The post Panasonic Unveils the GH5 II, With Wireless Live Streaming and Improved IBIS appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Panasonic has announced its latest Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera: The Lumix GH5 II, an update to the much-loved GH5, which debuted back in 2017.
While the GH5 II retains many of the capabilities that made the GH5 such a praiseworthy camera, it also features several upgrades – particularly to its videography and streaming options, though also for action photography, low-light photography, and more.
Let’s take a closer look.
Panasonic Lumix GH5 II: What does it offer?
The Lumix GH5 II is a Micro Four Thirds camera combining significant photography and videography capabilities; as such, it should appeal to both enthusiast and professional hybrid shooters, though it can certainly perform well as a standalone photography or videography option.
Here are the key features that are identical (or nearly identical) to those on the GH5:
The GH5 II packs the same build as the GH5, including solid construction and weather resistance. The GH5 II is perfect for the outdoor photographer or videographer, though heavier than hobbyist alternatives.
The sensor is the 20 MP MFT technology used in the GH5, but Panasonic has added a new anti-reflective coating for better backlit shooting.
Like the GH5, the GH5 II features dual SD card slots, useful for professionals who require redundancy in their work.
12 frames-per-second continuous shooting (in AF-S) and 9 frames-per-second continuous shooting (in AF-C) promise decent action performance.
The electronic viewfinder remains a respectable 3.68M dots.
And here’s what you get from the GH5 II over the GH5:
10-bit 4:2:0 DCI 4K/60p; pre-installed V-Log L for improved dynamic range; simultaneous external 10-bit 4:2:2 4K and internal 10-bit 4:2:0 4K recording.
The GH5 II supports wireless live streaming. As Panasonic explains, with the GH5 II, “high-quality live streaming is possible with minimum equipment – only the camera and a smartphone are required…in either an indoor or outdoor environment.”
Improved autofocus performance. Panasonic claims that the GH5 II “features high-speed and high-precision AF” that “detects eyes and faces at a 2x faster recognition-cycle speed than the GH5.” The camera also packs “enhanced AF-C, which…enables users to keep tracking small or fast-moving subjects.”
An improved buffer for action photography (108+ RAWs, 999+ JPEGs).
6.5 stops of in-body image stabilization versus the 5 stops of IBIS on the GH5 – a small but useful upgrade for low-light photography (and handheld videography).
(Slightly) increased resolution on the fully articulating touchscreen, though with a subtle decrease in size.
On the whole, upgrades for photographers are relatively minor. If you’re primarily a stills shooter, these enhancements probably won’t justify shelling out for the GH5 II over the GH5 (and you may be better off considering a different Panasonic camera).
But for hybrid shooters and videographers requiring top-notch recording and/or streaming capabilities, the GH5 II is certainly an appealing package.
Panasonic Lumix GH5 II: Price and release date
You can preorder the Panasonic Lumix GH5 II for a reasonable $ 1699 USD ($ 2299 when bundled with the Leica 12-60mm f/2.8-4 lens). Orders will begin shipping in late June.
So if the GH5 II’s new features appeal to you, I highly recommend you check it out (though you should also keep an eye out for news regarding the just-announced Lumix GH6).
Now over to you:
What do you think of the Panasonic Lumix GH5 II? Are you disappointed by the lack of upgrades? Or pleased by what the GH5 II does include? Would you consider buying it? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
The post Panasonic Unveils the GH5 II, With Wireless Live Streaming and Improved IBIS appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
The post iPhone Live Photos: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.
Baked into every iPhone is a neat trick – one that combines the serendipity of photos with the magic of video to produce a Live Photo. These aren’t the same as normal photos, but they’re not exactly videos, either.
Live Photos are images that can be edited, adjusted, and shared just like any other image. But they are also tiny video clips: each contains three seconds of video showing a brief moment right before, during, and after you take the picture.
To learn more about Live Photos, including how to use and edit them, keep reading!
What are iPhone Live Photos?
First introduced in the iPhone 6s, Live Photos are a great way to add a bit of context to your iPhone pictures.
Instead of just taking a picture of your kids, you capture the photo – but you also get a brief clip of them running and laughing. Rather than photographing only a flower, your iPhone captures the flower, but it also displays the wind, moving insects, and background noise. A snapshot of your friend holding a freshly caught fish becomes a short clip where you can see the fish wiggling and flopping free.
These short bits of video might not sound like much, but they can go a long way toward bringing a still scene to life. A simple Live Photo can trigger emotions and memories years later that you never knew you wanted to save. The best part about Live Photos is that you don’t have to do anything to create or view them – they’re captured automatically by your iPhone unless you turn the option off manually.
That said, despite the prevalence of Live Photos, there’s still a great deal of confusion among iPhone users. For instance, how do you use Live Photos? How do you edit and share them? What are their benefits and drawbacks? That’s what I aim to cover in the rest of this article.
