Essential Kit No. 2…

Essential Kit No. 2 – Lens Blower

Dust is the ultimate nemesis of the photographer (that and zombies) and cameras have a knack of attracting all manner of dust, grit and crud, which eventually will compromise the quality of your images, so it's a good idea to get in some cleaning products early on.

The best way to expel dust from your equipment is with  a controlled air source to blast it away and there are plenty of great products on the market for just this purpose.


I bought one of those classic "grey puffer with a brush on the end" things to start with and set too with great zeal, but the shortcomings of this kind of design were quickly all too obvious.

First off, the brush section came off the bulb every time I used it - very annoying. Also, the amount of air it moved was minimal. Finally, the brush shed bristles so badly, I was actively making my camera dirtier!

Don't buy one of these - they are almost manufactured to disappoint!

The key to moving dust is the amount of air delivered - the bigger the puff, the more chance of blasting everything out. I found loads of options online and plumped for this:

Giottos GTAA1900 Rocket Air Blower - Black - £7.93

 

It retails (from Amazon) at a reasonable £7.93 and does basically exactly what you'd expect - it's a full fist sized rubber bulb with a nozzle attached. Each squeeze moves a big volume of air and the long nozzle means you can get inside your camera body and blast out all the lurking crud buildup. There's no brush, but you'd be far better off going to a DIY barn and buying a small good quality 1" paint brush and using that on the outside of the camera and lens. Never be tempted to put your fingers in there or touch the sensor as you will do more damage than good that way, guaranteed. If the camera sensor is dirty - take it to a reputable camera shop and get it professionally cleaned. From what I've read - most people advise this about once a year - I've not had to deal with that yet.

In use, I've found this to be an excellent tool - I usually give everything the once over when I'm packing my bag and it's great to just blast over filters before putting them on. Best of all, unlike the aerosol "keyboard air" type cans - it'll never run out!

There are plenty of alternatives out there too - here are a few:

Buyincoins Rubber Air Blower Pump Dust Cleaner £1.19

Giottos GTCL2810 Q.Ball Angleable Air Blower - Black £7.12

Hama 5610 Bellows Blower 55mm Diameter Bulb  £6.74


All prices are from Amazon.co.uk


They all look just as good - judging from the price I'm guessing the Buyincoins pump is smaller than the others - I went for the fancy shape, it's the big kid in me!
An added bonus with these puffers is blasting them on the back of people's necks when they least expect it - fun for all the family!

So there we go - keep the dust at bay and that's one less thing to worry about!

 

Essential Kit No.1…

I'm going to post periodic reviews or recommendations on items of kit and equipment that I think are useful, well designed or just plain useful. This won't always cover camera equipment and as I'm mostly interested in landscape photography, could well cover all manner of things that I  find really useful or work really well when you're out in the field.

So, here's my first recommendation - an essential basic item with a myriad of uses…

Essential Kit No. 1 – Black Bin Bag

I'm starting basic with this one - it's a design classic! We all use them – mostly for the intended purpose, but when you're out in the middle of nowhere, it's the one item that can make things way easier in so many ways. The first time I planned a trip out to get some misty dawn images, a bin bag was one item that would have really helped. My kit got all wet, everything I put down got wet, my knees got filthy - it all got emotional!

• Use it to but your kit down on the ground – it will stop your camera bag getting wet and dirty – if you're on a beach, it'll stop sand getting into everything and that's a bad thing!

• Use it as a seat or put it down under one knee when you need to kneel for a  low angle. You can split the bag and lay on it if you want to be shooting up at trees.

• Use it as a bag liner in the event of a downpour – I have one ready so I can just stuff the whole camera in and back into my rucksack. Nothing murders camera equipment faster than water.

• At the end of the day – bag up all your crap in it and bin it – leave nothing but memories. If I'm shooting on a beach from now on, I'm going to start bagging up a sack of the plastic crap at the end of my session, that gets washed up – I'm no tree hugger, but if we all did that it'd have a real impact. (just making a note to self - latex gloves!)

In an emergency you can tear 3 holes in it and make a waterproof coat or use it as a style free useful hat. Take 2 and use them inside your boots if it all goes a bit Bear Grylls. I have a couple in my bag as extra padding so nothing rattles – it's as useful as your camera! And way cheaper!!


I'll be dropping these posts in randomly as and when, so keep an eye out for them. If it's useful, regardless of cost - I'll be putting you on it!

