Odd title I know, it just that it’s been a hard, very hard, 2 weeks. I have had no time to even open my camera bag, let alone shoot with the LensBaby. So forgive me for not posting some photographs, how-to’s or experiences. Tomorrow is another day, maybe I will find some time, I can only hope. Maybe I’ll even find some inspiration… I saw a rainbow today and went “awesome” and carried on walking, that is bad, very bad.

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My house is reasonably big but in all honesty, I have no space for a permanent photography studio. Ideally, you will need a 5 by 5 or 6 meter area, that is 30 square metres, who has that spare?

So, I temporarily convert my garage into a photography studio, it is 6.5 by 6.5 wrapped with cupboards all around but it still leaves me with plenty space to work and it’s cheap. One thing I had to do was to add wall plugs all around and dedicate a trip switch. Try sharing a 15 amp trip switch with 900 Watts of big flashes, power trips no flash goes off… You get the picture.

So what will you need to transform your garage into a functional studio?

1. A backdrop fame, they not too expansive (cheaper than a studio).
2. Various backdrops, I use black (my favourite by far), white and green Chroma key, I can change them in minutes should I need to, mine are in light cloth so they are easy to store and carry.
3. Strobes and stands, I use 3 x 300 watts, I do not see the need to go above that I barely go above minimum.
4. Some soft boxes, I personally like the Octagonal ones, I have 120cm one and that works for me (I also have a rectangular and square one).
5. A couple of reflectors, a medium round and a really large (2×1 meter) 5 in 1 should do.
6. A fan, the more the power the better, to blow hair for fashion type shoots.
7. Dense Foam Mats, these are interlocking soft tiles that you can lay, so if your subject wants to lay down, it’s not a problem. Besides, garage floors tend to be a little hard and cold and if you are like me you kneel down often, the mats are welcomed.
8. A sturdy tripod
9. A bar stool or similar for Head an shoulders portraits, trust me on that, it makes life easy.

There is 2 more items, for one a camera (preferably an SLR) and a trigger for the flashes, that is where things get a little interesting. There are 3 ways one can go about this:

• TTL (Though the lens), this is done using you camera flashes, usually the one on the camera is a master and does not emit light, unless your camera can act as a controller like the Canon EOS 7D or you have a controller unit but they rather expensive. This uses infrared and in a studio environment works well. The pro part is that the camera will decide on the required flash output for you. And you will be able to control it too via the flash compensation. The bad is that little strobes are not that powerful and you are going to go though a lot of AA batteries.
• Having big strobes (since most come with a light sensor trigger) triggered by the camera’s flash, do not laugh it works, but controlling to light is a tad difficult, I have tried, it becomes too complicated. If you do that set you on camera flash to minimum and in manual, all it does is trigger the other ones, you do not want to over power them.
• Radio remotes, in my honest opinion this is the best, because it works inside and outside.

So the results?

I still look ugly and stupid, but I really wanted to show you some results and could not find a model, actually the model didn’t pitch but hey who is counting?

Notice that there are no reflection on my glasses? Well, I was playing around and then it came to me, put the darn edge soft box at the beginning of my face, so I only catch the fall off. I don’t know if I like it because the catch light is off.

And there you are, that is how I do it. The pain is to assemble and disassemble it every time you need it…

Any thoughts?

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This is the last post on “publishing to Facebook” I promises, at least for the next few weeks, unless I suddenly get the urge to do a “Publish to Facebook with the iPhone” post.

To my surprise shortly after Adobe released Lightroom 3.0.1 comes 3.2 and this is more than bug fixes, under the hood enhancements and Camera Raw 6.2 Update too, built in is a Facebook publisher place under Publish Services along with the trusted Flickr and new SmugMug services, they must have been spooked by Apple’s Aperture 3.

So how hard is it to use? Well it literally takes 2 minutes to setup and you are ready to go, see bellow. Click on “Set up…”, authorize LR on Facebook with your login, pick a default Album, a few other settings and you are done.

Click to enlarge

to create a new album is just as easy, right click on the Facebook button, select “Create Collection…”, drop in the photos you want to upload then right click the newly created collection and select “Publish Now” and LR will do the rest.

Now what if you do not have Adobe Lightroom 3? There is a plug-in available from Jeffrey Friedl, you can find it here. He has a few more plug-ins so have a look around.

By the way you can download the update / trial for Adobe Lightroom 3.2 for Windows from here.

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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…

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Today I am going to take time off photography and talk a bit about sharing your photos, this is really for beginners but are we not all beginners at something?

There are some issues you should consider before uploading any images to any online services, one of these is the licence and copyrights of the service. In the instance of Facebook, you are giving them a lot of rights by uploading any images to it. Please read the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully before you upload any images to it. Particularly section 2, which states (last updated on April 22, 2010):

You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License").

