Happy Independence Day

Just a little note to my photography friends out there, wishing that you all had a wonderful Independence Day this year with your family and friends and that you had a chance to check out your local fireworks festivities. Here in New England we got hit with the tail end of a tropical storm on the 4th, but there were still tons of firework displays the following day. 

This week, July 11th - 13th, I'll be attending the New England Camera Club Conference at the U Mass campus in Amherst, MA and I'm planning on doing a short post on that event, plus I'm going to be trying out a "new toy" that weekend also. My new toy is a Canon G15 Powershot, a nice pocket/carry round camera for me. I could have purchased the newer G16, but I saved almost $150 on this one and it had all the features I was looking for. I wanted a camera with RAW shooting capabilities, a hotshoe for my speedlights and great image quality. Of course I'll also bring my workhorse, a Canon Mk II, for some of the studio set ups and other shooting opportunities, but I'm looking forward to putting the G15 through its paces. Check back here for that post and some images from the G15. 

The NECC is something I look forward to all year and it has always been a great time; hanging out with friends and fellow camera club members and attending the seminars and classes.  I'm sure it'll be another great conference again this year.    
Remember as always, keep shooting and have some fun !

Tamron 28-300mm VC lens

For the last four or five years my go-to camera has been a full-frame Canon. I was shooting for a few years with the original 5D, then I upgraded to a Mark II and just recently I upgraded that camera to the Canon 5D Mark III.   Now all of these are awesome cameras but what I really needed was a good walk-around lens. I wanted a lens that I could just leave on my camera all day that would cover just about any situation so that I wouldn’t be constantly switching lenses to get “the shot”.  Sometimes it’s either dark or dusty or just too wet to change lenses or even if you do switch lenses, half the time you miss the shot anyhow.  Does this sound familiar?

The original photo with the red arrow was shot at ƒ7.1 - 28mm at 200 ISO and the second shot was zoomed all the way out to 300mm. This will work for me, how about you?

If you’re like me, whenever I’m planning on getting some new gear, I go online and start doing my homework. I read all the reviews and write-ups to get the pros and cons before I buy anything. What helped me finally make a decision was a review by a photographer that I really admire, David Ziser.  David is a world class wedding photographer and has been speaking and teaching at seminars for years. Plus he’s a Canon shooter himself, so when he said he was using one of these lenses to shoot an entire wedding I took notice. I had read probably a dozen write-ups on this lens, but when I read his blog post on this lens I was sold.  I’ve shot quite a few weddings myself so I know what it requires to shoot a wedding and I was already a big fan of his photography. On a full frame body the Tamron 28-300mm but on a crop body (like my 40D) it’s a 43-465mm!  Pretty nice huh?

The original shot of the warehouse was taken at ƒ6.3-55mm at ISO 160, the zoomed version was just cropped in Photoshop at 68%.  Nice huh?

This figurine was shot handheld at ƒ6.3-300mm - 1/100 at ISO 640. You’ll notice the shadows from a little fill flash, but keep in mind this is almost straight out of the camera hand-held.  Now I'm used to shooting with Canon’s “L” glass and I knew I was going to have to make some compromises. Canon also makes a 28-300mm lens, but it is priced now at B & H for $2449.00, about $1800 more! The Canon weighs over 3½ lbs more than Tamron which weighs in at a little over a pound. Plus, all of my camera bodies have a battery grip so weight was another factor. As far as the focal range, the Canon lens was ƒ 3.5 – ƒ 5.6 and the Tamron was ƒ 3.5 – ƒ 6.3, which meant I only lost a third of a stop with this lens.

   


Another big factor was that the Tamron was advertised as a Macro lens and said it could focus from only 1½ feet away. I don’t know about you but that’s a big feature for me. I just had to test that out for myself. Check out the photo of the watch. I grabbed a tape measure, and get this, the end of the lens was 9 inches away ( I focused on the gem at 12 o’clock). The background I used was an insert from the Sunday paper from a local grocery store and that was only 10 inches behind the watch!  So this lens focused from only 9 inches away and totally blew out the background only 10 inches away from it at ƒ6.3.

