Another fun challenge. You can capture the color purple in so many ways.
You can photograph a still life, flowers (macro or not), landscapes (think the beautiful purple tinges between the Golden and Blue hour), cityscapes (think light trails as the sun has just gone down leaving a purple hue in the sky), bokeh lights, abstracts, live music photography (think purple lighting), use colored purple gels on your lights, or people wearing purple clothing.
Alternatively, you may like to do some purple split toning in post-production.
There are so many options!
So, check out these pics to give you some ideas, have fun, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.
Tips for Shooting the color PURPLE
Mastering Color Series – The Psychology and Evolution of the Color PURPLE and its use in Photography
A Beginner’s Guide to Abstract Flower Photography
How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Portraits
How to Create a Delicious Blurry Bokeh Background in 4 Easy Steps
How to Create Abstract Images With a Soft-Focus Look Using Vaseline
How to Apply Compositional Theory to Still Life Photography
5 Product Photography Tips to Improve Your Images
Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Share in the dPS Facebook Group
You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSpurple to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Purple appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
The post Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographer Roberto Valenzuela appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview several professional photographers who are a part of Canon’s Explorers of Light program.
The Explorers of Light Program, running since 1995, boasts some incredibly talented photographers. These photographers have spent years honing their craft, and influence and educate other photographers of all levels – something, we at dPS, can respect and relate to.
In this Canon Explorers of Light Q&A series, we interview photographer Roberto Valenzuela. He shares his experiences and gives tips to upcoming photographers.
Photographer Roberto Valenzuela
How did you get into photography?
My full-time career as a photographer began in March 2006. I had been married for a little over a year, and I decided to take some time off from teaching high school to attend the annual Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) convention held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This convention was the yearly gathering of more than 15,000 wedding and portrait photographers from every corner of the world.
The most exciting part was that some of the world’s top wedding photographers would be there, including the famous Canon Explorer of Light photographers, who are a group of elite photographers carefully chosen by Canon USA as the best photographers in the world in their respective fields. I was in heaven!
During WPPI, I realized that my passion for photography was just too strong to ignore. I felt an inexplicable calling to photography.
A very scary thought went through my head for the first time. The thought that I may want to follow my heart and perhaps leave my high school teaching career that I loved and worked so hard to get to dedicate myself to photography full time. Oh boy! I was in trouble.
How do I tell my wife? The woman I had just married and who relied on my humble income as a teacher to live and provide health insurance.
The thought of leaving a job I adored, and that provided me with a steady paycheck, scared the heck out of me.
Roberto Valenzuela
The trip to WPPI changed my life. It was just an overload of brain stimuli.
I loved everything about photography – the cameras, lenses, lighting, software, the technical side, the artistic side, and – my favorite – the business side. It had it all!
I knew my wife Kim would be receiving her Master’s degree in Engineering in May, and she had landed a great engineering job upon graduation. Kim having her own income, definitely helped to solidify my decision to leave teaching and pursue a career as a full-time professional photographer.
That was probably the hardest decision I have ever made. It felt as if I was jumping into a dark hole without knowing how deep the fall would be.
That following week, I made an appointment with the principal of the school to tell her that I would not be continuing after that school year. I hugged her and thanked her for the amazing opportunity she had given me. But I had to pursue this new profession, or I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Before I left her office, she asked me if I was sure, and with a heavy heart, I said, “Yes, yes, I am.”
After that school year was over, my full-time photography journey began.
What was your first camera setup?
The first camera I bought was the Canon 20D, and the 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 IS in 2006.
I didn’t have much money, so I put it all on one lens. I had to learn to work with this lens on every portrait and every wedding I shot.
It was especially difficult working with a floating aperture like this indoors, but that’s the only lens I had, so I figured it out.
Actually, it was that experience to only work with one lens that taught me a very valuable lesson – mastering the gear you have is something most people don’t really do.
For example, we all know what a 50mm f/1.2 lens is, but we don’t really know the ins and outs of that lens. How does it behave in the middle, or in the corners of the frame? What apertures provide the best sharpness for that lens? How does taking a portrait with a 50mm lens look at close proximity? Also, how does it differ from photographing a portrait with that lens at further distances?
I actually quite enjoyed knowing everything there is to know about one lens. Then I used that same mentality with all of my other lenses, cameras, and flashes I purchased in the future.
What camera gear do you use now and why?
I enjoy learning about new, evolving technologies. I love my SLR cameras, and I still have them. I have the Canon 5D Mark IV, the Canon 1D X Mark II, and the Canon 5DS.
But as soon as Canon launched their mirrorless line with the introduction of the Canon EOS R, I embraced the technology.
Although it is different than shooting with a regular dSLR, this camera opens opportunities that are simply impossible with a dSLR. For example, with the face-detection AF, I can take the camera away from my face and engage with clients face-to-face, and while the camera is tracking their face, I’m actually taking photos without the clients knowing.
Also, the ability to use a 1-stop to 9-stop variable neutral density (ND) filter that sits inside the lens adapter is one of my favorite features. This saves me from having to buy multiple ND filters for all of my lenses.
The ND variable filter also allows me to achieve a beautiful cinematic look outdoors by keeping my apertures wide open, such as f/2.0. Then I’m able to illuminate my subjects with the full capabilities of my flashes, and I can stay within the camera’s flash sync speed. This is amazing to me!
Regardless of how bright the light outdoors may be, I can drop the light as far as I want in seconds. Then add flash to my subjects with a color gel filter to do in-camera color grading.
How cool is that?
I am also quite excited about the new R EF lenses, especially the 28-70 f/2.0. These lenses are incredibly sharp and offer a great wide aperture.
However, my favorite feature of these lenses is the ability to program the control ring to whatever you want to fit the kind of shoot you are doing. For example, I programmed my control ring to quickly change my ISO in rapidly changing lighting conditions.
What area of photography do you specialize in and why did you move into that field?
My photography career began in Tucson, AZ.
In Tucson, there is not much of a fashion or beauty industry, but it is a very popular place to get married because of the beauty of the Sonoran Desert and Tucson’s famous sunsets.
On top of that, I was getting married myself during that time.
All of these factors led me to the world of wedding photography. And what a world it is!
I learned quickly that most important is what sets you apart from the hundreds of thousands of wedding photographers out there.
If I had to choose one aspect of my life that sets me apart from other wedding and portrait photographers, it would have to be my background as a classical guitarist. Being a classical guitarist forces you to develop a culture of great dedication to practice.
In fact, in my 14 years as a photographer now, I have not missed a single month that I haven’t practiced something. Regardless of how busy I am, I always make time to practice 30 to 60 minutes a month.
This practice has come in very handy in the most difficult of times to create something truly special for my clients.
