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New UK bill would enable police to stop, search and seize drones

30 Jan

The United Kingdom is cracking down on the unsafe and potentially illegal use of drones via the new Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill, which went before the UK’s Parliament for a second reading on January 27. According to an announcement from Parliament, this bill would give UK Police the power to order a drone to land, inspect it and, when applicable, seize it.

This new bill would grant the UK police a variety of new powers, including the option to stop and search drones being operated around airports and prisons, both sensitive locations where drones can be used for everything from drug smuggling to wreaking havoc on society.

As part of an amendment to the Police Act 1997, UK Police forces, as well as ‘senior prison authorities,’ will be granted the powers to use counter-drone measures in cases where drones are being used illegally. As well, this bill would make it possible for police to fine drone operators ‘on the spot’ if they commit certain offenses, including failure to prove that they have the right permissions or exemptions that authorize them to violate any rules they’re caught breaking (flying too close to a particular building, for example).

The UK government stresses that this bill would only impact drone operators who are illegally flying UAVs and who are putting other people at risk. Photographers are specifically mentioned as one of the groups of people who will still be able to operate drones, assuming they follow all of the local laws and regulations, of course.

The full bill, as well as minutes of the proceedings, can be found on Parliament’s website.

Via: DroneDJ

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How Would Your Photography Change if you Couldn’t use any Auto Functions on Your Camera?

08 Oct

The post How Would Your Photography Change if you Couldn’t use any Auto Functions on Your Camera? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

What if your digital camera had no auto exposure ability? How would you manage? Do you think you’d adapt and learn to make good and creative exposures? I’m sure you would. And you’d enjoy your photography a lot more once you realize it’s not so difficult.

Learn to control your exposures in Manual Mode

I learned on a camera with no auto modes. It was completely mechanical. It only required a battery for the simple exposure meter. My Nikkormat FTN, however, was a film camera, so I had no monitor with which to preview or review photos. There was also no metadata recorded to help me understand the exposure choices I was making. I had to write my settings in a notebook.

How much do you rely on any of the auto exposure modes? When you’re learning how to use your camera these modes are helpful. They allow you to capture photographs easily. Not having to think about exposure settings can free you up to pay more attention to other aspects of picture taking.

You can better achieve composition, timing, and relating to your subject when using an auto mode. But what if you didn’t have this option? Do you think you’d learn to manage to set your exposures by yourself, only with the help of a built-in light meter? I think you would.

Once you commit to understanding light and exposure, making manual adjustments is not so difficult. You can become more accurate with them over time. If you are only sometimes bold to use manual settings, you’ll take a very long time to master them, if you can at all.

To be successful at using manual exposure mode you must commit to learning how it works. You need to have an understanding of light and how your camera records different tone values. Using manual mode does require you to slow down at first. But once you’re practiced, you’ll become faster and more accurate.

Discipline is required to learn to photograph in Manual Mode

Learning any creative artform requires discipline. If you want to paint or sculpt you must spend time studying. Making ceramics or wood carving takes time and practice. When learning to play a musical instrument, you must go over and over the basics many times.

Most kids don’t like playing scales ad nauseam when learning a musical instrument. But they are foundational and so beneficial in helping a young musician grow and understand their craft. Photographers are rarely so disciplined.

Taking time to practice the essential functions of your camera will allow you to become more proficient. If you are relying on the built-in artificial intelligence, you will often struggle to reach your full creative potential.

By making a point of frequently using manual mode, you’ll be on a journey towards a deeper creative expression. But you have to be disciplined to make it most effective.

Many people who enroll in my photography workshops tell me they use their cameras in an auto mode. They admit to occasional manual use. I encourage them that unless they commit to using it, manual mode will remain difficult.

Slow down and feel the freedom

Often, photographers who prefer using an auto mode express their concern for missing the moment if they are using manual mode. I appreciate this as a genuine concern. However, you can’t always catch great photos on the spur of the moment. They take planning and patience.

Taking time to learn manual mode will also help you develop what you want to photograph. You will look at the world around you in different ways. You will begin to anticipate more when you choose to take photographs, rather than looking for snapshots.

Every genre of photography requires patience on the part of the people with the cameras. Whether your photographing landscapes, sports or birds, it’s best if you are not in a hurry. Take the time to study your subject. Know your camera well and how you can control it. Be most familiar with it, and observe and predict when the best opportunity for a photograph will happen.

Landscape photographers can wait for months for the right conditions. Sports photographers must develop lightning-fast reflexes. But these take time to perfect. They are developed with the study of the game and frequent practice photographing it.

Practice often

The more often you practice anything, the better you will become.

Many years ago, I had accreditation to photograph the world cup cricket matches played in Auckland, New Zealand. I was working for a newspaper back then. I had no experience with cricket, other than watching some matches on TV. I turned up on the morning of the first match with my camera fitted with a 2X converter and a 400mm lens.

That day, I hardly managed to capture a single frame with the ball in it. I felt disheartened. I did realize, though, that I had lots of opportunities to practice. Over the next month that the tournament played out, I improved. Each match managed a higher percentage of good photos.

I started with what was simplest – the batsman swinging at and, hopefully, striking the ball. These were not the most impressive photos to aim for, but it was a good place to start. I was envious when I saw the published pictures of more experienced photographers. They showed more dynamic action. However, as I became used to working in the environment with an 800mm focal length, I was able to capture more interesting photos.

