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Photography podcast #117 features an interview with fine art photographer Royce Howland where we discuss the ‘junk’ that can get into our photographs. In particular we discuss and dissect noise, halos and chromatic aberration in photography. We talk about how to avoid getting these problems, how to fix these problems and how for some photographers — these aren’t problems at all but rather, deliberate creative choices.

Royce does an AWESOME job of explaining these problems so that they are understandable to anyone. 

This is the longest podcast I’ve published to date and it clocks in at around 70 minutes. We spend roughly 20 minutes on each of the 3 topics. We cover halos first, then noise, then chromatic aberration. Each of the 3  issues have very different causes and solutions.

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On the Rocks, Moraine Lake by Royce Howland — An HDR example where Royce controlled the settings to make sure no halos appeared in the sky or water.

Fall at Abraham Lake by Royce Howland — Another HDR example where Royce left the haloing in the sky, and in fact accentuated it a bit more via a Photoshop Curves adjustment, to give a sense of glow over the mountains. So sometimes halos are not a flaw, they’re a creative choice.

Looming, Abraham Lake by Royce Howland — An HDR example involving a high contrast backlit scene. The trees were deeply shadowed. Even on a Pentax 645D medium format camera, there’s noise in those trees in a normal single exposure. Bottom left — A 100% crop of a single exposure that went into the image above showing the level of noise in the trees. Bottom right — A 100% crop of the final image. Using a combination of HDR technique and a touch of additional noise reduction, I was able to subtly boost the contrast in the deep shadows, preserve all of the genuine detail, and also virtually eliminate the digital noise. Without HDR technique, just using a noise reduction filter can take the digital noise down but generally also will sacrifice legitimate detail as well.

Ghost Of Server Present, Jerome by Royce Howland — An indoor shot taken with available light in somewhat dim conditions at a supposedly haunted hotel. I’m using a bunch of creative techniques here including shallow depth of field, a reflection in a mirror, subject motion blur and extra digital blurring. Despite the softening effects of all the techniques used in this image, I also wanted a bit of texture and bit of “vintage film grain” feel. So far from removing all digital noise, I actually controlled it and then added a uniform monochromatic grain layer on top of everything in Photoshop. In print up to 16x20 size it’s difficult to see this grain, but on a nice matte paper it gives a slight feeling of texture; whereas running noise reduction as I would normally do in fact makes the results looking flat and plastic. You can see the noise detail added in the bottom detailed part of the image.

Chromatic aberration example at f/3.5 by Royce Howland — It was a bit after noon so the sun was high, and I shot straight into the light. The tree branches against a darker background show extremely high contrast edges. I was using a Sony RX100 pocket camera, which is a very high quality point & shoot with a Carl Zeiss lens. So a quality piece of kit for a compact. The first composition was at medium lens zoom and the aperture wide open — f/3.5. Bottom left — A 100% crop of the shot shows a lot of green and purple fringes are visible along the branch edges. Even towards the center of the lens, the chromatic aberration is pretty bad. This is a file converted from RAW using the latest Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS6, no chromatic aberration removal. Bottom right — Now here’s the identical file, but using the green and purple fringe removal settings during RAW conversion. Quite strong settings were needed for the green fringes, not so strong for purple. Mostly the fringes were removed.

Chromatic aberration example at f/5.6 by Royce Howland — Now here is the same composition photographed again moments later in the same strong light, but stopping the lens down to f/5.6. Bottom left — Stopping the lens down just over 1 stop has actually gotten rid of many of the purple & green fringes without doing anything else. That’s because a slightly smaller aperture lets through less of the misaligned light rays that contribute to the chromatic aberration in the first place. This is a RAW file converted again with no chromatic aberration settings. Bottom right — And here’s the same file converted with a small amount of purple and green defringe settings, much less than needed in the first example and the results look better.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

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Thanks to Jared Fein and Enrique Waizel who posted a blog comment about our last podcast. Thanks as well to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

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Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Photography podcast #116 features an interview with German landscape photographer Michael Breitung where we talk about why and how to do focus stacking in photography. Basically focus stacking involves taking multiple frames of the same scene but each frame is focused at a different part of the image. Then these frames are blended together using a graphics program like Gimp (free) or Photoshop (expensive). The result is sharpness and depth of field on steroids that can’t be matched by any camera lens combination on a 35mm DSLR camera at the time of this writing.  Only tilt shift lenses can compete in this extreme sharpness arena, but those lenses require many saved dollars or a rich uncle. This technique is free if you have the skills and a graphics program.

