Keep Your Camera Handy, Andy

Copyright 2013 Jon Wason

“I wish I would’ve had my camera with me,” is a common lament. I don’t know how many people have said that to me after describing some amazing sight such as a bald eagle, a rare Ferrari or a famous celebrity. It has happened to me, but not too often.

            During my daily commute my camera is within easy reach. One recent morning, I was driving to work on a foggy morning. Some of the route is rural and takes me past a reservoir. As I pulled up to a stop sign I looked to my left and caught a glimpse of a pleasant reflection of a tree in the mist.

Instead of saying, “I wish I had a camera,” I pulled over, put the car in Park and grabbed my camera. I shot a few frames out the lowered window and continued on my merry way to work. That evening I discovered that I had captured a nice image.

Another morning I was passing near the railroad tracks when I saw the Amtrak Acela coming my way. I stopped the car and grabbed my camera. Unfortunately, there was no memory card in the trusty EOS, but I had one in my pocket. As quick as a bunny rabbit, I popped it in, and clicked off two shots. It is a good thing that the fastest train in the USA is forced to slow down to a crawl as it passes through my town.

I used to drive a minivan and my camera fit under the seat. Now I have a Toyota RAV4 with a center console that is a perfect hiding place for my camera. This is also a protected location where food and drink cannot be spilled on it.

My advice is to keep your camera (with good batteries and a memory card inserted) close at hand while you also keep your eyes peeled for photographic opportunities. Go get some good shots.

Capture the Golden Light of Sunset and Sunrise

The average person does not pay much attention to light, but photographers develop a sensitivity to the quality of light. For outdoor photography the "magic hour" is hour hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise. The sun at that time of day is not directly overhead and so it creates long shadows. The light is also not as bright and has a slight yellow cast.

RTFM Where is My Owner’s Manual?

by Jon Wason   copyright 2012

Back in 1901 if you had a dollar to spend on a frivolous luxury you could buy a Kodak Brownie camera. Even though the advertisements claimed the camera was so simple “any schoolboy or girl can make good pictures with the Brownie Camera” it came with a 44-page instruction booklet.  

More than a hundred years later, cameras still come with a manual and people still don’t read them. However, there are benefits to reading your camera manual or the manuals for any other mechanical devices.

The initials RTFM stand for “Read The Fine Manual” – or something like that. I think perhaps the angry retort, “RTFM, you idiot!” can be traced back to frustrated computer help desk employees, but that is just a hunch. Anyhow, my advice is just invest a few minutes and read the manual. After that put in your camera bag so in some future date when you are out in the field shooting some interesting subject and need to adjust something on your camera, you can easily retrieve the manual and find the answer. If the manual is back at home with the box the camera arrived in you are out of luck.

Many people purchase a new camera, excitedly open the box, remove the wonder of modern technology and never even open the manual, much less read it cover to cover.

I can’t recall how many times I was at wedding shooting all the events of the day and a person approached to ask me how to operate their camera. They ask, “Hey can you show me how to turn on the flash? I just got this camera,” or “Do you know how to change the shutter speed?” I did my best to help them but they were making two mistakes. The first was assuming that because I am a wedding photographer I know how to operate every camera. The second mistake was not learning how to use their camera. The best remedy for that one is to read the manual.

A few minutes spent looking at boring little booklet can pay off later with better photos.


HERE IS A LINK TO A SHORT VIDEO ABOUT F-STOPS:


http://youtu.be/FBJLg77daP8 

Why Would I Need Filters On My Lens?

by Jon Wason copyright 2012

There are several reasons to use a filter. Serious film shooters usually have a several filters in their camera bag. But with the widespread transition to digital cameras, the use of filters has waned because the after capture processing done in a computer may often accomplish the same results. A dropdown menu in Adobe Photoshop can perform wonders with an image.

However, there is one important thing that a circular piece of glass can do for you: protect your expensive lens from windblown dust, splashed liquids and blunt force impact with the floor. Replacing a cracked, dented or shattered UV filter is a lot cheaper than buying a new lens. A skylight filter is basically a clear glass but it protects your investment. A UV filter is a bit more than just glass; it filters some of the ultra violet rays and can slightly enhance the colors of your images.

