Super Rechargables - How to get the most out of your batteries!

I’m a big fan of using off camera flash (Speedlights) and love experimenting with various lighting set-ups. My goal is to get my lighting down to a science, unfortunately when your using Speedlights you will quickly find out that they can really drain batteries in difficult lighting set-ups. For example, if you’re using your flash unit as a main light and have to shoot at f/8 or better to get decent depth of field or when using high-speed sync at full power you can easily eat up the charge in your disposable batteries in no time.

Now granted, if you are familiar with lighting and power ratios, you know that by raising ISO you can lower your flash output to one quarter or one eighth power and then you can get hundreds of pops out of your flashes, (check out the diagram) But at the end of a typical wedding, you will still go through a lot of batteries and that can get expensive. Usually, we tend to think getting rechargeable batteries, Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) to cut down your costs, but the average (NiMH) rechargeables really don’t hold up that long. You’ll find that after they’ve been recharged 20 or 30 times, the recycling time between pops is much slower. When shooting a wedding, I usually try to get all my batteries charged the night before, but you’ll find that they will lose quite a bit of power overnight. What to do now?

Well, I read a lot of blogs and wanted to see what the Pros use out in the field in their flash units. I knew I needed a better solution than the plain rechargeable batteries that I had been using. I found one of the most popular products on the market today is the slow-discharge type battery. I personally use the Sanyo Eneloop hybrid Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiHD). Unlike plain rechargeable batteries, these batteries actually come pre-charged when you purchase them. Plus they maintain over 80% of their charge even after sitting around for over a year! Another nice feature is that they can be recharged up to 1500 times. What that means to you or me is, even if you recharge them twice a week it will take 10 years to reach 1000 cycles!

Now your probably saying to yourself that these must be expensive, but get this, a 4 pack of pre-charged batteries is only around 10 bucks or about the same price as a 4 pack of Energizer rechargeables! But you do have to be careful with how you charge them, some chargers can hurt these batteries and shorten their life span. I dug around online again and found a really highly rated charger, the Maha C801D made by PowerEX. I purchased mine through a company called Thomas Distributing because they actually had great customer reviews and the best prices around. PowerEX puts out their own line of batteries but I found that the Sanyo’s were rated even higher. The model I purchased can charge up to 8 batteries at the same time in under an hour. Plus each battery can be at a different level of charge and the charger actually knows this and charges accordingly! So it will charge your batteries correctly each and every time. You will never over or under charge your batteries again because the Maha will shut off that cell when the battery is fully charged. The charger also features a slow charge setting. The slow charge will automatically drain all the juice from your battery then fully recharge them. The rapid charge does exactly what the name implies; it fully charges your batteries in under an hour! So you can load the charger with 1 battery or up to 8 batteries and it will charge them all perfectly. On the front face of the unit are little power level guides so you know when your batteries are all charged up and ready to go. This charger even recognizes alkaline batteries and won’t try to charge them and risk hurting the unit. With the Maha C801D you can even charge both AA’s and AAA’s at the same time.

Now I aimed this article at off-camera flash fans, but these batteries can be used for all sorts of devices ranging from flashlights to digital cameras, basically anything that uses batteries. The Eneloop batteries are available in all sorts of sizes, not just AA or AAA’s. You can get C, D and even 9V batteries and you can purchase combo packs that come with their own charger if you prefer. If you’re like me and use batteries a quite a bit, maybe its time to check into some of these slow-discharge batteries and save yourself some money in the long run. These days I’ve always got fully charged set of batteries when I need them...........Nice huh?

Hope you find this article useful and remember, keep shooting and have some fun!

Sharpening Clouds

Have you ever had a photo of a nice sunset or a landscape with some clouds in it, but when you open the photo up, you wish the clouds had a little more punch to them? 

I have a technique I use on almost all of my photos with clouds in them to add some extra punch. It’s a pretty quick process and the results make a nice improvement almost every time. 

The beauty of this technique is, all this is done on its own layer so if want to reduce the effects, you can just lower the opacity and if you still don’t like the effect, you can trash the layer. Either way, its just a few mouse clicks to adjust or correct your photo.




Grab one of your photos with a few clouds in it and follow along.

1. Whenever I work on a photo I always start by making a copy of my background layer (just in case) so click Cmd or Ctrl + J.
2. Now go up to the filter menu, click on it and scroll down to Other, then click on High Pass.
3. When the High Pass dialog box comes up, slide the slider until your clouds look really sharpened with lots of definition in your clouds. You don’t want to go overboard because it will make your photo look really funky. Every photo will be different so feel free to play around with your settings. When you’re done tweaking it, click OK.
4. Now I desaturate my new layer, just hold down Cmd + U or Ctrl + U to bring up your Hue and Saturation dialog box, and then drag your saturation slider all the way to the left to remove all the saturation.
5. Now go up to the top of your layers panel and change the blend mode of our High Pass layer to either Overlay or Hard Light, I usually prefer Hard Light myself.

Now depending on the photo you use, you might have to make some other minor adjustments to parts of your photo to either hide the sharpening effects or paint in the effects. This is actually quite easy to do using a layer mask and a nice soft brush.

 
Most of the time it’s easier to use a black mask and ‘conceal’ all the sharpening, then I use a white brush to paint in the sharpening on just my clouds. To get a black mask, hold the Alt key down before you hit the mask button on the bottom of the layers panel. (the mask button is the third one in from the left side of the panel) Make sure your painting on the mask by clicking on the mask box. Remember, if your effects are still a little too strong for your taste, just lower opacity to your own liking. In this image, I painted in the effects with a nice soft white brush. I use a Wacom tablet so I can paint with various degrees of pressure, but you can do this with a mouse too.