For example, the photo I took in Sarasota, Florida, during a hurricane. This photograph was taken late in the evening as the wedding came to an end at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. This photo has to be one of my all-time favorite wedding photographs in my career.
It had been raining all day and all night due to a hurricane passing by the area. To take advantage of the rain, I asked the Rolls Royce driver if he could park the car in front of the tree. I then asked my assistant to stand in front of the grid of the car with two Canon 600EXRT flash units.
One flash unit was used to backlight the couple, and the second was pointed towards the car’s headlights.
Illuminating the headlights would give the viewer the perception that this photograph was lit by the car’s lights. However, the car was not even on. When everything was set, I then asked the bride and groom to run out quickly. It took us a couple of tries to get it right, and maybe we got a little wet, but the photograph is magical, and it will last forever!
Without my relentless practice sessions with my flashes, I would have never been able to visualize this beautiful photo in the midst of a hurricane passing through the location of the wedding.
I have a full production studio in Beverly Hills now. Although I still shoot a few weddings a year, my focus has switched to commercial fashion photography.
Are you working on any exciting projects you’d like to share?
I am incredibly passionate about the benefits I have received from really taking the time to master all aspects of lighting and posing. The more you know about lighting and posing, the more fun you have as a photographer.
The art of photography just opens up to you in ways you never thought imaginable. The type of work you can produce with more knowledge is just incredible and addictive!
Because of this, I dreamed of creating the ultimate education platform for eager photographers wanting a concentrated level of the highest quality education in pure lighting knowledge.
So, I’m in the process of designing a conference. More details to come.
If you could share any photography tips with our readers, what would they be?
I would say that photography has opened doors in my life that I have never thought possible. But it has come because of my training.
My tip would be to never think you know something so well, that you don’t have to learn anymore. Keep your curiosity as big as that of a child. Learn how to pose so that people don’t look posed.
Also, learn how to light, so that the light communicates something to the viewer instead of using light simply to illuminate and create an exposure.
Embrace education, learning, and the new technologies available to help you expand your capabilities and become an even better visual storyteller.
The post Canon Explorers of Light – Q&A with Photographer Roberto Valenzuela appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
The post Types of Photography that go Beyond the Scope of Human Vision appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
I recently saw a T-shirt for photographers which said, “I Can Freeze Time – What’s Your Superpower?” It got me thinking about all the things we can do with photography that take us beyond the scope of normal human vision. The time-space continuum isn’t sufficient here to discuss the how-to of all these different techniques, but instead, my intent is to at least expose (yes… a photographic pun) you to these various types of photography so you too can explore new superpowers at your command. Put on your tights and cape, and let’s go.
Einstein says…
Your head might explode if we got very deep into Albert Einstein’s theories, but one thing to consider as a photographer is his Theory of Relativity. He postulated that at the speed of light, time stands still. Do we as photographers really have the ability to freeze time? After all, the raw materials of photography are light and time.
When we make an exposure, we allow a measured quality of light to come into our cameras for a set period of time. The aperture controls that quantity of light. The shutter speed controls how long we allow that light to create an image on the sensor (or the film if you still use that stuff). ISO is simply how sensitive we choose to make the sensor to that admitted light.
Now, I’m no Einstein, not even a Bill Nye, but I think in some way, we really do have the ability to alter time with photography.
Take a quantum leap with me as we explore this.
Can we freeze time with photography? I froze the falling sand in this hourglass not with a fast shutter, but with the short duration of a burst from a Speedlight. 8 seconds f/22 ISO 100
Slivers of time
One of the main attractions of photography, even for those who are just snapshooters, is the ability to capture a moment. What the fallen giant photography company once called a “Kodak Moment.”
Every photograph captures a scene that never existed before that moment and ceases to exists afterward.
We record, and later can review, that sliver of time in a photograph. So in that sense, we really do have the ability to freeze time. Let’s look at some ways we do that.
A photo captures a sliver of time. The people in the photos on the table are long gone, but we can still see the sliver of time that the photo captured.
We can freeze time with a fast shutter speed. For the pepper – 1/3200 sec. f/4 ISO 400. For the motorcyclists – 1/1000 sec. f/3.2 ISO 100
Shutter speed
How long we allow the shutter to stay open is the slice of time we capture. For example, if we shoot at 1/30th of a second, that’s the sliver of time we capture. Shorten the shutter speed to something like 1/500th of a second and that’s the slice of time captured.
This is the reason we need faster shutter speeds to freeze faster-moving objects. Light from the moving object comes into the camera from one point at the beginning of the exposure and other points as the subject moves until the shutter closes.
Static objects don’t move, so nothing much changes during the exposure duration.
Fast-moving objects travel a greater distance during the exposure. We can determine what shutter speed is necessary to freeze the object. The objective here is to not have the object move appreciably during the exposure, such that it appears “frozen.”
Most of our cameras top out at around 1/4000th to 1/8000th of a second. That can freeze some pretty fast action. But what if you have really fast-moving objects you want to freeze? You can meet your increased need for speed with flash.
Flash duration
If you’re a fan of superheroes, you no doubt have heard of The Flash. His superpower is the ability to move at incredible speed – so fast that he’s imperceptible to bystanders. He does have the ability to essentially freeze time, at least relative to the speed of normal humans.
You, as a photographer, can come closer to freezing really fast-moving objects with your flash.
Your camera shutter might top out at 1/8000th of a second, but using the extremely short duration of a flash (ditto for Speedlights, studio strobes, any kind of stroboscopic light), you now up the game.
Rather than reduce the sliver of time with the shutter, you use a much shorter flash duration as the means of making your exposure. How much shorter?
When you -really- want to freeze fast action, use the short duration of a burst of flash. The raspberry – 1/60th sec. f/25 ISO 100 (but the flash at 1/16th power had a duration of just 1/16,000 sec.) The milk splash .3 sec f/8 ISO 800 – flash at 1/32 power for a duration of about 1/10,000 sec.
Look at the table below. This is for a Canon 580EX speedlight.
Different flashes will differ, but the constant is that the lower the flash power, the shorter the flash duration.
Note that at full-power, the 580EX has a flash duration of 1/250 sec. You can do better with just your camera shutter. But, at a setting of 1/128th power, we get some serious stopping power, a flash duration of just 1/20,000th of a second. That will freeze some really fast-moving subjects!
Before you get too cocky with your superpower of freezing time, I wanted to throw in what the big boys at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab have accomplished.
They have actually been able to take photographs at the speed of light, capturing the motion of photons (which move at about 186,282 miles per second, 299,792 kps, millions of times faster than even bullets).
The exposure duration, if that’s the right term for the MIT technique, is less than two-trillionths of a second!
Warping time
Freezing time is magic enough. But with photography, our superpowers don’t end there. Did you know you can also warp time, stretching it out or shrinking it down?
Let’s explore some other types of photography.