The use of either a skylight filter or a UV filter is a wise choice and after taking the baby step you may want to delve deeper into the wonderful world of filters by adding a polarizer filter to your line up of equipment. A polarizer is sort of like sunglasses for your camera but better. This filter has the effect sifting multidirectional light beams into a tidy collection of light that is uniform. This is great for capturing bold blue skies. Another use is eliminating reflections, especially on surface water or glass such as the windshield of a car. The most useful polarizer filter can be rotated into the best position once mounted on the lens. These are called circular polarizer filters. If you want a dramatic sky in your photo, point the camera at about a 45 to 90 degree angle from the sun. Then slightly rotate the polarizer until you get the effect that suits you best. Linear polarizers are a bit lower in cost but cannot do this. One little parlor trick you can perform with two polarizer filters is to stack one in front of the other and rotate it. At a certain point the two polarizers cancel each other out and block all the light. Impressive.

Neutral density filters are used by digital photographers and film photographers. This is a filter that reduces the amount of light that enters the camera. This is desirable when a long exposure is required such as a photo of a mountain stream with blurred out details denoting fast moving water.

There are a variety of special effects filters. One is a star filter that creates a pleasing twinkle when photographing the flame of a candle or sunlight reflecting off a lake. The soft focus filter is a favorite of portrait photographers. It can create a dreamlike effect or reduce the detail of a wrinkled face.

Soft focus

Photographers who shoot black and white film can use color filters to control which parts of the light spectrum enter the camera and expose the film. For instance a red filter can bring out the green tones in an image.

Filters are yet another creative tool for photographers.

Tips for Photographing Children

By Jon Wason copyright 2011
Photographing children can be a challenge but a few simple tips can help you capture some great shots. Children can be hard to photograph because they move quickly. Children also tend to have a short attention span and their mood can change from giggling to crying in two seconds.
The first thing that I recommend when photographing children is to move down to their level because if an adult six feet-tall stands close to a four year-old and shoots a photo of that child most likely the resulting image will be the top of the child’s head. Not a great portrait.
So kneel or sit down and your photographs of children will improve. If you are getting older and your knees can’t take much kneeling; then pull up a chair. You will find yourself closer to eye level with you subjects. Also try moving closer. Some people are always too far from their subject and their images include too much background.

Because little kids run around a lot the photographer has to be ready. Using a flash can stop some of the action. Sports photographers know this. The duration of typical photo strobe is 1/10,000 of a second. Even a sugared up three-year-old does not cover much territory in that short amount of time. Even on a sunny day a flash can improve your photography because mid-day sun tends to created harsh shadows under the eyes, nose and chin. The light of a flash can reduce this problem.
If you are attempting to shoot a formal or semi-formal portrait of a child in a studio setting get the camera and all the equipment set up before the child (or children) are asked to pose. Otherwise the ten minutes or so that they can refrain from running, jumping and playing are wasted as you set the ISO, changes lens and adjust the shutter speed. By the time you are ready to start, they are all done and twitching to get out there and play.

Talented child photographers know how to use props like bubbles, balloons and puppets to get children to look at or at least toward the camera. Babies can be especially challenging since they are just learning to respond to verbal commands. A three-month old cannot understand, “Smile for the camera,” but she will probably look at a red balloon or turn toward a squeaky toy. Be warned that even these new and exciting stimuli will lose their interested after a few times.
What happens if the happy children are uncooperative, bored or crying? I usually try to enlist the help of the parents to get the child to cooperate. But I do not push it too far. I believe that children (and all people) have a limit of how long they can pose for the camera. Even professional models have limits.
Threatening a child to smile or face punishment is not effective but I have witnesses several occasions when a well-meaning parent said something like, “smile or I’ll take away your Gameboy.” It doesn’t bring a smile to the children’s face.
The candid approach is very effective for children. Just let kids be kids and photograph them from a distance. Shoot a lot and delete the ones that did not work out. Also keep practicing. The more you practice the better you will get at photographing children.

Flash Memory is a Marvel of Modern Science

The tiny memory cards that store hundreds of images for digital cameras may look insignificant at a glance but they are amazing. Their storage capacity, the speed at which they write, and their low cost make them a modern marvel. These little rectangular Compact Flash (CF) cards and SecureDigital (SD) cards are silent, have no moving parts and can withstand exposure to magnets, intense pressure and temperature extremes. Even if you accidently drop one in the toilet, it will not be damaged.

