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December 18, 2011
Vivian Maier exhibition in New York
One of the most interesting stories unfolding in photography in recent years, was the accidental discovery of an incredible body of work by an unknown photographer, Vivian Maier. Incredible in terms of quality and the sheer volume of photographs. If you’re not familiar with the backstory - in 2007, John Maloof, a real estate agent in Chicago, who was working on a project documenting the one neighborhood in Chicago, discovered and bought a vast collection of negatives and prints of a completely unknown photographer, Vivian Maier.
What makes this story so interesting, is that Vivian Maier had an eye for street photography on par with the great names in photography. Then there is the fortunate twist to the story, in that the images and negatives landed up in the hands of someone like John Maloof who realized what a treasure he had stumbled upon and took care of this legacy with the attention it needed.
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June 22, 2011
photo session with the Fuji X100 – camera review
First of all, for those who haven’t heard of the Fuji X100 (B&H) yet, it is a beautiful retro-looking rangefinder-mimicking 12 megapixel digital point & shoot camera (with a fixed 35mm equivalent f2.0 lens), that gives remarkable image quality. That about sums it up.
For all those reasons, quite a buzz developed around this camera. Quite unlike anything since … oh, the Leica X1. Or the Olympus Pen EP-2. Or the Sony NEX-5. There was greater excitement building up around the Fuji X100 though than other cameras, specifically for its looks initially. And then when news hit about the incredible image quality, the excitement and interest became more substantial. It’s a hot item right now, and for good reason. But more about the details and specs of this camera later on.
The reason why I bought this camera – well, the way I justify it to myself even though I have several Nikon D3 bodies and a Canon 5D mk II – is that I wanted a Day Off Camera.
My usual day working as a photographer, is where I’m slinging heavy cameras around and running myself ragged. Or else, a working day is where I slump in front of the computer. Because of all that, I’ve felt this need to take a day off during the week. On this mid-week “weekend” day, I would just like to roam around New York with a camera and take photos, and have lunch and relax. But the camera shouldn’t be a heavy Nikon D3 with a zoom lens. That would just be too much physical effort again. (As it is, I have tendonitis in my right elbow from not carefully handling the big cameras with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens.)
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So for a while now, I’ve been looking for a light-weight, top quality camera. My Day Off Camera. With the Fuji X100 (B&H), I finally felt I might have it. A stylish camera that is fun to play with, and gives great images.
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Before I even got to photograph a wedding with the Fuji X100, I had a brilliant idea for a review of this camera. I wanted to do a photo shoot with Anelisa. Now the twist here is that I wanted it to be a play on the idea that this camera is ideal for surreptitious street photography.
The styling of the Fuji X100 is like the classic rangefinder cameras which were the tools of the trade of the street photographers. However, I live in New Jersey. This land of suburbia and shopping malls isn’t exactly the kind of place where you can roam around the streets on foot with a camera, snagging images which are wonderful slices of life. Besides, street photography is tough. You have to pound the city pavements for months on end, looking for those interstitial moments where everything in the frame intersects just perfectly. It is long hard work building up a portfolio of street photography that doesn’t just consist of random boring snaps of stuff and people.
The brilliant idea was to test the Fuji X100 out as this inconspicuous and innocent looking, yet very professionally capable camera … by photographing Anelisa in a shopping mall in New Jersey. Doing this photo shoot without being noticed by the security guards and getting kicked out, would need some non-chalant moves by the photographer and model … and a camera that doesn’t draw attention. If you pulled out a big DSLR with a telephoto zoom and started to direct the model, it will surely be only a minute before security guards accost you and ask you for your permit and proof of insurance. Life in America.
Anyway, as I said, the idea behind the shoot was a tongue-in-cheek reference to this camera being this surreptitious street photographer’s camera. But in a New Jersey shopping mall. I know, I know, it’s not the same. But, just go along with the idea …
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June 7, 2011
how to carry your camera over your shoulder
An interesting comment came up in the article on choice of lenses for wedding photography. The observation was that the photographer, Lou, felt like he was the proverbial bull in a china shop when he carried two cameras over his shoulder. With the lenses protruding on either side, it was tough going through doorways without knocking something.
There are numerous camera strap solutions available on the market – rapid straps and holster systems. Most of them work well. I still like the old-fashioned camera strap on the camera. One thing I should mention here is that I really got to like the way the Canon bodies work. Attaching the strap to the bottom of the camera makes absolute sense. Then the camera dangles vertically, and it is easy to swipe the camera to the side under your elbow when it hangs from your shoulder.
I liked this so much that I got the Camadapter place to attach to the bottom of my Nikon bodies. This allows my Nikon cameras also to dangle vertically from my shoulder. Perfect. If I had to choose from scratch again, I’d probably settle for the Kirk plate (B&H). This too has a place for the camera strap to loop around, at the bottom of the camera. Perfect.
Now, it might not be immediately obvious when you pick the camera up and hoist it over your shoulder, but there are two ways to sling the camera …
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April 19, 2011
Last year this time, Stephanie Zettl, a more-than-occasional guest on Tangents, wrote an article with instructions on how to turn your D-SLR into a digital pinhole camera. The article was quite successful in that Gizmodo USA, Japan and Australia referenced the article! Well, Stephane is back with a follow-up article.
Stephanie is one of the top wedding photographers in St Louis, MO
digital pinhole photography day
I know what you were thinking. You were worried that we would forget World Pinhole Photography Day. But fear not!
