Adobe has announced it will be providing students and educators at-home access to Creative Cloud applications free of charge due to the increasing amount of remote learning current taking place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to qualify for this service, a student must otherwise only have access to Creative Cloud applications on campus or at a school computer lab.
In order to access a temporary license to use Adobe Creative Cloud software at home, an IT admin must request access for students and teachers from Adobe. The access application can be found here. Once access is granted, users will be able to remotely access Creative Cloud apps through May 31, 2020, or until their educational institution reopens if this occurs before the end of May.
Remote education can be challenging, especially for students who are only able to access certain services on campus, so it’s nice to see Adobe working to help those affected. Per PetaPixel, the initial request for help came from RC Concepion, a professor at Syracuse University. He told PetaPixel, ‘We have been running around—like every other university—quickly coming up with an action plan to keep serving our students through COVID-19. Teaching communications, we rely a huge amount on Adobe Software—reporters, cinematographers, photographers, designers. It dawned on me that a lot of student access was here at school and that with any students at universities, there would be many that couldn’t afford using the software.’
Image credit: Adobe
In addition to free at-home access to Adobe Creative Cloud for students and teachers, Adobe announced earlier this week that it would make Adobe Connect, its web conference application, free to all users until July 1, 2020. This decision has been made to facilitate remote business and education, and also allow healthcare and government institutions to coordinate their efforts in real-time. Of the decision, Adobe states, ‘We believe that Adobe Connect has a vital role to play for enterprises looking to continue business operations despite travel restrictions, canceled conferences and delayed projects, all while keeping their people safe.’
As more students, educators and other workers are forced to work remotely, access to technological services becomes even more important. It’s great to see a large company such as Adobe working to make people’s lives easier in what are trying times for many.
Adobe Enables Distance Learning Globally for Schools Impacted by COVID-19
March 12, 2020: The past few weeks have shown us that, even in times of uncertainty, our schools and business communities remain strong and resourceful, all while continuing to find creative ways to maintain learning and business continuity.
With many schools facing physical campus closures and moving to online learning due to COVID-19, we’re announcing that we’re giving greater access to Adobe Creative Cloud desktop apps to facilitate distance learning. We believe that doing so will make it possible to keep coursework, teamwork, and student progress on track through at-home access to Creative Cloud for students and educators.
The post A Look at the Fujifilm X100V in Action for Street Photography (video) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
In this video from Moment, Taylor takes the puts the new Fujifilm X100V in action on the streets to see how well it performs.
For street photography, the camera is the perfect size and weight to carry with you anywhere you go. The flip screen allows you to shoot from the hip – which is a great advantage when shooting street photography less obtrusively.
The fixed 23mm lens on an APS-C sensor is the equivalent of a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera.
Also, the famous Fujifilm film simulations are another great feature of this little camera.
So check out some of the images that come from this camera.
You may also like:
Your Guide to the Fujifilm JPG Film Simulations (with Sample Images)
1 Year with the Fujifilm X-T3 – Was It Worth Buying?
Best Fujifilm X-Series Kit for Urban Portraits
The Fujifilm X-Pro 3: Marvellous or Mistake?
The Best Fujifilm X-Series Kits for Travel Photography
Fujifilm X-T3 versus Fujifilm X-H1: The Best Mirrorless Camera for You?
Street Portraits vs Street Photography: What is the Difference?
The dPS Top Street Photography Tips of 2018
How to Avoid Distracting Backgrounds in Street Photography
Have you got your hands on this camera yet? If so, share your thoughts with us in the comments.
The post A Look at the Fujifilm X100V in Action for Street Photography (video) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
New lenses are getting better than ever, but sometimes it feels like prices are rising to stratospheric levels. Chris and Jordan share their picks for the best budget lenses for Canon APS-C DSLRs.
Want us to make similar videos for other brands? Let us know in the comments! Also make sure to check out our sample galleries for some of the featured lenses below.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.
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.
We recently launched an analog forum and in a continuing effort to promote the fun of the medium, we’ll be sharing an article from our film friends over at 35mmc on Fridays. This week’s article addresses the ever-inflating second-hand film camera market and the realities of what you get for your hard-earned cash. So don’t drop $ 300 on an Olympus MJU II before reading this first!
Thinking about spending a stack of cash on a film camera? Read this!
In an uncharacteristic move, Canon Australia has published a press release revealing a number of new details pertaining to the specifications of its upcoming EOS R5 mirrorless camera, in what appears to be an effort to quiet the ongoing speculation regarding what ‘8K’ capabilities the camera will offer. Spoiler alert: Canon’s video-limiting days may be over.
