Shoot

The plague of many photographs and photographic hardware devices is of not being able to produce nicely sharp pictures, nearly crunchy images (Nota bene: I do understand that this is not the ultimate goal of a photographer and that many a picture is technically mediocre or fuzzy or foggy and still is a great photograph).

A few tips and tricks I grouped for you in order to reach the maximum possible sharpness on your photos (and my photos):

• Light: Darkness is not favorable; It brings fuzziness when the subject moves and a difficult automated focus.
• Speed: A fast shutter speed is good to freeze the subject in place.
• tripod: In order to be stable, there is no better solution than screwing the camera to a good old sturdy tripod.
• ISO: Choose a sensitivity high enough for the shutter to stop all movement, but not too high (to avoid blowing the digital noise up).
• Autofocus: An AF finely tuned (for those who have micro-setting of the AF), using the AF in the right mode (according to the subject -moving or not- there are different AF modes on your SLR).
• Autofocus Zones: The choice of the AF zone(s) is also critical (it is all too often to focus on the background rather than the model). It is quite important to focus on the eye of the subject rather than on the nose.
• Subject: If everything else is already optimized (especially in low light), make sure that the subject itself does not move.
• Sensor: Of course, use a camera whose sensor is as high resolution as possible; But do not let figures fool you: The more resolution, the more digital noise. do not use a 10MP+ P&S, or a 18MP+ D-SLR with an ASP-C sensor, for example).
• Lens: It’s always better to use a lens with a pro sharpness (and a pro price, too) but each glass has its optimal conditions for use (hardly the full aperture, often not the most closed diaphragm).
• Filter: shun unnecessary filters (like the Skylights or the UVA/UVB) or low quality filters (who add their own optical defects to those from the lens).
• Software: Do not push to the limit of the noise reduction software settings (while NR crunches noise, it also removes details and image crunchiness).
• Format: Avoid JPEG or use JPEG at a low compression rate (the compression artifacts start by eroding the fine quality of your image). Stay in RAW (or in TIFF)

Camera tossing is all about sending a photo camera up in the air while in long exposure settings to record the whirling moves of the camera into a somewhat different picture. This is an obviously dangerous photo technique (How many times can you strike such a move without letting the camera fall on the floor?) but this is also a way to get out-of-the-ordinary photos.

Wired has an article about this technique. And Flickr allows to search for images resulting from this perillous exercise.

• Examples of camera tossing on Flickr
• Snap a Camera Toss picture

HyperDrive Album

For the last few years, I have been strongly recommending the Sanho disk-based photo viewers and portable memory, to empty your Flash cards into a big portable disk drive. Visibly, they have a very powerful technology which leads to features like:

• Extremely fast copying from card to hard disk drive
• Superb autonomy
• Compatibility with many card formats

Now, Sanho is launching a new product (or product series), the HyperDrive Album, and it boasts pretty nice and precise cons:

• 2GB per minute downloading, with full data verification
• 640GB configuration for $599.00 (or 160GB for $349.00 and any other intermediates)
• 4.8-inch display (800 x 480 resolution)
• 200GB of transfers between battery charges
• Compatibility with the new SDXC card format (and all other common ones)

Go and buy it at HyperShop.com.

Hyperdrive Album

Underwater photography is a technique specifically difficult to master. As in all other photography genres, there are some parameters to take into account in order to create a nice picture (even if a good technician is not enough to produce great photos).

Dive Photo Guide

More than in any other photography types, you have to adapt to a very harsh environment: Limited light or no light, density of the medium, incompatibility between water, pressure and mechanical or electrical hardware, optical characteristics of water.

This is why it is often necessary to acquire a number of core competencies before becoming able to produce nice images. I admire all the more those divers who invest a large part of their hobby time (or their professional time) into underwater photography.

For those willing to try or develop this technique, I would recommend heartily a web site which I found in Photography Blog: Dive Photo Guide. Hardware informations, techniques, tips and tricks, tutorials, ideas; All you may need for underwater photography for photo-divers.

Sunshine is a Danny Boyle movie from 2007 which scenrizes the crew of a space ship sent to save a dying sun. The American Cinematographer offers us a long interview with Alwin Küchler who designed the shooting and the light of this film. Even (or preferably) for a studio photographer, it will be quite interesting to understnad the way light, color and their relative organization were used to sustain the psychological intensity of the movie.

Read it.

Via Strobist.

Studio photography is clearly a real specialty and I don’t hide my admiration for those photographers able to master its difficult techniques.

I recently found three demonstrations of what may be a beautiful studio lighting, along with dense explanations and welcome details.

• Anatomy of a photo: Balvenie Scotch
• Professional Studio Lighting – Playing with Mirrors by Peter Kirring
• One simple photo of glasses, by Scott Kelby: from the studio shot to Photoshop.

But, if this is not enough and that yo want to dig deeper into the studio lighting technique, I recommend you start a browser window on Strobist’s Lighting 102 (Introduction). An exceptional source of information.

After that, we only have to try and apply these advices and these examples. Can you reproduce these studio flash lightings?

Here is an exceptional photo. Nothing was Photoshopped, its author, Richard Heeks, only reinforced a little the colors to make them a little more vibrant. This a soap bubble popping in front of the camera.

