The S1H can be seen as a large-sensor GH5S, but it’s not simply the case that the bigger camera gives you better quality. There are times it can, but it’s not just about cleaner footage.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The post Photographing on Overcast Days: The Light Simply Doesn’t Get Any Better appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.
Lighting is everything in photography, but some “poor” conditions may surprise you. Am I alone here? Does anybody else get excited about photographing on overcast days?
I use to think I was a contrast junkie, but I discovered that my passion is for detail, more of an internal contrast issue than one of overall contrast. Internal contrast (the clear distinction between tones inside the extremes of white and black) is what delivers the distinctions we call detail.
When you consider the dynamic range of most digital camera image sensors, typical bright sunny days can present two challenges right off the bat: hot highlights and deep shadows. When the highlights in the original image are very hot, and the shadows are very deep, extracting detail in the “near shadows” and “near highlights” turns into an editing issue.
This is why photographing on overcast days is the easiest lighting condition to deal with.
The holy grail of photographic exposure range is located well within those bookend extremes. On a typical Florida day, with the Sun blaring on a scene, the trick is to keep the quarter, middle, and three-quarter tones ideally balanced in order to capture critical detail.
With highlights too “hot,” the inevitable shadows cast by the tropical Sun tends to push critical three-quarter tones (shadow detail) into the mud. Shooting in RAW mode allows most images to recover all but the most severe edges of dark and light, though it can take a careful adjustment to do so.
When photographing on overcast days, the filtering effect of clouds mellows the Sun’s harsh light, revealing significant quarter tones (highlight detail).
The wonderful byproduct of this softer “diffused” light is softer shadows, which in turn deliver more shadow detail.
It is much easier to boost the highlights and deepen the shadows with a little help from overcast weather. On very sunny days, you might have to use a reflector or fill flash to open up the shadows, but on cloudy days, they’re already open! This natural diffuser renders rich colors and a full range of tones from the deepest shadows to the lightest highlights.
This lighting is the ideal time to press your 18% gray card into action.
There is a reason why photographers like to balance their lighting around an 18% gray card. That 18% value just happens to be the same reflective value as average Caucasian skin color. And that value is the sweet spot of all photographic exposure.
Your camera’s image sensor is tuned to record skin tones in the very center of the contrast range. Image sensors do their best work when you point them at this reflective value. Once the camera knows this value, the lighter and darker tones fall quite naturally in line. And when the outdoor lighting falls neatly within the camera sensor’s “cruising range” (with headroom on either side of the scene’s histogram), that my friends, delivers top drawer results.
Photographing on overcast days may well become your favorite lighting.
Don’t be afraid to put the scene’s tones well within the middle of the histogram.
There is no hard, fast rule that says that every image has to contain extreme highlights or near-black shadows. Real-life simply doesn’t appear that way to your eyes. Not even high-key photography mandates that the lightest tones must be extremely bright. Some of the most moving photos are nearly void of overall contrast.
Don’t fall into the trap of “optimizing” every photo’s range so that it produces bright highlights and deep shadows. Allow nature to dictate the visual mood. Realistically speaking, the only thing in nature that is truly “black” is the inside of a cave at midnight. The only thing pure “white” is a direct view of the Sun at noon.
It’s okay to have highlights that aren’t pegged up against the right side of the histogram. Please think twice before you hit the dreaded Auto button in the Levels dialog of Photoshop. That kind of cookie-cutter photography should be left to those who don’t know any better. Let the scene set the mood and simply convey what you experienced.
Occasionally, dynamic adjustments within software applications tempt us to automatically force nature into conditions that aren’t natural.
The next time you find yourself in the shadow-free lighting of a clouded sky, go and get your camera. Great color (and fabulous black and white) photography is there for the taking. However, do keep in mind that outdoor shots under cloud cover will appear slightly bluish because those clouds are absorbing the shorter wavelengths.
Set your camera’s white balance to Overcast or Cloudy. This setting will compensate for the bluishness of the scene. If you are using a gray card and have the time to set a situational white balance, you can zero in on the color even more accurately.
