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A New Adobe Lightroom Update Just Deleted Customers’ Photos and Presets

24 Aug

The post A New Adobe Lightroom Update Just Deleted Customers’ Photos and Presets appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Last week, Adobe released Lightroom 5.4.0, a routine update meant for the iPad and iPhone Lightroom app.

But it soon became clear that the update was far more than users bargained for when customers who installed Lightroom 5.4.0 found that their photos and presets had disappeared.

Lightroom users immediately reported their situation on forums, explaining the data loss and asking Adobe for help.

One user wrote, “After the automatic update to Lightroom mobile 5.4…my whole library is lost.” Another wrote, “I can’t believe I lost 2+ years of edits due to the Lightroom mobile update.”

Note that presets were also affected; a Redditor explained how, upon launching Lightroom, “Not only were most of my photos gone, but also hundreds of my presets, some of which I worked on for the past couple of years.”

Adobe soon issued Lightroom 5.4.1, as well as an official response:

“Some customers who updated to Lightroom 5.4.0 on iPhone and iPad may be missing photos and/or presets. This affected customers using Lightroom mobile without a subscription to the Adobe cloud. It also affected Lightroom cloud customers with photos and presets that had not yet synced to the Adobe cloud.

A new version of Lightroom mobile (5.4.1) for iOS and iPadOS has now been released that prevents this issue from affecting additional customers.

Installing version 5.4.1 will not restore missing photos or presets for customers affected by the problem introduced in 5.4.0.

We know that some customers have photos and presets that are not recoverable. We know how frustrating and upsetting this will be to people affected and we sincerely apologize.

Some customers affected by this issue might be able to use iPhone and iPad backups to recover photos and presets.“

Many users were understandably upset upon learning that their photos and presets were unrecoverable. It seems that much of the data is gone forever, though a few users did manage to regain some or all of their missing data via device backups.

While it’s deeply frustrating that Adobe would make such a mistake, this error hammers home the importance of having multiple backups of your photos at all times. I recommend having at least three, including at least one physical backup (e.g., an external hard drive), as well as a cloud-based backup. And, once you have the backups, you must update them regularly; it’s the only way to ensure that your precious images stay safe!

Now over to you:

Were any of you affected by this Lightroom update? If so, were you able to recover your images? And for those who weren’t affected, do you plan to change your image backup practices? Share your thoughts in the comments!

The post A New Adobe Lightroom Update Just Deleted Customers’ Photos and Presets appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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Dealer’s Choice: It’s new card time. Is that such a bad thing?

23 Aug

If you buy a new high-end camera, you’ll probably have to stock up on new memory cards. And card readers. CFexpress Type A is one of the options, but will it take off, or remain an expensive outlier?

It’s sometimes hard to recognize when life’s been treating you well until things take a turn for the worse. Like it or not, we’re not returning to the halcyon days you may have taken for granted at the time.

I’m talking, of course, about memory card formats. But you knew that, right?

For much of the last ten years, the SD card has held sway over most cameras’ card slots. Its dominance has never been absolute, Compact Flash held on in the higher end until the short-lived CFast and XQD formats usurped them, but the chances are that the camera you had ten or fifteen years ago took SD cards and the one you use now does, too. The days of xD, Memory Stick and multiple flavors of Smart Media seemed to be in the past.

An interesting side-effect of this hegemony is that many of us have forgotten what it’s like to have to buy new memory cards (and readers) every time we buy a camera. As if picking a brand (or, more sensibly, a lens system) wasn’t hard enough, the next time you upgrade you may also have to commit to a new media format, with no guarantee that the format will last beyond that next camera body.

A comparatively short life: neither XQD and CFast (the latter mostly used in pro video cameras) have shown much longevity compared to the venerable SD and CF formats.

New cameras, new formats

But change does appear to be here, with both Canon and Nikon settling on the same high-end media format (CFexpress Type B) for the first time in eight years. Meanwhile, in its latest camera, Sony has opted for the similar-sounding but physically incompatible CFexpress Type A.

There are advantages to this: CFexpress is based on a much faster interface than current SD cards, and the cards themselves are more physically durable. But, as is usual with electronics, ‘faster’ plus ‘new’ does not equal ‘cheap.’