Lastly, I was very impressed with Tamrons VC (vibration control). I was used to shooting with Canons IS (image stabilization) and you absolutely need this feature, especially with these focal lengths. In his blog post, David shows images shot at 1/10 of a second at 160mm. Most cameras these days can shoot quality photos at very high ISO’s and with my Mk III I knew I could shoot all day at 2500 ISO or better but sometimes you like to drag the shutter. So after seeing his images, I knew the VC on this lens would work for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my trusty “L” glass, but I’m not locked into that option these days. These days, my Tamron 28-300mm VC is on my camera almost all the time I'm out shooting for myself. Check out some of the photos taken with this lens online and I think you’ll be impressed.

Like all this wasn’t enough, the price was the final clincher. The Canon lens sold for almost $2500 bucks and the Tamron 28-300mm Di VC  lens was only $630 (when I originally wrote this post) but the price did go up to $849 with a bunch of improvements! So, when David Ziser said this was his new go-to lens for his wedding photography business, it was a no brainer for me.  Sure the Tamron could be a little softer at certain focal lengths, but I knew I’d have no problem doing a little extra sharpening in post to save $1900 bucks and almost 3 lbs of weight. A lot of the reviews mentioned the Tamron had some chromatic aberration when zoomed all the way out to 300mm, but I use Adobe Camera RAW and fixing that was only a few mouse clicks away. In the Lens Corrections panel in CS6, just click the middle tab marked color and then click Remove Chromatic Distortion, how easy is that?

If you’ve been searching for a good all-purpose lens for your Nikon or Canon camera that won’t break the bank, maybe you should put the Tamron 28-300mm Di VC macro lens on your Christmas list this year!

Remember, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!

Going Mobile - On Location Off Camera Flash

Recently, I was talking with another photographer about our different shooting styles and we got to talking about lighting and off-camera flash. I enjoy putting together images as opposed to just taking photos. What I mean is, when the conditions aren’t just right, I don’t mind altering it to create the image in my mind. Usually this can be as simple as just adding some extra fill light with speedlights or reflector panels. In this post, I’ll try to take you through my process of getting the shot I imagined. This day I didn’t have the luxury of light meters or assistants. Hopefully this will show you how to get similar shots quickly and easily without having to lug around a ton of gear.

About a mile from my home is a local bird sanctuary that I like to visit. It has miles of nice trails and lots of waterways and ponds. It also has a few abandoned buildings, some old dead cars and even a small waterfall and a covered bridge. To me, it’s a shooters paradise. I like to go walking / hiking there often and always bring along a camera. For a long time I’ve wanted to get a nice shot of a particular lagoon captured in early October, because I wanted the trees in full bloom with all the Fall colors. I couldn’t find anyone to model this day, so I elected myself.

Trouble is that in New England, once the leaves peak, you only have a few days before they start falling. Because of some nasty weather, I missed the peak by a few days and a lot of the leaves had blown off the trees or had already fallen. I decided to shoot it anyway and I got my gear ready; a couple of light stands, a few speedlights with remotes, a shoot thru umbrella and of course my camera and trusty tripod. Also, I knew that I wanted to blend in a little so I wore some fall colors and put on an orange shirt and some tan shorts. A little planning can change everything.

Check out the before and after shots, labeled Original Scene and Finished Copy. Luckily I got some pretty decent clouds that day, although I did have to punch them up a bit in Photoshop later on. In a shoot like this I have a system that works for me. I usually like to shoot tethered but this day I wanted to rely solely on my LCD and the histogram for creating this tutorial.

I knew I wanted some good depth of field so I started off at  ƒ / 11.  I switched my camera to aperture priority and then set it to ƒ /11, pushed the shutter button halfway to see what the camera wanted for a shutter speed, and then switched over to manual mode and used those settings as my starting point.

