For a long time I have had a theory that Nikon photographers are more likely to be Mac OS and Apple Aperture users while Canon shooters tend to use MS Windows and Adobe Lightroom.

Please tell us what you are most likely to use as the primary set of tools in your photography workflow:

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Polls Archive

In another widely anticipated move, Canon has finally announced an update to the firmware for their extremely popular Canon EOS 5D Mark II SLR camera. This update is mainly aimed at the video users that have been very disappointed (and very vocal about it) with the video controls that were included with the original camera.

This update brings several updates and improvements to the video controls for the camera, including manual control over the audio input level, and several new recording formats as well:

NOTE – Firmware Version 2.0.3 was very quickly superseded by 2.04 which fixed a few bugs that were introduced in 2.0.3. The major changes in 2.0.4 are the same as in 2.0.3.

Firmware Version 2.0.4 incorporates five enhancements to the
movie function and a fix to the manual sensor cleaning function
of the EOS 5D Mark II camera.

1. Adds or changes the following movie frame rates
   NTSC:
   1920×1080:30 fps (changed – actual 29.97fps)
   1920×1080:24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
   640×480:30 fps (changed – actual 29.97fps)
   PAL:
   1920×1080:25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)
   1920×1080:24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
   640×480:25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)
2. Adds a function for manually adjusting the sound recording level (64 levels).
3. Adds a histogram display (brightness or RGB) for shooting movies in manual exposure.
4. Adds shutter-priority AE mode (Tv) and aperture-priority AE (Av) mode to the exposure modes for shooting movies.
5. Changes the audio sampling frequency from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz.
6. Fixes a phenomenon where communication between the camera and the attached lens is sometimes interrupted after manual sensor cleaning. (This phenomenon only affects units with Firmware Version 1.2.4.)

For all the details about the firmware update including a download and installation instructions head over to the official Canon site.

A friend of mine recently asked for some advice on how to make some great images of his newborn baby.

“We’re having our first child in a couple of weeks and I just started a photography course. I’m looking for some tips on getting some decent shots. You being a Dad AND an accomplished shutterbug, I thought I might pick your brain a bit. It was suggested to me to pick up a 50mm 1.8 lens. I have a 40D which puts the lens at approx 80mm after crop factor. Obviously flash probably shouldn’t be used, so I was wondering if you could please toss a little guidance my way.”

I quickly came up with a few great tips that I wanted to share here too:

1. Consider Black and White, and use Tight Depth of Field - Brand new Babies are often blotchy and scaly and if you photograph them in color then they tend to look funny. Black and White images can hide lots of that stuff. So does a really large aperture and tight cropping. This is where a lens like the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 comes in. It is very inexpensive (around $100) and has a very wide maximum aperture that allows you to highlight a sweet spot of the scene, such as the eyes or the face of the baby. (I wouldn’t actually shoot it at 1.8 because the depth of field would be so narrow that much of the image would look blurry. If you use something like f/2.8 then you can really bring the attention to the part of the image that you want, while still giving yourself a chance of making the image in focus).
2. 
   Move Closer - When you think you’re close enough, take another step closer! A series of tightly cropped shots are often much better than trying to show everything in one image. And portrait where the subject almost completely fill the frame are almost always better than images where the subject is small in the frame. Having said that, make sure you shoot a little bit of everything, from really wide to very tight just to make sure you capture everything that you might want to remember later.
3. Shoot the Details – Baby hands and feet are really cute, so don’t forget to make some nice images of them. Make sure you also get a few shots of the hospital details that you will only see in the first few days. The birth announcement, the name card on the bassinet, the wrist band (security ID) on Baby’s arm or leg, etc. You might also want get a few images of the doctors, nurses, and any other people in the hospital that make your life better while you’re there. The key is to have a camera with you at all times for the first few days.
4. Use Window Light on a Cloudy Day - After the initial excitement of Baby’s arrival drops off, you’ll want to make some great portraits while the baby is still tiny. It’s still winter in our neck of the woods and we’ve had lots of those foggy days lately where the light coming in the window is extremely soft and bright white. This is fantastic light for portraits. Set baby up in a blanky (or in mom’s arms) near the window and use that light to your advantage. This is much easier than trying to make light from a flash look good because you can see what you’ve got before actually taking the picture. Try it, you’ll like it!

These are all great ways to make sure you get some great images of your baby and some of the details of her arrival.You’ll look back on these images many many times over the coming years, so you really should try to do it right!

A few more thoughts about 50mm lenses:

I love mine and I use it all the time. In fact I have two of them; an older 50 f/1.8 and a brand new Canon 50mm f/1.4. I really love the 1.4 version because it focuses extremely quickly and it’s incredibly sharp. The 1.8 is also very good (especially for the price), and I happily used it for years before upgrading, but it focuses really slowly, especially in low light. The good news is that really little babies don’t move very quickly so you can set up every shot very carefully and get your focus bang on! Either one of them make fantastic portrait lenses because the focal length is just right for making images that look pretty natural to the human eye (ie. it is very similar to what we see with our own eyes). But they also allow very tight DOF which lets you to blur out the distractions in the background. I definitely recommend buying one if you have the cash.

I’d love to hear what has worked well for you when making portraits of your children (or your clients children). Hit me in the comments below!

