Do yourself a favor and check to see if your camera has a feature called Auto ISO. It is really cool especially if you shoot in Aperture Priority (Av) mode.

So to backtrack a little bit, Aperture Priority mode means that all you have to do is select your desired aperture and the camera figures out what proper shutter speed it should use to give your a decently exposed image. Now I say “decent” because it isn’t always dead on. By default, the camera exposes for what it assumes is 18% gray. If you have a light skinned bride in a white dress then you want her to appear light or white in the image. That is where Exposure Compensation comes into play. If you need your image is under exposed (check the histogram) then dial the exposure compensation up to +0.7 or so. Vice versa if the image is too bright.

Now you still have to set your ISO but that can be a pain OR your shutter speed may end up getting set by the camera so that it is way to slow and causes camera shake or unwanted motion blur. This is where AUTO ISO comes in handy. When you enable Auto ISO on your camera, you also set a minimum shutter speed that you do not want to go slower than. For me, I toy between 1/60″ and 1/80″. You also get to pick what your minimum and maximum ISO should be. This is beneficial if your camera doesn’t have awesome files at higher ISOs. Simply set the maximum ISO to the best high ISO files that your camera can produce. For me, I have no problem going to ISO 6400 on my D700 as long as I can ensure my images will not be under-exposed even in the slightest.

So after you set your Auto ISO up then it is time to rock and roll. What goes on in the camera is that it takes your minimum shutter speed into consideration when it’s figuring out what value to use. IF the needed shutter speed is slower than your minimum then it automatically bumps up your ISO to let in more light for you and thus, allowing you to shoot at faster shutter speeds.

Hope this helps. Please comment below if you use Auto ISO and share your thoughts. Enjoy and be inLIGHTin’ed.

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones,

Man, I never expected my workshops to go so well last year. The feedback has been so great and I got to meet a ton of amazing up and coming photographers. It is always great being able to share knowledge with others and I know that I have learned so much since 2009 and how I can better “inLIGHTin” future students of mine.

The only downside is that these workshops have really had me booked solid without any breathing room. My workshops and my photo business (www.ParamourPhoto.com) made it so that I really had no free time with my wife and child. I still love doing what I do but the photo business is my main priority. The only way to really make things work is for me to raise my workshop prices for 2010. Prices last year were VERY affordable and you got years of knowledge in a 6 hour seminar. Now, prices will remain on the affordable side, unlike other workshops, with only a $100 price increase for my one-on-one workshops.

I would really like to do more group workshops. This will be another way for me to get you all the most bang for your buck. I can keep prices lower when multiple people attend and I can reach more people in one day as opposed to individual sessions so it is a big win-win situation.

I also want to branch out past Buffalo, NY so if you aren’t a Buffalo native and would like to host a workshop in your town then be sure to get in touch with me and to set something up. Those who host a workshop get a lot of perks such as a free admission, complimentary phone consultation and other special goodies.

Thank you all for such a great 2009. I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2010 and hope to see you all very soon at one of my workshops.
~Michael

Hello everyone.
So much for my daily posts huh? Man it has been a busy couple months but I cannot complain. I feel like I am coming down with a cold of some sort which is going to be some good times.

Anyways, I have been receiving a bunch of emails asking where I have been so I just wanted to update you all on what is going on. I do have a lot of posts ready to go and be released. Hopefully this winter will slow down enough for me to get back into the game and post more tips and tricks over here on a more regular basis. The primary slowdown is from me wanting to shoot more videos and less text but that eats up a lot of time to push up to the site.

So I hope everyone is well and that you are having yourselves a prosperous year.

Keep checking back for more content to be added… eventually.

I came across an amazing video that I just have to share with you all.

It really hits home in the grand scheme of things and is a MUST SEE, especially for everyone who has a camera in their hands.

Here is another one that is equally as motivational! I am at a loss for words.

WOW! Thanks to Zack Arias for putting this piece together and sharing it with the photography community.

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones!