I focussed manually, due to using the 2X converter. My exposures were also manually controlled. But this was not so challenging when the light was constant. The repetitive action allowed me to grow used to the flow of the game. I became better at predicting when the best photo opportunities were.

Explore and experiment with your photography

If you can discipline yourself to use manual mode and practice photographing the same subject material over and over, you’ll improve. Once you are more confident using manual exposure settings, you’ll become faster.

Doing the same routine many times, you’ll build up your ability to understand your camera. You can reach a level of competence where you make good exposure changes without being fully conscious of your actions.

When the light changes, you will be more aware of it. You will change your aperture or shutter speed a few clicks without having to check your exposure meter. Once you are doing this, you’ll be able to give more of your attention to other aspects of taking photos.

Difficult lighting conditions will no longer be so challenging. Many people who prefer to use auto exposure settings don’t like taking photos in the middle of the day. Especially when the sun is out. Learning to control your camera will help you see the light and make your exposures to manage well in these conditions.

I took this photo at around 2 pm on a sunny day and tweaked it only slightly during post-processing. The basic light and dark effect was created when I took the photo. Being able to see when the light is right and control your camera gives you more freedom. You will be able to create better photographs.

Conclusion

I know there will always be photographers who prefer to stick to using auto modes. The most common argument is using exposure compensation to override the camera’s choice. I always think if you are taking this extra step, you may as well be using manual mode.

I know from experience, learning on a camera with no auto exposure options helped me to understand more about light. It also meant I had to learn the relationships between the exposure settings. I was responsible for getting it right and making my photos look the way I wanted them to.

If you discipline yourself to use your camera in manual mode, you will have a far easier time learning than I did. With digital cameras, you have the advantage of being able to preview and review your photos in real-time. You also have tools like the histogram, highlight indicators, and spot metering. These all make it easier to capture well-exposed photos in manual mode.

The post How Would Your Photography Change if you Couldn’t use any Auto Functions on Your Camera? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.

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Which would you choose? Shooting the Canon EOS 90D and EOS M6 Mark II in Atlanta

28 Aug

Introduction

Small camera with a big lens, being filmed with a big camera with a moderately sized lens, all photographed with a big camera with a moderately sized lens.
Out of camera JPEG with the Canon EOS 90D.
Canon EF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 @ 42mm | ISO 100 | 1/640 sec | F4.5

Due to the basic fundamentals of how the ol’ Internet works, if you’re into digital cameras, you’ve likely already heard of Canon’s newly released crop-sensor duo. We all know that the EOS 90D and EOS M6 Mark II both have 32.5MP sensors, fast burst shooting and crop-free 4K video. The former is a DSLR and the latter comes sans mirror.

But during my time spent sweating through my cotton v-neck at Canon’s Atlanta pre-launch event for the two cameras, I found more than few novel differences that aren’t necessarily obvious from a quick spec-sheet or design-ethos rundown. It’s not quite as simple as ‘EVF vs. OVF,’ ‘big grip vs. small grip,’ and so on.

‘Have it your way’

Lenses aside, the EOS 90D and EOS M6 Mark II should produce identical image quality.
Out-of-camera JPEG on the EOS 90D
Canon EF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 @ 135 mm | ISO 100 | 1/80 sec | F14

As I began to think through this article, I couldn’t help but mentally write ‘Whether mirrorless or DSLR, Canon lets you have it your way,’ before remembering that we already had an article with an awfully similar title. Good grief, how much of the English language is doomed to cliché thanks in part to the thinning of popular culture among the rise of infinite and disparate sources of web-based entertainment? Anyway, I digress.

In keeping with the afore-linked tradition, Canon continues to give us the ingredients for broadly comparable image quality in two very different configurations. From a business perspective, it makes immense sense, at least in the United States. Here, DSLR cameras continue to be popular and Canon’s mirrorless presence has, well, room to grow.

I was prepared to prefer the EOS M6 II over the 90D, but that isn’t exactly what happened

And I have to admit, even as a former high-end DSLR user, that I’ve enjoyed the advantages that mirrorless cameras have brought to the market. Good touchscreen interfaces can make up for fewer physical controls, an electronic viewfinder makes it easy to check images in playback under bright daylight, and my back continues to thank me for a generally lighter overall kit.

So I was prepared to greatly prefer the EOS M6 II over the EOS 90D on this pre-launch event. But that isn’t exactly what happened.

First, bursts

Fast burst speeds mean it’s more likely I’ll have a decent image from a pan – so long as I don’t fill the buffer up first.
Out-of-camera JPEG with the EOS M6 Mark II
Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 @ 76mm | ISO 100 | 1/250 sec | F9

I generally think of myself as a car guy, but even so, I didn’t realize that the lifecycle of a drift-car tire is best measured in seconds, not minutes. And with those very fast (10-14 fps) burst speeds, both the EOS 90D and EOS M6 Mark II have buffer life that measures in at far fewer seconds of life than even drift-car tires.

So although the burst rates on the spec sheet may communicate that these cameras can replace your older double-grip sports DSLR, the reality is that you’ll run out of buffer and miss shots unless you dial your speed back, your image quality back, or both. At least the new C-Raw option (which gives you 30-40% smaller Raw files) won’t have a huge impact on image quality for most users, and extends the buffer noticeably.

But buffer depth isn’t all. Yes, let’s delve into EVF vs. OVF.

