Episode 86 : The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Yong Nuo releases iTTL radio based flash controller for Nikon Nikon updates Capture NX to 2.4.6 to support D3300

Nikon has scheduled a press conference announcement for Feb 11.  Expect the official release of the D4s

Nikon US has confirmed the return of Nikon "lens only" rebates

Nikon released a slew of P&S cameras that won't matter because that marketplace is dead

Hasselblad releases first DSLR, it's a Sony A99 in titanium, for $10K call it unobtainium

Too much money?  $490 for a leather half case for your Leica M

Tamrac has been on the edge lately but this week announced new messenger bags

Canon has announced the patent of a new 70-400 4.5-5.6L IS, looks like a twist but hard to be sure

Canon patents 17-55/3.5-5.6 IS STM EF-S

Canon rumours for CP+ - Rebel priced below the SL1, replacement for the G1x, more P&S for a dead market

Pentax has upgraded the firmware for the K-3

Ricoh promises a CMOS based Pentax 645 at CP+ this week

Ricoh has announced a new HD 1.4x teleconverter

Tamron is building a 16-300 /3.5-6.3 for APS-C sensors and a 28-300/3.5-6.3 for full frame

Panasonic announced the DMC-GH4 m43 camera with 4K video capability, expandable to include SDI and XLR ports

Episode 85 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Nikon replacing D600 with D610 under service.  Nikon releases D3300, 35/18G.  Nikon firmware for Df, D5200, D3200.  Expecting D4s and 1 V3 at CP+.  Update of ViewNX available now.  Fuji has new grips for X-E and X-Pro.  Fuji files new sensor patent with different sized pixels.  Fuji announce X-T1.  Adobe adds perspective warp to Photoshop CC and leaks Lightroom Mobile, great idea, stupid price.  Leica celebrates 100th birthday and plans release of new T series mirrorless in April.  PhaseOne and Hasselblad bring CMOS to medium format.  Gitzo adopts Arca Swiss style plate system.  Olympus releases OM-D E-M10, 25/18 and 14-42 zoom.  Firmware for the OM-D E-M5 updated.  Canon announces financials and nothing of interest at CES.  Canon has filed a patent for 11-24/4.  Zeiss announces a 50/2.8 macro to fit Sony and Fuji.  Sony updates firmware on QX10 and QX1009.

Q & A : What to use as a Master flash if my Canon doesn't have the capability in the popup?

To ask questions of the Photo Video Guy, send your question in an email to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca I did a seminar on getting your flash off camera at my local Henry's store yesterday and Dennis asked if I had a solution for the SL1.  He was curious if the Speedlite 90EX could be used as a master flash.

The SL1 has a popup flash but it doesn't have the capability to control other Canon flashes via optical transmission as is found in the T3i and higher cameras.  There are other cameras, like the older 30D that have a popup without this functionality either.

Dennis said that he had heard that the Speedlite 90EX could be a master and be used to control other Canon Speedlites acting as slaves.

He's mostly correct.  The Speedlite 90EX can be a master controller, but not a Master Flash.  If you go into the External Flash Control menus, and turn wireless on with the 90EX mounted and powered up, it becomes a controller only.  Sort of like the ST-E2 device.  It's no longer capable of being used as a flash.  So long as the camera has the ability to control an external EX series flash from the camera menu system, that flash can be a master controller.  In the case of the 90EX, this works but turns off the flash function of the 90EX.

Which is just fine after all since you don't want it contributing to the exposure anyway.  I could not put hands on a 90EX to try on an SL1 but according to the documentation on both sides, this will work.  Which is cool since a 90EX is only about $130 whereas the ST-E2 is discontinued and even used they are selling for $180.

I'm going to try to borrow a 90EX (it comes in the kit with the EOS-M) and test this out live and will update this post if it fails.

Q & A : Do the room conditions where I edit matter?

To ask a question of The Photo Video Guy, email your question to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Denis wants to know if the lighting and configuration of the room where you edit your images matters.

Absolutely it does, and many people operate under the mistaken perception that it doesn't.  Let's see how to optimize for editing.

I'm going to assume that your display is calibrated.  If not, stop reading and go get a Color Munki Smile.  It's ok, we'll wait.  Ok that's better.

1. Your calibrated display should be the brightest thing in the room
2. If there are pot or spotlights in the room, they should be off
3. If there are other lights in the room, and you cannot turn them down, they should be daylight balanced.  Remember that manufacturers are frequently marketing, not being accurate, so you want lights set for 5500K.  Your "cool white" fluorescents are about 4300K and lousy for editing
4. Any lights on in the room should be behind the display.  Avoid light falling on the display.  Because better colour management devices read the average lux level in the room as part of the calibration DOES NOT mean that you can or should have light falling on the screen
5. In the best possible case, your walls are painted neutral grey, not white or coloured or black or covered in flock wallpaper from 1969.  I get that this is often the toughest part so that's why you want the room to be dim, so colours being reflected off stuff do not impact your editing
6. Lastly don't believe everything you read on the social nets.  As hard as it may be to believe, there are people writing blogs, or articles, or recording videos who think that they know what they are talking about and actually are just regurgitating some unverified crap that they heard from someone else.  Shocking I know.

Light operates by the laws of physics.  Human eyes are amazing, nearly magical entities that effortlessly compensate for excreable conditions .  Screens and paper, not so much.

Thanks Denis for writing.  Hope this helps.

Q & A : What is "Safe" storage

To ask a question of The Photo Video Guy, send an email with your question to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Rod writes to ask about storing images. "What's the best means of storage and archiving digital photos.  I read your article on thephotoguy.ca about memory cards.  I find the technical info helpful but I also read elsewhere that flash storage is not long-term reliable. "

Great question Rod, let's take a look at the subject.

There are potentially hundreds of opinions on how best to store and keep your digital photos, and videos.  In the old days of digital, owners would have to create their own image management system of directories, folders, naming conventions and the like, and hope that over time the thing was sustainable, manageable and the the owner could actually find something four years down the road.  It was not really viable then and is the worst option now.

The first rule of safe storage is that no single storage mechanism is "safe".  Storage professionals will tell you that no file is really safe until there are three copies of it.  The three copies include the master, the local backup and the offsite backup.

Physical Media

Before we get in to that architectural conversation, I want to address the comment you have heard that flash storage is not long-term reliable.  The real question is what constitutes "long-term".  In the early days of static column RAM integrity was measured in years without a power application to recharge the chips's ability to retain a bit instruction.  With today's flash memory cards such as high end Compact Flash or Secure Digital cards, reliability is superb.  There are numerous indicators where a card has spent six years underwater in the ocean and been readable.  No electronic storage medium is fully protected from data loss due to strong magnetics or degaussers, but reasonably maintained, the flash memory in storage cards will last a long time.  It's NOT suitable as a long term storage mechanism not because of reliability but because of the difficulty in cataloging.

Solid state drives use a different class of flash memory.  They are more reliable than media cards and as of yet, we have not seen any strong indicators of limited life.  They are extremely fast, robust and make an excellent storage medium but you pay a higher price for this sort of storage.

Classic spinning drives are the most common type of storage.  They are very cost-effective, come in enormous sizes and if you buy smart have superb integrity.  To a large extent you do get what you pay for.  Enterprise class spindles cost a LOT more than consumer grade drives.  They tend to be smaller in capacity, but are built to be used heavily.  An example would be Western Digital Velociraptor drives.  Fast, robust and pricey.

For home storage in desktop enclosures, Western Digital Caviar Black series are proven to be very reliable.  The newer Caviar Red drives vary their rotational speed but are built to be always on in Network Attached Storage.  As an archive target, Caviar Reds are good choices.  The less expensive Caviar Green drives are targeted at the "green" client.  I have lost two of five in two years and will never buy another one.  Similarly, I would never buy any drive from Seagate because of execrable reliability.  Hitachi was my go-to favourite drive but they were sold to Western Digital.  You can get these high quality drives in the external drives from G-Tech.

In laptop format drives, SSD is the way to go, albeit at a higher price.  If SSD is too expensive, then the WD high performance drives are a good choice.  If you are looking for a packaged solution, the G-Tech are excellent.  I used to use LaCie drives but I found them to be sufficiently unreliable such that I do not recommend their products to anyone.  Nice enclosures with really cheap drives.

Also popular are local RAID style drive enclosures.  Systems are available from Promise, CalDigit, Synology and Drobo.  RAID style systems can provide for protection from single drive failure by spanning data but recovery can be a real pain in the butt when something goes wrong.  Drobo made a name for themselves originally but having owned two and having had both units go bad more than once in and out of warranty, I would never suggest a Drobo to anyone.  Synology has developed a very good reputation and while their RAID is not proprietary as are some others, it is based on proven Linux models and works very well.  Be careful buying RAID because while it can look very pretty, upgradeability may be limited when you start to run out of space and be sure that data recovery is simple and proven.