I shot this as a Live Photo on my iPhone, so I get a bit of motion to go along with the still image.
How to use Live Photos
As with a lot of things in the Apple ecosystem, using Live Photos requires almost zero effort. Any time the camera interface is open, there is an icon in the top-right corner that looks like three concentric circles (pictured below). If there is a line through the icon, Live Photos is turned off. If there is no line, it means Live Photos is enabled. Tap the icon to switch between On and Off.
Tap the concentric circle icon in the top-right corner to enable or disable Live Photos.
When Live Photos is enabled, you don’t have to do anything different when you take a picture. Any time you press the shutter button, your iPhone automatically captures the picture and a bit of video. It’s almost like a short animation, or like a moving picture you might see in one of the Harry Potter movies.
If you don’t want to toggle the Live Photos setting every time, navigate to Settings and then choose Camera>Preserve Settings. If you have Live Photo checked, the camera app will remember whether you had Live Photos enabled or disabled the last time you used it. That way you won’t have to click the Live Photos icon every single time you want to take a picture – it will be enabled or disabled depending on your previous settings.
To make your iPhone remember whether you had Live Photos turned on or off, toggle the Preserve Settings>Live Photo option.
Once the Live Photos setting is enabled, all you have to do is snap a picture and your phone takes care of the rest. There are no parameters to tweak, no options to configure, and no changes from one iPhone to the next. Every time you take a picture, your phone automatically saves a Live Photo.
What can you do with Live Photos?
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs once said that people don’t know what they want until you give it to them. Live Photos are kind of like that, in that they give you a tiny glimpse into the context of your images.
People take pictures with their phones every day, but those images are devoid of the audiovisual context that Live Photos provide. Live Photos aren’t life-altering or world-changing, but the few seconds of video alongside each photo is so nice that it’s hard to give up once you’re used to it.
In fact, the real benefit of Live Photos isn’t readily apparent until you start scrolling back through images from months or years ago. You see a picture of a parent, child, or loved one – and you suddenly realize you also have a few seconds of their voice and past life. That’s when Live Photos become indispensable.
Personally, I don’t find Live Photos to be particularly useful for landscapes, animals, or everyday objects, but it’s those images of the people in my life that make me glad to have Live Photos as an option.
I didn’t remember what was going on in this picture of my relatives from several years ago. But since it was a Live Photo, all I had to do was tap and hold. Turns out they were caring for a small animal.
How to view Live Photos
While taking Live Photos is easy, viewing them can be a bit confusing. As you scroll through your photo library, there aren’t any indicators that separate Live Photos from normal photos. And when you tap on a Live Photo, all you see is a still image.
Viewing a Live Photo sent by someone else can be tricky, too, because it looks like any other picture.
When scrolling through your iPhone photo library, there isn’t any way to automatically distinguish Live Photos from normal photos.
The key to viewing Live Photos lies in the key to operating your phone: You have to use your fingers. So to view a Live Photo, whether in your own photo library or one sent to you in a text message, you have to press and hold. The pressure will activate the Live function and start playing the video.
(Note: If you are viewing Live Photos on a Mac computer in the Messages or Photos apps, you have to click and hold on with the mouse cursor.)
Viewing Live Photos is one thing, but what about finding them in the first place? With scant visual clues to separate Live Photos from normal images, locating them can be confusing. Fortunately, you can use the Media Type option in your iPhone photo library to show all Live Photos; this eliminates the need to scroll through all your images in the hopes of randomly stumbling across a Live Photo.
Open the Photos app on your iPhone, then tap Albums. Finally, scroll down to Media Types to see all your Live Photos.
There are also a few hints embedded in every Live Photo to help you know what you’re looking at: Every Live Photo has the word “Live” in the top-left corner, along with the Live Photos bullseye icon. And when you receive a Live Photo over text message, you won’t see the word “Live” – but you will see the Live Photos icon, which means you can tap and hold to view the clip.
How to edit Live Photos
One of the most compelling features of Live Photos is how they can be edited and tweaked just like any other image.
You can use the iPhone Photos app to crop, adjust color, change brightness, add a vignette, and even use filters such as Mono, Silvertone, Dramatic, and more.
You can also change the Key Photo – the image that shows up when you first view a Live Photo (before video playback begins).
When editing a Live Photo, you can tap and drag the horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen to change the displayed still photo (also known as the Key Photo).
I’m a fan of Live Photo editing capabilities; they reinforce the idea that Live Photos aren’t to be treated differently from any other picture. Editing prohibitions or restrictions would be a big drawback – but at present, the only thing you can’t do with a Live Photo is use markup effects to draw on it.
(If you do want to add markup, the Live Photo is discarded and you’re left with a still image. It’s not necessarily a bad tradeoff, just something to keep in mind.)
