An Amateur Camera For Pro Use??? Never, Well Maybe

Good Afternoon Everybody,

I have to admit, that while we're in Cabo San Lucas Mexico, I'm having a great time with my new, early Christmas present, a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS Digital Camera.

The cool thing about this special, little camera is the fact that it will zoom from 24 mm all the way out to 1200 mm – 35mm equivalent – without changing lenses! If you let that zoom range sink in, just for a second, you understand why it is such a fun camera to use. While in Cabo, I've been photographing everything from sunrises to sunsets, landscapes, cactus flowers and plants, macros of baby sea turtles, goggley eyed crabs, wildlife photos, and even taking close-up photographs of the moon.

It's the unbelievable zoom range of this camera that makes it so much fun to use. It produces a 12 mega-pixel RAW file which I can import into the latest Lightroom 4's beta release. Lightroom gives me plenty of control in enhancing the camera's images. The 12 mega-pixel file size is the same as my size as my beloved Canon 40D camera of just a few years ago. So I suspect I'll be able to print an acceptable 24x36 inch print from these files just as I routinely produced and delivered from my 40D.

The camera is also responsive enough for me to capture most of the photographs that I want to take. The time it takes to write the file to the card is a little slower than I would like, meaning that I rarely do any burst shooting and that can be a real hindrance for any wedding photographer.  Don' t  get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you trade in your Canon 5D Mark III of Nikon D800.

This camera is small, convenient, light weight and what I REALLY love about this camera is the zoom range.  It is that fantastic zoom range that offers not just an amateur photographer some added shooting versatility but the professional photographers as well. I know some of you reading this must think I'm "nuts" about now, but hang in there with me.  I ran a few tests about a week ago just to see what kind of real image quality I could produce out of the camera.  I was really surprised with my first tests!

I have several sample images that I quickly printed 11x14 prior to us leaving for Cabo. I plan to share with you these images in a follow-up post this week. So, be sure to tune in, I think you'll be surprised with the results I was able to obtain!

Hey, for $450 US dollars, this camera is one sweet little gem that I am thoroughly enjoying using while on vacation. Galileo would have loved it ;~)

_________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, that's it for me today. Everybody have a great rest of the day in whatever part of the world you're in and I'll plan to see you again later this week.

Adios, David

Shooting For Fun Friday: How A Pro Shoots His Vacation Pics

Good Afternoon Everybody,

I thought I would be posting this after we arrived home today.  But as fate would have it, we are stranded in Washington National Airport till 4:00 p.m. Ugh, the life of the airlines traveler. Hey, the good news is that I’m watching the British Open and have a view of the Capital Building and the Washington Monument from the Delta Crown Room -  not a bad place to hang out if you get stranded. 

We should finally arrive home about 6:00 p.m. – still time to enjoy a bit of the evening. I've said it once and I'll say it again, even though we had a great time in Boston and Bar Harbor, met some super friendly people along the way, and saw some phenomenal sites, there is  no place like home.

For LaDawn and I vacations are NEVER too restful and relaxing - we just want to see it all and are always on the go. And, we love seeing a lot of the sites on foot too - we logged 32 miles walking this trip. The funny thing is that I never lost a pound either - go figure. So, like they say, we're finally back home and can relax for a few days;~)

Since we're on the subject of vacations, I thought I'd give you a little insight into how I, as a professional photographer, handle "vacation" photography.

Just Shooting For Fun: How A Pro Shoots His Vacation Pics

So if you are a professional photographer, how do you cover your vacations and other leisure times? Do you carry all the heavy artillery - cameras, lenses, flashes? Or do you pack on the lighter side and just take along the bare essentials? Let me share with you how I handle the photographic side of our free time and a few images from this trip.

Packing The Gear

When we pack the bags for vacation we keep it pretty light gear-wise. That usually means my 7D for me and a 40D for LaDawn who loves to shoot too. And we carry spare batteries and chargers for both.

Both cameras are fitted with an 18-200mm IS lenses. The 18-200mm IS lens work very well as "almost macro" lenses too. They focus really close. This is a great all around "walk about" lens because of the wide focal length range and it's close focusing capabilities.

I usually pack a wide angle lens too. I just love the look of the wide angle images. In the past that lens has always been my Canon 10-22mm, but on this vacation it was the wonderful new Sigma 8-16mm super wide angle lens - what a blast to shoot with that lens! I need to take a closer look at my images, but early reports show it to be a real wide angle gem.

And last, if space permits, I also like to pack my 100mm Macro IS lens too. I've been a "macro nut" since my early days as a photo enthusiast and have always loved getting up close and personal. Shooting with the macro just gives you a different way of seeing the world.

Sometimes I'll throw in one of my 580 EXII flashes just in case. And yes, I'll throw in my Quantum radios too. You just never know when you might need some extra light. Add to that a very small and light tripod and my Zumbrella, 4 - 16 gig cards, and we are almost ready to go.