The Storage Model

If you have a desktop computer, I recommend putting your photo / video library on a high performance external drive.  If you have a laptop, I recommend putting your photo / video library on a high performance external drive.  If you run Windows, at minimum your interface should be USB3, Thunderbolt if your system supports it.  If you run Macintosh, go Thunderbolt unless you have an older Mac Pro that has no Thunderbolt capability (like me), in which case get the CalDigit USB3 card and go USB3.  I tend not to depend on the internal drives to hold my libraries.  I capture images on the local laptop drive when in the field but transfer them to the library drive when I get home.  Laptop drives tend to be too small to be viable for long term library storage.

The backup drive should also be external, and use the fastest interface your computer can support.  If you use Macintosh, leverage the power of Time Machine to backup your library from the main external to this secondary drive.  If you use Windows, there are lots of backup applications to use, I am not a Windows user anymore, but I know that the Acronis people do very good software and it actually will perform a restore without dying.  Typically the backup drives are larger than the main drives so you can keep multiple versions.  This is a good use for RAID arrays.  They're usually a bit slower but make good backup targets.

The last piece of storage is offsite.  You can buy externals and move them to and from other sites or lockboxes, but the most effective way to do this is with secure cloud backup.  I have tried most of the services and recommend Crashplan above all others.  Your license will cover multiple computers and does not restrict backing up external drives.  Most other cloud services don't do external drives at all or charge extra for the privilege.  Carbonite gets lots of advertising but their pricing model is onerous and they treat external drives like lepers.

Now that you have a good storage model, let's get to cataloging.

In my opinion a photo editor is not necessarily a catalog system.  Photoshop comes with Bridge.  Bridge is a file browser not a catalog system.  It sucks and blows simultaneously.  While there are lots of editors, there are only two serious editors that also have very strong catalog functions and they are Aperture (Macintosh only) and Lightroom (Windows and Macintosh).  I recommend Lightroom to EVERYONE.  It works, there's tons of free training on the web and you can build your own catalog system and let the Lightroom engine do the majority of the work.

in my world, I set up my Lightroom catalog to store files by the date of capture.  This is the default so not a lot of work there.  At time of import, I have Lightroom make a second copy to a completely different drive as well (so I have three local copies plus cloud).  I used to have Lightroom convert to DNG at time of import, I no longer do this.  At time of Import, I use a preset to apply metadata information including my copyright and rights information as well as IPTC information into each file.  I choose to COPY the original into my Lightroom library so Lightroom can act as my organizer.  I use keywords on each import because I typically do an import after each shoot.  I don't leave cards in cameras for multiple shoots. Keywords help me find files after the fact so I include things like shoot information, lens and camera info, model names etc.  Anything that might apply to the entire import.  Once the import is done, I immediately create a collection for the entire import and give it a useful name.  I then create other collections to subdivide the images into easily findable subsets.  If I'm really bored, I will then specifically keyword select photos but this is a lot of work and hasn't made a real difference so I do it less and less.  Collections are for me the most useful of Lightroom's cross-hierarchy model.  The copy process means that I have a Lightroom library of photos, along with a separate Catalog file, both of which that get backed up to the local RAID array.  That original copy sits untouched on that other drive.  It's my last resort local backup.  I then set Crashplan to backup both my Catalog and my Lightroom library to the cloud.  I've done restores from Crashplan as a test and while not speedy, it works.  I've also done test restores from my local backups to be sure that they work as well.

Because of metadata, IPTC, keywords and EXIF, I can search Lightroom using multiple criteria and I can usually find what I am looking for no matter how old in a couple of minutes.  I don't have to build a structure in a folder system or directory because Lightroom does the job for me.  Transitioning to Lightroom is difficult for those who have built robust manual hierarchies because of the perceived loss of control.  It's all in the head of course, the Lightroom catalog is a much more powerful and much richer structure.

This also allows me to use Lightroom as the launch point for all other editing software.  I launch all plugins and Photoshop from within Lightroom.  This means that anything that goes out of Lightroom to an editor round trips back to Lightroom and updates the catalog.

I set Lightroom to optimize and backup the catalog on every exit.  This adds time to the close operation but keeps things running smoothly.  With over 50,000 images in my current library, performance is still good.

Lightroom does support multiple catalogs, but for my volume I don't need to use this function.  If you are making 150K retained images a year, maybe you do.  I also keep things clean by aggressive pruning of the library.  I make time to go through every import and use the X key to reject anything that I would not want to spend time editing right off the bat.  Then I delete the rejected photos.  Remember, I have that copy of everything that was made to the second drive at time of import if I ever really needed something (I never have) so by keeping my library to only good stuff it's fast and effective.

It's a longer answer to Rod's question but the subject warrants.  There are three considerations, physical media, storage architecture and catalog.  Hopefully this post helps you get a system set up that properly leverages all three.

Understanding Tilt + Shift Lenses

I recently put hands-on a used Canon Tilt + Shift lens and wanted to clear up the myriad misconceptions around what these lenses do.  I was distressed to see so much misinformation out there and hope that this helps readers get a clearer idea of why Tilt+Shift can be so powerful.

There is lots of babble about the tilt-shift "effect", usually in relation to using focus plane adjustment or making things look like a "toy".  This usually means taking a normal shot and making it look like it was shot with a macro lens with limited depth of field.  It's an eye trick, and while some people like it, it gets old very fast and severely under-utilizes the power of tilt + shift lenses.  You'll note that I refer to Tilt + Shift instead of Tilt-Shift.  I credit Australian photographer Peter Hill for educating me on the distinction and seeing as I find his argument so credible, elect to continue using his nomenclature.

Let's step back a bit.

With a view camera, there are two standards, the lens standard and the film plane standard.  On a view camera, both standards are adjustable in four ways.  Rise and fall means that the standard can move up or down without altering the angle of the lens or film plane.  Shift means that the standard can move left or right without altering the angle of the lens or film plane.  Tilt means that the standard can tilt forward and back without altering the vertical or horizontal position of the lens or film plane.  Swing means that the standard can swing to the left or right without altering the vertical or horizontal position of the lens or film plane.

With a DSLR style Tilt + Shift lens, instead of there being four movements available simultaneously, there are only two available simultaneously (mostly).  This isn't a bad thing at all, just a fact of life.  All movements in this type of lens are like moving the lens standard on the view camera.  The rear standard (film plane) is fixed.  Most TS lenses will offer rotation, so you can have either Shift or Rise/Fall but not both fully independently.  Because the rotation is free, you can get shift and rise/fall together but not with the exactitude of separate adjustments.

Similarly in standard orientations the lens can either tilt or swing but not both.  Again, using the rotation capability you can get some level of tilt and swing, but not with the exactitude of separate adjustments.

Please note that a full tilt with a full shift may cause vignetting to occur, although newer TS lenses have larger image circles to combat this.  For example, I was using the first edition of Canon's 24/3.5L TS lens.  The second edition, has an image circle 1.5x bigger so this reduces the likelihood of vignetting substantially.  When you look at the samples under Combinations, you can see vignetting happening.  Yes I could correct his in post, I simply chose not to do so, in order to illustrate the point.

Be aware that there is no autofocus in a Tilt + Shift lens.  This is logical since the focus plane is by definition, unfixed.  There is also no autoexposure.  With the lens centred, take your light meter reading and then make those settings in manual mode.  When you start moving the lens options, the meter reading will be wrong.  So learn where manual mode is and how to make a setting in it before moving the lens.  Using a handheld incident light meter will of course be helpful.

Also note that this lens is not one of those that you will use Lens Profile corrections for in your editing software.  That would defeat the purpose somewhat.

Let's take a look at the different movements

Rise / Fall and Shift

In these scenarios, the lens is raised or lowered, or shifted to the left or right, relative to the film plane.  It's kind of hard to describe so I made some simple (and boring) shots to help illustrate.  Rises and shifts tend not to introduce distortions and are very useful when photographing buildings to prevent them from appearing to be falling over or leaning.  These movements are also awesome for big landscapes where you cannot get into the exact position you want to be to shoot from but need more than you could get without tilting the camera.  All the images you see here are shot from EXACTLY the same position, camera on a tripod.  These are samples of rises, falls and shifts.

Tilts and Swings

In these scenarios, the lens is moved so it changes the focus plane that the lens delivers to the sensor.  So subjects in different parts of the viewfinder but at the same distance from the camera can have one in focus and the other out of focus.  This is the "toy" effect. Much more useful is if you are shooting a canyon where the far side varies significantly in distance and you want all elements in focus, but the lighting or other situations prevent you from going for maximum depth of field.  By swinging or tilting the lens, you change what is in focus and can align the new focus plane to the subject.  I've seen Moose Peterson use a tilt to pull more foreground into focus in a landscape to create the image of more depth.  There is also a capability to combine tilts / swings with focus stacking to get incredible depth of field while correcting for distortions such as mountains leaning over backward or buildings appearing to lean in towards the centre.  Here are some samples showing tilts and swings.

