Author Archives: Eric

Photos in front of the Christmas Tree

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This time of year many of us want pics of the kids in front of the tree to send to relatives, printing on cards, etc.  Shooting these images can be a challenge because lights on the tree are warm (colour temperature) and not that bright.  Using a flash or strobes (which are much cooler) will result in images that are difficult to colour balance and if you run your flash and camera on auto it will usually wash out the tree lights.

Here’s a quick recipe to get you going:

1) Mount your camera on a tripod and use a cable release (or self timer if a cable release isn’t available and your subjects will hold still that long). Turn your flash off.

2) Use tungsten light (i.e. standard light bulbs) to light your subjects. I use an inexpensive hot light that takes a standard size bulb and a 10-inch reflector.  This year I used a common 100w bulb and placed it high and center. Move it closer or further away until the tree light, ornaments, and the face of your subjects have the look you want. Be creative – use room lights, lights with clamps, or whatever you have.  Just try to stick to the same colour temperature to preserve the balance and help achieve that warm look.

3) Set your camera in aperture priority mode (“A”) and select the smallest aperture (i.e. largest f-number) that still results in a shutter speed higher than 1/10. You may need to adjust your ISO to a higher number, such as 400. f5.6 at 1/20th or faster would be ideal, but you may not get there.  Some of my favourite shots this year were at f2.8, 1/15th, ISO 400. With large apertures pay careful attention to focus and depth of field. If your camera allows you to “zoom” in while viewing images, use that feature to check for focus and sharpness, especially if photographing kids that don’t hold perfectly still.

4) If you have an advanced camera you can set your white balance manually. If not (or if you don’t want to) just shoot with auto white balance and adjust in Lightroom or your favourite photo editor after the shoot.  3000k is a good starting point.

Enjoy!

Kodak Playsport Zx3 Review

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During the summer Kodak was kind enough to lend me a Playsport to test out for a two-week camping trip. The Playsport is a light-weight, pocket-size HD video (and still) camera that is waterproof to 3 meters.

The Playsport features a 5 megapixel sensor and shoots video at WVGA, 720p and 1080p through a fixed focus lens that works out to a 35mm equivalent of 36mm for stills, WVGA, and 720p and a 48mm equivalent for 1080p.  It offers 30 frame per second on all video modes plus an additional 60fps mode at 720p. The lens is a fixed focal length, but it does offer a 4x digital zoom and electronic image stabilization. It has 128MB internal memory, but is primarily designed to shoot directly to a SD or SDHC card. And finally, it has a built in mono microphone and speaker for playback, USB 2.0, AV out, an HDMI connector, and accepts a standard 1/4” tripod mount.

But enough of the technical specs. The PlaySport is the most fun video camera I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. I used it in the truck, in the trailer, in the pool, and it spent several hours in the ocean off of Cape Cod tethered to my wrist.

Like all other cameras in the pocket video class, it’s easy to criticize the lack of optical zoom, fixed-focus lens, or the fact that the audio can get a bit strange sounding when the microphone is wet. But I kept coming back to, “It costs $160 and it’s waterproof.”  I own an expensive video camera, and I wouldn’t take it to the beach for fear or getting a few grains of sand in the mechanism. But there I was, playing with the kids in the ocean surf and shooting video clips.  I shot mostly at 720p to balance quality with file size, and I was pleased with the results.

When it came to uploading a few clips to YouTube, it was also a breeze because the Playsport produces H.264 .MOV files that can be directly uploaded, no editing or re-encoding required.

The bottom line:  Two weeks with the Playsport changed the way I see personal video – from expensive and fragile to something really fun I could carry with me all the time. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use digital video camera that you can take anywhere, look no further. Highly recommended.

Color Scheme Designer

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As a photographer I hate to admit it, but I’m horrible when it comes to picking colour schemes.  I know what I don’t like – it’s easy for me to conclude that a colour is too warm or cold, that I’d prefer a darker shade, or that the saturation just doesn’t cut it.  But ask me to help choose a colour palette for a web site, and I’m in trouble.

Over the weekend while searching for some help, I ran across this gem: Color Scheme Designer.  It’s a free web-based application that allows you to choose a hue, adjust saturation, brightness, contrast and other options to develop your killer colour scheme.

When you’re done, you can click on the “Scheme ID” (look for it on the right under the four colour squares) to obtain a URL to your new scheme – perfect for sending to friends, colleagues and web designers for their opinion.  Thanks to Petr Stanicek for this excellent tool!

Camera Buyer’s Guide

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Choosing a camera is tough. Choosing a camera for someone else is even tougher. So with Christmas on the horizon, we’ll help you wade through the sea of cameras at your local retailer and narrow down the choices to a more manageable number.

The key to choosing a camera is to consider it a tool. Your challenge is not to find the perfect camera because it doesn’t exist. Instead, we’re looking for the best tool for the job. So to begin, we’ll divide the digital camera marketing into three categories: Pocket, Compact and SLR.

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Is my camera good enough?

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Rohit writes,

“I’m using a Canon S3. It’s a simple SLR so and I’m a beginner. Is it a good camera for me?”

I haven’t tried that camera, but from the specs it certainly appears to have all the features you’ll need to learn photography.  As I often say, “It’s not the camera, it’s how you use it.” If you haven’t signed up already, please consider joining 12 Weeks to Better Photography!

Photographing Lightning

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Adrian writes,

I’ve tried recently to photograph lightning but with little success.
Is there a basic set of rules to follow for this? Or some sort of guideline where I can try to find what works best for me?

I personally haven’t tried lightning, so for this one I turn to the National Geographic Photography Field Guide by Burian and Caputo. They recommend as follows:

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Using your flash

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Adrian writes,

I notice a lot of professionals always use their flash no matter the conditions.
I’ve tried this but sadly poor results. Why do they do it and why do most of my flash photos suck!?

Photographers often use their flash for “fill”, especially when photographing people. Rather than blinding them with the sun and getting a photo of a squinting subject, it is often more effective to put them in the shade or even with their back to the sun and then use a reasonably powerful flash to light the subject. It’s just another technique to control the light falling on your subject.

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Photo Editing

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Gerry writes,

I get the impression from what I have read so far about digital photography that all pictures have been somewhat modified in a photo editing program before being displayed in magazines. I would have thought that a picture taken by professional photographers would not need photo editing.

It depends upon how we define “modified”. Technically, you are quite correct. At minimum, basic adjustments such as white and black levels, contrast, saturation, etc. are usually required to produce a good magazine print. But that’s not really any different than what we had to do with film. it is also normal to crop images, especially if the camera aspect ratio is different than that magazine page or other space in which the print is required.

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