Apple also gives you some fun ways to edit your Live Photos that go beyond what you can do with normal images. When viewing a Live Photo, you can tap the Share button to save it as a movie, which can then be sent to anyone for viewing on any device – iPhone, Windows computer, etc. You can tweak things even further with some fun effects, too.
For instance, tap and hold on a Live Photo, then – without letting go – swipe upward. This brings up an Effects menu, where you can make a Live Photo loop, bounce back and forth from the end to the beginning, or create a long exposure that blurs all the frames together. These can be shared like other Live Photos, exported as movie files, or uploaded to websites like Giphy.com, which can turn the content into animated GIFs.
If you sync your pictures to iCloud then download a Live Photo to your computer, you get two files: a still image and a movie, which is the Live Photo.
If you have your iPhone pictures synced to your Mac via iCloud, you can even separate a Live Photo into its component parts: a single HEIC image file and a QuickTime movie file. (HEIC files are similar to JPEG files, but they offer more color information and better compression.) You can then edit and share each file individually, or you can use software such as iMovie or Adobe Premiere to stitch multiple Live Photo QuickTime movies into a single video.
Drawbacks to Live Photos
There are a few caveats to keep in mind when using Live Photos.
For one, while Live Photos are a great way to add a bit of context to your memories, they do take up more storage space than traditional photos. The exact file size varies, but Live Photos are generally about twice as large as normal photos. Even if you have 256 GB or 512 GB of storage space, Live Photos can eat through this pretty quickly.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t take Live Photos; just be aware of your storage limitations.
If you find yourself running low on iPhone storage, it’s possible that Live Photos are part of the problem.
Also, Live Photos exist only within the Apple ecosystem. Other Apple users can see the entire three-second clip – but if you send a Live Photo to an Android user, they’ll only receive a single JPEG image. There is a process you can use to export a Live Photo as a movie clip or animated GIF file, but those extra steps are an obvious inconvenience.
And Live Photos offer no customization options, which might bother folks who enjoy tweaking things to fit their own preferences. Every Live Photo is exactly 3 seconds – no more, no less. Every Live Photo is also shot at the same resolution and quality settings, and these limits can be somewhat frustrating. It would be nice if Apple had the option to shoot longer Live Photos, but I wouldn’t count on that changing anytime soon.
This still image turned out great. But what if I had just a few seconds of him swinging at the tennis ball? Thanks to Live Photos, I do. Once you start using Live Photos, you might never want to go back to still images.
iPhone Live Photos: final words
Live Photos are a great way to get more enjoyment out of everyday images.
While drawbacks exist, the benefits mostly outweigh the negatives – and it can be incredibly rewarding to look back on these brief video snippets years later. You will find yourself enjoying your images in a whole new way, and the creative sharing options might open up new doors you never knew existed.
Now over to you:
What do you think of iPhone Live Photos? Do you plan to use them often? Do you prefer them to still images? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Live Photos FAQ
How do I turn on Live Photos?
With your camera app open, tap the little bullseye icon in the top-right corner. If the icon is yellow, then Live Photos are enabled. If the icon is white, Live Photos are disabled.
How much storage space do Live Photos use?
As a rule of thumb, Live Photos are about twice the size of a normal image. Most Live Photos are about 6-7 MB in size, though this varies depending on the subject you’re shooting.
How do I share a Live Photo to an Android phone?
When you tap the Share button, use the “Save as Video” option. This will convert your Live Photo into a movie file, which you can send to an Android phone (or share with someone who uses a Windows computer).
How can I turn a Live Photo into an animated GIF?
Your iPhone can’t do this by itself, but you can save a Live Photo as a movie and then upload the movie to a GIF website such as Giphy. The GIF website will convert your movie into an animated GIF, which you can share with others.
The post iPhone Live Photos: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.
Sony Electronics recently announced updates to its Visual Story, a cloud-based mobile application that works with various models of cameras the company produces. Built with event photographers in mind, ‘Visual Story’ Version 1.1 uses AI (artificial intelligence) to instantly recognize scenes and objects. The app will continuously select what it deems the best images for real-time gallery creation.
What this means, for these socially-distanced times, is that friends, family and colleagues can view the highlights of a wedding, conference or sporting match, while it’s happening, in the comfort of their own homes or offices. The ‘Live Gallery’ feature also applies presets to images as the photos upload, to maximize their visual appeal.
A newly-added object detection filter allows the photographer and viewers to locate a specific photo containing, for example, a wedding cake, soccer ball or table. The audience can also ‘like’ specific photos. This can aid the photographer in curating images for a final gallery before it’s delivered to the client.
Photographers can also add their own logo plus links to their website and social media profiles to galleries for branding purposes, not to mention increased exposure to the audiences.
Visual Story allows you to access photos from any specific time during the event. Photos are stored to the cloud for backup as well. Photographers can also add their own logo plus links to their website and social media profiles to galleries for branding purposes, not to mention increased exposure to the audiences.