There are new corrections in Lightroom and Photoshop and also in dedicated applications such as DxO Viewpoint to help correct for falling and leaning that frankly costs a lot less than a TS lens, so judge accordingly as to the value that owning a TS lens would bring you.  Rent one a few times before dropping major coin on one.

Combinations

You can of course mix Tilts and Shifts in a single image.  This perhaps where a TS lens becomes most agile, and also the most work.  Here are some samples with multiple movements.

In closing, Tilt + Shift lenses are not for everyone, but may be for more people than would initially be considered.  And let me be clear.  Lens Baby style kit ARE NOT like a Tilt + Shift lens.  They are capable of altering the tilt/swing of the lens but do not shift and their mediocre optics become tiresome in short order.  With great respect, they are more toy than practical tool.

A Tilt + Shift lens could be an amazing tool in your photographic arsenal.  The sample images really don't do the power of the lens full justice but they do give you a sense of the capability.  To reiterate; every frame was taken at the same exposure, same focus from exactly the same position on a tripod.  Camera was a Canon 1Dx with Canon's 24mm f/3.5L I Tilt + Shift lens.  Images were imported into Lightroom 5.3 and then exported to high quality JPEG for web presentation.  1/160 f/13 ISO 100 +- 0EV

Episode 84 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Tamron announces 150-600/5-6.3.  Leica lens prices go up today.  Fuji announces 10-24/4 OIS for March.  Sinar announces mount for Leica S system.  Apple RAW update adds support for Nikon Df and Sony A7.  Sony updates formware on QX series.  Nikon dumps the SB-400.  Nikon D4 is very scarce, replacement coming?  Nikon drops J3, removes price limit on D3100.  Canon announces patents, likely for EOS-M lenses including 16-120, 18-55, 18-200 all STM

Canon 600 EX RT - no optical slave capability

Well this is annoying... When I sold off my Metz 58s, I missed something as I moved entirely to 600 EX-RT hotshoe flashes.  Don't get me wrong, Canon's radio system is terrific, and I love it and even did a popular video on how great they are.

But...

Last night I was commissioned to shoot portraits of the guests at a big party.  My main lights were Elinchrom BRX strobes and I wanted a hair light up on a boom that wouldn't be stupid heavy.  So I packed along a 600 EX-RT assuming (yes I know) that like any decent flash it would do simple optical slave triggering.

Wrong again honey.

Canon flashes do infrared slave, radio slave and remote slave from other Canon lights.  But no optical slave.  In fact even the 580 EXs didn't so I should have known years back.

This is in my opinion, really stupid on Canon's part.  Nikon doesn't remove functionality when they add to CLS, Canon didn't need to remove functionality when they added radio. One more hard to navigate menu selection would not have made that much of a difference.

We figured a way around the problem using the 600 EX RT in manual mode, controlled from the camera shoe with the ST-E3 RT, and setting the Elinchroms to fire using their built-in optical slave triggers.  The night went fine, except for the annoying fact that guests using their cellphone flashes kept triggering the very sensitive Elinchrom triggers.

So I am going to go fire up the old Metz 45 CT1 with a connected slave and dial it down to be my light weight hair light flash because I know that this works, but I'm also going to go take a look at the Elinchrom D-Lites for smaller lighter lights that I can control and group from the single Elinchrom Skyport transmitter.  I had thought of taking my Quadras, but I failed to charge them up prior and while they would have been ideal I had lots of AC available so the need to hang the battery pack would have necessitated a third C stand and boom instead of the much lighter Manfrotto 420B boom combo stand that it is my drag everywhere light stand.

The New Year's Revolution - 14 Tips to Be Better

Revolutionary?  Probably not, but at minimum evolutionary and at best game-changing.  Here are my 14 thoughts to help you make better photos and videos in 2014.

1. Make only interesting images.  Challenge your eye to see before you press the shutter or start recording.  Ask yourself why you will make this image or clip.  What makes it interesting or special or unique?  Make a note of your rationale.  Treat yourself to a Hemingway-esque Moleskine notebook and write down what you are seeing.  Sound like a lot of work?  Yes, but you will become a better artist because you do so.
2. Instead of spending money on more gear, go somewhere interesting.  For a day, a weekend, or longer.  Photographers and videographers routinely drop hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on new kit.  Use the money to take yourself somewhere where you will see different things and make interesting images or clips.
3. Make a portfolio if you do not have one.  Use SmugMug or Squarespace or Wordpress or whatever tool you like but make a portfolio.  Restrict yourself to no more than twenty-four images.  Place only your best work.  You may not have two images of the same subject in your portfolio.  Never post "work in progress" or "just okay" shots on social media.  You lower your personal bar when you do.
4. If you have a portfolio, it needs cleaning.  If there is anything more than two years old in it, it's housekeeping time.  Keep only your very best work in your portfolio and tighten up your themes.  Some pros advocate separate portfolios for different types of work to maintain continuity for the audience.  If you are selling work, or your own ability, this is very good advice.  If you shoot weddings, your wedding portfolio should be nothing but weddings.  If you also shoot full contact rugby, that's a completely separate portfolio.
5. Whatever editing tool you use, learn the speed key to delete images.  Import everything since you cannot tell if an image or clip is worth keeping by looking at the LCD on the camera display, but after the import is done, the first job is vicious deletion.  If you went out to shoot the Caledon badlands and came home with 300+ images, you have no reason to keep them all.  In fact if you are keeping many more than 40, you are building the editing rod for your own back.  Most pros plan for a keep ratio of between 6% and 10%.  If you are retaining more than this, you're probably not being honest with yourself.  Shaky footage goes in the can.  So do any pictures of people where the eyes aren't sharp.  Sports images where you cannot see the player's eyes are not keepers.  Bad exposure, bad white balance, bad audio tracks that are critical to the video track are all learning experiences.  You should learn from them and throw them away.  There's no prize for the size of your Lightroom library or Final Cut project bins.  Keep only the really good stuff and you won't end up wasting time on work that's mediocre.  There are plenty of people who are expert at mediocre and they are already posting enough for the rest of us.
6. Last year, I said that before you specialize you need to become adept at most any kind of photography.  I stand by that statement, but there has to be something you prefer to shoot.  No one actually loves shooting everything.  This doesn't mean you cannot focus on skills development in a new space, but identify the things you love to shoot.  I am capable, and have earned income as a wedding photographer and as an assistant in wedding videos.  That doesn't mean I enjoy doing the work so it will never be a specialty because I don't like it.  As the great philosopher Carlin said, "you got to wanna".  What's your specialty?  I know that Rick Sammon says "I specialize in everything".  Neither you nor I is Rick Sammon.  Pick your shot.
7. Learn your gear.  I meet lots of really nice people with a good eye who come away unhappy because they didn't get the image that they saw in their mind's eye.  They saw the image but did not know how to use their tools to capture it.  Vendor's produce manuals to be read.  If you haven't read your manual since you got your camera / lens / flash whatever, you're missing something.  Read it again.  Read it until you know the device inside out, and then practice changing settings without looking and without referring to the documentation.  Only then does the tool not get in the way of the work being done.
8. Get a mentor.  None of us know everything.  I go to classes, take workshops and watch a lot of video training.  I also ask people I respect for guidance.  I've been at this 35+ years.  If photography or videography is still relatively new to you, or if you've hit the creative wall, get yourself a mentor to help you along.  I offer eight week mentoring programs at a very fair price.  For the first time, the programs can be delivered using Google Hangouts, not just live in person.  So do others.  But be demanding.  "I want to get better" is not sufficiently demanding.  Contact me at ross@thephotovideoguy.ca to learn more about my mentor program.
9. Get a critique.  Your friends and family, and everyone on Flickr and sadly Google+ will trip over themselves to tell you how great your stuff is.  No offence, but all of it is not  great.  Get a critique from someone who genuinely wants to help you, not just destroy your hopes and dreams like many of the "judges" in photo contests.  A professional critique is not an emotional experience, and you will likely find you learn exactly the undefinable thing you didn't like about the shot.  I do critiques for people.  In the past they were only ever live.  I am now offering critiques using web tools.  A professional critique asks you as many questions as perspectives are shared.  This is how you tell the pros from the amateurs.  Contact me at ross@thephotovideoguy.ca to learn more about arranging a critique.
10. Learn composition.  Whether you are shooting a film or stills, composition is all.  Everytime I hear somebody say "rules are made to be broken" it usually ends up meaning that they never learned the rules in the first place.  True 90% of the time.  Learn and apply the rules.  The worst thing that happens from learning composition is that you get better images and better footage.
11. Learn about lighting.  Photography and videography are 100% about light.  It's not the gear, it's not the model, it's not even the subject.  It's all about light.   Great light can make a staid, boring subject interesting.  Crappy light can make the most incredible subject flat and lifeless.  A great landscape filled with atmospheric haze is a crappy image.  A beautiful dancer filmed in bad light is a bad film.
12. If you shoot video, become an expert on audio.  Nothing destroys your cinematic masterpiece faster than bad audio.  Good audio is very hard, you have to match the spatial layout of the video footage and still ensure that your actors are heard properly and have proper nuance.  Not everything is a head's up product pitch.  Learn about equalization and filtration, about compressors and dynamic range management.  Great sound keeps great video great.  Lousy sound destroys your video work.
13. Get out and shoot.  Looking at your kit does nothing.  Until about ten years ago, I was a very serious competitive shooter (the other kind of shooting).  To hold my skills I had to shoot at minimum 200 serious practice rounds a week.  To improve, I had to push to 500 rounds and at least one, sometimes two competitions a week.  It was incredibly demanding and a lot of fun.  There were ladies and gentlemen much better than I.  They made it look easy.  What I learned from everyone I took classes from is that repetition is the mother of skill.  If you aren't making images or clips constantly, you aren't likely to grow.  As Einstein said, "if you aren't failing, you aren't learning".
14. Print your work or burn your films to media.  For a still photographer, there is nothing like holding a big print of your own work.  It's incredible.  For a filmmaker, putting your work on a Bluray or DVD and showing it to friends and family on the biggest screen you can connect to is absolutely awesome.  It's transformational.  One of our friends in the local club, who is, in my opinion, a brilliant wildlife photographer, only just started printing.  He practiced and learned and moved to large canvas images.  Literally in weeks, he went from being a respected web poster to a seller of his incredible images as prints for people's homes.

