they might otherwise seek shade.
Luck. No matter how you study your subject, figure out where to find them, time your visit, plan around the weather, there is still luck involved. I have given up on carrying telephoto lenses while hiking on more than one occasion only to get my best view of wildlife when my telephoto lenses were back in the car. In fact, I’ve come to believe that leaving your telephotos behind guarantees you will see great wildlife. This does not, however, result in great photos.

All-in-all, knowing a lot about your subjects, where and when to find them, and what the weather will be like all increases the odds that you’ll have some luck and get a great shot. Some photographers like to stack the deck and hire guides who bait wildlife. Baiting wildlife teaches them to come out into the open and tolerate people standing around pointing objects at them. While cameras may be harmless, hunters are not. I am not opposed to hunting when it is practiced skillfully and prey is fully consumed, but I believe it should be fair. Animals that have been baited for photographers are at greater risk of falling prey to hunters, so I choose not to participate in such practices. This may explain why I so often go out to shoot wildlife but come home with landscape images. 🙂

Lesson 104: Bird Photography Tips, or When Not to Use an iPhone

January 20, 2014January 19, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Tips, Photography, Photography Lessons

Double double-crested cormorants

Cormorant almost touching the water

Immature Bald Eagle

Sandhill Cranes flying through trees

Belted Kingfisher on an Osprey nest

Sandhill Cranes closer

Stream of Sandhill Cranes

Soaring into the sun against the bright blue sky

In Lesson 26, we looked at trying to get wildlife photographs with an iPhone. Specifically of a Great Blue Heron hanging out by a bike path. Today, I am sharing a few images from a recent river cruise in a wildlife preserve during Sandhill Crane migration.

All of the images in this post were taken with a DSLR. In fact, I used two different DSLRs, each with a telephoto lens to take these images. If your an iPhoneographer, I’m sorry, but here are the reasons why I left my iPhone in my pocket:

Focusing while tracking a bird in flight with the iPhone may be possible, but if it is, I haven’t mastered it. While I’ve gotten good images of a bird flying directly toward me with the iPhone, I’ve not been able to get images worth keeping of a bird flying across the field of view.
The super-wide lens on the iPhone means that unless you can get within a few feet of a bird, you’ll end up with tiny bird spots instead of recognizable birds.
The timing of when you click and when the image is made can be quite delayed in the iPhone–not ideal for a moving subject.
Getting the exposure right for a small bird in a big sky is trickier than what can be accomplished quickly on the iPhone and speed is imperative when shooting moving birds from a moving boat.
The resolution is too low to do a lot of cropping, which number 2 makes necessary.

So now you know why I didn’t use my iPhone. Here are a few tips for photographing birds with a DSLR:

Unless you’re going to be very close to large birds (like in our Raptography workshop), use the longest lens you own.
If your lens has Image Stabilization, turn it on and select the type for panning (IS 2 for Canon, Active for Nikon).
Use the continuous focusing setting on your camera (your camera will keep focusing as long as you keep the shutter button half pressed) in AI Servo mode for Canon or AF-C for Nikon.
If you have tracking settings, set a choice that will stay with the subject and not refocus on new subjects entering the frame.
If you can pick how many focus selection points are used, try using 8. If you can’t keep up with a bird in flight or if you’re on a boat that’s bouncing a lot, you might want to expand to more.
If your camera allows you to manually select one focus point but still uses the additional points when tracking motion, manually select the center focus point. In all cameras, the center selection point has the best focusing sensitivity (although in some cameras, other selection points do as well). For most people, using the center focus selection point also makes panning more intuitive.
Panning with birds takes eye-hand coordination and becomes more difficult for your brain to adjust to when you’re on a moving vehicle (like a boat), so start practicing as soon as anything flies your way even if it’s not exciting. Better to get bad shots of crows than when the elusive Whooping Crane suddenly appears on the scene.

Your Assignment: For iPhoneographers, I’d love to see your bird images! If you’ve managed to get a bird photo you’re proud of with your iPhone, please post it on our Facebook page: facebook.com/snapgreatphotos!

For other shooters, get out and try these settings on robins and pigeons before you go on a birding excursion. Everyone has different preferences and different camera features, so you may find different settings work better for you.

Lesson 103: Sunrise and the iPhone

January 12, 2014January 11, 2014 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

iPhone 5S Apple Camera App

iPhone 5S Pro HDR app

The greatest thing about an iPhone (or any smart phone, for that matter) as a camera is that most of us don’t go out the door without it. It takes forethought and extra effort to pop a lens on my DSLR, check to make sure it has space on its memory card, check the battery charge level, and look at what settings are on it. I don’t think about photography at all when I grab my iPhone before I head out the door. In fact, I have to remind myself that I have a camera with me because I carry my iPhone for so many other reasons.

When the clouds look interesting, it’s hard to resist getting a shot, even if the colors aren’t unusual. The iPhone, for better or worse, makes it possible to capture all of the sunrises I happen to see.

On this particular morning, the bank of clouds in front of the sun caught my eye. As usual, I was out walking my dog. This means I was at the mercy of his bladder, trying to get to a position where I had a view of the bridge and river before the sun got too high, but not wanting to rush him through his morning routine. There is a reason you don’t see professional photographers toting around their gear while holding a leash with a dog at the other end.

