Lens Acronyms

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 27. January 2012 - 6:21

I was talking to Marg who, proudly, showed me that she just discovered that her lens was also a macro. It's one of these, wide angle to extra tele, all in one lens (no name mentioned). The “macro” is not a macro mode, I would call it a close-up mode and that's not even that close. Then I looked at her lens… so many acronyms

Canon

Packing List

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 26. January 2012 - 6:15

Did you ever forgot to take… for a very important photo session or for a trip? I did, I realized that I forgot to take my flash cables (at the time, we only used cables, there were no Pocket Wizards) and forgot the extra batteries to make it worth.

That's why I created my photographic equipment list.

  1. All of my photo gear is in a chest
  2. All the boxes or unused equipment or monopods, tripods are in a separate closet
  3. Almost all of my “everyday” is already in the backpack

Do I use my list everyday? No, because many items are in small pouches.

Lightroom: You Have a Bad Backup

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. January 2012 - 6:10

Do you have a backup? The vast majority of the people do not even have a backup. My personal experience is that less than 1 in 10 people do have a backup. The problem is that people that claim to have a backup, actually have a bad backup! People claim that they have RAID 1, 5 or 10 or they use a Drobo box. Those are not backups.

The purpose of a backup is:

What's the cost of re-entering the data?

— Syv Ritch, http://www.foto-biz.com

  • A guy, that I know, does weddings. He just raised his price from $199 to $249 per wedding.

Waiting for the Photo

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 24. January 2012 - 6:20

When dealing with portraits, weddings, seniors… the photographer arrives, setups and starts taking the photos. But often, we don't have such a control, we are all setup, ready and we have to wait, wait and wait… until the right moment. The question is what's the right moment? Everybody defines it differently. For me, it's a gut instinct, sometimes it feels right, but mostly it feels almost right. That's when I start. What about you? Do you wait or do you chase after the photo?

Waiting for something to happen With most of the snowy owls sleeping, there is always one that's mostly awake and keeps guard.So the photographers are waiting for the snowy owls to turn their heads toward them.snowy-owls-20120114-1743.jpg — ©2011 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Photographers Waiting for Something to Happen   click on image for gallery

I Copy Everything

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 23. January 2012 - 6:33

The photography business is all about copying what the other does. The current “fad” is HDR. In the “good old days”, every landscape was taken with 2 to 3 color polarizer. Now, all the weddings are “documentary style”… Photographers often get a friend or a family member to call their competition and ask for the prices… then copy it almost exactly.

The best that happened to me was: when people shoot from over my shoulder, literally, which not too difficult since I'm often on my knees. The worst was just a week ago, when a “turkey” instead of going behind me, just went straight in front when I had to shame him to get him to move. There are magazines, conferences… that show you how copy other successful photographers.

What the duck has captured it very well, except the most important, what makes me unique and that nobody can copy.

I Copy EverythingThe photography business is all about copying what the other does. The current “fad” is HDR. In the good old days, every landscape was taken with 2 to 3 color polarizer. Now, all the weddings are documentary style… Photographers often get a friend or a family member to call their competition and ask for the prices… then copy it almost exactly.The best that happened to me was: when people shoot from over my shoulder, literally which not too difficult since I'm often on my knees.What the duck from www.whattheduck.net has captured it very well, except the most important, that makes me unique and nobody can copy.My name lists. My name lists with an “S”. I have a list of:* Prospects* Occasional customers* Regular customersI just spent the last month updating, refining my lists. Even if you got hold of my lists, it wouldn't help you, it's me that they know, they receive my mail (yes, I still use a lot of first class mail.)what-the-duck-getting-new-customers.jpg — ©2012 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Kodak: the Debacle and the BS

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. January 2012 - 6:20

By now, you must have heard that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy. All the noise from the web is that Kodak is a bankrupt company because, although they invented many of the digital technology, they were not nimble enough… Those are mostly people that repeat what everybody else copied from the web. The problem is that these people don't have a “long enough” memory. Kodak's problems started long, long before the digital area.

What The Duck has this great cartoon about “Kodak's death”

Kodak filing for bankruptcy Kodak filing for bankruptcy according to What The Duck of www.whattheduck.netwhat-the-duck-kodak.jpg — ©2012 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Here are the 3 main events that caused “Kodak's death”:

Superwoman Photographer

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 18. January 2012 - 6:46

This woman photographer is amazing! She must be from the planet Krypton.

Amazing Woman PhotographerThis woman photographer is amazing! She must be from the planet Krypton. She's an older person and carries a 1DMk4 with a 500mm f/4. She makes her photos *HAND-HELD*. That's 17Lbs/8Kg at the end of the extended arm. That day, the light was not the greatest, low contrast and very cloudy. Either she's super-woman or she uses ISO 12800 or more. Just holding such a big and heavy rig at the end of the arm is hard enough for me. That's why I use a tripod or at least my monopod, usually set at 2½ feet tall. I wear a knee pad and I kneel down, like Tim Tebow but I was doing it long before he started to play football, so I'm closer to the ground.The way she holds the lens from the tripod collar, she can't even tuck her arm underneath.snowy-owls-20111231-0867.jpg — ©2011 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

This woman photographer is amazing! She must be from the planet Krypton   click on image for gallery

Running Out of Ideas for Keywording?

