Shooting RAW

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Jul 312011
 

I decided I’d like to write an occasional photography how-to post. Well into year 2 of Project365 it’s obvious I enjoy photography and it seems that some of my readers do as well, so why not?

I’ll tell you one of the secrets to my photos – post-processing.

What that means is that what you see is not necessarily how it came out of the camera. I used to be a bit of a purist, that I had to get the settings exactly right and the only thing I did before publishing was to resize and apply a watermark.

Probably a year ago I became a convert to shooting in RAW mode instead of JPG mode. What’s the difference? This graphic that I found on PetaPixel explains it well (and was the inspiration for this post!)

All those things on the right that the camera does? For the most part, none of those actions can be undone.  SOME editing of JPGs is possible, but no where near the editing that can be done on a RAW file.
- photo was under- or over-exposed?
- white balance settings were incorrect?
- saturation isn’t to your liking?
- should have used a flash for some fill light?
- want to try some ‘artistic’ editing of your images?

These issues and more can be fixed by editing the RAW file, even better use Lightroom and you’re making non-destructive edits, that is the original file from the camera is unchanged, you’re basically editing a copy, making it easy to go back.

So just what is a RAW file? I think of it this way- my Nikon D90 has a 12.1 megapixel sensor. The RAW file contains the original data (for the most part) from every one of those pixels, which is why the resulting RAW file is ~12 megabytes in size.  Every pixel is available for editing, in theory, no data has been lost.

There are some downsides
- large image files, takes a lot of disk space (unless you delete ruthlessly, which I’ll write about one of these days)
- post-processing software is necessary. Nikon has their own program which I think is free, though most people use Photoshop, Photoshop Lightroom, or Adobe Aperture.
- time, probably 50-75% of the photos I post have at least a little processing done, which takes time.
- burst-mode speed is reduced. My D90 can shoot at 4.5 frames per second in burst mode when saving to JPG, which is great for action shots and stuff with the kids. Set to RAW mode and that speed goes waaaay down, due to the large file size and data transfer speed limitations of the processor and the memory card.

Can’t decide which might be for you? Shoot in both RAW and JPG! Most cameras have a setting where both RAW and JPG versions are saved for each image. I did that for a while and unless burst speed is an issue, I’ve switched to always shooting in RAW.

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Confused by any terms?
Have a suggestion for another photography post?
Have other photography technique questions?
Thinking about buying a new camera or lens?

I don’t know where this is going, and I’m certainly not a pro, but I enjoy sharing my experiences and knowledge, so don’t be shy, use the comments to chime in with your thoughts, ask questions, tell me I suck and shouldn’t be doing this, whatever comes to mind.

Have a great Sunday!

 Pictures  1 Response »

Paris, Day 1

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Jul 032011
 

I’ve been back for over 2 weeks, it’s about time I got around to posting these photos! There will be at least 2 more sets to follow this one.  As always, click on any photo to view full-sized in a new window and then click to zoom to full 1500×900 pixel resolution.

The view from my room at the Hotel de Castiglione, just 2 blocks from Av des Champs Elysees.

I started my adventure by wandering to Av des Champs Elysees and saw a big gold-domed building off in the distance that caught my interest, so I started heading that way. On the way there I passed Le Grand Palais and took a few photos. I was continually amazed at the artistry and detail on the exterior of so many of the buildings.

I was walking down Av Winston Churchill which becomes Av du Marechal Gallieni as it crosses the Siene River. At each side of the bridge on each side of the road is a tall stone column, each topped by a beautiful gold scuplture

While crossing the bridge I also noticed the Eiffel Tower!  Sadly this is the closest I got, I guess I’ll just have to go back there someday.

Now I was getting closer to the gold-domed building that originally caught my attention. It turned out to be the Hotel National des Invalides and Napolean is buried directly underneath the doom. The following 3 photos are all from there.

Another view of Le Grand Palais on the way back toward my hotel

I took a slightly different route back to my hotel and passed thru the Pl de la Concorde. The dominant feature is this Egyptian obelisk, which dates from the reign of Ramses II and once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple.  It was given to the French in the nineteenth century, so it was taken apart stone-by-stone, moved to France, and reassembled.  Pretty cool, huh?

That’s all for now.  I still have photos from the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral, Musee de Louvre and other assorted sights.  Oh, and on Friday night of that week I had a personal tour guide in the form of a reader of Veronica’s blog who took mercy on my lack of language skills and offered to help me out :-)

 Pictures  10 Responses »

11 of 12

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Jun 102011
 

I’m spending 11 of the next 12 nights on the road on 2 separate trips.