Currently available for free on iOS, Visual Story is compatible with the following Sony cameras: a7C, a7R IV, a7S III, a9, a9 II, a1, a7 III (with updated firmware) and FX3.
The post 14 Guidelines for Photographers to Live By appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.
It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new to photography or a seasoned pro with decades of experience; at some point or another, you’re going to develop some habits and behaviors that are counterproductive.
Without getting these habits in check, they can have a negative effect on your photography, whether on your portfolio in general, your love for the medium, or your workflow. Sometimes these behaviors can even be destructive to other people in ways you didn’t realize.
In this article, I’ll share 14 guidelines for photographers – designed to deal with some of these counterproductive behaviors and habits that I’ve come across.
Now, none of these are rules, and I am not presenting them as such. If you feel that a guideline doesn’t apply to you, I am not saying or implying that you are wrong for feeling that way. These are merely my thoughts based on my experiences.
So without further ado, here are 14 guidelines for photographers to live by.
1. Shoot often, show few
Whether you shoot 10 photos at a time or 100, try to whittle your portfolio down to the very best and only show those.
One of the best things any photographer can do for their portfolio is reduce the number of images from any given session that they share with the public. By showing only the very best of your work, the quality of your portfolio and its impression on your viewers will increase.
Let’s say that you have a portrait session, and you normally share 10-15 photos from a set. All of the images might be good, but chances are that one or two of those images are much better than the rest. By sharing every photo, you are only diluting the quality of the best ones. Instead, only share the very best shots – this is what will make them shine.
Of course, it also means that you will have fewer images to share. How do you counteract this deficit in content?
Shoot more!
Now, this doesn’t mean you should shoot more images of the same subject. It means you should shoot more in general. For instance, if you’re a portrait shooter, then you should conduct more portrait sessions with more people.
This will give your portfolio more variety, as well as ensuring that you have plenty of images to share.
2. Shoot outside your genre
As a portrait photographer, long exposures of buildings in the middle of the day are way outside my normal range. Shooting outside your niche every once in a while can help to give you realizations that you wouldn’t have come to otherwise.
Canon 5D Mark III | Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM | 35mm | 326s | f/11 | ISO 100
Even if you don’t specialize in a single particular niche with your photography, you will probably wind up shooting the same genre (or a couple of genres) over and over again.
While you may be perfectly happy photographing the same subjects repeatedly, you also might start developing habits that guide how you photograph things. When you get set in your ways like this, it can become increasingly difficult to shake those systems and try things in new ways.
One way to counteract this is to shoot in a genre outside of what you normally photograph. Photographing subjects that require a completely different skill set than what you are used to will force you to actively think about what you are doing instead of going through the motions. This has helped me to come up with a solution to an unrelated problem more than once, as it helps you think about things from a completely different angle.
Shooting outside of your genre can also act as something of a palette cleanser. As a portrait photographer, when I do a long stretch of shooting nothing but portraits, it can feel a bit monotonous and stale. Getting out and shooting a landscape feels like a breath of fresh air and helps get me excited about portrait photography again.
3. Share your knowledge
Sharing your knowledge with other photographers (whether it’s lighting setups, post-processing techniques, or general camera-craft skills) can help to reinforce your own knowledge and strengthen the community.
There’s an old negative cliché about photographers shutting down when asked how something was done (and mentioning the words “trade secret”). Fortunately, I haven’t noticed any of this in recent years, and things have opened up quite a bit. That’s a great thing for everybody.
Don’t be afraid to share what you’ve learned. Not only will you be able to help someone else, but the act of trying to communicate something to somebody else only reinforces your understanding of it.
Everybody wins here. And I genuinely believe that when one of us grows, we all grow.
4. You are not special, so don’t act like it
Hey, look at me! I have some fancy equipment. Perhaps I should lord that over others who don’t! No, that is definitely not what you should do.
The barriers to entry for getting started in photography are lower than ever. The only thing that could be considered a real barrier is money, but only if you want to go all-in from the start and buy the fanciest camera and lenses.
Ultimately, this means that there’s pretty much nothing stopping anyone interested in photography from getting into it.
So owning a camera does not make you special. Calling yourself a photographer does not make you special. Having a great portfolio opens doors that other photographers can’t access, but it still does not make you special.
All too often, there are stories about photographers treating other people like dirt, acting entitled in public, and trashing landscapes. Photography forums can be some of the most toxic places on the internet. Yes, I know the vast majority of photographers aren’t like that, but it doesn’t excuse the poor behavior of the minority.
There is no reason to act that way. Be respectful to people. Be polite. Contrary to another old cliché, your photos do not speak for themselves, and acting decent will only help to strengthen people’s impression of your photography.
If you don’t want to be decent and you choose the other route, you may find that it closes a lot of doors – and there are a hundred other photographers right behind you, ready to take your place.