Most of all, have fun!  Yes, a person dedicated to his or her craft can turn it into a revenue generating tool.  Not to be harsh, but I have seen too many folks who really loved image or filmmaking pack it in or become jaded after turning it into a "job".  Never forget the magical feeling you had when you first decided to get better.  Cheers!

Q & A : What's the truth about memory cards

To ask a question of The Photo Video Guy, send an email with your question to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca John writes (yes it's his real name :) ) "I swear I have heard every possible story about what memory card I should use, what the numbers mean, and why the most expensive card is the ONLY answer, or why it doesn't matter at all so long as the card is Class 10, whatever that means.  I don't think most salespeople know what they are talking about, and I believe that most of them are making it all up.  Can you tell me the real story?  And don't try to sell me something please."

Ok John.  Deal.  No selling.

Full disclosure, I do work part time in a camera store and I do sell memory cards to clients.  I always give a straight-forward answer and I have encountered enormous amounts of customer frustration given the amount of fabrication and outright falsehood they have been fed from computer stores, big box stores, the convenience store and "pro" camera shops.

So let's cut to the key details of multiplier (the number in front of the X), Class, and MB/s transfer rates.

What is the X Number?

For some readers, the idea of measuring the performance of a CD-ROM drive will sound like ancient history.  The first decent drives delivered READ performance of 150kbps.  That is kilobits per second.  In today's world, think snail speed.  That reality was never impacting on some marketing types so we still see 133x, 400x, 600x used as advertisements on cards.  What does this really mean?

What about the other numbers?  And all the letters? And the little pictorials?

133x = 19.95 megabytes per second or an approximate READ performance of 20 megabytes per second.  That translates into about ten 2 megapixel image read from the card per second.  Fascinating but pretty irrelevant because that is the data transfer rate for getting the data OFF the card.  As photographers and videographers, we must be most concerned about getting data ON to the card, to free the buffer for the next shot.  So this means that for any camera using an uncompressed image storage format, this card is pretty much useless.  The Write speed for these cards is usually undocumented so unless otherwise specifically stated, assume Write speed is about half of Read performance.

The bus type used by the card manufacturer, and even the card architecture has an impact on performance.  Bus types include Default, High Speed and UHS-1.  Faster cards need faster busses.  But to take advantage of the faster bus, the host (your camera, your card reader) also needs to have the same bus capability.  A UHS-1 bus is backward compatible.  A high speed bus will never leverage a card with a UHS-1 bus properly and will always treat it as a high speed bus card.

Accessing the memory on the card uses Direct Memory Access aka DMA.  Newer cards offer UDMA at different levels.  The higher the level the greater the maximum theoretical performance.  Today UDMA 7 has a theoretical cap of 256MB/s but there are no cards presently performing near that level of throughput.

But wait!  There's more bafflegab!

As noted in the 133x example, card manufacturers have an annoying tendency to quote READ performance in big type and WRITE performance in no type or ½ point typeface that requires a microdot reader to see.  In fact, in my research, I found only two cards where the READ and WRITE performance match and are guaranteed minimums.

Class?  Who has class?

Class was created to make it easy (hahahaha) for video camera users to get a card that would work in their cameras.  Most consumer video cameras today shoot at 1080p resolution, so 2 megapixel frames on average at 30fps.  But they also do VERY aggressive compression using H.264 and AVCHD amongst other methods.  The Class number is a number and basically guarantees a megabyte per second rate based on the number, so a Class 10 card guarantees 10MB/s read/write performance.  If the camera were doing a less compressed video stream, such as DNX, ProRes 4:2:2 or any of the other more serious video formats (less compression = better footage), a Class 10 card could not promise to keep up.  The brings up the new VPG graphic, a little film frame with a number in it that sort of guarantees a level of READ/WRITE throughput beyond a Class number.  It's a bit spurious.  For example, the Lexar 1000x cards are one of the very few that guarantee 150MB/s READ and WRITE performance.  I can run them continuously in my Canon C300 that pushes video onto storage at 50MB/s in ProResHQ 4:2:2.  Yet the cards only hold a graphic that says VPG-20.  Huh?  Sandisk's Extreme Pro cards read at 150MB/s, write at something slower but carry a VPG-65 marking guaranteeing 65MB/s write speed for video.  No wonder sellers and buyers get confused.

Here's a little table that might help...

	Bus Type	CF / SD Naming	Memory Architecture	Megabytes/s (READ)	Megabytes/s (WRITE)	Video Class Assignment CF/SD
133x	Normal	SD-XC	DMA	20	6	6
200x	High Speed	SD-XC I	DMA	30	15	10
400x	High Speed	SD-XC I	DMA	60	60	10
600x	UHS-I	SD-HC I	DMA	90	45	10
800x	UHS-I		UDMA 7	120	<=120	VPG-20 / 10
1000x	UHS-I		UDMA 7	150	<=150	VPG-65 VPG-20 1 Class 10

About the Memory...

CF and SD card memory is known as flash memory.  It holds content for a very long time without constant power so is called non-volatile.  This probably sounds like the flash storage used in Solid State Drives in laptops (SSD) or flash storage built in to computers, such as the flash storage found into the recently announced Mac Pro.

Yes they are both flash memory.  No they are not the same flash memory.  Flash memory used for "hard disk storage" is much more stringently tested and is much more fault tolerant than the flash memory found in memory cards.  That's why SSDs are so expensive.  This does not mean that the memory in memory cards is not good.  Lexar and Sandisk would not do lifetime warranties if they weren't very sure they would not get uptake on the warranty.  Because we know that a warranty is only offered when the manufacturer expects never to have a claim.  Did someone just call me cynical?

Hoodman tells me that their memory cards use SSD quality memory.  Ok.  I know that their cards are great and they do offer much tougher casings to help protect the card if you drop it and walk on it.  I don't know that the memory is really any better, but they say it is and they are a good company.

There are very few manufacturers of flash memory in the world.  Samsung in South Korea is one of the world's largest manufacturers.  The other is Micron Technologies based in the United States.  Lexar is the card brand of Micron.  There are lots of card OEMs though so how do you know which ones are good.  Look at the warranties, read reviews and read the specs, or observe the lack thereof.  I have never had an issue with either a Lexar or Sandisk product.  I do like that Lexar gives their recovery software with all their serious cards for free.  Sandisk gives a 12 month time bombed edition with their serious cards.  That's enough to be annoying.

This means that every other card is buying memory from someone and repackaging it.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but in my research I have found that memory comes to OEMs at different prices based on anticipated reliability levels.  100% reliability costs a lot more than memory rated at 85%.  Because these cards (mostly) use the old DOS style FAT file system, the format process automatically creates extra areas so bad sectors can be marked bad without data loss.  If you are a snap shooter, you need a card only fast enough for your most important project.  If you are a serious photographer or videographer, your requirements and standards might be much higher.  Personally, I have replaced every third party card with either Sandisk or predominantly Lexar.

How many....