Oddly unnecessary

What’s interesting (and I may be using that word entirely inappropriately), is that the move to CFexpress isn’t strictly necessary.

CFexpress is based around the use of PCIe 3.0 NVMe technology, an interface used for computer SSDs. But the Secure Digital Association has set out a version of SD based on the same technology. It’s even mapped out a PCIe 4.0 version which could theoretically hit 4 GB/s (the maximum currently promised by CFexpress).

However, SD Express is two generations ahead of the UHS-II cards and slots that are only now becoming common on cameras, and would only be backward compatible at UHS-I speeds. It’ll be interesting to see whether brands such as Fujifilm, Leica and Olympus will skip UHS-III entirely to adopt SD Express, or whether they too will jump aboard one of the CFexpress trains.

A little legacy support

All of the manufacturers using these cards seem keen to accommodate existing card owners: Canon by providing an SD card slot alongside CFexpress B, Nikon and Panasonic by continuing to support XQD as well as CFexpress B and Sony by designing slots that can accept either SD or CFexpress A cards. But in all instances, you need to adopt the newer format to squeeze the most out of the new cameras (in many instances, it’s video modes that require the faster card types, perhaps the one concrete example of video features adding to photographers’ costs).

No more making do

On the plus side, the move toward new card formats reduces the temptation to try to make-do with those older, slower cards you’d already bought. No more winging it to see if your particular U3 card can reliably maintain the sustained 90MB/s read/write of an actual V90 card, just because it says ‘300MB/s’ on the front. No more hiccoughing continuous bursts because you grabbed a 10-year old Class 1 ‘Extreme’ card as you left the house.

So yes, there’s every chance you’re going to have to dig a bit deeper next time you buy a fancy new camera. New cards, new card readers, perhaps at rather inflated prices if you jump in too soon. But think about it, how much have you spent during the lifetime of your camera on SD cards you’ve lost, that have become corrupted or have broken just enough that they won’t eject properly anymore?

What’s holding you back?

Look at it this way: it’s a great way of being certain your camera is able to work to its full potential, and aren’t a lot of us buying more camera than we need, to ensure it’s never the factor holding us back? And with the three biggest camera makers settling on variants of CFexpress, there’s only a slight risk that you’re investing heavily in the next xD or Memory Stick.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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A Non-Techie User Guide to Installing GIMP Plugins

23 Aug

The post A Non-Techie User Guide to Installing GIMP Plugins appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Have you heard all about how GIMP is free and open-source, but you’ve struggled to embrace the program? Well, I was like that at first; that’s why I decided to make this guide on installing GIMP plugins from one non-techie to another.

My first few attempts to use GIMP were quite off-putting, and when I tried to install a plugin I ended up completely frustrated. But now I actually prefer GIMP to Photoshop for certain edits. Hopefully, this article can save you some time and turn you into an avid GIMP user, as well.

What is open-source software?

When a developer builds software, they write lines of text in a specific programming language. This forms the software’s source code.

In commercial software, this code is protected by copyright. You have to pay a license to use such a program, and you can’t change it in any way.

Instead, an open-source program can be used, modified, and distributed by anyone. Also, most of the time it is free. Sounds great, right?

Well, it is. That’s why everybody keeps telling you GIMP is amazing because it’s “open source.” On the other hand, GIMP is not as user-friendly as other programs. So you might need some time to get used to it. Here’s an introductory guide to get you started.

What are plugins?

A plugin is an add-on that gives more functions to a program. It can be a filter, a tool, or a library that isn’t included in the original source code. As a result, the software gets more powerful and gains more capabilities.

Commercial software has plugins, too (Photoshop, for example).

Since we are already talking about expanding the capabilities of software, scripts are another essential add-on to be aware of. You’ve probably heard of Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets, both of which are scripts.

Well, GIMP has scripts to automate processes and save you time and effort. So while you might find GIMP to be somewhat basic at first, once you start adding plugins and scripts you’ll see that it really has a lot to offer.

Where can you find GIMP plugins?

