Posts filed under Photography

Unpredictable Exposures

When shooting from a tripod and/or with Live View on your (d)SLR you may find strangely exposed photos. Some are darker than others.

This could be related to the light seeping in through the ocular on your camera. Normally you have your eye against the ocular, but when you use e.g. Live View on your camera, you watch the LCD. This leaves the ocular 'open', and unwanted light might enter the camera and screw up the exposure of the photos you're taking.

I created a small example were I shot several high-speed images (in Aperture priority mode) while I used a small flashlight to pass a beam of light over the back of the body (e.g. car lights passing by in low light circumstances). I made sure that I also 'touched' the ocular with the beam of light.

You can see that the exposure goes from normal to dark, and back to 'normal'.

I haven't found any real differences when you're shooting under normal circumstances, but when (a strong) light is shining in or on the ocular, you might be in trouble.

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Willem and filed under Photography, Tips'n Tricks, Video and tagged exposure ocular video.

Career Change??

We had a presentation of a local photo journalist this evening on our camera club. It was to hear what his job was about. But after hearing his story, and seeing some of his portfolio I decided to stick with my current career. I'm just not that type of a photographer. I like shooting what ever I want, and not what someone else wants. I guess I would be a terrible wedding photographer :).

Thankfully not everyone likes the same thing, otherwise it would be a boring (grey) world.

During the break I had a little conversation about the photos taken by the National Geographic photographers (which is also a form of photo journalisme). That it might be nice to do those kind of photo shoots.
But if you've seen the National Geographics  'The Photographers' DVD you might change your mind on that as well :). It's not as romantic as you might think.

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Willem and filed under Personal, Photography.

Amateur Photographers Stealing Your Bread

Every now and then, I stumble on a discussion about stealing the bread out the professional photographers mouth.

These (forum) discussions start with a amateur photographer asking advice about settings (like ISO, Aperture, etc), equipment etc. regarding shooting photos in a certain area (groups, head-shots, whatever). At first; some quick and helpful answers from other enthusiasts, but then the 'pro' photographer enters the 'room'.

Within minutes they turn the original question into something else.... A discussion about fairness, skills, and stealing the bread from someone else has begun....

Somehow they (the pro's) feel threatened by average Joe holding a digital camera (dSLR), and shooting (a cousins) weddings, or doing some work for a foundation or whatever. In most cases a low/no budget shooting.

On one hand, I can sort of sympathize with the pro's, because it's not pleasant to see other people 'stealing the bread from your mouth'. On the other end, they should (or could) have seen it coming.
Ever since the day digital photography became affordable to the public, more and more people started carrying cameras, and they are all photographers (technically). Just because you made it your profession doesn't mean that others can't play that game in their spare time.

If you don't have much money, and you want a photographer shooting your wedding pictures you might end up with a nephew (or another acquaintance) shooting those photo's. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. It just means that you've got competition. The bad competition might produce crappy photos, but then again 'you (the customer) get what you've paid for'.

If you don't want to give advice to an amateur photographer don't start moaning and bitching, but make sure to make a difference in your line of work (value added services e.g.) or find another job. Shooting photos is no longer for a select few. You are the professional. Act accordingly!

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Willem and filed under Personal, Photography.

Panasonic Lumix LX3 Annoyance

The LX3 is in my possession for a couple of weeks, and last weekend I noticed something annoying. When I imported the photos in Adobe Lightroom, some of the photos were imported as RAW, and some as JPG.

By default I set my cameras on RAW (if they support it). When I purchased the LX3 there was no RAW importer for Lightroom or Photoshop, so I shot in RAW+JPG. This way I could see the photos and could work with the RAW files when a proper RAW converter (Adobe Camera RAW) cae along.

I checked the format settings and these were set at RAW, so where did those JPG's came from?
After some searching I found that the iA mode of the camera (intelligent Auto) decides which image quality setting to use. Something I didn't find in the manual (or I read over it).

Anyway, it's annoying as hell.

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Hardware, Photography and tagged JPG LX3 Lumix RAW iA.

Adobe Camera RAW update

Adobe released an update for Adobe Camera RAW. The update adds RAW support in Photoshop for the following camera's;

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II
  • Canon PowerShot G10
  • Panasonic DMC-G1
  • Panasonic DMC-FX150
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ28
  • Panasonic DMC-LX3 :D
  • Leica D-LUX 4

The Camera RAW update dosn't include the RAW capabilities for Lightroom. The upcoming Lightroom v2.2 update (scheduled for December 2009) will incorporate the RAW capabilities for these camera's.

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Willem and filed under Photography, Software and tagged ACR RAW.