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Bloody Causeway by Michael Breitung — This focus stacked image blends 4 frames into one. Each frame was focused at a different point and then blended in Photoshop. Check out the sharpness from the closest corners all the way to the end of the causeway. This is sharpness swimming in awesome sauce. The aperture used here was f/9.5

Kraichgau at Dawn — Focus stacked photograph by Michael Breitung

Kraichgau at Dawn Details — Close up comparison by Michael Breitung — Only 2 frames were needed to create the final full-sized image above this one. One frame (left) focused at the foreground corners, gets the corners sharp in the final image. The other frame (right) focused at the midground, gets both the midground and the background sharp. Then the frames are blended in Photoshop to produce the final image. The aperture used here was f/11.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

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Thanks to D. Lavoie who posted a blog comment about our last podcast. Thanks as well to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

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Photography podcast #115 features an interview with Colour expert Joe Brady who works for Macgroup US.

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This image shows off the 3 main color spaces. You’ll note that the ProPhoto RGB color space contains the most colors. This makes it the best color space for printing your own images on a quality printer. When posting to the web, the colour space should be sRGB as that is the type of monitor that most people have.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

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Thanks to Mikey88  who posted a blog comment about our last podcast. Thanks as well to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Photography podcast #114 features an interview with light painter Patrick Rochon who discusses his new experimental 360 degree light painting technique. In a nutshell, Patrick light paints a model who stands in the middle of a ring as 24 DSLR cameras around the ring expose the scene at the same time. The frames are then strung together with software to give the illusion of circular movement. Patrick and I talk about his new work, his older work, and we talk about Patrick’s light painting process as well.

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This is a Gif animation that Patrick created from one of the 360 degree light painting sessions

Light painting by Patrick Rochon — Animated Gif

This is the ‘ring’ where Patrick lit the models:

While I was at Patrick’s place recording this interview, I noticed a gallery of new light painted (non 360) photographs on his wall that were gorgeous. This image below was one that I really liked — Thx for sending it Patrick!

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

patrickrochon.com

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Thanks to Photo Studios  who posted a blog comment about our last podcast. Thanks as well to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

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Photography podcast #113 discusses what I feel are six essential accessories for day trip photography. I just came back from a super-quick trip to Nevada where I did solo day trips on 2 days to Red Rock Canyon and Valley of Fire State Park.

For now, my day trips to national/state/provincial/local parks and other cool places are easy ON-TRAIL day trips and the accessories that I’ve chosen to talk about reflect this. I go into detail about why these 6 accessories are essential in the podcast. The list I’ve come up with includes a tripod, polarizing filter, hiking shoes/boots, polarized sunglasses, a lens cloth and knee-pads.

Of course I’m SUPER-CURIOUS as to any other accessories listeners may suggest, so please feel free to let me know if you think I missed something.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

REI Las Vegas - Awesome sporting store — Ask for Tommy, he’s awesome.

Tripods for photography Podcast #96

Polarizing filters and other important filters Podcast #77

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MY APOLOGIES THAT THE WEBSITE FIELD TO COMMENT WASN’T THERE, PLEASE JUST CONNECT WITH ME TO ADD IT. I’LL GET THIS FIXED FOR THE NEXT PODCAST.

Thanks to Mac Sokulski, Dave Johnson, Enrique Waizel, Bernard Dallaire, JP, Bret Farris and Sylvain Racicot who posted  blog comments about our last podcast.. Thanks as well to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Photography podcast #112 addresses a question posed by Gordon Laing on Google+

I replied to that question saying that these days I usually shoot bag free and keep my lenses that are in lens holding cases, attached to my belt as per the picture below. In case people are interested, here is a list of the items that I carry with me most of the time without a bag. Gitzo carbon fibre tripod (2540LLVL) also referred to as ‘my baby’. That’s on a Gitzo tripod shoulder strap slung diagonally around my shoulder. It’s an ‘OK’ strap, no better. I’m still hunting for the perfect tripod shoulder strap. Usually I carry 3 lenses;  Nikon 14–24, Nikon 28–300, Nikon 50mm and 1 flash, the SB-800.

More details on the exact lenses and lens holders are listed in the affiliate links below from B&H.

I also carry in my pockets a cable release, spare batteries, lens cloth and a hex key for my camera bracket plate. Not shown is the flashlight that I’ll often have with me for night shoots. Not shown are the cokin filters that I sometimes keep in a pouch around my neck.