Next time you shoot outdoors in overcast weather, search the scene for something interesting and unique, something that will bring a smile to your face. I’ve found that I find whatever I’m looking for in life, and that includes dismal weather. There is a bright spot in just about every situation if you keep your eyes (and your mind) open.
I hope this inspires you to look forward to photographing on overcast days. These special days deliver great natural lighting and provide many opportunities to see a different side of life.
Do you photograph on overcast days? What are your thoughts? Share with us in the comments!
The post Photographing on Overcast Days: The Light Simply Doesn’t Get Any Better appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.
In this article, I’ll give the virtues and benefits of shooting simply, with only one light and a reflector.
Lighting is often perceived as a complicated beast, but does it have to be? Sure, in terms of technical aspects, there’s an awful lot to learn before you can truly master lighting. There are also plenty of techniques that involve numerous light sources at various power outputs, rigged together with any number of modifiers.
But are these necessary? If you want to learn every aspect of lighting inside and out, then the answer is yes. However, when you are a beginner, I would argue that it’s far too easy to get bogged down in those complications when in reality, you could conceivably go an entire photographic career without touching them.
With a single light source and a reflector for fill, you have enough creative options in terms of lighting that you could go an entire lifetime with nothing more and still fill a diverse and varied portfolio. Technically the reflector is a second light source if you want to get into that, but it’ll be referred to as a reflector for our purposes here.
You may not want to and it’s more than likely that once you’ve got the basics of lighting down, you’ll want to dive deeper and deeper until you get to those ultra complicated set-ups, but it is possible. One light set-ups can give you both dramatic, shadowy photos which ooze mood as well as bright, cleanly lit images with plenty of detail throughout.
On top of that, there’s only one light to set up, only one light to modify and only one light to meter. If you’re working with limited time, say 20 minutes to set up, take a few shots and get out of there.
Four, five and six light set-ups just aren’t going to be an option. Of course, it’s also a whole lot easier to lug around one light then it is to take five.
This article will cover examples that are based in a studio where all ambient light is cut out (with one exception) and bounce is controlled through light placement or flags. As such, the light and the reflector are the only things lighting the images and each has its own respective role.
Key Light – The key light is your main light source. In these instances, it’s the actual strobe. It could just as easily be any other type of light source such as a window or a street light. This is the main light that you will be shaping your subject with.
Fill Light – In these examples, the fill light is the job of the reflector. When placed opposite the key light, the reflector bounces light back onto your subject and fills in the shadows. This helps to reduce contrast and also tends to lead to more flattering images of human subjects. A fill light does not have to be a reflector. Again, it could be any light source that acts independently of your key light to fill in shadows on your subject.
In all of these examples (except one that’s annotated), the reflector used is a large, cheap 5-in-1 reflector. You can buy one of these from just about anywhere that sells photo equipment for around $ 20 or less. Sure, there are expensive versions, but in my experience, they’re not worth the extra money. Get a good sized (32″ or 42″) cheap one and take it everywhere. Don’t be too precious with it and let it get dirty, battered and warped through use. They’re easily replaced.
If you don’t want to buy one, reflectors are pretty easy to make. White foamcore, posterboard, cardboard painted white, or a styrofoam insulation are all easily turned into reflectors.
Since the specific focus of this article is portraits, all of the modifiers used range from fairly big to huge. This is so that the light was as soft and flattering as possible. You can absolutely use a single hard light source with a reflector, so don’t consider the absence of examples of hard light here to be some kind of rule against it.
This shot is about as simple as it gets. The subject was placed a few feet from the background. The light source was a 5-foot octabox which was placed at forty-five degrees from the subject. The distance of the light was determined by watching how the modeling light fell on the subject and where the catchlights were in her eyes. It ended up about five feet away.
Because the octabox is quite a big modifier, it would have been possible to get away without using a reflector. The soft light the large modifier produces would wrap around the subject in a pleasing way. It also means that the subject could turn and face any direction she wanted for posing.
Regardless, I still chose to add a reflector to bring up the shadow side. It was placed as close to the subject as possible so as not to interfere with composition.