Making moving water look silky is a favorite photographer’s trick. We essentially stretch time with a slow shutter speed. Thousand Springs, Idaho at left – .3 sec. f/22 ISO 100. Sabbaday Falls, New Hampshire – 5 sec. f/20 ISO 200
Stretching time
When we take a long exposure photo, we allow light to come into the camera for an extended period of time. All photos are, as described, a “sliver of time,” but sometimes we can allow that sliver to become quite long.
To not overexpose the image, we must still find proper exposure with the camera’s combination of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
We can set our aperture to the smallest opening of our lens, perhaps f/22, maybe f/32 or even f/64 on large format cameras with special lenses. We can reduce our ISO to maybe 50. That will maximize our shutter time.
If those settings still let in too much light, we can reach for Neutral Density filters to cut the light further and allow even longer exposures. Now we can make exposures that last for minutes, maybe even hours, rather than fractions of a second.
Need to stretch time even further? Put on an ND filter so you can slow the shutter even more. Left – Convict Lake, California – 30 seconds f/13 ISO 100, Center – Boise River, done with a welder’s glass ND – 162 seconds f/8 ISO 400. Right – Oceanside Pier, California 30 sec. f/6.3 ISO 50
Slowing down your shutter gives you more time to play with the light and creates light-streak effects. It also allows time for “light-painting” as the image on the far right shows.
Of course, with special photo gear and know-how, you can get really radical.
The longest known photo exposures have a “shutter speed” of…get this – almost 3 years!
German photography artist, Michael Wesely, who does this kind of thing, says he estimates with the right setup, he could make an exposure that would last 40 years.
Another guy described as a “conceptual artist and experimental philosopher,” Jonathon Keats, has set up a camera he hopes will take a 1,000-year exposure.
A long exposure of traffic is a favorite photographer’s way to “stretch time” and make light streaks of moving objects. This is the Boise, Idaho skyline during “rush hour.” 15 sec. f/13 ISO 100
Shrinking time
How about we go the other direction and shrink time?
Can we make a photo which reduces what took a long time into a short viewing duration?
One way to do this with a standard digital camera is to use what we call time-lapse photography. A camera with an intervalometer will take a shot every so often, taking many individual images over an extended period. Then, combining the images into what essentially becomes frames in an animation. The long duration becomes a much shorter time-lapse video.
Time is shrunken down. What might have taken days to shoot, can be viewed in seconds.
If you’ve seen sequences of things like flowers growing or fruit rotting, this is the technique. Here’s my feeble attempt. I’ve forgotten how many individual shots it took to make even this very short 7-second video clip – but it was a bunch.
I can’t even begin to fathom what it takes to make a truly epic timelapse like this one.
Another option is to do this in an all-in-one, non-moving image. Taking multiple exposures and combining them into the same final composited image uses this technique. Take a look at the techniques I used in the following images.
You can show a sequence of motion with different techniques. The peppers image was done with strobed flash. The shot of the total eclipse was constructed from multiple images later composited in Photoshop.
Combining a multi-shot panorama with the capabilities of Microsoft ICE, you can make sequences like this.
Intentional Camera Movement – ICM
Another way to distort time, and your image, is to intentionally move the camera, and/or the lens during the exposure. A longer exposure will allow you to do things like swish-pans, zooms, changing focus, or “free-lensing.”
Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) like this vertical swish-pan, can produce very abstract effects. 1/20 sec. f/29 ISO 250
See the light
Humans see and, in normal use, our cameras are designed to capture the portion of the “Electromagnetic Spectrum” we call visible light. (For a deeper dive into this subject, take a look at my article – “How to Understand Light and Color to Improve your Photography.”)
We reference the Kelvin scale when we talk about photography in the visible light realm. Then we use white balance to adjust our cameras to do something our eyes and brains do naturally – adjust to the varying degrees of warm and cool light.
Foliage turns light, skies go dark, and colors get strange when photographing with a camera altered to be sensitive to the infrared spectrum.
We can’t change the portion of the spectrum we see, but our cameras can. You can have a camera altered so that is responsive to other wavelengths of light. This will take a little extra commitment to explore, as once your camera is altered for either infrared or ultraviolet use, it will no longer work for standard photography.
Some cameras may give you infrared capability without special conversion. Take a look at this DPS article.
What our eyes can see is only a tiny portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) called Visible Light. Cameras can be altered to “see” other wavelengths for infrared and ultraviolet photography.
Don’t want to convert your camera for infrared? Tweaking the colors and tones can help you create a pretty good monochrome approximation in Lightroom. There are some good “recipes” for creating presets available.
Cameras can go even further up and down the spectrum of light, though hobbyist photographers aren’t apt to do so.
Get into even shorter wavelengths of light and you can make X-ray images.
Go the other direction into long wavelengths, and you’re not using a camera anymore. Instead, you are perhaps cooking dinner in a microwave oven, clocking the speed of a baseball with radar, or even further, listening to the “light” which we know as radio waves.
Kirlian Photography
When seeking out new types of photography, why be limited to light to make a photo? With Kirlian photography, you can make a “photo” with high-voltage electricity. Shocking! – (Well, I hope not).
Want to give it a go? Here’s a link to a how-to.
Some claim that Kirlian photography, which uses a charged plate to make the image, reveals the Aura of living things, like this fingertip. Guess you’ll have to see for yourself.
HDR
Digital cameras keep getting better and better. However, they still can’t compete with the human eye and brain for capturing scenes that have an extreme range between light and shadow.
To work around this, photographers will take a series of images at different exposures. They then combine those with what is known as High Dynamic Range (HDR) software.
This is yet one more of the types of photography you can explore.
Seeking to expand the dynamic range of this image, I combined multiple exposures with Aurora HDR software.
Astro-Photography
Why limit your photography to earth?
Astrophotography is, as they say, out of this world.
Much more light-sensitive cameras, better lenses, more noise-free sensors, and noise-reduction techniques allow better long exposure images to be made.
We can produce digital camera images showing far more than we can see with our naked eyes.
The light from these stars in the Milky Way has traveled perhaps tens of thousands of years to reach my camera. Mind-blowing! Taken at Bruneau Dunes State Park, Idaho. 25 sec. f/8 ISO 12,800
Thinking about what we can capture with astrophotography begins to boggle your mind. When you take a photo of the night sky, you are literally looking back in time… a very long way back. You’re also looking a long way away… a very very long way. Literally to infinity and beyond.
The farthest star we can usually see with the naked eye is the faint V762 Cassiopeiae, just barely visible under dark skies and around 16,300 light-years away.
For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year.
So, that means the light entering your camera from that star took over 16,000 years to make the trip. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). So…(calculator out now…) this star is 9.78E16 miles away, or 97,800,000,000,000,000 or 9.8 quadrillion miles (15.77 quadrillion km) away. (Talk about focusing at infinity!)