I should be really excited about it, for starters I get to go on my very first-time-ever-in-my-life-trip to Europe. I’ll be spending 5 days in Germany and then traveling to Paris, France for 3 days!  But right now I’m so incredibly stressed out about the logistics of the trip, my role while I’m there (I’m going for work in support of my boss) that I literally can’t sleep.  It’s 5am as I draft this post and I’ve been up since 3:15, my brain absolutely won’t stop, there are some incomplete details and I’m NOT looking forward to dealing with my boss in a few hours.  We’re scheduled to leave tomorrow yet there are some administrative details that are not complete, that he’ll hold me responsible for, yet are out of my control.

I’m sure that I’ll enjoy myself once I get there. For starters I GET TO GO TO GERMANY AND FRANCE!  I also have plans to see an old enlisted Army buddy of mine, he’s now an officer and stationed not too far from where I’ll be.  I haven’t seen him since 2003 so it will be good to catch up with him.  Once in Paris we’ll be staying in the heart of the city and you know I’m packing my DSLR for this trip!

I’ll get home from Paris next Saturday and then barely 24 hours later will head out again, this time to nowhere exciting at all, somewhere in the eastern US. This will be a purely business trip and there’s nothing to look forward too. Especially after returning from 8 days away from my family, I’m not relishing the idea of turning around and leaving again so soon.

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I would love to have been able to take Veronica with my to Germany and France. Unfortunately the trip came up only a few weeks ago, after she had arranged vacation time from work, a grandparent to watch the kids and bought her non-refundable plane ticket to join me in Denver last week.

She’s turning 40 in the fall and talked about wanted to escape for a long weekend alone in Paris, so I’m just thinking of this as a scouting trip for her!

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We have a public affairs office at work and I’ve gotten to know the staff photographer who works there. I often tease him that if one of his lenses ever goes missing that I’m the first person he should suspect. I was talking with his boss, the head of the public affairs office, about the trip to Europe and about teasing the photographer about stealing one of his lenses someday.

“You know, I bet he’d loan you a lens for the trip if you ask nicely. I’d have no problem with that”

Now I didn’t get my hands on the Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 that I’ve been lusting over, but I do have a very nice 24-120 f/3.5-5.6 to carry with me! The specs aren’t too different from the kit lens I usually carry but it’s much better quality glass and I’m looking forward to shooting with it all next week.

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I’m not too fond of my new boss, fortunately this is just an interim job for me and in mid-July I’ll be going back to my regular job, my own hours, and best of all my own office.  He’s just not very personable, he’s not someone I would want to spend time with outside of the office, we just don’t have any kind of report that way.  Eight days on the road with him will be interesting.

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Can you tell that I have mixed emotions about this trip?

 Life, Work  7 Responses »

Memory

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Mar 152011
 

I came across this on PetaPixal the other day and it reminded me of a conversation I had with Darling Boy over the weekend. He made a comment about how big computers used to be and yet how basic they were- “Hey dad, did you know that supercomputers used to be the size of our house?”  I love when he tells me things he thinks I’ve never heard before, so of course I play along and acted surprised. I don’t want him to think I know everything (hahaha yeah right…), though I did point out that my iPhone probably has more computing power than the systems NASA used for the Apollo moon landing missions, which made his little head spin :-)

Anyway, here’s the tidbit I saw-

YEAR — Price of a Gigabyte
1981 — $300,000
1987 — $50,000
1990 — $10,000
1994 — $1000
1997 — $100
2000 — $10
2004 — $1
2010 — $0.10

Check out this ad, a whopping 11MB of hard disk space AND 64KB of RAM for the low low price of under $10K, what a bargain! Right know there’s an 8GB memory card in my DSLR, I think I paid about $50 and the individual RAW files from my camera are about 11MB each. I also have a 1TB external hard drive to back up all of my files, I think I paid about $120 for that. Digital photography, had it existed in the early ’80s, would have been pretty damn expensive!

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Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment or e-mail me privately on yesterday’s post about getting caught, you’ve given me a lot to think about, which is why I haven’t responded to anyone yet. Katie is away on a family vacation this week and I’m traveling all of next week for work, I think there’s going to be a rather serious “what are we doing” talk when I see her again in 2 weeks.

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Know Your Rights

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Mar 042011
 

An item from a local online news source: “February 23, 2011 – A *Redacted* Street resident was asked to call for an individual who had allegedly been assaulted by a driver after she stopped to ask him why he was photographing her vehicle.”

