As it turns out, I think I do not have flare and will not get flare. I kept trying different approaches: putting the sun in the photo, just on the edge of the photo, just out of the photo, and maybe a little further out. Nada. No flare.

It is one of those methods or little tricks that pop in my head every few days, when the sun it up and nothing else seems to be happening, and I try a few more shots out. I can never get any flare. I simply wanted to be able to control it, meaning, if I wanted it in a photo, what is the trick to making that happen. Or, conversely, if it is sunny and I want to avoid it, how do I do that.

Then, something came back to me. My walk around lens is a Nikkor AF 35mm f/2 D. I remember reading something a while back (actually, while reading info on my coveted lens, the Ai-S 35mm 1.4): that lens has almost no lens flare. Oh. Oops. So, I guess it is time to stop the experimenting and just be thankful for a lens that seems to be very well built.

And speaking of lens flare, in a slightly awkward ending, I love the tribute to lens flare in the Wall-E opening sequence. You have a computer animation which has lens flare. That is just cool. And it is proof that lens flare is cool, which I guess makes my lens a little less cool. Bummer. I bet that old, 1.4 would be cool!

Assuming, from the quality of the photos, she was an experienced photographer, I actually asked how she used her flash to balance the light so beautifully. After a brief exchange, which I still have a hard time processing, I found out she had used a regular, old point-and-shoot camera! How could it be?

Even after knowing it was a compact camera, I could barely believe the photos I was seeing. The sky was so perfectly blue and not overly bright. The faces all looked like there were either reflectors coming up from below or some creative flash lighting. Not so. It must have been the perfect day for lighting!

I do not say that to diminish her skills in any way, but simply to say that having not thought about the lighting at all, those were perfectly lit photos. She was obviously playing with the angle and perspective, though. That much goes 100% to her credit.

Some folks get all the perfect light. I guess it all goes to reemphasize for me that light is what photography is all about. Know how to “read” it, manage it it, and how your equipment reacts to it.

Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.

The problem with my Cactus radio triggers (aka “radio slaves”) was pretty simple: I would press the shutter release, and the flash would not fire. I press the test button on the Cactus, and nothing would happen. At first, they were just unreliable, which in time became utterly useless. Just a quick search on Flickr, and you will find loads of folks who love these and hate them (for these same reasons), so I figured I just had a dud pair.

So, I thought it was my battery. I changed that, and they were better for a while, but quickly went downhill again. That was when I discovered how reliable my optical flash triggering was.

I could use the pop-up flash on my camera to trigger my flash just about anywhere (around corners, through bodies, etc), at least, anywhere I had been using my radio wireless triggers. I still did not want the pop-up flash light in my photo, so most often, I deflected almost all the light with folded up paper or maybe just softened it with a coffee filter slid over the flash (high-tech, huh?).

There are two big negatives to this method of wireless flash, though. One, you are usually holding a piece of paper in front of the pop-up flash or holding a coffee filter on. That means you are shooting with one hand and sometimes at awkward angles. I did have the presence of mind to tape the coffee filter on a few times, but even still, it was a common problem.

And two (the really big downside), I am limited by the recycle rate on my pop-up flash. My “big” speedlight/flash can fire very quickly and many times in a row, but that little pop-up hangs after one or two shots and needs to recycle or recharge. And when you are doing a shoot with people (portraits, family, group, etc), and you see that perfect opportunity a half second after you  just fired…well, you miss it if you have to wait on that pop-up flash.

Having an optically triggered flash is still a great idea, but when that is a pop-up doing the triggering, you are greatly limited. If you had two or more speedlights, the “triggerer” either itself radio triggered or mounted on the camera, and the second flash triggered optically, you would be set. And that is where I am headed, but the pop-up flash just about killed my family shoot (see the last entry), and I had to find something different.

Re-enter: the Cactus triggers.

I took the Cactus trigger set and my flash down to buy batteries and test them out to make sure that was the problem. Oh, I have a little confession to make: as I was messing around with the idea of putting them back into action, I noticed the transmitter light was dim…i.e. it had a battery in it too and it was going dead. I should have known it had a battery too, but it just never registered in my head. I had figured it was using the camera’s power. I should have realized it had a battery because you can trigger it even when it is not attached to the camera. Not too quick on that one.

Anyway, turns out my brand new receiver battery was dead, because I had left it to “on” the last time I used it…at least, I assume that is why it is dead with almost no use, even though it was not receiving anything…unless that transmitter button is getting pressed accidentally in the bag…hmm. I digress, but an important digression for your information’s sake, don’t you think?

Lesson 1: turn them off when finished and possibly keep that test button from accidental “testing”.