All the best - keep snapping

Real photographers do it in the raw…

It's nearly December, so no - I'm not advocating we all get nekkid and start snapping away - too cold! But as the blog title implies, when it comes time to setting the file format on your DSLR - RAW is the only way to go.

For a photographer working with digital media - the saved file is the equivalent of your exposed negative, so we all really want to be capturing and saving the maximum amount of information from the camera sensor as possible. All digital cameras in every shape and size, will offer you a range of saving options that will dictate the amount of picture information saved to the memory card.

Most people save small files - keep the same card in the camera forever and never take their images off and store them. If this sounds like you, there's nothing wrong with that - I'm sure scrolling through 8 billion images each time you want to find one has the long winter nights flying by! But if you want to keep your images safe and work on them after shooting - the camera RAW file format is your best bet.

So what's wrong with jpeg you say? well, nothing really, it has it's place - for instance, it's a really good format for online use or for uploading an image to a stock library, but the jpeg format doesn't capture all the file data that you will get from a RAW file and is far less useful when you want to edit it later.

A camera RAW file will allow you the opportunity to edit your file in many more ways than a jpeg. Your jpeg files will have had some compression added to them by the setting you've selected and this can affect the quality quite badly. If you've ever looked at an image file that has weird pixellation around the edges of things - it's usually down to jpeg compression artifacts - here's an example:

In contrast to this, your camera's RAW file will be fully editable and you can open it into one of the many applications that will allow you a far greater level of control over your finished image. My personal weapon of choice is Adobe Photoshop which offers the full control of opening your files in Adobe Camera Raw, but Nikon's own "View NX 2 software that came with my camera is pretty good too (I'm sure Canon, Pentax, Sony etc come with good software too).

Here are some of the benefits that working with your camera's raw files will offer you:

1 - It will be the biggest file that your camera can capture - why take smaller images? Memory cards are cheap as chips and it's good practice to use a few in rotation anyway just in case one fails.

2 - You will be able to control noise much more effectively in camera raw.

3. You can easily remove lens aberrations such as barrel distortion on wide angle images, vignetting around the image edges and colour fringing.

4. You are able to adjust the exposure before opening your file fully for editing - very handy!

5. You can alter the white balance of your image, so if you have accidentally left the white balance set for indoor lighting and then spent all day taking landscape shots outdoor - you can correct the hideous colour cast that will be on all your images (No, I haven't done this - but it's only a matter of time and you'll be able to hear the swearing).

6. You have far greater control over colour adjustments like "Vibrance", "Saturation", "Contrast", "Fill Light" and black levels.

7. You can use the "Recover" option to better control any black and white "clipping" in the image - that's where all the detail will be lost in total shadow or blown out to white highlights. The slider allows you to put back the detail in these areas.

8. Opening a RAW file will give you the ability to tailor several exposures of the same image, processing each version for a different result before merging them into a single file. This gives you the ability for example, to process a landscape shot for the foreground exposure and again for the sky, which would typically be bleached out - then merge the two.

9. If you shoot RAW, you can archive your raw file and your processed version so you will always have access to the original.

10. It's comedy gold for all sorts of "naked shooting" double entendres

So there you go - after all that, if you're still saving your files as fun sized jpegs, what is wrong with you people, get with the program here and start doing it in the raw!

You know you want to!


As usual, if you're enjoying this stuff at all - let me know and please click the "follow" link. Happy shooting!

Put you on it - Ansel Adams

My intention with this blog, as well as being a bit informative and hopefully humorous, is also to direct people to the work of some of the great photographers who's work I find inspirational and exciting.

The entire reason for me getting into photography in the first place, is a love of the outdoors and the beautiful images that can be captured in wild places. Landscape photography speaks to everyone - the opportunities are limitless, and I'll be showcasing some of the greats here – starting with the undisputed, never beaten in the ring, all time champion of the craft – Ansel Easton Adams.

Use the link and have a look at what is justly regarded to be some of the best landscape photography ever shot - the man was a seminal genius…

http://shop.anseladams.com/

Image ©Ansel Adams

Lens Aberration - that can't be good…

I've been putting my camera through it's paces for a few months now, trying new things, having some successes (along with plenty of failures), but one thing that's really starting to bug me is the performance of the kit lens.

