In an earlier post, I mentioned that the first accessory I buy for a camera is a UV filter.  This is mainly for the protection of the camera lens.  Even now now with a UV neutralizing factor built-in with today’s digital cameras, rendering a UV filter unnecessary to filter out unwanted UV rays, I still use one for the protection.

Ultraviolet light is something we can’t see. However, your camera can see it. From an optical standpoint, a digital camera is not as vulnerable to ultraviolet light as film, but a UV filter can cut down on “purple fringing” and/or blue hues that occur in film and some digital cameras. Also, the use of an ultraviolet filter can protect your camera lens.
With the ultraviolet filter, we can achieve improved contrast and color saturation when shooting sunny landscapes, marine and mountain scenes. This filter specifically reduces the effect of ultraviolet light and atmospheric dust.

To maximize the use of the ultraviolet filter, experts have provided us seven steps on how to use this high-end.

Step 1.  Write down the diameter of your camera lenses or take your camera and lenses with you to buy the filter.

Step2. Purchase an ultraviolet filter for each of your camera lenses or opt for a filter system. In this case, you buy a filter-holder for the camera and interchangeable rings that fit your lenses. This is good for people who change filters often.

Step3. Screw the ultraviolet filter onto your camera lens.

Step4. Protect your camera lens from breakage, scratches, dust and moisture by leaving an ultraviolet filter on your camera lens whenever you’re not using a different filter, even when storing it.

Step5. Use a blower brush to remove dust and sand from your camera lens and filter.

Step6. Breathe on the filter or lens, and carefully wipe away any fingerprints or smudges with a lens tissue.

Step7. Take your photos as you normally would. The filter blocks the ultraviolet light.

In theory, UV filters add clarity by cutting UV scatter in high UV environments—e.g., at extremely high altitude (well over 10,000′) or in long shots over water, but most digital cameras are too UV-insensitive to benefit here. Post-processing can suppress or sharpen a hazy blue channel to good effect, particularly in B&W work, but an effective UV filter (most like a haze) might allow you to improve clarity while preserving blue channel data in your color images.

Ask any portraitist or advanced (amateur/professional/hobbyist) photographer and they’d tell you that the hardest subject to take a picture of is a kid.

There are several reasons for this.  The most obvious is that kids have short attention spans.  Another reason is that it’s hard to give directions to kids, as a rule, they don’t follow.  Worse is if the kid is old enough and likes to ham it up before the camera.

However, one viewpoint I can present for this is that the photographer doesn’t have the time to take the shot.  For all the photographer’s preparations, the kid will not cooperate.  Composition is an exercise in dynamics.  In this context, taking pictures of kids is like taking pictures of a fast-paced sports event, or of a photojournalism assignment.  Just a little bit more frustrating because you want to finish the shot as soon as possible.

Patience is a virtue.  Specially when it comes to kids as photo subjects.  Seriously.  The best way to take a kid’s picture is to wait. and wait very patiently.  The alternative is to keep on shooting.  There’s got to be a good shot in there sometime.  When using film there seems that there’s not enough film in the camera.  And it’s a good thing digital cameras came along.

An old rule of thumb for professional photographers, is that out of three rolls of film (each of 36 shots), you’ve be lucky to have one very good picture.  That’s roughly one shot in a hundred.  With careful composition, and lots of patience, this number can be trimmed down to one good picture for every roll.  If you’re not picky, you can just choose one out of every ten. This is particularly true of kids.

However, when using a digital camera and playing with those numbers it just makes lots of sense to keep on shooting.  Of course, when you do that, there would be less composition, more pictures which are off-focus and blurred, you might not have the depth of field you want, and other problems.  The numbers would go up just to find that one picture.  And then you go back to the original problem:  how many pictures of ears and napes does it take before you get that one good picture with the distinctive facial expression?

Me, I’d rather wait, and wait patiently, with the camera aimed at the subject, taking the shot inside my head before taking a picture.   I have found that this is more fun than the shotgun approach.

Source:  Cameratown.com

Tamron recently announced the development of their newest high power zoom lens in the AF18-270mm Di II VC Ultra High Power Zoom lens.

Tamron of Japan is a third-party manufacturer of lenses for SLR cameras.  One of their most famous innovations came in 1992 with the introduction of a 28-200mm f3.8-5.6 zoom lens which was barely 4 inches in length.  This at a time when zoom lenses were typically at least 6 inches in length.  Effectively, this development made zoom lenses very practical for regular use.