Viewfinder experiences

The add-on EVF on the EOS M6 Mark II is good, but fast-action aficionados will likely still prefer the OVF on the EOS 90D.
Out-of-camera JPEG with the EOS 90D
Canon EF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 @ 135mm | ISO 100 | 1/60 sec | F14

The optional electronic viewfinder on the EOS M6 II doesn’t come with the largest magnification on the market (Canon does not disclose the actual figure), but it does offer a good refresh rate and great contrast. At 14 fps on the M6 II, you get a slideshow of the previous images – drop to 7 fps, and you get a live view between shots. I found 7 fps to get me plenty of keepers, plus I was able to easily follow fast-moving cars, and not-so-fast-moving models. And, I was able to use Canon’s Face + Tracking mode: an option only available in live view on the EOS 90D.

The EOS 90D’s iTR tracking accuracy is leagues ahead of the older EOS 80D

Switching over to the optical viewfinder on the EOS 90D, I exclusively used Canon’s iTR tracking through the viewfinder. It’s not as robust as Canon’s Dual Pixel AF in live view – there’s a much smaller AF area, for starters – but I found accuracy and tracking tenacity to be leagues ahead of the older EOS 80D, probably thanks to Canon’s new metering sensor. We’ll be taking a closer look in our full review.

The 90D’s new ‘face detection’ option in the viewfinder is honestly hard to evaluate, as it was hard to tell if it was tracking a face simply because I placed my initial AF point over it and it was tracking color or depth, as opposed to really recognizing a face. There were times when I placed my initial AF point over a face, initiated tracking, and the system jumped to an adjacent face. I’d wager that, at this point, the system just isn’t as reliable as Dual Pixel’s face and eye detection in live view.

Video-centric, stills-centric

Full disclosure – I didn’t shoot any video with these cameras, but I did work alongside a man shooting video with these cameras. We were hoping to have him trade back-and-forth between both the 90D and M6 Mark II while shooting our DPReview TV episode, but fun fact, the 90D is the only camera of the two with a headphone port. Rather than risk losing entire takes due to bad audio, we opted to use the 90D for almost all of our video shooting so we could monitor the microphones Chris and I were using.

For stills shooters, 32.5MP should be plenty for almost any purpose.
Out-of-camera JPEG using the EOS 90D
Canon EF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 @ 35mm | ISO 400 | 1/60 sec | F4.5

Audio features aside, the 90D also has a crop mode that improves detail capture in video, and of course, the fully articulating touchscreen which many video shooters prefer over the tilting screen mechanism on the 6D Mark II. This makes it by far the more useful video camera of the two – despite the fact that it comes with a mirrorbox that is totally unnecessary for video capture.

Meanwhile, the EOS M6 Mark II has a 30 fps Raw Burst mode, which is distinctly aimed at stills-photography shooters. Additionally, its short flange-back distance encourages the adapting of non-native lenses, and there’s not a mess of glass and hinges obstructing the sensor if one did want to launch their way into capturing moving pictures.

Most perplexing is that neither camera shoots 24p video at any resolution

But most perplexing for us on staff is the fact that neither camera shoots 24p video – at any resolution. For the average consumer, and indeed, most people who are looking at cameras around this price point for shooting video, it isn’t a deal-breaker. But it’s also simply a software choice – if the camera can record 30p footage, it can certainly record 24p footage. So for those looking at (particularly regarding the M6 II) a small, easily mountable secondary camera for a larger production, you’ll have to pony up the extra cash for a higher-end Canon camera (or a cheaper camera from another brand) that does natively offer this.

The wrap

Out-of-camera JPEG with the EOS 90D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm F2.8 @ 20mm | ISO 1000 | 1/80 sec | F4

So, which did I really end up preferring? In case it isn’t obvious by now, I like each camera for different reasons.

The EOS M6 Mark II is very quick, but the DSLR still has an advantage in terms of absolute immediacy, helped in no small part by the optical viewfinder. But I just can’t trust viewfinder autofocus the way I can trust Dual Pixel AF. Turns out, though, the bigger and weightier EOS 90D made panning much easier for me, and I consistently got more keepers at lower shutter speeds than I could on the M6 Mark II – and at F9 and up, absolute autofocus accuracy is pretty moot.

But perhaps most telling, I largely prefer the overall selection of images I got from the 90D. Of course there’s no real quality difference – but I used the 90D during the second half of the day and the EOS M6 Mark II during the first half, so maybe I was just more warmed up photographically.

For most other people… the EOS M6 Mark II is probably the better choice

In the end, the EOS 90D is really best suited for those with larger hands and larger lenses, or those traveling in inclement environments, thanks to its tougher weather-sealed body. For most other people, though, the EOS M6 Mark II is probably the better choice. Thanks to its small size (which belies its huge capability), you’re more likely to carry it with you and make more photographs with it as a result. And that’s what really counts.

Oh, and the EOS M6 Mark II is $ 250 US cheaper regardless of what kit option you choose. So, that counts too.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Would you delete all your Instagram photos to fly free for a year? JetBlue hopes so

06 Mar

Budget American airline JetBlue has announced a new promotional contest called ‘All You Can’ that offers Instagrammers the chance the win free flights for a year. The catch? To enter the contest, users must delete (or archive) every image from their Instagram account.

Once they have removed all the images from their account, Instagram users must upload an image from JetBlue that features the ‘#AllYouCanJetSweetstakes’ hashtag and the caption ‘All You Can’ in order to enter the contest. The Instagram account must be publicly visible so that JetBlue can confirm the eligibility.

