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Pros and Cons of Chimping – What is it and how it can hurt or help you?

15 Jul

Whether you are an amateur taking photos with your smartphone or a pro using a DSLR, if you make digital photographs, you do chimping. It doesn’t matter if you’ve heard the term or not it could be hurting your photographic practice so keep reading to learn about the pros and cons of chimping and how to use it (or stop using it) to your advantage.

Chimping Tutorial Intro - Pros and Cons of Chimping - photo of a DSLR camera screen

What is chimping?

There’s no doubt that digital photography has many advantages. One of them is being able to see the result of your shot immediately instead of having to wait until you got your film developed. This practice is commonly known as chimping, since Bryan Peterson coined the term and it became popular.

However, it’s not all good. If used without much thought you may not be taking full advantage of it or even worse, it could be working against you.

So, chimping is simply the act of checking your images on your camera’s LCD screen. It doesn’t necessarily imply what you do after that. You may delete some photos, you may do some adjustments to your settings for the following shots or you may even stop taking any more photos because you’re satisfied with what you’ve got. That’s where it gets tricky.

Pros and Cons of Chimping

Pro #1

If you change the conditions dramatically and need to readjust your settings it’s very helpful to find out immediately if you got the shot right. Here is an example.

It was a bright sunny day so I was photographing outside with an ISO of 100, f-stop of f/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/250th. When I walked inside a room it was obviously much darker. But because I was looking at the beauty of the walls and the play of the elements and design I just snapped a photo without thinking about the change of lighting. Needless to say, it came out extremely dark.

Fortunately, however, I did some chimping, realized the issue and adjusted the ISO to 400.

Chimping Tutorial Outside Inside - Pros and Cons of Chimping - comparison of two photos

Con #1

Things look very different on your camera’s small screen as compared to the big screen of your computer. You might think the photo you just took is perfect but that’s not always the case. For example, this image looked good when I was chimping on the camera when I shot it, but once I downloaded it back home I realized the focus was not really sharp.

Chimping Tutorial Soft Focus - Pros and Cons of Chimping

When zoomed in on the computer this image is clearly out of focus, but it looked sharp on the camera.

Pro #2

If you are looking for a really concrete shot or effect you can immediately know if you are achieving it or what you need to adjust in order to get it by chimping and reviewing the image on the camera.

For example, I wanted to capture the movement of these ice skaters. This is always a tricky effect because you need to set the right shutter speed so it doesn’t freeze the subject or leave just a smudge if it’s too slow. If you are interested in learning how to do this I invite you to check out my tutorial, “How to Have Fun with Shutter Speed and Added Motion Blur”.

You also need to move the camera (panning) at the same speed of the subject so this is an exercise where you need to try many times and definitely do some chimping.

Chimping Tutorial Slow ShutterSpeed Blur Movement - Pros and Cons of Chimping - skaters

Con #2

Another con of chimping is you can miss out on the perfect moment, that once-in-a-lifetime shot because you were looking at your screen instead of paying attention to the scene.

Here, for example, I wanted to capture the elephant throwing the dirt with its trunk. But I looked at my screen (and snapped) a second too late and all I got was the dirt cloud and the trunk almost all the way down.

Chimping Tutorial the Decisive Moment - elephant

Fortunately, elephants do this a lot, so I just had to wait a little bit longer (without taking my eyes off them this time) and got the photo.

Chimping Tutorial the Decisive Moment2 - elephant spraying dirt

Tips

If you have some time to review your photos and you’re sure you’re not going to be missing a once in a lifetime opportunity, then go ahead check, but do it well. Zoom into your image especially on any risky parts, like the shadows and highlights, to see they still have detail as well as your focus point to see that it’s sharp.

Chimping Tutorial Critical Points Zoom Review

Use the Histogram

When you are chimping, check your image but don’t forget to review the histogram as well. It should have a good range from black to white with many grey tones (unless you purposely went towards one end of the spectrum).

Most DSLR cameras have this feature integrated. On mine (a Canon 70D), for example, you access the histogram by playing the image, then clicking on the info button and it gives you the histogram by color channel and the general histogram.

Chimping Tutorial Histogram In Camera Review

Even after reviewing your photos and deciding you have what you need, do some extra shots. For example, I went to photograph a temple so it was mostly about architecture photos. After walking around it and shooting every angle on the outside, I went inside and did some shooting there as well.

I figured I had all I needed to head back to the city. Fortunately, I never put away the camera when I’m out for a shoot, especially in a new place. So when I was walking down the stairs I found this little girl in a traditional costume just resting from all the tourist attention she was getting. Never close the door to possibilities!