And lastly, I do pack a little Canon ELPH camera if during our travels we want to go "really portable".  A good example is when heading out to dinner we don't want to take the heavier gear.

The Easy Camera Settings

OK, we are ready to go. Next I get the cameras set to their most general settings. That makes shooting really fast and easy. Heck, I'm on vacation - I don't want to think about work.

Both cameras are set on AWB, Auto ISO, and Program mode. The 7D is set to medium Raw and 40D is set to full RAW. Basically that gives me the same size file for storage and post production for both cameras.

Wait, I'm a pro so I set the camera to a few "contingency" settings just in case I encounter a shooting situation that requires a bit more control. I set the Shutter Priority to a shutter speed of 1/125 second just in case the situation calls for a faster shutter speed. Aperture Priority is set to F 5.6 just in case I want to shoot with a much more shallow depth of field.

In Manual mode I've set the camera to the most common settings I need for the time of the day I happen to be shooting. If I need to control how the sky is being rendered or need to open up the foreground, switching to Manual mode and fine tuning the settings assures me that I'll get the result I want.

And lastly, if I'm shooting a scene that happens to "blow me away" I'll switch to large RAW just to be sure I have the best digital file I can capture.

The Shooting Routine

When we travel I'm going to be sure I get all the "record shots". That is, I take shots that document the places and locations we visit. But more importantly, I'm trying to capture some great images that are exciting visually.

Even when on vacation, I'm paying attention to lighting, color, contrast, composition - all the visual elements I need to create a good image. And yes, we will even rise at the crack of dawn to get the shot if that's the time of the day when the light's right.

I love shooting then"urban landscape" images that you see here at DPT now and then. I also love shooting the landscape images too. You've seen a few of them this week as "picture of the day" posts. Detail shots of the locations we visit, wildlife, human interest and "people pics" are all part of the shooting repertoire.

Many times, I like to select just the wide angle lens or the macro and just keep it on for the entire day. That forces me to see differently and makes it fun creatively with that particular lens constraint. It sort of gets the "brain juices" flowing because you must look at things differently before you shoot and then decide how the scene would be best rendered with that particular lens.

As you can see, it's the shooting routine that makes the photography fun and a big part of our travels. We wrapped this trip with about 3,000 images by the time we arrive back home.

Post Production

At the end of the day's shooting - every day is a shooting day, and usually over an adult beverage, I load the cards into the card reader, rename the day's DCIM folder on the card to something like "DZ Boston1" and them copy that folder into a newly named trip parent folder on an external drive.

Next I fire up Lightroom 3 and import the images making standard size previews during the import process. This usually takes a while, but once imported, we give them a quick glance to see and quickly evaluate what we captured and which images are our favorites.

At this point, I may select an image or two for DPT, run it through the LR3 prep and have it ready to go for the next day. This is really the fun part of the day - it's fun just seeing if you got what you were shooting for and tweaking the images in Lightroom 3 for best presentation.

I repeat the process each day so that by the end of the trip everything is nicely organized and ready to be backed up to the server and DVDs when we get back home.

Once we are back at the studio, LaDawn and I will review all the images and select a few for our fine art collection, printing off one or two of our favorites making large prints, sometimes on canvass, for wall decor in our home.

Finding the best images is an on going process from trip to trip. The goal is to continue to enrich our fine art image collection for further projects down the road. I'll tell you, when we go on vacation packing the cameras along, we are far more involved with the trip than regular tourists and I feel more intimately connected with what we see. We love our daily shoots and it's a big part of the enjoyment we get out of travels. Besides at our age we just can’t rely on our memories to revisit the trips.

Anyway, just thought you might like to peek.

______________________________________________________

Hey gang, that's it for me today. It's been a great trip to New England these past several days and we can't wait to take a closer look at all the shots. We have a "huge" week next week so these next few days off back home enjoying our images and just relaxing will be fun.

I hope all you guys and girls are enjoying a relaxing weekend also. Be good and I’ll see everybody again on Monday.

See ya' then, -David

"A Study In Violet"

"A Study In Violet"
©David A. Ziser

In keeping with the Gear Bag Friday post, I'd thought I'd post this image taken with the lens discussed below. The image was taken on a photowalk in Mexico about a year ago. The 100mm lens was the only lens I used on that particular walk and I was lucky to photograph some of my favorite subjects - flowers. This image shows the power of a macro lens to easily isolate the subject and create some really cool compositions. This is one of my favorites from that shoot. Camera specs; Canon 30D fitted with 100mm F2.8 macro, F 8.0 @ 1/800 second, ISO 800. Enjoy! -David