This is where it starts to get more tricky. Because neither GIMP nor the plugins are made by one developer, there isn’t a website that you can go to find a list with links.

GIMP's plugins are no longer in registry installing GIMP plugins

There used to be one registry that held all the plugins, scripts, images, and files, but it’s not active anymore. Fortunately, in this day and age, you can find anything just by Googling.

As you know, search engines like Google will show you a lot of results; some of it can be outdated, other results can even be a virus, so be careful with what you download.
Here are some tips to make your search more efficient:

Look for tutorials

Start by searching for guides or tutorials on what you want to do, for example: “How to do Content Aware Resizing in GIMP?”

These results will give you suggestions for different plugins that have this functionality, and often they’ll even share the link so you can download it. Since you know that the recommendation comes from a plugin user, you know it’s safe and you can also see if it’s what you’re looking for.

Always look at the date the recommendation was published and click on the most recent suggestions. If you find an article that’s too old, you might not find the plugin anymore, or the plugin may not be compatible with your GIMP version.

Look for reviews on blogs

There are tons of websites that make lists and reviews about these kinds of things. You can search for “The best plugins of this year for GIMP.”

This way, you’ll also find safe downloads and you don’t have to worry about the plugins being useful. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be on such a list, right?

Installing GIMP plugins

Download your file

Once you find the plugin you want, download it to your computer. I’ll use the Resynthesizer plugin as an example, which you can download here. Please keep in mind that you need to find the right file for your operating system. Everything you see here is done on a Mac.

Resynthesizer downloads in a zip file, so double-click on it to extract the files. Leave this Finder window open. You’ll need it again in a moment.

Find GIMP’s plugin folder

Now open GIMP. Click on the GIMP menu and choose Preferences. This will open a pop-up window.

In the left column, find the Folders menu and click on it. This will display all the folders that hold GIMP’s information, so just look in there for the one called Plugins.

Find the folder with the plugin resources. It should be called something like this: GIMP-2.10.app/Contents/Resources/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins.

Of course, the GIMP version may be different for you; mine is 2.10.

Find the folder for installing GIMP plugins

Now click on the square button in the top right of the window. If you hover on top of the button, it should say Show file location in the file manager. This will open the folder that contains the plugin files.

Copy the plugin to GIMP

Now you should have the two folders open:

On one side, the Finder window with the folder of the plugin you downloaded.

On the other side, the window you just opened from GIMP with the folder that contains the plugins.

Select the files from the new plugin and drag them into GIMP’s plugin folder.

Copy-Paste files for installing GIMP plugins

Restart GIMP

That’s it. Now you only have to restart GIMP to find the new tools ready for use.

In the case of the Resynthesizer plugin, it adds the filters Enlarge & Sharpen, Heal Selection, Heal Transparency, Sharpen by Synthesis, and Uncrop.

Conclusion

That’s it. As you can see, installing GIMP plugins is basically a copy-paste operation, so it’s really not as complicated as you might think.

The only hassle is finding the right files and locations. With the tricks I showed you in this article, it will hopefully get easier.

In the end, it’s worth the effort.

Now over to you:

Share in the comments your experiences with GIMP plugins, as well as any plugins or scripts you recommend.

The post A Non-Techie User Guide to Installing GIMP Plugins appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

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SLC-2L-13: Shoot Through Your Sunset

23 Aug

Whenever you have control over the time of day in which you'll be shooting a location portrait, always remember that the hour that wraps around sunset will offer you at least five different lighting environments in which to work.

And for today's portrait of birders Jo (left) and Bob Solem, we're going to use three of them.

Video: Scientists records insects taking flight at 3,200fps

23 Aug

Dr. Adrian Smith, an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State, has shared an incredible slow-motion video on his YouTube channel Ant Lab that showcases various insects taking off for flight at 3,200 frames per second (fps) with a Phantom Miro LC321s.

To keep the video interesting, Smith opted to record ‘the weird stuff.’ In other words, rather than bees, house flies and more common insects, Smith chose less-photographed bugs. Specifically, the video covers (in order): plume moth, firefly, painted lichen moth, leafroller moth, rosy maple moth, common stonefly, mayflies, fishflies, aphid, scorpionfly and lacewing.