Anyway, I replaced the dead receiver and the dying transmitter batteries, and the triggers (no-so-miraculously) worked flawlessly. One more thing, though: when I put the dying transmitter battery back in, it would still trigger the flash, but if I pressed it fast, several times in a row, it would miss a few of the clicks. With two fresh batteries, it would trigger the flash as fast as I could click the little test button. BINGO!

Lesson 2: if your Cactus triggers are not firing 100%, try fresh batteries in both transmitter and receiver.

So, once I realized it was just an issue of dead batteries, I bought some spares and put them to a field test. I am referring to the shoot I set up to fix the horrible flop of a shoot a couple days earlier. Flop shoot = pop-up flash triggered. Looking back at the photos from the second shoot, they never missed a beat; there was the flash in every photo, even when firing three or four quick shots when the family was in action.

So, for all those times I have hinted on this blog that my little Cactus radio triggers were less than wonderful, I take it back. That was probably the best $40 I  have ever spent on camera gear. If you are interested, just run over to Midwest Photo Exchange (where the cool, off-camera flash kind of folk go) and search for “cactus”. And do yourself a favor: pay $15 more for a V4 set, instead of the V2s set, which I have. You may not know it, but there are several very practical, little updates that make them much more useful in the field.

Come on, stop dreaming about $1,500 cameras and ungodly-expensive lenses, and drop $50 to make just about any flash (even that stol borrowed one from your dad’s camera bag) transform your photos from plane-jane to rockin’-awesome.

My current humbling experience all started a few days ago with a wonderful meal and talk with a photographer friend of mine. It was not him, but just watching some of the videos he has produced recently really reminded me what a two-bit punk hack I am. It was not the technique, but how he captured the power of the story.

Then today, I shot a very “ok” family portrait session. That is “ok”, as in, I do not want to say more of what I really think. The harsh sunlight made things tough, not only for lighting, but for the quickly wilting subjects. Excuses aside, though, I really want to know what happened. How do I improve? What can I learn here?

One of the key problems was a lack of familiarity with my lighting equipment. Well, more accurately, I was so focused on trying to balance the flash with the blaring ambient, I totally lost connection with the subject. I did not direct them. I did not let them know what they should do. And, to top it all off, I was not really even paying attention to them when I put the camera up to my face (or before then either).

Ok. How to fix it, though? What are some keys to making it different, and I mean small practical things?

Limit location/scene. In an attempt to give the mother a wide choice of background, poses, and set-ups (for lack of a better word), which she expressly stated she wanted, I ended up magnifying my difficulty at getting the lighting right. What I should have done is pick one or two spots, the ones I knew would end up best in the end, and spend more time there. Then, after the lighting was set right, I would be free to interact and catch that nice moment.

Be the director. To help them be at ease and to have confidence in me, I must direct. If I notice somebody is not smiling, find a way to get that out of them (well, if you need a smile, which this photo was certainly expected to have). If they are all just standing straight, hands to their sides, in the classic boring pose (because the photographer did not know what better to do), I need to help position them, pose them, suggest movement, or whatever.

Well, there may be more things, but every other “should-a” I can think of really falls into one of those two. Honestly, I really think I am going to call them up, let them know I have some “ok” shots, but nothing really nice, and I would be more than willing to set up another shoot in the next couple days.

And for the cold-hearted motivation, as if I were not already motivated enough to want to make this right, I found out during the shoot they will be printing this photo with some printer in the US to show as an example to other families here in town of that printer’s services. In other words, if I can really excel in this shoot, my work would be displayed before a wide(r) audience, and I would be first in line to provide photographic services for their family and group photos. I am not terribly concerned about that (because I live and work in a different country anyway), but it would be throwing away an excellent opportunity.

So, to add on the title of this post a little bit, it is good to be humbled, especially publicly. That reveals the weak areas of our photography and, if publicly so, gives us great motivation to improve.

Feel free to leave your own comments below. And please, leave some negative comments. Positive comments are only good for buffering the hard stuff.

Looking for the Time Card

This was her favorite. Good thing, because I like to start strong. She liked the action, watching this guy hunt for his time card. She also likes (foreshadowing her dislikes) that he does not know I am there, primarily because she does not want think about a photographer in the scene, but to just be a part of the scene.

She also liked the framing. When she mentioned it, I realized the door looked very distorted. My mind started thinking through if it was barrel distortion because of the lens or just a strange angle that caused it, and then how to fix it. She liked it precisely because it was curved. It was not interesting if straight. Ok. I will leave it.

Punching In

I was personally waiting to see if the hand was too hard to notice, if a glace would pass right over it, but she did not have any problem there. She did not want to be this close in, though. She wanted to see the person checking in, not the hand only. She felt the focus was the clock and not the people. It made her feel like this person knows the photographer is right there, and it took her out of the story.