Long time no see. How has everyone been lately?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am always thinking and brainstorming… For example, I should be editing a wedding right now. Instead, I have finally came up with where I want to direct my inLIGHTin Workshops. Before I get going, these are all good things! I am in no way, shape or form stopping these workshops so you can let out that sigh of relief now haha ;P

Now in my head I always seen a ‘loop-hole’ in my workshops so to speak… I basically held up a sign that said, “come to me if you want to know anything and everything about photography…” That was ideally what my one-on-one workshops did. You came to me with what you wanted to learn and I taught it. However, in my 5 year plan, I planned on doing more speaking engagements, group workshops and team learning (both locally and on a national level)… How can I get to that point when I only affect one photographer at a time? Also, do I want to be known as the guy who is like the Bob Villa of photography or do I want to be known for being an expert in my strengths and passions? Why give you an overall general knowledge base of things when I can hone into the nitty gritty and provide you with more concentrated content. These are the questions that I have been racking my brain on and here is my answer!

I have a new direction for the inLIGHTin Workshops which will be effective immediately:
All future inLIGHTin Workshops will be conducted in a group environment and the topics of these workshops are now divided into four categories: Lighting, Post-Processing/Workflow, Photography 101 and Nature/Landscape Photography. These are the disciplines that I am most passionate about and love to teach. My lighting workshops cater to my passion for portrait photography. The nature/landscape workshops combine my love for traveling, sight seeing and fine art landscapes. Post-processing and workflow lets out the inner geek in myself and the photography 101 courses will be my way of giving back to the industry. We all started off somewhere so these Photography 101 workshops will get my students more comfortable with their cameras and hopefully help them to acquire a new found love and passion for photography.

Take a look at the following link for more information on what these workshops entail: http://www.inlightinworkshop.com/about/

I will most definitely still offer one-on-one workshops but they will come at a premium and on a more limited basis. Please contact me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com for more information.

I also hope to start taping these workshops and am looking to partner up with a videographer to help this vision become a reality. If you miss the workshop then you can always have access to it via these videos.

All in all, I have big, big plans for The inLIGHTin Workshop and I thank you for being on-board! If you are interested in hosting an inLIGHTin Workshop in your neck of the woods then please email me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com .

These workshops have always and will still be 110% about YOU. Therefore, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments so please comment on the blog below and let me know your feedback.

Thanks for reading and for all your support!
Michael

Hello everyone. Today I want to talk about Aperture Priority (Av for short) Mode on your cameras. I think this setting will really help you to get the images you want without fiddling too much with your camera settings.

Please refer to your camera’s manual to see how to change your camera’s shooting modes. Every camera is different so the four different modes (M, Av, Tv, P) could appear on a knob that turns, it could require your to hold down a button and move a command dial or none of the above. While you have that user’s manual open, it might be helpful to give it a read…

So let’s do a quick review of the camera modes before we go any further.
Manual Mode (M): Enabling this requires that you the photographer has to set the shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Basically, you have full control over the camera in order to have the most creative control over your exposure.
Aperture Priority Mode (Av): This setting is a lot like Manual Mode, BUT you only have to set the Aperture and ISO. The camera takes those two settings and then goes ahead and computes the proper Shutter Speed for an average exposure. But what happens when we want the CORRECT exposure? We’ll dive into that a little later.
Shutter Priority Mode (Tv): This setting is the opposite of Aperture Priority mode. We set the Shutter Speed and ISO while the camera figures out the proper Aperture. The camera also computes an average exposure for you that sometimes needs to be overridden. The Tv in the abbreviation there stands for Time by the way. I can safely say that I have NEVER used this setting EVER!
Program Mode (P): This setting is used by many people when they first get their cameras and are still learning. Program Mode is the “safe” setting. It figures out the Shutter Speed and Aperture for you all the time to once again to compute a “safe” setting so your photo comes out fairly decent. All you have to worry about is the ISO… If you don’t even want to mess with the ISO then there is a full auto mode. On Canon camera’s, it is represented as a green square. Basically, that is the mode you set it to when you give it to your grandmother so she can take a picture for you. haha.

Now, I posed a question earlier about the Av, Tv and P camera modes and how the camera decides upon a middle of the road setting for Shutter Speed and Aperture. More often than not, the setting the camera chooses is not correct. For example, if you are photographing something that is mostly white, then the image will be kinda gray and under-exposed and vice versa for black. There you have a black subject but it will over-expose the image so it appears gray. Don’t worry there are ways to get around this… Want to know how? Glad you asked.

