Natalie Norton, author of the widely popular mini-series of articles titled Moving Toward Manual Settings, has released another installment over at Digital Photography School.  The topic of this article:  ISO.  Many digital cameras have the ability to alter the ISO on the fly.  But many don’t fully understand its purpose.  Natalie does a great job of introducing young photographers to the concept of ISO and clearly outlines the trade-offs of using high and low ISO settings for your photos.

Read the Article:  Moving Toward Manual Settings:  Understanding ISO (A Beginner’s Guide)

In response to yesterday’s syndication of Wired’s article, Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End, I did a lot of thinking.  Subconsciously, the topic is a soft spot for me.  I really believe that many people don’t really know what they have in their hands.

Professionally, I am a Landscape Architect (there’s a point here, don’t worry).  Those who don’t really understand what I do like to sum it up as best as they can.  They’re almost never on the mark unless they, themselves, are Landscape Architects or are married to one.  But humans try to quantify everything in order to understand.  So their minds will affix to one specific detail:  How many clients do I have?  What’s my favorite tree?  Public sector or private sector?  It does not matter how you look at it, you can’t understand the big picture from any of those details.  As far as they’re concerned, I might as well mow lawns.  I have yet to meet a Landscape Architect who mows lawns.  Those guys are Landscape Contractors.  Without the education, training and experience to back them, they will not be able to do what I do.  I refer to those guys as “Guys with Trucks”.  They can do some of what I do, and they may even be able to do some of that well.  But they will always just be guys with trucks.

Okay, Travis…how does this relate to the photography world?  Well, consumers are very much like anyone trying to assess my job.  They don’t fully understand the big picture so they affix their minds to one specific detail that can be quantified and compared - in the digital camera world,  the megapixel reigns as king.  But it does not tell the whole story.

If you are not willing to learn every aspect of a camera, then you cannot make a true assessment of the product.  If you cannot tell me without hesitation the crop factor of your camera’s sensor, then you haven’t done your research.  You may as well be just another “Guy with a Camera”.

[Read more →]

Wired Gadget Lab has a really great post about the megapixel wars between camera manufacturers. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Megapixels, like megahertz before them, are the big consumer swindle of the camera world. The first thing anyone asks me when they see my Canon G9 is “How many megapixels does it have?” My answer, 12, causes a swoon. The trouble is, I neither want nor need that many. My Nikon D60, with just 10 megapixels, takes better pictures, especially in low light. In fact, when Nikon announced its new P6000 two weeks ago, I groaned when I read the sensor size: 13.5 megapixels. All those extra dots add up to one thing: noise. Here we take a look at the advantages of smaller pixel-counts, and what they mean for the future of photography.

Read the Article: Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End (blog.wired.com)

Unfortunately, megapixels are a bit of a bench mark that the consumers understand.  Key word:  consumers.  What separates consumers from the pros is that they don’t necessarily or always understand the big picture.  And the big picture is that the sensor’s size is only one aspect of the camera.  This article is one that really hits the nail on the head.

The team at Pro Photo Life created an awesome video tutorial having to do with outdoor portrait photography.  Portrait photography is a challenging discipline as it is, and outdoor sessions can be even more complicated.  But the end results are stunning.  The tutorial and video linked below is a really simple and easy to understand tutorial that will help you get started.  It will outline the equipment you will need and how to use it effectively during your session.

Read and view the tutorial:  Outdoor Portraits #1 (prophotolife.com)

Thanks to an awesome post at Pro Photo Life, I learned a really cool and interesting technique to do Extreme Macro Photography (you gotta watch the video on that post).  In short, if you have a telephoto or zoom lens and a shorter prime lens, you can place them face to face (zoom/telephoto mounted) and get really close-up.  You have to focus by moving the camera towards or away from the object, but it’s possible to do macro photography in this manner.  It’s very difficult to get used to and it’s hard to keep the camera steady, but the results are amazing.  Also, you have a very narrow depth of field (millimeters deep).

In my case, only the center of the image is often in focus because of the curvature of my prime lens (50mm).  And since my prime lens is significantly smaller than my zoom (the prime is a 52mm ring while the zoom is a 67mm ring), I get some really severe vignetting around the edge.  But I’m having a lot of fun with the technique.  One day, I’ll get a real macro lens…but for now, I just saved myself a couple of thousand dollars.

Here’s one of my first trials (I have more coming).