It’s unclear why JetBlue requires the images to be removed as part of its contest, but it does reassure people who enter the contest that they will be able to ‘post pics from everywhere we fly,’ assuming they are one of the contest’s three winners.

Users who enter the contest must keep their Instagram profiles clear — with the exception of JetBlue’s All You Can image — until March 8, 2019, at 11:59PM ET to remain eligible. Participants can find (and optionally customize) the contest’s hashtag image here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Proposed rule changes would make it easier for drones to fly at night, above crowds

15 Jan

Despite a partial government shutdown in the United States, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced a new proposed rule that would simplify the process of flying drones at night and over crowds of people by removing the need for waivers.

The proposed rule, which can be read as a draft (PDF), would remove the need for commercial drone operators to file for waivers granting them permission to fly both at night and over large gatherings of people. It would also drones to have ‘an anti-collision light illuminated and visible for at least 3 statute miles, according to the document proposal.

‘This will help communities reap the considerable economic benefits of this growing industry, and help our country remain a global technology leader,’ said Chao in her statement to the nonprofit Transportation Research Board.

DJI chimed in on the proposed rule change with a blog post on its website that begins by stating:

DJI, the world’s leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, welcomes the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposals announced today to help expand the use of drones in America, and looks forward to a substantive discussion that balances the requirements of the proposed rules with the benefits they would achieve.

The proposed rule change also lists out new rules for smaller drones. Specifically, drones weighing less than .55lbs / 250g would be able to fly over crowds without any new restrictions. However, drones weighing more would need their manufacturers to prove that if the drone ‘crashed into a person, the resulting injury would be below a certain severity threshold,’

The proposed rule change will be open for public comment for 60 days before anything can be set in stone.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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DPReview TV: The Yashica Y35 looks like a camera that would be fun to shoot.. until you try shooting with it

14 Jan

What do you get when you combine an iconic camera brand from the past with a crowdfunding campaign for a ‘rangefinder’ camera? The Yashica Y35, that’s what. Watch Chris and Jordan try to make lemonade out of a lemon.

Get new episodes of DPReview TV every week by subscribing to our YouTube channel!

Sample gallery from this episode

$ (document).ready(function() { SampleGalleryV2({“containerId”:”embeddedSampleGallery_0178804861″,”galleryId”:”0178804861″,”isEmbeddedWidget”:true,”selectedImageIndex”:0,”isMobile”:false}) });
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Reader poll results: What would you want from Nikon and Canon full-frame mirrorless?

31 Jul

We asked, and you responded. Thousands of you, in fact. We’ve already voiced some opinions about what we’d like to see from a full-frame mirrorless camera from the remaining two of the ‘Big Three’ manufacturers. So when Nikon went public with its development announcement recently, and with rumors swirling about something big coming from Canon, we turned the microphone over to you – our readers. We asked what you wanted to see from a Canikon mirrorless, and here’s what you had to say.

The number one request across the board was for full compatibility with existing lenses. When Sony created the E mount, it was starting (almost) from scratch and primarily aiming to attract new customers rather than maintain an existing base.

Ironically, creating a new system is much more daunting for Canon and Nikon since there are literally millions of F and EF-mount lenses in circulation, a huge number of them in the hands of working professional photographers. These customers just need their gear to work and can’t afford the time or expense of replacing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of lenses and relearning an entirely new system. Equally as important are Canon and Nikon’s non-professional users, who even if they wanted to, couldn’t afford to replace their ‘old’ lenses overnight.

For these reasons, we would hope that ensuring compatibility with these legacy lenses will be a major priority for both Canon and Nikon and we weren’t surprised to see this concern reflected in our poll results.

Nikon’s 1-series showed that the company knows how to make a fast hybrid AF system, and Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus has been impressing us for years

Coming in second is a request for a high resolution sensor, followed closely by a sports-ready AF system and a lifelike viewfinder in third and fourth place, respectively. It remains to be seen how ‘pro’ any eventual full-frame Canikon mirrorless product/s will be, but we know from interviewing senior executives at both companies that matching the DSLR viewfinder and autofocus experience is key to their vision of what a competitive high-end mirrorless camera should look like.

If nothing else, Nikon’s much-maligned 1-series showed that the company knows how to make a fast hybrid AF system, and Canon’s mirrorless-ready Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus has been impressing us for years.

Many of you want to see in-body stabilization too, which we’ve come to really appreciate in the Sony a7/a9-series, as well as in mirrorless ILCs from Olympus and Panasonic. In-body stabilization has never been a standard feature on DSLRs (notwithstanding the sterling efforts of Minolta/Sony and Pentax) and it’s hugely useful for both stills and video capture.

Comments on Facebook, Twitter and on our site ran the gamut from serious and reasonable to not at all serious and wholly unreasonable. Here are a couple of our favorites.

Easy ?
1. UHDp50/60, 4:2:2 10bit internal video recording
2. Uses new “SDUC Express” and/or CFast2.0
3. 5.5 stops of IS/VR in-camera
4. 15-stops DR for stills, 14-stops DR for video
5. 14bit RAW files (losslessly compressed & uncompressed)
6. 18-90mm f/1.8 AF lens at launch

— Eric (@1HDBIZ) July 25, 2018

We won’t be left hanging for too long – Nikon will be livestreaming its ‘special event’ on August 23rd. Until then, the speculation continues and you can view the full results of our poll below.

