iPad for Photographers
Apple iPad
Apple introduced with the usual fanfare its new entry to the market: iPad. Many have started test-drooling over the pictures and Job’s cool presentation. Others, like me, see it as a stretched iPod Touch, which it is. I have read on various blogs “imagine taking your photography portfolio to a gallery on an iPad” and similar comments. Frankly, I think that will emphasize the technology of the presentation rather than the art in the photographs. After all, iPad will not be hanging on the wall, a beautiful print will.
One potential use of iPad highly interests me and I believe it will be the killer app for iPad. Add two features for photographers and it will start selling like hot cakes. First, add a CompactFlash and an SD card reader. This will make it irresistible to photographers. Imagine being able to store and back up your photos in the field and see them on a 10″ screen for field proofing. Second, put an application on iPad that allows it to directly tether to the DSLRs which will make it indispensable to the same crowd. Think about it, you are looking at a 10″ screen to preview your photograph while controlling the camera features from the same screen. You can do the same now but you need a laptop for that which is larger and bulkier. Until then, iPad will remain an oversize iPod Touch.
Are you listening Acer, HP, Dell, Asus, …?
Canon Flash Photography
Vivitar 283
Portable flash units have come a very long way from the days of the ever popular Vivitar 283 and the potato-masher Honeywell and Metz units. Although the earlier units had some level of automation, it was limited to what the flash could do on its own.
Metz Mecablitz Courtesy Peter Wallage
The new generation of flash units from the camera manufacturers take the automation to the level of integration. The camera and the flash unit(s) work as one, freeing the photographer from much of the tedium of flash setup and synchronization. Both Nikon and Canon systems include several dedicated units that can function with amazing ease and capability. The down side of this super integration is the intimidation that may arise from reading the flash manuals. They are chuck-full of information, settings, capabilities and also written in a technical tone rather than what would be easy set of instructions to follow.
Canon 580EX-II
To ease the way into single and multi-flash photography using these super capable units, I recommend a book by Lou Jones “Speedlights & Speedlites“. The book covers, in a color-coded style, both the Nikon and Canon flash systems. Interestingly, the book has two chapters. Chapter 1 deals with “one-flash” photography, and chapter 2 handles two or more flash setups.
It has many examples with diagrams and flash settings. It is an excellent read and a reference on the matter.
Being a Canon user of many years (OK, decades!), I am more interested in detailed explanations and capabilities of Canon gear. Not surprisingly Canon provides some excellent tutorials and information on Canon flash photography. Surprisingly, however, they make it convoluted to find this information even after one arrives at the related site. To save you the confusion (or to hide my thick-headedness) I will give you below links to specific pages where you will find much information on this subject. I am sure Nikon has similar resources for their users as well, you are on your own there. If you also own a new generation Canon cameras you are in for a treat; much of the flash control can be handled directly on the camera menu. This is far easier than trying to remember which button activates what, when, and when to turn the dial to make adjustments on the flash units.
- Flash Work you will find here general information on Canon flash systems and use
- EOS Speedlite System Tips where Stephen Wilkes and George Lepp share their thoughts and use of Canon flashes
- Fill-Flash use with EOS cameras and speedlites which is self explanatory
- Bruce Dorn Speedlite Videos, Part I: External Speedlite Controls A video tutorial
- Bruce Dorn Speedlite Videos, Part II: External Speedlite Ratio Controls The second part of the above
- Speedlite Tip Series, Part 1: Choosing the Right Flash
- Speedlite Tip Series, Part 2: Beyond the Instruction Manual
- Speedlite 580EX II External Automatic Flash Exposure Sensor
Get your flash unit out, it is indeed fully integrated and automatic. Flash photography is no longer banal, in-your-face, hit-or-miss, or too complex to use; you will be surprised with the results.
Customer orientation
I have known Photodex since the early days of computer graphics. They had one of the best, and quickest image viewers going, Compupic. It was a mainstay of my tool box and I recommended that to my friends who adopted it as well. I no longer use Compupic but I have been using another great product they make, ProShow. It comes in Gold and Producer versions and I use them to create the slide shows like those of Hagia Sophia. As an active member of the Photographic Society of Rhode Island, I got many users there and have established good relations with Photodex. They support PSRI through discounts and door prizes and we list them as one of our sponsors and promote ProShow and train members on how to use the product. They are terrific products for this purpose, I heartily recommend them to anyone interested in creating highly polished presentations with animation, transitions, and sound.
All this well and good, but I want to narrate something else that is not easily visible unless you experience it. Last week, I created a screen saver using ProShow Producer which would not install into Windows XP. I called Photodex and the tech support person recommended a process by which I could provide information to help them trouble shoot the issue. I followed the instructions and added a little more of my empirical trouble shooting results. I downloaded the latest version of Producer and was able to create the screen saver with that which installed properly. The support person helped me try a few other things, including a screen saver he created for me to try. He then asked me to download the trial version of the latest release of Producer and try it. Since I had already tried it, I gave him the result which was positive and added I would probably eventually upgrade the software so that I could do this kind of work.
The next morning I received an e-mail from him with a license code that would activate the latest version of ProShow Producer. A totally unexpected surprise! My version was about two years old. He had no obligation to give me a free upgrade to the latest version, but realizing that there was an unexplained glitch in the software that prevented it from doing what it was supposed to do. Apparently that was unacceptable to him and to Photodex to offer that upgrade, which I consider to be very generous. He did not even know of my relationship with Photodex on behalf of PSRI.
Companies like Photodex, and the support people like the one I worked with often get unmentioned in the sea of support disasters; so, I thought it would be a refreshing change for many to hear an extremely positive experience.