In addition to the incredible visuals throughout the eight-and-a-half minute video, Smith also shares facts about insect flight and discusses the different flying mechanisms different insects use. Smith also shared the following tweet showing off what gear he used to capture this video.

If you’re curious here’s 100% of the gear I used to film this:
1-phantom miro LC321s; 2- @laowa_lens 60mm 2:1; 3-cheap LED (background light); 4-roscolux #116 (background); 5-focusing rack; 6-cup & acrylic platform; 7-expensive & super bright LED (subject light); 8-magic arm https://t.co/1FqPvpeoMK pic.twitter.com/gRNrYxI8od

— Adrian Smith (@DrAdrianSmith) August 21, 2020

You can find more insect videos from Smith on his Ant Lab YouTube channel and follow him on Twitter.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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13 Tips for Improving Outdoor Portraits

22 Aug

The post 13 Tips for Improving Outdoor Portraits appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Guest Contributor.

Outdoor portraits present portrait photographers with a variety of challenges and opportunities. Today, James Pickett suggests 13 tips to help you with your outdoor portrait work.

When I bought my very first digital SLR, there was a sigh of relief. Everything was going to be so much easier, and I wouldn’t have to think anymore.

You know the scenario: You pull the camera out, charge the batteries, go for a walk around the house and down the street, taking the same pictures you have taken every time a new camera came into your life.

“This is great,” you think to yourself. “This is going to make my life so much easier!” I was wrong. In fact, I was dead wrong.

There are three very simple things that improve all photography, including portraits. To this day, there is no trick I have found that replaces the need for proper exposure, white balance, and sharp focus.

1) Never select all of the focus points for portraits; pick one

When you pick the autofocus option that allows the camera to select focus points, you are doing your portraits a terrible disservice.

This feature of a camera is usually designed to pick whatever is closest to the lens and focus there. In some cases, like with my 1DS Mark III, the camera will choose a cluster of focus points and make a “best guess” based on averaging the distance between all of the chosen points. Using one focus point gives you, the photographer, ultimate control.

2) Always focus on the eyes

The eyes are the windows to the soul and should be the focal point of any good portrait. Not only are the eyes the most important part of a good portrait, but they are the sharpest element on the face and should be left that way.

When you are shooting with a wide aperture value and you’re focused on the eyes, the lens’s bokeh will aid in softening the skin, as well.

3) Shoot wide open for shallow depth of field

There are quite a few reasons to invest in a fast lens capable of wide aperture values; the most common is for shallow depth of field.

If you can shoot at ƒ/2.8 or ƒ/4, you should use it. Most fantastic natural light portraits are from wide aperture values, and it is all because of the wonderful smooth background blur we call “bokeh.”

4) Never, ever shoot a portrait at less than 50mm; try to stay at 70mm or higher

The last thing you want to hear from a client is “Why does my head look swollen?”

Any focal length below 70mm can distort your subject. However, it doesn’t become very noticeable until you are below 50mm. The compression effect of a telephoto lens will also increase the blur of bokeh. Most of my portraits are done between 120mm and 200mm.

5) Always shoot in RAW

These words have bellowed from my mouth a thousand times, and they will surely come out a million more. Raw is an unmodified compilation of your sensor’s data during the time of exposure. It is your digital negative. When you shoot in JPG format, everything but what the image processor needs to make a shell representation of the image you intended to capture is stripped away. For every edit you make to a JPG, you lose more data. With RAW, you can make a vast range of edits before creating the JPG.

How can this make you portrait better? Think about the last time your white balance was set incorrectly and you tried for hours to remove the color cast, only to destroy the image with every attempt. RAW would have saved you by allowing you to fix the color before opening the image for retouching.

6) Always bring a gray card or a piece of a gray card for white balance

Gray cards aren’t free. However, $ 5.95 US for a cardboard Kodak gray card is darn close. To avoid confusion, I am going to explain this backward. When opening Adobe Camera Raw or any other RAW image editing application, there is always a way to select a custom white balance. Usually, it is an eyedropper of some kind that you can use to click on what you think is neutral gray in your image.