There is a little something called EXPOSURE COMPENSATION and the button looks like this:

Exposure Compensation works for Av, Tv and P modes. You can set it in Manual mode but it will not affect the image. It will however, affect your flash if in TTL (At least Nikon works this way). So Exposure Compensation is the tool we need to tell the camera that it is giving us the wrong exposures (thus images are too light or too dark) and that we want more (by setting a + number) or less (by setting a – number) light to enter the camera. See the camera is nothing but a computer. All it knows is ones and zeros. Therefore, it doesn’t know that you are photographing a landscape at sunset or sparklers on the Fourth of July. All it does is take a light meter reading and gives us a safe set of settings. The camera can, and more often than not, gets fooled. All we have to do is hold down that exposure compensation button and use our command dial to set it to a plus or minus value. In this digital age, we can simply take a photo and physically see how the exposure looks. We have Highlight Warning to tell if we blew out our highlight, we have our Histogram to tell where all the pixels in our image are falling within the limits or not and we have the actual image for us to critique with our own eyes. So take a test picture and make your adjustments as needed. It is always important to adjust the Exposure Compensation and then check every once in a while to make sure your lighting didn’t change!

Also, make sure to zero out your Exposure Compensation settings before you are done shooting. You may have had a +2 for a backlit condition but when you pick up the camera again you may not remember that you had it set to that high of a value. Zeroing it out gives you one less possible thing to troubleshoot.

Now, I use Av mode a ton during weddings. The wedding is a fast paced event at times so I need a setting that will keep up. I also use Av sometimes for portraits, when outside and under varying lighting. I love being able to adjust my aperture and control my depth of field and then have the camera set the shutter speed for me. Of course I know how to set my Shutter Speed, but sometimes I miss “the moment” because I am moving my camera to the proper Shutter Speed. In Av mode, the camera sets the Shutter Speed to what I would have set it to, just faster!

Thanks for reading and I will talk to you again real soon!

I have been a photographer for over 12 years now. To some, that’s how long they have been shooting film alone! However, even though I am only 26 years old, I’ve made my way through the ranks and have been blessed to actually have shot with film, developed it in the darkroom and even wound my own film! With that being said, I’ve used and acquired a lot of camera equipment. And by a lot, I mean A LOT!

Technology is changing so fast that it can be easy to get caught in this “age of obsolescence” where new tech comes out every month. Combine that with forums and internet chatter about the new gear just in case you weren’t enticed enough to get it already. In all honesty, itt is like “keeping up with the Jonses” except on a national level.

So where am I going with this? Photography is expensive… But good news! Today’s cameras are allowing your money to go further. How so? Easy…

Way back in 2001, I had a Nikon D100. This camera was a workhorse. BUT, it sucked at low light. AF acquisition was okay and good luck with noise after ISO 800… Nothing like today’s cameras. So way back in 2001, that D100 ran me a good $1600 or so. I paired that up with a Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 variable aperture zoom lens and that was my setup for quite some time… As you can imagine, I needed a speedlight for a lot of my work in order to have enough light since the lens was definitely not the fastest in Nikon’s fleet.

I managed but it was tough! All in all, that was my gear for 2-3 years. A Nikon D100, SB-800 Speedlight and a 28-105mm zoom lens. All that totaled about $3000 back in 2001. So what can we get for $3000 today?

The money is the same but the features and equipment of today far surpasses what I had to use back then!

Basically all D-SLRs allow you to take control of the following: Shutter speed, aperture and ISO controls. These three items are the basis for photography. The shutter speed and aperture hasn’t changed. However, recent ISO improvements in the current array of cameras have been huge for photographers! My Nikon D700 (D3 too) can get me to ISO 26,500!!! That is madness. Remember me complaining about files coming out of my D100 that were taken at ISO 800? I can now handhold my camera in darker conditions, without a flash I might add, and get superior images than before. What does this mean for today’s photographers? First off, we can save a boat load of money by choosing those slower, variable aperture lenses!

Here are two lenses:
The first is my Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 and the other is my old Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5.

Images courtesy of www.KenRockwell.com

So that 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 ran me around $350 back in the day. What is the price of the 24-70mm f/2.8?? About $1800! That is quite the difference in price… What could you do with that $1500 in savings?

Now let me first start off this comparison by saying that the 24-70mm is one of my favorite lenses. It is sharp at every aperture and could be my one and only lens. I love it! If you have the money to pick one up then I would highly suggest making it your first lens purchase! This article is written for those just starting out or who may be wanting to take the jump to digital so keep that in mind as you are reading this!