I used two different apps for these images. First, I used the Apple Camera App (the one that comes installed on your iPhone) for this image:

iPhone 5S Apple Camera App

Then, when I finally made it down to the river, I used it again for this image:

iPhone 5S Apple Camera App

But, I switch to Pro HDR for this image:

iPhone 5S Pro HDR app

Here are the two different exposures Pro HDR used to combine them into the final image above:

Image 1 of the 2 images combined by Pro HDR

Image 2 of the two images combined by Pro HDR

The result is better exposure of both the water and the sky in the same image without looking over-processed. This is one way to deal with the bright sun–I’ve covered the Pro HDR app in earlier lessons. See Lessons 9, 18, 20, and 66.

A word about composition: Compare these two images side-by-side:

iPhone 5S Apple Camera App

iPhone 5S Pro HDR app

Notice that in the one on the left, the sky takes up the majority of the frame. The clouds in the foreground at the top enter the frame. In the image on the right, the water occupies the majority of the frame. The sunlight reflected in the water adds more depth to the image and the clouds seem secondary to the composition. While one isn’t necessarily preferable to the other, in this particular example, in spite of my obsession with clouds, I prefer the one on the right. The reflection in the water helps draw my eye into the bridges, sun, and clouds more than the extra clouds add to the image on the left. Which framing do you like better?

Your Assignment: The next time you’re out at sunrise or sunset, remember that you have a camera in your pocket. Try taking a few shots with the default camera. Try turning on the HDR feature in it as well (for a comparison of with and without HDR in the Apple camera app, see Lesson 72). Then try Pro HDR and see if you like the results you get–remember you have to hold still until it takes both exposures (watch the screen prompts).

Lesson 102: DSLR Macro Photography

December 30, 2013December 30, 2013 by dkrashb, posted in Featured, Photography, Photography Lessons

Passion Flower

Center of a Cone Flower

Tiny mushroom babies

A tired mushroom

Petals of a Dahlia

Another dahlia

Looking into a dahlia

Bubble wrap

Tiny little ferns going dormant for the winter

Colorful fungus–maybe Turkey Tail?

One of the brightest colors in the woods at the end of Dec

Water droplet hanging on the tiny “blooms” sticking out of moss

A water droplet falling from moss

An early spring flower from last January

Another January fungus

Tiny berries on a vine in the park last fall

Tiny grass seeds dried on the sidewalk

Milkweed about to take flight

Milk weed hanging out in the pod

water droplet clinging to a rail with an out-of-focus streetlight in the background

A hairpin on a fuzzy carpet

Since I answered a question about macro photography with the iPhone on our Facebook page yesterday, thought I’d do a more detailed follow up on macro with a DSLR version–my apologies for using the iPhoneography blog for a DSLR example. For the iPhone version, check out Lesson 37: Small Subjects.

Macro (in Canon terminology; micro if you’re a Nikon shooter) photography is probably best understood as getting really close-up to small subjects. So close that the subject is life-sized or larger on your camera’s sensor. It allows us to capture details that are often surprising to those of us who can’t see that well without our reading glasses.

The challenge is that all lenses have something called a minimum focusing distance. Macro (or micro) lenses have short enough minimum focusing distances to allow you to get up close and personal with a 1:1 ratio, meaning if the subject is 10mm wide, it occupies 10mm on your sensor.

If you don’t have a macro lens, you can use extension tubes to make your minimum focusing distance much smaller, allowing you to get much closer. Extension tubes can also be used with a macro lens to get larger than a 1:1 ratio. Extension tube sets run from about $20-200 with the low-end being full manual and the high-end supporting the lens electronics. With the low end version, you are likely to be stuck with a wide open aperture as the camera and lens won’t be talking to each other.

The full assembly of a 100mm macro lens and 3 stacked extension tubes

The stacked extension tubes off the camera.

The stack can be separated into 3 different sized tubes. They are truly tubes–no glass.

Since this blog is normally used to post simple lessons on photography you can do with your iPhone, I’m going to try to minimize the tech talk here. But, depth of field is important in macro photography. Depth of field refers to how much of the image is acceptably sharp in the 3rd dimension of your image–that is, front to back of the scene.

Getting up close to a subject means your depth of field is minimal even with the aperture stopped all the way down. Sometimes backing up a bit and going more for a “close-up” shot vs a true macro image yields a more pleasing image as a result. I frequently use a very small aperture opening (f/22ish) and opt to go “close-up” rather than true macro to increase depth of field.

Your Assignment: I’ve included some examples of my own experiments. There are many better examples out there from serious macro photographers. Google macro photography in Google images and see what you get–it’s like a whole new universe living right under our lenses. Check it out and see if this is a form of photography you’d like to experiment with. If so, for iPhone shooters, consider getting a macro attachment lens (see Lesson 37). For DSLR shooters, check out extension tubes as a cheap way to turn a lens you already have into a macro lens. If you have an advanced point-and-shoot, you may also want to check out whether a macro attachment is available for your camera.