Two:Thirty AM

I have to start by saying I am just as guilty as anyone when it comes to this subject, but I have finally seen the error in my ways. Over the last 3-4 years of making digital images I have migrated between a few different cameras. From cheap to mildly expensive. From film to digital. I have by no means “seen it all” but I have a good taste of what’s out there. As with a lot of new hobbies that you start, it is easy to get wrapped up in the gear and tools side of the hobby, which is normal because you are not only learning about new things, but you get to play with them too! Over the years I have ooh’d and ahh’d over certain camera bodies, lenses, tripods, etc. In your head you know that buying a newer, more expensive, body or lens doesn’t make you a better photographer, but maybe it will help right? I think a lot of us feel this way when starting out, “if only I had X, I would make such better images.” Often times, the shiny part of the new piece of gear overtakes logic and you end up with the new item, and yet your photos remain unchanged. How could that have happened?

I recently took a Black & White film photography class at a local college. This class was my first real experience with film. After shooting various assigned projects, we went through the steps of manually processing the film, and then making prints in the dark room. Shooting film was a whole new world; you were still making images, but in a very different way. With digital cameras, the camera does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but when shooting film, every single aspect of your end result print is 100% your doing. From manual focus, to shutter speed, to proper processing times with the chemistry, to exposure times for photo paper, it’s all you. This class was the beginning of my “new vision of photography”. That sounds kind of weird and deep, but what I mean is the way in which I approach photography as an art form.

The Internet and the age of digital has opened the flood gates to everyone to be creative (or not so creative). I have taken a lot of inspiration from fantastic photographers and artists that I would never know about if it weren’t for places like Flickr and SmugMug. This also means that “competition” is vastly increased when it comes to people finding your particular images interesting. This is where technique and style come into play the most. Anyone can pick up a cameras and press the shutter release, but it take someone with a highly tuned and developed eye to make that image wonderful. No piece of gear will help you tune your creative eye. The next time you are going to do research online about a new tripod or camera body, go outside instead and shoot 10 or 20 photos of things you would never normally shoot.

Longish story short, gear doesn’t matter; forget about it. Anytime you find yourself saying that you could make a better photo if only you had XYZ piece of gear, you are only making excuses. Trust me, I am speaking to myself as much as any of you, so don’t take it personal. I even removed all the gear I was lusting over from my Amazon wish list. I am going to focus on developing my skills over the next 12 months, and just make the absolute best images I can with what I have!

Film. Digital. $20 camera. $20,000 camera. 1MP. 50MP. None of these will change your images, only your vision will.

If you are a photographer that shoots with an SLR, you know why you prefer that to your typical point and shoot style camera. Control, picture quality, low light capabilities, etc. Unfortunately, carrying your bulky SLR around with you everywhere does not always cut it. You may be at a party, concert, or just out and about; there are times when an SLR just doesn’t work. You want something more compact that will fit in a pocket and is hassle free. Generally, point and shoot style cameras have too many trade offs to make them desirable to the SLR shooter. I thought the same, until I came across the Canon PowerShot S90. This small point and shoot changed the way I thought about point and shoots. With its wide variety of manual controls, wide aperture, and control ring, I was sold.

The Canon S90 weighs in at just a touch above 6 ounces, and you can pretty much fit it in any pocket. It has a beautiful 3 inch LCD viewfinder on the back complete with intuitive controls for camera settings. You have a large selection of shooting modes as well, complete with aperture priority (Av), shutter priority (Tv), and even full manual mode (M). The S90 has an f/2.0 – 4.9 lens with 3.8x optical zoom, and Image Stabilization. This puts the lens at about a 28 – 105mm focal length. At 10 megapixels, Canon decided to opt for low light capabilities rather than high megapixel count. This is fantastic for photographers, and casual shooters alike. One of the really innovative parts of this camera is the Control Ring. This ring is around the lens and allows you to customize what it controls (aperture, focus, shutter speed, etc.) for all types of creative shooting.

A few other features of note include: built in flash, HDMI out, video mode, and low light scene mode. If you are looking to shoot HD video in addition to making great images, then this is not the camera for you, as it only shoots SD video. However, if you are mainly interested in still shots, then absolutely take a look at this camera.

Pros:
- f/2.0 lens
- Control Ring
- 10.0 Megapixel
- Large beautiful LCD
- Ability to shoot manual
- Turns on very quickly
- Shoots RAW format
- Macro shooting mode
- Low light performance
- Battery Life

Cons:
- No HD video
- On the high end of the price scale

Retail Price: $399

It’s time to get creative with the camera that is with you every second of the day. Your cell phone camera! It may not be the best quality, or the fastest, or most versatile, but what it is, is available. It is rare you go anywhere without your cell phone, and it is even more rare that a cell phone does not have a camera. That being said, let’s get into it!