Have your say

$ (document).ready(function() { Poll({“pollId”:”5717924829″,”openForVoting”:false,”mainElementId”:”poll0″,”slot”:null,”isSingleChoicePoll”:false,”minNumberOfChoices”:1,”maxNumberOfChoices”:3}); })

What are the most important things you'd want from a Canon or Nikon mirrorless camera?

High resolution sensor11.3%
High speed shooting1.9%
Good quality video3.8%
Sports-ready AF system10.7%
Easy-to-use AF system4.0%
Lifelike viewfinder10.2%
Responsive controls and menus3.4%
Configurable controls/interface1.4%
Pro video features such as waveforms / 10-bit capture1.5%
Small, affordable primes5.4%
Fast primes2.5%
Tele zooms0.5%
Full compatibility / full performance with existing lenses13.0%
Lightweight4.3%
Compact size6.3%
Substantial grip1.6%
Good battery life4.5%
16-bit Raw1.4%
Top plate settings display0.3%
Dual card slots1.0%
Effective weather sealing3.2%
In-body stabilization7.9%

Total voters: 3,783

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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What would you want from a full frame Canon or Nikon mirrorless camera?

26 Jul

Nikon has finally confirmed the age-old rumor that its going to make a full frame mirrorless camera. It’s widely assumed Canon plans to do the same. But what are the things they need to get right?

We’re way beyond the point where the ‘mirrorless or DSLR’ question simply depends on whether size or autofocus is more important to you. But what are the other aspects of camera design and behavior that need to be in place for a camera to work for your photography?

We’d love to hear what you think, so please pick what would be the three most important factors for you. These needn’t be the things that would make you switch, just the things that they’d need to deliver, to make it even worth considering.

Or, if we’ve missed anything, mention it in the comments.

Have your say

$ (document).ready(function() { Poll({“pollId”:”5717924829″,”openForVoting”:true,”mainElementId”:”poll0″,”slot”:null,”isSingleChoicePoll”:false,”minNumberOfChoices”:1,”maxNumberOfChoices”:3}); })

What are the most important things you'd want from a Canon or Nikon mirrorless camera?

High resolution sensor

High speed shooting

Good quality video

Sports-ready AF system

Easy-to-use AF system

Lifelike viewfinder

Responsive controls and menus

Configurable controls/interface

Pro video features such as waveforms / 10-bit capture

Small, affordable primes

Fast primes

Tele zooms

Full compatibility / full performance with existing lenses

Lightweight

Compact size

Substantial grip

Good battery life

16-bit Raw

Top plate settings display

Dual card slots

Effective weather sealing

In-body stabilization

Voting is easy – you pick your favorite products by dragging and dropping. You can pick up to three, and rank them in order of priority.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations – What Would You Do?

29 Aug

Recently on a road trip to Newfoundland, and a visit to Sable Island in Novia Scotia, I ran into a handful of tricky photography situations. Like you, I’m typically pretty well prepared. I know my gear and I have a good idea of how I want my final images to look. In some of these cases though, I was a little out of my depth. Have you ever felt that way? You thought you knew what you were doing but then when you were actually doing it, things didn’t go as planned?

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - in Newfoundland

Bridge on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm lens at 60mm, 1/125th, f/16, ISO 800, hand held, processed in Lightroom.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about four situations, my goals, my gear choices, and my oh-no-this-isn’t-going-the-way-I-thought-it-would moments. Then I’ll own up, show you some images and tell you if think I made the right choices or not. Of course, then I want YOU to share what you would have done in these same situations.

This was my gear list for the trip:

Canon 5D Mark III (full frame)
Canon 7D Mark II (crop sensor)
70-200mm L f/2.8 lens II
100-400mm L f/4.5-5.6 lens Mark II
Canon 1.4x Teleconverter Mark III
Canon 24-105mm L f/4 Mark I lens
Polarizing filter

Situation #1 – Overcast day and a boat

On my first full day in Newfoundland, I scheduled a boat tour out of Bay Bulls to photograph Atlantic Puffins in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, with a sidecar of Humpback and Minke whales as we ferried to and from the reserve. The boat was about 50 feet long and 22 feet wide, making it relatively stable for photography though with about 100 people on board, it was a bit crowded.

What would you do - overcast day - Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do?

The morning of the boat tour was overcast and foggy. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm lens at 32mm, 1/180th, f/16, ISO 800, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Skies were overcast so I pulled out my full frame body Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens. I didn’t worry about the 5DIII’s somewhat laggy shutter speed since I’m not the best at photographing birds in flight. I didn’t even plan to try it from a moving boat. Instead, I hoped to photograph some nice puffin behaviors in their nesting grounds as well as whales, if they cooperated by breaching or showing us their tails. At the last minute, I tucked the 1.4x teleconverter into my bag.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - humpback whale

Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens plus 1.4x converter at 560mm, 1/6000th, f/8, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

I can tell you the first huge mistake I made right off the bat. I didn’t take a motion sickness pill that morning. So, I spent most of the boat trip feeling rather green and taking deep meditative breaths while trying to shoot. Mistake number two, deep-breathing near a bird rookery. (I think you know what I mean).

