Occasional Drivel

I got a few followup questions from my friend after my response to his request for advice about baby photography, so I figured I might as well put my additional answers up here too:

Should I be taking the shot in B/W or converting it later?

I always shoot in color and convert in software later. That way you have both options. If you shoot in B&W in the camera then you are stuck with it. But if you shoot in RAW (rather than JPG) then it doesn’t matter. The preview on the back of the camera would be in B&W if you shoot in B&W mode (which can be helpful to visualize the image in B&W), but the actually file will have full color and you can do whatever you want with the file.

Lens Hood required with the 50mm?

I use hoods on all my lenses to help protect the lenses if I drop them. The hoods for the 50’s are so small that they don’t really help much for flare or reflections. You can get after-market hoods for most lenses from stores like DealExtreme.com for less than $10 (compared to 2 to 3 times as much for branded hoods from Canon and Nikon), so for me it’s a no-brainer.

I have the 580EX [flash], should I be leaving it at home? Or is bouncing flash of the ceiling OK to do in low light?

Nice flash! I carry my flashes with me all the time and I use them a lot. I pretty much only use them by bouncing off the walls or the ceiling (or off-camera in a Softbox). It’s a different look than ambient only, but if you’re careful with it then it can still look very good. I probably use a flash less with my 50 than with other lenses, but I still use it a lot. You may want to use it at the hospital, but they may not be very happy with you if you do. I would definitely take it so you have it if you need it! After you bring baby home then you will be shooting so much that you should experiment with flash and no-flash and see what you like.

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!

This is another one of those very quick tips that’s going to take me a long time to say.

The tip itself is very simple: Back up your data! Your photos don’t really exist until they exist in at least two places. Hard Drives fail. Optical Discs rot. Floppy Discs are tiny. So what do you do? You make sure that you have multiple copies of every single one of your important files. And you really should have one backup copy of all your important data that is quickly and easily accessible, and another copy that is stored at an off-site location that can’t be affected by the same flood, fire, or theft that could get the other two copies.

Hard Drivesare cheap. If you just consider your backup drives as part of your photographic kit (just like the camera, lenses, and these days the computer too) then you will be in a much better place mentally when it comes to buying them. You need all of these things in order to successfully create, manipulate, and preserve your images. It’s just that simple.

How to Backup

This is the long part. I’m not going to tell you how to backup your photos and other important documents. That’s up to you. But I will tell you what I do, and why I do it. Unfortunately, because my system is so robust it is also quite complicated. And that takes a long time to describe…

I recognize that most people won’t even come close to doing what I do. But I hope you will do some of it, because (say it with me) “All Hard Drives Fail“. Even if you only do some of this it will be much more likely that your data is safe.

• First of all I keep the original copies of all of my important documents, data, and recent photos on my laptop. I would prefer to keep absolutely everything on my laptop, but laptop hard drives simply aren’t available that are big enough to do so; therefore, I can only keep my recent work on my laptop and older stuff must be stored elsewhere.
• My laptop and my desktop are connected via a network and I do automatic backups of all my important documents so that they are readily available on either machine. The frequency of these backups varies depending on the type of data.

  The automatic backup is done using AJC Directory Synchronizer. This is a very powerful program that allows you to choose exactly what you want to backup and where you want it to go. It is easily scheduled via the Windows task manager so you can create multiple jobs with appropriate frequencies for each job. I have used many similar pieces of software over the years and I’m much happier with this one than I was with any of the others…

• I have 2 D-Link DNS-323 Network Attached Storage (NAS) cases that each contain 2 Hard Drives. One of the drives in each NAS contains my entire photography library (including the recent work from my laptop), which I can access directly over the network from either computer using Adobe Lightroom or Windows Explorer. The other drive in each NAS contains all of my other data and documents. I do an automatic backup every week to copy everything from the primary NAS to the secondary NAS. This backup syncs any additions, deletions, or changes to any files on the primary. I do this weekly because that provides a nice buffer in case I make a mistake on either of the computers and it gets propagated to the primary NAS before I catch it. I then have a few days to recover any necessary files from the secondary NAS.
• This next part may sound crazy to some of you, but it is actually the most important part of my backup strategy… I use a portable USB drive that contains another copy of absolutely everything, and I store this drive off-site. This protects me in case of fire, flood, or any other major disaster that would impact my house, and which could potentially destroy all of the other backup copies at the same time. I only update this drive every few weeks, so there is always some exposure to losing my most recent files, but I have years worth of work stored on this drive that will always be safe.

  This drive can be stored at your workplace, at a friends house, in a safety deposit box, or even in your vehicle (as long as you don’t park it in the garage attached to your house!). The important part is that it must be an off-site backup, and therefore you have to get it out of your house. With this drive stored somewhere else, my absolute worst case is that I lose a few weeks worth of data.