There are tons of apps out there for various platforms that are awesome for doing filters and effects on your camera phone photos. The problem is that no one app is available for everyone. What is available to everyone is a physical filters placed in front of your cell phone camera.

I recently stumbled upon a product called Jelly Lens at http://www.jelly-lens.com/. These awesome little filters fit just about every make and model of camera phone. They have a filter on one side and a round sticky circle on the other side so you can just stick the filter over your camera lens on your phone. The sticky material is re-usable and does not leave any marks on your phone.

As of this writing they have 14 different filters you can buy (I bought them all!). The best part? They are only $5 each! And for that 5 bucks you actually get a pretty damn good result. In some cases it actually improves the quality of an image you would get with just your camera phone.

Available Filters:
1. Wide Angle
2. Stretch
3. 6 Image Mirage
4. 3 Image Mirage
5. Heart Frame
6. Blue Filter
7. Star Frame
8. Sepia Filter
9. Polarizer
10. Close Up
11. Soft Lens
12. Starburst
13. Vignette
14. Spark

Short Youtube how-to from @alcedine:

Up until recent years, memory cards for cameras were all about the same. Sure there were different sizes and shapes, but as far as memory went, there was very little difference between them. In 2005, a small startup in Mountain View, CA changed the way we think about memory cards and shooting photos. A new product was released that was like no other: The Eye-Fi Card, created by a company with the same name. These engineering geniuses stuffed a WiFi chipset inside the already seemingly tiny SD card format. Wait, why WiFi? By having WiFi in the card, this enables the card to transfer your photos from your camera to your computer wirelessly without the need for plugging the camera in and then having to import the photos into your computer. The fun doesn’t end there, however. As if wireless photo transfer wasn’t enough, the card also will upload your photos directly to your favorite online photo sharing services effortlessly!

The product has come a very long way in just a few years. The first Eye-Fi card was a 2GB model that supported transfer of JPEG images to your computer and your favorite photo sharing sites. Flash forward to 2010 when the newest card, the Eye-Fi Pro X2, was released. This insanely powerful card boasts 8GB of storage, the ability to transfer the RAW file format, geotagging, 802.11n WiFi, SDHC Class 6 Read&Write speeds, and a brand new feature called “Endless Memory Mode”. With 8GB of memory, you might think it is basically endless already, but what they have done with this new feature is quite brilliant. Endless Memory Mode will begin to free up space on the card by removing images that have already been uploaded safely to their destination. Finally, a card that never runs out! A huge bonus that comes along with this feature is that the card is effectively backing up your photos as well. It is all well and good to have a giant card for your photos, but if that card is the only place they exist, if that card dies on you, you have lost everything.

Of course, the new Pro X2 card is not for everyone, as you may not need all of these very high-end features. Good news is that Eye-Fi offers a range of cards which will fit any style and level of photographer. From Point & Shoot to Digital SLR, these cards are a must have for your camera!

For more Information please visit: http://eye.fi/
Retail Price: $149.99

I will admit right off the bat that I have a photo and laptop bag obsession. There, now that’s out of the way. :) I have been eying this particular bag for a while due to it’s large amount of storage and it holds a 15″ laptop on top of all the photo gear. This bag is generally around $150 – $200. Price was really the only reason I was holding off on the purchase. Fortunately I was on eBay and found a seller with a Buy It Now auction that was accepting offers. I offered $90 not thinking they would take it, and they did! So now onto the bag itself.

You can easily hold 2 SLR bodies and around 6-8 lenses in this bag. You can customize the whole inside with the velcro padding. There are also several zippered pouches inside for storage. On the outside there are even more zippered storage areas. There is also a tripod holding system that can fold down and secure a tripod to the back.

The bag is very comfortable to wear. It has 2 very padded shoulder straps along with a chest strap and waist strap to secure it to your body. The zippers on this bag are big and easy to zip. I wore this pack for a photo hike that was about 5 hours and it was great. Everything was safe and secure with no issues. One thing I would like to see however is a memory card pouch on the shoulder strap that is easy to get to. Other than that, it is an all around awesome bag for your photo gear.

I recently went on a photo shoot with a friend of mine to the abandoned town of Drawbridge, CA. I needed to rent a lens because I recently sold the majority of my lenses with my old Nikon D40 camera body. This only left me with my Nikon 35mm f/1.8. A fantastic lens for sure, but not quite the right tool for the job. Since a lens like the 24-70mm f/2.8 is upwards of $1600, renting was the way to go for sure. This particular lens is talked about like a god, so I had to see what all the hype was about! I rented it for 3 days for about $50. Not a bad deal at all. The very first thing I noticed about this lens was the weight; it is hefty! It weighs about 2 pounds, compared to my Nikon D90 body that weighs about 1.3 pounds! Having a solid f/2.8 from 24-70mm is fantastic; I found this lens to be very versatile for my shooting. This lens actually stayed on my body the whole day. The autofocus on this particular rented unit felt like it might have been slightly out of whack, but when in manual focus it was pretty damn sharp. I realize this lens is probably better suited for an FX body, but even on my DX D90 it was a wonderful experience. I can see why everyone talks about this lens so much! If you have the almost $2000 to shell out, this lens should be in your bag!