So the main difference in specs is the fast fixed f/2.8 vs. the slower, variable aperture f/3.5-f/4.5 lens.

f/2.8 to f/4 is a reduction of 1 stop of light… This is a fact. The difference between the two lenses is a loss of 1.3 stops of light. Long story shot… Big friggen’ deal! 1.3 stops of light is nothing in this day and age. Another big perk is that a lot of these cheaper “kit lenses” as they are also called is the fact that they are now coming with VR built in. Canon calls this IS and others have their own unique name. VR stands for Vibration Reduction. Essentially, there is a floating element inside the lens that moves when enabled and helps correct for camera shake at slower shutter speeds. VR lenses essentially can give you three to four extra stops of light by being able to shoot at slower shutter speeds. Pretty cool huh? Just make a mental note that VR capabilities fix camera shake that is caused on the photographer’s end. It helps correct shake from hand holding the camera and shaking or a wobbly tripod. If you are shooting at 1/25″ second then don’t expect your moving SUBJECT to be still… The camera will still pick up blur from your subjects moving so keep that in mind!

Now the 28-105mm lens seems to be extinct but there are other amazing lenses out there that are ripe for the taking. Many of these newer lenses have the VR option too which is pretty sweet. As a matter of fact, I wrote this article and it encouraged me to pick up the Nikkor 80-400mm f/4-5.6D VR lens. But more on that later…

So here are some Nikon lenses that are in the $300 price range and rock.
Nikon 50mm f/1.8D Prime Lens: $130 (Look maw, f/1.8! Wow. This really means hello low light photography!)
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 IF AF-S DX VR: $219
Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX VR ED: $360
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 ED AF-S DX: $170

What do all those letters mean in the lens name?
ED = Extra-low Dispersion. This came about around 1960-1975′ish and it is a better quality glass that is used for the lens elements. It is harder and helps correct for chromatic aberration (green and magenta color fringes around the edges of your subject).
IF = Internal Focusing. This means that when the auto-focus is activated, the glass elements move inside the lens. This means that the lenses have a shorter focusing distance and can help the lens focus quicker.
DX = the short hand name for the sensor in crop cameras like the D40, D90 and D300 DSLRs (to name a few). When a lens has this in it’s name that means that it is optimized for crop cameras. This is because the lenses have smaller image circles to pair up with the smaller sensors. If you were to put a DX lens on an FX body then the result would be a big loss in resolution. Don’t get me wrong, FX camera bodies would work with these lenses. It is just that my 12mp full frame D700 would end up giving me 6mp images and would basically do the DX cropping for me.
FX = the short hand name for full frame sensors like the ones found in the D700, D3 and D3x DSLRs. Lenses do not have this in their name. It is more of a camera abbreviation.
PC = Perspective Control. This is another name for tilt-shift lenses. These are specialty lenses designed primarily for architectural photography.
Older lenses may have the abbreviations: NIC, SIC or RF to them. I wouldn’t get too caught up with these. If you are buying new equipment, then stick with the newer tech.

So we covered lenses, now it’s time to dive into camera bodies. I would suggest a Nikon D300 ($1500) or the newly announced D300s ($1800). Typically, camera’s that have an ‘X’ appended to their name (i.e. the Nikon D40 vs. the D40x and the Nikon D3 vs the D3x) means that there is a resolution improvement. The D40 was around 6mp while the D40x was in the 10mp range and the D3 is a 12mp camera while the D3x is a whopping 24mp! When you see an ‘S’ appended to the model then that more or less means that the camera has feature upgrades. (i.e. the Nikon D2X vs. D2Xs and the Nikon D300 vs. the D300s)This includes, adding more menu options, video mode, screen size and other various bells and whistles of the like. When a camera has a DX format sensor, that means that it is not the same size as 35mm film. Instead, the sensor is smaller. It is cheaper to make (due to less silicon) and has something called a crop factor (aka lens multiplier) to it. Think about it… If you drew a picture on a large piece of paper and then put smaller tracking paper over it and copied whatever you could then you would only be able to trace a portion of the drawing. The tracing would appear to be A ZOOMED IN version of your original drawing. So if you have a 50mm lens on both a DX and FX camera… The image coming out of the DX camera would appear to be zoomed in. Nikon and other camera companies do the conversion math for you and came up with like 1.3, 1.5 or 1.6x crop factors. All you need to know is that when you throw a lens on your DX camera, just multiply whatever your current focal length is by the crop factor. Let’s do one for an example: I have my D300 with a 1.5x crop factor and mount a Nikkor 70-200mm lens on it. What zoom range do I REALLY have?