Even light from astronomical bodies in the neighborhood, so to speak, takes a while to make the trip. Here are some examples:
Sun to Earth – 8 minutes 20 seconds
Moon to Earth – 1.3 seconds
Mars to Earth – 3 min. 2 seconds.
Jupiter to Earth – About 43 minutes.
Macro and Micro
There’s another whole world that awaits when you try macro photography. at left – 1/120 sec. f/1.8 ISO 50, Center – 1/13 sec. f/9 ISO 200, Right – 15 sec. ISO 50 – w/reversed lens.
Think too much about the expansiveness of the universe and you’ll begin to feel really tiny. So how about we look at some types of photography that will make you feel really large – macro and microphotography.
Using things like macro lenses, close-up filters, reversed-lens techniques, bellows, and focus-stacking, we can get really up-close-and-personal with the tiny world.
If you’ve never explored macro photography, take a look at the many ways to get into it. Some of which you can do on-the-cheap as you start out. There’s another whole world right at your feet.
Shoot multiple exposures focused at different spots, and focus-stack them with software to have all the depth-of-field you want. Images stacked with Helicon Focus.
Get into macro photography on-the-cheap with an old film camera lens and a reversing ring. image at right – 2.5 sec. ISO 200
Going even further into inner space, you can get a microscope and the proper adapters to attach your camera to it. Now things like amoebas and paramecium can be your models.
Human vision vs camera vision
If you were a legit superhero, you’d have some kind of special vision, right?
You’ve heard of Superman’s X-ray vision, but did you know, he also is said to have telescopic vision and can see much further than humans? He has incredible night vision and can see in the dark. Also, he has microscopic vision and can see right down to the molecular structure of things. And like the baby in The Incredibles, Jack-Jack, he also has laser vision and can shoot laser beams out of his eyes.
So big deal…your camera can do most of that stuff too.
I’m being silly, but suffice it to say, your camera views the world much differently than you.
A commonly held view is that a 50mm prime lens on a full-frame camera pretty much duplicates the field of human vision. That point is debated. The bottom line is that the human eye and brain are much more sophisticated than any camera. Although an eyeball bears similarities to a camera, when coupled to your brain, well… it’s just different.
Dandelion Ying-Yang – We see in color, but the camera can be made to see in monochrome and also reverse the tones to create a negative image.
That said, cameras do have some of the abilities of Superman.
Coupled with a wide-angle lens, their field of vision can be wider than yours. With a telephoto lens, they can see further. And, with a zoom, they can concentrate on some subjects, excluding others.
Mounted to a telescope or microscope, they can see into space or down to microscopic levels.
Their high ISO capabilities can make images in what to you would be almost total darkness. Add night-vision capabilities and they can boost very low light into an image you can see.
Thermal imaging cameras view the infrared heat coming off objects.
Move your lens during a long exposure for special effects. The lens was zoomed for the image on the left, 2.5 sec. f/25 ISO 100. The lens was turned from out-of-focus to in-focus for the fireworks – 6 sec. f/8 ISO 100
As for shooting laser beams…some cameras really do use them in focusing.
My previous cellphone, an LG G3, and my current LG V30 use lasers to focus the camera. Superman, Jack-Jack, and Buck Rodgers got nuthin’ on us.
Turn a panoramic shot into a “Tiny Planet” with Microsoft ICE.
Distorted vision
I’m not sure a superhero would brag about having distorted vision as a superpower, but creative photographers sometimes like it.
Things like crystal balls, prisms, Lens Baby lenses, tilt-shift lenses, fisheye lenses and all manner of other photographic accessories can be used to distort how an image looks.
You can also play with a photo on the computer to bend and distort it, make “tiny worlds” with editing techniques, sew multiple photos together to make panoramas or even 360-degree virtual reality images.
Be an explorer
Canon has a sponsored group of photographers they call “Explorers of Light.”
What I’m suggesting is you, too, become an explorer. Tap into your superpowers as a photographer to explore all types of photography.
Just making standard photographs is fine and certainly by itself will keep you busy learning for a lifetime. However, when it’s time to broaden your horizons, there are so many other things to try.
Now superhero, harness the speed of light, and go make some unique photos!
14-shots stitched together with Microsoft ICE create this panorama taken at Deadhorse State Park, Utah
Do you know any other types of photography that go beyond the scope of human vision? If so, share your thoughts and comments with us below.
The post Types of Photography that go Beyond the Scope of Human Vision appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
The post Leica S3 Announced, a Medium Format DSLR With 64 MP appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Last week, Leica announced the S3, a medium-format DSLR that packs a whopping 64 megapixels and replaces the Leica S2.
This update is a long-time coming – the Leica S2 debuted way back in 2008 – and the new Leica S3 is looking to be a powerhouse of a camera.
But what does this new high-end DSLR include?
First, you get rugged build-quality and weather sealing, all packed into a DSLR-type form factor. If you’re never used a Leica camera before, you’ll be impressed by how sleek the S3 appears; rather than the usual “brick” you get from Canon and Nikon DSLRs, the S3 is a combination of stylish curves and lines.
You also get a Leica Pro Format sensor, sporting 64 megapixels (up from a 37.5-megapixel sensor in the S2). Of course, 64 megapixels is an exciting specification on its own, offering a resolution beyond anything currently available in the 35mm DSLR world. But when combined with Leica’s 30x45mm Pro Format sensor, the S3 is bound to offer sumptuous image quality, even in low light and at high ISOs.
Another bonus:
Leica offers an excellent lens selection. This includes 16 native Leica lenses, as well as a number of adaptable lenses from the likes of Hasselblad and more.
And let’s not forget about the Cinema 4K at 24 fps, in case you’re looking to bring that incredible image quality over to the video arena.
The main drawbacks to a medium format camera like the S3 are image size and shooting speed. As expected, the Leica S3 struggles in both of these areas; the 64 MP images produced are going to be huge, and will limit burst shooting to just 3 frames per second.
You also have to contend with a ridiculously high price, one that’s far out of the average photographer’s (and the average professional’s) price range. In this case, it’s just under $ 19,000 USD, and that’s for the body only. If you want a compatible lens, you’ll need to shell out another $ 5000+ USD.
For those who can afford it, the Leica S3 will likely come available in late March.
What do you think of the Leica S3? Do you wish you could use it? Or are you content with the 35mm camera market? Let me know in the comments!
The post Leica S3 Announced, a Medium Format DSLR With 64 MP appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
The post 5 Great Yoga Exercises for Photographers (with Illustrations) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.
Sore back and neck, stiff shoulders, probably sore feet too…Unfortunately, the physical nature of photography means that aches and pains can come with the territory. Even a solid editing session at the computer can take a toll. Luckily, there are ways to help ease these troublesome maladies. In this article, I’ve picked out a few yoga exercises for photographers that I use to help combat the strains we accumulate both in the field and during editing sessions.
