Week In Review

Last week from a flying standpoint was a breeze. Two days home, one travel, one work, another travel, one standby at the airport then yesterday was a checkride and airline flight home. This will get posted in the morning but right now I am in LaGuardia waiting for my flight to Grand Rapids. Every time I tether by phone to my laptop at an airport my mind goes wee, it's free free free.

I was able to get a bunch of editing done on a number of shoots I have done over the past couple of weeks which was nice to get caught up a little. Here are some of the images from those sessions.

The first one is a family from the Church Directory shoot and I got to playing around with changing the color of the background in Lightroom. This is not the color we are using in the directory, it is more of a grey lit with two strobe with full CTO gels giving the background a rusty look.

This was a Allan and Ava which are part of my marketing department because the spread the word really good. I had a roll of white seamless under the background and had them show up before the evening onslaught of shooting began. I wanted to do some high key shooting and it turned out well.

This is the other family in my marketing department. Mom just wanted the kids pictures and did not want to be a part of it. This was actually shot on the same white seamless. A trip to photoshop is all it takes to pull them out of the image and place a background in behind them. The gold PF in the lower right corner is a watermark from Lightroom that I am using as part of a selection/workflow process that I am working on.

My daughter Sandy, husband Chris and little guy Levi were in over Thanksgiving so I set up my moonlight background and hit it with a single strobe with a blue gel.

All in all last week was a productive week in one respect or another. This week is at home and I have a number of items on my plate but the one paramount project is the migration to the new iMac which sadly to say is still in it's box :(

Take care all... Doug

How Many Lenses Do You Need?

Most photographers would say that is an easy question to answer. One more.

But then again, there are many reasons to limit the number of lenses you have in your optical arsenal. Purist say stick with as many prime lenses as you can get your hands on because they say the optics are more precise vs the moving optics in zoom lenses. The portrait photographer will swear by a good 85mm or a 70-200 mm zoom. Nature can go both ways... Landscape will go wide while wildlife will go long as will sports photographers.

Ok... So that may not be much help to answer the question. To tell you the truth, I can not answer the question. By the simple fact that Canon has over 60 lenses to choose from, the need is so diverse that the original answer may be the best... One more

Here is a breakdown on the lenses shown in this post.

A - EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM $2299

This baby has 114° of view so you are almost looking at your feet when shooting. It is the closest lens to a fisheye and still maintaining minimum distortion. This is great for architectural and very wide landscape. It is a prime lens in that to change the focal length would require a different camera body (APS-C sensor based body).

B - EF 16-36mm f/2.8L II USM $1649

While not quite as wide as the 14mm this lens has a zoom capability that makes it very good for a metro walk around lens.

C - EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM $2149

This lens is coveted by portrait photographers for it's wide aperture of f/1.2. This easily generates soft bokeh in images. The price is the most restrictive on this lens. You are either doing a lot of portraiture or you have a nice dose of disposable income.

D - EF 50 f/1.4 USM $520

This lens is really an ideal lens for the APS-C sensored bodies such as the 40D, 50D, and Rebel line. With the 1.6 crop =factor this lens acts like it is an 80mm lens. Very nice for the cost.

E - EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS $199

Ok... This one seems a little out of place in this line-up. First it is Canon's consumer level lens but is a relatively new design. Specifically it is designed for the cropped sensor. The "S" in the EF-S designation stands for Short. That being the back part of the lens is closer to the camera body than a full EF lens. This lens would interfere with a full framed sensor such as the 5D Mk II, or 1DS Mk III. Having said all that. this has turned out to be a fine lens. A nice reach (320mm) and yet goes wide (18mm)when necessary.

G - EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM $1999

This is probably one of the best lenses in the Canon line-up. It encompasses that magical 85mm and can be racked out to compress the field without having to back up into the next county. The stabilizer can give up to four stops of additional light. Just a fantastic lens. On an APS-C (cropped) sensor it runs at 112-320mm. So what does this have over the EF-S 18-200? Bigger and higher quality glass and constant aperture of 2.8. It may not sound like that much but it is really big!

H - EF 1.4 x II Extender $299

This little device mounts between the long lenses such as the 70-200 and turns it into a 98-280mm on a full frame or 156-448 on a cropped body. That is some really nice flexibility. The only down side to strapping this buddy on is that the is a one stop loss in light. There is a 2x extender but that looses two stops. Most people call these teleconverters.

Ok now... We are moving into the twilight zone in lenses.

I - EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM $7999

You will see this lens on many football field, make that professional football sidelines. You have seen many of the products of this lens in Sports Illustrated. The glass is nice and fast at f/2.8 and allows very high shutter speeds to freeze the action. Oh, did I say it was a bit pricy.

J - EF 600mm f/4L IS USM $9199

The monster lens in the Canon line-up. It is the wildlife photographers lens of choice. Speed is not as necessary as reach. This is how they get that tiger looking into the eye of the camera. Somewhat beyond my budget though.

I have eluded to the APS-C sized sensors in this post for a reason. Having a cropped and a full framed sensored bodies doubles the utility of your lenses. That is with the exception of the EF-S lenses. So if I have any recommendation, it is this:

1. Get the best glass your pocket book can afford.
2. If you plan to have both sensor sized bodies, avoid the EF-S lenses.
3. Remember you feet! They are the ultimate manual zoom.
4. Shoot with one lens for a day to find out its limitations.
5. Practice... Practice... Practice... You parents were right after all!

Take care all... Doug

NOTES

I believe some of the Nikon bodies will accept the Nikor lenses that are designed for the full frame or crapped sensor. I am no where near as familiar with the Nikon line as I shoot Canon.

Going Home

Hey all,

The image above should give you a clue as to what I am doing today. Actually I have to spend the day in Columbus and then drive home to Michigan. Soooo... You guessed it. It will be a second no blog day this week. I will be back on the office project starting this weekend so there might be an office project update by Monday.

Take care... Doug

Pre-Blog Post #3

This image is a couple weeks old and was put together as a demo to my brother-in-law. While he is a PS guru in his own right, there are many roads to the final product in PS as those that are junkies already know.

The demo was to grab an image from Google Images and see what we could do with it in as little time as possible. It started with an image of a single F-18 Hornet flown by the US Navy Blue Angles and grew from there, here is the process. 

• Remove the plane from the background.
  
• Clone the number off the tail.
• Create background sky using the clouds filter.
• Add additional clouds using  very large hard circular brush and gaussian blur.
• Create multiple aircraft using duplicate layer (ControlCommand-J)
• Position aircraft for a diamond formation
• Create the 1-4 tail numbers
• Merge the numbers to the relative aircraft layers
• Expand canvas and turn background black
• Add mat-board trim lines using stroke (8 pt)
• Add frame and color copy from blue on the aircraft
• Add layer style drop shadow
• Add and trim frame highlight
• Add Logo layer
• DONE

Enjoy... Doug

Pre-Blog Post #2

Hey, Just want to let you know that we are in Maryland moving some of our kids stuff out to them. I will try and get something up here later today.

Cya... Doug

Pre-Blog Post #1

If all goes according to plan today, we will be picking up a trailer to move as much of the kids stuff out of the house and storage unit (yes we have a storage unit) and out to Maryland this week into their house and apartment.

Now we are not trying to divest ourselves of everything offspring. Quite the contrary. We see an opportunity to pass onto them some of the joy they have had in the memories of their youth. I was very angry with my mother when I found out she got rid of my rather extensive Tonka truck collection. Man that stuff would be priceless now. It was the good stuff made of steel.

Anyhow, we head out tomorrow and spend the day in travel.

If I get a chance I will post an update... Doug