Much like the first example, this image was created with the light source at a 45-degree angle to the subject. This time, the modifier was a mid-sized 2×3′ softbox.
To get the softest quality of light, it was placed as close as possible to the model without interfering with image composition. There are few things as annoying as having to retouch the corner of a softbox or a beauty dish out of every frame.
This time, the reflector was turned slightly away from the light source. This was because I didn’t want the full surface area of the reflector to be filling in the scene as I wanted to retain some of the dramatic lighting that the single smallish light source provided.
This is exactly the same set up as the previous example, all that changed here was the modifier.
The softbox was exchanged for a beauty dish to increase contrast and add drama. The reflector was turned slightly so that it had maximum impact on the shadow side.
To really take advantage of the contrasty lighting possible with one light, I opted for a large, gridded beauty dish in this example. Again, placed at forty-five degrees (notice a pattern here?), the light fall-off is much more abrupt than here, as compared with the bigger softboxes.
At 120 cm, this particular beauty dish is quite a bit larger than normal. As such, it is still quite soft, with a bit more wraparound than its smaller, more normal sized siblings.
A silver reflector was added to bring up the shadow side of the subject in order to ensure separation from the background and to keep the shadows from becoming pure black.
In a previous article, I wrote that you may very well never use a gold reflector. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since I wrote it and endeavoured to do exactly that. Instead of using the gold side of a normal 5-in-1 reflector, I used a Westcott Omega reflector, on which the gold is far subtler and less intrusive, making it much, much more flattering for portraits.
The key light in this image was a five foot octobox. If you look at the catchlights, you will see two other light sources. To camera left, there was a wall of windows which was underexposed by a stop to act as fill. To camera right is the gold reflector.
By adding a single light source to the ambient light, you get an incredible amount of versatility of what you can achieve.
This image was created exactly the same way as the previous one with the same octabox and the same gold reflector. This time, however, the power output of the flash was turned up so that it killed the ambient light from the windows. The reflector was also placed slightly to the rear of the subject in order to bring detail back into her hair.
One technique that I really love is to place the light source directly in front of the model (it’s okay to move it to the side a bit so that you can shoot past it) and as close as possible. With a single light, this can create some lovely, dramatic images. This was done with a large beauty dish.
The white reflector was placed flat and rested on the subject’s knees. This results in a makeshift clamshell technique, but instead of two lights, you’re only using one.
I could go on and on and on about this. The point here is to remind you to never forsake the power of simplicity when it comes to lighting techniques.
Sure, those set-ups with half a dozen lights, three reflectors, nine flags, your neighbor’s dog and a Swiss passport are great and you should absolutely explore them. Just be mindful that not every job has to rely on such complexities. Stripping things back to basics can, and does yield wonderful results.
Here are a few tips and trick to help you get the most out of your single one light source set-ups:
In terms of variations on these techniques, this article hasn’t been anywhere near comprehensive. Honestly, using a single light and a reflector will give you an infinite variety of techniques to use in your photography.
When you’re starting out, I strongly encourage you to explore these as much as possible before moving on to more complicated set-ups as you may find, that most situations would benefit from the simplicity.
The post The Power of Shooting Simply with One Light and a Reflector appeared first on Digital Photography School.
I’ve been photographing weddings for about nine years now, and I’ve found this to be the most effective and efficient way of designing and delivering a client’s dream wedding album. The method that I am going to describe keeps you in control of the process and still gives the client what they want and need. You might be surprised to know that it only takes me about 30 minutes to design an album from beginning to end.
In fact, just to test, I created an album right now for this article to see exactly how long it might take. I had 150 images to choose from; I used 118 images, created 31 spreads, and it took me 26 minutes. Let’s talk about how to achieve this, and how to work with your clients so you don’t find yourself dealing with wedding album orders months or years after the wedding.
One spread of images created in Pixellu SmartAlbums2.
If a client has indicated at some point in the process that they want a wedding album, then the very first draft of the wedding album is 100% created by me. That includes the selection of images, design, the number of spreads created, etc. I have one friend, Tim Halberg, who creates a preview wedding album on the night of the wedding and has it ready for the clients the next day. He chooses the images and design all on his own.