5. Learn constantly
Make it a point to learn new things. Here, I was trying to see what happened if I mixed flash and continuous lighting. The troubleshooting that followed gave me a better understanding of my equipment.
This is one of those things that is preached often in all walks of life and is critical for photographers to remember.
The world of photography is constantly changing. New technologies make it easier than ever to create images and get them out in the world. Therefore, new techniques and methods are popping up all the time.
By ensuring that you put regular effort into learning new skills (or into reinforcing old ones), you will stay ahead of the curve as things continue to change. Not only will this help improve your photography, but it will also help to enhance the skills that you already have. Things will take less time, and you will get more efficient.
By the way, this doesn’t just apply to image-making. It also applies to other important aspects of photography, such as marketing.
6. Do the things you’re sure won’t work
Before I set up this shot, I was certain the background was too busy, but I liked the light. I was right about the background, but what did it cost me? A bit of memory and a few minutes, plus there was always the chance that I could have been wrong.
As you learn new things, you are going to have a lot of ideas.
Many of those ideas are going to be ridiculous. There’s no way they could ever work out.
So do them anyway.
Taking on difficult, unlikely, or even impossible challenges is one of the fastest ways to learn. To get what you want, you must put your problem-solving skills through their paces. Even if the result isn’t up to scratch, you will almost certainly have learned something from the process that you can use in the future.
This is something I wish I had learned much sooner than I did. Take those crazy ideas and run with them. If nothing works out, don’t show anyone!
7. Embrace clichés
This view of Staithes has been photographed by just about every photographer who has ever set foot here. It’s about as clichéd as cliché gets. Does that mean you shouldn’t bother taking your own shot? No, not at all. Shoot whatever you want and enjoy it.
Canon 5D Mark III | Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM | 28mm | 1/30s | f/6.3 | ISO 400
Okay, I can already hear you groaning, but hear me out.
Every genre in photography has concepts that have been shot over and over again by just about anybody that’s ever picked up a camera.
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about portraits, landscapes, wildlife, or any other genre. If you need a visual example, search any photosharing site for “Derwent Water.” This is a lake in England’s Lake District National Park. What you should find is the exact same shot of a certain jetty a couple of thousand times over. Want another example? Search for “Skógafoss.”
So what?
Have they been done to death? Yes, definitely. Should you go there and take the same photo if you want to? Yes. Absolutely.
Should you take photos of birds perched on sticks? Should you take pictures of interesting doors? Should you take photos of swaddled newborns? Should you take photos of a ring on a book so the shadow looks like a heart?
Do you want to? Then the answer is “Yes.”
When it comes to clichés in photography, photographers get bored with them because we see them all the time. What you have to ask yourself is why they have become clichés in the first place. What has drawn people to photograph these things again and again? The answer is usually because they resonate with an audience.
In other words:
These things are clichés because people love them.
The audience for your photography should not be photographers (more on this later), so don’t be afraid to shoot something you like, or that might resonate with your viewers, even if another photographer might brand it as clichéd.
8. Shoot for fun
Going out and taking photos for the sheer pleasure of taking photos is a great way to help ensure that your interest remains fired up.
Once you’ve been doing photography for a while, it is likely that, at some point, it’s going to stop being fun for one reason or another. This happens all the time and it usually happens more than once.
This can result in a lack of motivation that can lead to feelings of contempt for a hobby you used to love.
To help stop this process before it starts, regularly shoot something just because it would be fun to do so. You don’t have to use the images for anything, but doing fun photoshoots will help make sure you are still connecting with the reasons you got into photography in the first place.
If you’re already experiencing a lack of motivation, do whatever you can to make sure that, the next time you pick up a camera, it is to do something solely for the sheer pleasure of photography.
9. Strive for consistency
Being able to provide a consistent output using a range of techniques is a good goal to strive for.
A consistent output might just be one of the most underrated things a photographer can focus on.
To be clear, in this instance, I am talking about consistency in quality. I’m talking about ensuring that every time you pick up a camera for a purpose beyond self-gratification, you are producing the best photos you can with a variety of techniques.
(There is a lot of value in consistency of style and presentation across a portfolio, but that is another point for another time.)
It will not serve you well as a photographer to have a well-curated portfolio that you show to potential clients if you are unable to reproduce the same quality of photos over and over again.
Having a good portfolio is only the first step. If you get something good that you feel is portfolio-worthy, hammer down the techniques and make sure you can get similar results whenever you need to.
10. Learn to love the process, not the output
Once you put an image out into the world, you have zero control over how it is received. Instead of worrying about how other people react, focus on and learn to love the process instead of people’s reactions.
Is there a part of the image-making process that you don’t like? Perhaps retouching? Early sunrises? Do you just slog through it to get to the end result? Have you gone through steps you don’t like to get an image that you love, only to upload it somewhere or add it to your portfolio and find that it gets no response, or that people hate it?
I suspect something similar has happened to every photographer at one point or another. But what do you do when an image or a body of work doesn’t get the response you like or the one you expect?