Talking Before the Shift

This was my personal favorite, but not my wife’s. Actually…the more I look, the less I like this one…do not know why. Again, she felt these two were almost posing. They know the photographer is there and are not natural. Interesting comment. It is totally natural. They knew I was there, yes, but were just talking. I do not know what other think, but I still find the comment interesting, because often the truth does not matter, the perception of what is going on is truth to the viewer.

Heading into the Factory

Her only complaint here was she wanted to see more people. Just one person did not cut it. I liked the lonliness of it…it is the midnight shift, after all, but I could not convince her.

Midnight Means Going Home for Many

Again, she wanted more people. I did too, for this one, but they left one by one, so there was little I could do. She did not dig the foreground parked motorcycle.

Standing Guard Till Morning Comes

Again, she felt like these two guys were almost posing. Again, they knew I was there, but I am pretty sure they did not know I was taking a photo. She (nor I) was very fond of the lack of action or their stance or whatever you want to call it instead of pose. They walked out and walked in. I thought I was going to get something else, but it just did not happen.

Overall, this story could be much stronger if I hit the shift change a few nights in a row. All these reflect about 20 minutes outside, with a good 15 minutes sitting around waiting for the shift change bell and some movement to happen. It was a helpful experiment for me, though, and is one more step in developing those story telling muscles.

The basic problem is that most cameras are set, by default, to a multiple focus point setting, meaning, a pathetic, little computer in your camera is deciding what in the scene needs to be in focus. I personally think my brain is a bit more sophisticated than my camera, and I would much rather choose for myself what is in focus. So, here is how I do that.

The vast majority of the time, I am set to a single, center focus point. I focus on the thing I want in focus, maybe the eyes if it is portrait or maybe on the point of action, then I keep that focus locked in and reframe the photo how I want it. You know that trick: half press to lock the focus, reframe, then full press when the framing and the moment is right.

I am always on a single point of focus, but not always in the center (though usually). There are a couple reasons I would move out of the center.

Cruising the neighborhood with the neighbor's dog.

Situation one. Just the other day, I was shooting a shot of a kid riding down the street on his bicycle. Now, you have to picture in your head what you want before you know where to move the focus point. I wanted a vertical shot, with him on the left side, riding toward the right. So, I moved the focus point to the left side, where he would be. I also had to set the camera to continual-servo focus (meaning the camera continually adjusts the focus instead of single-servo where it focuses once and holds that focus). Then, I just kept that selected focus point on him (on the left side of the frame) and let the camera keep that left focus point in focus till I had the framing I wanted.

Situation two, the other reason (I can think of) that you might want to change your focus point off-center. If you are shooting with a very open aperture, you will have a very shallow depth-of-field, right? Well, sometimes, that depth of field can be so selective that focusing in the middle then reframing the subject to the edges of the photo will be enough to actually throw the focus off. This honestly is not that big of a problem, but the more open your aperture, the closer you are to the subject, and the longer your lens, the more this problem grows. So, focusing on an outer focus point, closer to where you want to frame the subject, will ensure a sharper focus where you want it.

“Why,” you might ask, “are cameras set to multiple focus points, then, and what is the use of multiple points?” Well, my guess is that they are set to multiple by default becase, statistically, more shots will be in focus with multiple points (I think the camera just chooses the closest object) then if it was locked to the center. So, from the camera manufacturers’ point of view, that is fewer people thinking, “this camera stinks…it never focuses right.”

And the use of multiple points? Well, if you are a hot, shot sports shooter (or maybe wildlife?), this can come in handy, but even then, cameras have many variations of focusing with all those points to use for different purposes. I find it interesting that the new Nikons have 52 focus points! Yikes. I would feel so old school setting my camera to one itsy, bitsy focus point in the center…but I probably still would.

Next time you see a pro shooting, though, just watch. You will probably see the focus, reframe, and shoot movement, meaning, they are using a single focus point (or in the case of the new Nikons, maybe a small cluster of points), and then framing the photo how they want. That does not fit every single situation out there, but it certainly seems to be the norm.

Maybe you have the same problem I do. You do not have the Nikon D3 or the Canon 5D or some other full-frame, no-noise wonder, and moving your ISO up just a little turns your image into static. Do you want to keep image quality at its best (or pretty close) and stop sacrificing your pictures to the ISO noise gods? Here is what I do.

Before I give the tip, here is a good starter: buy fast glass. If you are on a budget, there are budget prime lenses out there that have pretty open apertures and can gain you a few stops of light over the cheap zooms.

So, you need to move that ISO 800 shot with its annoying noise back to an ISO 200, no noise shot? If your aperture is at its limit and you just cannot sacrifice the speed any more, just shoot the shot too dark. Exposure compensation is the answer (find it in your camera manual and figure out how to set it).

I know, it sounds backwards: “the shot it too dark so I am going to make it darker”, but it actually makes loads of sense. If you tell your camera it needs to meter minus two stops, then your speed can be two stops faster. Then, in post-production, you just bring the exposure back up. Sure, you get a little noise that way, but at least in my case, way less than if I had bumped up the ISO.