I posted an article yesterday describing a method to reduce noise from photographic images shot at high ISO by using a free Action for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom called the OD Virtual Tripod Action.

In that article I used an example image that was shot at ISO 400. I realized when I was writing it that the example image may not have been the most convincing; however, it was the best example I had at the time.

So I went out at sunrise and created a new series of images that could really demonstrate how well this action works.

This new example image was created from a series of 11 images that I shot in rapid fire on my Canon 1D Mark IV at ISO 12,800. I deliberately underexposed the images, which always results in noiser images than images that are exposed correctly. I also turned off all noise reduction in Lightroom. The resulting image (upper left) after applying the action is still somewhat noisy, but I think it’s a much more pleasant or organic noise than the originals.

Check out a closeup of the original image on the left below. It is really, really ugly. Now compare it to the image on the right. This is the resulting image after the OD Virtual Tripod Action has been applied. I think the result speaks for itself.

For more information about the OD Virtual Tripod Action check out the original article.

Download the Free OD Virtual Tripod Photoshop Action

• OD Virtual Tripod (Photoshop Action)

There was a post on the Imaging Professional Blog a few months ago showing how to use Adobe Photoshop to dramatically reduce the noise in a series of images that were shot at high ISO.

“This technique describes a method to stack several high ISO source images in Photoshop CS3 or CS4 Extended, in order to minimize random noise – in effect creating a synthesized long duration low-ISO exposure.”

Sometimes you really just don’t have the light you need to shoot at low ISO and still get the high shutter speeds you need to shoot hand held. If you don’t have a tripod with you then your only option may be to crank up the ISO. This will likely create some very noisy images. Using this Virtual Tripod technique will allow you to easily reduce that noise in post processing after the fact. In my experience this method works far better than noise reduction software and can result in some really great looking, noise-free images.

The original article described in detail a method to do this once you already have a series of images loaded up in Photoshop. I took those instructions and modified them slightly to simplify their use with Adobe Lightroom. I also created a Photoshop Action to automate the process. Depending on how many images you use, the resolution of your camera, and how fast your computer is, this method could take several minutes to run (or maybe even longer in some circumstances. But using this method is very easy, and extremely effective!

Example Images

The first image is one of the original images, essentially straight out of the camera. There may have been some minor global edits applied in Lightroom, but no noise reduction has been performed.

The second example is the resulting image after application of the OD Virtual Tripod Action. This was done using a series of 5 images that were shot using the high speed shooting mode with my Canon 40D.

The difference isn’t really noticeable when the images are rezzed down for on-screen display, but when you zoom in the noise in the original is extremely obvious (I’m really not that much of a pixel peeper, but even when looking at the originals in Lightroom the difference was extremely obvious.)

Here is a close up of one of the original images with no edits applied.

And here is a close up of the resulting image after application of the OD Virtual Tripod Action.

I think you will agree that the difference is simply amazing. These images were shot at ISO 400. Imagine if I had used originals at ISO 1600 or even 3200. I generally find the images shot at ISO’s above 800 on this camera are barely useable. Using this technique has allowed me to create a few really nice images that I wouldn’t even have tried to make if I didn’t have this tool in my kit.

Try it, you’ll like it!

Install the OD Virtual Tripod Action

1. Skip down to the end of this article to download the Free Virtual Tripod Photoshop Action
2. Extract the file called “OD_Virtual_Tripod.atn” from the zip file you just downloaded, and save the action to a safe place on your computer (that you will remember).
3. Open Photoshop
4. In the Actions Palette choose “Load Actions…” and navigate to the file you just saved. Choose “Load“.
5. You will now have a new folder in your Actions Palette called “OD Virtual Tripod“

If you need more help with loading actions (or using them) then you should check out the article called Photoshop Actions for Photographers over at PhotoshopSupport.com. They do a great job of teaching all about Photoshop Actions.

Using the OD Virtual Tripod Action

1. Shoot a series of photos in rapid fire. Use your best “Human Tripod” technique while shooting them. Hold your arms in tight to your body and try to be as still as possible. If there is a small amount of camera shake or body movement then the Photoshop Action will take care of aligning the images properly. This won’t work so well for large movements or for moving subjects. I suggest that you use at least 5 images, but any more than 12 is probably overkill. You can read more about how to actually make the images in the original article over at the Imaging Professional Blog.
2. Import the files into Lightroom. Do any basic edits you want to the images, but be sure to do the same edits to all of the images.
3. Select all the images.
4. Right Click on one of the files and choose “Edit In” and then “Open as Layers in Photoshop…“
5. Run the OD Virtual Tripod Action
6. When the action finishes, Save and Close the resulting file in Photoshop. The finished image will automatically get imported back into Lightroom.
7. Inspect the resulting image to ensure that there is no ghosting and that the edges are clean. If the images didn’t line up properly, or if one (or more) of the images was severely out of alignment with the others then you may need to do some additional cropping to clean up the images. You may even need to repeat the process after deselecting the offending image(s) that were badly aligned.

Download the Free Virtual Tripod Photoshop Action

• OD Virtual Tripod (Photoshop Action)

That’s it. Try it out and drop me a comment to let me know how it works! This action should definitely works in Photoshop CS4, and it may also work in prior versions. Please let me know if you try it with other versions and I will compile a compatibility list.