Nothing. There is nothing you can do. You cannot control how other people react to things. If you can learn to accept that the only thing you can control is the process of creating the image, and then learn to love and focus on that process, you will be able to detach from the things you can’t control.
When the inevitable does happen and you don’t get the response you expected or wanted, you can shrug it off and move on to creating the next image.
11. Embrace harsh feedback
This is one of my most favorite images. I wouldn’t change it for the world. Yet if I put my photography cap on, I can nitpick it until the end of time. That’s good. I can still love this image and know to look out for things I could do better (like the awkward crop, the overly contrasty subject/background, and the slightly too-slow shutter speed) in the future.
One of the fastest ways to learn as a photographer is to solicit feedback from other photographers. Often, the best sort of feedback can also be the harshest, and it can be utterly deflating. Have you ever asked for a critique only to receive a huge list of errors? It can feel soul-crushing, especially to a new photographer. Unfortunately, embracing that sort of feedback remains one of the best ways to improve fast.
The trick is to learn how to detach from the emotional attachment you have with the image you created.
How do you do this? I wish I could say. The answer is different for everyone. Once you have managed to do it, you’ll find it much easier to take on even the harshest feedback.
Now, harsh feedback does not always mean good feedback. A critique should never include prescriptive mandates, personal attacks on character or motivation, unsolicited criticism, or abusive comments toward people in the images.
Also, take statements such as “I would have done such and such” with a grain of salt and judge their relevance on a case-by-case basis. If you come across any feedback like that, feel free to ignore it. The sort of person who behaves in that way does not have you or your photography in their best interests. They are only stroking their ego at your expense.
12. Don’t force your ways onto others
In the studio, I like to bring the lights in as close to the subject as I can. This works for me, and I encourage other photographers to try it. Does that mean it’s the right way to do things? Not a chance. It’s one of a million ways and none of them are the single right way.
As photographers, we learn in different ways from different sources at different speeds. And we take the bits that work for us and apply them in a way that gets the results we want.
Everybody is different. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about lens choice, lighting choices, or retouching techniques. There is no right way, or proper way, to do anything in photography.
The only right way is the way that gets the job done.
I like to do my dodging and burning on separate gray layers. Other photographers like to do dodging and burning with curves layers. There are about a dozen other options that I can think of that all result in the same thing. It doesn’t matter what your preference is. If someone prefers a different method to you, great.
Yes, you can and should advise others on how you go about things; that’s all a part of sharing your knowledge, after all. Just try to leave the prescriptive mandates such as right and proper out of it.
13. Stop marketing to photographers
If you are trying to get attention for your photography and you want to build an audience, then there is one demographic you should stop targeting:
Photographers.
Photographers rarely buy photography. A lot don’t even consume it for any reason other than comparison. Sure, peer recognition and validation feel nice, but when it comes to getting your work out there or starting a photography business, it has very little tangible value.
It’s as simple as that. Instead of posting your images where only photographers see them, look for the places where people are interested in the sort of subjects you cover.
Is this easy? No. If marketing were easy, then we’d all be rich and famous!
14. Your work is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is
To be honest, my own impression of my photography is not great. It goes with my overly self-critical nature. Whenever my images place in a contest (as this image did), it always comes as a surprise. It is hard to have an objective view of your own images.
Canon 5D Mark III | Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Macro | 50mm | 1/125s | f/6.3 | ISO 100
Most of us don’t have a good grasp on how other people see our work.
Some photographers think everything they produce is fantastic. Some think everything they produce is utter rubbish. (Before anyone asks, I’m in the “utter rubbish” category.)
The problem is that we, as humans, are rarely objective judges when it comes to ourselves, and both extremes have serious downsides to them.
For the more confident personalities, it can be disheartening or downright depressing to think a photo is great only to have it be rejected by a wider audience. If this happens enough times, it can spell the end of your passion for photography.
For the self-critical camp, that’s only the beginning of the battle. I mean, what’s the point in even trying when you know that whatever you do is going to wind up terrible, anyway?
If you fall into one of these extremes, one answer is to try your best to remove any self-judgment from the process, good or bad. Try to come at your images with an analytical approach, and as mentioned above, focus on the process – because you have no control over how anyone else might react.
14 guidelines for photographers to live by: Conclusion
I hope this article has provided you with some food for thought on how some of the habits and tendencies we can develop as photographers negatively affect our output.
Even if you feel none of this applies to you, I hope you can see how evaluating your habits can lead you to a deeper understanding of how what you do and think affects your photography.
So remember these 14 guidelines for photographers; that way, you can learn and grow as much as possible.
Now over to you:
Are there any guidelines that I missed? And are there any additional negative behaviors that you often witness from photographers? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The post 14 Guidelines for Photographers to Live By appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.