For those of you that want to put it on your calendar, World Pinhole Photography Day is the last Sunday of April. It will take place on April 29th in 2012.
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April 12, 2011
New to flash photography? Where to even start …
In preparing the material for the just-completed webinar, Don’t Fear Your Flash, I had given some thought to where I should start with the material. Flash photography on one level is so simple once you “get it” … but from the outside, it can look intimidating and complex. I feel that flash photography is one of those subjects which start to make sense once you grasp a bunch-of-things simultaneously. But how to explain it all at once so that it makes sense?
So I wondered about where exactly I should start the material for the webinar. What should I start a seminar with when I have a 90 minute time limit? Camera settings? Aperture, ISO and shutter speed settings? Manual flash vs TTL flash? Metering for flash and ambient light?
During a test run with the Clickin Moms team who had arranged and hosted the webinar, I had to check voice levels, and was told to say something. I just started riffing on the idea of starting the webinar … and as I said, “where do we even start?” to the imagined audience, it hit me .. that’s exactly what we need to do. We just have to start. We just have to take those first photos!
We can spend too much time caught up in first trying to understand all the technical aspects and all the nuances of lighting. We can be too intimidated by all that to actually use a flash … when all we need to do as a start, is to actually start using the flash!
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March 20, 2011
on-location headshots that work (w/ Meagan Lee)
This image is from the recent photo session with Meagan Lee, getting headshots for her portfolio. While this specific photograph is perhaps not useable as a headshot, I loved the way the wind whipped her hair around.
An uncomplicated portrait made stronger with a few things working in its favor:
- effective off-camera lighting via a softbox,
- a complimentary but non-intrusive background,
- strong diagonal lines created by Meagan’s pose.
With that, this photograph again shows a simple and effective method for great portraits on-location:
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February 4, 2011
The previous post about metering modes was all set to be part of the on-going theme where I look at search engine queries, answering a selection of 10 questions more specifically. But then it expanded into something longer than just a quick reply. Same with today’s post. It was going to be a short explanation, but then expanded into something which is probably better as a stand-alone post. The question was stated in an interesting way:
do natural light photographers always use fill flash?
The question curiously implies that you might not find natural light which is perfect. However, as photographers, that is something we’re constantly searching for: perfect light. It is out there, somewhere. So, resisting the temptation to just answer with a cheeky “no”, let’s consider an example of when you would not want or need fill-flash.
The thing with natural light, is that you have to look at it. You have to look at the direction of light. And see whether it gives you the quality of light that you need …
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February 2, 2011
which metering mode to use -
Matrix / Evaluative, or Center-weighted, or Spot-metering?
I noticed that search engine query come up in my web-stats – ‘which metering mode for outdoor photos’. So it might be a good idea to answer it specifically. Which metering mode should you use for outdoor photography? Or for that matter any kind of photography?
My approach is quite simple: Since I’m using manual exposure mode nearly exclusively, no matter which route I take to get to a specific shutter speed / aperture / ISO combination … I would be getting the exact same exposure regardless of which metering mode was used.
In this way, the metering technique is the essential factor, not the metering mode …
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January 11, 2011
aperture and depth of field
A question that came up in the forum recently was whether an 70-200mm f4 zoom would give you the same kind of look that an f2.8 zoom would.
For me, the f2.8 aperture is essential, especially with a telephoto zoom. For the same scenario, it gives me a higher shutter speed than the f4 zoom. Or I can use a lower ISO. More importantly, since I often bounce flash in large areas, the f2.8 aperture gives me more chance of successfully bouncing my flash than an f4 aperture would.
But what does the change in depth-of-field look like?
Keeping in mind that the how much the background appears to be blurred, depends on a few things:
– the chosen aperture. The wider the aperture, the shallower the depth-of-field will be, giving a more blurry the background. (This is the main factor that affects how much the background will be blurred.)
– how far your subject is from the background,
– your chosen focal length.
– The bokeh of the lens will also affect whether the background appears more blurred, or less. (Note that bokeh and shallow depth-of-field are not the same thing.)
The change in depth-of-field is incremental. If you had to look at a photograph showing amazingly thin depth-of-field, you wouldn’t be able to tell just from the photograph alone, whether f2 was used or f2.8 … but a side-by-side comparison will reveal the answer. An individual image won’t. However, it will be obvious when an image was shot at f 8 or f11 (on a 200mm lens for example), compared to either f2 or f2.8 … we should be able to recognize that a shallow depth-of-field was not used on the f8 or f11 image.
There are hordes of examples of how depth-of-field changes with aperture. But I thought it might be interesting to see with an overlay of images, just how much the depth-of-field appears to change …
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January 7, 2011
Kate – a photo shoot in New York
Kate is from Ukraine and has a deep fascination for New York. As a present, Kate’s sister flew both of them out for a vacation here … and had me photograph Kate around New York yesterday. The idea was to get a mixture of portraits of Kate and some photos of Kate in obvious New York locales.
We started off in the Meat-Packing district because I wanted a photogenic spot that wasn’t too crowded during a weekday (in winter), so we could have an easy start to the photo session. Since Kate might not have been experienced with photo shoots, I thought this would be the gentlest start. From there we wandered around a few other chosen spots.
Shooting on my own, I brought along a 70-200mm f2.8 and a 24-70mm f2.8 and two speedlights. Even though this winter’s day was slightly overcast, giving us soft light, I still didn’t want to rely entirely on just the available light …
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