Disclaimer: if you shoot JPG, this trick is not really very helpful. Do yourself a favor; shoot raw. With raw, you easily have a couple stops to play with. I find (with my camera, anyway) that bringing a photo up three stops is just too much. That is when I would start to shoot 400, then compensate -2 on exposure, gaining three stops of light, total.

So, back to the nameless seasoned pro. He said they did not use light meters (they were not built in to the cameras, and no photojournalist had the time to be taking light readings for every shot). So, they would shoot 400 film, shoot it too dark, just guessing on the exposure. Then, when they developed the film (not making prints, just developing the film itself), they would leave it in the chemicals till it looked right. What I realized is that I am effectively doing a digital version of the same trick.

I knew I was not crazy.

[My wife] got the D40, it was an eBay buy. I wish that we had a better lens, it came with a lower end model. We are saving up and hoping to get a better one soon, they are all just so stinking expensive. It has been great, though, being able to catch those moments with [our kid] that you normally wouldn’t because of the slow shutter speed on the point and shoot digital. I know there are some ways to tweaking the camera so you can get a little better shot out of it, but I haven’t had the chance to play with it enough.

What new lens should my friend buy? Are there some not so expensive lenses out there for amateur photographers on a limited budget? I have just the answer.

Since we are speaking of a Nikon D40 (and the D60 would be the same answer), I would highly suggest a lens that Nikon just came out with a few months ago: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 G. That is techy gibberish to many of you, so I will break that down and tell you how that applies, but first, I will give the simple explanation.

The “standard” lens for 35mm film cameras is a 50mm lens, and it is standard because it gives a perspective very close to what the human eye would. That standard is dependent on the size of the film or sensor, though. Most digital cameras out there (except for some of the pro-level ones) have a smaller sized sensor, and the stardard length of lens is no longer 50mm. On the smaller-sized-sensor digital SLRs out there today (regardless of brand), a 35mm lens is going to give that standard perspective. Basically that standard perspective is not too telephoto (long) nor is it too wide angle (short). It is in the middle and great for wide variety of everyday shots.

So, that Nikon lens mentioned above is made specifically for the smaller sized sensor cameras. You get that standard perspective, with a very wide open aperture (that is the f/1.8 part), at a very cheap price ($200). That is a steal.

Nikon and Canon also have out cheap 50mm prime (fixed focal length, non-zoom lenses) lenses with a nice, open aperture: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D and Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. And when I say cheap, I am talking $100 kind of cheap. (note: See the comments below; Nikon D40, D40x, and D60 cannot auto focus with the 50mm f/1.8). It is a great addition if you just need more light than that cheapo kit lens will give you. The only downside is that 50mm on a smaller sensor is a little too long of a lens for many situations. Just set your kit lens to 50mm all day and shoot around and see what you think. Do the same at 35mm and see which you like better.

I talk a lot about aperture because it is really the most important part of the lens choosing process. The smaller that number, the bigger the aperture (hole), the more light the lens will let in. If the aperture is more open, that means either shutter speed can increase taking care of your blur problem or your ISO (film speed) can decrease thus keeping grain out of your photos. Lens prices are basically set by the aperture…just look for yourself.

The prices are great on these lenses, and you really get great quality for the money. More than likely, you will find yourself using this fixed length prime lens much more than your zoom lens. Once you get used to that wide open aperture, it is hard to go back.

The first day, about a week ago, things went ok…not great, but lessons learned. I also wanted to field test a pair of Cactus triggers. “What are those,” you might ask? With those, I can remote trigger my flash via radio (i.e. no cords). Those ended up incredibly frustrating, to be honest. They did not fire very consistently. When you read through discussions about these on Flickr, some folks love them and some hate them. They are consistent for some folks and inconsistent for others. For me, when they are needed, the break. When I am goofing around, they work flawlessly.

Wait, this was about the flash. I will get back to the story.
So, the second day comes along. Seeing as my radio triggers were not reliable, I decided to go optical. Meaning, I could use the pop-up flash from my camera to trigger a little optical sensor attached to the flash. I had heard it might not do well on a sunny day (and sunny it was), but it worked just fine, until…

Pointing down into a fountain (our backdrop), someone said, “Cooper, is that your…” There was no need to complete the sentence, everything went into slow motion and their words would have been incomprehensible, anyway. I calmly walked closer to the long, dark shape at the bottom of the water, then took a glace to where my tripod-flash-umbrella set up had been: nothing. It did not hit me till I saw the white (now folded up) umbrella sticking out from the tripod.