Further development along the years have been to push the envelop towards higher ranges.  With the new model 18-270mm zoom, it is the first effective 15x lens for SLRs.  It is the lens with the longest zoom range specifically designed for digital SLRs with sensors smaller than 24mm x 16mm.

For all of that, it is still the same approximate size as older Tamron models. It’s light, and easy to manipulate when zooming.  There have been several manufacturer’s which have released zoom lenses which approximate it’s size.  But none have gotten close to the performance of being extraordinarily sharp through out it’s zoom range.  For the most part, lenses from other manufacturers with comparable zoom ranges are almost twice the length and weight of Tamron models.

Among it’s features, it has built-in electronics with its Vibration Compensation (VC) which minimizes handheld camera shakes.  This is a great help for handheld photography considering that shake is more noticeable when the lens is zoomed to the max.  A regular user wouldn’t notice that he’s zoomed to the point where handheld shake is evident in the picture.  The mechanism is really a great help.  In terms of philosophy, Canon and Nikon zoom lenses also have the image stabilization mechanism in the lenses rather than in the camera.

The AF18-270mm Di II VC Ultra High Power Zoom lens will be available for Canon and Nikon cameras.

Official Website:  Press Release

Most cameras have flash units.  This is a matter of necessity for the most part as most people are not comfortable shooting in low-light or natural light settings.  In fact, most casual photographers don’t know how to take pictures without the flash, and worse, they don’t realize that a flash is very much important in harsh lighting conditions.  It’s a common enough problem, mainly because the regular casual photographer is not really concerned about the small things, but only about the big picture: did the subject appear in the picture?

A flash is an attachment to the camera to provide much needed focused light on the subject.  Normally this is mounted on top of the camera.  And there lies a story about making the shot better, if only the flash was at the BOTTOM of the camera. I’ll explain this in another post.

The nature of the flash is that it provides an instant of bright light to illuminate the subject.  The light lasts just long enough for the image to appear on film, or to be captured by the scanning element/sensor of the camera.  And since this is focused light from a single source, the shadows would appear emanating outward from it.

There are strategies to make the light more diffused or for it to appear from a different direction.  But as long as you’re using a camera-mounted flash, the light will hit the subject and the shadow would be behind it.

If the subject is too close, usually less than 10 feet, there would be uneven highlights.  It it is too far, usually more than 15 feet, then it would be a bit darker.

[An aside, notice that when in an arena, there are lots of flash from the audience when taking pictures of the performers or sports players?  The cameras are automatically set for flash, usually the picture will turn out fine.  But this is not due to the camera's flash unit.  This is because the subject is already bathed in light and the flash is not needed.]

For the most part, the ideal camera mounting is a ring flash.  This is a ring of flash elements mounted around the lens.  The purpose is to have the center of the picture and the flash one and the same.  There would be no shadows.  However, ring flash elements are expensive.  It’s quite rare to find a ring flash cheaper than $300.  However, these really are great accessories.  A side-effect is that if the background were too near the subject, there would be a halo-effect.  Not an altogether bad side effect.

My cameras all have filters.  That includes the (almost permanent) UV filter, which is always the first thing I buy after getting a camera.  Besides that, one of the most understated filters is the polarizer.  I know lots of guys with expensive gear, but no polarizer.  And is hampered when shooting the cityscape and sunset from his 37th story office.

I remember the old Polaroid sunglasses commercial showing a guy beside the pool looking at the girls swimming around.  The sunglasses clear the glare from the water, and sees crystal clear to the swimmers.  That is the basic principle of a polarizer.  This is a very subtle advantage when taking pictures of landscapes and skycapes.  It is particularly evident when taking pictures of the water or the beach.  To explain further, this all relates to that wonderful organ called the eye.  The human eye adjusts what it sees and translates accordingly.  This happens unconsciously and is an important hidden function of the human body.  It works, and that’s all there is to it.

On the beach we see the clear water, and what else is underwater.  With some automatic pre-processing it is a lot clearer compared to taking a picture of the objects under water.  The light which reflects from the underwater object gets diffused before escaping to the surface.  And there’s a lot light reflecting as it hits the surface of the water.  All of this makes for a murky image.

The polarizer is like a fine filter which only allows light coming in from a certain angle.  This resolves the glare and murky image.  The sky looks a lot more blue, a darker shade of blue, in fact.  Taking a picture of someone beside the glass window would lessen the reflection and show what’s out the window.  However, because it filters out ambient light, the resulting images are darker.  It’s usually not a good idea to use flash to solve this situation.  In which case, the only solution would be a tripod for long exposure times.  In my experience, I can live with it.

