Here are the step by step process I use.

First I open up Adobe Photoshop. You should see this after it starts.

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“Malalaman mo sa may bitbit ng DSLR kung sino ang tunay na marunong at iyong mga WANNABE lamang. Tingnan mo ang lente ng DSLR. Kung kit lens lang… WANNABE IYAN.

Iyong mga tunay na hobbyist, tulad ko, mga FAST LENS (aka large aperture capability minimum f/2.8) ang nakakabit sa DSLR. Mangyari kung kit lens ka lang… mag p&s compact camera ka na la’ang!

-Just_JT
Pero.kakatamad.magbitbit.ng.DSLR.dahil.malaki.at.mabigat.”

Translation

“You will know from those who carry a DSLR who knows his stuff or who’s a wannabe. Just look at the lens of their DSLR. If they’re using a kit lens only…that’s a wannabe.

The real hobbyist, like me, uses FAST LENS (aka large aperture capability minimum f/2.8) is what’s attached to the DSLR. If you’re using a kit lens only….stick with a P&S compact camera instead.

Just_JT
But too lazy to carry a DSLR because it’s big and heavy”

There was a huge reaction by a lot of photographers who uses kit lens in the forum about him being the wannabe. They challenged him to post his photo to really see if he is as good as he say he is.

Here is his photo

This is what he posted as the technical data of the photo.

“Wala akong macro lens: gamit ko lang dito ang aking 17-55mm walkabout.”

Translation: I don’t have a macro lens: I just used my 17-55mm walkabout.”

Shutter speed: 1/30
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100
Focal length: 51mm
Program mode: aperture priority (favourite ko ito)
White balance: auto

“Sige nga pintasan mo para may matutunan ako.”

Translation: Go on, critique it so I can learn.

When someone critiqued that the photo looks like it has soft focus and wasn’t taken properly. He reacted by saying.

“Salamat sa critique. Very challenging magfocus sa ganyan kalinggit na subject. Iyong bulaklak na iyon ay mga 2 inches lang ang haba. Dapat siguro binaba ko pa ang aperture para magsharpen lahat noong bulaklak.”

Translation:

“Thanks for the critique. Very challenging to focus on such a small subject. The flower itself was only about 2 inches long. I probably should have lowered the aperture so it will sharpen the whole flower.”

All I can say is…

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ASCII facepalm by these guys.

Like I said, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer.

WTT: Ken Rockwell-Obsessed Husband (North York)

Reasonable offers accepted: Food, clothing, 1992 Subaru Justy. Offers of photo equipment will promptly be deleted! Lowball kickers are welcome! A swift one in the nuts will do him some good.

• Location: North York
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1239135682

Like I said, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. Chase Jarvis has set up a gallery of his favorite 100 submissions.

While I always say that you don’t need a DSLR to make good photos and that a point and shoot camera is good enough, I never felt a camera phone would be good enough. I pretty much ignore using a camera phone and just leave my cellphone in my pocket.

But Chase Jarvis’ gallery actually made me think twice and I’m thinking of practicing photography with just my camera phone.

Yes, I will be limiting myself even more since I only have zoom on my Nokia 3500 and I don’t even have focus on it. But working handicap helps you concentrate more on the image instead of the technical controls of the camera.

I’ll post some of those shots once I am confident enough that the photos I took with my phone are good enough.

The reason for the retirement according to Kodak was that Kodachrome represents less than 1% of their total film sales.

Kodakchrome has been a big hit since its introduction in 1935 that singer Paul Simon released a hit song “Kodachrome” in 1973. It has the distinction of being the only film to be the subject of a song.

Perhaps the most famous photograph taken with Kodachrome was the “Afghan Girl” photo taken by Steve McCurry that was published in the June 1985 edition of National Geographic Magazine.

There is only one photofinishing lab left that processes Kodakchrome film, Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas.

Kodak has a slideshow of photos taken with Kodachrome film.

For more info about Kodachrome, check out The Kodachrome Project.

As I was browsing his site, I came upon a link to his flickr site and saw a ton of pictures taken with a Ricoh Caplio GX100. This camera came out in 2007 and is a 10 MP point and shoot camera that has 24mm wide angle zoom lens. Having a 24mm lens means it can take great landscape photos. But that’s not why I’m writing about him. What interested me was I saw a lot of his photos in flickr taken with the Ricoh Caplio GX100.

He has press shots, travel photos, food photos or as they say food porn and various other photos using the Ricoh Caplio GX100 or other type of point and shoot cameras. He does have a few shot with a Nikon D700 DSLR. But the point is, a lot of his shots were done beautifully on a simple point and shoot camera.

As I always say, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. Don’t worry about what camera you have, learn to take better composition and read the light and you can get better photos even without an expensive DSLR camera.

The previous iPhone 3G came with a 2 megapixel camera. I personally don’t have an iPhone, but I have used several camera phones and a friend of mine has an iPhone that I have borrowed and played around with the camera.

I’ve used a Nokia and a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and to date, I haven’t seen one with a decent camera. I have used a Nokia cellphone with a 5 megapixel camera. But they always seem to come out bluish and the lens and shutter is pretty slow.

Granted, you can’t expect much from a camera phone, but it still doesn’t come out very clear in my opinion.

Then I borrowed my friend’s iPhone 3G and tested the camera. The first time I took the shot I was immediately impressed. It was a very clear photo! I was indoors, under fluorescent light and the photo looks very natural.

Since then, I have seen several photos taken with the iPhone 3G on flickr and from other professional photographers like Chase Jarvis.

I have read a lot of complaints about the iPhone camera in several forums about how it sucks because it’s only 2 megapixels when other phones already have 5 megapixels. Or how it doesn’t have video.

All I can say is, if megapixel is your only basis on whether a camera is good or not, you’re probably not taking a good picture anyway even if you have a $5,000 DSLR.