Canon confirms in the press release the EOS R5 will offer 8K internal video recording using the full width of the sensor at up to 30 frames per second (fps). In addition to no crop shooting, Canon notes all 8k modes for the EOS R5 will support Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology.
Canon also says the R5 will support ‘advanced animal AF – recognising dogs, cats and birds, relying not only on the eyes of the animal but also the face and body for situations when the eyes are not visible.’
Historically, Canon has been suspected to limit the video capabilities of its non-cinema camera products in order to minimize cannibalization, a name given to the problem of losing sales within a company’s own product lineup by putting what’s considered premium features and capabilities in lower-cost products.
These new details don’t confirm Canon has taken an entirely altruistic approach to its EOS R camera development, but it does show Canon is getting serious about video in its mirrorless lineup and is determined to make a statement in the market compared to the likes of the Sony’s a7 III and Nikon’s Z7, two full-frame mirrorless cameras that have, until now, been above and beyond what Canon has offered with its EOS R and RP mirrorless cameras.
Sydney, AUSTRALIA, 13th March 2020: Canon INC has today released further development specifications for its recently announced Canon EOS R5, the next-generation full-frame interchangeable lens camera in the company’s EOS R System. These additional details come exactly one month since Canon released the development announcement of the EOS R5 and shut down speculation that some of its revolutionary specifications are ‘a fantasy’.
Signalling a new phase of Canon 5-Series imaging and a revolution in the mirrorless full camera category, Canon’s EOS R5 will offer every photographer – not just professionals – access to high-quality imaging, cutting-edge 8K movie recording, new approaches to in-body image stabilisation, and revolutionary subject detection and tracking performance features.
New possibilities for movie performance Unleashing new possibilities, Canon Inc. confirms the EOS R5’s video capabilities will exceed that of competing cameras on the market1. With its ability to internally record 8K using the full width of the sensor at up to 30p, the latest Canon EOS R camera is set to redefine mirrorless with its market-leading features. In addition, in all 8K modes the EOS R5 will support Canon’s renowned Dual Pixel CMOS AF.
A beast for subject detection and tracking performance for animals and people Canon Inc. also confirms the EOS R5 supports advanced animal AF – recognising dogs, cats and birds, relying not only on the eyes of the animal but also the face and body for situations when the eyes are not visible.
Jason McLean, Director – Consumer Imaging & Services, Canon Australia, said: “Our EOS 5-Series was developed fifteen years ago to make full-frame cameras accessible to consumers, not just professional shooters. Today, that purpose remains steadfast as we continue achieving the ‘impossible’ to deliver the hybrid needs of content creators who are demanding uncompromised performance to generate more still and motion visual content than ever before.”
“With its game changing 8K movie capabilities, new approaches to image stabilisation, revolutionary subject detection, and compatibility with Canon’s full suite of EF2 and RF lenses, the EOS R5 represents a category revolution as opposed to product evolution in the interchangeable-lens camera market.”
The EOS R5 specifications previously confirmed by Canon include: • The EOS R5 offers a step-change in performance with an incredible 12fps using the mechanical shutter and the electronic shutter offering 20fps • The EOS R5 takes Canon’s cutting-edge image stabilisation technology to the next level, by including a newly Canon-developed, in-camera image stabilisation system – which works in combination with the lens stabilisation system • With content delivery just as important as image and video capture, the EOS R5 supports automatic transfer of image files from the device to the image.canon cloud platform3 • The highly anticipated EOS R5 will feature dual card slots • Upon launch, the Canon EOS R5 will also be supported by Canon Australia’s 5-year warranty when purchased from an authorised local dealer4.
To stay up to date with the latest news and information regarding the EOS R5, register here: www.canon.com.au/preference-and-settings/in-focus.
1 As of 13th March 2020 2 When used with Canon’s EF-Series lens mount 3 Automatic file transferring, available for cameras equipped with the automatic file transfer function, beginning with the currently-in-development EOS R5 (announced on 13 February 2020), requires users to connect the camera to a Wi-Fi access point that has been registered in advance 4 For full details on Canon Australia’s 5 year warranty, visit https://www.canon.com.au/support/warranty
Photography gear company Fotodiox has published a new video showing viewers how to turn a portable scanner into a 4×5 digital scanner back for use with large format cameras. The video tutorial is based on a concept published by Randy Sarafan on Instructables.
In Fotodiox’s version of the project, the team uses a Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner, which costs around $ 180 on Amazon; other models could also be used, video host Sean notes in the tutorial. The scanner is paired with a CameraDactyl 4×5 camera ($ 200) and a 5×7 Fresnel sheet ($ 5).
Sean notes that the digital back cannot provide the same level of quality as 4×5 film, but he says that it’s ‘such a cool idea, I had to try it.’