Yup, after the UV filter, the third thing I bought was the tripod.

Sources:

Cameratown.com

Digital Photography Review

Casio is, like most Japanese multi-national companies, almost a conglomerate with a whole lot of product lines.  It started out with calculators and watches (thing G-Shock) and now is putting it’s strength into cameras.  In the same way that it put a GPS into a wristwatch and sold at an affordable price, this time the innovation is almost on that scale, and relatively less pricey.  A $700+ 10 megapixel camera with full HD capability, high speed burst speed on stills, and slow motion capture on video.

With the release of the newest model of its Exilim series of cameras, the Casio Exilim Pro Ex-FH20, it’s showing innovation in unexpected ways.  Among other things, this camera is fast.  It has a burst mode of 40 frames per second on 7 megapixels.  It is so fast, it can take a picture even BEFORE you press the shutter button. It stores the images in the camera and you can choose which pictures to save.  This means that even if you missed the picture you can still recover it.

It is so fast, it can capture video at 30fps for full HD quality 1280×720; 210fps at 480×360; 420fps at 224×168; and 1000fps at 224×56.  That is faster than a speeding bullet.  We’re no longer talking about catching a drop of water in the air, but of seeing a bullet pass through a balloon before the balloon bursts.  Well almost.  But you get the drift.

Usually when a camera comes along boasting something extraordinary, most other features would pale in comparison.  Except that this camera also has a 20x optical zoom, equivalent to 26mm to 520mm on a standard SLR.  Casio is serious about this camera.  It uses a CMOS sensor which allows it to capture images faster.  And to round it off, it also has a high-speed anti-shake function, as well as a high-speed night scene setting (a natural result of the anti-shake setting).

Priced at £399 in the UK, it should weigh in at around $700 to $750 in the United States.

Official website:  Casio Press Release

Source:  Digital Photography Review

The lines have blurred between high-end digital photography and Full HD video.  One of the first DSLR camera manufacturers to go into Full HD video was Nikon.  Now it’s Canon’s turn. With the release of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II there is a lot of pressure for every other camera manufacturer to follow suit.

An interesting sidelight of this development is that traditional digital video cameras have been based on the mini-DV format.  One limitation of the mini-DV cameras was that not all the pro model cameras had interchangeable lenses.  Except for Canon.  The top-end Canon pro model mini-DV video camera had an adapter which allows EOS lenses to be fitted to the video camera.  This extended the quality of the video beyond the standard camera lens.

With Nikon leading the way with the release of a full HD video capable camera, Canon is trying to catch up. This is an evolutionary step for DSLR cameras.  Capable of capturing at 1920×1080, it can save the file to Quicktime MOV format.  At 30fps and 1080p HD, it can store up to 12 mins of video.  Maximum file size is 4GB.  More than enough for saving and editing purposes.

One thing missing from the EOS 5D Mark II is a built-in flash.  Though it has the necessary software for controlling flash and white balance compensation for the use of flash.  And it has a relatively low 3.9fps burst mode.

By all means this is not a shabby camera.  This may not be Canon’s top of the line, but it definitely ranks higher than other camera manufacturer’s top of the line model. It’s important to note the direction these two camera makers are going.  The hefty $2,700 price tag (body only) is relatively  cheap considering that it is a full-featured HD video camera.  Now if only CompactFlash disks were able to catch up with faster and larger capacity flash drives then this would be a well-defined niche with the other major players coming in with their own full-HD video DSLR camera models.

Official Website:  Canon Press Release

My son is now in college and since he was a kid, I never saw him have any interest in photography.  My daughter is a different story though.  She’s got a good technical grasp of the camera and taking pictures.

But lately, it’s been my son who’s doing some catch up with the camera.  And I guess he’s got a better eye than me.   I have refrained from teaching him photography, specifically how to take pictures and composition because I’d much rather he develop his own style before I mess it with whatever concepts I have.

Now that he’s a freshman in Fine Arts, he’s takent he camera and he’s been experimenting with it.  I am still holding back on teaching him the technicals (topics such as aperture, light, film speed, flash, etc.).  He’s learning on his own.