It's also pretty common to get the question "well how many pictures can I get on a card?" I've put together a table with some popular cameras, along with the uncompressed RAW file size and the largest JPEG file size.  These are maximums based on the camera sensors and also assume 12 bit images.  8 bit images would take less space.  Some cameras let you capture lower bit count images.  I have yet to understand any logic in that since there's usually a JPEG export in the workflow somewhere and more than half the info gets tossed in the trash at that point so why capture at a lower bit rate...  The math is done for a 32GB card.  Divide by 2 to get approximates for a 16GB card, multiply by 2 fro a 64GB card.  Video is a very different question because it depends greatly on the compression type, the bit depth and the quality level.  Consumer camcorders are typically 8 bit devices with high levels of compression.  DSLRs can be 14 bit for stills but be 8 bit for video and then use H.264 compression to further reduce file size.  Pro cameras are 10 bit or higher and may deliver anything from RAW video (you must own a storage company) through a variety of professional codec models.  I created a sample chart for the Canon 7D for stills and its native video and added a column for what the video consumption would look like if using an external recorder and ProRes 4:2:2 like an Atomos Ninja.  Pro video is VERY demanding of storage.

Popular Camera File Sizes and Capacity

Camera	Canon 1Dx	Nikon D800	Sony A99	Canon 5D Mk III	Sony A7	Nikon D5200	Canon  T5i	Canon 7D	Nikon D7100
Rated MP	18	36.3	24	22	24	24	18	18	24
Pixel Dimensions	5202x3533	7360x4912	6000x4000	5760x3840	6000x4000	6000x4000	5184x3456	5184x3456	6000x4000
RAW File Size (uncompressed)	27.5	54.2	36	32.2	36	36	26.9	26.9	36
JPEG Fine File Size	12.25	24.1	16	14.75	16	16	11.94	11.94	16
RAW shots on 32GB	1,164	590	889	994	889	889	1,190	1,190	889
JPEG Fine on 32GB	2,612	1,328	2,000	2,169	2,000	2,000	2,680	2,680	2,000

Comparing Still Consumption to Video Consumption

	# RAW 12 images	# JPEG Fine Images	Hours of 4:2:0  1080P Video (H.264) max 21GB / Hour (Canon 7D)	Hours of 4:2:2 1080P Video (ProRes HQ) max 77.36 GB / Hour
16 GB	595	1,306	0.76	0.21
32 GB	1,190	2,612	1.52	0.41
64 GB	2,379	5,224	3.05	0.83
128 GB	4,758	10,449	6.10	1.65
256 GB	9,517	20,898	12.19	3.31

I have to thank the SD Card Association, Lexar, and Sandisk for producing such useful materials that helped in the creation of this article.  I did go to the Compactflash Association website as well but they were more interested in selling me their specification books than providing education.  I hope that this helped reader John and the rest of the folks who are regularly confused or misled on this subject.  It's more cumbersome than it should be but you now have enough information to make better decisions.

When I first moved to Ontario as a child, there was a fellow called Sy Sims, a clothier in Buffalo, who advertised on the local TV station.  His slogan was "an educated consumer is my best customer".  Some retailers don't want you to be educated it seems.  Fight back against that attitude.

Episode 83 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Sony's RX-10 quite a hit.  Nikon firmware update disables third party batteries and Nikon batteries in third party battery grips.  Canon exec hints at EOS-M3 for second half 2014.  Canon 5D Mk III not working with third party batteries.  Canon releases firmware for the 7D that doesn't matter.  Latest 7D Mk II rumour is that there won't be one.  DxOMark says that the Nikon Df outperforms the Nikon D4 in low light.  Leica releases 6 Summicron C cine lenses.  $97,500 takes the set.  Adobe releases Lightroom 5.3, DNG Converter 5.3 and Adobe Camera Raw 8.3.  Cameras added include Nikon D610, Nikon D5300, Nikon Df, Sony A7/A7r, and Olympus OM-D E-M1 amongst others.

Q & A : How do I make a High Key portrait?

To ask a question simply send an email to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca Reader Jens sent in the following question. "I have seen some portraits called high key on the web.  The picture looks very light and the background is completely washed out, but there is still lots of detail.  How do I do this?  I have a Nikon D7100, a 105mm micro and a SB-910 flash.  I think I need a background and more flashes but I am not sure.  Is this an expensive method? Can you help?"

Thanks for writing in Jens and yes I can help.  High key as a style has come in and out of favour over a long time.  I like the look myself and it's pretty easy to do.  You will need at least one, probably two, more flashes but you don't have to spend a ton of money on the other flashes since purely manual ones will do.

It will help if you have a flash meter but it isn't completely necessary.  I will tell you how to do it without a flash meter using all the flashes in manual mode for simplicity.  You will definitely need a white background, preferably a paper roll to reduce wrinkle shadows, a background stand of some kind and a diffuser of some sort for your SB-910.  Fortunately you have a D7100 that supports Nikon's Creative Lighting System so this gets easier to get your flash off camera.

Let's work back to front.

Start by putting your paper roll on the background stands and rolling it out to make a smooth backdrop right to the floor and forward on the floor a bit.  You want white on the ground for more reflection.

Put a simple manual flash head on either side of the background and angle them so the beams "cross" each other to make even light coverage on the white paper.  Set the flashes at full power to start and make sure that their slave mode is enabled.  This will cause them to fire when they detect your main flash going off.

Put a mark a few feet in front of the flashes where your model with stand or sit.

Put your SB-910 in manual mode at say ¼ power and put it on a stand and use a soft box.  If you are doing only head shots, a 20" x 20" soft box will do the job, go bigger for more coverage.  A good place to start is the Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe.  I recommend the Joe McNally version for high key because the box is lined with white instead of silver, producing a softer light.  The box comes with the bracket for your flash, you will need a light stand and tilter bracket as well.  If you already have a flash diffusion system, you can get by with what you have.

Position the soft box so it is in front of the model and aiming down towards the model.  This produces a sort of beauty dish style light but one that is softer.

Set your D7100 to Commander mode so the popup unit will trip the SB-910 but not contribute to the light.  You might need to fiddle with the sensor orientation on the SB-910 to get it to read the popup.  If this is a hassle or you are shooting right under the soft box, you will need a set of radio triggers.  Get the Cactus V5 system and you are good to go.  They don't do TTL but you will be just fine without it, and it doesn't really work for high key anyways.

What you want is the light on the background to be AT LEAST two stops brighter than the light on your model.  So if your test exposure says that you get a very nice exposure of the model at 1/125 and f/5.6, you want the exposure on the background that gives completely white response to be at least 1/125 at f/11.  This is why you turn the back flashes up high and the front one down a bit, to help get this ratio happening.  You aren't using TTL because your camera would be trying to turn down the background making the model silhouette out.  This is where manual is best and actually easiest.

I've attached a simple diagram so you can see what I mean.  Keep your main light close to the subject so it's really soft.  You may need to dial down the power on the SB-910 to get the right ratio, just keep adjusting until you get the initial exposure on the face right and then manipulate the power on the two rear flashes so they are at least two stops brighter.  This will give you the washed out background, some nice spill around the model's periphery and that high key look.

Now start experimenting with some over exposure of the main exposure.  If the "correct" exposure is 1/125 at f/5.6, shoot at f/5, f/4.5 and f/4 to see which you like best.  You'll be overexposing the background as well but there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into what the "right" exposure from your main light is.

Now, if you have a flash meter, it gets easier because you just meter the light coming off the background when the rear flashes fire and then set the output level on the main flash to be at least two stops less.  What does this get you?  It saves you time getting to your starting point.

Ideal Gear Scenario

• 3 Flash Heads of similar output, manual mode, output power control, slave function
• 2 Light Stands with hotshoe flash mounts
• 1 Light Stand, Boom optional
• 1 Softbox, flash bracket and tilter head
• 1 Background Stand Kit
• 1 Wide Roll White Background Paper
• 1 Radio Trigger Set from Camera to Main Flash
• 1 Flash Meter

Note that the gear listed is going to be useful for a lot more than just high key portraits and will be valuable for all kinds of different shooting scenarios.  I've recently discovered the Lastolite Hilite, a dedicated popup background specifically for high key.  It's a 6' x 7' pop up system with an outer white diffusion panel and an inner white reflector stitched together by separators about 16" wide.  It comes with four 16" rods to hold the front and back sections apart and has zippers on all four sides that open to allow you to get the front of the flash heads inside the enclosure.  It's not inexpensive but it is readily portable and collapses into a disk about three feet in diameter.  I've just ordered one in and will provide a review in the future.

Thanks for the question, I hope that this has been useful.