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 17. January 2012 - 7:02

What's the purpose of keywords?

The purpose is to find the photos among the thousands of photos in your catalog. It can be for you or it can be for customers or it can be for internet searches.

The keywords are associated with a photo to describe:

  • subject matter
  • status
  • style
  • use

The simplest way of creating keywords is just add another keyword when you need it. The problem with just adding them on the fly without any structure is fine for the first few dozen keywords. Then it becomes unwieldy when it becomes thousands.

The “cleanest” way is to create base categories, then expand these various categories.

Lightroom Keywords Categories

First: Always fill in the IPTC information. The problem, with the IPTC information, is that you can't search for it! The IPTC search is so limited that I find it useless. It's only possible to search if you already know the exact word and you cannot select in which IPTC field.

Most Photographers Do Not Understand

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 16. January 2012 - 6:42

Yan of http://yanphoto.com wrote a blog post: sick of it, in which she states how hard the life of a photographer is: no business, dead… Her photos are good, so why can't she get any work?

Because like most photographers, she doesn't understand the business of photography. First the facts, then the solutions.

  • Photography is booming
  • Photography is exploding.

Trey Ratcliff — Stuck in Customs Controversy

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 12. January 2012 - 6:20

Nikon announced their Nikon D4 in January 2012. The next day, Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in customs wrote the following blog post DSLRs are a dying breed – 3rd Gen Cameras are the Future in which he slams Nikon/Canon and the big/standard dSLRs.

Please note that:

  • Stuck in customs has 1+ million visitors per month
  • Trey Ratcliff sales were in the 7 figures in 2011
  • Trey Ratcliff employs 11 part and full-time people (that's what he mentioned in Feb-2011 in an interview)

Trey announced that:

The Important New Stuff in the Lightroom 4 Beta

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 11. January 2012 - 6:15

It's CES time in Last Vegas and Adobe has announced the Lightroom 4 beta. LR4 is out for the people to test and/or play with it. I haven't played with it yet, just downloaded it. You can too from: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_lightroom4 but you first need to register for an Adobe ID.

Here are a few videos released by Adobe.

And the Winner of the Biggest Telephoto is

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 10. January 2012 - 8:35

You are not seeing much of the guy, but I'm talking about the guy in the middle and the small tube. He's sandwiched between a Sony with a Minolta 600 behind him and a Canon 500 in front. It's not a Canon, Nikon or a …

The winner of the tele photo wars The guy in the middle, between the Canon 500 and the Minolta 600, with the small narrow white tube, has a 1200mm!It's a digiscope. A 1200mm on a micro-4/3rd format. This gives him a whopping 2400mm lens, and it's very light, under 4lbs. snowy-owls-20111225-0388.jpg — ©2011 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Canon 1Dx vs Nikon D4

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 8. January 2012 - 21:35

The mine's better than yours war has ready started. Nikon has finally announced their D4, almost 6 weeks after Canon announced their 1Dx.

  • It looks like Nikon will ship first. 1 point for Canon announcing first and 1 point for Nikon shipping first.
  • The prices are in the same range, the $6,000 range, 1 point Nikon and ¾ point for Canon because the announced price will be high end of the $6,000 range but I'm convinced that they will quickly match Nikon's.
  • Photo side: technically, if you read the specs, they are pretty much equivalent on the photo side. Canon is a little bit more here, Nikon is a little bit more there. In the real world, the major difference is clock-wise (Canon) vs counter clock-wise (Nikon). I defy you to identify a photo taken with the 1Dx or by the D4. They both have 60 years of experience and it shows. Nikon has closed the megapixels gaps by going to 16 megapixels. So 1 point for Canon and 1½ point for Nikon.

Canon: The Right Way of Metering

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 5. January 2012 - 6:15

Canon has 4+ metering modes:

  1. Evaluative Metering
  2. Partial Metering
  3. Spot Metering
  4. Center-weighted Average Metering

All new dSLRs have similar modes, they just call it differently

And then there's the manual mode. So what's the right way? That depends:

  • On the direction of the wind
  • The age of the captain
  • What about the exposing to the right?

Does this sound whimsical? Because exposure is whimsical. There's no right exposure. It just depends. The metering is only one step in the exposure.

Speeding up Lightroom, not so Cheap

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 5. January 2012 - 6:00

Just before Xmas, I started to have problems with my computer (again.) This time, it was the video card. Either the video card was on “the fritz”, or the problem was with the driver. I had an nVidia 310GT video card that came with the computer. So I bought an Asus nVidia 550GT video card for the grand total of $129 Canadian.

This new video card with the current video driver, from nVidia's website, supports hardware acceleration. This means that any of the screen operations are not done by the CPU but by the video card.

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