I mentioned it in the last post, so I'd like to elaborate a bit here so other users will know what to look for - but the same problems seem to crop up regardless of the lighting conditions and don't seem to be exclusive to the extremes of the focal length.

Now - don't get me wrong here - compared to the majority of compact cameras this is still a great lens and I've found it great for learning the craft and how to use my equipment. And I've captured some great images, but the lens has introduced the same 2 flaws consistently, that - now my eye has become more critical - is really doing my head in!

This shouldn't come as a surprise really as I've noticed quite a few adverts offering the camera body on it's own or with the lens and the price increase is now only £30. When you look at it that way - even factoring in the problems - it's an incredibly cheap lens and pretty good value for money.

But you do only get what you pay for in this life of toil and it shows here

Some things that are bad, sometimes sound nice - binge drinking, joy riding, friendly fire - they all sound nicer than they really are. Lens aberration just sounds straight up nasty though, and here's what to look for if your lens is exhibiting flaws:

1 - colour fringing - this is the number one gripe I have with the 18-55 kit lens. You would expect some colour fringing at the focal length extremes (18 or 55) - or maybe if you shoot straight into the light source, but it seems to happen under most circumstances.

2 - colour noise - this is the equivalent of the grain you would get in some high iso films, and would show as grain in the print. Here it shows as noisy pixels and is most often seen in the sky areas of an outdoor image

An example of both can be seen in this image of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona…

This shows the camera raw image opened in Adobe Camera Raw, for processing into photoshop (this is a great tool and I'll cover it more in a future post). Zoom into the detail though and all is not well!

If you check out this enlargement - you can see the colour fringing clearly along the edge of the building. It shows as a green colour fringe along the edge.

Also the sky areas are fairly noisy. You can see this as a dithering of the pixels across the flat blue of the sky.

On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be any vignetting - that's where the edges of the lens barrel cast a dark halo around the image corners like you're looking down a tube - so it's not all stick and no carrot!

So - time for a top tip here, brace for impact…

Check your images at true 100% magnification on a proper monitor or laptop screen

Never judge the quality of an image by looking at it on the camera LCD screen - everything looks great on there! The true acid test, for all images, is to open the file in your preferred processing application (there are loads - the Nikon "View NX 2" software that is supplied with the camera is great), and view the image at 100%. I usually zoom in to 400% to check mine and that's when all the badness floats to the surface - but at least then you can correct it.

It makes the difference between a good image and a potentially great image.

I'm planning to break up the posts going forward with some diary type posts, some tips and some gear or magazine or book reviews. In addition, my passion is for landscape photography, and I will be posting links to other established photographer's work that I find inspirational, so you can explore their fantastic imagery yourself - kind of a "put you on it"

If you're enjoying the post to date though - please link to follow (I need some followers!) and I will always welcome your feedback.

Taking the plunge…

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I’ve spent the last couple of years wishing more and more that I had access to a camera – but here’s the problem. I wasn’t interested in shooting film.

I know that will have "real photographers" punching themselves in the face in indignant rage, but the whole process of loading the film, calculating the exposure (lightmeters?? wtf) and making the prints seemed mind numbingly laborious – and after all that, you have no real idea what you’ve got until days later. Not for me.

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop for my work for years – digital was the way to go for me!

But the digital cameras that my family had owned were really coming up short. You got the instant results, but the quality was almost always terrible even though some of them had over 10 mega-pixels. I wanted to be able to sell my images on the stock sites I contribute to, so compact point and shoot cameras were out.

So, I gravitated towards a digital SLR. After reading all the magazines (and there’s soooo many) and getting some good advice from a colleague, I narrowed the contenders down to Canon and Nikon. It was a 50/50 choice and while I was weighing things up – Nikon released the D3200 and it swung the deal.

If you want a thorough review here – look online or buy a mag – there are experts who can give you a thorough unbiased report based on years of expert testing. My perspective is from the “learner driver” end of the spectrum.

All the reports I read before and since buying, are pretty much on the money – this is a great camera. And Nikon’s advertising backs this up – anyone can pick it up and get great images as soon as the battery is charged. The price is attractive given the mega-pixel count that the APS-C sensor can capture and the controls are intuitive and easy to get the hang of. I bought the camera with the Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, ordered some spin on filters and a cheap tripod on ebay and I was good to go!

I set out on the Saturday morning after getting my hands on it and staggered back home 5 hours later thinking I was Ansel Adams.