70mm X 1.5x = 105mm
200mm X 1.5x = 300mm

So I get more zoom out of that lens with my D300 than I would with my full frame D700. Got it? Good. Back to the topic at hand now…

The D300 has the ability to shoot at ISO 6400… If you wanted to spend more money and drop $2500 on a D700, not only will you get a full frame sensor, but the ability to shoot up to ISO 25,600! If you think back to my D100 which got up to ISO 1600 (without looking like complete garbage) then the D300 will give you an extra 2 stops of light (while the low noise in the image still looking good) or up to 4 stops of light with the D700. Worse case scenario, throw your image into a software plug-in like Neat Image or Noise Ninja to fix the noise in the pics.

In conclusion, you don’t have to drop $30k on slew of camera equipment. You can if you want but you can still have fun and take great pics with a $3,000 setup. Can you purchase cameras that are cheaper? Sure… There are DSLRs in the $500 price range. In my experience though, I found that if you spend that little bit extra and get yourself into the $1500 price range then you will have yourself a very nice camera that won’t be missing an important feature or two and will last you a lot longer. I found that people who start off with the $500 camera’s end up moving up to the $1500 cameras and then take a loss when trying to sell their old one… Just spend the extra money because it will come back and bite you in the butt later on. Lenses; You can get away with a $300-$500 lens no sweat.

So this article was really inspiring to me. Inspiring to cost me money at least. I recently purchased the Nikon D300 (non S version) and paired it up with that 80-400mm VR lens I mentioned earlier. This combo is just killer and can do a lot of damage (in a good way)! This camera/lens combo ran me about $3,000. The perfectionist/snob in me required myself to pick up a MB-10 battery grip for the D300 and RRS (Really Right Stuff) brackets and mounts for the camera and lens. For me, I like having the battery pack and the RRS stuff makes tripod shooting super steady and tight and gives me the sharpest images possible.

This article hit me when I had the Nikon 600mm f/4 lens arrive at my doorstep. I am a NPS member and had one shipped to me as a loaner. It was heavy, bulky and costs upwards of $10,000!!! Sure it was sharper than sharp and was extremely cool to use but good luck taking it with you on an airplane or for hikes. Heck anywhere outside of your house for that matter

I have been eyeing up a crop camera for some time. The D300 is a staple and is a very nice camera so I went with that. I was toying with the 80-400mm f/4-5.6 lens and the 200-400mm f/4 lens (about a $5,000 price difference) when it hit me… GET THE D300 AND 80-400mm LENS AND SAVE $2,000!!!

With the D300 and the 80-400mm, my effective focal lengths are 120-600mm f/4-5.6! Not too shabby. The VR will help with camera shake at those effective focal lengths which is a huge help. I saved myself (and my back) probably 20lbs of camera gear and I have the same focal length… Sure I can’t use teleconverters and I lose a stop of light being at f/5.6 and all but who thought there wouldn’t be a catch somewhere in this?

I knew that going into the purchase. For me, $3,000 is worth the expense for how often I go out shooting birds and wildlife while not taking a huge $10,000 hit for a lens that will REALLY see no use…

I am not dogging the 600mm lens in any way. I am just being realistic with my shooting and weighing in the pros and cons to both. I would say that the 200-40mm f/4 lens is probably the best option for travel, quality and price over the 600mm lens.

Hopefully this article will at least open your eyes up and maybe even save you a few dollars in the process.
Thanks for reading and check out my new articles next week!

Digital SLR cameras allow you to toggle between using a couple of different file types for your images. Most camera models actually allow you to record both file types simultaneously. However, I get asked what these different file types are a lot! So first things first, lets cover what they are…

JPEG: JPEG files is a very common file type (probably because it was agreed upon by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee back in like 1994 or so, and the initials make up the file name). A JPEG is basically a method of compressing an image. This compression can be adjusted for size and image quality constraints. This means that these files can vary greatly. If you opt for better image quality over file size then it will take up more space on your memory card, hard drive and whatnot. Keeping the file size down and sacrificing in quality (shrunk for the web and for download purposes) could also be important given your specific needs. In your camera menu, you can choose between various JPEG settings. There is compressed/uncompressed, JPEG Fine, Normal and Basic, or something along those lines. My Nikon’s for example ask me for Size Priority (which is default) or Optimal Quality. I always set my camera’s to the latter option. My JPEG file size is always set to JPEG Fine for the best quality possible. I get the largest JPEG files under these circumstances but also the best image. JPEG Normal and Basic give you smaller files with lesser detail and will not produce an optimal image. The problem with JPEGs is that it is a compressed format. You can notice it in the files too… Take a look at the blocks that start to appear in the file with different levels of compression. The first file is the largest in size while the last one is the smallest. This is due to sacrificing image detail.

