Pascal Photography Studio

The quick way to publish to Facebook with Windows Live Essential

For those that are as lazy as I am there are easier ways to upload photos to Facebook or any other social sites. If you happen to have Microsoft Windows XP or greater and do not have Windows Live Essential yet download it now!

The important part of Windows Live Essential in this case is the Photo Gallery once configured it will allow you to upload your photos to Facebook in a second without having to worry about resizing and installing Java on you machine and so on. And if you realy adventurous have a look at the beta, not covered here.

So now that you have the Windows live Photo Gallery installed, what now? Open it and let it index your Image folder, it may take a while so prepare a tea for yourself.

Now comes the harder part, close Windows live Photo Gallery. Head over to http://liveuploadfacebook.codeplex.com/ download it and install it.

Open Windows live Photo Gallery, go to Publish –> More Services –> LiveUpload to Facebook in the menu, follow the instructions and voila, you are ready.

Enjoy the uploading…

The triangle of light, overview.

In the days of film, there was only tree things that a photographer had to worry about once the film was inserted. These were how many shots do I have left, getting the exposure and aperture right and getting a beautiful photograph goes without saying but this is a technical post and we will forgo the actual photograph framing, beauty and quality for a while.

In the digital age, not much has changed except that we are no longer limited by film but there is a new factor, ISO. In the analogue days this was a constant once the film was in the body. This brings me to the triangle of light exposure, aperture and sensitivity.

Each of these factors have now become vital from the time you pickup your camera. Each have their own pros and cons, our jobs as photographers is to mitigate these to achieve the best possible photograph.

Let’s talk about each factor individually before we address them in unison.

• Exposure, the time taken to capture the image, measured in seconds or parts thereof.
  

  	Pro	Cons
  Higher Speeds (1/1000s)	Freezing motion	No low light capability
  Lower Speeds (2s)	Low light capability	Motion blur

• Aperture, the amount of light allowed to traverse to the sensor at any time, measured in f-stops or parts thereof.
  

  	Pro	Cons
  Higher Apertures (f/1.4)	Low light capability	Low depth of field
  Lower Apertures (f/22)	High Depth of Field	No low light capability

• Sensitivity, the light sensitivity of the sensor, measured in ISO
  

  	Pro	Cons
  Lower ISO (100)	Sharper image, no noise	No low light capability
  Lower ISO (1600)	Low light capability	More noise, less sharpness

I will go deeper on each subject in further posts.

So what does it all mean? Generally, it means that, as photographers, we often have to compromise on something. The aim is to get the middle of the triangle all the time, but it is seldom possible.

The good news is that there are very good tools for one of those factors, noise…

Macro photography extension tubes.

Yesterday, I tried something new, something I had never done in photography. True macro photography. And though my shoulder, back, neck, hand and right arm are complaining today I am thrilled with what I have learned and achieve.

So what have I learned? Well how about a short list of things you have to consider when making macro photographs:

1. The gear.
   • I do not have millions to spend on another lens, particularly when it would be a specialised one that would not be used often. So opted to go the extension tube route, a set of Kenko to be exact, why these? because they have the necessary connections to the lens, so you can still control your Depth of Field and, though completely futile, the auto-focus still works. But when you are 1 cm away from your subject auto-focus just hunts, even with a Canon EOS 7D.
   • Use a 70- 200mm with a f/2.8, it will make your life easier, I started with a 24-70 that I could only use between 50 and 70mm.
   • Use a tripod!
   • And have something (or someone) to give shade when required, which I found was most of the time.
2. The technique:
   • Pick one or more extension tube, I would recommend the shortest to start with, put your choice of lens on and find a really small flower or use a book and focus on the text, it makes for interesting photographs too.
   • Set the whole gear up on your tripod.
   • Set your focus ring to the closest possible point in manual, no kidding.
   • Use your zoom ring to focus, it took me a while to get that, forget about the focusing ring. If you cannot get focus you are either too close or to far, you will also find that you need to change distance if you add or remove tubes. As my instructor said a zoom between 80 and 130mm works best, find your lens sweet spot if you are not using a pro grade lens (I find Canon’s EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L lens perfectly suited).
3. The catches:
   • DOF, I tried to change it from f/2.8 right down to f/22 I could not see a difference.
   • Because of the above, if you are using all 3 extension tubes, I did not check with different combinations, you end up with a depth of field focus area of about 5mm, believe it or not a bee’s back side and it’s wings can be in perfect focus but not it’s head, so be careful with that.

And that is it, go and try, it’s loads of fun and your garden is the first please to visit, I know it’s a long trip. By the way, none of the photos below have been tempered with outside of being resized, what you see is exactly what the camera gave me, no colour calibration either than white balance set to day light, the camera used was a Canon EOS 7D.

Click on photos to enlarge

Click on photos to enlarge

Geotagging photos

This is the follow up from my previous post on geotagging.

I had scheduled some time during the weekend, an entire day to be honest, to do some photography and try to geotag… First, the weather was not on my site, cloudy and threats of rain but this did not stop me. Batteries charged, GPS tracking on, backpack ready and off we went, more about the places we visited in the next few days. Even if the photos were not great my geotagging experiment would yield results.