On a side note, if you have a Nikon D90, you know it came with the LCD protective cover. LEAVE IT ON! During this last shoot, my plastic cover got scratched to all hell, not even sure how it happened, but if the cover wasn’t there, my LCD would be wrecked! So if you have it on, keep it on. If you don’t, put it on now! If your particular camera model doesn’t have a protective cover, research to find one that will suit you. You won’t regret it. A new $10 cover is always better than a permanently scratched LCD.

The Nikon D40 was my very first dSLR camera. A fantastic leap from the point-and-shoot side of the fence! I had the camera for about 4 years, but really only started getting serious about photography a little over a year ago. After shooting with the D40 body and mastering it (the camera, not photography) over the course of a year, I was starting to hit imitations of the camera hardware and it was starting to look like it was time for an upgrade. I really prefer and like the Nikon camera bodies, so I knew I would be upgrading to a new Nikon. I studied all the bodies and reviews for months to find out what would be the best upgrade for me. It came down to the D90 and the D300.

The two seemed to have pretty similar specs minus the video on the D90, although the D300 was touted as more of a “professional” camera. One of the biggest features I wanted was the command and sub-command dials for aperture and shutter speed adjustments.

The video on the D90 leaves a little to be desired. Especially compared to the new D300s that came out a couple months after purchasing the D90. Video is not all that important to me, so it is just a bonus to be able to shoot little video clips with the same camera I already have with me.

I find the build quality of the D90 to be much higher than some of the newer bodies coming out like the D3000. The body feels great in the hand and is a good weight. I like a larger camera body and this is just that. I found the D40 a little annoying to hold due to its small size. I had a battery grip on the D40 simply to make it more comfortable to hold with a longer lens.

The image quality on the D90 is great. A very nice improvement from the D40, although the raw files were a lot harder to work with on my old laptop. The D40 raw files were no problem, but the D90 at twice the size made the computer chug. I have since upgraded to a new MacBook Pro, so it is no longer an issue.

As far as lenses go with this new body, I bought the Nikon 35mm f/1.8. This lens is AMAZING! Super sharp and fast. And for only $200, you have to have this lens in your bag. I also rented the Nikon 18-200mm from Lensrentals.com and I WILL be buying that lens at some point. It was so versatile and handled a full day shoot walking around town without having to stop and swap lenses.

Overall, If you are in the market for a Nikon body upgrade from one of the lower tier bodies I would say this is definitely a camera to look at. If video is more important to you, you may want to look into the D300s instead. For me, stills are where I want to be, and this camera body does not disappoint!

Lamborghini Reventón and Bugatti Veyron. Two cars I never thought I would see in person. Well, scratch that, I saw them both…at the same time! Insanity! I was out on a photowalk with a friend and we happened upon a high end car dealer. We were drawn to the dealer at first because we saw a MINI GP out front. After shooting a few photos of the GP I was standing there talking to my friend and suddenly a strange feeling came over me and I just happen to turn to my left. Upon turning, I saw the ass end of the Lamborghini Reventón. After a quick double take, the freaking out began. One of the guys that worked there (and owner of the GP) came out and we chatted with him for a bit and then he invited us in to check out the rest of the cars. They had a ton of sweet cars; Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porches, etc. You name it, they had it. However compared to the Veyron and Reventón, the rest all but disappeared! After taking tons of shots of the Veyron from every angle, I moved outside to the Reventón, where I took probably double the number of photos. Right as I was about done shooting, one of the employees came out to move the Reventón inside, so I switched over to video mode and shot a little video of them moving the Reventón inside. Everything about the Reventón is absolutely perfect. Every line, every detail, flawless. Needless to say it was a fantastic day!

Lamborghini Reventón Photo Gallery
Lamborghini Reventón Video
Bugatti Veyron Photo Gallery

This weeks photopost comes to you thanks to a new software package that I have fallen in love with! The software comes from Nik Software. They make these plugins for both Aperture and LightRoom. I personally use Aperture and love it! The particular plugin I used for this image was SilverEfexPro. A fantastic little plugin, and at the $199 price point you would hope so! The good news is that Nik offers a “Complete Collection” for $299 that includes five of their plugins that separately would come to a grand total of $750! So needless to say, go for the $299 Complete Collection. I can’t wait to work with all the plugins more!

This photo was taken during the Worldwide Photo Walk on July 18, 2009 in San Jose, CA.