Official Photography Thread

[Katy Lied]

I had the photoshoot from hell yesterday. A multigenerational family with a ton of very little kids who can't sit still. And one little girl who is deathly afraid of the camera, especially the flash, and who would hide her face every time I walked around. There were at least 20 other photography groups (with pros and amateurs like me who were doing favors) in the same park. I have one picture where at least 3 little kids are crying. One will start and it sets off all the others. If I had at least one or two decent pictures it would be okay, but I'm afraid I dont have any usables. Sigh.

I learned that with lots of very little kids, its best just to pose them on a bench with the kids sitting in among the parents who can keep them focused. Or bring a helper with lots of little flashy toys to wave.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

I had the photoshoot from hell yesterday. A multigenerational family with a ton of very little kids who can't sit still. And one little girl who is deathly afraid of the camera, especially the flash, and who would hide her face every time I walked around. There were at least 20 other photography groups (with pros and amateurs like me who were doing favors) in the same park. I have one picture where at least 3 little kids are crying. One will start and it sets off all the others. If I had at least one or two decent pictures it would be okay, but I'm afraid I dont have any usables. Sigh.

I learned that with lots of very little kids, its best just to pose them on a bench with the kids sitting in among the parents who can keep them focused. Or bring a helper with lots of little flashy toys to wave.

This is why Photoshop was invented.

[swampfrog]

I had the photoshoot from hell yesterday. A multigenerational family with a ton of very little kids who can't sit still. And one little girl who is deathly afraid of the camera, especially the flash, and who would hide her face every time I walked around. There were at least 20 other photography groups (with pros and amateurs like me who were doing favors) in the same park. I have one picture where at least 3 little kids are crying. One will start and it sets off all the others. If I had at least one or two decent pictures it would be okay, but I'm afraid I dont have any usables. Sigh.

I learned that with lots of very little kids, its best just to pose them on a bench with the kids sitting in among the parents who can keep them focused. Or bring a helper with lots of little flashy toys to wave.

Some extension of this is probably applicable:

http://archive.is/Oh9yr

You do have to keep their attention, tell them when your are going to take the shot, but also shoot 5-10 extras both before the shot and after. Put the camera in high speed multi-shot mode and hold the shutter release down. If it all possible, use a tripod for group shots. This isn't to prevent blur in individual photos, but to make the eventual swapping heads in photoshop as simple as possible.

This contains 4 swapped heads for blinking/not smiling and the insertion of one individual who couldn't be found at the time of the original shot. (Pretty easy to pick out which one, I'm not very talented when it comes to that kind of thing).

[wuapinmon]

That dude in the center with the red shirt has almost an Eddie Munster widow's peak.

[swampfrog]

Snow trip with the scouts. I picked up the cheap ultra-wide zoom Canon EF-S 10-18mm over Christmas, a lot of fun for $200. Last year there was barely a foot of snow, this year 5 or 6 feet easily.





And back to the awesome 70-200 for tubing action.

[Northwestcoug]

Snow trip with the scouts. I picked up the cheap ultra-wide zoom Canon EF-S 10-18mm over Christmas, a lot of fun for $200. Last year there was barely a foot of snow, this year 5 or 6 feet easily.

I haven't heard of the 10-18mm lens, SF. Seems like a no-brainer for the price. Any reservations about it?

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Nice stuff SF. I love the structure and depth.

[swampfrog]

I haven't heard of the 10-18mm lens, SF. Seems like a no-brainer for the price. Any reservations about it?

The $200 is refurb through the canon store, at that price, no reservations whatsoever. At 10mm there is a significant amount of vignetting in the corners. It's very good in the center. I up the sharpening in post more with this lens, but it seems to leave no halo artifacts.

[swampfrog]

Nice stuff SF. I love the structure and depth.

The first two would not be the same without Nik Color Efex Pro from Google, if you can afford the whole Nik package there are some very good tools in there. Clever interface for local adjustments. Much easier to get contrast and detail enhancements than using Photoshop (at least for me).

[Katy Lied]

Wow that is incredibly cheap. I bought my 14-24mm wide angle lens used for about $1400. Crazy price, but I can always sell it for the same price or more.

Loved the tubing pictures. I always wonder how hard you work to capture these insanely amazing pictures, like your bird photos.

[swampfrog]

Wow that is incredibly cheap. I bought my 14-24mm wide angle lens used for about $1400. Crazy price, but I can always sell it for the same price or more.

Loved the tubing pictures. I always wonder how hard you work to capture these insanely amazing pictures, like your bird photos.

The 10-18 is an EF-S (crop) mount only. It's plastic, it's not incredibly fast, it's not weather sealed, it doesn't have great flare resistance and isn't incredibly sharp in the corners. There is a reason the new EF 11-24mm f/4 costs an arm and a leg. But for the MSRP of $299 the 10-18 is a great value, also it's small and light.

