Ever want to see how the range of a particular lens might work for you? Or how that FX (full-frame) sensor lens might perform on your DX (crop) sensor body? Nikon has a cool tool to let you simulate the field of view of their various lens models. You can pick a specific lens, or go commando and freely select your focal length and body combo to compare various focal lengths. It even saves lens settings to come back to later.

Not a Nikon shooter? That’s ok, since the tool doesn’t require you to choose a specific model, it can be useful to get a feel of how that old 50mm lens you had on your 35mm camera might work on your new DSLR (assuming it is compatible!). Just note that Nikon crop sensors (the bulk of DSLR’s out today use a crop- or smaller sensor than a 35mm frame – Nikon calls those “DX” while 35mm size sensors are called “FX”) are a 1.5x scale factor and is close to most crop sensors, but not all of them (most of Canon’s crop sensors are 1.6x, for example).

I was browsing David duChemin’s site this morning and he pointed to an interesting ebook/app store with a bunch of interesting titls for only $5 a pop! With the iBooks app on the iPhone I’ve become a big fan of keeping pdf manuals and books for inspiration/reference on my iPhone. At five bucks a piece, it’s worth checking out.

Craft and Vision

I’m a real fan of AlienBees. I know many have a love/hate relationship with the product or the man behind the product (I personally really like the company – no complaints here), but the company makes a quality product at a great price. So maybe the color consistency isn’t Profoto, but it’s not 10x the price either. Nevermind the new products that Paul Buff has released (Einstein) that address many of the naysayers – most of which I think spend more time bitching about gear than taking pictures.

Enough said. So I have these AlienBees monolights (a monolight is simply a studio strobe with the tube (bulb) and all the electronics necessary in one housing – as opposed to a pack system where a lightweight head holds the tube and is tethered to an outboard box containing the electronics). Four of them to be exact, and I have a bunch of small battery-powered Nikon speedlights. Speedlights in the field, monolights in the studio. But what if I want to take the monolights on location and use their awesome power and modifiers in the field. The monolights plug into AC wall outlets, so I have two choices: a generator or a battery pack and inverter.

The catch with portable power for monolights is that, due to the sort of draw that the constant charging/discharging of the lights require, you must be very careful what sort of portable power system you use. The AC power feeding the light must be very clean and precise, like the power you get out of your wall outlet. Most portable generators or inexpensive inverters (like the sort you plug into your car cigarette lighter) offer only choppy approximations of wall current, fine for portable lights and light appliances, but horrible for electronic gear and may even damage or destroy studio flashes.

Thus your choices for portable location power come down specific models of portable generators (the Honda EU-series is a popular option) and specific inverter and battery pack combinations. The secret: the AC output must be rated as a “pure-sine-wave” output. The specifics of what that mean are a discussion in itself, but suffice it to say that looking for that rating is important.

There are other important factors as well. The system must be able to provide enough current to be useful (indicated by the wattage rating of the inverter) and it must not have limiting switches that trip when a large current draw is demanded (the recharge cycle of a strobe demands a high current peak).

I had investigated a DIY option – purchase a pure-sine-wave inverter and some rechargeable SLA (sealed-lead-acid) or NiMH cells and build my own. In fact, there is an excellent build thread on fredmiranda.com for building a lightweight compact system housed in a small Pelican accessory case. This system is indeed smaller and lighter than other commercial systems, but it has severeal drawbacks. It can’t power as many lights – essentially requiring one small pack for each light instead of one large pack powering several. It is less expensive than the thousand-and-something commercial options out there, and would be a great deal were it not for AlienBees submission to the field (I’m getting there, I promise). But most problematic is that the manufacturer of the inverter that the system revolves around that offers compactness, power, and size advantages, seems to have changed the design rendering their device useless for monolight applications. SO much for that idea.

So enter Paul Buff and AlienBees. Buff offers a portable pure-sine-wave power system called the Vagabond II that offers reasonable portability, good capacity and great integration at a price that’s about 1/3 or less of any but a few of the nearest competitors. And I’ve lusted after the Vagabond II for some time now. However, it seems that Buff has experienced some issues from his suppliers much as the DIY community has and there are reports of some inverter failures in the field. That said, Buff’s company has an impeccable record for customer service (another great reason to use AlienBees) and these issues are usually dealt with post haste, but I have wondered if he might have something new up his sleeve. And according to a relatively obscure Paul Buff tech support forum, it looks like there is a Vagabond III in the works.

From the forum:

BUT FANTASTIC NEWS WILL BE COMING OUT IN THE NEXT WEEK OR SO. QUICK PRELIMINARY VIEW . . .VAGABOND MINI LITHIUM

3 1/2 LBS TOTAL – INCLUDING BATTERY PACK, 500 640WS SHOTS FROM AN AB1600 PER CHARGE, 8.8AH 14.8V LITHIUM BATTERY (EQUIVALENT TO ABOUT 14AH SLA,) NO SULFATING, 3-4 HOUR CHARGER IN OR OUT OF THE UNIT, SOPHISTICATED MOLDED HOUSING DESIGN WITH INSTANT PLUG IN BATTERY PACK, STAND CLAMP AND SHOULDER STRAP AND LOTS MORE. IT’S BEEN COMPLETELY TESTED AND ALL PARTS ARE ON ORDER NOW, WITH ABOUT A 60 DAY ANTICIPATED PRODUCTION START TIME. THESE SHOULD HAVE NO SIGNIFICANT BACKLOG ONCE THEY START SHIPPING. AND THEY DON’T COST MUCH AND SHOULD BE AVAILABLE IN 120VAC AND 230VAC VERSIONS.