When I get it where it looks good to me, I tap on the top layer to make it active and then hold down the Ctrl + Shft + Alt keys and tap the letter E to make a flattened copy of all my layers right on top of my layers stack. Then I hit Ctrl + A to select it, (you’ll see the marching ants around it) then hit Ctrl + C to make a copy of that layer.


Now go over to the File menu, and click New. This will open a new blank document that will be the same size automatically. Now just hold the Ctrl key and tap V to paste your copied image into your new document and you’ll see a new single layered file, then just save your new image as you like. Now you can either save the original file with your changes or just close it out.

Now that you know this little technique you can use it to add a little punch to your clouds in own photos. Don’t be scared to try this with other photos also. It works great on images when you want to selectively sharpen only specific areas in your photos or to add some extra drama to your images. Try it yourself on a few images, the results might amaze you!

 










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

New England Camera Club Conference - 2011

Each summer, one of the things I really look forward to is attending the NECCC conference held at the University Of Massachusetts campus in Amherst Mass. NECCC stands for the New England Camera Club Council. Every year the NECCC holds a three-day conference for people that are into photography. The council itself is a non-profit umbrella group of about 80 camera clubs in New England, which was established in 1937 and became so popular that it was officially incorporated in 1963. If you’re into photography, then this is the place to go. It is New England’s version of Photoshop World.


I had been into photography for many years but I had never even heard anything about the NECCC until I joined a local camera club (Stonybrook Camera Club). It was through my club members that I found out what the conference was all about and I instantly wanted to attend it myself. I have been to Photoshop World a few times and really enjoy learning just about anything to do with photography, camera’s etc.




I was very lucky because a few of the members of my club were also presenters and teachers at the conference (as well as being very gifted photographers themselves) Each year my club usually has about 20 or more members that attend the conference and its a lot of fun hanging out and talking shop all weekend.

For me, the conference is about 120 miles away from my home, so like most of the attendees we stay right at the campus in the same dorms used by the students during the school year. Very few students are on campus in the summer and for a minimal fee you can rent a room, with or without A/C. Some people choose to dine out during the weekend, but as an added convenience, the college opens one of the campus cafeterias for dining and offers various meal plans. I like this personally because I don’t have to drive anywhere and it gives me a chance to hang out with my club members and my fellow photographers.


Each year the conference offers classes and seminars on everything from printing and camera settings to subjects like flash photography and lighting. In addition to that, some of the big name equipment manufacturers like Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Tamron, Nik Software, Wacom, Epson etc have booths set up with reps there to answer any of your questions and also have a nice selection of the “latest and greatest” for sale. Some of them even hold classes to help people get up to speed on their equipment. You can even borrow some new cameras or lenses for the weekend or test some of the latest printers.


















Classes on the Conference Schedule are rated according to your skill level, B for Beginner, I for Intermediate and A for Advanced. Every year they also offer shooting set-ups with live models (usually college students or faculty) either in a photo studio type environment or at various places around the campus. They also have set-ups for shooting exotic animals or birds, so there is usually something for everyone.

This year as always, they had a few of the big names teaching you their tricks of the trade, teaching how they got to where they are and how they stay ahead of the pack in this highly competitive field. Some of speakers/ presenters for 2011 included Ken Sklute, one of the Canon Explorers of Light, doing a show on sports photography. Eddie Tapp, also sponsored by Canon and a 2006 Photoshop Hall of Famer, doing a seminar on his digital process and back-up system. Adobe proudly sponsored Jane Conner-Ziser, and she showed her own workflow using ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) and Lightroom with her own personal tips and techniques.

I really enjoy the special presentations by some world-class photographers. This year, one of the feature artists was Wendell Phillips of Canada. His show consisted of some of his images from the Olympic games and his recent documentary from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Another world-class photographer, Andre Galant, also from Canada, did a presentation on his own world travels and as an added bonus they also had Jack Reznicki back again this year to do two presentations, one called Copyrights and Copywrongs – Model Releases and other Legal Issues and another called Lighting and Visual Perception. The NECCC also features local professionals from the N.E. area doing various workshops and shows on how they succeed in the world of photography.



















One of my personal local favorites is Sarah Musumeci. Sarah specializes in architectural and travel photography and photographs everything from Bed and Breakfasts in New England to major hotels and businesses in the New York and Boston areas. I like to mingle with the presenters and artists when I can and one of the people I met this year was Robert Harrington, a first time instructor at the conference and he taught a class on Off-Camera Flash and it was a big hit. All in all, the conference is a great time and is almost guaranteed to have something for everyone.


Usually the conference people do a special presentation on Saturday night in the main auditorium on campus, but this year the building was having some renovations during summer break so for their feature presentation, a popular local photo retailer, Hunts Photo and Video, sponsored a show with hot air balloons. On Saturday evening they had three balloons tethered next to a pond on campus and ‘fired them up” for an evening tethered glow. The following morning, very early, the balloons were scheduled to do a take off. Both viewings were a lot of fun and made for great photo opportunities.

This year, as always, the conference was a great time. The NECCC has a faithful following and is sure to be around for years to come. I’m sure that there are conferences similar to this all around the country and you owe it to yourself to go online and find one in your area.
Remember, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!