You see, you may have a 21 megapixel camera like the Canon 5D Mark II or the 24 megapixel Nikon D3X, but if you don’t have it with you, it’s useless. The problem with these cameras is that they’re very heavy. It’s not practical to bring them with you all the time, but your camera phone or iPhone is with you all the time.

Sometimes you just have to know what the limitations are on your camera. Obviously, the iPhone camera is not meant to take magazine quality photos.

The nice thing about the new iPhone 3G S is that it features a 3 megapixel compared to a 2 megapixel camera with the iPhone 3G. It now has autofocus, auto white balance, auto exposure, macro detection, better low light capability and it shoots faster so you can take a sequence of photos.

The great thing about the iPhone 3G S camera is that it now features a tap to focus feature. So if you have two subjects, say one is 10 feet away and another 20 feet away. You can tap either one of the subjects to be the main focus and the other one is out of focus. Similar to how it works with a regular camera. Just imagine how much more creative your shots will be when you get to play around with something as simple as focus.

Another feature of the camera is that it now includes video. Yes, it’s nothing new since pretty much 99% of camera phones out there has video. What’s nice about the video feature of the iPhone 3Gs is that you can actually edit the video on the iPhone. You can select the start and end the footage then send it through e-mail, YouTube, MMS or MobileMe. I can’t wait to see how people are going to make use of these features and I look forward to see more photos and videos on flickr and YouTube using the iPhone 3G S.

Coincidentally, Chase Jarvis just got his new iPhone 3G Ss and is giving away his old iPhone 3G. Check out his blog for details on how to win it. You got until June 23rd, 2009 to win it.

Here I used flash on normal mode and as you can see, the background is very dark while the people are properly exposed.

Here’s a photo using slow synchro mode

The background and the people are now properly exposed and there is over exposure on the sky as I was looking directly into the sun.

You use a flash when the sun is directly behind your subject so their faces don’t become dark. The problem with using slow synchro flash is that the shutter speed is usually set as if there’s no flash. In this case, the shutter speed was set at 1/20 which will be prone to blur or camera shake.

In cases like this, you would normally use a tripod, but I just relied on steady hands and the image stabilizer mode on my camera.

This blur can be good or bad depending on what you have in mind for a photo. It would look great say if you’re taking a photo in a bar or disco with lots of laser or strobe lights but would need a flash to see the faces of the people. This is where you might want to use slow synchro setting on your on camera flash.

Try it out!

As with the previous lesson on lighting on when to use flash. Here, I’m going to show you how to use flash.

Look at this photo, I didn’t use a flash on this photo.

There is a strong backlight from the setting sun and it makes the background have an even lighting, but the tree itself is dark because of the backlight. Backlight basically happens when the light at the back (behind) the subject casts a shadow and makes the subject dark.

Now, if you’re happy with this photo, you can leave it at that. But I would like the tree to be a bit brighter.

To do that, I used my on camera flash and this is the result.

As you can see, the tree is now brighter, but the background suddenly became dark. Even the sky is dark. This is because when you use the on camera flash, the shutter speed on my camera defaults to 1/60. Since this shutter speed is too fast to capture the low light from the setting sun, it didn’t have enough time to expose the background properly.

Also, since the flash can only go to around 10 to 15 feet, it can expose the tree properly, but it’s not powerful enough to light the background. No flash can unless you several flashes you use as they do in professional photography. But we’re not gonna go there as this is more on teaching you how to use your point and shoot camera.

Here’s another photo where I put arrows on the picture to show you what I mean.

The arrow on top shows the dark background, the arrow pointing at the tree shows it to be lighter than the first photo with no flash.

So the question is, how do you make the background and the tree have an even light? On your camera, there is a setting called “slow synchro” or “rear curtain” on your flash settings. Read you manual on how to set this.

Basically, what happens is this. When you just use the normal setting for flash, the shutter and the flash goes at the same time. When the shutter opens, the flash fires.

On slow synchro setting, the shutter opens first but the flash doesn’t fire. Just before the shutter closes, the flash fires. This happens so fast that you won’t notice it unless you know the technical details of it. To illustrate, let’s use the example of a time of 1 second break down 1 second into 1/10th of a second increments to keep the math simple.

On normal flash setting, when the shutter opens at time 1/1o, the flash fires through around 2/10th to 3/10th of a second and the shutter closes at 5/10th of a second or at 1 second.

When using slow synchro flash, the shutter opens at time 1/10, but the flash doens’t fire. Then at around 6/10th or 8/10th of a second, the flash then fires before the shutter closes at 10/10th or at 1 second.

The difference in time of the two is because when you’re using normal flash, the shutter doesn’t need to open very long since the flash provides enough light to capture the subject.

So what is the difference with this? With the slow synchro flash, the shutter is open longer to have enough time to capture the light of the overall scene. The flash then fires and lights up the foreground. This eliminates the darker foreground as seen on the first photo.

So what does using slow synchro flash looks like? Here’s a photo with the same tree.

As you can see from this photo, the background is pretty much the same as the first photo except the tree is now brighter and almost has the same exposure as the background. The sky is also brighter and in fact, over exposed. But that is expected from a strong backlight and unless I have an SLR camera or a compact camera that has manual controls, there’s not much I can do about it.

Here’s another photo with arrows to point you to what I’m talking about.

Now this is a more even picture and it would look better when we’re talking about people instead of a tree. I’ll show you some samples on my next post.
Posted in Photography Tagged: backlight, backlighting, compact camera, digicam, exposure, flash, photo, Photography, point and shoot, rear curtain, rear curtain flash, shutter, slow synchro, slow synchro flash ]]> http://pointandshooter.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/using-slow-synchro-flash/feed/ 0 mjolnir8