Check out this map showing incidents where someone was “harassed, detained, threatened, attacked, arrested, or charged with a crime” by government officials for using a camera. Click on the map to view it in Google Maps and see details of each incident.

So what rights do individuals in the US possess when it comes to photography? Here is a list I found on PetaPixal

1. You can make a photograph of anything and anyone on any public property, except where a specific law prohibits it.  i.e. streets, sidewalks, town squares, parks, government buildings open to the public, and public libraries.

2. You may shoot on private property if it is open to the public, but you are obligated to stop if the owner requests it. i.e. malls, retail stores, restaurants, banks, and office building lobbies.

3. Private property owners can prevent photography ON their property, but not photography OF their property from a public location.

4. Anyone can be photographed without consent when they are in a public place unless there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. i.e. private homes, restrooms, dressing rooms, medical facilities, and phone booths.

5. Despite common misconceptions, the following subjects are almost always permissible:

* accidents, fire scenes, criminal activities
* children, celebrities, law enforcement officers
* bridges, infrastructure, transportation facilities
* residential, commercial, and industrial buildings

6. Security is rarely an acceptable reason for restricting photography. Photographing from a public place cannot infringe on trade secrets, nor is it terrorist activity.

7. Private parties cannot detain you against your will unless a serious crime was committed in their presence. Those that do so may be subject to criminal and civil charges.

8. It is a crime for someone to threaten injury, detention, confiscation, or arrest because you are making photographs.

9. You are not obligated to provide your identity or reason for photographing unless questioned by a law enforcement officer and state law requires it.

10. Private parties have no right to confiscate your equipment without a court order. Even law enforcement officers must obtain one unless making an arrest. No one can force you to delete photos you have made.

Just do me a favor, don’t take this as actual legal advice, okay? Who knows how state or local laws may differ.

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Nikon School (Review)

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Jan 162011
 

[I mentioned the Nikon School when I posted my Day 10 photo and a few readers wanted to hear more about it, so here you go!]

I first learned about the Nikon School a year ago, when I got my DSLR.  I decided against enrolling at the time because I was going to attend some of the free workshops offered by the camera shop where Veronica bought my camera.  Anyone who knows me knows that I’m perpetually looking to learn and improve, and not just in photography, so I kept an eye out for future dates when the Nikon School would be back in my area, thinking it still might be useful for me to attend someday.

A little about the Nikon School- there are 6 instructors who work with the program, basically they travel the country giving the same courses over and over. Looking at the schedule, they come to Boston twice a year, so last weekend I finally took the Introduction to DSLR Photography and Next Steps: Color, Light, Technology courses.  The instructors were Bill Durrence and Michael Schwarz.

I figured that the Intro course might not be that useful to me, I’ve gotten pretty good with the technical aspects of photography, but thought I’d take it anyway, you never know what tips or tricks you might pick up.  Besides, knowing I wanted to take the Next Steps class, with the same instructors, it made sense from a continuity standpoint.

I’m not going to re-hash course content, if you click on the links to each course above you can see what they covered.

The course was held at Regis College, they rented the theater in the Fine Arts Center, and it wasn’t a bad place at all.  Bill mentioned that at other locations they use a hotel conference center, which means folding tables and hard chairs.  For a 7 hr/day course, I was thankful for comfy auditorium seating!  The course fee also included a brown bag lunch each day, which was actually pretty good.

There were sales reps from Nikon, Sandisk and Iomega with displays and literature on their respective products.  The Nikon table had some high-end cameras and lenses for us to handle, I got my hands on a D3X, now if only I could win the lottery and afford one…

Okay, impressions of the courses, in bullet form

  • Bill and Michael REALLY know their stuff, technically and creatively (file that one under pointing out the obvious).  Good interaction with the class (all 200+ of us) and a fun sense of humor
  • Due to the class size and time to get through the material, no questions are allowed during the presentations.  However there is scheduled Q&A time and Bill and Michael were available during breaks and lunch as well.
  • They didn’t just cover photography itself, but also post-processing, on-line sharing, printing, and back-up considerations.
  • Speaking of post-processing, I realize it’s a Nikon course, but I could have done without the hour or so spent talking about the Nikon Capture NX software.  A step-by-step tutorial on how to do something in that particular software package wasn’t a very good use of time when less than 10% of the students, by a show of hands, even use that software.  They could have gotten the same point across, that you can fix some ‘errors’ or save a ‘bad’ photograph with post-processing, without pushing the Capture NX software so hard.  But it is a Nikon course…
  • If you’re not a Nikon owner, the courses could still be very helpful.  Just beware that when they start talking about on-camera controls, you’ll be own your own if your a Canon or Sony shooter, for example.
  • I really liked the time spent critiquing photographs and how a good shot could be made better.
  • The lighting demo, using a variety of off-camera flash techniques, was REALLY helpful, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the importance of good lighting

If you’re brand new to DSLR photography, the technical aspects of the class might be a little overwhelming.  Chatting with some others during lunch on Saturday, there were 2 people who just got their cameras for Christmas and were working hard to keep up at some points.