  Note that I even go to the extreme of taking my secondary NAS off-site prior to bringing in my external drive!
  

Note that if you have a relatively small amount of data, a system like this could easily be created by using 2 inexpensive USB Hard Drives. These are readily available for under $100 if you need 1TB or less. You could use one drive as your primary backup and the other as the off-site backup. In fact this is exactly what I did for a long time before my storage needs outpaced the USB drives that I had. One benefit of using the NAS cases is that they are directly connected to my gigabit ethernet network, and I really like the performance and speed that the NAS is capable of.

The beauty of this system is that it can be easily upgraded by replacing the portable hard drives as your storage needs get bigger. These drives get bigger, faster, and cheaper all the time. Depending on how much storage space you need, you may never have to do this. Or you might need to start off with a multi-bay NAS right off the bat if you already have lots of data and you don’t have a good backup system.

So even if you only get one backup drive, and even if you only backup your data every once in awhile, I hope you are doing something. Do whatever works for you! Feel free to drop me a line if you need some help setting up your backup system!

As soon as I placed the order for my Canon 1D Mark IV I started to look into some accessories that I knew I would need. There are always a few things that you have to get when you buy a new camera (or any other electronic gadget for that matter) like batteries, memory cards, etc. Here are a few of the things that I immediately wanted to go with my new camera:

Batteries: This is absolutely the first thing I buy when I get a new camera. I can’t imagine why the manufacturers think it’s OK to ship a camera with a single battery, but they always do. The 1D Mark IV uses the same Canon LP-E4 battery as the other recent 1D cameras, including the 1D Mark III and the 1Ds Mark III. The OEM Canon version of these batteries sell for over $100, but there are many after market equivalents available for $30 to $50. I have always used aftermarket batteries in my cameras and have never had a problem, and I would have no problem recommending that for this camera as well.

Memory Cards: The 1D Mark IV takes both CompactFlash cards and SDHC cards. I have a pretty good supply of CF cards (be sure to get fast UDMA cards) but I needed to pick up a couple of SD cards. I recommend Lexar 8GB SDHC cards, but many other cards will do the trick too. Just be sure to get at least Class 6 cards for best performance with video.

Camera Bag: I want to be able to carry a good selection of lenses in addition to my camera body, and my old bag simply wasn’t big enough. Of course this happens all the time with photographers… We always need new bags! I did a lot of research and decided that the best bag for me was the Tamrac 777 Summit. Everyone’s needs are different, but this bag is definitely worth checking out.

Video Microphone: I haven’t done enough video with the new camera yet to really know, but everyone says that the built in mic simply isn’t good enough. So I immediately invested in a shotgun microphone from Rode called the VideoMic. I honestly haven’t even tested it yet, but I’m told that it’s a great mic for shooting videos with a DSLR. It attaches to the camera via the hotshoe and connects directly to the mic in port on the side of the camera.

As with all new cameras I’m sure there will be many more purchases over the next few months, but these things were enough to get me started. I’d love to hear about any other gadgets that might help make the camera better and easier to use!

In the last installment of Quick Tips for Photographers we talked about Shooting the Moon. Well I’ve got another great tip for you to make even better images of the moon.

Make the Moon Look Really Big

Most people automatically shoot images of the moon with really wide angle lenses. The natural assumption is that a great Landscape image will look even better if it includes the moon. This is true, but the thing is, the moon is really far away and if you shoot it with a wide lens, it’s going to look really small. You’re far better to use the longest lens you’ve got. This will allow you to take advantage of a principle called Telephoto Compression; this is where distant objects appear to be closer, and larger, than they really are when they are magnified

So how do you make this work with the moon?

1. Figure out when you need to be at your chosen destination so that you see the Full Moon when it is near the horizon. I prefer to do this at sunrise or sunset so that the light of the moon is nicely balanced with the landscape around it. Note that for every Full Moon there will be at least 2, and sometimes 3, opportunities when the rising or setting moon coincides with the rising or setting sun. You can use TimeandDate.com to figure out when the next one will be.
2. Find a really scenic vista that you can see unobstructed from a long way away.
3. Back up a long way so that you can fill the frame appropriately with the main subject (other than the moon), and still have room to include the moon.
4. Arrive plenty early so you have time to get your gear set up in advance of the rising or setting moon, and so that you can change positions if you don’t have the moon perfectly aligned with your main subject.
5. Make plenty of images as the sun and the moon rise and set. The light will be perfect for only a few minutes for each opportunity.
6. Be prepared for the weather to totally bust you more often than not. I honestly try to make moon images almost every month, and in the last year I’ve only been successful 3 times. That’s just how it goes as a landscape shooter. Sometimes the weather cooperates, sometimes it doesn’t.