Unfortunately, not only were my feet blistered – my shots were really – for want of a better expression – mehh! They were really only run of the mill snaps and when I looked at them on screen, I realized I had nothing. A thought wormed it’s way into my mind that maybe it’s harder to take good images than I had rashly assumed. Just as everyone wrongly clings to the belief that we’ve all got a book inside us – maybe we can’t all be photographers! (same as we can’t all date supermodels,  go to work on jetpacks or bring about world peace). Maybe I should aim lower – depressing!

Luckily – I pushed through and things have improved, although there’s plenty of distance to go – I’m enjoying the process. Learning to use a sophisticated camera well is only going to take time, and practice makes perfect.

The one major piece of reviewer advice that I think is key with this or any DSLR purchase – the kit lens is fine, but that’s about all. There are some real performance drawbacks with the glass (listen to me using photo-boy terms) and they really impact on the performance of the camera back. The 18-55mm kit lens has huge problems with colour fringing (look out for a specific post coming soon), and tends to make the images “noisy”. I was getting really down-heartened, worrying that it was due to the camera performing badly, but it is down to the lens choice. 

I’ve just bought a 50mm prime as my second lens purchase and I’ll be able to compare the 2, but if I was buying today, I’d be tempted to go with the camera back on it’s own and buying a 35 or 50mm prime. The price is roughly the same but the quality of the glass is way better. Hindsight is 50/50.

So, to sum up…

1. Digital photograph good

2. Camera great

3. Skills poor

4. Lens, a bit wafty! Not terrible, and great for practicing, but certainly not capable of what I'm trying to achieve.

It can only go upward from here!

Please leave me some feedback if you're enjoying these posts - I welcome your messages and hope you'll keep following the posts!

Lense virgin!

Actually, that's not strictly true - but it had been a good long while since I'd owned a camera. Long enough that the entire digital SLR thing had happened without me!

 

By way of a brief introduction, I'll just introduce myself and fill in a bit of background…
My name's Richard Evans - I've been working as a graphic designer and illustrator for around 25 years. I've worked with digital images daily, retouching and comping with the best - but until this year, I hadn't picked up a camera since I was in art school.

This wasn't laziness or anything like that - I just didn't own a camera! Everybody else in my family has one, but what with the price of kids shoes and the intimidating level of blokey f-stop rubbish, I just thought that it's not for me. I'd see people on holiday humping around 8 stone of camera baggage and chuckled inwardly at how they were documenting the scene without actually enjoying being there.

But during this time, I'll have to admit, there has been a growing desire to get into photography as an artistic outlet. A camera is another creative tool  after all - just a lot more expensive than a pencil. How hard can it be?

I took the plunge and lashed out a bunch of cash on a Nikon D3200 (I'll expand on this in my next posting) and haven't looked back.

So here's the reason for starting a blog!

Buying a piece of camera equipment is just the first step into the mind bogglingly complex world of digital photography. If all you want to do is point and click, that's great - bash on! There are way worse things you can waste your money on than a good camera and you'll have a blast filling up those SD cards!
 
If, on the other hand, like me, you'd like to be able to capture the kind of images that stand out from the crowd - stick with me! We can rope up and climb the steep learning curve together!


As a creative, I know what makes an image special. I can appreciate the craft and attention to detail, the composition and creative flair. To capture these qualities in an image is a much trickier undertaking though. I've made almost all the mistakes that people attribute to beginners - hopefully, by documenting my misadventures here, you can avoid falling into the same pits!

I saw a short video recently where the photographer was talking about the beginners frustration at not being able to produce a great image, and it really resonated with me.  He said that, as creatives, we all have innate good taste when it comes to images - we know what we like and this can be frustrating to the beginner when their images just don't have that special something.

His advice was to just push through this early phase, shooting as much as possible and you will eventually match up your images with your expectations. It'll take about 7 years on average! Now - that's a long time, but being good at anything takes time - I've been repelling women consistently for years now but it took dedicated practice to get that good (just kidding). I came away reassured by this advice and with each day's shooting, my images are stronger and better composed. I know in my mind what I want to be shooting though, and there's some years to go yet until I'm there!

Stick with it and we'll all be taking the kind of images we're proud of!

If you want to leave me your comments that'd be great - I'll be aiming to post on a weekly basis and trying to address the kind of issues and topics that I find interesting, funny or frustrating as I try to take better images - see you next posting