I tried to stay cool so my friends, for whom I was taking the photos, would not feel too bad. I layed down on my stomach and fished it out of the fountain. The flash was…wet. It is an interesting feeling to see water pouring from your equipment. I took the batteries out. That is only sensible, but I figure it will not make much difference with such a low power source and the fact they were already sitting in the water with the flash on anyway.

So, needless to say, I did not get much of a field test out of the optical flash trigger, but I pulled out my handy dandy coffee filter, slipped it over my pop up flash to soften the light, and used that for fill light every now and then.

I honestly thought the flash would be fine in the end. I unscrewed every screw I could find and it ended up looking like C3-PO after coming out of Lando Calrissian’s recycling room (if you are not a Star Wars fan, you can probabaly still figure it out). The trickiest part was getting the head open. The bottom was easy, but I never really did get that head open (I probably should have looked it up online, like I did the spelling of ‘Calrissian’ a few seconds ago). I finally figured the plastic cover where the flash actually comes out would just pop off, and it did, both of them.

I hair dried the whole thing till I was more than satisfied and when I put it all back together (it was not too bad, easier than getting it apart) it worked just fine. As a fun side note, sometime after I put it back together, I was looking for some manual or something for my flash online. I found out the red glass looking thing on the front is a built-in optical slave receiver. In other words, my little optical trigger I mentioned was a silly purchase, because my second hand Nikon SB-26 speedlight already has one built in! Sweet. I feel dumb for not knowing that already (I thought it was just a distance calculating light…which is also in there), but you can bet I will be putting that to work.

So, yes, your flash should be fine if you decided to drop it underwater like I did. Take it apart, hair dry that thing (though without the hair part), and I would guess it will be fine. Oh, I forgot to mention that a bad connection with the Cactus trigger the previous week was loose and I dropped it twice, once concrete, once grass. So, I can confidently say this Nikon SB-26 flash is a tough character.

My wife recently bought a point-and-shoot for family use–honestly, it is mainly for videos. When I was setting everything up for her, one of the decisions I made was NOT to use the highest image quality setting. Call me crazy. A few factors came into play: image quality, file size, and how big the photos might be printed.

I have already waxed on about the size of the sensor and how that affects image quality. What I still wondered was what the difference really was…I mean in real-life images. The settings I wanted to compare on our camera were the two 12 megapixel settings and the 6 megapixel setting (there is nothing in between). So, here you go:

Comparison of 6MP and 12MP images from a FujiFilm F50fd compact camera.

Those are all separate photos taken at the same time, from a tripod, with the exact same settings (as best I could do so with a compact camera which chooses some settings for you). So, the only difference should be the image quality setting.

Can I see a difference? Sure. On this camera the actual file size of those photos is approximately 1.2MB, 2.8MB, and 4MB, though size varies from camera to camera and photo to photo. Those look like a small difference right now, but 1000 photos later, that is gigabytes worth of difference, and if they are family photos, they are probably all going to be sitting on our laptop so we can show people. So, what I see is this: I can save a lot of space on the computer for a very small difference in quality.

And as for printing, well, never would one of these photos be printed more than an 8×10 inch size, and six megapixels is more than enough for that. So, that is not a problem.

So, my choice (for the point-and-shoot, compact camera) is to just shoot the 6MP setting. What do you think of the quality difference in the images above?

The depth of field is way too shallow, I now see. The tree bark works, but way too few of the leaves are in focus…I actually feel like no leaves are in focus. I shot at f/4, and really should have closed that down considerably. But, I was already at 1/40th of a second, and that was handheld because I did not carry a tripod on such a quick trip. So, f/4 was about the best I could do.

So, now I see the value of the nature photography pointers I have read before:

• use a small aperture for deep depth of field
• use a tripod

And though it was early-ish in the morning, I could have done a lot better if I were serious about capturing a great shot. Honestly, though, I was a guest in an unknown (till that night) home, and could not get out till they were up and the house alarm was off.

I think this photo could really be improved in another important way as well. I do not know what my subject was. My eye did not seem to be able to focus on anything when taking the shot, and I think that is reflected in the photo. I do not know where I am supposed to look.

Nice colors, but that is my best critique on this photo.

When I shoot sunsets with my film camera (with slide film), I seem to always come away with stunning colors. I shot sunsets about every other day for two or three weeks with my digital camera and came away with a few “well, that’s nice” photos. Am I the only one having trouble with this? I have heard answers suggesting white balance issues, changing the speed and aperture, and so forth, but nothing seems to really solve it for me.

After days of shooting, I finally took this one. I was just happy to have some color, but unfortunately, there is nothing at all going on in this photo: no subject, no action. A friend of mine shot this next one with a digital SLR, a Nikon D40 no less, and came away with a much better shot.

