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Ok, I really need to share this. Two weeks ago, I needed to shoot a short video for a friend. So I thought of making some sort of simple follow focus that I can use. We all know that the cheapest follow focus will easily go from $100 and more. So scratch that. I'm not buying one. Thankfully I found one that is really cheap and amusing, really, I was laughing when I saw the video below.
Bird in the Rain by Ness Flores is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
It was raining all day today, but the birds were still out playing, I can here them enjoying the rain, so I grab my gear and sat by the front door, I was lucky enough to get a few keepers.
In situations like this your best friend is your ISO. Boosting your ISO can greatly help you get a great shot. Here for example, I use an ISO of 800. This allowed me to use a fast shutter speed to catch this fast little birds. The photo above was shot using a was shot with a Canon EOS 40D and Canon EF 400mm F/5.6L.
I just love this feature in CS 5 I have to share it with everyone.
In this episode, Russell Brown demonstrates how beginning and advanced users can quickly and easily create professional quality masks using Photoshop CS5's Refine Mask panel. More tips like this at http://tv.adobe.com
Crazy custumes, spooky decorations, wacky funny people, it’s this time of the year where we go crazy about anything scary. Halloween is such an awesome tradition, so why not go out there have fun and make some great pictures. There are plenty of subjects to photograph during Halloween all you need is your camera, a little bit of patience and creativity.
Scary Halloween Face
Here are some tips that will help you capture those memorable halloween moments:
- Gear Recommendation:
- A fast lens with a max aperture of F/2.8 and up is ideal for low light photography, in this case the cheap Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens
would be a great tool.
- Zoom lenses will give you versatility and will allow you to take group and portrait shots. The Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM
or the cheaper but reliable Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 VC
are my recommendation. You can also consider lenses in the 24-70mm range with a Fast F/2.8 aperture. In this range I can highly recommend the cheaper Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 SP
. With zoom lenses you have flexibility to zoom in or go wide anytime you need, with a prime you’ll have the convenience of a larger aperture at F/1.8 and up and easier to carry around compare to zoom lenses.
- Don’t forget to bring your external flash, although you can use your camera’s pop up flash, the quality of light from external flash will give you more beautiful results.
- A Flash Diffuser would be great to have, like the Demb flash Diffuser pro or the Opteka Universal Flash Diffuser. This will give you a more pleasing soft light at close range.
- Flash Gels, I use the rosco gels, Orange and Reds are best for halloween to give you that scary halloween look. If you don’t have a flash gel, you can cut a orange or red plastic folder. Flash gels, can also work as a diffuser.
- Don’ t forget to bring extra memory cards and extra battery.
- And of course don’t forget you Camera.
Shot with a Canon EOS 20D with a Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 Lens and Canon 430EX II Flash(No Gel) ISO 800, 34mm, F/2.8, , 1/50th, Manual .
- Making the Photograps.
- Since most of the fun and actions occurs at dark, setting your camera to use it’s higher aperture, F/2.8 and up (F/1.8, F/1.4) is recommended, if using a kit lens which can probably go up to F/3.5 will do. Depending on the aperture settings, increasing your ISO around 400 and above is recommended even when using a flash.
- Use flash when taking candid photographs of people, I sometimes I use red or orange gels to give that warm reddish scary halloween feel. (See photo of scary clown below).
- When using flash, make sure you use a diffuser to minimize harsh light, flash modifiers like the ones I mentioned above in the gear recommendation will do the trick and using red / orange gels in this situation will also diffuse the light.
- When shooting scenes like glowing lights or jack o lanterns, I wouldn’t recommend using your flash, dial your camera to use a wide aperture like F/2.8, F/1.8 or F/1.4 would be ideal and increasing your ISO to will also help. Sure, using high ISO will add noise and grain to your photograph, but if it’s the only way for you to capture the scene, why not, a grainy picture is better than no picture at all and besides, if people notices the grain or noise in your picture, it’s probably a boring picture.
- Find something scary.
- Meet new people.
- and Most important of all, enjoy the night, have fun making pictures.
Shot with A Rosco Red Gel. Canon EOS 20D, ISO 800, 22mm, F/2.8 , 1/50th, manual
Taken with a 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. ISO 200, 200mm, 1/400, F/10, Aperture Priority.