I for one am excited and can’t wait to hear more about price and performance. Regardless of what you think about Buff and his ways, the guy continues to come up with innovative ideas at great value that let’s us photogs that do this for love instead of money expand our art.

I know that was a long way to get to the meat, but we’ll be following this on RCG and can’t wait to hear more.

The image above is a before/after of a shoot from a few weeks ago. I don’t consider my post processing technique heavy handed, but I’m still just learning (see if you can see the big error on the left). Nonetheless, it’s a foundation of the art of art photography, and always has been.

Case in point: Avedon’s own retouch notes:

Interesting analysis of historical retouching here.

I was intrigued by Apple’s new announcement of iOS4.1 and the inclusion of an HDR mode in the new iOS for iPhone and iPod Touch. And to that end, I was encouraging my father he and my mom need a new iPod Touch. The big reason being the ability to FaceTime with me instead of watching my Dad struggle with Skype on his Win machine each time, but also I really thought it would be a cool thing that they could use that integrates a bunch of stuff they can use – like a camera, for example (never mind that I later discovered the truth about the camera in the new Touch – it’s not quite the iPhone 4 camera – but that’s another post). I was telling my Dad about the new HDR feature and he replied with “Mom doesn’t need HDR” to which I responded “Mom doesn’t know she needs HDR.”

Of course we often times associate HDR with the sort of surrealistic images spread all over Flickr – they have their place and of course I’ve made my share. However the real advantage is to make an image that looks the way we remember it. Our brains can see a lot more than our cameras can – they adjust exposure and blend them to create the image we see in our brains. HDR let’s us approach this process.

Above is a good example of how HDR works. On the left is a single snap with a general evaluative exposure, as the iPhone would normally take. On the right is the same image made from three simultaneous images, made at three different exposures. The left hand image, in order to properly contain detail in the shadow areas, completely obliterates the sky, as well as the highlights on Eagle’s face. While certainly I could apply a little contrast adjustment to make the right-hand picture a little better, but if this was a day at the amusement park with the kids, I think the right-hand image is certainly much more desirable. This image, taken with high, midday sun, is one of the worst sorts of images to capture. If I could get the image on the right with a single click, wouldn’t you too?

Readers of my blog and those that know me know that I’ve certainly dabbled in in HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. Essentially I described the HDR process in this post and it can create everything from wildly surreal images to scary realism. Well, Apple has just announced the inclusion of HDR in the iPhone. Now, you might think of this as a gimmick, but there are some really amazing, yet subtle, possibilities here. (Note, all educated speculation on my part.)

A digital sensor without a traditional shutter apparatus like those used in phones and point and shoots, etc, can dynamically adjust their sensitivity, on the fly, allowing a single image to be captured (presumably) at different sensitivities at the same time. As demonstrated in today’s keynote, the iPhone can soon take three simultaneous exposures, one right on, one over and one under. Through sophisticated one-touch algorithms (I’m sure Apple has picked the “best” algorithm for us) these three exposures are combined so that dark objects have detail and that blue sky remains blue and doesn’t get blown out.

The iPhone 4 is an amazing pocket camera for what it is. This makes it even better in my opinion and I’m surprised you don’t see this already in every other point-and-shoot.

iOS 4.1 is supposed to be a free update, available next week.

From the “Same News As Any Other Blog” department, Adobe released Camera RAW 6.1 and Lightroom 3.2 updates today and they are available here.

The new ACR is of interest if you use any of these cameras: Canon EOS 60D, Fuji FinePix HS10, Panasonic DMC-FZ100, Panasonic DMC-FZ40 (FZ45), Panasonic DMC-LX5, Pentax 645D, Samsung NX10, Samsung TL500 (EX1), Sony A290, Sony A390, Sony Alpha NEX-3, Sony Alpha NEX-5, Sony SLT-A33, Sony SLT-A55V.

Interesting that while this seems really proactive on keeping up with new releases (sorry, Apple, Adobe eats you lunch in this department) ther is no Nikon D3100 supp

LR 3.2 includes the same support and both also include more than 120 new lens profiles for the awesome lens correction features recently added with the whole CS5 update thingy. I vascillate whether or not to switch to LightRoom from Aperture, but really love Aperture’s new brushes and management features. LR has awesome web gallery generation (that I use for this very site), but otherwise ACR has all the features of LR I need that Aperture doesn’t. Now I just wish Aperture would round-trip edit RAW (or ANY master file for that matter) files instead of forcing me to generate a tiff or psd first and lose the embedded RAW data on the way out – but that’s another post.