At the end of the weekend, both courses were certainly worth it for me.  I was reminded of some basics I had forgotten and learned several new tips and tricks.  I think 2 of the best lessons can be summed up in these quotes from the instructors-

Be ready for serendipity to happen

Learn to see the extraordinary in the ordinary

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Day 365- Projects Complete!

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Dec 312010
 

Time: 1:15 pm
Place: Hallway

There used to be a collection of portraits of the kids on these walls.  We decided to take them down and scan them to go in a digital picture frame instead.  What started as a simple project grew, as is often the case.  After I spackled the holes from the picture hooks, I looked around and realized that the entire hallway area could use repainted…

Time: 1:15 pm
Place: Stairs

To reach some of the spots on the wall, I had to maneuver my 12′ extension ladder inside.
It barely fit and was uncomfortably close to vertical, I really wasn’t too happy up there.

Time: 1:20 pm
Place: Hallway

During the day I tweeted something along the lines of “Cough cough, I think my palm sander needs a new dust catcher”
See what I was talking about? Our house isn’t normally that dusty, really!


Time: 2:30 pm
Place: Living Room

The dog was rather disinterested in my efforts!

Time: 5:30 pm
Place: Hallway

A few hours later the paint was dry, I removed the tape around the door and trim molding and hung the picture that my mom and step-dad gave us for Christmas.  Not too bad, if I may say so myself!

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And now I’ve done it, I completed my Project365!!!!

My goal was to take a photo every day and publish it the next day and with a few exceptions, I succeeded.  When I went to Ft Lauderdale in February I took so many photos that I spread them out over 3 or 4 days.  There were also a couple of occasions when my photo was taken after midnight, so technically there are probably some days that I didn’t take a photo.  But that’s minor stuff, there are 365 Project365 posts as of today.

Did I accomplish what I set out to do?

I believe I did, I think I’ve become a much better photographer.  My first pictures were taking using Auto mode, basically my DSLR was a glorified point-and-shoot camera.  I’ve gotten to know the camera controls A LOT better and shoot exclusively in Manual mode now.  I’ve also become more mindful of composition and more of the art of what makes a good photograph.

Am I done now?

No I’m not!

Tomorrow starts Project365, Year 2!  More on that tomorrow :-)

 Pictures  8 Responses »

Apropos of Nothing

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Dec 122010
 

It’s a brain-dump post on a rainy Sunday morning!

A conversation between Veronica and I last night:

Me: You know what you should do tomorrow?
Veronica: Spend some time with the butt plug in my ass?
Me: That’s not what I had in mind, but I like how you think!
Veronica: What where you thinking?
Me: That you should sleep in tomorrow morning.  The gym will still be there later in the day
Veronica: Oh, that sounds like a good idea too

She listened, she slept in and didn’t head out to the gym until after 8am.  And since she mentioned it, she’ll be wearing the butt plug for a while later today ;-)

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For all of the Red Sox fans who like to comment to Yankees fans like me that they just buy championships by having the highest payroll in baseball and spending the most money on free agents, I’d like to point something out.

In the past week the Sox have signed free agent Carl Crawford (7 years, $142 million) and traded for Adrian Gonzalez (and there is the expectation of big-money contract extension), this is on top of having the 2nd highest payroll in all of baseball last year and not even making the playoffs.

Here in New England the Yankees are known as the Evil Empire.

You’ve lost your right to bitch about the Yankees spending habits anymore- welcome to the dark side!

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I find myself really sitting on the fence about all of this Wikileaks stuff.  On the one hand, the revelation of certain information could truly be a threat to national security and damage our diplomatic relations with any number of countries, so I can appreciate the point of view of those who view Julian Assange as a criminal.

On the other hand, to a certain extent our government needs some degree of transparency AND journalism in general should be allowed to function free of reprisal when they report on things that are potentially damaging or embarrassing to the government.