The cool thing about JPEG is that you can instantly do SOMETHING with the images that you just took. First off, you can set the sharpness, saturation and contrast of your images in camera and the JPEG will take those settings into affect. That means your images can look good and edited at time of capture. No the file can’t do skin retouching or whatnot so Photoshop ‘may’ still be needed. However, for all intents and purposes shooting in JPEG is very convenient. That means you can run over to a photo lab and start printing right then and there. You could also go back home and push those images to Flickr, Facebook, MySpace or even blog about the pics. Not so easy with RAW!

Now, I only shoot JPEG when shooting sports. That is it! Why? Well because of a little something called RAW! JPEGs are good for sports because it allows me to store more files on my memory card and so I can take more photos in burst when ramping up to the apex of the play. This ensures me that I get the shot. Now let’s talk about RAW.

RAW: A RAW file is the closest thing to a Film Negative. That is why RAW files are quite often called digital negatives. Mind you, I can get well over 1000+ images on a 16gb memory card when shooting JPEG and only 800 when shooting RAW. That means you will get less shots per memory card but it is WELL worth it! Each camera provider has their own type of RAW file. That means if you shoot Canon, your file extensions will be a *.CR2, Nikon will be a *.NEF and so on for every other camera company. With a RAW file, the in-camera sharpness, saturation and contrast settings are thrown away and it is up to you to set all those things when editing the photos. This is good and bad… The good is that you can fine tune every image. The bad is that you HAVE to edit every image. You also need special RAW processing software to do so enter Photoshop Camera RAW, Lightroom, Aperture, Capture One and various others. A plus is that your camera should come with their own software to edit their RAW images with as well to save some cash. The big perk with having to edit all your files is that you can always add or remove sharpness, contrast, saturation or whatever else. A lot of the software handles RAW images in a non-destructive manor so you can always get back to square one if you mess things up. Good luck trying to lessen those effects in a JPEG! Once you set them in camera then you are pretty much married to them unless you want to do massive Photoshop work to correct.

So another perk about RAW files is the fact that you have more flexibility. If you blow out highlights in a JPEG image then you can do very little to get the data in the white area back. RAW files have a lot more flexibility and have brought images back to usable conditions that were 2-3 stops under/over exposed. There is even highlight recovery sliders that will bring back highlight detail for you. So this is good especially if you are new to photography, maybe new to Manual mode and doing the settings on your own or whatever… By having the flexibility you can play with your settings and know that you sort of have that “fail safe” of being able to have that added recovery mechanism if need be. This also means one can start getting careless and to start relying on software to fix their images. Remember, garbage in = garbage out! It is always best to start with a well exposed image for the most flexibility with your images. End of story! Another great feature is the white balance correction. With RAW, you can click on a gray, black or white point and instantly get a better (and more accurate) color rendition of your image. JPEG requires a lot more clickity clicking to fix in Photoshop.

Something else that is a HUGE help with RAW images is that you can do something called batch processing in the RAW software. That means you can edit one image and apply the same setting to as many other images as you want. Take a look at my little article and video on batch processing HERE. This can REALLY save you time.

Now for the cons to RAW… You cannot go to a photo kiosk and get your recent pics printed until you go to a computer and work on them and then export them to a JPEG. Another con are the file sizes and storage situations. You need bigger memory cards, hard drive space and quite often find yourself having to save both the RAW and JPEG file on your computer… That means pay up for external hard drives! Another thing with the computers is that the RAW processing does take a toll on the processor and memory so you should have a fairly well decked out computer with like 2-4gb RAM and a decent processor. This will ultimately help you save time and so you can spend less time waiting for your computer to chug away on various actions.

All in all, the cons are nothing to me compared to the pros of shooting in RAW. Back in the day it was a toss-up between JPEG and RAW but nowadays, the technology of both the hardware and software have made RAW the best file type to use for photographers.

I would love to hear your thoughts so comment below. Thanks for reading and check back for a Master Class Monday article.