This photo is great! The small f/stop gives a very large depth of field, making the foreground sand as well as the far off clouds all in focus. Plus, what my photo lacked, there is something to look at, whether the sand, the waves, the clouds, or even the far off islands. And my favorite part is the color: it has the red we want in a sunrise, but is balanced nicely with the blue in the top right. Somehow, that blue clues us in that this was the “real” color of the sunrise. It was not falsely just tinted red.

What did he do right to accomplish this? Well, luck for one, because he was asking me how he did it. I tend to shoot my white balance in auto, and later adjust the raw file to the proper white balance, but that does not work for sunsets and sunrises, it seems. He shoots with one of the set white balance settings. He asked if it was ISO, saturation, vividity, white balance, or what, but my guess is white balance.

Maybe if we all carried around a gray card (a coffee filter is close, if you are el cheapo) and set our white balance for the situation, we could walk away with these colors consistently. That is my best guess. I am still working on it.

Why would I even bother with slides? Too 1970s for you? Well, for one, the quality still far surpasses digital cameras. And two (the real reason), I have a lot of slides and I actually want to view them instead of leaving them stored forever, lost to all memory.

Giants like Wal-Mart cannot do it, but the smaller shops like the local Walgreens can. Funny, but true. Wal-Mart does everything themselves, and slide processing is in too small a demand to justify the need for such equipment in stores across the country. Smaller processors, like Walgreens, know how to provide more options for their customers by simply contracting out the work.

I am not exactly in a major metropolis, so those two are basically my only processing options here locally. But, strapped for time because I would like those slides for a presentation in a few days, I will have to find another way. Thankfully, though, that presentation is in a big city, so I think I can solve all my problems there.

I actually already have my slides processed, but thinking it would take up less space to store them, I never mounted them, but just kept them rolled up in the film canisters. Bad choice. I have noticed serious scratching on my photos. Eeeks! So, I have finally decided to mount all my old slides to keep them from further deteriorating. Well, not only that, but unless I have them mounted, I will not be able to view my photos and enjoy images from years gone by.

Problem two was the slide projector itself. Basically, I figure there are hundreds hidden away here and there in dusty boxes and garage corners. So, all I have to do is ask around a little. I found one almost immediately, but I still need to do some looking to make sure I have a backup for the presentation. I do not really feel in the mood to put all my faith in a twenty year old machine. I would much rather put my faith in two twenty year old machines!

After the day was over and I had a little time to think through the experience, the biggest problem I had was too shallow a depth of field. The effect was great in a way: the background was nice and blurred and the depth of field really drew the attention to one person the in the photo. The problem was that only one person was in focus, rarely even two.

I had my f/stop opened wide much of the time. Most of the wedding was indoors, so the lighting was not so great, as we might expect. I needed a fast enough speed to keep from blurring the shots, which often left me sitting at an aperture of f/2.8 or less.

This problem can be solved several ways, really. I think the most common fix is a flash. I do not have an off-camera flash, and that would have saved me on the group shots. Most of my group shots did not have all the people in crisp focus. With a powerful flash, I could have closed the f/stop some and still have a multitude of options to keep the group well lit and in focus.

A flash is a must, but does not solve all the problems faced in weddings. Some photographers may feel free to do so, but during the ceremony, I would not fire my flash much anyway. A few flashes here and there would be fine, but too many and that annoying photographer would be stealing the attention from the couple. How else could you fix this?

Pump up the ISO. The negative is that the more we raise the ISO, the more grain we introduce into the photos. Still, if there is no other option, and if you need to close the f/stop some, this may be one of the only choices out there. I find my Nikon D100 introduces too much grain for me, though. So, I have come up with another fix.

Exposure compensation. I tell my camera to take the photos a stop or two too dark. Seem backwards? Well, let me give an example. If my camera meter said the scene looked right at a speed of 1/125 to my chosen f/stop of f/2.8, then telling it to take the photo a couple stops darker would keep the speed at 1/125 even when I close the f/stop two stops to f/5.6.

Then the photo is too dark, right? Yes, but I find that adding a couple stops of light in my raw photo editor gives me a much better photo than if I had just boosted the ISO. A new camera that allow less noise at higher ISOs would be nice, but till a Nikon D200 falls from heaven, I will just have to keep using the exposure compensation method.

I would completely agree with Antony Hands’s article, How to Shoot a Wedding (point #3), that f/5.6 should be the minimum for these groups shots. If I had shot mine at f/5.6, I would have had all my subjects in focus.

So, regardless of how we make it happen, we need to make sure our depth of field does indeed cover all the subjects. In my case, my main problem was with the group shots, but I had to be very careful even with the couple alone. If shooting at f/1.4 or f/1.8, I could easily have only one of the couple in focus.

It’s a nasty world out there; let’s make sure and focus it!

The explanation is quite simple, but what to do about it is not. Basically, the problem is that the camera is thinking. And evidentally, not fast enough, eh. So, what do we do about it?