My Top 12 Holiday Gifts Under $250 (mostly)

Every holiday season the family and friends of photographers go seeking gift ideas.  Every year they ask the photographer or videographer what he or she would like.  Every year the answer starts with a 400/2.8 at eleven grand and the buyer gives up.  The Photo Video Guy is here to help with my top 12 gifts under $250 (mostly). If you buy from B&H, OnOne or Amazon through my links, you help support The Photo Video Guy. If you buy from Adobe or Google, you're getting the deal and if you buy through the Henry's links, well you help them out because Henry's doesn't have an affiliate program. Adobe Creative Cloud Photographer's Bundle

At $9.99 per month if you sign up before December 31st, this is a killer deal.  You get Lightroom 5.x and Photoshop CC for less than the retail price for Lightroom.  Yes it is subscription and yes there is a web activation component, but you get the newest hottest code and the ability to run on two machines simultaneously.  Adobe has listened and this is a great deal.

Adobe Photographer's Bundle

Set of Extension Tubes

It's hard to beat a great macro lens for closeups but this is the entry way to do it.  Using a set of extension tubes enables pretty much any lens to do close up work.  If your gift receiver already has a macro lens, this kit makes it capable of even greater closeup work.  I recommend the set because the kit of three costs about the same as one tube from a manufacturer and works just as well.

Aputure Tubes Canon and Nikon - Henry's Canada Tube Set for Canon Tube Set for Nikon

Kenko Tubes - B&H USA

Tube Set for Canon Tube Set for Nikon

Google Nik Collection

When Google bought Nik, post-processors were terrified.  The Nik Collection used to be $600.  Now it's $149 and contains amazing post processing plugins that work with Lightroom, Photoshop and Aperture including Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro 2, Silver Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine Noise Reduction.

Nik Collection

Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe / Ezybox

Nothing makes a hotshoe flash look better than getting it off the camera and softening the light.  The Lastolite Ezybox hotshoe straps right onto the head of your hotshoe flash and produces really nice light.  If you have an off camera cable or wireless system, you can control your flash centrally and just hold it at arm's length for significantly better flash shots.  Want a bigger source?  Go for the Lastolite Ezybox Softbox.  It includes the bracket and flash mount, all you need is a simple light stand and tilter bracket.  Nothing sets up faster than an Ezybox and the dual diffusion panels make the light beautiful

Henry's Canada - Softbox

B&H USA - Softbox

Henry's Canada - Ezybox Speedlite Kit

B&H USA - Ezybox Speedlite Kit

Cowboy Studios Shoulder Rig for DSLR Video

You could spend a fortune on a shoulder rig to shoot live video with your DSLR or Compact System Camera.  You don't have to.  The Cowboy Studios kit is an amazing value and it just works.  Designed specifically for DSLR and mirror less style cameras, you forego weight and cumbersome rods for a solution that is simple, lightweight and incredibly effective. Also includes a follow focus for less than the price of a standalone follow focus.

Shoulder Rig w Follow Focus

Polarizing Filter

You can do most anything in post processing with digital filters except for true polarization.  Every photographer and videographer will benefit from a polarizer to manage reflections and deepen blue skies on clear days.  Buy the one to fit the largest diameter required and step down rings to use the same filter on lenses with smaller filter sizes. I personally prefer the B+W and Heliopan brands.

Various sizes and prices, check out Henry's

Piccure

I see too many potentially great shots where a bit of camera shake creates enough micro blur to make the shot less than ideal.  Piccure is a plugin that does one thing really well and that is to correct for camera micro shake.  The plugin works with Lightroom or Photoshop.  If your photo enthusiast is complaining about micro blur, this could be the answer.

Get Piccure

OnOne Software Perfect Photo Suite

Full disclosure, I am an affiliate with the great people at OnOne Software, and if you buy the software through my link I earn a minor commission.  That said, Perfect Photo Suite 8 rocks.  The Suite contains Perfect Effects, Perfect Enhance, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Resize, Perfect B&W, Perfect Browse, Perfect Layers and Perfect Mask.  And the full suite is on sale right now.

Cowboy Studio Continuous Lighting Kit

This is a very inexpensive multi-head continuous lighting kit that is perfect for someone starting out.  You get in a easy to handle kit, two light stands, one boom stand kit with bracket, a lamp housing with soft box for the boom, two 5 lamp housings with two 20"x28" soft boxes, 10 45w bulbs, 1 65w bulb and a carrying case.  Because it is continuous lighting based on CFL bulbs it's perfect for photography and videography and the lights run cool so you don't bake your talent.

Manfrotto Boom/Stand Kit

Every photographer needs a light stand.  They also need a boom.  They usually find out that they need a boom after buying a light stand.  Then another trip to the store to buy a sandbag to keep everything from being tippy.  Save time and money with the superb Manfrotto 420B Combi-Boom Stand.  It folds compactly and is all most folks will ever need in a complete kit with a boom that doesn't creep like some sold for more money.

Henry's Canada - Manfrotto 420B

B&H USA - Manfrotto 420B

External Hard Drive

Photos and videos take up space.  Many photographers and videographers have limited space on their preferred laptops so an external drive is the way to go to hold libraries and projects.  You can build your own using components or buy complete units.  The WD Passports are complete kits that work pretty well as are the G-Tech series.  I've had bad experience with LaCie myself but many people love them.  My greatest success comes from buying a case and putting an SSD into it.  Screaming fast and easy on energy.

WD 2TB USB3

Aputure HDMI Monitor

That little LCD on the back of the camera just isn't big enough to confirm sharpness and a good shot, especially with video.  Every videographer needs an external monitor that runs off the HDMI port to check their recordings.  The videographer is often in the "shot" and an external display can be positioned to help the talent see what's going on.  The Aputure 7" display does a great job at a really low price.

Henry's Canada - Aputure HDMI Monitor

Video : Picking a Portrait Lens

Since this has been a very popular topic, I recorded a short video discussing some potential focal lengths to use for portraits, along with my personal recommendation.

Episode 82 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Canon announces the EOS-M2 but only for Japan.  Canon releases patents for more lenses with built-in teleconverters.  DP Review likes the Nikon AW1, turnaround for the maligned Nikon 1?  Sigma announces some lenses will not autofocus on Nikon Df.  Adobe extends PS/LR deal.  DxO updates software.  CamRanger wireless tripod head.

Episode 81 - The Photo Video Guy Podcast

Piccure - micro camera shake correction.  Nikon D5300 has focus issues with some Sigma lenses, fix maybe.  Nikon Df shipping.  Nikon stock poor performer in 2013.  Nikon to release Nikon 1 V3 in January.  Google RAW coming to Android.  Fujifilm announces digital magazine for X Series owners, updates X series firmware again.  Canon C300 gets new firmware and wins Asia Silver Award.  Canon to release new non-L primes in 2014 with IS.  Adobe deal on PS/LR for $9.99 / mth ends Dec 2nd.  Leica prices go up Jan 1, 2014.  Leica takes over Sinar.  Leica M240 deisgned by Jony Ive and Mark Newsome sells for $1.8M at auction.  Olympus releases new firmware for the OM-D E-M1.  Roger Cicala writes the Devil's Photography Dictionary.

Q & A : The Best Lens for Portraits

To get your question answered, send it via email to ross@thephotovideoguy.ca  You'll be glad you did! I've actually known CJ since he was an infant, because I know his folks.  He's been into photography since his teens and as a young adult is starting to make his way as a professional photographer.  He's been published and is a very talented fellow.  He recently asked me this question, after adding a beauty dish to his lighting kit.  "What's the best lens for portraits?  I'll be doing head shots and half body shots.  I've narrowed it down to 2 lenses, the Canon 85/1.2 L and the Canon 100/2.8 L Macro.  What do you think?"

Well CJ, it's a great question.  My preferred portrait lens is actually the Canon 70-200/2.8. It's awesome but I hold +Scott Kelby accountable since it was his articulate treatise on the subject that led me this way.  That said, I own and like both the lenses you asked about and I will hold my answer to one of your selections, (which is what I actually did do).

CJ is using a Canon 7D.  We tend to toss this off as "oh a crop sensor camera" as if that meant some kind of disease.  The ONLY think that really matters with having a crop sensor is the effect it has on relative focal length.  A crop sensor sees a smaller image circle, so if a lens that produces a full frame image circle is used (as in these two lenses), the sensor only sees part of the total image giving you the effect of shooting a longer focal length.

This is true for crop sensor built lenses too with the difference that they WON'T work on full frame cameras.  If you think you'll ever move from crop to full, or have both, only buy glass that will produce the image circle required by a full frame sensor.

The Canon sensor has a crop factor of approximately 1.6x.  So simply this means to get what the effective focal length is, multiply the physical focal length by the crop factor.  In the example of the 100mm lens, this means it gets the look of a 160mm lens.

This can be awesome and horrible.  For sports and long distance it's wonderful.  For super wide it's a nightmare.  But CJ asks about portraits.

Back in the olden days, there was an ongoing bun fight over what lens was better for portraits, the 85mm which allowed you to get really tight, had a super large maximum aperture and had lovely focus falloff, or the 105mm which allowed you a bit more standoff distance and gave slightly more perspective compression.  I know CJ asked about the 100mm, but when I was coming up, the portrait lens I yearned for was the Nikkor 105/2.5 AI.  It was SO good.  Well that bun fight still goes on.