Not exactly a photography site, but wow this interactive HTML5 movie (for lack of a better word – it is more like dynamic interactive art) is fantastic! The visuals are stunning and by asking one simple question “What is the address of your childhood home” the emotions it evokes are unbelievable.

I intend to learn more about who made this for Arcade Fire, but wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.

(Best viewed using a browser like Safari or Chrome)

There are a metric ton of photography apps available for the iPhone. I could spend this entire blog reviewing and discussing them til I go blue in the face. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to do that. What I do intend to do is talk a little about the apps and accessories that I use and like, or dislike for that matter.

I hate paper. Well, maybe photographic prints are nice, but in general I have no desire to store and file things like model releases, property releases, etc. I’ve recently been working with a number of models and wasn’t really excited about carrying around a pad of releases to sign. Not to mention make copies and keep track of them.

Enter Easy Release, a $9.99 (I know, expensive in iPhone app-land) app for the iPhone (also available for Android). Easy Release is a release generator-manager that eliminates paper from your paper-work workflow whether on location or in the studio. There are several competing products on the market:ID Release, mRelease and Photographer’s Contract Maker, just to name a few. To be fair, I haven’t tried these other apps, and I’m sure they all do a decent job, but I will tell you why I chose Easy Release. Easy Release was criticized early on in their singularity in release text. That is to say, the app came with a single release each for mode, property, and minor and that was it. I like to customize my text and when Easy Release announced that it now supported adding your own releases, with tags to automatically insert things like Photographer’s name and company, etc, I was sold.

Easy Release is relatively simple to use, with a few tricky interface caveats to be aware of. The first, for me, was the help system and documentation. The App steps you through entering the model’s name and address, etc (either manually or via your address book), location and shoot information and witness information. It also allows you to select from any number of release forms. As in earlier versions, it comes with basic release language, but via copy/paste (the easiest way to get your text into Easy Release is to send yourself an email with the text in the body of the message, copy it and paste it into the proper place in the setup window in Easy Release) you can set up your own releases. It also affords the opportunity to take a picture, using the iPhone’s built in camera, of the model, or the model’s ID, and include that in the release for reference.

It took me a little while to figure out how to add my own releases with tags to insert my name and other information into the release. The answer was right in front of me all the time and this is a key to understanding Easy Release. Each page includes the typical “info” button seen on many apps using standard iPhone interface objects. I had assumed that they all pointed me to the same basic help/overview page I had encountered on the opening page of the app. However, the info is context-sensitive, so there is help for nearly every page of the app. Something to remember when you get stuck.

After entering all the pertinent data, obviously the release needs a signature – something that can get a little bit awkward. Tapping the signature status line on the summary page of the release opens up a signature page, in which your model and witness can accept the terms of the release and sign the device – with their finger! Using your finger is certainly function, but as I started to use the app regularly I realized that this was a little strange for some people.

A highly recommended accessory for this app would be some sort of Stylus. I use the POGO stylus – a soft-tipped, pen-like writing utensil for touch-screens. It works great and eliminates that awkwardness of requiring your model to use their finger for their signature.

Finally, upon completion, the app allows you to send pdf copies (as well as jpegs if requested) to yourself and the model (or both) for digital-record keeping. I even go one step further and have the release automatically forwarded to my Evernote document storage in the “cloud” where it is automatically tagged and filed for future reference.

The app formats a gorgeous pdf document, including the photographer’s name and company and logo, if supplied, the picture of the model and the collected signatures. Security features in the app prevent any changes to the document without requiring new signatures and, while you will have to check the applicability of these releases for your clients, Easy Release has been updating the app with features designed to make the app more acceptable to stock photo agencies who often have very specific release requirements.

I’d like to try some of the other apps out there, but so far, with Easy Release on my iPhone and a POGO stylus in my pocket, I’ve got no reason to look elsewhere.

Let’s face it, none of us like to read our camera manuals as much as we like to just dive in and use them. Well, you might be amazed what you might learn if you take a minute and sit down and peruse your camera manual. And it always seems to happen that we need the manual the most when we’re in the field, camera isn’t doing what we expect and we’re left scratching our heads trying to find where that one $%!@* feature is in the depth of the menu system on the LCD.

Well, I for one like to take my manuals everywhere I go. No, I’m not a bookworm, but recent developments in the latest iOS for iPhone make it really really easy to carry our camera manuals with us.

iOS4 includes iBooks, Apple’s own book reader that not only syncs and displays books purchased from the iTunes store, but also displays and searches simple pdf files.

Most camera manufacturers offer pdf versions of their manuals on their websites. Nikon manuals can be found here and Canon manuals can be found here. I’m sure other manufacturers have similar resources on their websites. Just look under the support area on your camera manufacturer’s website.

Once you’ve downloaded the manual to your local computer, getting the pdf file onto your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad is as simple as plugging your device into iTunes and dragging the pdf file to your device. Or you can use my favorite file syncing app – Dropbox – and place the pdf in a Dropbox folder on your computer and it will magically appear in your Dropbox app on your device. From there you can “send” the file to the iBooks library and it will always be there, right in your pocket when you need it.