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - bird rookery

The wise choice around all these birds is to hold your breath or breathe through your mouth. Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens 1.4x converter at 140mm, 1/1500th, f/9.5, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

The third mistake I made was leaving on my polarizing filter. Blown out spectral highlights are hard to fix in post-production so I almost always use a polarizer when shooting on or near water. However, the 1-stop loss of light was too much on the rocking boat. I removed the filter and shoved it in my pocket immediately.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations What Would You Do - humpback whale tail

Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens 1.4x converter at 560mm, 1/6000th, f/8, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

The fourth mistake I made was underestimating how far away we’d be from both the whales and birds. Barely 15 minutes into the trip I was digging out my teleconverter, and hunkering down to protect my gear while I connected the teleconverter between the lens and camera body. Thank goodness it was in my bag.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations What would you do - puffins

Puffins are comical little birds! Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm 1.4x converter @ 560mm, 1/750th, f/9.5, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

In the end, I recovered from my motion sickness (and I didn’t vomit from the odiferous bird smell). A common murre (bird) did have the temerity to hit me in the head as it flew off the rookery but it didn’t poop on me (much, anyway). Ultimately, I was only moderately happy with my images – mostly because of the super flat light.

Have you photographed from boats before? Would you have made the same choices? Do you have any suggestions for anyone that will be shooting in a similar situation?

Situation #2 – Adjusting exposure for fog

In Cape Saint Mary’s, Newfoundland, there is a renowned ecological reserve for seabirds, many of them Northern Gannets, which are white. The reserve is supposed to be stunningly beautiful. I can’t actually confirm if it was beautiful or not. Both times I visited, the fog was so thick that the visibility was terrible.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations -St Mary's fog

The famous “spire” is almost completely obscured by fog. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm at 24mm, 1/350th, f/13, ISO 640, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Photographing in heavy fog is a problem because your camera’s exposure meter reads the white fog as grayer than it is in reality. To get a properly exposed image, you need to systematically check your histogram as you shoot. Pushing your histogram to the right, towards the white end of the histogram’s range, can give you a more realistic exposure.

In this histogram, you can see that the recorded data for the image falls short of the white point (right side). It also falls short of the black point (left side) but that can easily be adjusted in post-production. Whites aren’t so easy to adjust because when you brighten an image, you also add noise.

However, if you push your exposure too far to the right, you can blow out the highlights, creating patches of white with no recoverable detail recorded in the file. I increased my exposure compensation in 1/3-stop increments until it was almost 2-stops above my camera’s recommended exposure.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - blown highlights

Here you can see that the histogram climbs up the right edge indicating blown-out (unrecoverable) whites and highlights.

At 1 and 2/3rds-stops above the recommended exposure, the histogram still didn’t touch the right side, meaning no true whites were being recorded in the image. At two full stops above, the histogram crawled up the right side – indicating blown highlights. I decided that shooting at 1.66 stops above was the better choice.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - target histogram

It’s a subtle difference but the histogram I was looking for would have looked like this – just touching the right side but not crawling up it.

I said I’d own up to my mistakes, right? That choice was probably the wrong one. All the RAW files from that shoot look very flat and I only salvaged a few in post-production. I wish I’d experimented more with lowering my ISO to evaluate how that affected the exposure. If I’d lowered my ISO, I could possibly have increased my exposure compensation by two full stops without blowing out the highlights.

Later in my trip, completely frustrated by fog and exposure, I played with ISO values and – oddly – it did seem to help. With a lower ISO, I could increase my exposure compensation while limiting the number of blown highlights.

The moral of the story here is to think outside of the box. Don’t get stuck on what you think are the right settings. In situations like fog, change all your settings frequently to produce multiple files that are both under- and over-exposed and give yourself a better chance of having a RAW file that will give you the final images you were looking for.

Here’s a straight out of camera RAW file so that you can see exactly what I mean by “flat.” Canon 7DII with 100-400mm at 400mm, 1/800th, f/10, ISO 640, exposure compensation +1 2/3rd stops, hand held.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - processed gannets

Here’s the same image processed in Lightroom CC. You can see I had a little fun with it to give it some oomph. Lavender birds are way more fun than pea soup fog birds!

Note that the RAW file could have been pushed far more but personally, I felt that produced unattractive results. With extreme increases of Clarity, Contrast, and Dehaze, the birds did become crisper but it was still obvious that the image was captured on a very foggy day. The heavy processing didn’t make the image look anything like an image taken on a clear day.

Have you photographed birds or wildlife in pea soup fog? Would you have made the same choice? Any other suggestions for the dPS community?

Situation #3 – Photographing in the rain

One lucky evening the fog didn’t blanket Sable Island like it usually did. The ship was anchored just a kilometer away, so I jumped into the waiting Zodiac to cruise around the island’s shoreline. In the best of circumstances, as you cruise you can see wild horses running along the beach, colonies of seals happily snoozing and seals cavorting around you in the ocean.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - Zodiac

While this was taken earlier in the day, it gives you an idea of the logistics of shooting from a Zodiac boat. Many people never even pulled out their gear while on the water.

While there was no fog on that evening, it was still overcast. The wind and swell were also high. Salty sea spray was a significant gear hazard. Even though my camera was protected with a rain cover, I was nervous. It wouldn’t be easy shooting but there were three shots I wanted to capture:

Seals playing in the water around the boat.
Sleeping seals piled en-mass on the beach.
Wild horses on the beach, with the dunes as a backdrop behind them.

Twenty minutes into our shoreline cruise, the skies darkened and it started to rain. We continued to cruise but I tucked my camera away in the dry sack and just enjoyed the curious seals popping up around the boat. Before putting the camera away, I hadn’t checked off any of the three images I wanted but my gear stayed safe and I really enjoyed watching the seals.

Before I put my gear away, this was the sort of image I was getting. Canon 7DII with 100-400 II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/1250th, f/8, ISO 1250, hand held (in a small rocking boat), processed in Lightroom CC.

