The right stuff, but what about technique?

I was at a panel discussion event the other night, off to the side was the official event photographer who was working the event. I couldn't help but notice him, not because he was disruptive but simply because I wanted to observe another photog at work.

Now what I way say in the rest of this post may be a critique, but the important thing is quality result. I was not able to see any of the results - and they may have been great, but if you see yourself described below and you are NOT happy with your image sharpness then my observations may be helpful.

The other thing to highlight is that there is rarely only one way to do something. So if you have another technique that works, please share.

1. Hand holding a 70-200 f/2.8 lens or any other lens with a tripod foot.
This is what this kind of lens looks like:

Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L IS II

The photog in question had the foot hanging down where the tripod would be. As a result he was awkwardly weaving his fingers around the foot, often holding the weight on his finger tips.

Ideally you want to carry the weight of this lens at the base of your palm. So loosen the ring and swing it around to the side or top and tighten. The lens barrel can now be nicely cradled in your palm. The tripod foot can easily be swung back into position if needed.

2. Proper posture.

Our mystery photog had glue on his feet. He would often zoom with his neck meaning his weight is way off centre. There was no major restrictions on where he could have stood, in fact he would often take a step forward take a n image and then zoom with his neck backwards. He just did not use his feet. So unless you have some constraint on your motion and your zoom range on your lens always move your body so that you are centered and stable.

3. Use your body for support
The final thing I observed is that the photog supported his lens with his hand but would flare his elbow out to the side. This means he would be easily susceptible to muscle fatigue. He would likely be better off to drop your elbow straight down and rest it on your rib cage. I suppose if your heart was really jumping our of your rib cage it might be better to float your elbow away from ribs, but generally you would be better of to use it as a rest. Don't forget to hold your breath while actually taking the picture. For some further tips on this check out this video from Joe McNally:




Today's Assignment: Grab your body and put on your biggest lens. Practice different techniques for holding it, both in horizontal and vertical positions. Don't forget to control your breathing as you press the shutter.

Advanced Assignment: Do this with every lens you have and also try a variety of stances like knelling down low, waist level , etc.

Tractor and Plough - Revisit

Some of you may have seen my Plough (or Plow) post from Monday. I want to revisit one of the pictures and focus on the a technique which can be helpful in some cases. The technique is "tone mapping", some may think of it also known as HDR. But in today's discussion, 'tone mapping' is the technique.

As I wrote on Monday, when I first saw this equipment, it was somewhat early in the morning and it was bathed in some pretty decent light. I couldn't stop and take the picture then and I returned in mid-afternoon. The light was not nearly as good. The resulting images were not like the scene I had seen in the morning, they were somewhat flat and dull.

I am in the processing of writing a tutorial on HDR and tone mapping and as part of that process I have been working on improving some of my skills in that part of image processing. For practice, I picked one of the tractor series.

The first image below is the result of some of that practice and I have repeated the same image from Monday for easy comparison. I am sure you can easily see the difference. The tractors colours have more pop and if you look inside the tire you can see some detail.

The bottom image was the best I could achieve with Lightroom. The top image was processed with Photomatix Pro (as a Lightroom plug-in). One of the complaints held by many is that the images don't look natural. Although this image is not what I saw in the afternoon, it is very close to what caught my eye in the morning.

By the way, I almost always shoot in RAW format, which means I have more colour and brightness data to work with, which would not be the case if I were to shot in JPG format only. I'll explain this in more detail in the forth coming tutorial.

Which image do you prefer?


1/800 f/4.5 ISO 400 @ 73 mm Canon EOS 40D, processed with Photomatix Pro

Victoria Square,Markham,Ontario

1/800 f/4.5 ISO 400 EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 73 mm Canon EOS 40D
Victoria Square,Markham,Ontario

I Am Not the Centre of the Universe

But this picture might make it look like I am. My friend Joe P, pointed out this tutorial on creating 'planet shaped' images. I finally got around to creating one myself.

I started by taking my camera and tripod up to my roof top. Warning: Attempt this at your own risk - I cannot be held responsible for any damage to your camera equipment if you fall of your roof (or you either). I shot fifteen overlapping images .My technique for overlapping uses the right and left most focus squares along the centre line of my viewfinder.

I frame up my first shot, press the shutter, take note of what is in the right hand square and then reframe so that the left hand square is in the exact same spot and take the next image. This way I get a consistent overlap of about 25%.

Once again I tried to stitch in photoshop. It just did not produce a good result. So I dropped them into MS ICE which produced a very good result which you can see here.

After exporting the image from ICE as a jpg I took that into photoshop and followed there directions with one small variation. When I followed there directions the white circle that you see in my image below did not exist and my entire roof was very pincushioned. So I made the image, almost square - 90% high and then added a white border on the top edge (Image - Canvass size) to add the remaining 10% to make the square. Then I applied the polor coordinates.



P.S. Thanks Joe for the tip.