Tubing is easy, birds take a little more work, but if you have tame birds that are used to humans, that's not too bad either. Those nature photogs that will go sit in a blind day in and day out for weeks to get a clear shot of a rare species do the real work.

Steps for tubing photos, similar for moving wildlife or other sports.

1. Take camera out of bag, unscrew the 17-55 walk-around lens on the body, put on the 70-200, take off lens cap, unscrew the hood from it's reverse mounting and put in on normal. If really bright outside, a polarizer will help with sun reflected off the snow.

2. Place camera strap around neck.

3. Walk out of the nice toasty scout lodge, take 50 steps to the base of the hill.

4. Turn the camera on.

5. Set the camera to manual mode and do standard settings check (every photographer should do this, check the lens to make sure stabilization and autofocus are on, set stabilizer mode as needed, check camera ISO setting, etc.)

6. Meter on a scout on the hill that's relatively close, set the shutter speed to a minimum of 1/800 (even better at 1/1000 or faster this will freeze everything that's in motion at capture time), set corresponding ISO and aperture (usually wide open to keep ISO as low as possible).

7. Take a test shot.

8. Look at the LCD and see that the camera did what it's supposed to which is made the scout too dark because of all the surrounding white snow.

9. Adjust the ISO up, or open up the aperture (if not already wide open) likely about 2/3 stop (2 clicks in 1/3 increments).

10. Take another shot and make sure the scout is well exposed while getting no (or very few) blinkies in the snow (clipped whites). Lower the ISO if whites are being clipped. If it's cloudy, you should be able to expose the subject well without clipping. In sunlight, you get to choose to live with clipped whites or underexposed subjects which you have to lighten in post-processing. Depending on your body/sensor and desire to avoid noise and extra time processing--adjust accordingly.

11. Set camera for focus tracking (AI-Servo on Canon). If you are comfortable with rear button focus (that is all I use), set the camera for that. My right thumb sits on the focus button while the index finger is on the shutter release. In this configuration a half-press of the shutter does not engage the focusing system, though I do have it engage metering and stabilization in the lens.

12. Set the shutter release settings to high-speed multi-shot.

13. Set focus method dependent on camera, tubes are not hard to track, so I use single point (center, or just above center so there is some downhill negative space) and track the scout's face.

14. For a tube, I just hold the focus button down with my thumb through the whole run causing the camera to continuously maintain focus, and click and hold the shutter release to a burst of 3 to 10 consecutive shots when I want to capture a sequence.

15. Any recent DSLR will track a face in white snow very accurately, it does all of the hard work.

16. Make adjustments to SS/Aperture/ISO as lighting conditions change throughout the day.

I shot well over a thousand frames just that morning, but I'm trying to get shots of all of the scouts for the parents (mostly the moms). I also like sequence progressions, so where someone else might shoot 1 or 2, I shoot a series of 6 or 7 and publish them all. I threw out roughly a third for missed focus, cut-off heads, no face in the picture, etc. The rest go up on Google photos with link provided to the parents to view/download.

[Katy Lied]

But don't you freeze in the snow? Dont you have to dodge the tubers? Dont you have to perch on the edge of a steep drop off? What kind of sacrifices do you make to get the shot?

I prefer blown out white snow to underexposed faces. I can never get underexposed faces fixed correctly in post.

[swampfrog]

But don't you freeze in the snow? Don't you have to dodge the tubers? Don't you have to perch on the edge of a steep drop off? What kind of sacrifices do you make to get the shot?

I left work early Friday, drove up with five 12-year olds in a van for an hour and a half, "slept" on a wire cot held together with twine in a lodge with about 150 twelve-to-sixteen year olds and their leaders. Drove same five 12-year olds back to their homes.

I did have to dodge one tuber that resulted in having to catch myself with one hand while supporting the camera with the other. Also, with about 5 feet of snow, if I walked anywhere besides the worn trails I would find one leg or the other embedded 2 to 3 feet in snow and it was questionable whether extracting the leg would result in an excavation to locate a missing boot. Ended up with plenty of snow in the boots.

I prefer blown out white snow to underexposed faces. I can never get underexposed faces fixed correctly in post.

Luckily, there was cloud cover this year and I rarely had to blow out the snow. I also find that it's typically better to always expose for the subject first. Adding some contrast to the snow takes some post work, so I didn't bother with most of the tubing pictures.

We had a few scouts that thought they were superman:





Some took it to the extreme:

[swampfrog]

Finally got back to my favorite duck pond to check out this year's waterfowl:

[wuapinmon]

I cannot tell scaups apart from each other. Also, that's a great photo of the cormorant. Do you use ebird to report what you see?