One great tool in capturing beautiful live actions shots is anticipation. A good knowledge of your subjects behavior can greatly help you capture amazing photos. When you learned how and when your subject will do sorts of things you can anticipate their every move.
This of course requires patience, practice and a lot of shooting, and as you progress you will to anticipate your subjects every moved.
Anticipation, combined with great choice of background will help you create amazing photos.
Taken with a 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. ISO 200, 200mm, 1/400, F/10, Aperture Priority.
Taken with a 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. ISO 400, 200mm, 1/200, F/4, Aperture Priority.
Photographing wildlife at the local zoo can be really fun and exciting and at the same time challenging and frustrating. Why? First off at the zoo photographers have to overcome some barriers and obstructions that limits the photographers ability to capture the subject and the scene at it’s bests. Examples of such obstructions are fences, animal tags, buildings, cages, concrete floors and the one thing I hate most, glass cages.
To capture the beauty of wildlife in the zoo, I always look for a story on every photograph I make. Let’s take for example the photo above titled Caring for the Young, it’s not just a photo of a flamingo feeding her chick, it tells a story how all living creatures cares for it’s love ones most especially their siblings. For me the photo is beautiful and also conveys an emotional attachment to the viewer.
Last weekend, I encountered an error in Lightroom. When I import direct from the card into my Lightroom 3.4 Library I get the following message stating something like:
Import results.
Some import operations were not performed:
The following files were imported but could not be renamed.
When I pressed ok. I hen realized that some of the files that were listed not renamed where actually missing in the catalog, as shown in the photo above. So I went on to investigate, I launch windows explorer and went directly on to the import folder to see what was in there. I then found out while looking at inside the import folder that the files that lightroom reported not renamed where actually copied and renamed correctly, for some reason lightroom was not able to correctly link to the physical files.
To fix the problem, I went back to my lightroom catalog and remove all the files that were reported missing. I then open the import dialogue and import the files from the import folder (not the card) using the option Add photos to catalog without moving them. After the import I checked the files if everything was in placed and proceeded with my next batch of import. Luckily the error didn’t happen again.
Canon EOS 60D with Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens.
Change can be a good thing. There are times that the default rectangular format of a photograph can get boring and the easiest way to address this is to crop your photos. You can also use cropping to minimize or eliminate distraction and it’s a really useful tool to use when you want to draw attention to your subject.
Gear:
More Info
- Manual exposure,
- Shutter Speed: 1/250
- Aperture: f/5
- Focal Length: 200mm
- ISO : 640
- Flash : 1/16
Canon EOS 60D with Canon EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 USM Lens. Shot in Manual mode @ 1/500, ISO 200, F/8, 10mm.
Here’s a very useful tip that some of us doesn’t do often, that includes me:
- Try to look up then look down, I don’t know why but, it seems that it’s always easy to look down but not the other way around. You’ll be surprise, there are lots of good things up there.
- When you look down, try to change perspective, go low and get on your knees.
- It’s always a good idea to bring along a wide angle lens.
Canon EOS 60D with Canon EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 USM Lens. Shot in Shutter Priority @ 1/30, ISO 500, 22mm.
Canon EOS 40D with Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. Shot in Manual mode @ 1/400, ISO 1250, F/4, 200mm.
Photographing birds in your backyard can be really fun and exciting, not just for you, but for the whole family as well, especially your children. I mean just watching those tiny little birds take turns and feasts on the bird feeder is just crazy fun and can be really rewarding.
Here are a few tips to get some good photos:
- Use the longest lens you have.
- Shoot at wide aperture to blur the background and make your subject stand out.
- Use a fast shutter speed to catch the action, this will minimize blurry photos.
- Check your background for distraction.
- Use your external flash to improve the quality of light.
- Don’t be afraid to boost your ISO.
- Crop for creativity.
Canon EOS 40D with Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. Shot in Manual mode @ 1/400, ISO 1250, F/4, 200mm.
Canon EOS 20D with Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L IS USM Lens. Shot in Manual mode @ 1/250, ISO 400, F/8, 200mm.
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