Apple’s iPhones have a front-facing camera for selfies and FaceTime, but the front camera’s performance and image quality pales in comparison to the rear cameras. For those wanting a high-quality selfie or to record video content of themselves, your options have long been to use the front-facing camera so you can see your phone’s display or to try your luck with the rear-facing camera and hope everything is framed properly. Ulanzi has a new product, the ST-09 Phone Tripod Mount for Apple Watch, designed to solve this exact problem.
By using a paired Apple Watch and the ST-09, you can mount your smartwatch to the ST-09 and clamp it onto your iPhone. With the accompanying Apple Watch app, your Watch’s face becomes a live viewfinder mounted to the back of your iPhone.
As Gizmodo says, it may ‘seem like a foolish use for the $ 200+ smartwatch strapped to your wrist. But as you think about it more, you realize the mount solves a problem that many amateur vloggers who rely on their smartphones for all of their productions needs run into: using the back camera to film yourself is all but impossible.’ The target audience is somewhat niche, perhaps, but the ST-09 is an inexpensive, simple solution. Provided you already have an Apple Watch, of course.
On the bottom of the mount is a tripod a 1/4″ hole for mounting a tripod. On the top of the mount is a cold shoe, which can be used for attaching a fill light, microphone or other accessories.
Ulanzi ST-09 product details. Image courtesy of Ulanzi. Click to enlarge.
If you’re worried about scratching your devices, Ulanzi states that the product features an anti-scratch silicone pad design for the Watch mount and the clamps which adjust to your phone. Speaking of which, the tension distance is 58-89mm, meaning it will fit most iPhones, including the latest iPhone 12 models. With respect to Apple Watch model compatibility, Ulanzi only mentions the Series 5, so Gizmodo observes that the ST-09 may only be compatible with the Series 5 and Series 6 Apple Watches.
The Ulanzi ST-09 can adjust from 58mm to 89mm in order to fit a variety of iPhones. Image courtesy of Ulanzi.
The problem Ulanzi is trying to solve has been tackled by different manufacturers over the years. Gizmodo recalls the DJI Osmo Action, an action camera with a front-facing camera. (You can check out our hands-on with the Osmo Action right here). GoPro followed suit shortly thereafter with the Hero9 action camera. Smartphone manufacturers, on the other hand, have not gone this route. Smartphone displays drain battery and a second display on the rear presents power, engineering and cost concerns.
The Ulanzi ST-09 can be ordered directly from Ulanzi for $ 19.95 USD. The accessory is current on sale from its regular price of $ 29.99.
If you’re wondering what all Apple managed to pack inside its iPhone 12, repair site iFixit is currently hosting a live teardown of one of Apple’s latest smartphone on its YouTube channel.
The review started at roughly 1:20pm ET, but it’s still going on and is available to watch from the beginning if you’d prefer to take it all in. If iFixit comes across any interesting surprises, we’ll summarize them in an update to this article.
The Panasonic Lumix DC-BGH1 is a highly modular camera, aimed at videographers, and built around a 10.2MP Live MOS sensor.
Starting at 8:45am PT/11:45am ET/15:45 GMT, join our DPReview livestream on YouTube to learn more about Panasonic’s latest camera. Chris and Jordan will talk about the BGH1, cover Panasonic’s own livestream, and answer questions from viewers.
Product designer Ethan Moses of CAMERADACTYL has launched a new film scanning product on Kickstarter called Mongoose. This device can be used with ‘just about any camera’ that has cable release support, according to Moses; it has three scanning modes, including a Fast Mode that can scan a roll of standard-sized exposures in less than one minute.
Mongoose is an automated 35mm film carrier that can be used with most cameras to digitize black & white and color negatives, as well as slide film. The Mongoose features a 27mm x 68mm film gate, enabling it to scan anywhere from half-frame images at 24mm x 20mm up to Hasselblad Xpan-sized panoramic images at 24mm x 65mm. Each scanned image includes a ‘full black border,’ but Mongoose doesn’t support scanning the film’s sprocket holes.
According to Moses, Mongoose was designed in such a way that it only touches the portion of the film where the sprocket holes are located, ensuring the film lies flat for scanning even if it is a cupped or curly film.
Mongoose is designed to be used with a third-party lightbox or some other source of light, such as a strobe with a diffuser, as well as a stand for holding the camera above the film and a lens that can focus close enough to digitize the content.
The film scanner is fully automated with a number of features that give users a fair amount of control over the process, including offering Fast and Manual modes in addition to the Automatic mode. Manual mode gives users full control over the process, including enabling them to manually advance and retract the film strips and to manually trigger the camera using Mongoose’s control box.
Automatic mode is more accurate than Fast mode, according to Moses, who explains on Kickstarter that Automatic can be used with rolls of film that have unevenly spaced frames because it uses edge detection to capture each image. ‘This mode has very high positional accuracy, and can scan a full roll of 36 frames in under a minute and a half,’ he says.