While the camera is trying to focus, set exposure, and take care of all the other nifty chores compact cameras do for the users, your precious photo op comes and goes. When it finally does take the shot, we end up with a perfect shot of Uncle Bill’s bald spot, Little Bobby’s finger up his nose, or Betty and Suzy turning to say something to each other, because they think the shot has long since been taken.

One option to fix the problem, I guess, is to buy a different camera. But seeing as that probably is not going to be the preferred option for most of you, we will just move on.

There are several ways to try to work around the problem, but the best and most normal, in my view, but my name is Strange, has to do with how you focus the camera. Most folks see what they want and push the shutter to try to capture it. Yes, that is simple, and we might think the most simple approach would work best…but there is a better way.

Every camera I know of, that is, of the auto focus, auto exposure type, works best when we add one step into that process. When pressing the shutter, first press it down half way, at which point it will focus, but not take a picture.

Basically, you have just told the camera, “I am about to shoot this scene, could you get ready please?”. And it obliges. The focus and exposure are “locked” in. You hold the button right there and wait for that perfect photo. When you see it, press the shutter button the rest of the way down, and you will find the camera takes the photo much faster.

At least, that is what I would do.

Well, I sure hope this is not just some excuse, but I really think the solution to all my bad close up photos is my lenses. My lenses are not really made for this. I have a 50mm f/1.4 with a closest focusing distance of 1.5ft (0.45m), and an 85mm f/1.8 with a closest focusing distance of 3ft (0.85m). I think that is my problem. I just cannot get close enough.

First, I guess we should address the silly way close up photography is usually labeled: macro photography. That just does not make any sense to me: “macro” encompasses a large or broad area. I always thought this should be called micro photography.

Then, just when I thought I was the only one with this problem, I took a look through a Nikon lens brochure, where they call their close up lenses “Micro Nikkors”, and the style of photography they call “close up and macro shooting”. They even make the letter i in micro a different color to bring out the purposeful use of i instead of a. Actually, the brochure uses both words in the text, but it seems they use them differently, as if there is a subtle difference which has to do with the reproduction ratio (wow, big words). I have not quite figured that out. Anyway, back to our original question…

So, with no success taking really close up, detailed shots, let say of a flower, I have just backed off a little. Instead of digging into the details of the flower, I have taken a photo with a flower in it as the main subject. This is not really macro/micro photography. It is nice, but not the same.

Here is a photo demonstrating my point. This is as close as I can get. I would like to move another foot closer.

When digging through the specifications page at the back of the Nikon brochure, I think the whole micro/macro game comes down to a lens’s maximum reproduction ratio. To see what I am talking about, we could compare Nikon’s micro lenses’ ratio of 1:1 or 1:2 to my 50mm’s ratio of 1:6.8 and my 85mm’s ratio of 1:9.2! So, there is a little difference there.

Am I going to go buy a new lens just to take photos of flowers? Nope. Now, some would, but that is just not my photographic focus, so it is not really a need for me. So, what can I do with what I have?

One thing I want to try that would probably help my detail problem is playing with the f/stop. I cannot get clear details, but if I remember correctly, I was shooting at a very large f/stop. If I close down the f/stop, I will open up the depth of field, gain a lot more detail, and likely capture a nice, crisp close up shot.

So, for me, not having a micro lens, like the majority of the folks out there who just want to take a photo of that dashingly beautiful flower, I suggest moving that f/stop to a bigger number. I am going to play around with it and see what different f/stops to for me.

I recently took a couple photos of my newborn son—I have taken much more than a couple, obviously—which I wanted to print out for the grandparents. I had already spent a good amount of time on my computer adjusting the color and contrast to get the photos just were I wanted them, especially for the supple skin tones on my little boy’s face.

Off I go to Lab A. When I picked up my photos, the skin looked like my son had a rash or something. It had red blotches all over his cheeks. Now, I could use the original on the computer and play with the color to bring about the same effect, but definitely did not make it that way before taking it to the lab.

Forget that! Off to Lab B. Ten minutes later (they were not exactly busy that day), I found an all new color problem. My son’s very kissable little cheeks now looked lifeless. The bluish tint made me think of a dead body made up to look life-like. And the dead giveaway to what they were doing (I think) came in colors from the background.

The photos were of my son taking a bath in a blue, plastic tub. In my originals (that is, the JPG files I turned in to the lab), the blue of the tub was not really too blue, but rather more gray. The tub was in the shadows and the light was not lighting up the blue much.

In Lab A’s prints, the tub looked purple. In Lab B’s prints, the tub was bright blue. If two labs used the same JPG files to create two totally different products, there is only one conclusion: post processing. They were adjusting the color on my prints.

They want to help the customers have better looking photos and thus adjust the color (and who knows what else) to improve the photo. Problem is: they do not realize they have no idea what they are doing. They also have no idea that I have already played with the colors to make them just what want. They just want to help, but really, apply a very unprofessional job to my photos and ruin them. Which is more important, a plastic tub or a baby’s face?