Imagine a world where your photoshoot involved 4 locations and a total of 800 images, and all day the camera was set to Auto White Balance. That is 800 different white balance values, a post-production nightmare.

If at each location you have your subject hold the gray card on the first shot, you will save hours of work. When you open images from the first location in your favorite post-production application, all you have to do is click the eyedropper on the gray card, select all the photos, and synchronize the rest. Precious hours will be saved.

(If you plan on taking your time, it may be wise to do this once every 30 minutes or so to compensate for the changing light of day.)

7) Shoot in the shade (avoid direct sunlight)

Direct sunlight is harsh, makes your subject squint, and creates hard directional shadows and unpredictable white balance conditions. When shooting in the shade, there are no more harsh shadows, only smooth, milky shadows created by your subject’s natural features. With proper exposure and white balance, you can make these shots look amazing.

8) Shooting carefully on an overcast day.

Nature’s softbox is a giant blanket of clouds. A good heavy blanket of cloud cover can help you enrich your colors, and make some very smooth and pleasing shadows.

9) If you must use hot, hard, bright light…

Always try to control the direction, use some kind of reflector, and try to mimic a studio light. Putting the sun directly behind your subject isn’t a good idea, unless you are trying to make a silhouette.

When the sun is at my back, I have the subject look off-camera (away from the sun) and get very nice results. Another great trick is to wait for a cloud to move in front of the sun; this usually creates a very bright-yet-contrasted look.

10) Use an existing reflector

For example, my guess is that about 75% of the delivery trucks on the planet are white. These big, white delivery trucks can make amazing fill light reflectors as long as they weren’t painted with an off-white. (A yellow tint can change the white balance in your shadows.) Picture framing outlets and craft stores always have medium-to-large-sized pieces of foam core lying around that have been left for scrap. They are usually more than happy to part with these scraps and, if not, chances are that there are pieces by the dumpster.

11) Learn the sunny ƒ/16 rule

Why?

So you have a baseline for proper exposure in your mind to work with if no other tools are present.

The sunny ƒ/16 rule states that on a sunny day, with your aperture value set to ƒ/16, your shutter speed will be the inverse of the current ISO speed. For example, if your camera is set to ISO 100, and your aperture value is ƒ/16, your shutter speed will be 1/100th of a second. On a cloudy day (or when in the shade), you simply use ƒ/8 instead. If you own an incident light meter or gray card, use either for the most accurate exposure instead.

(Note: the procedure for metering exposure with a gray card is not the same as a custom white balance.)

12) Bring a sheet and a few spring clamps from home

Leave the expensive 200-thread-count sheets on the bed. You already got them? Well, go put them back. You know that cheap old sheet you stuck in the corner of the closet to use as a drop cloth the next time you paint? Go get it.

(Another option is to buy the cheapest low-thread-count white top sheet you can find.)

A queen-sized sheet is an amazing, cheap diffuser. Sort of a seven-foot softbox for the sun. Wrap an edge of the sheet around a branch or clothesline and clamp for a sidelight.

(Anchor the bottom corners with rocks to keep the sheet from blowing into your image.) Clamp all four corners to anything you can above your subject for an overhead light.

13) Keep the powerlines and signs out!

We have already discussed keeping your camera focused on the eyes, but you must also keep the viewer’s mind focused on the image as a whole. Powerlines, signs, long single blades of grass, single pieces of garbage, and sometimes even trees can be serious distractions from the overall focus of the image: the person you are photographing.

Last, and most important, have a great time shooting! Enjoy what you’re doing, and it will show in your work (as well as in the expression of your subject).

A few bonus tips for shooting on cloudy days

Clouds are wonderful. They create a giant blanket of natural sunlight diffusion that makes your images rich and powerful. The clouds can fool your mind in ways you can’t imagine, much like your mind corrects for the natural white balance throughout the day.

When you are shooting on an overcast day, using your camera’s custom white balance is especially important. Every day is completely different for color, and that color depends on two things. First, the time of day; most people understand white balance and how it changes throughout the day. Second, you have to account for all of the wonderful things that light has to pass through before it hits your subject.