That’s nearly double the 40-second capture time of Fast mode, which can only be used with film that has evenly spaced frames. The big advantage of Fast mode is that it can rapidly scan a roll of film, but the downside is that it has less positional accuracy when compared to Automatic mode.
Users are able to adjust Mongoose’s edge detection sensitivity for use with underdeveloped/exposed film. Likewise, users are able to adjust the delay between each film frame; it can be turned off so that the scanning takes place very quickly or it can be slowed down so that the scanner accommodates other aspects of the overall setup, such as strobe light recycling time.
Finally, Moses notes that Mongoose can be used with strips of film that have as few as four frames, though it’s better when used with an entire roll. Likewise, Mongoose was designed with a separate control box so that users who are manually triggering shots aren’t at risk of bumping the scan module. Moses also says that Mongoose is not a silent device, and that it is, in fact, quite loud when in use.
Moses is seeking funding for his latest CAMERADACTYL product on Kickstarter, where Mongoose has already exceeded the funding goal. The product will ship to backers with the scan module and control box, connection cord, power supply, and an electronic shutter release cable. Kickstarter users have the option of backing the campaign at $ 500 or more with estimated delivery of this third batch (the first two are sold out) starting in February 2021.
Disclaimer: Remember to do your research with any crowdfunding project. DPReview does its best to share only the projects that look legitimate and come from reliable creators, but as with any crowdfunded campaign, there’s always the risk of the product or service never coming to fruition.
Loupedeck has announced a new product, Loupedeck Live. The new product looks a lot like the top half of the Loupedeck CT. The result is that the Loupedeck Live offers fewer total controls to the user but is more compact and more affordable than the Loupedeck CT.
Loupedeck Live is a customizable console designed to give you quick and easy access to numerous tools and functions. It acts as an additional input method beyond your keyboard and mouse. Loupedeck Live is aimed at streamers and content creators, but like Loupedeck CT, it is fully compatible with the software many photographers and videographers use daily, such as Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere Pro. In total, Loupedeck Live supports 11 applications: Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC, Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Audition CC, Illustrator CC, Final Cut Pro X, OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS, Spotify and Twitch. The native plugins for Loupedeck are regularly updated to support the latest version of the above applications.
Of its new Live model, Loupedeck says, ‘Loupedeck Live puts all of [the] tools you need right at your fingertips, making creative work faster, easier and most of all – more enjoyable!’ The company continues, ‘Loupedeck Live helps you streamline your workflow, with custom macros and shortcuts – putting you in complete control over your creativity.’ You can read more about how Loupedeck Live helps creatives here.
Image credit: Loupedeck
The Loupedeck Live is housed within an aluminum cover and has a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 pixel LCD with a capacitive touch panel. The console includes eight round push-buttons with RGB backlight and six endless rotation encoders with detents and push-button functionality. Loupedeck Live’s dimensions are 150 x 110 x 30mm and it weighs 230g. Loupedeck Live comes with a stand and with cables (USB-C cable and USB-C to USB-A adapter are included). You can see the Loupedeck Live in action in the video below. Loupedeck Live requires a computer running either Windows 10 or macOS 10.13 or higher.
In addition to the native plugin support, you can use Loupedeck’s software to create custom profiles for any application. These profiles are a combination of user actions and adjustments mapped to selected actions and adjustments. You can share these profiles and browse profiles other users have created. To learn more about how this functionality works, click here.
Image credit: Loupedeck
The ability to create custom profiles is perhaps even more important with Loupedeck Live than it is with its larger sibling, the Loupedeck CT. Loupedeck Live users will be able to select two creative plugins to unlock permanently at the beginning of 2021 and must purchase additional native plugins. You can learn more about this change in this article from Loupedeck. Additional plugins will be available on a monthly basis or as a lifetime license. This change does not impact Loupedeck CT owners, who have lifetime access to all native plugins.
For photographers interested in Loupedeck Live, some of the functions you can map to the console include putting cropping, undo, auto white balance and before/after comparisons on the screen and using the haptic dials to make precise adjustments to hue, saturation and luminance or other slider-based adjustments. You can learn more about how a Loupedeck Live console could fit into your photography workflow by watching the video below by Ted Forbes at The Art of Photography. He discusses a Loupedeck CT model, but the Loupedeck Live is a smaller, more affordable alternative that offers much of the same functionality, minus some keys and the large dial on the bottom half of the CT.
Loupedeck Live is available to order now for $ 269 USD. Shipping begins at the end of this month.
This Sunday 8/4/2010 at 9pm EST (6pm pacific) Don Giannatti has been kind enough to do a live portfolio review with me on the air. We’ll be talking about making the final cut of images, and finalizing a portfolio. Maybe a bit about design and branding and style as well. Should be fun – tune in at:
http://www.vokle.com/events/4284-editing-a-portfolio-with-don-giannatti-and-ed-zawadzki
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