Now that we have the legalities of of the way, here are a few tips before you upload any images to any social sites:

1. Resize your images to a maximum of 600 pixels on the long side.
2. Compress them to at least 70% and save them in JPG format
3. Make sure you save them in a separate folder that you can easily find again (I called mine Facebook) and do not overwrite your original photo.

Now, here is how to upload images to Facebook, for cross operating system compatibility’s sake I will be using Mozilla Firefox as my browser, though this should not matter.

First, to create an album go to your profile and click on Photos ad the following screen will appear:

Fill it in and click on Create album, this will bring you to this screen:

If you click “Select photos” the process can be lengthy and not very friendly, I advise using the Java Uploader. You will need the Java plugin to do this so allow it to download. Click “Install Missing plug-ins…” on the right top corner of your browser. Should you encounter a problem you may acquire the Java plug-in here: http://www.java.com/en/download/inc/windows_new_xpi.jsp

Once Java is installed you will get the obligatory “waiting for…” screen

But it is well worth the pain.

Now you can select and rotate your images at will before uploading them as shown bellow.

When you ready to upload, click Upload and you will get this screen

Followed by “Upload Successful!, click OK

Facebook will then redirect you to the Edit Album Screen, edit your caption here.

Then click “Publish Now” and you are done, you have successfully created an album.

There are many more function feel free to explore.

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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…

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As a photographer I get a whole lot of questions about a whole lot of photography related things. Some are easy to answer others need to be demonstrated. This one needs to be demonstrated…

I will not go into great technical details, however understand that a zoom lens usually allows for more than one “ZOOM” factor and it has moving glass in addition to focus. In fact it is usually safe to assume that the further away the glass elements are, the longer the lens is, the higher the zoom factor.

So what do we mean by zoom factor? It is the magnification that a lens can produce in relation to the human eye. In photography, it is generally accepted that a 1x zoom factor is equal to a 50mm lens on a 35mm film/digital format camera, I am not going into more details than this as it is not relevant to this post. So assuming that 50mm is 1x what would be 400mm ?

The equation is:

In a Canon EOS 5D the answer would be (400×1)/50 or 8x magnification. However with a crop sensor camera such as the Canon 7D, it would be (400×1.6)/50 and thus would result in a 12.8 magnification. But what about a 16mm wide angle lens? Well (16×1.6)/50 results in a 0.512 magnification which is a theorical negative magnification. So what are the actual result in a photo? Here are a few photos of commonly used zoom factors to illustrate, all taken at the same place with a Canon EOS 7D with a 1.6 crop factor.

16 mm (0.51x)	24 mm (0.77x)	35 mm (1.12x)	50 mm (1.60x)
70mm (2.24x)	85 mm (2.72x)	100 mm (3.20x)	135 mm (4.32x)
150mm (4.80x)	200 mm (6.40x)	300mm (9.60x)	400 mm (12.8x)
500 mm (16x)	600 mm (19.2x)	700 mm (22.4)	800 mm (25.6x)

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Finally, I was able to take my Canon EOS 7D into the field, I mean by that into the bush, how did it fair though?

Let me be honest up front, so there are no misunderstanding, after 6 months of using the camera I am still learning how to get it right. I may know how to, technically and theoretically, take a photograph but this machine is still partially a mystery to me. A mystery mostly because yours truly is off the “auto mode” and into some serious photography. Besides “auto mode” does not give me what I want, just what I expect and that is not good enough.

A tip for you, when you go into the bush choose you lens carefully, chances are you will not be able to change it as it will make you loose the moment. So, what lens are suitable in the bush for wildlife? You can look at this previous article I wrote, Choosing a lens to suit wildlife photography and Living with a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens in the wild, but it gets more complicated than this. Consider light, are you going out in the day or twilight? In full day light a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 will do fine, in twilight you would be better off with a 70-200mm f/2.8 as the reach would be limited anyways. Fine so the next question is what about flash or high ISO to compensate? Flash, forget about it, it’s unlikely to help because of the distance we are talking about. As for high ISO, in the case of the Canon EOS 7D up to 12800 which I never used, it does help and the noise control of the Canon EOS 7D makes it all worth it. At ISO 6400, you have noise but less then my Canon EOS 400D at ISO 1600, besides there are wonderful tools to reduce grain/noise, check out Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta 2 for example.

So what have I learned about taking photos of wildlife with the Canon EOS 7D ?

1. Set it to aperture priority, AV Mode. Then again I only shoot in this mode, it gives you control over the depth of field.
2. Set the ISO to Auto, surprise surprise, yes and leave it that way, it will avoid profane language when you set it to 6400 and forget that you did, I found that the camera it very good at choosing the right ISO setting.
3. Set the focus to AF Point Expansion, it will give you a little more control over the focus point then Single Point AF, just in case the subject moves.
4. Set it to spot or centre weighted average metering, I find it gives me a better result overall
5. Set to AI focus, again for flexibility (double tap the trigger and it acts as AI Servo) although AI Servo would work too but it may start hunting.
6. Set it to High or Low Speed Continuous, though for fast moving subjects High Speed Continuous shooting is advisable.
7. Have a high capacity CF card 8GB and above, trust me.