I’m reminded of 2 incidents during my lifetime, Watergate and Abu Ghraib.  One brought down a sitting president, the other severely damaged our reputation in a country we’re trying to “help”.  Were any of the parties involved in bringing those incidents to light accused as traitors or of espionage?  No.  I realize that these cases differ from WikiLeaks in a number of ways and are not perfect analogies, but I hope you see my broader point.

And I suppose that there are other points of view, but I only have 2 hands….

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346 Days in, and I’m still loving my Project365!  In fact, I’m having so much fun with it, I’m going to continue next year, I haven’t missed a single day (some pictures have been posted late, but I’ve actually taken pictures every single day so far) and there is no reason to stop now.

Right now I’m messing around with shooting in RAW mode and I’ve also downloaded a free 30 day trial of Adobe Lightroom.  Normally I shoot in jpg mode and use Photoshop Elements for re-sizing, applying my watermark, and some minor editing.  Then I use iPhoto to organize my pictures, at least the family-safe ones, HNT and other more explicit pictures are elsewhere on my hard drive.  I’m wondering if Lightroom can simplify my workflow.

I’m interested in hearing from my photographer readers, I want to know your opinion on shooting RAW and if Lightroom is worth it.

Emmy, Bettie Peach, I’m thinking of you!

I’m also continuing to explore other lenses, a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 is on the way from LensRentals.Com!  According to reviews that I’ve read it’s a very versatile lens and I think it would complement my 18-105mm kit lens and 35mm prime lens very nicely.  I’m looking forward to playing with it for a week.

I found this on PetaPixal

That’s it for now, bring on the football!

 Misc.  7 Responses »

Photography Style

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Oct 112010
 

The genesis of this post was way back in early July, I was on the road to Texas and was chatting with a blogger friend about our respective Project365s.  She opened my eyes to the idea of different photography styles, something I hadn’t really thought about.  Obviously, there are different types of photographers, especially professional ones.  There are those who specialize in weddings, or sporting events, or portraits, or fashion, or whatever.  This is more about style, how someone sees something, not what they see.

Those of you who are familiar with the HNT piece of the blogosphere are probably familiar with 13messages, Vixen, and Emmy.  And if you’re not, you should be, they’re all great photographers!  Anyway, I can’t quite put into works why, but their photographs have a distinctive style to me, something that makes their photographs instantly recognizable as their own.

Style seems to be something that is less something that someone works towards and more something that they discover, that seems to be the case for me.  I’ve browsed the collections of many different photographers and thought “wow, I’d like to take pictures like that!”, but can’t.  Not because of a lack of technical skill or artistic inspiration, but because that’s not my style, literally.

I’ve been gaining a sense of what types of photography appeals to me the most.  Looking back just at the last week of photographs from my Project365, along with a few purposefully “artistic” ones there are a number that are just “a day in the life of Hubman”, shown in my style.  Whatever that is…

I did a little reading on photography style and came across a couple of pieces of good advice

  • Take lots of pictures, spontaneous and planned (that’s part of why I’m doing this Project365)
  • Look at others work for inspiration
  • Challenge yourself, look for new ways to photograph the same old thing
  • Experiment with categories, landscapes, portraits, street, nature, etc

So far, I think I’ve been doing pretty good at following this advice, there is certainly an eclectic variation in categories in the past 284 days and my technical skills are gotten much better compared to January, when I was shooting everything in auto mode.

When Veronica and I were in NYC 2 weekends ago we went to an exhibit of photographs by Lee Friedlander at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Every one of his photographs on display, 150+ of them, was taken from the perspective of his car as he traveled around the country.  Seeing this exhibit got me thinking about themes for my Project365 and ways to challenge myself.  As it so happens, today’s picture was taken using my 50mm prime lens (that’s a lens with a fixed focal length ie doesn’t zoom), and just for the hell of it I’m going to leave the prime lens on my camera all week and put away from zoom lens.  Not having the ability to zoom in or out will certainly challenge my image composition skills!

In my next life, or when I win the Lotto and become independently wealthy, I want to be a documentary photographer or photojournalist, that could be fun.

Thanks for reading :-)

 Pictures  7 Responses »

Day 225- Motion Blur

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Aug 132010
 

A post on the Digital Photography School website inspired this picture.  While it came out okay, it’s not quite what I was going for, I’ll have to try again sometime.  But it’s not too bad for a first attempt, if I may say so!

For my safety-conscious readers, I set the ISO, white balance, shutter speed and aperture before I started driving, then placed the camera on the dashboard and used the remote shutter to take the picture.

 Pictures  5 Responses »
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