Nikon’s Mind-Blowing D800 Specs

Posted by chris on February 8th, 2012

Nikon's D800 specs will certainly rattle the camera market

Nikon definitely made a splash in the photography world with the introduction of the D800 and D800E . The D800 series raises the bar on resolution and makes a play for Canon’s DSLR video business.

Priced competitively with the Canon 5D MK II, the D800 delivers an eye-popping 36.3-megapixel image weighing in at over 70 MB for the RAW file and 212 MB for the processed TIFF, a resolution that borders on what’s available in medium format cameras.


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Wedding Photography For The Second Shooter

Posted by chris on February 6th, 2012
second shooter

My job was to get candid shots of the guests and wedding party

With the nuptial season charging on us like a pack of credit card-wielding brides at a wedding dress discount sale, this is also the time for those of you considering a career in photography to start thinking about how you get into the wedding photography business.

Of all the specialty branches of photography, the one providing the most reliable and consistent income is wedding photography. Anyone who thinks they can just hang up a shingle and launch into the business without experience is not only doomed to failure but reckless as well. Screwing up your own future and trashing your reputation in the local photography community is one thing, messing up a new family’s memories of a lifetime is unforgivable.

For most of you the path to a career as a wedding photographer starts with being second shooter and gear mule for a more experienced photographer. Since it’s been a while since I shot a wedding, I decided to go back to my friends in the wedding business and tag along as a second shooter.

With permission, I accompanied Karl Leopold at ImagesForver.net to cover a wedding in Cocoa Beach orchestrated by Kristi Parks at Sun Kissed Weddings as the second shooter. I’d also like the thank the Farris family and their wedding party for being such good sports and wish them the best on their new life together.

What I discovered is that, even though I’ve been taking pictures for 20 some odd years, I had developed some habits that don’t fit well in wedding photography, an experience I found both painful and a little humbling.

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Five Tips For Finding The Perfect Wedding Photographer

Posted by chris on February 3rd, 2012
wedding 1

Start early to find the best photographer for your wedding - by Joe Mabel

A wedding photographer friend of mine calls Valentine’s Day by a different name, he calls it Pop The Question Day. After the squeals of delight and frantic phone calls to girlfriends subside the soon to be brides will be breaking out the checkbooks and getting down to the business of booking wedding venues, reception halls, DJs and photographers.

Here are some tips I’ve gathered from my contacts in the wedding photography business that will help you find the perfect photographer for your big day.


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Three Critical Elements In Great Photography

Posted by chris on February 1st, 2012
picture of tree

Getting quality photos means focusing on the critical elements of photography

Let me admit right up front that limiting the critical elements of photography to just three is a little arbitrary. There are many critical elements that go into great photography, but what I’m trying to do is bring attention to important elements that are frequently overlooked.

Too many people waste a fantastic amount of time on things that have no bearing on taking good pictures. Take megapixels as an example. The megapixel difference between a 16.1 megapixel Nikon D7000 and the 18 megapixel Canon 7D is totally meaningless. There are many good reasons to choose one camera over the other, but megapixels is not one of them.

That is why camera selection did not make my list of critical elements. Because there really isn’t that much difference between high end cameras, regardless of the brand. So, if not the camera, what are the critical elements?


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Three Alternatives To Lightroom

Posted by chris on January 30th, 2012
corel aftershot pro

Corel has fielded a winner with AfterShot Pro

Ever since Adobe niggled customers by limiting CS6 upgrades to CS5 and CS5.5 users have been in a such froth that Adobe finally backed off and added CS3 and CS4 to the upgrade path. Further proof that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

While it may not have been serious enough to get people scrambling for GIMP tutorials, it did prompt some people to start searching around for alternatives to Adobe products. For most photographers the product that would be most difficult to replace is not Photoshop as much as Lightroom.

I’m glad that Adobe saw the light on the Creative Suite upgrade pricing, but I had already started looking around for alternatives to Lightroom and found some worth checking out. Two of them are free.