What is Yoga?
Yoga in the West usually describes a modern form of Hatha yoga (yoga as exercise) which consists of set poses called asanas. By performing these poses, yoga practitioners build flexibility and strength and also learn how to focus through breathing and mindfulness.
Basically, yoga is great for the body and the mind.
All you need is a bit of floor space, comfortable clothing, and a yoga mat if you want one.
To start, take a few deep breaths to get in the zone. If you like, sit cross-legged for a little while (Sukhasana), straightening your spine and rolling your head side to side to relax the neck muscles.
Once you are feeling centered, you’re ready to go!
Cat/Cow (Marjaryasana/Bitilasana)
The yoga poses I’ve selected for this article put particular emphasis on common photography sore spots. In terms of yoga exercises for photographers, you can’t go wrong with Cat and Cow Poses.
When performed together, Cat and Cow Poses lengthen the spine, flexing the back and the neck to relieve tension and stress.
Begin on your hands and knees (Table Top Pose or Bharmanasana). Position your wrists directly under your shoulders. Shift your knees so they are aligned with your hip points. Look down towards the floor, relaxing the neck.
Starting with Cow Pose, inhale and slowly drop your belly towards the floor. Lift your chin and chest, looking toward the ceiling. Draw your shoulders away from your ears and hold the position for 5-10 seconds.
Next is Cat Pose. Begin to exhale and draw your belly up to your spine, rounding your back towards the ceiling. Look down towards the floor, relax your neck and hold the position for 5-10 seconds.
Repeat Cat/Cow as many times as you like, breathing in for Cow Pose and out for Cat Pose.
Upward Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana)
Upward Facing Dog may look like one of the trickier yoga exercises for photographers, but it’s well worth a go. Stretching the back and neck and opening up the chest and shoulders, Upward Facing Dog is a great way to check-in with your body.
Start by lying face-down on the floor. Rest the tops of your feet on the floor with your legs a few inches apart.
Position your hands on the floor next to your lower ribs. Point your fingers towards your head and pull your elbows in close to your rib cage.
Press your hands into the floor. Straightening your arms, lift your torso and upper thighs off the floor.
Pressing down on the floor with the tops of your feet, tense your leg muscles to keep your upper thighs lifted. Keep your elbows pressed tightly against your body.
Pull your shoulders away from your ears and push your chest up towards the ceiling.
Tilt your head to look at the ceiling and hold the pose for 10-30 seconds. Release gradually.
Ragdoll Pose (Baddha Hasta Uttanasana)
Ragdoll Pose, also known as Dangling Pose is a variation on the Standing Forward Fold Pose (Uttanasana). It’s a perfect yoga exercise for photographers, stretching the back and relaxing the shoulders, arms, and neck.
I find it also helps with headaches too.
Start in a standing position, with your feet aligned with your hips and your toes pointed forward.
Fold forward from the hips so that the belly meets with the tops of the thighs. As you fold, bend the knees generously. Keep your navel drawn up to your spine.
Hold your elbows with your hands and let the weight of your arms and head hang down, lengthening the neck and spine.
From here you can rock side to side, rest your hands on the floor or stay as is. Hold the pose for as long as you’d like, focusing on inhaling and exhaling.
Extended Child’s Pose (Utthitta Balasana)
Extended Child’s Pose is calming and restorative – great for the spine, thighs, hips, shoulders, arms, and neck.
To begin Extended Child’s Pose, kneel on the floor. Keep your weight on the heels of your feet.
Touch your big toes together. Separate the knees so that they are a little more than a hip’s width apart.
Reach your arms ahead of you and let the chest sink towards the floor.
Rest your forehead on the floor, drawing the shoulders away from the ears.
Stay in Extended Child’s Pose for as long as you need, focusing on your breath.
Triangle pose (Trikonasana)
Triangle Pose is a yoga exercise for photographers that opens up the chest and shoulders as well as stretching the groin, hamstrings, and hips. It helps to relieve pain in the lower and upper back and stimulates balance.
Begin in a standing position with your feet together. Step your feet wide and raise your arms parallel to the floor, palms down. Your wrists should be roughly in line with your ankles.
Rotate your palms up to the ceiling and turn your right toes out by 90 degrees. Turn the left foot inward slightly so you are balanced.
Reach the right fingertips forward and bend at the hip crease, sending your buttocks back. Keeping the arms straight, reach your right hand towards the top of your right shin, allowing the left arm to raise toward the ceiling.
Once your right hand is settled on your shin and your left arm is pointed toward the ceiling, rotate the chest out and look towards your left hand.
Hold Triangle Pose for 10-15 seconds and then return to a standing position. Reverse the feet and repeat to the left.
Conclusion
Helping to ease stress as well as aches and pains, yoga exercises for photographers are pretty great. Of course, there are plenty of other yoga asanas out there, but I’ve found these five to be especially effective after long days out in the field.
Do you have a favorite yoga pose that you find beneficial to your photography practice? Let us known in the comments!
Note: Megan is not a qualified Yoga instructor. These exercises are a guide only. As with all exercise, please listen to your body, and only do what feels comfortable for you.
The post 5 Great Yoga Exercises for Photographers (with Illustrations) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.
The post 2 Important Skills All Photographers Need appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.
Do you know what are two of the most important skills all photographers need? Since photographers don’t usually apply for jobs with a traditional CV, we’re not really used to thinking about things like soft skills. Yet, we really should.
As a photographer, you are very conscious of technical skills and you ‘sell’ them to the client. But what about soft skills? Usually, everything falls into the creative category, but learning to recognize individual soft skills can help you to improve as a photographer and grow your list of clients.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are a list of personal competencies or attributes that impact the way you do your job. Because they come from a personal level, they are not necessarily job-specific. However, some are more important than others for each professional profile. Two important skills all photographers need are resourcefulness and flexibility.
A streak of bad luck during the shoot, or a slip of memory that made you forget some equipment, can happen to anyone. This is where soft skills kick in – how do you solve the problem? I’ll give you two examples where simple things can go wrong, and why these are important skills all photographers need.
Example 1: a broken tripod
You have a photoshoot where the composition was laid out considering a high point of view looking down on the subject. Unfortunately, the quick-release plate of the tripod brakes, what would you do? Problem-solving may lead you to change the settings to do the photo handheld, but sometimes you can’t.
Let’s explore some other ways to deal with it.
Resourcefulness
It means that you’re able to face a difficult and unexpected situation by using any resource you have at hand. In this case, you’ll need to find a steady support for your camera. Look around and find any stable thing that you can use considering the height you need to reach. You can use your equipment cases, or some boxes for example.