Ultimately, I captured two of three of the shots I wanted on another day but I’m curious, what would you have done? Have you ever photographed wildlife from a Zodiac? Would you have put your camera away once it started to rain? Or just kept shooting during this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

Situation #4 – Photographing far away wildlife

On one of my last hikes on Sable Island, I assembled what I call my “long combination” of the Canon 7D Mark II and 100-400mm with the 1.4x teleconverter. As much as I wanted to use my full frame Canon 5D Mark III, I just wasn’t able to get close enough to the horses on this trip. I needed the maximum focal length I could garner.

Here’s the focal length math:

Multiply your focal length by the 1.4x teleconverter. For example, 400mm multiplied by 1.4 x equals and effective focal length of 560mm.
Multiplied again by the 1.6 crop factor of the 7DII, the effective focal length increases to 896mm.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - Sable Island Stallion

The lone horse I saw after hours of hiking. Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/500th, f/9, ISO 500, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Ultimately, did I make the right decision with my gear? After hours of hiking, I only saw one wild horse. Considering that, I was darn glad not to be carrying two camera bodies with multiple heavy lenses.

Tenacity pays off! Even though it wasn’t the animal I was looking to photograph that day, I’m delighted with this seal portrait. Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 368mm, 1/250th, f/8, ISO 400, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

On the way back to the Zodiac pick-up point at the beach though, I sighted a huge colony of seals. A ridge of sand actually obscured the hundreds of seals that were nearest to me until I was on the brink of being too close to them. I dropped to my knees and photographed them like a mad woman. The light was bright enough, if not soft and golden. And those shots of seals I wanted to get from the Zodiac cruise earlier in the trip? I captured them during this hike instead.

Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/640th, f/8, ISO 400, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Conclusion

What would you have done? Take a look at my gear list (top of article). Would you have chosen the same gear? Or carried multiple cameras and lenses? Would you have headed back after hours of hiking and seeing only one horse? Or just kept hiking in hopes of seeing more?

Thanks for playing along today. Please take a minute to post a comment about a tricky photography situation you’ve encountered so that we can all learn from each other’s mistakes – and successes!

The post Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations – What Would You Do? by Lara Joy Brynildssen appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Why would I want an external recorder/monitor?

12 Jun

Not everyone wants to shoot video, so it may seem unthinkable to spend around $ 1000 on an external video monitor/recorder. However, others find it opens up creative challenges every bit as satisfying as stills photography.

The more you shoot video, the more you’re likely to encounter (and find yourself needing) tools that are rarely provided on stills/video cameras. We’ll be shooting with a couple of the more common models over the coming weeks to see how they compare, but first we wanted to give an overview of why you’d even consider using one.

Why would I want an external monitor/recorder?

As the two-part descriptor suggests, there are two main benefits to using an external recorder: to get a bigger, more informative preview as you shoot and to capture better quality footage.

Recording

In terms of recording, the benefits come from a number of factors.

Understandably, most stills/video cameras have processors designed primarily for stills, and they also have to make significant compromises in the name of battery life and thermal management, since video isn’t their primary role. Also, for the most part, they’re designed to produce amounts of data that are manageable by consumers, and at bit rates compatible with (relatively) slow memory cards. This typically means heavily compressed video, usually using what’s known as a GOP (group of pictures) video codec, which only records a full image at select key frames while interpolating the in-between images based on changes between frames. H.264 is a common example of a GOP codec.

“As the two-part descriptor suggests, there are two main benefits to using an external recorder: to get a bigger, more informative preview as you shoot and to capture better quality footage.”

External recorders, by contrast, are dedicated video capture devices built by companies that specialize in video capture. So, while they can’t improve the level of detail that your camera initially captures, they leverage the fact that your camera often captures more detail than can be recorded using the internal codec. As a result, you can capture video with fewer compression artifacts, and usually in formats that work smoothly with major editing software, such as Apple’s ProRes and Avid’s DNxHD and HR.

For example, most cameras output a more detailed 4:2:2 stream over HDMI, rather than the simpler 4:2:0 footage they can themselves capture and compress. Meanwhile the Fujifilm X-T2 will only output Log footage over its HDMI socket. Other cameras, notably Panasonic’s GH4 and 5, will output 10-bit footage and can’t capture their very highest quality footage internally.

External recorders also often support SDI connectors, a more robust type of connection typically used on pro video cameras. The latest recorders support Raw footage over SDI which means the recorder can continue to serve you if you move beyond your current camera.

Camera	Frame Rate	Codec	Bit depth / sub-sampling	Bitrate
Panasonic GH5	UHD/24p	h.264	10-bit, 4:2:2	400 Mbps
Sony a7S II	UHD/24p	h.264	8-bit 4:2:0	100 Mbps
Olympus E-M1 Mark II	DCI/24p	h.264	8-bit 4:2:0	237 Mbps
	UHD/24p	ProRes 422	10-bit 4:2:2	471 Mbps
	UHD/24p	ProRes 422 HQ	10-bit 4:2:2	707 Mbps

Similarly, external recorders often have better audio capture capabilities than those baked into the mass-market capture formats used in many cameras. As with the video footage, this is primarily a case of having more space dedicated on the screen, lower levels of compression and a wider range of settings and connectors.