I was introduced to photography in High School, around 1997. Immediately fell in love with it. I rolled my own film, worked in the darkroom and did all that fun stuff. I made the switch to digital around late 2001 and that really appealed to me as well. I was majoring in computer science so digital made the inner-geek in me absolutely ecstatic. I have learned A LOT through these 12 or so years of being a photographer. There are so many things that, for lack of a better word, were revelations. I mean these things could have made my photos so much better, cut my workflow in half or even could have just made things so much easier. Want me to share my top 5 with you?

Haha I thought you would never ask…

1.) Your Light Meter Measures Everything as 18% Gray: I was fooled for the longest time on this one. I have no idea why I never read it anywhere or figured it out on my own. This was a huge “A-Ha” moment for me. Handheld and in-camera camera light meters are made to read 18% gray at the center. I always thought that the center line in the camera’s viewfinder was the perfect exposure but that isn’t the case. The result was me always tweaking my photos plus or minus a stop or so. If I photographed something that was bright then my photos would be under exposed and vice versa for dark scenes. So I figured out that 18% gray is meant to be the middle ground and it is up to the photographer to take that data and make good use of it. So a bride in a white dress along a white wall needs MORE light to turn that middle gray into about +1 eV on the light meter. If you have a groom in a black tux along a black wall then you need to let LESS light in so that light meter better be about -1 eV.

Digital is a beautiful thing so you can enable highlight warnings in camera and see if you are overexposing any part of the scene. If you see those “blinkies” all over your subject then that should tell you to calm your exposure down a bit…

2.) Lenses Matter: I didn’t invest into good glass until about 2006. I was using kit lenses which were often very slow and had variable apertures. Slow lenses are ones that are in the f/4-5.6 f-stop range and variable aperture lenses are cheaper zoom lenses and the f-stop changes when you zoom in and out. For example, if you have an 18-200mm lens then you may be at f/4 at 18mm but when you zoom up to 200mm then you will see your minimum aperture change as well up to f/5.6… I was a Nikon shooter from 2001 to 2006. I wasn’t happy with what I had and made the switch to Canon for a year. I HATED the quality control issues Canon had and made the switch back to Nikon a year or so ago. Now I am super happy with my camera equipment… What changed since going from Nikon to Canon and back? My lenses. I didn’t have expensive glass the first time but did when I moved to Canon. After selling that stuff off, I bought expensive glass from Nikon and boy what a difference! My photos were sharper, my color accuracy was better out of camera and the faster lenses (some with VR or “vibration reduction” / IS or “image stabilization” for Canon shooters) made it so I could take pictures relatively anywhere. Before I had the faster lenses, it seemed like I was always somewhere that didn’t have enough light to shoot at shutter speeds faster than 1/60″. Anything in that range or slower means camera shake or motion blur. Not always ideal for photos! Once I got lenses in the f/1.2 to f/2.8 range then that all went out the door. Suddenly I had new shutter speeds available to me that were faster than 1/60″ shutter speeds. Some fast prime lenses can get you in this ballpark with ease. A 50mm Nikon or Canon f/1.8 lens can be as cheap as $100. Check out Amazon.com for that kind of stuff because they have great deals on camera equipment. Won’t break the bank and it will get you some real nice results. Makes a great birthday gift too ;)

3.) Make Backups and Backups of your Backups: I had a great time at Myrtle Beach in 2004. Took lots of killer pictures and great memories of my girlfriend (now my wife) and I. It was also a bittersweet time because my wife, Rebecca, found out that her Great Grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. I managed to get some real nice pictures of her and her great grandmother before she got real sick. Sure enough, I made only one copy of the above mentioned photos and had them on an external hard drive. Formatted my cards and went about my business shooting everything else. Well, a month later, guess what decided to become a fireball and blow up on me? THAT hard drive. Bye bye photos, bye bye memories. What did I learn? Make backups of your backups!

4.) Shoot RAW: I know there are some JPEG blow hards out there where it is all JPEG or nothing. Good for you. If you don’t want to sit behind a computer after a shoot then no problem. That is about the only reason I would ever even consider shooting exclusively JPEG in this day and age. Memory cards are cheap (I remember paying $200+ for a 512mb card in 2002!), RAW converters are cheap and fast and they do the job. Even my snap shots are done in RAW. WHY? I love the flexibility and love the fact that I can apply the necessary white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness after the shoot depending on my needs. If I shot JPEG then I would be limited to what my settings were at time of capture. Last time I checked, Photoshop has a hard time of getting a correct white balance after the fact and sharpening can always be added but rarely removed! RAW also has more flexibility. In the heat of the moment, maybe you took a beautiful picture but your settings may have been off. If you shoot in RAW and your goof ups are suddenly not throw outs. I have pulled a couple stops back from a file and made it a keeper. If I shot JPEG then it would have been off to the trash can.