Next, think about the angle you need to give your camera and find something malleable to put on top of the boxes. Most photographers have a sandbag to put weight on the tripod, you can use that. Otherwise, you can find a cushion, a bag of sugar, or anything you can find. This would potentially solve your problem with resourcefulness.
Flexibility
If there weren’t any resources available to solve the problem, or not in an acceptable way, then you need flexibility. This means that you have the ability and willingness to adapt to changing circumstances. For example, being open to change the aesthetics of the image by rearranging the composition and reframing it.
1/125 f8 ISO 200
If you’re working with still life, products or food, you can even place the camera on the same surface as the subject. If it’s a portrait or a landscape, try placing your camera on the tripod without having to angle it.
Example 2: no flash trigger
A wireless flash trigger is a device that allows your camera to communicate with your flash so you can fire it in sync. Usually, it’s two pieces of equipment – the transmitter and the receiver. If you forget one of the pieces, run out of batteries, or it breaks, what can you do to trigger the flash?
Resourcefulness
Even if your set-up involves several flashes, you can use most speed lights and strobes in slave mode. This means that you only need to fire one flash and the others will react to it. So, which flash can fore without extra devices or cables? The one from your camera (if your camera has an onboard flash).
Normally, you don’t want to use that flash to illuminate your scene, as it tends to be quite unflattering, but you can use it to trigger your other lights. Using a piece of cardboard, or a small box, block the front (and at least one of the sides) of the flash so that it won’t spill any light into your scene.
Leave open one side so that the light triggers the slave flashes.
Flexibility
Another possible solution is to fire the flash manually. In order to do this, you’ll need a longer shutter speed so you can react and fire it on time.
1,6 sec f8 ISO 200
The last time I faced something like this, I started processing whatever I had shot before the trigger broke, this way the client didn’t feel we were just waiting around doing nothing and I used the time productively. If not, you’ll need to be open to reschedule or run to buy a new trigger (or batteries, depending on what happened). In any case, flexibility is key.
Conclusion
As you can see, soft skills are small things that you probably already have but never considered an extra asset. The important thing about identifying your soft skills is that you can improve on them.
Also, now that you know them, don’t be shy about letting your clients know about it. In the end, they want a photographer that gets the job done, no matter what. This is why resourcefulness and flexibility are important skills all photographers need.
Have you faced any scenarios where you had to think quick on your feet to get the job done? Share with us in the comments!
The post 2 Important Skills All Photographers Need appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.
The post How to Use Photoshop and Capture One Pro Together appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.
Capture One Pro is a RAW processor with incredible performance and functionality, but it doesn’t completely replace Photoshop.
In order to get the most out of your RAW file, you might want to do as much of your post-processing as possible in Capture One (COP). However, you’ll still need Photoshop for retouching.
COP offers fantastic color management and adjustment tools, but Photoshop allows you to work on the individual pixels in a file via cleaning techniques, cloning, and layers. Photoshop also allows you to create composites.
The process of using Photoshop and Capture One together has been automated since version 10, just like it is between Lightroom and Photoshop.
Instead of having to manually open an exported file into Photoshop and then reimport it back into the Catalog or Session, your file can quickly and easily make a “round-trip”, starting in Capture One.
How do Capture One Pro and Photoshop differ?
There is a lot of conversation around which program is better – Capture One or Photoshop? But there’s not much point in comparing the two programs in this way because they’re very different. They’re meant to do different things, as Lightroom and Photoshop are also meant to do different things.
Photoshop is the standard for image manipulation across various disciplines, such as graphic design, graphic art, and, of course, photography. It’s a powerful program for retouching, composting, creating website mockups, and adding effects to images.
On the other hand, Capture One is a RAW editor and asset management tool, such as Lightroom and Camera RAW. It is made by Phase One, manufacturers of medium format cameras.
Because Photoshop and Capture One have their strengths in different areas, you’ll get the most functionality out of using them together. Some photographers and retouchers prefer to focus on Photoshop alone, which is certainly a viable choice. However, there are benefits to using Capture One as an additional software program. It has powerful masking, layer, and color tools.
One of these benefits of using Capture One is the advanced tethering capabilities that the software offers.
If you’re a studio photographer, or otherwise find shooting tethered to a computer indispensable to your workflow, you’ll find Capture One outstanding in this regard.
It allows you to use Live View, artwork overlays, and also offers stability and lightning speed. Capture One technology uses direct access to the camera, which enables Live View and advanced controls. Other tethering programs copy files such as camera proprietary programs save the captures to an SD card and call it “tethered capture.” However, it’s actually a “file copy.”
The steps for using Capture One and Photoshop together
Your photo can make a “round trip” in Capture One and Photoshop.
You can open the image in Photoshop via Capture One, retouch it, and then send it back to Capture One. Lightroom and Photoshop work in tandem the same way.
With Capture One, you can finalize your image within the program and send it to an external editor, like Photoshop.
Capture One is an asset manager, so you’ll probably want to put it back alongside your original file in the Catalog or Session where it’s stored.
You can then refine it further, or create Variants (like Virtual Copies) in black & white, color grading, etc. if you choose.
To initiate the round-trip process, follow these steps:
1. Start with the Basic Tab:
Right-click on the image itself or on the thumbnail. This will initiate a dropdown menu. Choose >Edit With. This will bring up a Dialog Box.
Do not choose >Open With. This function is just for opening up the image in another program, while >Edit With will create a new file and place it next to the RAW file.
If you don’t see Photoshop as an option in the dropdown, just click on >Other and navigate to Photoshop in your applications and click on it.
In the Dialog box, choose >PSD and your desired bit depth – 8-bit or 16-bit.
Choose the desired color profile – sRGB for web use only, or Adobe RGB.
Choose 100% for Scale to the image is full-sized.
2. Under the Adjustment Tab:
Choose to ignore crop, if desired.
Add additional sharpening if you want to do so at this stage.
3. Under the Metadata tab:
Check off any metadata parameters you want included in the file.
Click on >Edit Variants. The image will open up in Photoshop.
“Edit Variants” refers to a single file, instead of batch processing.
Once your image is open in Photoshop, do your retouching as you normally would.
When you’re ready to take your image back into Capture One, close the file and hit >Save.
Note that Maximize Compatibility must be checked to work properly.
Now when you go back to Capture One, you’ll see your PSD file in the filmstrip.
From here, you can make new variants, which work similarly to Lightroom Virtual Copies. You can convert your image to black & white or make variations with different color grading, such as warmer or cooler shadows. This can be handy for showing a client some variations on your work to find out what they would prefer.
Conclusion
Users of Lightroom are often hesitant about making the switch to Capture One or other RAW processors outside of the Adobe suite because of the learning curve associated with a new piece of software. They also worry about having to alter a workflow they may have spent years refining.