Pollution changes the color of the light from minute to minute. Even if your eyes don’t see it, your camera does. On a cloudy day, pollution particles are being carried around in the sky by tiny water droplets. Now your sunlight is passing through nature’s prism and reflecting off of pollution particles in infinite directions.

Don’t forget to white balance with that six-dollar piece of cardboard, your Kodak gray card.

The ultimate secret to shooting on a cloudy day is a compass. (You either tipped your head like a confused Chihuahua or just had an epiphany.) I am an experienced, internationally-published photographer, and rarely can I see where the sun is coming from on an overcast day. The light isn’t omnipresent; it’s just diffused, softened, and scattered. Sunlight on a cloudy day is still directional, and your subject still has a dark side. Use a compass to find out where the sun is, put it at your back, and shoot like mad. Never again will you look at an image after and wonder why the sky was blown out when it was so cloudy, or why the clouds look great but your subject is dark.

The post 13 Tips for Improving Outdoor Portraits appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Guest Contributor.

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DPReview TV: We review six popular photo backpacks

22 Aug

We compare six of the most popular camera backpacks on the market: the Wandrd Prvke, the Peak Design Travel Backpack, the Shimoda Explore, the Manfrotto Manhattan Mover, the CosySpeed PhotoHiker and the Atlas Athlete.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.

Introduction
Meet the backpacks
How much can you pack?
Comfort and features
The rain test
Standing water test
Which pack is right for you?

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Zhiyun announces Crane 2S gimbal, promising improved speed and precision

22 Aug

Zhiyun has announced a new handheld gimbal, the Crane 2S. While many modern cameras and lenses offer good stabilization performance, amateurs and professionals alike still flock to gimbals for even more stable handheld video. The Crane 2S includes numerous improvements over the Crane 2.

The Zhiyun Crane 2S is stronger than its predecessor and can hold video rigs such as the Black Magic BMPCC 6K, Panasonic S1H, Sony A9, Nikon D850 or Canon EOS 1DX Mark II. You can view a full list of compatible cameras and lenses by clicking here. Further, the latest version of the Crane 2S’s Instune Algorithm has been refined to deliver quick and smooth gimbal performance.

In terms of setup speed, the Crane 2S features a brand new FlexMount System. This system simplifies the setup process while also ensuring that your gear is secure. The system incorporates a double safety mechanism and has a user-adjustable safety lock. If you want to record vertical video, such as for social media needs, the Crane 2S comes with a vertical quick release mount and safety knob.

Additional features of the gimbal’s design include an upgraded axis locking mechanism, dubbed Axis Locking Mechanism 2.0, guaranteeing ‘zero swinging of the gimbal during traveling or storage.’ To keep the Crane 2S light and strong, the handle is constructed of carbon fiber. The Crane 2S uses 3 removable Li-ion batteries, delivering a total run time of 12 hours.

The Crane 2S includes six gimbal modes: Pan Following, Locking, Following, Full-Range POV, Vortex and Go mode. The gimbal also includes special modes for aiding in the creation of panoramas, timelapse, motionlapse and long exposure timelapse.

The Crane 2S supports digital and manual focus control via a built-in focus wheel on the gimbal itself. Zhiyun states that the focus control ability offers improved speed and precision as well, allowing for easier focus pulls when shooting. You can refer to the compatibility sheet linked above to see which cameras and lenses are compatible with the Crane 2S’s focus wheel.

The gimbal includes a new 0.96″ OLED display, allowing easy control of important settings and simple menu navigation. If you’d like to use a bigger display, the Crane 2S includes a dedicated slot for installing an image transmitter and with Zhiyun’s TransMount Image Transmission System, you can attach a monitor for live monitoring. The TransMount system also allows for the use of various accessories, such as quick setup kits, a monopod, servo zoom and focus motors and more.

Zhiyun Crane 2S. Shown with Panasonic S1H. Image credit: Zhiyun

The Zhiyun Crane 2S is available now with the standard package retailing for $ 599 USD. For additional information on the Crane 2S and finding a retailer, click here. Zhiyun streamed a full presentation earlier today for the debut of the Crane 2S. You can view a replay of the stream below.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Weekly Photography Challenge – Mistakes

22 Aug

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Mistakes appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

A bit of a departure this week! We want to see your mistakes, we all make them, we learn from them (or we don’t, I mean… who knew my kids were that fast on scooters!)