The project kicks off with Sean grinding the scanner’s glass using 600 grit silicon carbide and a small piece of glass. This transforms the panel into ground glass, which is then paired with the sheet of Fresnel glass for more even light distribution. The ground glass is reattached to the projector and the Fresnel is attached to it using ordinary duct tape.
The camera was then duct-taped to the projector, as well, with Sean noting that he used the CameraDactyl model partly because it is very lightweight.
After opening the aperture and focusing the image, Sean covered the back of the camera with a dark object to keep light out, then hit the ‘scan’ button on the digital back. The scanning process took about 20 seconds and the result was a ‘4×5 film look’ from a digital scanner.
As far as downsides go, Sean notes that this scanner arrangement can’t capture color images and that the image is captured off the ground glass, which means the texture from the glass results in grainy images. Photographers may also have to deal with scan lines in some images.
Ultimately, though, Sean explains: ‘I get a really shallow depth of field. It just has this really nice vintage 4×5 film look.’
Nikon’s release of firmware 3.0 for its Z6 and Z7 cameras is significant. Not just for the changes it brings, but the significance of those changes in the context of the company’s history. Like Canon, Nikon has historically brought DSLR cameras to market that you could be sure would work exactly the same in ten years as the day you bought it. There simply wasn’t any expectation that you would gain additional features, refinements or enhancements over the life of the product.
But times have changed, and with the Z6 and Z7, Nikon has clearly taken industry feedback to heart. Of course, this isn’t the first major firmware update for these cameras – firmware 2.0 brought us eye detect autofocus – but 3.0 changes some of the autofocus system’s fundamental operation in an attempt to make it more familiar to users of the company’s DSLR cameras.
Alright, enough with the pontificating. Here’s what firmware 3.0 brings to the table.
Refined autofocus tracking implementation
The most significant change in FW 3.0 (to us, anyway) is the refinement in the behavior of the Z6 and Z7’s tracking autofocus. Up until now, you had to hit the ‘OK’ button while in the Auto AF area mode to bring up the tracking box. You could place that over your subject and initiate autofocus, and it would track around the frame. But when you released the shutter button (or AF On button), the box would continue to track your subject until you canceled it with the ‘OK’ button, and then the tracking box would reset to the center of the frame, regardless of whether you’d moved it around before initiating autofocus. You then exited tracking with the ‘Zoom out’ button.
You can now have either the Fn1 or Fn2 buttons initiate tracking AF. Our opinions on staff differ, but I personally find these buttons fall naturally under my middle and ring fingers, and are easy to press.
Now, with FW 3.0, you have the option to assign Tracking mode to one of the Fn buttons on the front of the camera, which are easier to manipulate with the camera to your eye. And once you’ve initiated tracking, releasing the shutter or AF On buttons will see the camera cease tracking, and the box return to wherever it was when you initiated tracking.
It actually makes a remarkable difference in everyday shooting, and we’ve found that we can use the Z6 and Z7 more comfortably, and in a similar way to how we’re used to shooting with Nikon’s DSLRs.
It’s not quite perfect though. Firstly, if you enter playback or menus, or power-cycle the camera, you’re back into non-tracking Auto area AF mode. We’d love to see it remember your chosen mode or, better still, be offered as a distinct AF area mode. Secondly, initiating tracking on a face does not switch to face and eye-detection, as it does on Sony and Canon cameras with the latest firmware.
But on the whole, it’s a welcome improvement and makes the Z6 and Z7 much more usable, further improving on cameras that already had great ergonomics and handling. We discuss how this new behavior interacts with the cameras’ other AF features in our Nikon Z7 review.
Pet eye detection and CFExpress
Firmware 3.0 also brings the ability to focus on the eyes of pets, for all you pet portraitists out there. Depending on the pet (in essence, on how similar their eyes looked to human eyes) some Z6 and Z7 users with the old firmware might have found that their cameras already did a decent job of this, but now it’s official. With Firmware 3.0 you get more reliable and stable pet detection tracking, when you enable the requisite menu function.
Lastly, the Z6 and Z7 cameras are now compatible with CFExpress cards. This won’t impact you too much if you already have a bunch of XQD cards laying around, but CFExpress is the future, and broader compatibility is always a plus.
The reviews
Our reviews of both the Z6 and Z7 now have updated autofocus sections, updated conclusions, and we made tweaks to the scoring. Neither received a higher overall numerical score – they both scored very highly to begin with – but the ‘metering and focus’ category of the scoring widget has received a noticeable boost on both. We’ve also updated our Pros and Cons lists at the top of the conclusion pages to reflect the changes.
To see all the changes for yourself, hop on over to our full Nikon Z6 and Z7 full reviews.
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.
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