If this describes you, never fear. As you can see, your images can make the round trip through Capture One and Photoshop just as seamlessly as they do using Lightroom.
And If this is one of the major reasons you’ve been holding off on a change, you may want to download the free 30-day trial to Capture One and test it for yourself. The best RAW processor is the one that is best for your needs.
Have you tried using Photoshop and Capture One together? What are your experiences and thoughts on it? Share them with us in the comments!
The post How to Use Photoshop and Capture One Pro Together appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.
The post 5 Ways to Capture More Diverse Landscape Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jeremy Flint.
One of the most challenging things with landscape photography is to capture images that stand out. Planning to get to a destination at the right time is the easy part, and usually requires minimal effort. So when you have arrived at your location, how do you go about capturing more diverse landscape photos?
Well, there are several ways to represent greater diversity in your landscape images. Read on to discover how to make your landscape photos more interesting.
1. Minimalist scene
1/400 sec at f/11, Canon 5D Mark IV, 70-200mm f/2.8 lens
The first thing to consider when you are out in nature doing landscape photography is to decide what you are going to capture.
You may decide to photograph the entire view of the beautiful scenery in front of you. However, while executing a wide-angle shot of everything in the scene is a great way to start, why not try simplifying a scene to make it stand out.
Take a moment to think about what is actually appealing about the landscape. Are there any interesting features on show? What elements help to make the landscape look stunning? Is there an attractive outbuilding or a tree, for example?
I find limiting the number of components in a scene helps to convey the spirit of a place more fluently. Try adopting a “less is more approach” and bring certain elements together, such as a visually enticing cloud formation or evocative mist floating over an alluring landscape. The natural light and components within a scene can play an important part in the overall composition and look of your final image.
2. Extract patterns
1/100 sec at f/11, Canon 5D Mark IV, 70-200mm f/2.8 lens
Have you ever felt your landscape images are overly complicated or lack impact?
Another great technique to capture more diverse landscape photos that depict a location in a better way is to draw out patterns or details within the environment.
One method to do this is to shoot with a long lens from afar and compress the perspective to reduce the sense of space. A long lens helps to focus on capturing a certain part of the landscape, bringing near and far objects closer together and emphasizing shapes and patterns more effectively. An example of this may be to capture an attractive building with a field.
3. Aerial views
When looking to capture diverse landscape photos, a great way to alter the perspective of your shots is to vary your viewpoint. Shooting from a high viewpoint provides a great way to capture scenes from an angle that people may not normally see. This can be a good strategy to photograph something new and develop some creative landscape photography.
Elevated views can help to flatten the perspective of your image as it eliminates distance indicators. You can reduce the amount of sky in your photos and concentrate on creating images with interesting shapes. You can achieve aerial views by walking up to a higher vantage point, or shooting from a plane or hot-air balloon, for example.
1/180 sec at f/11, Canon 5D SR, 24-70mm f/2.8 lens
4. Shoot in overcast conditions
Don’t limit your landscape photography to sunny days or only wait for perfect light to appear, you can achieve diverse landscape photos in all weathers.
Capturing a scene in overcast conditions can lead to particularly striking results. The flat lighting will remove shadows and help to simplify a scene. Also, the reduced contrast will help to provide a simpler and more minimalist composition.
Overcast skies provide beautiful diffused light that can be really appealing for landscape photography.
5. Shoot fleeting light
Working with light can be a great way to capture remarkable images. With the right amount of light and cloud, you can convert a dull scene into a special scene, taking your photos to the next level.
For example, after a storm has passed, interesting light can transform a photo of the landscape into something incredible. This is especially so where the sun paints the land with magical pockets of light.
The precise combination of light, sky, and atmosphere can be blended to create an incomparable beauty within a frame.
1/320 sec at f/8, Canon 5D Mark IV, 24-70mm f/2.8 lens
Following a rain shower, keep a lookout for rainbows, as they provide an extraordinary addition to your pictures and help them to stand out. Remember to ensure your gear is kept dry during any rain too. That way, your camera will work well when capturing these great lighting moments after the rain has stopped.
Conclusion
In summary, you can capture more diverse landscape photos by applying a few important techniques. Go for a minimalist look by focussing on attractive elements within the landscape, and extract patterns by using a long lens to compress the perspective.
Shoot from above, shoot in overcast conditions, and capture momentary light and rainbows for more varied landscape images.
Apply these techniques next time you are out with your camera photographing the landscape and share your pictures with us below.
Do you have any other tips for capturing more diverse landscape photos? Share them with us also.
The post 5 Ways to Capture More Diverse Landscape Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jeremy Flint.
The post 5 Reasons You Should Use Mirrorless in 2020 appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Are you struggling to decide between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras? Do you want to know which is best for your needs? You’ve come to the right place. In this article, I’m going to give you the main reasons you may want to use mirrorless in 2020 over DSLRs.
And, if at the end of this article, some (or all) of those reasons speak to you, then mirrorless is probably the way to go.
If not, then I recommend you stick with DSLRs, because they really can produce amazing images.
Make sense?
Let’s get started.
1. Mirrorless cameras offer a live exposure preview
For me, this is the absolute best thing about mirrorless photography and the main reason why I bought my first mirrorless body.
You see, on a DSLR, when you look through the viewfinder, you see the actual scene before you (through your camera’s lens).
But if you look through the electronic viewfinder of mirrorless cameras, then you don’t see the scene in real life. Instead, you get a feed from the camera’s sensor, which incorporates exposure information.
See the area where you look through on the camera below? There’s a small OLED or LCD screen, which allows you to see a preview of the shot.
The feed isn’t perfect. It doesn’t always show you an accurate representation of the final image, especially if you’re shooting long exposure with changing light.
But it’s really, really good. And it’s extremely useful for those situations where you need to capture shots on the fly, because you have an immediate understanding of where your camera’s exposure is and where it needs to be. Just a few twists of your camera’s dial and – voila! – you’ve got a good exposure.
Note that there are also downsides to using these electronic viewfinders. They vary a lot in terms of quality, and even the best EVFs are nowhere near optical (DSLR) viewfinders in terms of clarity.
Plus, there will be some situations where you’ll want to work without exposure simulation, and this often means diving into your camera’s menu in order to figure out how to turn the feature off.
But if you’re the type of person who wants to know the resulting exposure before you hit the shutter button, then mirrorless is a great choice.
2. You can fit a mirrorless body in your pocket
I’m serious.
With some of the smaller mirrorless cameras, you can mount the lens on the body and stick it in your pocket, no problem.
You do need to use a small lens, but it’s still pretty impressive, and it’s another reason to use mirrorless in 2020.
In other words:
Mirrorless cameras tend to be much smaller than their DSLR counterparts.
In fact, the small size was considered the original groundbreaking advantage of mirrorless, and is still pretty great, even though DSLRs like the Canon SL3 and Nikon D3500 are really quite small.