Thank you Photodex, thank you Jeremy.
Extra Memory for my Desktop: Update
In an earlier post I explained how I installed extra memory for better computer performance, that was last August. Since then my computer started acting strangely. Don’t get me wrong, the performance gains were real and when the computer was running it worked beautifully. The problem was with the cold boot in the morning, it would not start until it warmed up a little, taking upwards of five minutes of “hand cranking” to start. Once it started, there was no ill effects. When I had lots of work to do, I began leaving it on all the time to save the trouble of restarting in the morning. It ran for weeks without any problems. Read more
On Shadows and Clouds
I flew to and from Salt Lake City within the last few weeks. As I planned, I got a window seat to take photographs; there I found an infinitely variable, ethereal subject. Clouds, the nice puffy ones that dotted the sky created beautiful shadows down below, and through the openings in between them I could see and photograph them, clouds and their shadows. Most of the time I used my Canon G7, modified for infrared, which gave even more penetrating views of both the clouds and the shadows they cast. I took altogether over 300 photographs during the flights, mostly cloud shadows but also great views of natural and man-made shapes, forms, textures, and the abstract, fractal-like world they created. At the end of this post you will see a small collection of these photographs.
Shadows can be extremely powerful components of photographs, they evoke different feelings, and convey different meanings. Philosophers from Plato on, perhaps even from earlier time have used shadows as metaphors and written about them. They are indeed fascinating, now I am planning to acquire and read Seeing Dark Things by Sorensen. The more I thought about the cloud shadows the more special they have become for me. Cloud shadows are unlike any other shadow we normally see. In fact, photography is as much about the shadows as it is about the light reflecting off surfaces. Yes, sometimes the shadow may be so diffuse, so soft we may think that there is no shadow. Make no mistake about it, if light strikes an object it must cast a shadow, no matter how soft or diffuse. What distinguishes the cloud shadows from the shadows of most objects we see around us (including our own shadow of course) is their continual change and eventual disappearance. I do not mean the disappearance of the shadow only, but also, and more emphatically the disappearance of the object that casts the shadow along with the shadow. Read more
Extra Memory for my Desktop
(After reading this, you may also want to read the update that I posted.)
This morning I added extra 2GB of RAM to bring the total memory to 4GB total. I made sure that I purchased the same type of memory as the originals, Corsair TWIN2X2048 from NewEgg.com. NewEgg is a great place to buy stuff, they really care about their customers. I have a story to prove it.
After installing the memory I did a Google search on whther further steps were necessary. The properties of my computer showed the total memory as 3.25GB, but I wanted to make sure. Good thing I did. There is a file in the root directory of the boot drive, typically drive C:, called boot.ini. It instructs Windows XP on special steps of features to enable during the boot time. There appears to be two relevant soft switces that may need to be added, they are /PAE and /3GB. They are simply added to the end of a line in the boot.ine file. So, my boot.ini line looked like the following, your boot.ini file may be different: Read more
How to Use a Polarizing Filter
What is polarized light
We see and photograph reflections of light from the surfaces surround us. If objects did not reflect light we would not see them. Upon reflection, however, the quality of the light may change with undesirable side effects for photography. Before it reflects from a surface, light wave moves in all directions very much like a pipe cleaner with its bristles coming out in all directions. When it reflects from a surface, depending on the angle, reflective surface qualities, our angle of observation, the part of all of the light may become polarized. A polarized light wave no longer moves in all directions but in one direction much like a recording tape, flat. Read more
Imagine
Digital photography certainly opened new horizons on imaging and gave photographers a very powerful set of tools. We enjoy the quality and spontaneity of digital cameras and the software to handle small or extensive image processing has improved greatly. We can create stitched panoramas for wide field of view photographs, or use software to generate high dynamic range images that yield images of great tonal spectrum and detail. All this has been really great, but …
… imagine the next generation of cameras that, by using more powerful on-board computers, could converge computing and photography. As I write this piece, researchers are busy working on various experiments, experimental cameras that are collectively called “computational photography.” Where there is now some time and space separation between the taking of the photographs and later processing on a separate computers, the new generation of cameras will likely merge these separate activities into one device.
These cameras that bring discrete steps together into a seamless process will bring some very exciting capabilities to photography. Imagine the following:
- A camera that can record scenes with 10-12 f-stop brightness range, maybe even more
- A lens that captures an image with information that comes from three separate points and can generate a 3D rendering of the subject that can be seen from different angles
- A camera that allows photographing a scene and later deciding on the plane of focus
- A camera that captures 360 degree horizontal field of view and 200+ degree vertical
- A camera that captures a group photograph where everyone’s expression is as desired, no closed eyes
Now, imagine that these are not some fancy of my imagination and they actually exist!
And you thought the digital-vs-film debate was heated…
Quick Tip #3
When it comes to camera gear cleanliness and hygiene, we mostly think about cleaning the lens. That is of course important and should be done regularly and with great care. Another item that needs at least occasional cleaning has emerged after the advent of digital SLRs: the sensor. Sensor dust bothers most, if not all digital photographers. As concerned and sometimes consumed as we are about clean lenses and sensors, the exterior of the camera and lens gear may not get the necessary attention they deserve. These surfaces are not as sensitive to scratching, practically any soft cloth can be used to dust them.
I have found inexpensive cosmetic brushes sold at drugstores very convenient to dust off the exterior surfaces of my cameras and lenses. These brushes come in different fullness and size depending on the purpose. I carry a couple of them in my camera bag to dust off the gear. DO NOT USE THESE BRUSHES ON YOUR LENS GLASS OR FILTERS. They may possibly do damage to the coating.
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