To a bride or groom, every photo is important to them. So telling them to choose their favorite photos for the album is a recipe for disaster. I don’t consult with my couples about which images I am going to use, how many images to use, or the number of page spreads they might want. How would a person ever know how many spreads he/she wants? 10? 100? It’s an abstract idea to anyone who has never made a wedding album before.
In the same way, you probably don’t give your client all the raw files from their wedding day and let them choose the photos they want you to edit. The same philosophy applies to album design.
The opening image for my sample album.
The first time I made the mistake of giving my clients the option to pick their own images, they came back to me with about 300+ photos, many of which were almost duplicates of each other. I ended up just choosing the best images of those 300, which is what I should have done from the beginning. I also would have saved myself a month or so of waiting for the client to come up with their selections and saved them the hassle and stress of narrowing it down.
An average wedding album should have around 80 images that will fill about 20-30 spreads. Some album companies don’t even support albums beyond 30 spreads.
Essentially, I do this:
After a wedding, I tell my clients I will have a rough draft of the wedding album for them within a week or two. This puts me in control of the situation from the first moment.
Now, let’s talk about how to create a wedding album in a quick and painless way.
Some spreads have open space between the images. These are some of the getting ready images on one double-page spread.
You’ll need three things to create your wedding album.
There are three software companies that I am aware of that most of my professional wedding photographer friends use to create their wedding albums:
You can research online to see what might suit your needs best for software. You’ll have to pay to play the wedding album game, but you should earn back your investment in good software from your very first album sale. Don’t be cheap! Pixellu SmartAlbums costs about $ 300 and it was the best software purchase I have made (besides Lightroom) for my wedding business.
If you had read my article on How to Edit and Deliver Wedding Photographs in One Day you would know my philosophy on creating a highlights gallery. Everyone should have one. Your highlights gallery will also be the foundation of your wedding album. The top 100 photos from the wedding will tell the best story of the day, and that is exactly what a wedding album is supposed to do.
Export all of your images in Lightroom with these settings:
Lightroom export settings.
This will guarantee that every image will print properly on any spread of a 10×10 inch or 12×12 inch album. I personally like creating square albums (8×8 inches, 10×10 inches, 12×12 inches).
When designing your album, go with your gut, and keep it simple. With my software, I can select a number of images, throw them into a spread and then quickly scroll through a number of arrangement options by simply pressing the up/down arrow on my keyboard. Here are some examples that show up when I use the same three images from the ceremony:
Six random sample page designs that my album software created for me in under a minute.
It’s really fun to scroll through the designs that the software creates for you. Simply press the up or down arrow to scroll through them. I like full bleed spreads so I chose the second option on the left. You can also grab any image and drag it to another position to swap the two images. You can see in the examples above that the software will also sometimes do square designs even if your image is horizontal or vertical. Sometimes it works perfectly and other times it doesn’t.
Keep a good visual balance and flow for each spread and throughout the album as a whole. Notice in the example above that I have two black and white images and two color images. In some spreads, I will do all color, or all black and white. Also, if I have a few spreads in a row with a multiple of four or more images, I like to break it up with one strong double-page-spread single image, like this:
Try and create a balance of pages with many pictures and some with only a few pictures in your spreads.
Side note: I didn’t export my images at 20 inches long for this sample album so you are seeing that exclamation warning in the bottom-right corner of the image because the software knows that the image is not large enough to print at the designated 12×12 inch size. If you see this warning on your images, check the sizes carefully.
This part of the design process should only take about 20-30 minutes once you get the hang of your software. All the photos are imported into your album project and usually sorted by time, so you can start grabbing photos from each scene and putting them into your book.
Don’t feel like you need to use every single image. Sometimes cutting something out makes the whole spread work better. In fact, like most things in life, less is almost always better. After you have finished your album design you should have the option to export and upload your album to the cloud for review.