Bubble pop, Copyright (C) Richard Heeks

Try and do the same.

Do not forget the next Wildlife Festival in Montier-en-Der, from November 19 to 22, 2009.

DIY

This Flickr user, Marco Jetti has a proposal to transform into a long-distance radio-controlled trigger a kit of two talkie-walkies.

A little DIY elbow grease and here it is:

totally on the opposite side from the use of an SLR camera with a specialized lens, here is an article offering to use the lens stolen from a dead DVD player to transform a mobile phone into a ultra-micrographic photo camera. Apparently, the harder part is to attach the lens to the phone. But then, if you forget a little the intense vignetting, here is a photo camera of astounding capacity.

When you want to go cheap, you’d better be able to build your own devices. For most photographers, a tilt-shit lens is often too expensive for something that you’ll nearly never use. So, why not build your own tilt-shift lens from cheap plumbing parts?

Bhautik Joshi did exactly that. $10 for the whole project, including the lens mount, plus a manual focus lens (less than $50 on will open the doors to architecture and special effects only available to tilt-shift. If you accept quality limited by your ability with tools and crafts.

Dorje-Lapka

When you are in a plane of a light plane flying near a mountain range, it is quite tempting to shoot a few landscape photos; But the conditions will stay very difficult for the photographer. There are many traps and the results may loose a lot of quality compared to what you expected.

For example, problems could be:

1. The presence of visible obstacles
2. The atmospheric turbulence
3. The atmospheric veil
4. The vibrations of the plane
5. The optical limitations of the cabin window

First, you must be seated near a window (and on the right side) and you must avoid the presence of the wing and/or an engine which could reduce the view. Choose your seat wisely at check-in time or politely negotiate with the passenger better seated.

The engines of the plane produce a lot of air turbulence that is very perceptible just behind them. Seat sufficiently in front (unfortunately, the more expensive seat are often in the front of the plane).

Air moisture and dust are less problematic at high altitude than at ground level, but you will probably shoot your landscapes from very far. Only when the sky is very clear can you try a flight. Then you would limit the atmospheric veil to its minimum. It’s even better to fly early in the morning (the light is nicer and the air moisture is still mostly on the ground). Chance must fly with you (or you will have to compensate with perseverance).

Melungtse - with a polarizing filtrer and some Photoshop correction

Melungtse - without a polarizing filter, but shaded by the window

Then, a plane shakes a lot. Even more when it’s a small plane. Not as much as a helicopter, but it is definitely not stable! So, choose a fast shutter speed. Worse: Those vibration frequencies are not well compensated by the image stabilizer of your camera or lens; They are targeting the smoother moves of the photographer. For an 80mm lens, I would advise faster than 1/200 s; For a 35mm, faster than 1/100 s. You may have to crank your ISO up a little for that.

But the biggest interference will probably be the window itself. Nothing much you can do: It is not a neutral photo filter. It will darken irregularly the image. It is not really compatible with polarizing filters (color shift and forced shading in the sky part of the image). It usually has a lot of scratches and stains (those inside may be cleaned, but going outside is tougher…)

(more…)

It is not always easy to shoot rare animals, like a North Chinese leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis). These photographers found the solution at the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg (Germany).

(Joern Pollex/Getty Images)

When wildlife photo meets tabloid-like photography.

Shooting good pictures of sports events is challenging at best. Rob Miracle is offering good advice about sports photography, grouped in several important categories:

• Location, Location, Location!
• The Decisive Moment
• Required Equipment
• Depth of Field — Isolating the subject
• Focus
• Composition
• Know your Sport, Know your Players
• Freezing Action Shots
• Giving the illusion of movement
• Lighting and Film
• Emotion
• Where to Start

Seven pages of excellent information, tips and advice. For people willing to improve their aptitude to shoot sports images (or even beginners).

photo credit: nsaplayer

Who did not dream of making such a great photo as the milk or water drop stopped in mid-air?

But this seems quite difficult. It may be, but there are a few techniques that can simplify things a little. Gavin Hoey, in the following video, shows a few of them, explaining lighting issue and telling us that even without motion-detection equipment it is possible to catch the droplet: Just shoot a zillion photos with your flash and hope for a little luck to bring a good image out of sheer luck. This is not as silly as it looks and digital photography made this actually practical (you will not mind erasing dozens of failed attempts on the path to a great image).

If you want to try your hand at it, remember that the flash is used to light not the droplet itself (it’s transparent), but the background which may be white or colored.

But if you still want to use a little more expensive equipment, you can check a specialist: Hiviz.

It has been revealed by a scientific study that ecotourists (and certainly wildlife photographers like you and me are falling in this category) are actually much more disturbing to wildlife than initially supposed. As written by New Scientist, “The sound of even a quiet conversation caused the birds [hoatzins in the Amazonian forest] to begin clucking and defecating – a common defense response – at longer approach distances than for quiet approaches.”

So, if you want to make a good photo, if you want to limit your impact on Nature when shooting photos, forget about speaking, concentrate on the image and think about not frightening your models. Shouldn’t that be the a natural way to approach wildlife photography?

photo credit: Veronique Debord