The reality is that either of the 85mm or 100mm will do lovely portraits if you do your part.  The 85mm that CJ asks about is the f/1.2 variant.  Think sees in the dark.  Also think very razor thin depth of field wide open.  On a headshot with focus on the eye, the tip of the nose is definitely soft.  It's an incredible look if you use it properly.  The lens also has wonderful bokeh (no rants on mispronunciation or vendor BS dumps about Bokeh - I Promise).  Out of focus areas are really rendered beautifully.  The downside is that the AF performance is slow.  Like you can watch the lens turn slow.  And this is the II iteration which is faster than the first series.  It's also surprisingly heavy.  On a 7D, it acts like a 136mm/1.2 lens which is really wonderful for faces and still works for half-lengths if you stop down a bit, say f/5.6.

The 100mm f/2.8 is a different animal entirely.  This is by design, first a macro lens.  It delivers up to 1x life size on the sensor without additional kit.  It's tack sharp and focuses very quickly, given the sophistication that goes into macro lens design.  It's fast enough optically but doesn't produce that razor thin depth of field as we find in the 85mm.  It does produce beautiful bokeh, because that is a design criteria for top end macro lenses.  This is not well known but may help explain why so many photographers love the bokeh in macro lenses.

There is a lot of noise about the number and style of the blades.  Odd numbers of blades produce star effects with twice the number of points as blades, even numbers of blades produce star effects with the same number of points as blades.  This has NOTHING to do with the choice of lens for portraits.  More blades tend to produce rounder apertures as do curved blades and many people think that this produces more pleasing out of focus highlights.  I'm one of those people.

Having shot both lenses a lot, I favour the 100mm most often.  I love the look of the 85mm but since I shoot most often with a full frame now, in my opinion, the 85mm focal length pushes me too close to the subject for a headshot, particularly if the subject is not a model who may be more comfortable with big glass in her (or his) face.  The 100mm give just a bit more standoff and I have not found that to be a problem in the areas where I shoot these types of portraits.  I also love getting really close (eyes are awesome) and the macro is wonderful for that sort of thing.  If I'm doing low natural light work, that's really where that f/1.2 comes into play on the 85mm.  Here are a couple of shots of my wonderful model Sondra shot today and attempting to get a similar perspective with the different lenses.  For those all gear interested, lighting is a Bowens 500 Pro tripped by radio via Pocket Wizard at lowest power shooting through the Bowens Beauty Dish with the added diffusion sock.  Camera is a Canon 1Dx in manual mode at 1/100 and f/9.0 ISO 50, no exposure compensation.

Yes, I should have brushed her hair.  Bad me.

Again, although it wasn't in the criteria that CJ asked about, I encourage you to take some time to think about a 70-200/2.8  Both the Canon and Nikon variants are really exceptional and they are extremely versatile lenses.  Both are extremely sharp with excellent distortion control so great for head shots, plus the zoom gives you very quick compositional changes.  The downside of this route is always going to be the physical size and intimidation factor.  Please also note that I would never go with a lens optically slower than f/2.8 in such a zoom if portraiture was part of my expected outcome list.

A Second Look at Piccure

I am always interested in hearing alternate perspectives.  Recently I wrote a review of a plug-in called Piccure and indicated that it wasn't right for me.  Lui from Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH wrote with some suggestions on how I might improve my results.

His first suggestion was to read through the Handbook that they make available.  I had scanned it, and did not read it word for word.  I read it and there is a recommended workflow that I did not follow.

Lui suggested that Piccure be the first thing I do, before any other editing, stating that other filters are destructive.  While Lightroom is non-destructive by design, a saved file like a TIFF as used by any plug-in has had filtration applied if editing has been done.  Ok, while this is completely contrary to my normal workflow, just like Nik's Pre-Sharpening, I will do start with Piccure before doing ANYTHING else.

The Handbook says Edit in Piccure using TIFF, 16 bit and sRGB.  I would never have tried this as I prefer the proper and full colour gamut of ProPhoto RGB.  Lui honestly states that in the current release Piccure doesn't work very well with ProPhoto RGB or Full RGB.  It works best with sRGB.  This is sub-optimal in my view but in respect of his courtesy to write, I agreed to give it a shot.

He also suggested using a Smartspot.  I had tried this but didn't see a difference, but again, I will do so.  He also coached that the Micro setting is a better place to start than the default of Medium because the design precepts behind Piccure are solely to the micro evidence of camera shake.  Here's a comparison screen grab with Piccure on the left and the original RAW on the right.

So here's what I learned from following the Handbook and the guidance from Lui.

The sRGB choice, while I don't like it, makes a significant difference in Piccure's success.  No longer are the colours skewed and the image is no longer made crunchy and as noisy.

Cautious placement of the Smartspot helps a lot.  I tried placing the Smartspot where recommended and then also in a number of other places.  This is time consuming because of the processing load to recalculate with each placement, but it definitely makes a difference in Piccure's success.

Lui also suggested manually tweaking the defaults.  I had already done this in my first review, and so I agree that this is always a good idea.

Outcome

Ok I stand corrected.  Piccure does a VERY GOOD job when you follow the instructions.  If I did not already have a subscription to Creative Cloud (I do) and micro camera shake was something I was concerned about (it is - I shoot sports and wildlife with long lenses), Piccure is a very good solution.   At $80 it may be all you need.

What I Liked

It's a very focused offering.  I can alter my workflow to put Piccure first when I use it.  I'm still not completely clear about adjusting colour balance before or after using Piccure, although I believe that so long as I know the colour temperature, it shouldn't make a big difference if I fix the WB after using Piccure.  The number of variables are small and while the processing requirements are significant when set to highest quality, you get good and visible results.  It does not correct out of focus shots, it corrects for camera micro shake - just as promised.  In my test images the amount of shake was very small but Piccure did the corrections and so long as I followed the Handbook, I got consistently good results.

What I Would Like to See Improved

Number one for me would be to not have to drop the gamut to sRGB when going to Piccure.  I'd much rather be able to have Piccure work properly with ProPhotoRGB gamuts.  I am guessing that the architects understood that sports shooters might be candidate customers and pro shooters tend to shoot in JPEG regardless because they need to upload to their services on the breaks and a decent JPEG is fine for wire services and web broadcast.  That would be a reasonable business decision but it's not me.  I never shoot in JPEG unless I have screwed up.

In the end, I have Photoshop CC and Adobe's Camera Shake Reduction algorithm is very good and there are no restrictions on colour spaces when using it.  If I did not have Photoshop CC, I'd be buying the Piccure plugin because it works, and because Lui advised that addressing the colour space limitation is on their roadmap.  A big thank you to Lui and the rest of the team at Intelligent Imaging Solutions GmbH for building a good tool, and more importantly for caring what prospective customers think and for making a real effort at creating customer joy.  Other software companies could learn from this attitude.

OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8 is now available

Check it out gang, the newest release of OnOne's Perfect Photo Suite, v8 is available for purchase and download today.  Here's the Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: onOne Software Announces Availability of Perfect Photo Suite 8

New Perfect Eraser for Content-Aware Fill, Enhance and Browse Modules, Perfect Batch Processor, and Re-imagined Effects Module Evolve Popular Plug-In Into a Complete Photo Editing Solution for Every Workflow

Portland, OR – November 26, 2013 – onOne Software, Inc., a leading developer of innovative digital photography solutions, today announced the availability of Perfect Photo Suite 8—the Photographer’s Choice for Photo Editing. Perfect Photo Suite 8 is a full-featured, standalone photo editor that also integrates seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, and Apple Aperture. It includes all the best tools a photographer needs to create stunning images.

Key new features include the Perfect Eraser, with content-aware fill technology; the Perfect Enhance module for essential photo adjustments; a new Browser that streamlines direct access to images wherever they are located; the Perfect Batch engine that applies presets to multiple images with a single click; and a re-engineered Perfect Effects module, with twice as many adjustable filters, customizable presets, and integrated FocalPoint technology. These new tools and capabilities alongside Perfect Photo Suite 8’s eight modules, one-click presets, tools for automated enhancements, and powerful controls allow photographers to enhance, retouch, and stylize images in a layered workflow, replace backgrounds, create high-quality enlargements, and prepare images for output—giving them the ability to express their creativity and transform their photos quickly and easily.

“We are extremely excited about Perfect Photo Suite 8,” said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. “This version is the result of what photographers have been asking for, not only from us but from the industry as a whole. We’re grateful for the contributions and feedback the photography community has invested in our effort and we believe that we’ve created an extraordinarily powerful image editing tool that meets their specific needs in return.”