Obviously this setup will not work for many people carrying very large lenses and heavier gear — but this will work for most people that shoot with lenses that are about as large as an average 70-200mm  F-2.8. This setup is also meant to give people new ideas on carrying gear.

I’m also seriously into knowing if other people have alternative gear carrying methods so please feel free to share by commenting.

Although it’s no fashion get up, this set-up allows my back to feel great and it allows me to change lenses quickly.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

Lowepro S&F Lens Exchange Case 200AW at B&H - My favourite lens holding case. It’s FAB!

Pearstone Onyx 60 Lens Case — In the podcast I talk about the Lowepro 2S but it seems to be discontinued. This model seems to have similar specs.

Lowepro 50mm lens holder at B&H

Lens Changer 75 Pop Down V2.0 from Think tank for larger lenses like a 100-400mm or for shooting 70-200mm with the lens hood attached. You may need to buy their belt to use this though.

Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5–5.6G ED VR Zoom Lens at B&H — I just love the versatility of the focal range.

Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens at B&H - This lens and I are having a wonderful relationship, I love her.

Gitzo GT2540LLVL Leveling Carbon Fiber Tripod at B&H - This tripod works well for me. Fairly big but not too big.

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Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Photography podcast #111 is a personal account of the worst photo vacation I have ever taken and the steps I took to make the experience more enjoyable. I’d love to know how others have dealt with this issue in the past.

The Road to Nowhere — Yukon, Canada
9 out of 10 days had visibility similar to this — Serenity now was my mantra

Due to all the bad visibility in the mountains, I looked to the foreground instead which was often clear. Here I caught logs and tree stumps reflecting in the water at a small unnamed lake in Inuvik, NWT, Canada

Lake Logs — Inuvik, NWT

Details are another fun thing to shoot when the grand scenics are basking in obscurity.

Dempster Highway Truck — Yukon, Canada
This truck was silver before it got completely caked with thick Dempster highway mud.

Rain Photography — podcast #88

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Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Photography podcast #110 gives you a full on crash course in black and white film photography in around 30 minutes. Black and white film photography is not at all dead. Many creative photographers are getting their hands wet in a traditional darkroom.  If you’ve ever wanted to know what’s involved in black and white photography, I take you through the entire process. We talk about film cameras, film, developing film, printing contact sheets and printing a final print.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

Apug.org — Analog Photography Users Group

- Circles is our regular forum assignment for Spetember

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Thanks to Lucille B and Michael Van der Tol who posted  blog comments about our last podcast. Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

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Photography podcast #109 features an Interview about flash photography with well known photographer Joe McNally. Joe has been shooting for decades for well known magazines life Life, Sports Illustrated and National Geographic. He was in town giving a seminar on the variety of lighting techniques you can achieve by using just one or two flashes. After the seminar I sat down with Joe for this quick interview  to talk about flash tips. In this podcast we talk about diffusing your flash, triggering your flash and Joe talks about personal projects.

© Joe McNally

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

Joe McNally’s blog  — Joe McNally’s Dance Portfolio

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Thanks to Lucille B and Julian who posted  blog comments about our last podcast. Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

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Photography podcast #108 features an Interview with fine art photographer John Meadows where we talk about the advantages of shooting on film. Although it’s true that film photography is slowly being replaced by digital, it continues to remain VERY popular with fine art photographers for a bunch of reasons. One of these reasons is the incredible quality of the cameras and lenses available to film photographers that can be purchased these days for peanuts.

In this podcast we talk about the advantages of shooting on film, film characteristics, buying film, developing your own film, printing your own images in a darkroom, the hybrid approach of using both film and digital and more.

During this phone interview recorded by Skype, the quality of my voice is mediocre and I apologize in advance for this —  Luckily John Meadows’s voice sounds great.

Broken and Unbroken © John Meadows

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

Royce Howland’s follow up comment on the photo-realistic HDR podcast

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Thanks to John Starmer, Lucille B, chris f, Rob S, Royce Howland, Mike Langford and Delbensonphotography who posted  blog comments about our last podcast. Thanks as always to everyone that sent comments by email about our last podcast. Although ALL comments are appreciated, commenting directly in this blog is preferred. Thanks as well to all the new members of the bulletin board. Most of the links to actual the products are affiliate links that help support this site. Thanks in advance if you purchase through those links.

If you are looking at this material on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and podcast and get this and other photography info directly from the source. |Subscribe with iTunes|Subscribe via RSS feed |Subscribe with Google Reader|Subscribe for free to the Photography podcast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!