What am I thinking, though. As if they are actually manually adjusting the color! They are probably pressing some “auto color” button on some software and letting a computer tell them the way the photo should look. For shame! Lab A’s software probably recognized the skin in the photo and made it more red, but babies’ skin tones are unique. Lab B’s software probably saw that nice blue in the background and just knew it needed to be more blue.

With one lab where I processed frequently, I told them very clearly when I turned in photos that I did not want them to alter my photos in any way at all. At times, they still did, but at least it lowered the chances of having a problem.

Then, though, you pass beyond photographic problems and pass into cross cultural communication!

In a sentence, film and processing in China are unreliable. In one of the copy cat capitals of the world, you never really know what is real and what is fake in China, including that Kodak or Fuji roll of film on the shelves. Most people ask, “How can film be fake? Film is film.” Not true. Film is specific chemicals at specific amounts on specific “papers”, and trickster Chinese film makers cut costs on chemicals. Though most people have never thought about the effects of these chemicals, they would still very easily notice the difference if they compared photographs taken with genuine and fake films. The color is washed out, giving them a bluish or gray tint, and often grainy.

But that is not all! The processing stinks too! Somehow, even the most beautiful photos turn awful in Chinese processing. My guess is the same. They cut costs by using a below standard amount of chemicals, thus leaving your photos abou the same as bad film.

Well, truth be told, I do not know exactly which problems are caused by bad film and which are bad processing, because having both problems it is fairly hard to isolate which is at play. And I am sure there are many quality films and processors in China, but with the simple fact that the fakes are so rampant, customers cannot trust their purchase.

So, for me, the choice to go digital was simple, to sidestep these problems. It was easy: if I take good photos, do I want something silly like fake film or low-quality processing to destroy what I do? No. So, digital is the answer; take the “processing” out of the hands of others.

And I have only begun to dig into the many different little digital processing controls I have over my photographs now. I did my time in the darkroom, and loved every minute of it, but nobody would argue that digital processing on a computer is far more convenient than a film darkroom! You cannot exactly carry that around with you as you travel.

I mentioned this in the last entry that I was taking advantage of the reliable film quality and processing here in Thailand. I miss film sometimes, and decided to get my film fix. After shooting up two very old slide rolls I had in my bag (old because I do not have anywhere to process them in China, so never shot them), I went out and bought a roll of Kodak TMAX black & white film.

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed shooting the film, but when I processed it, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the print quality. It had that look of a color negative printed with black & white processing: dull, no contrast…ugly. So, with prints I found completely boring, I suddenly got an idea: “post processing”.

I picked up a few pens sitting around and went to town on the two photos I had printed. If nothing else, this little experiment was fun!

This was a 9 second exposure using my tripod. I was originally intending to get the cars on the outside road shooting from inside my complex, but when I saw a car coming down the driveway from inside our complex I quickly hit the shutter release. I was using a wider aperture so as to get stuff in the background more in focus, and in that sense it worked although do you think it would have been better if I had left it out of focus? Anyways, I really liked the way the taillights have a sweeping fiery pattern.

Before I can mention anything else about the photo, I have to mention the one thing that sticks out the most: red. This is way too red, unless you have some point to make by having it red or in real life there are red lights all over the place. My guess is that the white balance setting on the camera is set for a different kind of light source.

And I cannot help but throw in a shameless plug for taking photographs in a raw format. I know my friend, who shot this, primarily shoots JPG, and color can be quite a pain to get back to where it should be. If this was shot in a raw photo format, it would be a simple fix to bring the white balance back to a more realistic spot.

And speaking of balancing color in night motion photography, I saw a night shot recently that really stunned me. Something about the color really leaped out and made me stare at it for a while. It was not an incredible photograph necessarily, but the variety of colors really gave it a nice touch. I would like to see that in the photograph above.

One more thing: my friend said that he used a “wider aperture” in order to get more things in the background in focus. I am guessing he just used the wrong word on accident. This is an age old problem of terminology with camera aperture. A wide open f/stop will have a smaller number, because it is really an inverse fraction. We speak of “F 16″ (not the jet, mind you), but that is written ‘f/16′. And looking at that lets you know it is a fraction. So, f/2 would be larger value than f/16. If you eat 1/16th of my food, I will not even blink. If you eat half of it, I might start to growl.

Anyway, I will assume that my friend accually meant to say a smaller f/stop (a higher number), which would indeed make more of the photograph in focus. With a night motion shot—well, I guess with just about any motion shot, night or not—I would certainly tend to move to the smaller f/stops. Since the object is moving and I want all that motion (all that blur) to be in the focus area, I will get the best results with f/16 or f/22, or some other small f/stop.