There are a few issues with geotagging that one needs to be aware of:

• Synchronise the Camera’s Time with your GPS!!! I cannot stress that enough.
• Keep the GPS on tracking all times.
• Make sure the GPS is always on you, I forgot it in the car once and it skews the locations.

That will allow you to have all the necessary data to enable you to go the geotagging  when you get back to your computer.

After the photos are downloaded to your computer the possess is rather simple, download the track data from your GPS to your computer, I used Easy GPS for that task, it is free, supports wide array of GPS units and works well. I would advise to save the GPX file in the same folder as the photos, it will make it easy to find it later.

Next comes the synchronisation of the photos and the location stamping, for that I used GPicSync. GPicSync is very straight forward and supports Jpeg pictures and main RAW files format as well as being free. How to geotag? Select the GPX file, select the picture folder and let it go it’s job. Beware of the time it takes, I did a full 8GB of photos, about 350 RAW and JEPG (700 files) in about 1 hour, it is a slow possess. Also remember to set the UTC Offset and I set the time difference to 600 because I was in a few buildings.

The catch, if you have downloaded the photos using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, you will have to refresh the metadata after the geotagging process.

The conclusion is that my Gramin eTrex C will now be a permanent feature in my camera bag, the geotagging process is simple enough to warrant it.

And now for something completely different… Geotagging

So I lie a little, it’s still about photography.

I have a conundrum, when I do have the chance of doing some photography for fun I am usually nowhere near home and to be honest with you when I get home I have little time to do post-processing and no time to geotag. You would of noticed that I try to give a location in all my photographs.

So here is my solution:

1. Use a BIG monitor, 22inch +
2. Use Adode Photoshop Lightroom 2
   I am sold, that is it. It is the best photography related software I came across for the PC, MAC guys sorry I do not have a MAC so I cannot try Apple’s Aperture. From sorting, tagging to adjusting and publishing, it does 95% of what I need. Adobe, you should include a stitching utility though, really. 
3. When sorting if it does not catch your eye in the first 5 seconds, forget it.
4. Use a preset workflow when importing.
5. Geotag your photographs using a GPS to record location.

And here is the catch, to use a GPS to geotag you need a GPS capable of either creating a trail (track) or that knows when you shoot. I had a look at on camera solutions, expensive to tell you the truth. I would rather spend the money to a new wide-angle lens.

But wait, I own a Garmin Vista C, sure it’s not new but it works and it tracks movement! It might not be as glamorous as a Jobo but at least I do not need to have further expenses, I found some good resources on line to take the GPX file and auto geotag my photos. And I am going to try it this week-end.

I thing to remember when going it this way, synchronise the Camera’s time to the GPS!

Further on my experiences soon.

About photographing marine wildlife from terra-firma…

This was my first time trying to get photos of marine wildlife. I learned a couple of things trying to get them whales when they breach. I thought I would share them with you…

1. Do not use a tripod!
   OK, I lie, I would use a tripod if you have it fitted with a Wimbley Head and a 800mm weighing a ton, I do not have either as both have seriously prohibitive prices. The truth is the tripod will be in your way.
2. Do not look through the viewfinder to search!
   You will miss the action, rather scan that large ocean, when you see something point, shoot and hope that you got it in the frame.
3. Set your camera to continuous shooting.
4. Set your camera to centre focus
   Actually, now that I think about it, is there any other settings? At least for a wildlife photographer.
5. Pick a good sensible exposure.
   Around 250ms and up to catch the action, the higher the better.
6. Do not go to the full extent of your zoom.
   You can always crop it later… Try Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, it changed my mind about workflow and post-processing, it makes it so easy.
7. Try to be on a high point with a wide view.
8. And try to be there on a sunny day, I was not and it unfortunately shows…

All of that because marine wildlife moves bellow water and you cannot predict where or when thing are going to happen.

Good shooting to all.

Cross-posted from www.onlyinsothafrica.com

Some post-processing comparisons

I am by no means a post-processing master, I have only started to do post-processing in the last few months an found it more then necessary on most images I take, not that the photo is bad. Post-processing allows to add so much more vibrance to photos, some may call it cheating, I used to, I do not believe it anymore.

For example take this photo (all photos have been resized to 600×400 pixels):

No post-processing

High Pass Sharpening with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

Post-processed with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 all automatic, maybe a little too sharp

Post-processed with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.4 all automatic

Tone-mapped with High Dynamic Range in Photomatix Pro 3.2 using 3 photos.

Exposure Fusion with Photomatix Pro 3.2 using 3 photos.

Personally the Exposure Fusion and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 are my favourite, however for Exposure Fusion as for High Dynamic Range  it takes at least 2 identical photos at different exposure like HDR to achieve any results, that means using a tripod and ideally taking 3 to 7 photos at different exposure to get the best results and I will need to buy Photomatix Pro 3 as i am only running the trial at this time, see the watermarks?

I would also love to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 but the premium is preventing me right now, the demo is great though, I love it.

I still have so much to learn from post-processing, next thing you know I’ll be using Photoshop