One thing he’s been experimenting on is the use of the macro lens, as well as worm’s eye view composition.  The macro lens allows a shorter focal point, and you can get very close to the subject and still have it focused properly.  Macro photography requires a different eye for detail, seeing mundane and small things and composing the shot as if it was a regular-sized object. Using a zoom and a macro shows a lot of detail for the shot, very up close and personal.  We are talking of subjects as small as ants.  Personally, I feel limited by the available subjects.  But then again, I’m not a nature photography kind of guy who would like to go on a photo safari in the backyard.

He’s also taken to shooting from the ground.  On a recent trip to a rural community, his class visited a church and they took some pictures.  He lay prone on the church’s aisle to take a shot of the altar framed by the pews.  Too bad the shots had people walking on the aisle.  It would have been better if the church was empty when they visited.  He’s taken his style to more common subjects like his sister.  The resulting picture of her sitting on the floor and reading a book looked like a very tight shot with the subject - his sister - the focus on the picture’s vanishing point.

Me?  I’m still studying new things, like panoramic shots and stitching.

This is for all the camwhores out there.  Pardon my french, but the most common camera pose nowadays sucks.  Yes, the most common camera shot is with a camera held at arm’s length and pointing at oneself.  I say it sucks because there is no possibility of composing and expanding the picture.

No offense meant to anyone who’s done that before.  I know I have.  On my wedding day, even.  And that was with a film camera.  But really, there’s only that very close shot and if you’re lucky, you occupy the whole picture.  If you’re unlucky, it might show an ear.  But considering that the digital camera might have a wide-focus lens, the ear only shot is a very slim possibility.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t like the shot.  I actually hate it.  First off, because in all probability, the lens is wide angle, the resulting picture would be distorted.  The face would be a bit fatter, and the nose wider.  As an aside, this is also what happens when you have an ID picture shot at an arcade booth.  I will not go into the psychological study of people who have no better things to do than take pictures of themselves.  To them I say, knock yourself out.

I would much rather use a tripod.  Or at least a camera’s timer.  If there’s no tripod available, you can always set the camera down somewhere and hope it doesn’t fall and take a shot at the sky.  Now if I only had a camera remote control, I would not have ran uphill those several times I went to some hill top spots.

Tripods are cheap.  At least these are much cheaper than the camera.  Come to think of it, I have two cameras of my own, and two tripods.  One camera and tripod set was bought twenty years ago.  I don’t use the camera as often as before, but the old tripod still gets a lot of use.  And I expect to be using it for a much longer time than my film-based camera.

And yes, I bought the tripod so I won’t have to take a picture of myself at arm’s length.

There is however, one exception to the camwhore-camera-held-at-arm’s-length-sucks picture. If a celebrity on the red-carpet was bantering with fans and shot the photo at arm’s length to show him and the fans, then that is way cool!

Digital cameras nowadays are feeling the pinch of available storage media.  The numbers are large:  a 5MP JPEG picture shot with a Kodak could be 700KB in size; a 7MP JPEG picture captured with a Sony could be as large as 2.5MB; a 15MP JPEG shot with a Canon EOS could be as large as 7MB.

Unlike hard disks which have seen falling prices as they push towards the single hard disk terabyte capacity, flash memory used by cameras and other small electronic devices are still expensive when you consider the cost/MB.  Another problem with flash memory is the write speed of larger capacity drives.  And the larger the capacity, the slower the flash drive write speed.

That expectation has changed though with the release of the SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash Series 32GB flash drive.  This drive also boasts of a 50% speed increase (which means that the write cycle time is half that of current flash disks of the same capacity).

As a backgrounder, flash drives have no moving part. This makes it more robust than hard disks, which are based on a spinning disk and a read/write head on an arm. One reason, however, why flash drives are slower is because of the software which evens out the writing among the drive sectors.  This mean that as the flash drive is used, all the sectors have approximately the same number of accrued write cycles.  The software on the drive keeps track of the number of times a sector has been written to.  It decides which sector to use based on a least-used algorithm.  A side-effect of this is that when a flash drive starts having bad sectors (after a sector has been written to more than 100,000 times), all the other sectors will go bad very quickly afterwards.

The SanDisk announcement is very significant for camera makers and, to a lesser extent, to computer manufacturers.  The larger capacity flash drives can containg more and larger files of the large megapixel variety.  Additionally, the cameras can now cycle faster and be ready to shoot in a shorter time.  This also paves the way for longer use by video cameras.  This is specially true for HD cameras which use flash drives.

For now, SanDisk has the niche all to itself.  They invented the flash memory, and they are deserving of leaving the competition far behind.

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