Love them or hate them, mistakes are a part of learning. I could have used a different focus mode here, I could have been more prepared for when master 6 came towards me and I missed him with my focus point, but I wasn’t ready and I missed the shot and there was no way he was going back to do it again! Moving on.

9 Solutions for common camera mistakes beginners make
Photo Mistakes! Learning from a Photo Autopsy
7 Mistakes beginner photographers make the camera can’t be blamed for

Dig through your photos and find something that you remember as a mistake, here’s another of mine from a few years ago now, I was in Cuba, somewhere I likely won’t get to go back to, and I’d recently purchased a 50mm f/1.4 and was still in that “Whoa! Everything looks amazing at 1.4!” …I misfocused when I built up the courage to ask this chap if I could make an image, I got the tip of his nose nice and sharp, but missed his eyes… It made me slow down a little and make sure I had the focus point in the right place. As long as we learn from our mistakes, they can be a valuable tool!

Great! Where do I upload my photos?

Simply upload your shot into the comments field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favourite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. We’re interested to see how you revisit the images that you’ve taken before now in this re-edit challenge!

Weekly Photography Challenge – Looking Up

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSMistakes to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

Follow us on Instagram?

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Mistakes appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

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The $20 film camera challenge part 1: the hunt – Aaron Gold

21 Aug

Lead image: Dan Bracaglia. All other images: courtesy of Ebay and used with permission.

Not long ago, I was poking through a film camera forum where someone mentioned they were looking to ‘dabble’ in film – and they were about to spend $ 700 on a Leica. I choked on my Mountain Dew, mercifully missing the laptop screen.

$ 700 might be reasonable by digital standards (or perhaps even by Leica standards), but for a 35mm camera it’s a king’s ransom. I’ve been railing against the (mis)conception that film is prohibitively expensive, and one of the pillars of that argument is the low cost of equipment. In today’s film world, you can buy some shockingly good cameras for ridiculously low prices.

I’ve been railing against the (mis)conception that film is prohibitively expensive, and one of the pillars of that argument is the low cost of equipment

Maybe it was time to put my money where my mouth was.

I emailed Dan Bracaglia, my editor at DPReview. ‘Let’s do a $ 20 Film Camera Challenge. We’ll get some DPR staffers and maybe a few prominent film bloggers. Everyone gets a $ 20 budget, including shipping, to buy a working film rig and see what kind of pictures it makes. Whaddaya think?’

‘Great idea,’ Dan wrote back. ‘You go first.’

I know marching orders when I see them, so it was time to fire up eBay and see what I could find.

Option 1: Point and Shoot

I figured my best budget option was a compact point-and-shoot camera, even though I’m not the biggest fan. Not that there’s anything wrong with them – in fact, for those new to film, they highlight a strange tenet: When it comes to film, the quality of the camera has little impact on the quality of the images. It’s the lens, not the guts of the camera, that determines how sharp the image is. That’s why 35mm point-and-shoot cameras were so popular: Even the most inept photographer could get decent results.

If a compact is what you want, the $ 20 camera hunt is both a gold mine and a mine field. There are a trillion of these cameras out there, and aside from a few really advanced models that sell for crazy money (Nikon Ti, Olympus XA, anything from Contax or Leica, and don’t even get me started on the Olympus mju II), you’ll find a lot of them under $ 10 before shipping. Not all are great, but a lot are good.

The Perils of P+S

The problem is that the good point-and-shoot cameras are in the same price range as the really crappy ones. These include “focus free” or “fixed focus” cameras from Argus, Vivitar, LeClic, and even Kodak, Olympus and Minolta. They don’t have a moving lens element, but instead rely on a small aperture to get everything more-or-less in focus. And then there are the plastic-fantastic toy cameras of the sort given away free with magazine subscriptions. They’re the ones that are styled to look like 35mm SLRs but obviously aren’t. They’re good for Lomographers, but not for those who want sharp photos.