5.) It’s Called Workflow not “work-slow”: I remember editing a wedding in 2006 using Adobe Camera Raw. I was editing every photo one by one. I knew nothing about “batch processing” That wedding took me a week and now I can get one fully edited, make a blog post about it AND push it to Pictage within 2 hours tops. RAW converters like Adobe Lightroom are great tools and should be used to their fullest. Use Lightroom Presets, Photoshop Actions and Batch Processing and watch your calendar free up in no time.

There you have it, my top 5 revelations that I know I would have liked to have learned when I started off. Hopefully these can come in handy for you and you can be off to an even better start then when I did.

Thanks for reading!

I was pretty lucky that the stars aligned fairly well for while in California. I came back with a lot of great images that I obviously couldn’t have gotten here in Buffalo. Not too many cacti or mountains around here ;P

I am still going through images from the trip and it inspired me to write this little article here.

So many people focus on camera equipment and computer software but forget that great images simply require you to do your time.
What I mean by this is that the stars essentially have to align with you being there right smack dab in the middle of it all. Sometimes, you being there is fate. There is no easy way to call it anything else. It is just you and the shot right there at the right time. I have seen many powerful images through my various workshops and speaking engagements. These images were taken by self-proclaimed “amateur” photographers. They were at the right place at the right time and snap, they captured it beautifully. However, these powerful images in their portfolio were few and far in-between. It is my goal in this article for you to capture more of those powerful photographs time after time.

I think that Louis Pasteur nailed it best when he said: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
I have been hanging on this quote ever since I heard Ansel Adams say it. He was no slouch when it came to inspiration quotes either. Here are some of my favorites:

“Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter”

“A photograph is not an accident- It is a concept.”

“The ‘machine-gun’ approach to photography – by which many negatives are made with the hope that one will be good – is fatal to serious results.”

“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop”

All of these quotes hold great value to me. How many times do we find ourselves guilty of “machine gun” shooting? I know I am an offender at times. How many times do we put together our portfolio together with quantity in mind and not quality? A portfolio is only as strong as its weakest print. Remember that.

So back to the topic at hand, doing time. For me, taking the time out to research and study what I am about to photograph. If I will be photographing someplace local, I will go to the site and scout out the area. This image is a result of one such scouting trip:

Many of you will really like that image however, it is not available for sale on my fine art site. You may see it as “The Shot” but I see it as a learning experience and knowing when to come back to that area for what will be “The Shot” in my mind. I see the house in the upper-left of the screen, I see dead trees, lame colors and a ton of other nuances. The only thing I really do like is the yin yang characteristics between the left and right sides of the frame. One one side you actually have color and the other is pretty much devoid of it.

This photo is a tighter crop of the panorama and would be more sufficient but still isn’t quite there because of those darned trees.

Now I mentioned that I learned something while on this scouting adventure. I learned that I missed the season by a month or so. Now I know that early to mid-Fall will be the time to re-visit the falls. The fuller trees will block that house, the colors will be more vibrant and that should be just what the doctor ordered.

This next photograph happened to be me being there at the right moment. My camera gear was out and equipped and I sat around and waited patiently until this hummingbird made his appearance. My camera settings were right and all I had to do was press the shutter… Okay press the shutter a couple times ;)

It isn’t always easy for the amateur photographer to dedicate this much time to their hobby. Sure they have a nice camera but the 9-5 job, family and other factors can easilly make it so one cannot always get out to take pictures. This means that the few times they actually can get out to shoot might not be the ‘right’ day. The light may be horrible, their may be no cloud cover, the seasons may not be right or it could be a slew of other reasons.

So just remember “Chance favors the prepared mind” so just sit down and do your research then you will have much more eventful shoots.

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If you are an IPhone or IPod Touch user then I would suggest adding the following Applications to help you be ready:

1.) PhotoCalc ($2.99)
2.) Darkness – Sun, Moon, Clock + More ($1.99)
3.) more to be updated as I find them or as they become available…