Chimping Tutorial Extra Shot

Finally

One last thing, reviewing and deleting the photos you don’t want can save you space on your memory card but having the screen on consumes a lot of battery so make sure you keep a good balance. No use in having lots of battery life if you don’t have space for more photos and equally useless to have an empty card but no battery to shoot!

So chimping is not a good or bad thing in itself, it’s more about how you use it. Let us know in the comments what are your chimping habits and share some of your tips!

The post Pros and Cons of Chimping – What is it and how it can hurt or help you? appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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PIX 2015: Robert Hurt and the hidden universe

29 Nov

Robert Hurt might just have the coolest job in the galaxy. He’s a visualization scientist with NASA, helping to interpret research data from space telescopes and NASA missions into photography. In short, he helps reveal the hidden universe that exists beyond the realm of human vision. In his PIX 2015 talk, he shares his insight on how his images are created and what kinds of things we can hope to discover when the unseen world becomes visible. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Pizza Hurt: 12 Stale & Crusty Abandoned Pizza Hut Stores

12 Oct

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Pizza Hut has over 11,000 restaurants worldwide but it once had even more… until these dirty dozen outlets were abandoned like a leftover stuffed crust slice.

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Pizza Hut was founded in 1958 but it took a while for the chain to morph into the familiar red-roofed, trapezoid-windowed icon of fast food pop culture. Thousands of the Richard D. Burke-designed “red roofs” remain though the chain continues to move away from the old dine-in formula in favor of home delivery.

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According to Michael Wayne of Past/Lives, the “sad, wide, expressive eyes” of this drearily over-painted and graffiti-tagged former Pizza Hut restaurant in suburban Sydney, Australia “stare out at the busy King Georges Road rushing by, just like they have every day for the last 40 years.” That was in July of 2012… by early 2013 when Wayne returned, the store had vanished lock, stock and birch beer barrel. “Why couldn’t it have happened to Dominos instead?,” mourned Wayne. S’truth, mates.

“Gimme a C! Gimme an L!”

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Today on Wheel Of Misfortune… an abandoned Pizza Hut restaurant just off U.S. Highway 50 in Rocky Ford, Colorado, “where a cantaloupe-borne listeria outbreak which killed 33 people is said to have originated in 2011,” according to Tessa Cheek of The Dry Sea. That’s not going to be good for business… that’s not going to be good for anybody.

Brownout

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Some say that when a red-roofed Pizza Hut closes, a special corporate team rushes to the location and paints the roof brown as part of the “de-identifying” process. Sorta like airlines painting over their logo when one of their jets crashes. The more you know!

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Flickr user Ryan (RetailByRyan95) snapped this recently browned-over Pizza Hot restaurant in Williamsburg, VA on December 27th of 2008 and then again on June 30th of 2009. Wow, you’d never know the place used to be a Pizza Hut.

Spotless

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Whoops, looks like the Browning Brigade didn’t get the memo on an abandoned Spotsylvania County, VA Pizza Hut captured by Panoramio user Dan R. Mills in October of 2014. The entire sad scene screams of neglect from the building’s faded red roof to vegetated pavement cracks competing with ghostly yellow parking lines. One can only imagine what the food was like.

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Pizza Hurt 12 Stale Crusty Abandoned Pizza Hut Stores

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[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Putt Hurt: 12 More Abandoned Miniature Golf Courses

03 Aug

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Most miniature golf courses have 9 or 18 holes per course. These dozen abandoned courses, on the other hand, have more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire.

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Flickr user Tom Faulkner (tom faulkner photographs) has apparently done the impossible by turning an abandoned miniature golf course into an oasis of breathtaking beauty. The course is located somewhere in Maryland and though the artificial greens and fairways still reflect hints of their former verdant glory, the true glory of Faulkner’s images comes courtesy of Mother Nature in all her autumnal glory.

Pasture-ized

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It’s so annoying when a perfectly good miniature golf course closes its doors and drifts into deterioration and decay. In fact, one might say it really… gets our goat. Kudos to Flickr user Isaac Sachs, who snapped the currently “now serving as a goat pasture” status of the former Scappoose Mini Golf in September of 2013.

Eurotrashed

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Flickr user bertolino captured this baaadly overgrown and abandoned miniature golf course on May 2nd of 2009… hey, don’t they have goats in Europe?

Not Milwaukee’s Finest

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Dead Kennedys; D K; decay… coincidence? We think not! Flickr user Retinal Fetish brings us these post-apocalyptic images taken in 2006 and 2007 at Willow’s Miniature Golf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The graffiti’d divider wall looks a little like swiss cheese – gray and moldy swiss cheese but hey, beggers can’t be choosers. Hopefully it won’t attract giant rats.

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Putt Hurt 12 More Abandoned Miniature Golf Courses

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