I thought seriously about a compact; a cool power-wind P&S might be a nice addition to my collection. But then I realized that I already have one, a weatherproof Pentax Zoom 90WR, that I still haven’t gotten around to trying.

Also, I was starting to realize that $ 20 could buy something even niftier.

Option 2: Let’s go retro!

One of the things I’m eager to add to my collection is an antique 35mm camera, and I was surprised at how many I found in my price range. As a former resident of Rochester, New York, I’ve been keeping half an eye out for an old Kodak, and I found lots that were in or near my price range: Ponys, Signets, Automatics, even a couple of Retinas (though I didn’t expect those to stay under my budget once bidding began). There was a Canon Canonet, advertised as working, though I understand the selenium meter cells go bad and can’t be replaced. I also saw an East German camera called a Beriette for $ 19.99 with free shipping. Several of these classics made my short list.

I couldn’t believe how many beautiful old cameras were available for such cheap prices

Buying a vintage camera takes a bit of legwork, most importantly including research to figure out if there’s an instruction manual available online or on eBay. With shipping taken into account, a lot of the cameras went above my budget – but only by a few bucks. I couldn’t believe how many beautiful old cameras were available for such cheap prices.

Option 3: Go with what I know: the SLR

As my sorted-by-price listings hit the $ 10 range, I started seeing interchangeable-lens single-lens reflex cameras, the kind I know best. I knew I (probably) wasn’t going to score a Nikon FM for twenty bucks, but I saw plenty of lesser-known and less-loved cameras, mostly newer and more automatic, well within my budget. I saw some lovely old Sears cameras, which are really rebadged Ricohs. I also found some real horror shows, like a Pentax MG (above) in ‘like-new’ condition that looked like someone had hacked away at the lens mount with a Dremel tool.

The challenge with cheap SLRs on eBay is that a lot of sellers have separated the camera body from its lens. If I was looking for a body that was compatible with lenses I already owned, hitting my budget would have been ridiculously easy – but the rules Dan and I had established dictated that I must purchase a complete working rig. An SLR isn’t much good without a lens, and matched sets were proving tough to come by.

And then it occurred to me: If the sellers were splitting up cameras and lenses, why couldn’t I do the same thing? By shopping for my camera and lens separately, I might be able to hit my budget.

Minolta to the rescue

I needed a brand with good lenses that sold cheap, and one name kept coming up: Minolta. Back in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Minolta produced a line of consumer-level plastic-bodied SLRs that they advertised the daylights out of on television. They also had a partnership with Ritz Camera stores, one of which seemed to be installed in every US shopping mall. I already owned a couple of Maxxum cameras, including a 400si I bought for $ 12 as a parts camera that turned out to work perfectly. Minolta’s older AF zooms were great lenses that sold cheap. Could this be my answer?

My prospects for Minolta’s entry-level SLRs looked good. I saw plenty in the $ 10 to $ 15 range, shipping included

My prospects for Minolta’s entry-level SLRs looked good. I was looking at the 300si and QTsi (“Cutsie”), auto-only cameras that are effectively point-and-shoots with detachable lenses, as well as the 3xi which has manual and Av/Tv modes as well. I saw plenty in the $ 10 to $ 15 range, shipping included. Matching lenses, primarily 28-80 and 35-70 zooms, were around the same price. I found a seller – a camera store, as it happened – that had a 3xi for $ 10 and a lens for $ 12, both with free shipping. I was all set to email and ask if they would sell me the two for $ 20, all-in.

But just before I did, I scrolled a little bit farther down, and I found… IT.

The $ 20 camera of my dreams!

It was an SLR with lens, a model I hadn’t heard of, and it wasn’t just a glorified point-and-shoot – in fact, from what I could tell, it had a feature set to rival my Nikon N8008. And it was within in my $ 20 price range. Like, way within in my price range.

I made an offer. That offer was accepted, and my less-than-$ 20 film camera was on its way.

Would it work? Would it be any good? How much did it cost me? And what the hell kind of camera did I buy, anyway? I’ll answer all those questions in part two. Stay tuned!

All Aaron’s $ 20 film camera finds

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