So Sad It's Friday

Good Morning World,
Yep, today is our last day in sunny Cabo - although as LaDawn and I were sitting on the patio, we were hit with 16 raindrops. They say it only rains seven days a year down here - I don't know if this counts as one of those times but it still was not going to rain on our parade. If you want to follow the trip in more detail, head on over the Dave and LaDawn on the road right here.
Hey, before I forget, let me thanks all who have been linking to the articles these last few days. Whenever that happens, I like to go check out what by fellow bloggers are up to - it's usually pretty good info. Head over to Dave Cross's blog - he is one of NAPP's Photoshop gurus and always has good stuff over at his site right here. Another reader and fellow blogger, Nath Kaplan (who also uses the same tripod head I use in that rare moment when I use a tripod) also some good things posted over at his Photo World site right here. One of my favorite links is right on his front page - it's a link to over 60 Macro photography articles and tutorials. I mention this because it relates to our third "Creativity" article today. Thanks again, now on with the barrage on info, news, photographic items, and inspiration you just can't live without today....

Let's Get Up Close and Personal

Brand new ideas and hoping for some very cool results - that's what the plan was earlier Sunday morning. I asked LaDawn if she would like to head out to the Cincinnati Nature Center after church services this past Sunday, just for some fun shooting. Walking thru the center is one of our favorite things to do so she was all for it. I did have my own agenda in mind though. I wanted to explore macro photography, but with a twist. I wanted to use my brand new Canon 580EX II flash to illuminate the subject bringing a direction of light from any direction I chose. That way, I could create a nice direction of light at a very close range and kind of be my own self contained macro photography studio.

Here is the setup: I was using a Canon 40D fitted with 100mm F2.8 macro lens with a 580EX flash attached. The 580Ex served two purposes - first, it would have the Quantum Freewire transmitter attached to it - the Freewire was hardwired into the camera's sync terminal; and, secondly, it would supply any fill light I thought necessary. Myself or LaDawn would hold the 580EX II with the Freewire receiver attached to it at the appropriate angle for experimenting and finding the best direction of illumination.

My whole idea for the shoot was to experiment more with the new off camera flash features of the 580EX II. The first thing I did was set up the flash so that it would not automatically shut down and then secondly, I wanted it to fire in Manual mode triggered by the Freewire. I wanted manual mode so I could control the density on the scene by varying it's distance to the subject. You can see how I set up the flash in a previous post - Best Little Light in the World right here. I know what you are thinking, Ziser has taken this $460 high tech flash and turned it into a simple manual (yet very portable) flash - yep, that's what I did. I dialed the power down to about 1/8 power. At this setting and at the distances I was working the flash, I would be using very small apertures since maximum depth of field was one of my prerequisites as well.

As you can see throughout this article, I was getting my desired result - granted some were better than others, but the exercise was still fun. I found that if I was working close to the subject, I preferred the wide angle diffuser over the flash head because at the close working distances, it created a much softer light. Removing the wide angle diffuser and setting the flash to 80mm zoom gave a different result - this set up actually created a spot light effect on the scene localizing the lighting effect for maximum viewer's attention. You can see that effect in some of the images accompanying this article. The remote flash gives the images a special quality that makes much of the subject matter pop off the page as it stands isolated, many times isolated from the background.

I've populated the article with several of the images taken this past Sunday along with the setup shots for your reference. You can click on the images for a larger view to see the equipment set up. A slide show follows of some of my favorite images from the Sunday nature shoot. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

As a postscript to this whole post, let me say that pointing your camera at something different than what you normally point your camera at - for me it's normally people - especially brides and grooms - helps get those creative brain juices flowing and is quite a kick. Enjoy, --David

Mouth Photography From the Inside Out!

OK, I'm in one of those weird moods today and I thought this article was quite interesting, in a strange kind of way. It seems Justin Quinnell has devised a camera to take photographs from inside his mouth. I know it sounds weird, but the images are quite interesting, fun as well as funny. Here is the Mouth Cam story right here. You can check out Mr. Quinnell gallery of Mouth photography right here. And even get the book at Amazon right here. I wonder if he used "Loop Lighting"?

More Macro Photography

Hey, more Macro photography - this time of bugs. I still like shooting bugs and other creepy crawly things, too. So I thought I'd add this little follow up to yesterday's post - pretty interesting pics. Here is the link to Igor Siwanowicz's images. Hey, gang, I've got the rest of the day off - see ya, next week reporting from Louisville, KY. Have a great weekend! --David

Get Closer, I Can't See You

I have been a fan of Macro Photography since I was kid shooting pictures in my backyard. My mom always wanted me to take people pictures, but I was always taking pictures of flowers, leaves, bees, anything close up. Anyway, here is a good article on how to use extension tubes. This article talks about those little lens extenders that let you get ever so close over at Wingedpower's Blog. Here is the extension tube link right here. And speaking of macro photography here is another great article on the subject and some really wonderful images over at Darjanpanic.com. Here is the link to the macro article right here.