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Five Secrets of Professional Photographers

Posted by chris on January 27th, 2012
difficult shot

The best shots rarely are found in the most convenient locations

Many people aspire to being a professional photographer but few will ever make it. A small subset of the total will actually make some money. Out of that small subset who manages to make money, an even smaller percentage will actually end up making their living from photography.

There are certain qualities which separate those who make it and those who end up in another line of work. The people who do end up doing something else, frequently it’s for the best. They lack either the passion, imagination or drive to make themselves a commercial success. It takes a fairly narrow range of skills to make the cut, a lot of talent, and a little bit of luck.

Like most challenges in life, luck seems to be most likely to come those most prepared to receive it. There are some secrets that will put you out ahead of the pack if luck does wander by, here are five of them:


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Four Tips For Better Group Shots

Posted by chris on January 26th, 2012
group shot

This group shot tells a story about the people in the photo and it was one of my dad's favorite photos for over 60 years - Christmas Eve 1944

There are probably more group shots on the internet and photo sharing services than any other type of picture. And the vast majority of them are going to be a loosely organized mob of people thrown together in uncomfortable closeness for a few quick frames of unimaginative poses punctuated by forced, half-hearted smiles. Painful for subject and viewer alike they are quickly washed away by the digital river of newer images and forgotten.

Yet there was something that brought those people together. It may not be significant now, but what about the future? A good group shot will tell a story, both about the event that brought them together and the people taking part.  A fabulous group photo will fix a moment in time and make the date memorable for a lifetime.

It’s hard to tell a story herding people over against a wall and telling them to bunch up, unless the story is the first few minutes of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. It’s equally hard to tell a story about people sitting around a table. If I’m doing a group shot of a family gathering, I try to get it before everyone sits down or herd them all over to one side.


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Portrait Lighting On $100

Posted by chris on January 24th, 2012
$100 portrait lighting kit

My $100 portrait lighting kit

In the last few months I’ve covered basic three point lighting and five point lighting but what about those of you who can’t afford to lay out that kind of cash for gear or don’t have enough space for a studio?

I decided to put together a portrait lighting package that anyone with $100 to spare can afford and one that you can use anywhere; studio, outdoors, living room, where ever you want to shoot a portrait. I’ve already covered a $250 portable lighting kit that does a pretty decent job, but I decided to unleash my inner cheapskate and see how low I could go and still get a portrait I’d feel good about charging regular portrait rates.

The portability leaves out any kind of light that requires an electric socket and there wasn’t even enough room in the budget for a sync for the flash. Talk about a challenge!


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ND Filter or Polarizer?

Posted by chris on January 20th, 2012
polarizer v ND filter

A lot of sky and a lot of water means I went with a polarizer on this picture instead of an ND filter

If you’re a DSLR shooter, there are two indispensable filters you should have in your bag: One is a circular polarizer and the other is an adjustable ND filter or a set of ND filters.

Which of those you choose will likely depend on whether you shoot more stills or more video. As we’ve discussed before when shooting video you’d don’t have the same range of f-stop and shutter speed combinations you do shooting stills. That means on bright, sunny days when normally you’d just bump the shutter speed, you’ll need to use an ND filter or be stuck shooting at f/22 all the time. Video shooters will be more likely to opt for a set of ND filters over an adjustable for consistency.


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Going Manual

Posted by chris on January 18th, 2012
auto mode

Beware the green camera, don't rely on auto shooting mode - by Nikon

There is a debate that wanders through photography from time to time that pits people who insist that to be a great photographer you have to shoot in manual mode against people who like the convenience of the automatic camera settings.

In the early days it was no contest; camera light meters were center-weighted and primitive. Over the years the metering system improved by sampling more areas across a photo, the computers linked to the metering system became more powerful and the software inside got a lot better. The camera you carry today has a more powerful computer than those carried on some early spaceships.

Consequently the manual vs auto debate burns less hotly today than the days when anyone shooting on auto would have been dismissed out of hand. Yet, despite all the advances in technology, the camera makers have not been able to duplicate one critical element in great photography: You.


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