Next I needed to see what I’d get without any flash and I took a test shot of me on the rock. See the No Flash shot. These days all cameras have a self-timer and I set mine at 5 seconds so I could get in my shots. By looking at my LCD I could see I needed to add quite a bit of light on me. I set up my first bare speedlight on a stand to my left and took another test shot. I usually stretch my arms out straight and make that my distance between me and my main light. For me, that’s roughly 6 ft. away. Then I switch my first flash to manual and set it at ¼ power as a starting point.


As you can see in the 1^st Test Shot, I needed a wider spread of light so I re-adjusted the speedlight and added a shoot thru umbrella. Then I could easily move my light stand or adjust my speedlights power up or down to compensate. 


   

Next, I put a light stand in the place where I would sit and auto focused on it. See the Focus Shot. When I achieved focus, I switched the lens off of auto-focus so all my shots would be set.

After looking at that shot on my LCD, I saw the shadows under my leg, behind my arm, and on the sides of my face.  See the 2^nd Test Shot.


 

I knew I’d have to add another speedlight into the mix on my right hand side to lessen up those shadows. I set my second light about 8ft. away, bare bulb, and set it at ¼ power.  See the Add Second Light shot.
    


 

Check out my Lighting Set-Up diagram to see how I placed my gear.


 

Now I still had some shadows to mess with but by rearranging the speedlights a few more times and taking some test shots, I got to a place where I got the least amount of shadows and I knew I could easily fix those in Photoshop afterwards.  See the Tweaking Photo.



 
I could also see from my LCD that I wanted a darker sky. I dropped the ambient a little more by raising my shutter speed and adjusting the power of my speedlights until I was happy with the light on me. I knew I was going to punch up my colors on the trees in the background and on the sky some more in post so it was time to pack up and head home to edit and put the final touches on my shots.

Because I was only using my 3” LCD that day and mainly paying attention to the lighting on me, I didn’t notice the other stuff on the rock beside me until I opened the shots on my PC at home. You’ll notice the plastic bag and the white tube socks on the rock. Just for the record, I wrap my speedlights in tube socks to help protect them in transport.

The final steps were relatively easy. After downloading the shots, I opened up the last shot I got after tweaking my lights, duplicated the layer, and then removed the stuff on the rock beside me with the clone stamp and content aware fill.  See the Remove Clutter shot.


   

If you look close you’ll notice on the Remove Clutter shot, I still had a few more shadows that I had to remove (above and below my hands). So I duplicated that layer and edited the shadows out.  See the Remove Shadows shot. 

Next, I duplicated that layer because I needed to darken the tall grass and the ground in front of me and I grabbed the burn tool to tweak those areas.What I like to do when dodging and burning is to add a new layer, fill it with 50% gray, switch it to Overlay mode and then dodge and burn on that layer, all non-destructively……Nice huh?

Pressure sensitivity on my Wacum tablet helps with that.  I still wanted to darken my sky a little more so I used a new Gradient adjustment layer for that. Here I press and hold the Shift, Control and Alt buttons and tap the E key to create a flattened version of all my layers on top of the layer stack, then proceed to the next step.

Finally, I punched up the saturation on the island and the trees in the background with the sponge tool. I made sure it was set to saturation mode with the vibrance box checked and brushed it in until it looked good to me. Keep in mind, all my adjustments in post are made on adjustment layers or separate new layers so I can always go back and change things if I want. That's a huge reason I’m a huge fan of Smart Objects and Filters. Plus all my work is shot in RAW on my camera. This post wasn't meant to be a lesson in Photoshop, so please bear with me.
 

Because I’ve done this a few times, the whole shooting time was about a half hour or so and counting the practice shots, I probably took somewhere between 50 – 75 shots total. 

If I had a model, that time would be even less because I wouldn’t have had to jump up from the rock and move the light stands or adjust the power on my speedlights after every shot. In the end, I probably spent another half hour or so in Photoshop.

Obviously, your first time will probably take you a while longer, but with a couple speedlights and some practice, you too can make great shots under all conditions. I hope you enjoy this article and you get a few useful tips out of it.

Remember, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!