Oddly enough, I never shoot wildlife in RAW, simply because in RAW I can only shoot 6 frames (less then a second) in High Speed Continuous shooting  before the camera slows down, in JPG this rises to a cool 70 (10 seconds).

Please note that none of the photos below have been modified except for the resizing required for the web.

Here is a sequence of Impala chasing Impala shot with the Canon EOS 7D in relative low light (twilight) with the settings above, set at f/4.5 using the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens, the camera chose ISO 1600.

This photo of Rhinoceroses was shot after sundown with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM at f/2.8 at 1/4 sec and ISO 6400, it was on a tripod. You will notice noise but remember it was dark to the point where I could only see shadows.

In daylight the Canon EOS 7D paired with the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens give this result.

in brief, The Camera is very good and well suited for wildlife photography, if paired with the right lens.

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I was asked a simple question the other day: Why are photographers so expensive? A fair enough question from a potential client, I explained to her all that it entailed and oddly enough she agreed that the price I was asking for was reasonable.

The first thing that anyone that wants to hire a photographer must understand is that this professional often has a big responsibility, no matter what he shoots. The photographer has to deliver photographs that represents what they were hired to do, in many cases there are no second chances, think of your wedding for a second, if the photographer misses the first kiss or the exchange of the rings?

I will use a typical wedding photographer as my case study, mostly because it is the most common use of the profession that affects you and almost anyone can relate to it.

First up is experience, the more a wedding photographer has experience the more expansive he becomes, I have heard people calling wedding photographers rip-offs, I do not agree entirely. The more the experience, the larger the portfolio,the better the work becomes, the least likely there will be something going wrong and the more the demand… And there you are, the more the demand, trading 101, the more the demand, the more expensive things become, particularly when it comes to services.

Second is the equipment, the better the equipment, the better the photographs. Equipment compliment skill for a professional photographer, he needs to have the tools to cater for most situations and that costs. Let us start with the camera, a semi-pro camera will set you back in the region of R13000 for the body alone! A entry professional grade camera about R20,000 for the body. These are often changed every 3 years and need to be maintained, that is a serious cost. The table bellow shows the initial outlay a serious wedding photographer has to do, often in the form of a loan. The following is the strict minimum that a serious professional photographer will need based on professional grade equipment using Canon’s prices:

That is about a repayment R3,500 a month add to that the monthly cost of telephone, internet connectivity, web hosting, space rental, transport, etc… Well you get the picture.

There are also cost involved per event, a serious professional photographer will not stop at an interview or two, once they have secured the job they will go to scout the venue for good places to shoot and introduce themselves to the venue co-coordinator. They will also get in contact with the official that will carry out the ceremony, the caterers, the wedding coordinator, the videographer and anyone else the will be involved in the event. They will also have their camera cleaned and serviced for every event. Now as you can see there is a lot of preparation prior to the event itself and cost associated with it.

On the day itself, the cost are limited to the transport to the venue and more often than not the refreshments, assuming it is not a “location” wedding, but that is another affair all together which is not applicable here.

The post production, for ever 1000 photos taken during the event, you can estimate that a day is used to sort out and edit the photographs, that is a day’s work that must be paid. After that there are other cost such as the DVD(s), prints, albums, etc…

As you see you actually not paying a photographer for the event time but rather a series of specialised services and skills to which the outcome is a capture of your memories and more then often the things you have missed.

So are photographers a rip-off? I am sure some are, as in all professions there are bad apples, but generally your are paying for more than you think, most of the work happens before and after the event. The skill, for a professional photographer, is to minimize the post production time by getting it right at the event.

In short a typical 4 hour wedding shoot will take 24 hours of actual work, let’s assume that the cost was R5000 that is an actual R208.33 per hour, call your plumber or electrician, see how much that costs.

I can only hope that I have enlightened you a little about what it means to be a professional photographer today, until next time, enjoy.

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As you know I don’t often deviate from photography on this blog, but from time to time there is something to, well, shout about and this is the case. Head over to Shout for a safer South Africa, an initiative to create awareness around the raising criminality in raise funds to combat it. They currently only accept SMS donation for the song in return but you will also be able to download it for a R20 from their website as of next week. Now when you consider that a downloadable song will cost you R10 the donation is really cheap. There are comments on YouTube that you can downloaded it for free from YouTube but then is that not defeating the purpose and joining the criminal element?

I want to thank to Danny K, Kabelo Mabalane and the  other 37 great South African artists that made this possible, a good idea for a good cause. And if you worried about where your money is going go to Shout for a safer South Africa and click on the question mark icon on the left and check out the sponsors.

For a united, crime free South Africa, let’s Shout!!!

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