Tripods
One of the easiest ways to waste money in photography is to buy a cheap tripod. Unless you’re spending $150 or more, you might as well be lighting that money on fire for all the good your flimsy tripod will do you. If you’re not ready to invest in a tripod, hold onto your money until you are. When you’re ready, these are the ones to look at:

• Manfrotto MK293A3-A0RC2 293 Aluminum Tripod Kit with Ball Head and Quick Release  ~$150 – Lightweight, but sturdy. This is the minimum tripod you should get.
• Manfrotto Pro 055XPROB Tripod (Black) Outfit with 322RC2 Grip Action Head and MBAG80P Case  ~$350 – Heavy, durable, pistol grip head and carrying case. This is the tripod that I use. I’ve put it through some incredible abuse and it keeps coming back for more.
• Gitzo GT2541EX Series 2 Carbon 6x 4 Section G-Lock Explorer Tripod – Replaces GT2540EX (Black) $560 (legs only) – If you’re looking for carbon fiber. This is a good place to start.

Lenses

• Nikon 50mm f/1.8G AF-S NIKKOR Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras $220 – The “fast” 50. This is the lens to get for shooting indoors and in low light.
• Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras $220 – This lens is a little wider so it approximates a 50mm when used on a crop body.
• Tokina AT-X 116 Pro DX AF 11-16mm f/2.8 Lens For Nikon $699 – The budget wide-angle of choice. Better than the name-brand wide-angle DX lens in many regards.
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens $120 – The “fast” 50. This is the lens to get for shooting indoors and in low light.
• Canon EF 35mm f/2 Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras $360 – This lens is a little wider so it approximates a 50mm when used on a crop body.
• Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X116 Pro DX Digital Zoom Lens (for Canon EOS Cameras) $699 – The budget wide-angle of choice. Better than the name-brand wide-angle crop lens in many regards.

Accessories/Cleaning

• LensPEN Lens Cleaning System $8 – Handy lens cleaner. Brush gets rid of dust and special pad removes smudges.
• Sensor Swab Plus Type 3 w/ Eclipse (4pk) $18 – This is what I use to clean my camera’s sensor (it’s not as scary as people have told you it is.) Easy to use and premoistened with exactly the right amount of cleaner. There are different sizes for different camera sensors, so check the reference to be sure you’re getting the right size for your camera (if you have a crop sensor you probably want this one.) Some of the reviews make it sound like a bad product, but my experience has been completely opposite. Easy to use, great results, and about a tenth of the cost of paying someone else to clean it for you.

Color Management

• ColorMunki Photo – Monitor, Printer & Projector Profiler $450 – Tired of you prints coming out wildly different from what you saw on your monitor? Want to make sure you’re really seeing your photos? This is what you need.
• X-Rite i1Display 2 Color Calibrator for LCD, CRT, and Laptop Displays $180 – If the price tag on the ColorMunki is too much, this one will do a great job calibrating your monitors. (No printer calibration.)

Books

• Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera $16
• The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos $18

Software
Lightroom is the software for you to manage, edit, print, and share your photos.

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 $149
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Student and Teacher Edition $79 (Must submit proof of student/teacher status)

Full disclosure: if you buy something through one of these links I’ll get between a 4-10% kickback. I won’t be upset if you don’t buy through these links, but I’ll be very appreciative if you do.

So, let’s break it down…

• S – See: Take a moment to really look at the photo and absorb it. Look at the big picture, look at small sections for hidden detail, notice where your eye enters, where it goes, where it rests, where it exits. Try to see everything there is to see about the image.
• I – Interpret: What does the photo make you think of? Emotions? Mood? What do you think the photographer was trying to accomplish with their shot? This step can seem silly to some people, but it’s actually one of the most useful parts. As someone with no emotional attachment to the shot, you can provide untainted feedback that lets the photographer know if they accomplished what they set out to do with the photograph. Also, this is the only step that the photographer can’t learn on their own.
• T – Technicals: Go through the aspects of the photo that deal with skill using the equipment. Is it in sharp focus, is it exposed properly, how is the noise, etc.
• S – Subjectives: Go through the artistic parts of the photo. How is the composition? The depth of field? Framing?
• P – Praise: Talk about the things you like about the photo and why you like them. Again, this part of the critique some people find silly or unnecessary, but it’s a very important part of the learning process. You’re not giving praise to brace them for the impact of what they can improve upon. You’re maintaining their positive attitude to promote learning.
• I – Improvements: Talk about the parts of the photo that could be improved and be sure to include how to improve it and why you think it would be an improvement. If there are many things that can be improved, focus on one or two that will have the most impact rather than overwhelming them. Remember that your critique is intended to improve the photographer’s future work, not the photo you’re critiquing.
• N – Nutshell: Wrap up by going back through the highlights to condense any previous rambling you may have done into the concise couple of sentences you’d like the photographer to take away from your critique.