The person credited with inventing flash memory is Dr. Fujio Masuoka. In 1984 while working at Toshiba he made major developments in his work with cells that hold data and can be erased rapidly then rewritten. Flash was suggested as an appropriate name for the new type of memory because the process of erasing data from the cells was like a camera’s flash. History was made in 1984, when he presented this new technology at the meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in San Jose, CA.
Intel and other companes saw that flash memory had great potential. In 1988 Dr. Eli Harari and Sanjay Mehrotra, former coworkers at Intel, formed a company to produce flash memory for consumers. They founded SanDisk, which is now a world leader in digital memory devices. Sandisk’s launch in Silican Valley was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the the arrival of digital photography.
Some early digital cameras like the Sony Mavica stored images on a floppy disk. People liked this because it was easy to take the floppy out of the camera and insert it into a computer to transfer the images. The next generation of Mavica recorded images to a CD. But flash cards ultimately became the prefered media for digital cameras because they were small, had no moving parts and could be erased again and again.

Flash memory, unlike RAM (Random Access Memory) can continue to store information in the absence of a power source. This made flash memory a good choice not only for use in digital cameras, but also PDAs and video games. As consumer demand for flash cards grew Sandisk, Lexar, Kingston, Samsung and other companies offered Memory sticks, xD, SmartMedia and MultiMedia and other removable flash memory products.
As competition heated up, each brand would advertise higher capacity cards: Attention we have 4 Gigabyte cards! Look 8 GB for sale! Introducing 16 GB! Come and get the amazing 32 GB card! 64 GB cards are here! And as the public purchased the newest memory cards they found that the price paid per GB dropped steadily. That is the good news, but there is also bad news.
Unfortunately, counterfeit CF cards that look authentic but are knockoffs of the big name flash memory cards have appeared. These are passed off as the real thing to bargain hunters who later may find their joy of getting a great deal replaced by the sinking feeling that accompanies the realization that their data is lost.
Overall the invention of flash memory has been a great benefit to photography. So next time you are clicking photos take a moment to appreciate the wonders of modern technology.

Camera Shopping? Compare the Features

Coke vs Pepsi

Ford vs Chevy

Nikon vs Canon

What is your preference? I have no advice for comparing soft drinks or cars but when itcomes to cameras I can help.

There is now a website http://snapsort.com that is set up to pit one camera against another

and provide a detailed report with one camera declared THE WINNER! A few years ago,

a person shopping for a camera would usually walk into a camera shop and tell a clerk youwant to see some cameras. Or another alternate was to flip through magazines and booksreading reviews and descriptions of various camera models. Now you can save the tripto the camera store, bookstore or library.

I spent some time on the site entering models and noting the results which are broken down to important differences and important similarities. The winner and loser also have the pros and cons of the camera listed. I think that is good because perhaps you really need a feature

such as built-in flash or very rapid continuous shooting and the snapsort team has chosen a camera as a winner but the loser camera has a unique feature you need. Then you can make your own conclusion. Another nice feature of this website is the Popular Comparisons section below each camera which helps you see other cameras which are similar to the cameras in your search.

So with this information a person in the market for a new camera can spend a bit of time at this very useful website and learn plenty about all sorts of cameras before making a big

decision about a camera purchase. By the way, I prefer Pepsi and Chevy.

How to Improve Your Photos of Children

Capturing great photos of children can be challenging. Here are some tips that can help improve your results.

Get Down. The first thing is get down on their level. Adults are taller than kids and many mediocre pictures could have been great if the person with the camera had just taken a lower vantage point. So if you sit, kneel, squat or bend down this simple act can make you photographs of children better.

Get Ready. Children have a lot of energy and those little hands and feet are constantly in motion. Even their heads are turning and their expressions change in an instant so be ready. If you are photographing children you have to be ready to click. Also, it helps to set your camera to a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. When you are indoors using a flash, the camera’s recycling time can be a limitation. Lower end cameras especially can take a long time for the flash to recycle. For that matter those same cameras can cause a problem with slow focusing and taking a long time to write to the memory card. So this is a situation where a better camera can be an advantage.

Be patient. Even though kids move fast a photographer who wants to capture amazing images of kids has to be patient. So you may have to wait a while to get the perfect shot, but that is okay. Enjoy the experience.

Shoot, shoot, shoot. Back in the days of film taking more pictures meant spending more money. With digital cameras that is no longer true. So you can shoot and shoot while the opportunity is there. Later delete the ones that were no good.

Get Closer. One easy thing that will improve the pictures of most hobby photographers is simply to step a bit closer. That applies not just to children but 90 percent of the subject matter. So get close and fill the viewfinder.

Applying these simple points can help you capture great images of your precious little ones. Now go get your camera bag and get busy.