One spread of images made in Pixellu SmartAlbums 2
These are the exact words I have used to explain to my clients about how the process will go when creating a wedding album:
Okay, I have sent out draft number one! You should have an email with a link to be able to view the album and leave comments. If you haven’t seen that in your inbox please check your spam folder. Or, hey, I’ll just give you the link right now:
View draft #1 of your wedding album layout here
I do two rounds of edits, so if you see anything you want to replace, add, or delete from there let me know! I’ll make your first round of suggestions and then show you the updated version of the album online, and you can have one more go at it before I hit purchase.”
Guiding your clients in this way gives them some options, but not too many. You are dictating the terms of the album making process and they get to participate in a healthy and helpful way. This is also an effecting parenting technique with a small child. Saying things like, “You can sleep with stuffed animal A or stuffed animal B when you go to bed right now” is nice because it embeds the idea that they are already going to bed (no question about it), but they have some power and free will in the matter (what animal they are going to sleep next to). This psychology can be used everywhere, including in a classroom, in your business, etc.
With my software (and I’m assuming the others out there) your client can view the album and submit comments online for each individual spread. Each photo will have a number attached to it, so your client can easily say something like, “Love spread number 9! But let’s get rid of photo number 1 and replace it with one more of the two of us.”
What your client sees after you’ve uploaded your album to the cloud.
Once your client has written comments on each spread, they can submit that and you will receive an email that will take you to the album and their comments. At this point, the changes should be pretty straightforward. You will add, subtract, or swap out any images necessary.
Then you can upload the next draft and let your client see the changes that they made. I would include language like this:
“Okay, I’ve made all the edits you requested. I think the album looks awesome! If there are any last changes you think should happen let me know, otherwise I’ll submit an order for the album tonight and you’ll have it in your hands by next week.”
Notice how my language is encouraging them to approve and finish the project. This makes the next round of changes feel like they should be made only if necessary, not like the first round.
I don’t always have a lot of family photos in the highlights gallery, so I make sure to add family photos into the mix when creating the album. This is very important for your couples!
The next step is to order the album. This is a very different process than the album design. There are many many companies out there that can do this. All of them have different benefits and drawbacks. I happen to use Miller’s Lab. They deliver albums extremely fast (within a week) and have great customer service.
You need to use a special uploading software (usually free) to order your album. You can’t just order from the design software (unless you are building an album with KISS). For Miller’s Lab, there is a supplemental program to use called Miller’s Designer Plus. You tell it what project you want to create (12×12 inch leather bound album or book), drag all the exported photos into the program, and fill in each page.
The final spreads are shown on the left. You need to create a new “fullpage” spread and drag each photo onto it to purchase your album
After you have manually input each spread you can order your album. At this point, you will have to communicate with your client about what color leather they want on the album, and any other options they can choose. Again, keep the options limited. I usually offer black, tan, gray, or white, even though there are many other options available like blue, red, etc.
Once they respond with a color and their address, your job is done! Order the album and have it delivered straight to their doorstep with some boutique packaging ($ 6 extra with Miller’s). If you want to deliver it yourself and make it pretty with some personalized packaging, then ship it to your own address.
The last thing to note is that you can also order discounted sample albums (check with your supplier) for yourself and your studio if you want to show potential clients how their album could look. I would highly recommend creating your first album for yourself and your studio so you can feel what this process is like from beginning to end. The sample albums are exactly the same as a normal album you would sell to a client, but they have a big stamp or sticker on the back page that says “Sample Album.” (Note: may vary from supplier to supplier).
The final spread
So let’s get back to how this method will help you avoid dealing with wedding album orders much later. By following these steps and controlling the process you will not only help your clients to be less stressed and get their albums faster, but you will be less stressed as well.
In order to have a smooth and happy album designing process it’s important to guide expectations from the very beginning of your conversation/process. It’s important that you take control of the conversation and let your clients know how the design process will go, according to what works best for you. You limit options but you still GIVE options. You make it easier for them to make decisions about the album and you can do this all from the comfort of your home using just your computer and the internet.
Everyone wins in this process – the couple get their album super fast, they don’t have to spend hours pouring over their photos, and you don’t get 20 wedding album orders right before Christmas every year.
That’s it! Happy designing 
The post How to Design a Wedding Album Simply and Painlessly by Phillip Van Nostrand appeared first on Digital Photography School.