So there you have it. The next time you’re asked to give a critique… SIT & SPIN.

Slides from the presentation to the RCC:

Understanding stops (and how to calculate them) is a very important skill that is becoming all but lost in the age of built in exposure meters. Not that there’s anything wrong with letting the camera do the mundane work, but what happens when you’re going for a shot that’s outside the ability of the camera to calculate? For instance, with night photography or when using a neutral density filter to get that nice cotton candy water effect your camera may not have enough light to figure out what’s best and suddenly the weight is on your shoulders. The good news is that it’s pretty simple if you know how to multiply and divide by 2.

A Brief Aside on Correct Exposure
Correct exposure is subjective, but when speaking in normal terms, a well exposed image has the shadows just above black and the highlights just short of being blown out. (This post is about figuring out equivalent exposures so I’m going to assume you already know how to identify a good exposure.) When taking a picture we have three things we can adjust: the amount of light we let onto the sensor (Aperture), the length of time that light is allowed in (Shutter Speed), and how sensitive our sensor is to the light hitting it (ISO.) When you combine those three things you get the Exposure.

The Stop
When talking to other photographers you’ll hear things like “expose it a stop higher” or “when shooting HDR, shoot a normal exposure and shots a few stops higher and lower.” What does that mean? It means make the exposure lighter or darker, but beyond that, it means by a specific amount. A stop is a relative measurement of half or double an amount of light and it’s useful for quantifying how much of an adjustment we’re talking about. (BTW, you’ll sometimes see stops referred to as an Exposure Value or EV.)

The Equation
Here’s what you need to know. Doubling any one of the three exposure controls increases the exposure by one stop while halving them decreases the exposure by one stop.

• Shutter speed is easy. If you’re shooting 1/100, then 1/200 is a stop darker and 1/50 is a stop lighter.
• ISO is easy too. If you’re shooting at ISO400 you can stop down to ISO200 for a darker image or up to ISO800 for a brighter image.
• That leaves us with aperture.  Aperture is referring to the size of hole in the lens that the light passes through. If you double the size of that hole, you let in double the light. Halve the size and you halve the light. Easy! Aperture is a simple concept, but can be confusing because of how it’s measured. Let’s stick with simplicity for the purpose of this post and not dive into why those numbers are measured the way they are (I’ll cover that in-depth elsewhere, but the short version is that it’s a fraction.) Just know that the bigger number means a smaller opening and a smaller number means a bigger opening (so f/2.8 lets in a lot more light than f/11.) Some of the common numbers you’ll see are: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16. (Each jump in that list represents a stop, so f/2.8 to f/4 is one stop. f/5.6 to f/11 is 2 stops. And if you have trouble with memorizing that list, just remember 2 and 2.8 and you can figure out the rest from there by doubling – 2, 4, 8, 16 and 2.8, 5.6, 11)

Scenarios
So, you’re shooting at night and you take a shot at 30 seconds, F/11, and 200ISO. Your image looks okay, but your friend shooting nearby says it’d look great if it were 2 stops brighter. So what can you do?

- Change the shutterspeed by 2 stops. Doubling it once gets you 1 minute. Again gets you 2 minutes.

- You could increase the ISO by 2 stops. From 200 to 400 to 800.

- You could open your aperture by 2 stops. From f/11 to f/8 to f/5.6.

All of those examples will work to brighten the exposure, but you could also make smaller adjustments to multiple settings to get two stops. For example, increase the shutter speed to 1 minute and increase the ISO to 400.

Go Practice!
The math is easy, it just takes a little bit of practice and you’ll be calculating stops in your head in no time. One of the best resources I’ve found for online practice is the DSL Simulator at CameraSim.com. Give it a try!

Exposure Roanoke Model Shoot – March 2011 from HappyCatFilms on Vimeo.

And be sure to check out Rob’s website too: http://www.happycatfilms.com

The Myth of the Unmanipulated Image

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html

Lens Repair Data Report 4.0

Once you’ve missed a moment, you’ve missed it forever, so take the shot. There will be plenty of time to put out the fire.