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.

A Drive in the Countryside

My morning commute takes me through scenic areas of Connecticut. I drive past Colonial houses dating back to the 1700s, stone fences, woodlands and a few small farms. Sometimes if traffic is light I stop my car and take a few photos. Today I left extra early and enjoyed a beautiful June morning.

As I passed Sherwood Farm in Easton, CT I saw this little old tractor out in the field. It only took a moment to capture a great shot. This farm has been tilled by the Sherwood family for nearly 300 years. They offer all sorts of fresh vegetables and honey.

Another pleasant view on my daily communte is a very old house with no paint. I love the ornate gate in front. Today I got a nice shot of this fine old house in the morning sun. What will I see tomorrow?

These are Some of My Recent Black and White Images

Recently, I have been shooting images of things I find in nature. Although a rock, a root or log is not an amazing or fabulous item, a talented photographer can use creative lighting, composition and exposure techniques to produce a pleasing image.

What I like about this rock is the way the early morning light strikes at an angle creating a light side and a dark side. There is a lot of texture, too.

The photo of the wrinkly root sort of reminds me of an old person's hand. This is a bit of detail attached to the base of a large old Maple tree.

An Old Shed Near Redding Connecticut

This morning I was on my way to work and running a few minutes early so I jumped out of my car and shot a few frames of this rustic old building. I like how this long branch helps frame the image. Connecticut has some scenic areas.

Adventure in the North with Death Valley Danny

copyright Jon Wason 2011 
While prospecting for Gold up in the Yukon Territory with a man named Death Valley Danny it got so cold that we almost froze to death. But my trusty sled dog named Woofer contributed to my survival. Danny was not used to this Northern climate since he was from the high desert in California. He only came north to get a change of scenery for a while and to collect a gambling debt. I met Danny about a year ago when I was passing through Death Valley on my way from Texas to Hollywood. I was on my way to audition for a part in the talking movie called the Zigfield Follies of 1939 when my Stutz Bearcat automobile broke down near Scotty’s Castle. I caught a ride with a truck driver hauling a load of Crosley radios. While waiting for the car to be repaired I was biding my time in the lobby of the Oasis Hotel. I joined a poker game with a man in a yellow zoot suit, two cowboys and an old man wearing a bathrobe. One of the cowboys was abruptly asked to leave the table. Cheater, I guess.

His seat was taken by a talented card player that the other men called, Steamboat Steve. A tall man, dressed in a fancy light blue suit that made me think that perhaps he was a riverboat gambler. Still I wondered how a Mississippi River gambler could have ended up out here in the desert. I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. The card game was going well until about midnight when I ran out of cash, gold nuggets and jewelry. In desperation I wagered the deed to my mine in the Yukon Territory up near Yellowknife. That night I picked up the nickname Lenny-No-Penny and it stuck. As the hours at the green felt table passed I learned the name of man in the yellow plaid zoot suit was Death Valley Danny. He was a local. His handful of one-eyed Jacks and tens entitled him to ownership of the Lucky Leonard Mine. My loss was his gain. So here we are shivering in the Yukon. About the time that Death Valley Danny arrived in the Yukon we hit a nice vein of good quality ore so the future looked bright. His card playing habit had resulted in my winning back half ownership of the mine. We were both going to become rich. But after two successful days of digging out some good color, an intense blizzard blew in on a wicked North wind. We were about 200 feet down in the mine readying some dynamite and hadn’t noticed that the weather outside had changed for the worse. When Danny took a break from swinging his pick axe to go up and fetch a canteen of water, he saw that the bad weather had arrived and he panicked. That lowdown Danny took my dogsled, rifle, ax and a 100 pound sack of beans as he made a dash for town. Fortunately he left my dog, Woofer, behind. Alone in the mine with just my trusty sled dog to keep me company, I devised a survival plan. With no firearms, food or water I had no choice but eat the dog. Luckily I had stashed away a reserve supply of Barbeque sauce from my pal in Kansas City. He owns a smoke shack near the state line and makes the best barbeque ever. Those Kansas City rib joint can’t be beat. One time I was at a little smokehouse near Swope Park eating a big plate of ribs when none other than Charles Lindberg walked in. Well, I walked up to him and said if he knew what was good for him he would turn around and leave … But that is another tale for another day. Back to the gold mine. Well I knew that I was in trouble but I stayed calm. Down in the mine the temperature is an even 68 degrees all the time so I sat out the blizzard and rationed by food until spring came and I could hike back to town with a satchel full of gold. It was a long trek and when I arrived on the muddy main street of Yellowknife and made my way directly to the Grant’s General Store. “Lenny! Good to see you! I thought you were dead! Come on in,” was the hearty greeting of One-Eye Grant the owner and proprietor. “What made you think I was dead? I am a bit tired, hungry and thirsty but far from cashing in my chips,” I replied. Your partner Death Valley Danny passed through here during a blizzard and mumbled something about an incident at the mine and me and boys took it to mean that you were a goner,” said One-Eye. “That scoundrel left me for dead but I’ll have the last laugh, indeed,” I said as I plopped a fist full off gold nuggets onto the counter. That spring I was living a life of luxury up in the Yukon. I never heard any news of Death Valley Danny so I guess he must have headed back to California.

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.