That’s why mirrorless cameras are great for travel and casual shooting. Plus, you can take them into events without anybody noticing you’ve got a high-powered camera. This is also key for street photography, where you generally want to avoid attention.
Oh, and if you really want to take the small form factor to the next level, check out Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. Their compact size will blow you away.
Here’s an example of the size variation you can find with mirrorless bodies, from the large Olympus OM-D E-M1X, all the way down to the compact E-M10 Mark III:
3. You can see in black and white as you shoot
Another reason to use mirrorless in 2020 is black and white photography. If you’ve ever wanted to shoot in black and white, but you felt it’d be too hard a medium to master…
…get a mirrorless camera.
Because if you use a mirrorless body with a viewfinder, you’ll be able to program it to display in black and white.
And, as long as you’ve got the viewfinder to your eye, you’ll see in black and white.
This means that you have an immediate boost in your black and white potential. Instead of struggling to see in black and white (which is half the battle of the b&w genre), you’ll be able to understand the black and white medium straight out of the gate.
You’ll see how different colors are rendered in black and white. You’ll see how black and white photos change as the light changes.
And you’ll become a much better black and white photographer.
In fact, even if you switch back to a DSLR, you’ll retain your black and white skills. Because your understanding of black and white will exist on a much deeper level.
If you’re a street photographer or an event photographer, then I’m guessing that you’d love the opportunity to shoot without making a sound.
It prevents you from disturbing the silence in a wedding ceremony. And it prevents people from noticing that you’re photographing them on the streets.
Now, DSLRs often offer silent shooting modes.
But if you’ve ever tried one of these, they’re just…bad.
Sure, they make things quieter than the “thunk, thunk, thunk” you get from normal shooting. But they still leave the shutter quite audible, and I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable using them in a quiet room.
Enter mirrorless silent modes.
See, mirrorless cameras generally offer two broad types of shooting:
Shooting with the mechanical shutter (which is what causes the loud noise you get from a DSLR).
And shooting with the electronic shutter.
Fortunately, shooting with an electronic shutter is literally silent. You can hit the shutter button and no one (probably not even you) will hear it.
It’s perfect for street photography, and it’s amazing for event photography.
So that once you’ve used a true silent shutter, you’ll struggle to ever go back to a DSLR!
5. Mirrorless cameras come with all sorts of cool bonus features
When I got my first mirrorless camera, here’s one of the things I was most excited about:
The extra features that came with it. This is another reason to use mirrorless in 2020.
Sure, I was happy with the smaller size and the live preview, and those were the main reasons that I bought it in the first place.
But the extra features…
…well, I couldn’t wait to try them out.
I’m talking about things like focus peaking, which allows you to see, in advance, which areas of your shot are going to be in focus. It’s not perfect, but it gives you an approximation of the necessary depth of field, plus it’s just really cool.
I’m also talking about the manual focusing guide, which lets you select an autofocus point, then tells you when you’ve nailed it with manual focus.
This last feature has been a huge help for ensuring I get my point of focus right; it acts as a check on my manual focusing in landscape, architectural, and macro photography.
Now, not all mirrorless cameras offer these features. And there are some bonuses, such as Olympus’s Pro Capture option, that you’ll only find in a select few mirrorless bodies.
(Pro Capture, by the way, causes the camera to start firing at up to 60 frames per second when you press the shutter button halfway down, but then saves around a dozen shots from before you finally hit the shutter button, as well as dozens of frames after you hit the shutter.)
So before you buy a DSLR, check out the features hidden in different mirrorless camera menus. I bet there are some awesome ones that are worth a look.
5 Reasons You Should Use a Mirrorless in 2020: Conclusion
Now that you’ve finished this article, you should know all about mirrorless cameras, and whether you should think about purchasing one.
Because here’s the thing:
Mirrorless systems aren’t for everyone. There are reasons to use mirrorless in 2020, and there are reasons to shoot with DSLRs (and there are even reasons to shoot film!).
Now I’d like to know your opinion:
Why do you shoot mirrorless? Are there any reasons for shooting mirrorless that I missed? And if you shoot with a DSLR, why? Let us know in the comments!
The post 5 Reasons You Should Use Mirrorless in 2020 appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
The post Camera Industry Hit Hard by Coronavirus, Causing Production Delays appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Over the past month, the coronavirus outbreak has rocked the world.
And now it’s making its way into the camera industry.
The three biggest imaging companies, Canon, Nikon, and Sony, have found themselves affected by coronavirus outbreaks.
First, Sony Alpha Rumors published a tip from an unnamed source, which said:
“We can expect product [launches] to be very delayed along with much lower capacity in production volumes for many of [Sony’s] current imaging products.”
While we can’t know exactly what product launches Sony Alpha is referring to, fans have been eagerly anticipating the announcement of the Sony a7s III, as well as the Sony a7 IV.
Around the same time, the CP+2020 expo, which was due to be hosted in Japan, was canceled, with the organizers citing “no effective treatment or containment measures to deal with the novel coronavirus.” Organizers went on to explain that the “event attracts around 70,000 unspecified visitors and therefore we cannot completely eliminate the risk of infection.”
Then, only weeks later, Canon Rumors says this:
“Canon…will suspend operations at its five offices in Kyushu, which produce cameras and related products, for about two weeks from March 2 to 13. The supply of parts from China may become unstable due to the effects of the new coronavirus.”
While Canon Rumors goes on to say that, “At the moment, no employees have been infected,” the message is clear: Coronavirus, directly or indirectly, is taking its toll on Canon’s camera business.
And finally, a report by Nikon Rumors, and further corroborated by PetaPixel, indicates that Nikon’s new AF-S 120-300mm f/2.8 lens would not ship as initially announced. Instead, you can expect the lens in late March, at least according to Amazon’s shipping date.
As explained in a statement from Nikon, “The U.S. availability for the AF-S NIKKOR 120-300mm f/2.8E FL ED SR VR will be announced at a later date as we determine the global impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak. We will communicate updates on timing as they become available.”
At present, it’s difficult to say what all this means; will Canon, Sony, and Nikon recover swiftly from the effects of the coronavirus? Or will the virus’s impact be more long-lasting? These closures may be just the beginning.
Here’s one concern: Nikon hasn’t reported good financial numbers in recent months. If the coronavirus continues to affect production, Nikon may see a significant drop in sales, something that could further impact the imaging company over the next year (and beyond).
And similar worries are undoubtedly plaguing companies such as Olympus, which recently weathered rumors of a camera division shutdown.
What do you think? How will things play out regarding the coronavirus and the camera industry? Is this as bad as it will get, or will things become worse?
Let me know in the comments!
The post Camera Industry Hit Hard by Coronavirus, Causing Production Delays appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