Monitoring

The monitor side of things, there are a lot more benefits than just having a bigger screen to see things with, though this in itself is valuable. The ability to see your scene on a larger screen makes it easier to spot small, distracting objects and check precisely where your focus is set. It can also help you better visualize the way your final footage will look, helping you make creative decisions such as choosing how much depth-of-field you want.

It’s also common for monitors to offer overlays and composition aids. For example, framing guides that show crops for different aspect ratios can be helpful if you intend to publish your work in something other than the camera’s native aspect ratio.

Also, freed from having to share battery power with so many other functions, external monitors can often be run brighter than the rear screen on your camera, making it easier to shoot outdoors.

Boxes full of tools

But just as significantly, external devices often include useful monitoring tools that go beyond those offered in most cameras, both in terms of the range of tools available, and the precision with which they can be configured.

It’s becoming increasingly common for cameras to offer focus peaking, to check where the point of perfect focus is, but zebras, which highlights an area of a certain brightness, are still not universal. External recorders offer these features, often with greater control over their settings. The ability to choose to highlight a typical skintone brightness or everything exposed over 90 or 95% brightness, makes achieving consistent exposure much easier.

Focus peaking is becoming increasingly common on cameras, but external monitors can offer more subtle control over color and threshold, to make it easier to fine-focus.

The other feature common on external recorders that we’ve only seen on a couple of cameras is the ability to apply color and gamma curve correcting look up tables (LUTs) to Log video in real time. This means that you can shoot gradable, but washed-out-looking, Log footage but with a preview that approximates the finished result, so you end up looking at something much more visually meaningful.

‘Scopes

There are a series of exposure and color analysis tools widely used in video production, collectively known as ‘scopes.’ These are very rare on contemporary stills/video cameras, but are hugely useful for assessing your setup.

A waveform display is a tool to help visualize luminance/exposure. It’s common on pro video equipment as well as in video editing software. Rather than a histogram, which just tells you how many pixels hold each brightness value, a waveform tell you where those pixels occur in the image. The waveform diagram shows the brightness values for every column of pixels in the image: dark at the bottom, bright at the top.

Videographers like to use waveforms because it’s easy to visualize both exposure and contrast across the frame. This is particularly helpful for judging exposure at a particular location, such as a subject’s face. It’s also pretty common to have a choice of Luminance or separate R,G,B waveforms (known as an ‘RGB Parade’), for judging color balance and per-channel exposure.

The luma waveforms shown here are representing the ColorChecker on our test scene. There’s a thin, bright peak on the far left, representing the sliver of white that just crept into shot, then there are six columns representing the six columns of color patches on the ColorChecker.
Look closely and you’ll see that the pattern of the left-hand three columns getting progressively shorter continues into the right-hand columns: these are the progressively darker greyscale patches along the bottom of the ColorChecker.

The other common video tool is the Vectorscope, which can be used to evaluate color information in the image, such as hue and saturation. Getting accurate color straight out of camera (as well as matching it between shots) is particularly important when shooting video since Raw video capture hasn’t yet arrived in hybrid cameras. It’s a bit like shooting JPEGs – you only have so much latitude to adjust things in post.

False Color paints regions of the image to reflect their brightness. There’s a fairly standard scale, red for clipped whites, purple for crushed blacks, green for middle grey and pink for skintones.

Finally, one feature we’ve not seen on any camera yet is False Color, which is a little bit like having multiple zebras active at the same time. Most brands use a similar scheme in which tones around middle grey are painted green, one stop above this (the approximate brightness of Caucasian skin tones) is painted pink, near clipping is yellow, clipped is red, near black is blue and crushed black is purple. The result is a riot of color but with a bit of experience, it gives you a very easy way to interpret your exposure.

Workflow benefits

The net effect of these features quickly add up to provide benefits throughout the video workflow. If you can capture footage using a codec favored by your choice of editing software, you can usually speed up the process of importing by avoiding the need to transcode.

Similarly, the use of the fastest memory cards or still-faster SSDs maximizes transfer rates when it comes to transferring large video files to your editing computer. Again, with a project that takes more than a handful of clips, this is a huge time-saver.

Some external devices let you review and tag your clips before you get back to your computer, again speeding up the initial step of organizing your footage.

It’s not all good

As you’d expect, there are disadvantages to using external recorders, too.

Although each of the tools offered make it easier to set your shot up perfectly, this more precise way of working can also risk slowing you down. Also, the added weight and bulk of carrying a second device around with you makes it much harder to run-and-gun with an external monitor.

On top of this, it’s much less likely that you’ll go unnoticed. Even a relatively small monitor/recorder makes your setup look more professional and consequently more obtrusive. This is not the look for Guerrilla film making.

One downside of off-camera recorders is that it’s a bit harder to blend into the scenery and remain unnoticed.

Also, although external devices don’t need to share their battery power with so many other functions, it still takes a lot of power to run a screen and capture and compress video. Even the models with fans tend to run hot and hit their batteries hard, meaning you’ve got more recharging to plan and worry about.

But, given the amount of planning that goes into anything beyond the simple grabbing of clips, this additional consideration isn’t that onerous. For a bit more planning and setup time, an external recorder can help you get the very best out of your camera.

$ 1000 isn’t a trivial amount of money but, for a great many photographers, it’s an amount they’d justify spending on a lens. Just like a lens, an external recorder can help expand the range of things you can do with your current camera. It’s also brand agnostic, so unlike a lens, it’s very likely to work regardless of what camera you buy next, and will help boost the quality of everything you shoot, not just the things you can use a new lens for. And that’s got to be worth it, hasn’t it?

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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