[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]
High-density neighborhoods with heavy foot traffic and tiny plots of land in Japan force architects to come up with some clever space-saving, privacy-protecting residential layouts. Strategically placed windows, curving floors, translucent panels and hidden terraces are among the innovative tricks in play to maximize daylight and views of the sky while dissuading peeping toms and making the most of every inch of available space.
For a client who wanted plenty of outdoor space in a dense Tokyo neighborhood without sacrificing privacy or building a big wall around the property, architect Takuro Yamamoto faced every window in this three-story home toward the wall of an open-ended, box-shaped terrace. “Through the process of designing this house, we tried to prove that having a rich private external space was important for making a crucial difference in the quality of life inside the house, as well as obtaining various possibilities of external activity. Considering that the client’s original request was having a big terrace for doing yoga freely under the sun, connecting the terrace to the living room and the bedroom with big windows was the best way to offer fresh air and daylight to the internal spaces – like having respiratory organ to let the house breathe.”
The massive windows on either side of this house on a slope by Tomohiro Hata are strategically located to direct views to the sky and a small back garden, encouraging cross-breezes and bringing slanted rays of light straight through the home. A wooden insert delineates the interior spaces, creating platforms, stairs and small rooms, so the residents can enjoy varying degrees of daylight and privacy.
Four ‘ears’ sticking out of the roof of this house act as daylight catchers for the interior, keeping it from becoming too dark for a client who wanted maximum privacy. The home is set up to be wheelchair-accessible with space for gardens and parking spots for two cars while staying at a single story for earthquake protection, all on a small budget. The four vertical windows allow daylight to diagonally penetrate the home, blocking views of the interior from outside while enabling views of the sky from within.
Soundproof walls and one big window facing the sky protect this home from noisy neighbors and a busy street. Mitsuharu Kojima Architects came up with the highly unusual solution of a curving, green carpet-covered floor that gently slopes toward the wall of windows. The residents can choose to move their furniture around this space freely, lounging in the sun or staying in the shade. Storage is built into two walls full of cabinets and hidden rooms on either side, including loft-like lounge spaces.
A perforated steel facade lets little dots of light into the otherwise windowless front of this home in Osaka by Yoshiaki Yamashita. The clients, a young couple with a child, wanted natural light and ventilation as well as a high level of privacy. Two external terraces hidden within the outer envelope of the house act as giant skylights for the middle level, where the living space is located.
[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]
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Perspective…it is a central component of photography, although it’s one that you probably don’t actively consider when composing a shot. For our purposes, perspective can be described as the dimensions of objects within a scene and the measurements between them as they correspond to the viewpoint of the camera. This simply means how things appear in a composition from the camera’s point of view. Continue Reading
The post How to Change your Photography by Simply Changing your Perspective appeared first on Photodoto.
jimmythackery.com http Two world renown blues bands together in the Big Room. Jimmy Thackery is one of the few blues guitarists who learned first hand from the masters of the blues, not off a blues record or DVD. Though most associate Jimmy with his 15 years as the co-founder of the legendary Nighthawks, he ended his time with them in 1987. Since then, Jimmy has been on the road for 15 years doing nearly 300 shows a year proving each night that he is still the guitar powerhouse in the blues. Trust me when I say he’s worth the price of admission alone. A true blues monster. For more info on Jimmy, track him down on youtube. Make sure you’re sitting down when you do
Lots of People are asking for the track-list: 1. the bloody? beetroots – we are from venice 0:00 – 1:57 2. proxy – who are you? (bloody beetroots remix) 2:03 – 3:58 3. the bloody beetroots ft. steve aoki – warp 1.9 3:58 – 4:43 4. bird peterson – the essence 4:44 – 5:09 5. jokers of the scene – baggy bottom boys 5:10 – 6:25 6. redman – i hold the crown (gigi barocco remix) 6:26 – 6:36 7. bingo players – get up (diplo remix) 6:37 6:51 8. sound of stereo – heads up (the bloody beetroots remix) 6:52 – 7:36 Filmed and edited by Leo James
Video Rating: 4 / 5
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