After a successful public beta program for Perfect Photo Suite 8, many photographers had a chance to try out the new version and give their feedback. “The attention to your user’s needs is unmatched,” said Rebecca Lyyski, owner of Lyyski’s Designs. “As a graphic designer and photographer with an elevated workload, your product has made editing my professional photography a pleasure instead of a chore,” she adds. Greg Lambert, public beta user and onOne Software photo contest winner shared, “Perfect Photo Suite 8 continues to evolve by refining its existing capability, streamlining the interface and providing some new and exciting tools and presets to enable photographers to produce the images they visualize when they press the shutter button.”

The New Perfect Photo Suite 8 Features: • Eight integrated modules – Effects, Enhance, B&W, Portrait, Mask, Layers, Resize, and Browse. Each module is designed to target a specific image-processing task. Together, they help photographers enhance, retouch, and stylize images in a layered workflow, replace backgrounds, create high-quality enlargements, and prepare images for use in various capacities.

• New Module! Perfect Enhance provides essential tools for basic enhancements, such as brightness and contrast adjustments; colorcast, dust spot, and power line removal; and the addition of vignettes. It is an ideal module to start with when using Perfect Photo Suite 8 as a standalone application or when quick corrections are needed.

• New Module! Browse provides convenient and direct access to image files wherever they are stored—whether they are on a computer, an external drive, a connected network, or on a cloud-based storage service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Apple’s Photo Stream.

• Reimagined! Perfect Effects – As a cornerstone of Perfect Photo Suite 8, the Effects module has been redesigned by adding adjustable filters and customizable presets, making it the most powerful and versatile image stylization tool available on the market today.

• Twice as Many Adjustable Filters to create the most sought-after looks, including:

• Dynamic Contrast – Adds stunning clarity to images and makes them pop by exaggerating the levels of contrast, without sacrificing highlight and shadow detail, creating halos, or affecting saturation.

• Lens Blur – Includes the best parts of FocalPoint technology to create bokeh, tilt-shift, and selective focus effects after the shot.

• HDR – Gives images the edgy look of high dynamic range. Settings are adjustable and create effects that range from subtle to surreal.

• Vintage – Turns photos into a nostalgic memory with retro-style filters.

• Powerful brushes provide the right results for specific editing tasks:

• Perfect Eraser removes objects with content-aware fill technology

• Retouch Brush uses spot healing to remove small distractions

• Clone Brush removes unwanted items by replicating and covering specified areas of an image

• Masking Brush reveals underlying layers or selectively applies effects • Perfect Brush delivers precise edge-detection masking

• Hundreds of Customizable Presets are available throughout Perfect Photo Suite 8 that make it easy for any photographer to instantly create an image they love. Presets can also be used as starting points for creativity and efficiency. Presets are included in the Enhance, Effects, B&W, Portrait, and Resize modules.

• Improved Masking Bug in the Effects and Layers modules make mask creation easier and more intuitive.

• Perfect Batch engine simultaneously applies presets from multiple modules and a watermark to a selected group of images.

Availability and Pricing The new Perfect Photo Suite 8 is now available at www.ononesoftware.com/store. Perfect Photo Suite 8 is available in three editions: Premium, Standard, and for Adobe Lightroom & Apple Aperture.

The Premium Edition works with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Apple Aperture, and as a standalone application. It is priced at $179.95. Owners of previous versions of Perfect Photo Suite Premium Edition can upgrade for $99.95. For a limited time, orders of Perfect Photo Suite 8 Premium Edition will include a special collection of Professional Presets and The Essential Video Guide to Perfect Photo Suite 8, which provides a comprehensive collection of getting started training videos for Perfect Photo Suite 8—for free ($80 value). This offer ends on December 3, 2013.

Perfect Photo Suite 8 for Adobe Lightroom & Apple Aperture works with Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements, and as a standalone application. It is available for $129.95; upgrades are $79.95. The Standard Edition works as a complete standalone photo editor and is available for $79.95. For more information on Perfect Photo Suite 8, please visit http://www.ononesoftware.com. A 30-day Money Back Guarantee backs all onOne Software products.

About onOne Software onOne Software, Inc., is a leading developer of innovative software tools and apps for digital photography and offers time-saving software solutions for photographers of all levels, from enthusiasts to professionals. Leveraging its extensive history as successful plug-in developer for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple Aperture, and continued development of cutting-edge technology, onOne publishes unified solutions that offer both full-featured photo editing capabilities and the flexibility of traditional plug-ins. Founded in 2005, onOne Software is a privately held company located in Portland, Oregon. For additional information, visit www.ononesoftware.com.

Is Piccure Your Next Plugin Purchase?

I was listening to a recent This Week in Photo episode #TWIP and heard about this plugin called Piccure.  It was described as a tool to help correct camera shake.  There's a 14 day free trial so I thought I would download it and give it a shot. NOTE :  Since this initial review, I received some guidance from the manufacturer directly and applied it.  I got better results.  After reading this post, head on over to http://thephotovideoguy.ca/?p=1487 for the follow-on

Most folks know that Photoshop CC has a camera shake correction and it's quite good.  Not everyone has Photoshop CC and sometimes a dedicated plugin can be the answer, particularly for people who do all their work in Lightroom.  Piccure comes as a plugin for both Lightroom and Photoshop.  At time of writing there was no support for Aperture.

Initially I feared that the tool would simply do some fairly aggressive sharpening, using a high pass filter style algorithm and punch the contrast up to make it look like it was correcting for camera shake.  So for my tests, I used images that were already corrected in these ways and where extra sharpening and contrast would really make the shot look crispy.

I've netted this down to a single image for the sample pics in the article to make it clearer what is happening.  Please know that I am not making my valuation based solely on a single image test.  What is shown here is consistent with what I saw on all tests.

Piccure really does seem to do some significant math to determine where movement has taken place in the frame.  The default settings of Medium for shake and middle ground for sharpening produced really horrible results with the test image.  They were already pretty sharp.  It's definitely doing something.  I got a warning that because the image was large, it could take a while.  While processing, all eight cores in the Mac Pro were quite busy.

For point of interest, the test shot shown has the following EXIF.

• Canon 1D Mark IV
• Canon 70-200/2.8L IS II
• 175mm, IS mode 2
• 1/400
• f/2.8
• ISO 2500
• EV +1 2/3
• Shot handheld, unsupported

When you launch Piccure from Lightroom, you do so as with most all other plugins.  Right click, choose Edit In and select Piccure.  The defaults are sRGB and 240 dpi.  I reset those to ProPhoto RGB and 300 dpi as those are my common defaults.  The Piccure window looks like this;

You can see that it gives you a look at what it's going to do, a processing indicator and three sliders.  The first controls the balance of speed of work vs quality.  Default is full quality.  Second defines the amount of camera shake to correct for.  Default is medium.  Since there was near negligible camera shake, the results were ghastly.  I've moved it all the way to micro correction.  The third slider is called Sharpness varying between Smooth and Sharp.  In every experiment I end up with this all the way over to Smooth to prevent edges you could cut yourself on, along with a lot of duplication.

In the second image, I've zoomed in to 1:1 and you can see the Piccure proposed fixes on the right side.  The Canadian flag is nearly unrecognizable the goaltender's face cage is blown out and has black halos.

It's pretty brutal so I backed off the Sharpening completely.  In the next two images, I've shifted the display to show first the goaltender's face "corrected".  Look at how shattered the OJHL logo becomes in the processed side.  Then I shifted the image to show the goaltender's face without the processing.  The difference, even with the sliders for shake and sharpness backed full off is substantial.  I admit I don't like what I am seeing.

I didn't give up at this point, but let Piccure do its thing.  To my disappointment, the image is very edgy, the colour saturation is compressed, the contrast is way up and adjustments made in Lightroom have been crushed.  You can see this in the next sequence.  The first image is the export direct from Lightroom without using the Piccure plugin at all.  The second is what came back to Lightroom directly from Piccure and the third is after re-adjusting the Piccure image.

I'm sorry to say that even while the Piccure plugin has done some camera shake adjustment, I feel like I've lost more than I've gained.

By now, you've figured out that I'm not really blown away by the plugin.  You're right.  For $80, I'd like less crispy and less overall image loss.  I need to be fair, there was very minimal camera shake involved in the original image, but these are the ones I would want to tighten up.  If the shot is blur city, it goes to the trash.

As a final point of comparison, here's the LR edit passed through Photoshop CC invoking the Camera Shake Reduction filter and returned to Lightroom before export.  Consider that Adobe now has Lightroom and Photoshop CC for $10 a month.  You can have both programs for half again what the plugin costs on its own.  I hope the folks who make Piccure continue to enhance their product.  I won't be buying a license at this stage.  I can get better results using the tools that I have.  Fortunately software is an evolutionary business and they can continue to improve.  And perhaps Piccure is exactly the right thing for people who may not care to spend as much time in post-processing as I do, or who have more shake evident in their images.